I had already noticed that, rather than arriving in linear fashion, network printouts tended to reach me in staggered clusters, placed at random, so that no pattern could be discerned until the final - and most important -cluster had been transmitted. That way the transmitter held the key segment in its possession until the last moment possible, reducing what it had previously given me to a cipher.
As I returned to the bedroom, Johnny called to me _from his bed. "Daddy, can I have a drink?"
From the tap in the bathroom I got him a glass of water. And then, in a state of half-sleep, not fully recovered from the disquieting experience with the low-level AI unit, I took a piece of bread from the kitchen; carrying the bread and the water I entered Johnny's room. He was sitting up, reaching grumpily for the glass of water.
"Here is a game," I said. It had to be done stealthily and rapidly, because of the Romans, and it had to be done in such a manner that if they happened to see they would understand nothing and think only that I was giving my son bread and water. Bending down, I gave him the piece of bread, and then, before he took the water, I inclined the glass playfully, as if by accident, and managed to splash it on his hair and forehead. Then, wiping it off with the sleeve of my pajama, I traced with my finger a cross of water on his forehead and said very quietly, under my breath so that only he and I could hear, words in Greek that I did not know the meaning of. Then, at once, I gave him the glass of water to drink from, and as he handed it back I kissed him and hugged him, as if spontaneously. It was done in an instant, this ritual of ceremony, this series of actions, whatever it was, something ancient which I knew to do by instinct. As I let go of my son I said into his ear, for only him to hear: "Your secret name is Paul. Remember that."
Johnny gazed at me quizzically and then smiled. It was over. His real name had been given him, and under the correct circumstances.
"Good night," I said aloud, and left his bedroom; behind me he rubbed at his moist hair and, sleepily, lay back in his bed.
What was all that about? I asked myself. In the dream transmission something had been freighted across to nfe on an unconscious level, instructions rather than information, concerning the welfare of my son.
When I returned to bed I had another dream concerning Sadassa Silvia. I heard music as I lay in sleep, astonishingly lovely music, a woman singing, accompanied by an acoustic guitar. Gradually the guitar gave way to a small studio combo, and I heard, then, subtracks with backup vocals and the faint hint of an echo chamber. It was a professional production.
I thought, We should sign her up. She's good.
Presently I found myself in my office at Progressive Records. I could still hear the girl singing, again with the solo guitar. She sang:
You have to put your slippers on To walk toward the dawn.
As I listened, I picked up a new album which we had mastered. A mock-up of the artwork and layout had already been prepared: inspecting it critically, I saw that the singer was Sadassa Silvia; there, in addition to her name on the album cover, was her picture, the same Afro-natural hairstyle, the small worried face, the glasses. There was blurb material on the back, but I could not read it; the small letters blurred away.
That dream remained clear in my mind when I woke up the next morning. What a voice, I said to myself as I showered and shaved. In all my life I had never heard such a pure voice, so compelling; absolutely accurate in pitch, I realized critically. A -soprano, something like Joan Baez; what we could do in the way of marketing a voice like that!
Thinking about Sadassa Silvia reawakened my concern about my job at Progressive. I had missed a lot of time; maybe I was ready now to go back. The dream was telling me that.
Think you can make out okay alone?" I asked Rachel.
"Is your eyesight - "
"I can see well enough," I said. "I think it was all the vitamin C I was taking; it's finally flushed out of my system, taking everything else with it."
I spent one whole day walking around Placentia, enjoying myself immensely. There was a beauty in the trash of the alleys which I had never noticed before; my vision now seemed sharpened, rather than impaired. As I walked along it seemed to me that the flattened beer cans and papers and weeds and junk mail had been arranged by the wind into patterns; these patterns, when I scrutinized them, lay distributed so as to comprise a visual language. It resembled the trail signs which I understood American Indians used, and as I walked along I felt the invisible presence of a great spirit which had gone before me -walked here and moved the unwanted debris in these subtle, meaningful ways so as to spell out a greeting of comradeship to me, the smaller one who would follow.
You can almost read this stuff, I thought to myself. But I couldn't. All I could gather from the arrangements of trash was a participation in the passage of the great figure who had preceded me. He had left these discarded objects placed so that I would know he had been there, and in addition a golden illumination lay over them, a glow that told me something about his nature. He had brought the dust out of its obscurity into a kind of light; this was a good spirit indeed.
I had an acute feeling that the animals always saw this way, always were aware of who and what had passed along the alleys ahead of them. I was seeing with the hypervision associated with them. What a better world than our own, I reflected; it is so much more alive.
It was not so much that I had been exalted upward from my animal nature to the realm of the transcendent; actually I seemed closer to the animal world, more tuned to actual matter. Perhaps this was the first time I had really been at home in the world. I accepted all I saw and enjoyed it. I did not judge. And since I did not judge, there was nothing to reject.
I was ready to return to work. I felt cured. Having handled the shoe ad certainly helped. The crisis had come and gone. It did not disturb my tranquility to know that in point of fact I had not dealt with the shoe ad, but, rather, that it had been handled for me, by unseen entities. What would have demoralized me would have been their absence: if they had let me fall, incompetent and confused, alone.
My incompetence had called these invisible friends forth. Had I been more gifted I would not now know of them. It was, in my mind, a good trade. Few people had the awareness I now possessed. Because of my limitations an entire new universe had revealed itself to me, a benign and living hyperenvironment endowed with absolute wisdom. Wow, I said to myself. You can't beat that. I had caught a glimpse of the Big People. It was a lifetime dream fulfilled. You'd have to go back to ancient times to find a comparable revelation. Things like this didn't happen in the modern world.
One week after I returned to Progressive Records, Mrs Sadassa Silvia walked in and asked for a job. She did not want to be recorded by us, she informed us; she wanted a job such as I had: auditioning other artists. She stood before my desk, wearing pink bell-bottoms and a man's checkered shirt, her coat over her arm, her small face pale with fatigue. It looked as if she had walked a long way.
"I don't hire," I told her. "That's not my job."
"Yes, but you have the desk nearest the door," Mrs Silvia said. "May I sit down?" Without waiting, she seated herself in a chair facing my desk. She had come into my office; I had left the door open. "Do you want to see my resume?"
"I'm not personnel,"I repeated.
Mrs Silvia gazed at me through her rather thick glasses. She had a pretty, pert face, very much as it had appeared in the two dreams. I was amazed at her small size; she seemed unusually thin, and I had the impression that she was not physically strong, that in fact she was not well. "Well, can I just sit here a second and get my breath?" she said.