"Is Goosein the States?" Kevin said.
"Yes," I said, "according to Jamison."
"You didn't tell him the cypher," Fat said.
We all gave Fat a withering look.
"The cypher is for Goose," Kevin said. "When he calls."
"'When,'" I echoed.
"If you have to you can have your agent contact Goose's agent," Kevin said. He had become more earnest about this than even Fat himself. After all, it was Kevin who had discovered Valis and thereby put us in business.
"A film like that," David said, "is going to bring a lot of cranks out of the woodwork. Mother Goose is probably being rather careful."
"Thanks," Kevin said.
"I don't mean us," David said.
"He's right," I said, reviewing in my mind some of the mail my own writing generates. "Goose will probably prefer to contact my agent." I thought, If he contacts us at all. His agent to my agent. Balanced minds.
"If Goose does phone you," Fat said to me in a calm, low, very tense voice, unusual for him, "you are to give him the two-word cypher, KING FELIX. Work it into the conversation, of course; this isn't spy stuff. Say it's an alternate title for the screenplay."
I said, irritably, "I can handle it."
Chances were, there wouldn't be anything to handle. A week later I received a letter from Mother Goose himself, Eric Lampton. It contained one word. KING. And after the word a question mark and an arrow pointing to the right of KING.
It scared the shit out of me; I trembled. And wrote in the word FELIX. And mailed the letter back to Mother Goose.
He had included a stamped self-addressed envelope.
No doubt existed: we had linked up.
The person referred to by the two-word cypher KING FELIX is the fifth Savior who, Zebra -- or VALIS -- had said, was either already born or would soon be. This was terribly frightening to me, getting the letter from Mother Goose. I wondered how Goose -- Eric Lampton and his wife Linda -- would feel when they got the letter back with FELIX correctly added. Correctly; yes, that was it. Only one word out of the hundreds of thousands of English words would do; no, not English: Latin. It is a name in English but a word in Latin.
Prosperous, happy, fruitful... the Latin word "Felix" occurs in such injunctions as that by God Himself, who in Genesis 1:21 says to all the creatures of the world, "Be fruitful and increase, fill the waters of the seas; and let the birds increase on land." This is the essence of the meaning of Felix, this command from God, this loving command, this manifestation of his desire that we not only live but that we live happily and prosperously.
FELIX. Fruit-bearing, fruitful, fertile, productive. All the nobler sorts of trees, whose fruits are offered to the superior deities. That brings good luck, of good omen, auspicious, favorable, propitious, fortunate, prosperous, felicitous. Lucky, happy, fortunate. Wholesome. Happier, more successful in.
That last meaning interests me. "More successful in." The King who is more successful in... in what? Perhaps in overthrowing the tyrannical reign of the king of tears, replacing that sad and bitter king with his own legitimate reign of happiness: the end of the age of the Black Iron Prison and the beginning of the age of the Garden of Palm Trees in the warm sun of Arabia ("Felix" also refers to the fertile portion of Arabia).
Our little group, upon my receiving the missive from Mother Goose, met in plenipotentiary session.
"Fat is in the fire," Kevin said laconically, but his eyes sparkled with excitement and joy, a joy we all shared.
"You're with me," Fat said.
We had all chipped in to buy a bottle of Courvoisier Napoleon cognac; seated around Fat's living room we warmed our glasses by rubbing their stems like fire sticks, feeling pretty smart.
Kevin, hollowly, intoned, to no one in particular, "It would be interesting if some men in skin-tight shiny black uniforms show up and shoot us all, now. Because of Phil's phonecall."
"Them's the breaks," I said, easily fielding Kevin's wit. "Let's push Kevin out into the hall with the end of a broom handle and see if anyone opens fire on him."
"It would prove nothing," David said. "Half of Santa Ana is tired of Kevin."
Three nights later, at two a.m., the phone rang. When I answered it -- I was still up, finishing an introduction for a book of stories culled from twenty-five years of my career* ( * The Golden Man, edited by Mark Hurst, Berkley Publishing Corporation, NY., 1980. ) -- a man's voice with a slight British accent said, "How many are there of you?"
Bewildered, I said, "Who is this?"
"Goose."
Aw Christ, I thought, and again I trembled. "Four," I said, and my voice shook.
"This is a happy occasion," Eric Lampton said.
"Prosperous," I said.
Lampton laughed. "No, the King isn't financially well-off."
"He -- " I couldn't go on.
Lampton said, "Vivit. I think. Vivet? He lives, anyhow, you'll be happy to hear. My Latin isn't very good."
"Where?" I said.
"Where are you? I have a 714 area code, here."
"Santa Ana. In Orange County."
"With Ferris," Lampton said. "You're just north of Ferris's mansion-by-the-sea."
"Right," I said.
"Shall we get together?"
"Sure," I said, and in my head a voice said, This is real.
"You can fly up here, the four of you? To Sonoma?"
"Oh yes," I said.
"You'll fly to the Oakland Airport; it's better than San Francisco. You saw Valis?"
"Several times." My voice still shook. "Mr. Lampton, is a time dysfunction involved?"
Eric Lampton said, "How can there be a dysfunction in something that doesn't exist?" He paused. "You didn't think of that."
"No," I admitted. "Can I tell you that we thought Valis is one of the finest films we ever saw?"
"I hope we can release the uncut version sometime. I'll see that you get a peek at it up here. We really didn't want to cut it, but, you know, practical considerations... you're a science fiction writer? Do you know Thomas Disch?"
"Yes," I said.
"He is very good."
"Yes," I said, pleased that Lampton knew Disch's writing. It was a good sign.
"In a way Valis was shit," Lampton said. "We had to make it that way, to get the distributors to pick it up. For the popcorn drive-in crowd." There was merriment in his voice, a musical twinkling. "They expected me to sing, you know. 'Hey, Mr. Starman! When You Droppin' In?" I think they were a bit disappointed, do you see."
"Well," I said, nonplussed.
"Then we'll see you up here. You have the address, do you? I won't be in Sonoma after this month, so it must be this month or much later in the year; I'm flying back to the U.K. to do a TV film for the Grenada people. And I have concert engagements... I do have a recording date in Burbank; I could meet you there in -- what do you call it? The 'Southland'?"
"We'll fly up to Sonoma," I said. "Are there others?" I said. "Who've contacted you?"
"'Happy King' people? Well, well talk about that when we get together, your little group and Linda and Mini; did you know that Mini did the music?"
"Yes," I said. "Synchronicity Music."
"He is very good," Lampton said. "Much of what we get through lies in his music. He doesn't do songs, the prick. I wish he did. He'd do lovely songs. My songs aren't bad but I'm not Paul." He paused. "Simon, I mean."