"Can I ask you," I said, "where he is?"
"Oh. Well, yes; you can ask. But no one is going to tell you until we've talked. A two-word message doesn't really tell me very much about you, now does it? Although I've checked you out. You were into drugs for a while and then you switched sides. You met Tim Leary -- "
"Only on the phone," I corrected. "Talked to him once on the phone; he was in Canada with John Lennon and Paul Williams -- not the singer, but the writer."
"You've not been arrested. For possession?"
"Never," I said.
"You acted as a sort of dope guru to teen-agers in -- where was it? -- oh yes; Marin County. Someone took a shot at you."
"That's not quite it," I said.
"You write very strange books. But you are positive you don't have a police record; we don't want you if you do."
"I don't," I said.
Mildly, pleasantly, Lampton said, "You were mixed up with black terrorists for a while."
I said nothing.
"What an adventure your life has been," Lampton said.
"Yes," I agreed. That certainly was true.
"You're not on drugs now?" Lampton laughed. "I'll withdraw that question. We know you're squared up now. All right, Philip; I'll be glad to meet you and your friends personally. Was it you who got -- well, let's see. Got told things."
"The information was fired at my friend Horselover Fat."
"But that's you. 'Philip' means 'Horselover' in Greek, lover of horses. 'Fat' is the German translation of 'Dick.' So you've translated your name."
I said nothing.
"Should I call you "Horselover Fat'? Are you more comfortable that way?"
"Whatever's right," I said woodenly.
"An expression from the Sixties." Lampton laughed. "Okay, Philip. I think we have enough information on you. We talked to your agent, Mr. Galen; he seemed very astute and forthright."
"He's okay," I said.
"He certainly understands where your head is at, as they say over here. Your publisher is Doubleday, is it?"
"Bantam," I said.
"When will your group be coming up?"
I said, "What about this weekend?"
"Very good," Lampton said. "You'll enjoy this, you know. The suffering you've gone through is over. Do you realize that, Philip?" His tone was no longer bantering. "It is over; it really is."
"Fine," I said, my heart hammering.
"Don't be scared, Philip," Lampton said quietly.
"Okay," I said.
"You've gone through a lot. The dead girl... well, we can let that go; that is gone. Do you see?"
"Yes," I said. "I see." And I did. I hoped I did; I tried to understand; I wanted to.
"You don't understand. He's here. The information is correct. 'The Buddha is in the park.' Do you understand?"
"No," I said.
"Gautama was born in a great park called Lumbini. It's a story such as that of Christ at Bethlehem. If the information were 'Jesusis in Bethlehem,' you would know what that meant, wouldn't you?"
I nodded, forgetting I was on the phone.
"He has slept almost two thousand years," Lampton said. "A very long time. Under everything that has happened. But -- well, I think I've said enough. He is awake now; that's the point. Linda and I will see you Friday night or early Saturday, then?"
"Right," I said. "Fine. Probably Friday night."
"Just remember," Lampton said. "'The Buddha is in the park.' And try to be happy."
I said, "Is it him come back? Or another one?"
A pause.
"I mean -- " I said.
"Yes, I know what you mean. But you see, time isn't real. It's him again but not him; another one. There are many Buddhas, but only one. The key to understanding it is time... when you play a record a second time, do the musicians play the music a second time? If you play the record fifty times, do the musicians play the music fifty times?"
"Once," I said.
"Thank you," Lampton said, and the phone clicked. I set down the receiver.
You don't see that every day, I said to myself. What Goose said.
To my surprise I realized that I had stopped shaking.
It was as if I had been shaking all my life, from a chronic undercurrent of fear. Shaking, running, getting into trouble, losing the people I loved. Like a cartoon character instead of a person, I realized. A corny animation from the early Thirties. In back of all I had ever done the fear had forced me on. Now the fear had died, soothed away by the news I had heard. The news, I realized suddenly, that I had waited from the beginning to hear; created, in a sense, to be present when the news came, and for no other reason.
I could forget the dead girl. The universe itself, on its macrocosmic scale, could now cease to grieve. The wound had healed.
Because of the late hour I could not notify the others of Lampton's call. Nor could I call Air California and make the plane reservations. However, early in the morning I called David, then Kevin and then Fat. They had me take care of the travel arrangements; late Friday night sounded fine to them.
We met that evening and decided that our little group needed a name. After some bickering we let Fat decide. In view of Eric Lampton's emphasis on the statement about the Buddha we decided to call ourselves the Siddhartha Society.
"Then count me out," David said. "I'm sorry but I can't go along with it unless there's some suggestion of Christianity. I don't mean to sound fanatic, but -- "
"You sound fanatic," Kevin told him.
We bickered again. At last we came up with a name convoluted enough to satisfy Fat, cryptic enough to satisfy Kevin and Christian enough to satisfy David; to me the subject wasn't all that important. Fat told us of a dream he had had recently, in which he had been a large fish. Instead of an arm he had walked around with sail-like or fan-like fins; with one of these fins he had tried to hold onto an M-16 rifle but the weapon had slid to the ground, whereupon a voice had intoned:
"Fish cannot carry guns."
Since the Greek word for that land of fan was rhipidos -- as with the Rhiptoglossa reptiles -- we finally settled on the Rhipidon Society, the name referring elliptically to the Christian fish. This pleased Fat, too, since it alluded back to the Dogon people and their fish symbol for the benign deity.
So now we could approach Lampton -- both Eric and Linda Lampton -- in the form of an official organization. Small though we were. I guess we were frightened, at this point; intimidated is perhaps the better word.
Taking me off to one side, Fat said in a low voice, "Did Eric Lampton really say we don't have to think about her death any more?"
I put my hand on Fat's shoulder. "It's over," I said. "He told me that. The age of oppression ended in August 1974; now the age of sorrow begins to end. Okay?"
"Okay," Fat said, with a faint smile, as if he could not believe what he was hearing, but wanted to believe it.
"You're not crazy, you know," I said to Fat. "Remember that. You can't use that as a cop-out."
"And he's alive? Already? He really is?"
"Lampton says so."
"Then it's true."
I said, "Probably it's true."
"You believe it."
"I think so," I said. "We'll find out."
"Will he be old? Or a child? I guess he's still a child. Phil -- " Fat gazed at me, stricken. "What if he isn't human?"
"Well," I said, "we'll deal with that problem when and if it arises." In my own mind I thought, Probably he's here from the future; that's the most likely possibility. He will not be human in some respects, but in others he will be. Our immortal child... the life form of maybe millions of years ahead in time. Zebra, I thought. Now I will see you. We all will.
King and judge, I thought. As promised. All the way back to Zoroaster.