The illuminatus! trilogy (100 page)

“And you think the old and wise should rule?” Joe asked. “That doesn’t fit your character. This
has
to be another put-on.”

“I don’t think
anybody
should rule,” Hagbard said. “All I’m doing—all the Higher Order of the
, has ever tried to do—is communicate with people, in spite of their biases and fears. Not to rule them. And what we’re trying to communicate—the ultimate secret, the philosopher’s stone, the elixir of life—is just the power of the word
No
. We are people who have said
Non serviam
, and we’re trying to teach others to say it. Drake was one of us spiritually but never understood it. If we can’t find immortality, we can make a damned good try. If we can’t save this planet, we can get off it and go to the stars.”

“And what happens now?” Joe asked.

“More surprises,” Hagbard answered promptly. “I can’t tell you the whole story at this hour, with both of us fagged out at the end of an acid trip. We go back to the hotel and sleep, and after breakfast there are more revelations. For George as well as for you.”

And later in the Bugatti, which, driven by Harry Coin, was grandly wafting Hagbard, George, and Joe around the south side of Lake Totenkopf, George asked, “Is Hitler really going to be buried anonymously in a Jewish cemetery?”

“It looks that way.” Hagbard grinned. “His Israeli documents are excellent forgeries. He’ll be lifted off that toilet by Hauptmann’s men and gently deposited in the Ingolstadt Hebrew Burial Grounds, there to rest for all eternity.”

“That will make me throw up once a day for the rest of my life,” Joe said bitterly. “It’s the worst case of cemetery desecration in history.”

“Oh, it has a positive aspect,” said Hagbard. “Look at it from the point of view of the Nazi leaders. Think how they’ll hate being buried in a Jewish cemetery with a rabbi praying over them.”

“Doesn’t make up for it,” said George. “Joe’s right. It’s in terribly bad taste.”

“I thought both you guys were thoroughgoing atheists,” said Hagbard. “If you are, you think the dead are dead and it hardly matters where they’re buried. What’s happening —you both getting religion?”

“I can think of nothing more likely to drive a man to religion than your company,” said Joe.

“Burying them Nazis with a bunch of Jews is the funniest thing I ever heard,” Harry Coin offered from the driver’s seat.

“Go bugger a dead goat, Coin,” George called.

“Sure thing,” said Coin. “Lead me to it.”

“You’re incorrigible, Hagbard,” said Joe. “You really are incorrigible. And you surround yourself with people who incorrige you.”

“I don’t need help,” said Hagbard. “I have a great deal of initiative. More than any other human being I know. With the possible exception of Mavis.”

George said, “Hagbard, did I really see what I thought I saw last night? Is Mavis really a goddess? Are Stella and Miss Mao and Mavis all the same person, or was I just hallucinating?”

“Here come the paradoxes,” Joe groaned. “Hell talk for an hour, and we’ll be more confused when he’s finished.”

Hagbard, who was sitting in a large swivel jump seat, swung round so he was looking over Harry Coin’s shoulder at the road ahead. “I’d be glad to tell you later, George. I would have told you now, except that I don’t like Malik’s tone. He may not be intending to shoot me any more, but he still has it in for me.”

“You bet,” said Joe.

“Well, are you still going to marry Mavis?”

“What?” Hagbard swung round and stared at George with an expression that was almost a perfect replica of genuine surprise.

“You said that you and Mavis were going to be married aboard the
Leif Erikson
by Miss Portinari. Are you?”

“Yes,” said Hagbard, “Miss Portinari will marry us later today. Sorry, but I knew her first.”

“Then Mavis isn’t really Eris?” George persisted. “She’s just a priestess of Eris?”

Hagbard brushed the question away. “Later, George. She will explain it.”

“She’s even better at explanations than Hagbard is,” Joe commented cynically.

“Well,” said Hagbard, “getting back to Hitler and company, you have to realize that they will know about it if their bodies are buried in a Jewish cemetery. They are still conscious and aware, though they are not what we would normally call alive. Their consciousness-energy is intact, though there is no life in their bodies. They came to the Ingolstadt festival hoping that their young leaders would give them immortality. They’ve achieved immortality, all right. But not a very nice kind. Their consciousness-energy has been gobbled up by the Evil One. Their identities still survive, but they will be helpless parts of the Eater of Souls, the foulest being in the universe, the only creature that can turn spirit into carrion. Yog Sothoth has claimed his own.”

