However, Nicholas did not view it that way. "It's not a question of which theory is more economical; it's a question of what's true. I'm not in communication with myself. I have no way of knowing that my destiny lies down in Placentia. Only a greater mind, above human level, would know that."

"Maybe your destiny lies directly at the center of Disneyland. You could sleep under the Matterhorn ride and live on Coke and hot dogs, like they sell there. There're bathrooms. You'd have all you need."

Rachel, who was listening to all this, shot me a look of pure malice.

"Well, I'm just doing what you do," I said to her. "Making fun of him. You don't want to live in the LA area, do you, Rachel? Outside of Berkeley?"

"I'd never live in Orange County," Rachel said vehemently.

"There you are," I said to Nicholas.

Nicholas said, "We're thinking of splitting up. So she can continue on at the university and I can pursue my destiny down there."

That made it real. Divorce based on a" dream. What strange grounds. Cause of divorce? I left my wife because I dreamed about a foreign land... which proved to be ten miles from Disneyland, near a lot of orange trees.

Down in plastic-town USA. It was unreal, and yet Nicholas meant it. And they had been married for years.

The resolution to this came three years later when Rachel discovered that she was pregnant. Those were the days of the diaphragm, which wasn't all that good. This ended her university career; after she had little Johnny she didn't care where they lived. She got fat and sloppy; her hair became a mess; she forgot all she had learned at school and instead watched daytime TV.

In the mid-sixties they moved to Orange County. In a few years, Ferris F. Fremont would become president of the United States.

How are you to treat a friend whose life is directed from beyond the stars? What attitude do you take? I saw Nicholas rarely after he and Rachel moved down to Orange County, but when I did see him, when they drove up for a prolonged stay in the Bay Area or I flew down to visit them and take in Disneyland, Nicholas always filled me in on what Valis was up to. After he moved to Orange County, Valis communicated with him a lot. So from his standpoint the move was worth it.

Also, the job at Progressive Records turned out to be a vast improvement over working as a record clerk. Retail record selling was a dead end and Nicholas had always known it, whereas the recording field itself was wide open. Rock had become big, now, although that did not affect Progressive Records, which signed only folk artists. Even so, Progressive Records was getting them up there on the sales charts; they had some of the best folk artists under contract, many from the old San Francisco scene: from the Hungry i and the Purple Onion. They almost signed Peter, Paul and Mary, and, according to them, they had turned down the Kingston Trio. I heard about this through Nicholas; being in Artists and Repertoire, he himself auditioned new vocal artists, instrumentalists-, and groups, made tapes of them on location... although he did not have the authority to sign them. He did have the authority to reject them, however, and he enjoyed exercising this. It beat changing the toilet paper roll behind listening booth three, back up in Berkeley.

At last Nicholas's natural ear for a good voice was paying off. His talent plus what he had learned from listening to rare vocal records at University Music late at night were now underwriting him financially. Carl Don-dero hadn't erred; in doing Nicholas a favor he had done Progressive Records a favor as well.

"So you have a groovy job," I said, as he and I and Rachel sat around their apartment in Placentia.

"I'm driving to Huntington Beach to take in Uncle Dave Huggins and His Up-Front Electric Jugs," Nicholas said. "I think we should sign with them. Sign them up. It's folk rock, really. A little like the Grateful Dead does on some of their tracks." We were listening to an LP of the Jefferson Airplane at that moment, quite a jump from the classical music Nicholas had loved back in Berkeley. Grace Slick was singing "White Rabbit."

"What a groovy broad," Nicholas said. "One of the best," I said. I had just become interested in rock. The Airplane was my favorite group; one time I had driven over to Marin County to the town of Bolinas to gaze at the house reputed to be Grace Slick's. It was up over the beach but back away from the people and noise. "Too bad you can't sign her," I said to Nicholas.

"Oh, I see plenty of groovy broads," Nicholas said. "A lot of folksingers, aspiring folksingers, are broads. Most of them are what we in the industry call strictly no-talent. They've maybe listened repeatedly to tracks by Baez and Collins and Mitchell and imitated them - nothing original."

"So now," I said, "you have power over people."

Nicholas was silent, fooling with his glass of Charles Krug wine.

"How does it feel?" I asked.

"Well, I - " Nicholas hesitated. "I hate to see the expression on their faces when I say no. It's - " He gestured. "They have such high hopes. They come to Hollywood from all over the country with such high hopes. Like in the song by the Mamas & Papas, „Young Girls Are Coming ,to the Canyon." There was one girl today... she hitch-hiked from Kansas City, Kansas, with a fifteen-dollar Sears practice guitar... she knew perhaps five chords, and she had to read out of a songbook. We don't generally audition them unless they're booked somewhere already. I mean, we can't audition everybody." He looked sad as he said this.

"What's Valis have to say these days?" I asked. Perhaps with his new, more expanded life he was no longer hearing voices and seeing printed pages in his sleep.

Nicholas got a strange look on his face. For the first time since the topic came up he seemed reluctant to discuss it. "I've - " he began, and then he motioned me to go along with him, out of the living room of the apartment and into their bedroom. "Rachel has a rule now," he explained, shutting the door after us. "I'm not to ever mention it. Listen." He seated himself on the bed facing me. "I've discovered something. The clarity with which I can hear him - or her, or them; whichever it is - depends on the wind. When the wind is blowing - it blows in here from the desert to the east and north - I receive the communication better. I've been taking notes. Look at this." He opened a dresser drawer; there lay a stack of papers, typed on, about a hundred sheets. And in the corner of the bedroom stood a small typing table with a Royal portable on it. "There's a lot I haven't ever told you," he said, "about my contacts with them. I think it's them. They seem to be able to come together and form a single body or mind, like a plasmatic life form. I think they exist in the atmosphere."

"Goodness," I said.

Nicholas said earnestly, "To them, this is a polluted ocean we live in; I've had dream after dream from their viewpoint, and always they're looking down - I'm looking down - into a stagnant ocean or pond." „The smog," I said.

"They hate it. They won't descend into it. You're a science fiction writer; could life forms exist unsuspected in Earth's atmosphere, highly Evolved, highly intelligent life forms, which take an active interest in our welfare and can help us when they choose? You'd think there would have been reports over the ages. It doesn't make sense; someone would have discovered them long ago. Maybe - this is one of my theories - maybe they recently entered our atmosphere, possibly from another planet or plane. Another possibility I've considered is that they're from the future, come back here in time to assist us. They're very anxious to assist us. They seem to know everything. Christ, I guess they can .go anywhere; they don't have material bodies, just the energetic plasmatic forms, like electromagnetic fields. They probably merge, pool their information, and then separate. Of course I'm just theorizing. I don't know. That's the impression of them I get."