“Far-out! And I thought you were going to hand it all out at Collection.”

“No, no,” said Conrad quickly. “I’ve decided to go for the long haul. Low-profile. I don’t need to talk to Collection at all.”

“But listen! I was just at the Student Council meeting. After that big party last night, everyone wants you to speak. We scheduled you for September 22, and the college already approved it! You can talk on the secret of life!”

Chapter 27:

Sunday, September 18, 1966 Conrad kept to himself for the next week and a half. Giving a speech on the secret of life was something he’d always wanted to do—and he hoped to be ready for it. Dee’s simple summation, “All is One,”

seemed like the core of it, but the problem was that sometimes the phrase was ... just empty words.

“All is One,” Conrad would repeat to himself, jogging along the route that Ace had showed him through the Crum. Sometimes it would click, and sometimes it wouldn’t.

Odd things kept happening at Mr. Bulber’s house. Sometimes Conrad would come back, and it would look as if someone had been there, moving things around. Paranoia or truth? Other days, there’d be a car with strangers parked across the street. Scary, but what could he do? Nothing except hope that, when the heavy shit came down, he’d have another power up his sleeve. Meanwhile, Conrad kept on thinking, thinking about the secret of life.

He got a lot of books out of the Swarthmore library: Einstein’s essays, Wittgenstein’sTractatus , good oldNausea , and Kerouac and Suzuki and Eddington and Daumal. There was still so much to learn. He’d really wasted his three years here so far—he didn’t know much of anything, and the books were hard to understand. They were just marks on paper. Most days, hungry for reality, he’d wander off into the Crum woods.

He’d go down the hill behind Bulber’s, say, and smoke a joint and sit there, staring at bugs on a rock.

The bugs were alive, people were alive, the flamers were alive—butwhat was it all for? When he was high enough, he thought he knew; he’d have that fine merged feeling he’d had that day with Dee, and everything would fit together.

Another day—it was Sunday the eighteenth—Conrad sat all afternoon gazing at Crum Creek ...

wondering at the way a given bulge in the water could always be there, yet always be made up of different molecules of water. The bulge was a definite form, anobject , yet it was utterly insubstantial.

There was no molecule you could point to and say, “This is an essential part of the bulge.” On a longer time-scale, Conrad mused, human bodies were just as insubstantial—eat and shit, cough and breathe—the atoms come and go. But his flame-stick ... what wasit made of?

Focusing inward, Conrad could sort of feel the rod of light running down his spine. The flame was something other than ordinary matter, or it wouldn’t fit inside his flesh so easily. Plasma, ether, hypermatter? Try as he might, Conrad couldn’t pull it out as he had in the Z.T. graveyard. He needed the crystal to get the flame out; the crystal was an essential part of him. Crystal and flame, projector and image, body and mind, log and fire. That wasone direction; what was the other? What did the flame do for the crystal?

When Conrad got back to Mr. Bulber’s that evening, he found that all his preliminary notes for his speech had been stolen. The FBI was onto him for sure. He picked up the phone and listened. It gave off a tinny echo. Bugged? He’d resisted using the phone so far. But, hell, if the feds were onto him so bad they were going through his papers, then what difference did anything make anymore? He decided to go ahead and call up his parents. They’d be worried about him. His father answered.

“Hello?”

“Dad? This is Conrad.”

“I don’t know who you are, but I wish you’d leave us alone. We’ve been through enough.”

“No, Dad, it really is Conrad. I’ve been hiding out. Remember how you used to lie in the wading pool and call me Sausage?”

“It’s Sausage!” old Caldwell called to his wife. “Pick up the extension, Lucy!”

“Conrad?” came his mother’s voice then. “Is it really you? Where are you?”

“I better not say. I’m OK, though. I’m in disguise.”

“Is all this business about the flying saucers true?”

“I think it is. I think they sent me down here to find out what people are like. But I’m scared that the police are going to kill me.”

“Why can’t you turn yourself in peacefully?” asked his mother.

“Don’t do that,” put in Conrad’s father. “I think they really might kill you. They’ve been by here a lot—the FBI and the Secret Service. Those fellows mean business.”

“I’m still your son anyway,” blurted Conrad.

“We know that,” said his mother. “And we still love you.”

“I think my phone is tapped, Conrad,” said his father. “So we better keep it short. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“One thing, Dad. What’s the secret of life? What does it all mean? What are we here for?”

There was momentary silence. Crackles on the phone line. “Damned if I know,” his father said finally.

“Nobody knows. It’s just ... Here we are, and we have to take care of each other the best we can.”

Pause. “Does there have to be a reason?” “Thanks, Dad.” Again the fleeting feeling of understanding it all. “Thanks a lot. I guess I better hang up now.”

“Take care, Conrad,” said his mother. “Please try and find some way to straighten all this out.”

Conrad phoned Audrey next.

“Hi, Audrey.”

“Conrad! You finally decided it was safe to call?”

“I decided it didn’t matter. Either they’re onto me or they aren’t. This isn’t going to change anything. I was going to write you another letter, but I needed to hear your voice.”

“Well, here’s my voice,” said Audrey gaily, and sang a note. “LOOOOO!”

“Very pretty. Are you going to come down for my speech?”

“Of course, Dr. Bulber. What is the secret of life?”

Conrad sighed. “I had some notes, but somebody snuck in and stole them. I bet it was the cops.”

“Unless you lost them. Did you get stoned today?”

“No. But I had a lot of good ideas anyway.”

“Well, you see, Conrad? Now just keep thinking, and I’m sure your speech will be wonderful. I can’t wait to see you.”

“Me too. Will you stay the whole weekend?”

“Maybe.”

“I love you, Audrey.”

“I love you, too.”

As Thursday drew closer, Conrad wrote more and more. He got a notebook and carried it with him everywhere. If only he could break through and find the truth! On the one hand, he didn’t want to jeopardize his seemingly solid position as tenured physics prof. Maybe, just maybe, despite all his worries, the police reallyweren’t onto him. Maybe he really had just lost those earlier notes, maybe he was only being paranoid. But no matter what, he wanted his speech to say something meaningful. Things looked calm now, but who could tell when the end would come? He’d come here to learn from people; surely he could give them something back.

But what, after all,was the secret of life? Drink, and weed, and love, and life, and running, and talk, and water, and air—there wasn’t any secret when you got down to it. Like his father had said, “Does there have to be a reason?” This was correct, when his father said it. But said in a certain other way, it was wrong.

To say, “There is no secret of life,” in that certain other way means something like, “Get back to work, and watch TV, and believe everything the man tells you, and use vaginal deodorant spray—this is all you get—go to church and cough up some money, it’s all bullshit, use women like objects (snigger), don’t read—stop looking for more—matter is everything, there’s no soul, there’s no God up there, there’s just a mean old man keeping lists like Santa Claus, death is horrible, buy lots of things to forget about death, commit brutal sex-murders, go to war, build bombs, rape the Earth, try to kill everything with you when you die—only your body matters—winning is everything, don’t let people push you around, don’t listen to others, friends are to get things from—get your head out of the clouds—art’s a waste of time, so is philosophy, science will soon solve all mysteries, art is what theyused to have, no room for art in today’s modern age, technology is the thing, science is for making more goods, goods to help us try and buy off death a little longer, medicine is the only science thatreally counts, how much is that in dollars—follow the rules—innovation is too risky, don’t step out of line, what if everyone did that, shape up or ship out, you’re in the army now ...”