"Her voice is heard in human courts," David murmured.
"And she destroyed the tyrant?" Kevin said.
"Yes," Mini said. "As we called him in the film, Ferris F. Fremount. But you know who she toppled and brought to ruin."
"Yes," Kevin said. He looked somber; I knew he was thinking of a man wearing a suit and tie wandering along a beach in southern California, an aimless man wondering what had happened, what had gone wrong, a man who still planned stratagems.
"In the last days of those kingdoms,
When their sin is at its height,
A king shall appear, harsh and grim, a master of stratagem. .. "
The king of tears who had brought tears to everyone eventually; against him something had acted which he, in his occlusion, could not discern. We had just now talked to that person, that child.
That child who had always been.
As we ate dinner that night -- at a Mexican restaurant just off the park in the center of Sonoma -- I realized that I would never see my friend Horselover Fat again, and I felt grief inside me, the grief of loss. Intellectually, I knew that I had re-incorporated him, reversing the original process of projection. But still it made me sad. I had enjoyed his company, his endless tale-spinning, his account of his intellectual and spiritual and emotional quest. A quest -- not for the Grail -- but to be healed of his wound, the deep injury which Gloria had done to him by means of her death game.
It felt strange not to have Fat to phone up or visit. He had been so much a regular part of my life, and of the lives of our mutual friends. I wondered what Beth would think when the child support checks stopped coming in. Well, I realized, I could assume the economic liability; I could take care of Christopher. I had the funds to do it, and in many ways I loved Christopher as much as his father had.
"Feeling down, Phil?" Kevin said to me. We could talk freely now, since the three of us were alone; the Lamptons had dropped us off, telling us to call them when we had finished dinner and were ready to return to their large house.
"No," I said. And then I said, "I'm thinking about Horselover Fat."
Kevin said, after a pause, "You're waking up, then."
"Yes." I nodded.
"You'll be okay," David said, awkwardly. Expression of emotions came with difficulty to David.
"Yeah," I said.
Kevin said, "Do you think the Lamptons are nuts?"
"Yes," I said.
"What about the little girl?" Kevin said.
I said, "She is not nuts. She is as not nuts as they are. It's a paradox; two totally whacked out people -- three, if you count Mini -- have created a totally sane offspring."
"If I say -- " David began.
"Don't say God brings good out of evil," I said. "Okay? Will you do us that one favor?"
Half to himself, Kevin said, "That is the most beautiful child I have ever seen. But that stuff about her being a computer terminal -- " He gestured.
"You're the one who said it," I said.
"At the time," Kevin said, "it made sense. But not when I look back. When I have perspective."
"You know what I think?" David said. "I think we should get back on the Air Cal plane and fly back to Santa Ana. As soon as we can."
I said, "The Lamptons won't hurt us." I was certain of that, now. Odd, that the sick man, the dying man, Mini, had restored my confidence in the power of life. Logically, it should have worked the other way, I suppose. I had liked him very much. But, as is well known, I have a proclivity for helping sick or injured people; I gravitate to them. As my psychiatrist told me years ago, I've got to stop doing that. That, and one other thing.
Kevin said, "I can't scope it out."
"I know," I agreed. Did we really see the Savior? Or did we see just a very bright little girl who, possibly, had been coached to give lofty-sounding answers by three very shrewd professionals who had a master hype going in connection with their film and music?
"It's a strange form for him to take," Kevin said. "As a girl. That's going to encounter resistance. Christ as a female; that made David here pissed as hell."
"She didn't say she was Christ," David said.
I said, "But she is."
Both Kevin and David stopped eating and gazed at me.
"She is St. Sophia," I said, "and St. Sophia is a hypostasis of Christ. Whether she admitted it or not. She's being careful. After all, she knows everything; she knows what people will accept and what they won't."
"You have all your weirded-out experiences of March 1974 to go on," Kevin said. "That proves something; that proves it's real. VALIS exists. You already knew that. You encountered him."
"I guess so," I said.
"And what Mini knew and said collated with what you knew," David said.
"Yeah," I said.
Kevin said, "But you're not certain."
"We're dealing with a high order of sophisticated technology," I said. "Which Mini may have put together."
"Meaning microwave transmissions and such like," Kevin said.
"Yes," I said.
"A purely technological phenomenon," Kevin said. "A major technological breakthrough."
"Using the human mind as the transducer," I said. "Without an electronic interface."
"Could be," Kevin admitted. "The movie showed that. There is no way to tell what they're into."
"You know," David said slowly, "if they have high-yield energy available to them that they can beam over long distances, along the lines of laser beams -- "
"They can kill us dead," Kevin said.
"That's right," I said.
"If," Kevin said, "we started quacking about not believing them."
"We can just say we have to be back in Santa Ana," David said.
"Or we can leave from here," I said. "This restaurant."
"Our things -- clothes, everything we brought -- are there at their house," Kevin said.
"Fuck the clothes," I said.
"Are you afraid?" David said, "of something happening?"
I thought about it. "No," I said finally. I trusted the child. And I trusted Mini. You always have to go on that, your instinctive trust or -- your lack of trust. In the final analysis, there is really nothing else you can go on.
"I'd like to talk to Sophia again," Kevin said.
"So would I," I said. "The answer is there."
Kevin put his hand on my shoulder. "I'm sorry to say this like this, Phil, but we really have the big clue already. In one instant that child cleared up your mind. You stopped believing you were two people. You stopped believing in Horselover Fat as a separate person. And no therapist and no therapy over the years, since Gloria's death, has ever been able to accomplish that."
"He's right," David said in a gentle voice. "We all kept hoping, but it seemed as if -- you know. As if you'd never heal."
"'Heal,'" I said. "She healed me. Not Horselover Fat but me." They were right; the healing miracle had happened and we all know what that pointed to; we all three of us understood.
I said, "Eight years."
"Right," Kevin said. "Before we even knew you. Eight long fucking goddam years of occlusion and pain and searching and roaming about."
I nodded.
In my mind a voice said, What else do you need to know?
It was my own thoughts, the ratiocination of what had been Horselover Fat, who had rejoined me.
"You realize," Kevin said, "that Ferris F. Fremount is going to try to come back. He was toppled by that child -- or by what that child speaks for -- but he is returning; he will never give up. The battle was won but the struggle goes on."
David said, "Without that child -- "
"We will lose," I said.
"Right," Kevin said.