No response, only the pulsations of love.

What am I going to do? I asked.

You asked to be broken down, Valis answered. And healed. This is that breaking down and healing. You will be changed.

And go on? I asked.

The warmth of his love consumed me like an invisible^ cloud of light. He responded, And go on. Nothing is ever lost.

I can't be lost? I asked.

There is nowhere for anything to go. There is only here and us. For all time.

I realized then, that Valis and I had never beerr separated, that he had only fallen silent from time to time. I felt tired, now; I had drifted low over the mesas and I wanted to rest. There was a lessening sense of Valis's presence, as if he were withdrawing. Yet he still remained, like a lamp turned down, down but not off. Like a child, I has assumed that something no longer seen no longer existed. To an infant, when its parents leave the room they cease to be. But as he grows older he understands differently. They are there whether or not he can see them or touch them or hear their voices. It is an early lesson. But sometimes perhaps not completely learned.

So now I knew who Valis was; he was my father, my real father, from whose race I came repeatedly into this world, to leave again, to return again, to work toward some distant goal unseen, not as yet comprehended. The search, perhaps, was the goal. As I achieved a little motion toward it, I understood it. Overthrowing the tyranny of Ferris Fremont was a stop along the way, not a goal but a moment of decision, from which I then continued as before. Changed to some extent, but changed by my father, not by what I had done. For, I understood, Valis himself did it, through me. The virtue lay with him.

We are gloves, I realized, which our father puts on in order to achieve his objectives. What a pleasure to be that, to be of use. Part of a greater organism: its extensions into space and time, into the world of change. To influence that change - the greatest joy of all.

I can instruct you, Valis's thoughts came, without the satellite. It is a thing to show them, a shiny toy. To make them understand. When it fired it did its task; it served to open your mind and other minds. Those minds, opened once, will never close. The contact is established and the circuit is in place. It will remain that way. I am linked up then, I realized. For all time. You have remembered. You know. There is now no forgetting. Be of good cheer. Thank you, I said.

The reddish mesas, the level plain below me, faded; the sky closed and the sound of rushing wind slowly diminished.

Valis was out of my sight now, his face turned away from me, retractile in his cycle. I experienced this time no loss, as I always had before.

Son of Earth and starry heaven. The old rite, the disclosure to the ancient initiate. I had undergone the Orphic ceremonies, down in the dark caves, to emerge suddenly into the chamber of light, to see the gold tablet that reminded me of my own nature and my past: trip across space from Albemuth, the far star, migration to this world, to blend here in escape from our molelike enemy. That enemy had soon followed, and the garden we built had been polluted and made toxic with his presence, with his wastes. We sank into the silt; we became half blind; we forgot until reminded. Reminded by the rotating voice from the nearby sky, placed there long ago in case a calamity occurred, a break in the chain of continuity. Such a break did come. And, presently, the voice automatically fired. And informed us, as best as it could, of what we no longer knew.

If the Russians did photograph the ETI satellite, the invader, they would find it old and pitted. I had been there thousands of years. What a surprise that would be; they, too, might remember... until the molelike adversary closed up their minds and they forgot again. Were made to forget again, as the deformed landscape, clouded over by the poisoned atmosphere, occluded their senses and thoughts and they fell again, as before.

Recurrent cycles, I realized, of coming awake for a time, then falling back into sleep. I had, like the others, been asleep, but then I had woken up; or, rather, I had been awakened out of my sleep deliberately. The voice of a friend had called to me, as it moved among the rows of new corn, new life, and I had heard and recognized it. That voice was always calling, always attempting to wake us up, we who slept. Perhaps eventually we all would awaken. To communicate once again with our parent race beyond the stars... as if we had never left.

Albemuth. Our first home. We were wanderers, exiles, all of us, whether we knew it or not. Perhaps most of us wanted to forget. Memory - to be aware of our true condition, our identity - was too painful. We would make this place our home and we would recall nothing else. It was easier that way.

The simplicity of unawareness. The easier way. Deadly in its outcome: without memory we had fallen victim to our adversary. We had forgotten him, too, and been overtaken and surprised. That was the price we paid. We paid it now.

When I returned to consciousness I found myself in the recovery room, with a nurse taking my pulse. My chest hurt, I had difficulty breathing. An oxygen mask covered my nose. And I was terribly hungry.

"My," the nurse said brightly. "We really ran our little car into a lot of trouble."

"What happened to me?" I managed to say.

"Dr Wintaub will discuss your surgery with you," the nurse said. "After you're taken to your room."

"Did you notify... ?"

"Your wife is on the way here."

"What city is this?" I said.

"Downey."

"I'm a long way from home," I said.

Half an hour after I had been taken upstairs to a two-patient room, Dr Wintaub entered to examine me.

"How do you feel?" he asked, taking my pulse.

"A bad headache," I said. I could not remember having had such a headache; it was equaled only by the pain I had experienced the night Valis had informed me of Johnny's birth defect. And my sight seemed impaired again, as well.

"You've been through a lot," Dr Wintaub pulled the covers back, inspected my bandages. "Your lung was punctured by a broken rib," he said. "That was why we entered the chest cavity. You're going to be here, I'm afraid, for some time. The steering wheel of your car caught you head on and did most of the damage - " His voice abruptly came to a halt.

"What is it?" I said, afraid at what he had found.

Til be back in a minute, Mr Brady." Dr Wintaub departed from the room; I was left to wonder about it. Presently he returned with two male technicians. "I want his bandages removed," Wintaub said. "And the splints. I want to examine the wound."

. They began removing the bandages, with extreme gentleness. Dr Wintaub watched critically. I felt nothing, no discomfort, no pain. The headache remained; it was like a migraine headache, with a flashing grid of extraordinarily intense pink light in my right eye, a field of blurred color slowly moving from left to right.

There, doctor." The technicians stepped back.

Dr Wintaub came close; I felt his deft fingers touch my chest. "I performed this surgery," he murmured. "About two hours ago." He studied his wristwatch. "Two hours and ten minutes ago."

"Could you look at my eyes?" I said. "That's where the pain is."

Impatiently, Dr Wintaub flashed a light in my eyes. "Follow the light," he murmured. "You're tracking okay." He returned to my chest. To the two technicians he said, "Take him down to X-ray and do a full chest series."

"All right to move him, doctor?" one of the technicians asked.

"Just be extremely careful," Wintaub said.

I was wheeled down to X-ray and chest plates were made, several of them, and then I was returned to my room. While waiting at X-ray I managed to sit up enough to see my own chest.