The information was transferred simultaneously," Nicholas said. "Not sequentially. It's always that way. It's what's called analog, in computer science, in contrast to digital."

"You're sure they're friends?" Rachel said sharply.

"Anyone who saves my boy's life," Nicholas said, "is a friend."

I said, "If they could convey all that exact information directly to your head like that, in one burst of colored light, they could let you know any time they want who they are, where they are from, and what they intend. Any confusion on your part regarding any of those issues is deliberate withholding of knowledge on their part. They don't want you to know."

"If I knew, I'd tell people," Nicholas said. "They don't want to see - "

"Why not?" I said.

"It would defeat their purpose," Nicholas said, after a pause. "They're working against - " He ceased talking, then.

"There's a great deal you haven't told me," I said, "that you know about them."

"It's all in the written pages." He was silent for a few blocks and then said, "They're working against great odds. So it follows that they have to operate with great caution. Or it will fail." He did not elaborate. He probably didn't know any more. Most of what he believed probably consisted of shrewd guesses, hatched out over long months of pondering.

I had worked up a little speech to give; now I gave it. There is a slight chance," I said, "admittedly a very slight one, that what you're dealing with is religious, that in fact you are being informed by the Holy Spirit, which is a manifestation of God. We're all from Berkeley, raised there and limited by the secular viewpoint of a college town; we're not inclined to theological speculation. But healing is a typical miracle of the Holy Spirit, or so I understand. You ought to know about that, Nicholas, from having been a Quaker."

"Yes." He nodded. "When the Holy Spirit takes you over it does heal."

"Heard any non-English languages in your head?" I asked him. "That you don't know?"

Presently he nodded. "Yes. In my dreams."

"Glossolalia," I said.

"Koine Greek. I wrote down a few words phonetically, what I could, when I woke up. Rachel took a year of Greek; she recognized them. We both looked them up in her dictionary: Koine Greek."

"Is that still - "

"It qualifies. In the book of Acts in the Bible, other races recognized what the apostles were saying, in their own tongues, at Pentecost, when the Spirit first descended on them. Glossolalia isn't nonsense; it's foreign tongues you never knew. The Spirit brings them to your head so you can preach the gospel to every nation. It's generally misunderstood. I thought it was gibberish until I researched it."

"You've been reading the Bible?" I asked. "During your research?"

"The New Testament. And the Prophetic Books." Rachel said, "Nick never knew any Greek. He was sure they weren't real words." The cruel biting quality had left her voice; worry about Johnny, and shock, had done it.

"Nick very cautiously told a couple of people interested in the occult about dreaming in Greek, and they said, „It's a past life. You're the reincarnation of a Greek-speaking person." But I don't think that's it."

"What do you think it is?" I asked her.

"I don't know. The Greek words were the first thing that signified anything to me, that I ever took seriously about this. And now tonight, his diagnosing Johnny... and I saw that pinkish-purple spark of light beamed up at him for an instant. I just don't know, Phil; it doesn't fit anything I've ever heard of. Nick seems to be catching glimpses of benign supernatural manipulators of some kind we don't know about - just cryptic glimpses, what they want him to see. Not enough to extrapolate on. I get the impression they're very old - from the Koine Greek, which is two thousand years out of the past. If they lapse into that, maybe there's your one inadvertent clue."

In a hoarse voice Nicholas said abruptly, "Someone is waking up in me. After two thousand years, or almost that long. He's not awake yet, but his time is coming. He's been promised it ... a long time ago, when he was alive like us."

"Is he human?" I said.

"Oh, yes." Nicholas nodded. "Or he was once. The programming they're giving me - it's to wake him. They're having trouble, or anyhow it's very difficult; it takes a lot of things to do it. This man, this person, is important to them. I don't know why. I don't know who the man is. I don't know what he'll do." He lapsed into brooding silence for a time and then said, mostly to himself, as if he had said it or thought it many times before, "I don't know what's going to become of me when it happens. Maybe there are no plans for me at all."

"Are you sure you're not throwing six different theories up into the air to see which lands first?" I said. "I can tell theories when I hear them - speculation. You don't know, do you?"

"No," Nicholas admitted.

"How long have you had this one?"

"I don't know. They're all written down."

"In order of descending merit?"

"In the order they came to me."

"And each one," I said to him, "seemed equally true to you at the time."

Nicholas said, "One of them has to be true. Finally I'll find it. I have to."

"You could go to your grave not knowing," Rachel said. Til understand it eventually," Nicholas said doggedly. Maybe not, I thought; maybe she is right. Nicholas could flounder around forever, his stack of typed papers constantly growing with theory after theory, each one more lurid than the last, more comprehensive, more daring. Finally the man slumbering within him whom they were attempting to arouse back into wakeful life could appear, take charge, and finish Nicholas's thesis for him. Nicholas could write, I wonder if it's ... it may be that ... I'm sure that ... it has to be; and then the ancient man could rise into life and write down, He was correct; it is. I am.

"The thing that has worried me," Rachel said, "whenever you talked like this, is, What will he be like to me and Johnny if they're able to waken him, and I guess tonight shows that he'll take care of Johnny."

"With more than I can," Nicholas said.

"You're not going to fight?" I said. "You're just going to let it take you over?"

Nicholas said, "I'm looking forward to it."

To Rachel, I said, "Are there any vacant apartments in your building?" I was thinking to myself that as a freelance writer I could live anywhere. I didn't have to remain in the Bay Area.

Smiling a little, Rachel said, "You think you should be down here to help take care of him?"

"Something like that," I said.

They had both evidently accepted the invasion of Nicholas by this entity; they seemed resigned and not afraid. That was more than I could manage; the whole thing seemed unnatural and terrifying to me, something to be fought with all one had at one's disposal. The supplanting of a human personality by - whatever it was. Assuming Nicholas's theories were correct. In point of fact he could be totally wrong. Even so, perhaps because of this, I wanted to be down here. Over the many years Nicholas had been my best friend; he still was, even though six hundred miles separated us. And, like him, I had begun to like the Placentia area. I liked the barrio. There was nothing like it in Berkeley.

"It's a nice gesture," Rachel said, "to be with your friend at a time like this."

"It's more than a gesture," I said.

"Before you move to Placentia," Rachel said, "there is something I found out the other day by accident, that I don't think either of you realize. I was driving along one of those little palm-lined streets, just driving at random, trying to get Johnny to calm down and go to sleep before we got back to the apartment, and I saw a green clapboard house with a sign on it. „Birthplace of Ferris F. Fremont," it said. I asked the manager of our building, and he said, Yes, Ferris Fremont was born in Placentia."