“Yog Sothoth!” said Joe. “I remember learning about Yog Sothoth. It was an invisible being trapped in a pentagonal structure in Atlantis. The original Illuminati blew up the structure and turned the creature loose.”

“Why, yes,” Hagbard said, “you saw that Erisian Liberation Front training film about Atlantis and Grayface Gruad, didn’t you? Well, of course, the film isn’t accurate in every respect. For instance, Yog Sothoth is depicted as killing people by the thousands. Actually, most of the time, except under very limited conditions, he has to have his killing done for him. That’s how human sacrifice originated. And it was to get his killing done for him that he manipulated a great many events among the Atlanteans until old Gray-face, the original moral sadomasochist, came along with his notions about good and evil. Man suffers because he is evil, said Gruad, and because he is small and helpless. There are
vast powers in the universe, dwarfing us, who have to be placated. Gruad taught man to see ignorance, passion, pain, and death as evils, and to fight against them.”

“Well…ignorance is an evil,” said Joe.

“Not when it can be acknowledged and accepted,” said Hagbard. “In order to eat, you have to be hungry. In order to learn, you have to be ignorant. Ignorance is a condition of learning. Pain is a condition of health. Passion is a condition of thought. Death is a condition of life. When Gruad taught his followers in Atlantis to see those conditions as evils, then he could teach them human sacrifice, persecution, and warfare. Yog Sothoth taught Gruad to teach his people those things, only Gruad never knew it.”

“So Yog Sothoth is the serpent in the Garden of Eden,” said Joe.

“In a manner of speaking,” said Hagbard. “But you understand, the Garden of Eden myth was dreamed up and promulgated by the Illuminati.”

“And who dreamed up the Gruad of Atlantis myth?” said Joe.

“Oh, that’s true,” said Hagbard solemnly.

“That’s the biggest bunch of bullshit I ever heard,” said Joe. “You’re trying to claim that there’s no such thing as good and evil, that the concepts were invented and taught to humans deliberately to fuck them up psychologically. But in order to maintain that you have to postulate that the condition of man before Gruad was good and that his condition afterward has been evil. And you have to make Yog Sothoth into a carbon copy of Satan. You haven’t progressed one iota beyond the Judeo-Christian myth with that highfalutin’ science-fiction story.”

Hagbard roared with laughter and slapped Joe on the knee. “Beautiful!” He held up his hand in a distinctive gesture. “What I am doing?” he asked.

“You’re giving the peace sign, only with your fingers together,” George said, confused.

“That’s what comes of being an ignorant Baptist.” Joe laughed. “As a son of the True Church, I can tell you, George, that Hagbard is giving a Catholic blessing.”

“Indeed?” said Hagbard. “Look at the shadow my hand casts on this book.” He held up a book behind his hand, and they saw the head of a horned Devil. “The sun, source of all light and energy, symbol of redemption. And my
hand, in the most sacred gesture of benediction. Put them both together, they spell Satan,” he sang to an old tune.

“And what the hell does that mean?” Joe demanded. “Evil is only a shadow, a false appearance? The usual mystic mishmosh? Tell that to the survivors of Auschwitz.”

“Suppose,” Hagbard said, “I told you that good was only a shadow, a false appearance? Several modern philosophers have argued that case rather plausibly and earned themselves a reputation for hard-headed realism. And yet that’s just the mirror image of what you call the usual mystic mishmosh.”

“Then what is real?” George demanded. “Mary, Queen of the May, or Kali, Mother of Murderers, or Eris, who synthesizes both?”

“The
trip
is real,” Hagbard said. “The images you encounter along the way are all unreal. If you keep moving, and pass them, you eventually discover that.”

“Solipsism. Sophomore solipsism,” Joe answered.

“No.” Hagbard grinned. “The solipsist thinks the
tripper
is real.”

Harry Coin called out, “Hagbard, there’s a couple of guys up the road flagging us down.”

