"That is correct," Zina said.
"Any seeming reality that is obliging," Emmanuel said, "is something to suspect. The hallmark of the fraudulent is that it becomes what you would like it to be. I see that here. You would like Nicholas Bulkowsky not to be a vastly influential man; you would like Fulton Harms to be a minor figure, not part of history. Your world obliges you, and that gives it away for what it is. My world is stubborn. It will not yield. A recalcitrant and implacable world is a real world."
"A world that murders those forced to live in it."
"That is not the whole of it. My world is not that bad; there is much besides death and pain in it. On Earth, the real Earth, there is beauty and joy and-" He broke off. He had been tricked. She had won again.
"Then Earth is not so bad," she said. "It should not be scourged by fire. There is beauty and joy and love and good people. Despite Belial's rule. I told you that and you disputed it, as we walked among the Japanese cherry trees. What do you say now, Lord of Hosts, God of Abraham? Have you not proved me right?"
He admitted, "You are clever, Zina."
Her eyes sparkled and she smiled. "Then hold back the great and terrible day that you speak of in Scripture. As I begged you to."
For the first time he sensed defeat. Enticed into speaking foolishly, he realized. How clever she is; how shrewd.
"As it says in Scripture," Zina said.
I am Wisdom, I bestow shrewdness and show the way to knowledge and prudence.
"But," he said, "you told me you are not Holy Wisdom. That you only pretended to be."
"It is up to you to discern who I am. You yourself must decipher my identity; I will not do it for you."
"And in the meantime-tricks."
"Yes" Zina said, "because it is through tricks that you will learn."
Staring at her he said, "You are tricking me so that I wake! As I woke Herb Asher!"
"Perhaps."
"Are you my disinhibiting stimulus?" Staring fixedly at her he said in a low stern voice, "I think I created you to bring back my memory, to restore me to myself."
"To lead you back to your throne," Zina said. "Did I?"
Zina, steering the flycar, said nothing.
"Answer me," he said.
"Perhaps," Zina said.
"If I created you I can-"
"You created all things," Zina said.
"I do not understand you. I cannot follow you. You dance toward me and then away."
"But as I do so, you awaken," Zina said.
"Yes," he said. "And I reason back from that that you are the disinhibiting stimulus which I set up long ago, knowing as I did that my brain would be damaged and I would forget. You are systematically giving me back my identity, Zina. Then- I think I know who you are."
Turning her head she said, "Who?"
"I will not say. And you can't read it in my mind because I have suppressed it. I did so as soon as I thought it." Because, he realized, it is too much for me; even me. I can't believe it.
They drove on, toward the Atlantic and Washington, D.C. 4
The Divine Invasion 167
CHAPTER 14
Herb Asher felt himself engulfed by the profound impression that he had known the boy Manny Pallas at some other time, perhaps in another life. How many lives do we lead? he asked himself. Are we on tape? Is this some kind of a replay?
To Rybys he said, "The kid looked like you."
"Did he? I didn't notice." Rybys, as usual, was attempting to make a dress from a pattern, and screwing it up; pieces of fabric lay everywhere in the living room, along with dirty dishes, over- filled ashtrays and crumpled, stained magazines.
Herb decided to consult with his business partner, a middle- aged black named Elias Tate. Together he and Tate had operated a retail audio sales store for several years. Tate, however, viewed their store, Electronic Audio, as a sideline: his central interest in life was his missionary work. Tate preached at a small, out-of- the-way church, engaging a mostly black audience. His message, always, consisted of:
REPENT! THE KINGDOM OF GOD 15 AT HAND!
It seemed to Herb Asher a strange preoccupation for a man so intelligent, but, in the final analysis, it was Tate's problem. They rarely discussed it.
Seated in the listening room of the store, Herb said to his partner, "I met a striking and very peculiar little boy last night, at a cocktail lounge in Hollywood."
Involved in assembling a new laser-tracking phono compo- nent, Tate murmured, "What were you doing in Hollywood? Trying to get into pictures?"
"Listening to a new singer named Linda Fox."
"Never heard of her."
Herb said, "She's sexy as hell and very good. She-"
"You're married."
"I can dream," Herb said.
"Maybe you'd like to invite her to an autograph party at the store."
"We're the wrong kind of store."
"It's an audio store; she sings. That's audio. Or isn't she audible?"
"As far as I know she hasn't made any tapes or cut any records or been on TV. I happened to hear her last month when I was at the Anaheim Trade Center audio exhibit. I told you you should have come along."
"Sexuality is the malady of this world," Tate said. "This is a lustful and demented planet."
"And we're all going to hell."
Tate said, "I certainly hope so.
"You know you're out of step? You really are. You have an ethical code that dates back to the Dark Ages."
"Oh, long before that," Tate said. He placed a disc on the turntable and started up the component. On his 'scope the pattern appeared to be adequate but not perfect; Tate frowned.
"I almost met her. I was so close; a matter of seconds. She's better looking up close than anyone else I ever saw. You should see her. I know-I've got this intuition-that she's going to soar all the way to the top."
"Okay," Tate said, reasonably. "That's fine with me. Write her a fan letter. Tell her."
"Elias," Herb said, "the boy I met last night-he looked like Rybys."
The black man glanced up at him. "Really?"
"If Rybys could collect her goddam scattered wits for one second she could have noticed. She just can't goddam concen- trate. She never looked at the boy. He could have been her son."
"Maybe there's something you don't know."
"Lay off," Herb said.
Elias said, "I'd like to see the boy."
"I felt I'd known him before, in some other life. For a second it started to come back to me and then-" He gestured. "I lost it. I couldn't pin it down. And there was more ... as if I was remembering a whole other world. Another life entirely."
Elias ceased working. "Describe it."
"You were older. And not black. You were a very old man in a robe. I wasn't on Earth; I glimpsed a frozen landscape and it wasn't Terra. Elias-could I be from another planet, and some powerful agency laid down false memories in my mind, over the real ones? And the boy-seeing the boy-caused the real mem- ories to begin to return? And I had the idea that Rybys was very ill. In fact, about to die. And something about Immigration offi- cials with guns.
"Immigration officers don't carry guns.
"And a ship. A long trip at very high speed. Urgency. And most of all-a presence. An uncanny presence. Not human. Maybe it was an extraterrestrial, the race I'm really a part of. From my home planet."
"Herb," Elias said, "you are full of shit."
"I know. But just for a second I experienced all that. And- listen to this." He gestured excitedly. "An accident. Our ship crashing into another ship. My body remembered; it remembered the concussion, the trauma."
"Go to a hypnotherapist," Elias said, "get him to put you under, and remember. You're obviously a weird alien pro- grammed to blow up the world. You probably have a bomb inside you.
Herb said, "That's not funny."
"Okay; you're from some wise, super-advanced noble spiri- tual race and you were sent here to enlighten mankind. To save us.
Instantly, in Herb Asher's mind, memories flicked on, and then flicked off again. Almost at once.