Reading these entries, I said, "I'm supposed to recite this to Robin Jamison?"

"Say they're from your screenplay Zebra,"Kevin said. "Is this cypher real?" I asked Fat. A veiled expression appeared on his face. "Maybe."

This two-word secret message was actually sent out?" David said.

"In 1974," Fat said. "In February. The United States Army cryptographers studied it, but couldn't discern who it was intended for or what it meant."

"How do you know that?" I said.

"Zebra told him," Kevin said.

"No," Fat said, but he did not amplify.

In this industry you always talk to agents, never to principals. One time I had gotten loaded and tried to get hold of Kay Lenz, who I had a crush on from having seen Breezy. Her agent cut me off at the pass. The same thing happened when I tried to get through to Victoria Principal, who herself is now an agent; again, I had a crush on her and again I was ripped when I started phoning Universal Studios. But having Robin Jamison's address and phone number in London made a difference.

"Yes, I remember you," Jamison said pleasantly when I put the call through to London. "The science fiction writer with the child bride, as Mr. Purser described her in his article."

I told him about my dynamite screenplay Zebra and that I'd seen their sensational film Valis and thought that Mother Goose was absolutely perfect for the lead part; even more so than Robert Redford, who we were also considering and who was interested.

"What I can do," Jamison said, "is contact Mr. Lampton and give him your number there in the States. If he's interested he or his agent will get in touch with you or your agent."

I'd fired my best shot; that was it.

After some more talk I hung up, feeling futile. Also I had a minor twinge of guilt over my devious hype, but I knew that the twinge would abate.

Was Eric Lampton the fifth Savior who Fat sought?

Strange, the relationship between the actuality and the ideal. Fat had been prepared to climb the highest mountain in Tibet, to reach a two-hundred-year-old monk who would say, "The meaning of it all, my son, is -- " I thought, Here, my son, time turns into space. But I said nothing; Fat's circuits were already overloaded with information. The last thing he needed was more information; what Fat needed was someone to take the information from him.

"Is Goosein the States?" Kevin said.

"Yes," I said, "according to Jamison."

"You didn't tell him the cypher," Fat said.

We all gave Fat a withering look.

"The cypher is for Goose," Kevin said. "When he calls."

"'When,'" I echoed.

"If you have to you can have your agent contact Goose's agent," Kevin said. He had become more earnest about this than even Fat himself. After all, it was Kevin who had discovered Valis and thereby put us in business.

"A film like that," David said, "is going to bring a lot of cranks out of the woodwork. Mother Goose is probably being rather careful."

"Thanks," Kevin said.

"I don't mean us," David said.

"He's right," I said, reviewing in my mind some of the mail my own writing generates. "Goose will probably prefer to contact my agent." I thought, If he contacts us at all. His agent to my agent. Balanced minds.

"If Goose does phone you," Fat said to me in a calm, low, very tense voice, unusual for him, "you are to give him the two-word cypher, KING FELIX. Work it into the conversation, of course; this isn't spy stuff. Say it's an alternate title for the screenplay."

I said, irritably, "I can handle it."

Chances were, there wouldn't be anything to handle. A week later I received a letter from Mother Goose himself, Eric Lampton. It contained one word. KING. And after the word a question mark and an arrow pointing to the right of KING.

It scared the shit out of me; I trembled. And wrote in the word FELIX. And mailed the letter back to Mother Goose.

He had included a stamped self-addressed envelope.

No doubt existed: we had linked up.

The person referred to by the two-word cypher KING FELIX is the fifth Savior who, Zebra -- or VALIS -- had said, was either already born or would soon be. This was terribly frightening to me, getting the letter from Mother Goose. I wondered how Goose -- Eric Lampton and his wife Linda -- would feel when they got the letter back with FELIX correctly added. Correctly; yes, that was it. Only one word out of the hundreds of thousands of English words would do; no, not English: Latin. It is a name in English but a word in Latin.

Prosperous, happy, fruitful... the Latin word "Felix" occurs in such injunctions as that by God Himself, who in Genesis 1:21 says to all the creatures of the world, "Be fruitful and increase, fill the waters of the seas; and let the birds increase on land." This is the essence of the meaning of Felix, this command from God, this loving command, this manifestation of his desire that we not only live but that we live happily and prosperously.

FELIX. Fruit-bearing, fruitful, fertile, productive. All the nobler sorts of trees, whose fruits are offered to the superior deities. That brings good luck, of good omen, auspicious, favorable, propitious, fortunate, prosperous, felicitous. Lucky, happy, fortunate. Wholesome. Happier, more successful in.

That last meaning interests me. "More successful in." The King who is more successful in... in what? Perhaps in overthrowing the tyrannical reign of the king of tears, replacing that sad and bitter king with his own legitimate reign of happiness: the end of the age of the Black Iron Prison and the beginning of the age of the Garden of Palm Trees in the warm sun of Arabia ("Felix" also refers to the fertile portion of Arabia).

Our little group, upon my receiving the missive from Mother Goose, met in plenipotentiary session.

"Fat is in the fire," Kevin said laconically, but his eyes sparkled with excitement and joy, a joy we all shared.

"You're with me," Fat said.

We had all chipped in to buy a bottle of Courvoisier Napoleon cognac; seated around Fat's living room we warmed our glasses by rubbing their stems like fire sticks, feeling pretty smart.

Kevin, hollowly, intoned, to no one in particular, "It would be interesting if some men in skin-tight shiny black uniforms show up and shoot us all, now. Because of Phil's phonecall."

"Them's the breaks," I said, easily fielding Kevin's wit. "Let's push Kevin out into the hall with the end of a broom handle and see if anyone opens fire on him."

"It would prove nothing," David said. "Half of Santa Ana is tired of Kevin."

Three nights later, at two a.m., the phone rang. When I answered it -- I was still up, finishing an introduction for a book of stories culled from twenty-five years of my career* ( * The Golden Man, edited by Mark Hurst, Berkley Publishing Corporation, NY., 1980. ) -- a man's voice with a slight British accent said, "How many are there of you?"

Bewildered, I said, "Who is this?"

"Goose."

Aw Christ, I thought, and again I trembled. "Four," I said, and my voice shook.

"This is a happy occasion," Eric Lampton said.

"Prosperous," I said.

Lampton laughed. "No, the King isn't financially well-off."

"He -- " I couldn't go on.

Lampton said, "Vivit. I think. Vivet? He lives, anyhow, you'll be happy to hear. My Latin isn't very good."

"Where?" I said.

"Where are you? I have a 714 area code, here."

"Santa Ana. In Orange County."

"With Ferris," Lampton said. "You're just north of Ferris's mansion-by-the-sea."

"Right," I said.

"Shall we get together?"

"Sure," I said, and in my head a voice said, This is real.