Pandemonium

Shiva to life. These sensitives are a little closer to the boundaries. Their grip on the consensual world is a little tenuous.”

“You mean they’re crazy.”

He shrugged. “Let’s not debate cause and effect. All we know is that when death comes for them, when the darkness calls, some of them do not go gentle. They refuse to be pulled in, and so they pull something back out.”

“The demons.”

“Us,” Valis said. “You’re going to have to learn to accept what you are.”

“Which is what—aliens? Archetypes?”

“I don’t yet know. Perhaps the Jungians are right, perhaps not. We know that we are more than human, immortal yet polymorphous, incorruptible yet malleable. Consider my case: I am the embodiment of the rational, exactly what Phil needed when he reached for me. He clothed me, however, in the form that allowed him to make sense of me. So, I became a science fiction writer’s creation, an artificial intelligence from outer space. That is my aspect. And you, you’re the cartoon brat, the troublemaker, the boy rebel.”

“I’m not that boy anymore.”

“No.” He touched a hand to his unbearded chin, and looked at his hand. Bertram’s hand. “You and I are special. We outgrew our prescribed roles.” The hand returned to his lap. “We stayed too long. As soon as we began to covet the lives we’d interrupted, we began to move beyond monomania, beyond the pasteboard personalities we’d been given. Our task now is to abandon amnesia. To remember what we are, and claim our place in the world.”

“Unless someone finds a way to get rid of us,” I said. My fists—

Del’s fists—clenched the bedcovers. I’d known it was a risk looking for Valis, but I had to know the truth. “Someone like Dr. Ram.”

He tilted his head. “Do you have something you would like to ask me?”

“He was trying to pluck out the Eye of Shiva—that’s your way of putting it, right? He was going to kill the demons. The kid they arrested for shooting him, Kasparian, was a fan of yours. It would be easy enough to dress him up like the Truth and send him up there. If the Truth killed Dr. Ram, then no one would believe he had a cure for possession.”

Valis nodded, as if agreeing with my logic.

“But the kid figured it out.” I said. “He realized what had happened, who’d really possessed him. So he faked a confession, just to keep Dr. Ram’s work going.”

“You don’t sound very sure,” Valis said.

“So did you do it?”

“If you’re asking if I possessed Eliot Kasparian,” he said, “the answer is yes.”

I stared at him. He wore a placid expression that Bertram could never have managed.

“However, it wasn’t that night in Chicago,” he said. “In fact, it was only a few days ago. As you say, Eliot was a fan of mine. Crazy, as it turns out, but a fan nonetheless. If he had continued to insist that the Truth had possessed him, your fellow demon would have killed him. I felt it was my responsibility to rectify the situation.”

“Wait a minute—Kasparian killed Dr. Ram himself? It was his own idea?”

“Influenced, unfortunately, by Phil’s writings. But yes. I would have preferred that Eliot had decided to take responsibility for that deed, but when he did not, I took the necessary steps.”

“You . . . you possessed a man to make him confess that he wasn’t possessed.” I shook my head. “That’s not a fake fake, that’s—I don’t know what that is.”

Valis smiled. “I work in mysterious ways.” He stood up and moved the chair to exactly where it had been. “When we talked in Chicago, you asked me what good I was doing Phil walking around in his body. I’d been asking myself that question ever since I began to realize my true nature. Philip K. Dick will die, alas. When that day comes, I will no longer be able to ignore my larger responsibilities.”

He started for the door.

“Wait!” I said, and scrambled off the bed. Pain lanced across my