I had to read it to decode it. Superimposed on the black type, in a liquid, bright red, I saw certain words of the ad as if embossed. Rapidly, I copied them onto a separate piece of paper and then, when I had finished, handed it to Rachel. "Read it," I said. "But just to yourself, not to me." Rachel said falteringly, "It's a message to you. Your name is in it."

"What does it tell me to do?"

"Something about recording certain - it has to do with your job, Nick. Something about Party members who - I can't make sense out of it. Your handwriting is - "

"But it is to me," I said. "And it does have to do with Progressive and my job there, and recording Party members."

"How can it be?" Rachel said. "In a printed ad for shoes? I saw you with my own eyes get this message out of it, by picking words here and there... the words are really in it; I can see them myself now, when I look at the ad. But how did you know which words to pick?"

"Different in color," I said. They're in color and the other words are ordinary black, without color."

"All of the ad is black!" Rachel protested.

"Not to me," I said. I was still deep in heavy fearful thought. "Code from the Party," I said. "Instructions and the name of my - whatever she is - my boss; it's written in her hand on the back. My official contact."

"Nick," Rachel whispered, "this is awful. Are you -"

"I'm not a Communist," I said truthfully.

"But you knew this was coming. And you knew how to decode it. You were waiting for it." She stared at me wide-eyed.

I picked up the shoe ad, for the first time, turned it over, and as I did so a voice spoke inside my head. A transforming of my own thought processes, to confer on me a message.

The authorities."

Just those two words - the authorities - as I held the piece of paper. This had not come from a KGB agent operating out of New York, as it appeared to have. It was not instructions from the Party. It was a forgery. The thing operated on three levels: on the surface, to Rachel's eyes, it was an ordinary ad. For some reason, unexplained, I had been able to penetrate to the encoded information within the meaningless data. Never mind why, I thought; all that matters is that I did, I had been able to, readily. On the third and deepest level it was a fake, a plant by the police. And here I sat with it in the living room of my own apartment: prime evidence of my treasonable activities. Enough to send me to jail for life and completely ruin me and my family.

I have to get rid of this, I realized. Burn it. But what good will that do? There will be more like this coming to me in the mail. Until they have me.

The voice inside my head spoke again. I identified it now. The sibyl's voice, as I had heard her in my visionary dreams.

"Phone FA P in LA. I will talk for you."

Getting the phone book I looked up the emergency number of the main FAP headquarters for Southern California, located in Los Angeles.

"What are you doing?" Rachel said apprehensively, following me. "You're going to call - FAP? But why? Good lord, Nick, you're going to destroy yourself. Burn the thing!"

I dialed.

"Friends of the American People."

Inside my mind the sibyl stirred, and at once I lost power over my own vocal apparatus; I was struck dumb. And then she began to speak for me, using my voice.

Calmly, implacably, she spoke to the FAP agent on the other end of the line.

"I wish to report," my voice said, in a measured way not at all resembling my own cadences, "that I am being threatened by the Communist Party. For months they have been attempting to obtain my cooperation in a business matter and I have refused. They now are attempting to get their wish by coercion, force, and intimidation. Today I received a coded message from them in the mail, telling me what I must do for them. I will not do it, even if they murder me. I would like to turn this coded message over to you."

After a pause the FAP agent on the other end said, "Just a moment, please." A few clicks, then silence.

Time is of the essence," I said to Rachel.

"Hello," a different voice said, older in sound. "Would you repeat what you just told the operator?"

"The Communist Party," I said, "is blackmailing me to force me to cooperate with them in a business matter. I've refused."

"What kind of business matter?"

"I'm an executive at a recording firm," I said. "We record folk artists. The Party wants to compel me to record pro-Communist singers so their message, including coded messages, will be played on American radios."

"Your name."

I gave him my name, address, and telephone number. Rachel stricken, merely gazed mutely at me. She could not believe I was doing what I was doing. Neither could I.

"How are they blackmailing you, Mr Brady?" the voice asked.

"I'm beginning to receive hit mail from them," I said.

""Hit mail"?"

I said, "Mail designed to provoke a reaction out of fear

>f reprisal. In code. I can't read all the code, but - "

"We'll send someone over. Hang on to the written material you have in your possession. We will want to see it."

I said, or rather my voice uttered, „They've given me the name of someone back east to contact."

"Don't contact them. Don't leave your residence. Just wait until our representative comes by. You'll be instructed how to proceed. And thank you for contacting us, Mr Brady. It was very patriotic." The man at the other end clicked off.

"I did it," I said to Rachel; I felt flooded with relief. What I did," I said, "is I got out of the noose. This apartment would probably have been raided within the next hour. Certainly within the next day." Now it didn't matter even if they hit us; I had made the right call. The emergency was over, thanks not to me or any solution of mine but to the sibyl.

"But suppose," Rachel said frantically, "it turns out it is from the Party?"

"It's not from the Party. I don't know anyone in the Party; I'm not even sure there is a Party. If there is, they wouldn't be writing me, especially in code."

"It could be a mistake of some kind. They intended to write to someone else."

"Fuck "em then," I said. Anyhow, I knew it was the authorities; or rather the sibyl knew. Valis knew. Valis, who had come through at the critical time and saved me.

Rachel said, They'll think you're a Communist, from what you told them."

"No, they won't. No Communist would have phoned them in the first place, let alone said what I said. They'll know I am exactly what I am: a patriotic American. Fuck them and fuck the Party; they're one and the same, as far as I'm concerned. It's the party that kills its political rivals in purges - Ferris Fremont is the Party, and the Party killed the Kennedys and Dr King and Jim Pike to take power in America. We have one enemy and that's it. That's Comrade Ferris Fremont." My wife stared at me dumbfounded. "Sorry," I said, "but it's true. That's the great secret. That's what the people aren't supposed to know. But I know. I was told."

"Fremont isn't a Communist," Rachel said feebly, her face ashen. "He's a fascist."

The USSR turned fascist in Stalin's time," I said. "Now it's totally fascistic. America was the last stronghold of freedom and they took us over, internally, under fake names. We go too much on names - labels. Fremont is the first Communist Party president, and I'm going to get him out."

"Jesus Christ!" Rachel said. "Right," I said.

"I've never seen you display such animosity, Nick." „That letter today," I said savagely, "that alleged shoe ad - that's murder, murder aimed at me. I am going to get the sons-of-bitches for that - for sending that to me -if it's the last thing I do."

"But... you never showed such hate for the Party before. In Berkeley - "

"They never tried to kill me before," I said. "Can..." She could scarcely talk; trembling, she seated herself on the arm of the couch, by Pinky. The cat still dozed. "Can FAP help you?"