Hagbard turned and peered ahead. “Right. They’re crew members from the
Leif Erikson
. Pull up where they tell you to, Harry.” He reached up to a silver vase mounted beside the back seat and took a pink rosebud out of the fresh bouquet he had placed there that morning. He carefully inserted the rosebud in the buttonhole of his lapel. The great golden Bugatti rolled to a stop, and the four men got out. Harry patted its long front fender with a long, skinny hand.

“Thanks for letting me drive this car, Hagbard,” he said. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

“No it isn’t. Now you’ll want your own Bugatti. Or, what’s worse, you’ll ask me to let you be my chauffeur.”

“No I won’t. But I’ll do a deal with you. You let me have this car, and whenever you want to go somewhere in it, I’ll drive you.”

Hagbard laughed and slapped Coin on the back. “You keep on showing that much intelligence and you will end up owning one.”

The long line of cars that had been following the Bugatti now were stopping along the edge of the road behind it. There was a stretch of lawn that sloped gently down from
the road to the lake. Out on the choppy blue water a round gold buoy drifted, giving off a cloud of red smoke.

Stella stepped out of the Mercedes 600 that was parked behind the Bugatti. George half expected Mavis and Miss Mao to get out with her, but there was no sign of them. He looked at her and was unable to speak. He didn’t know what to say. She looked back at him with grave, sad eyes, in silence. Somehow, he thought, it will all be different and better when we get down to the submarine. In the submarine we’ll be able to talk to each other.

A pink Cadillac behind the Mercedes disgorged Simon Moon and Clark Kent. Stella did not turn to look at them. They were talking excitedly to each other. A motorcycle pulled up behind the Cadillac. Otto Waterhouse climbed off it. Now Stella turned and looked at Otto, then back to George. Otto looked at Stella, then at George. Stella suddenly turned away from both of them and walked down to the edge of the lake. A large inflated life-raft was pulled up on shore, and one of Hagbard’s men sitting in the raft stood up holding a wetsuit as Stella approached. Slowly, as if she were all alone by the shore of the lake, Stella took off her peasant blouse and skirt and continued stripping until she was naked. Then she started to put on the wetsuit.

Meanwhile, another man got behind the wheel of Hagbard’s Bugatti Royale and drove it across the lawn. Two other men held the mouth of a huge transparent plastic bag far enough apart so that the car could be driven right into it. They tied up the end of the bag with strong wire. Ropes attached to the bag grew taut; their other ends disappeared into the water. Slowly, looking somewhat majestic and somewhat ridiculous, the car slid across the lawn and into the water. When it had been pulled out a short distance from shore it began to float. Out of the deeper water popped two golden scuba-launches, Hagbard’s men in black wetsuits mounted in the saddles. The launches positioned themselves on either side of the automobile in its plastic bubble and the men lashed the launches and the car together with cables. Then they started their engines and launches; men and car quickly sank out of sight.

Meanwhile, more rubber rafts pulled ashore, and all of Hagbard’s people started donning wetsuits distributed by the men from the submarine.

“I’ve never done this before,” said Lady Velkor. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

“Don’t worry, baby,” said Simon Moon. “Even a man could do it.”

“Where’s your friend, Mary Lou?” George asked.

“She left me,” Simon said glumly. “The damned acid fucked up her mind.”

NO—because in the long run whites and blacks and men and women have to come to an understanding and an equality No because this split can’t go on forever I mean shit I understand that but No I can’t not now No I am not ready yet the penis I imagined I had last night was not just some Freudian hallucination there’s the phallic power behind the physical penis No the acting from the center of the body what Simon says Hagbard calls acting from the heart and only a few can have that right now No most of us haven’t learned and haven’t been given a chance to learn That’s the real castration the real impotence in both men and women in both blacks and whites No the power that we think is phallic because this is a patriarchal society No I can’t be Simon’s woman or anybody’s woman First I’ve got to be my own woman and it may take years it may take life I may never achieve it but I’ve got to try I can’t end up like Daddy I can’t end up like most blacks and most of the whites too end up No maybe I’ll meet Simon again maybe we can try a second time That acid nut Timothy Leary always said You can be anything you want the second time around No it can’t be this time it’s got to be the second time around No I said No I won’t No