"Immigration officers don't carry guns.

"And a ship. A long trip at very high speed. Urgency. And most of all-a presence. An uncanny presence. Not human. Maybe it was an extraterrestrial, the race I'm really a part of. From my home planet."

"Herb," Elias said, "you are full of shit."

"I know. But just for a second I experienced all that. And- listen to this." He gestured excitedly. "An accident. Our ship crashing into another ship. My body remembered; it remembered the concussion, the trauma."

"Go to a hypnotherapist," Elias said, "get him to put you under, and remember. You're obviously a weird alien pro- grammed to blow up the world. You probably have a bomb inside you.

Herb said, "That's not funny."

"Okay; you're from some wise, super-advanced noble spiri- tual race and you were sent here to enlighten mankind. To save us.

Instantly, in Herb Asher's mind, memories flicked on, and then flicked off again. Almost at once.

"What is it?" Elias asked, regarding him acutely.

"More memories. When you said that."

After an interval of silence Elias said, "I wish you would read the Bible sometime."

"It had something to do with the Bible," Herb said. "My mission."

"Maybe you're a messenger," Elias said. "Maybe you have a message to deliver to the world. From God."

"Stop kidding me."

Elias said, "I'm not kidding. Not now." And apparently that was so; his dark face had turned grim.

"What's wrong?" Herb said.

"Sometimes I think this planet is under a spell," Elias said. "We are asleep or in a trance, and something causes us to see what it wants us to see and remember and think what it wants us to remember and think. Which means we're whatever it wants us to be. Which in turn means that we have no genuine existence. We're at the mercy of some kind of whim."