The illuminatus! trilogy (99 page)

“A lot of occult writers,” he went on, “have made some amazing guesses as to what that means. Actually, it doesn’t mean a damned thing. To prevent our name being stolen and misused again, we don’t have a name. Anybody who thinks he’s guessed the name and tries to pass himself off as an initiate by declaring that we’re really the Atlantean Arcanum or the Argenteum Astrum or whatever immediately reveals that he’s a fraud. It’s a neat gimmick,” Hagbard intoned gloomily. “I only wish we had thought of it centuries earlier.”

The buzzer on the President’s secretary’s desk buzzed as Saul and Barney passed through the outer door. The secretary flipped the switch, and the President said, “Find out the highest medal a civilian can get, and order two, on my signature, for those two detectives.”

“Yes, sir,” the secretary said, scribbling.

“And then ask the FBI to check out that older one. He looked like a kike to me,” the President said shrewdly.

NO—because I’d be a fool to think miracles can occur in this world before somebody pays the rent and the taxes and shows that their papers are in order and the people who are running it can always tell you your papers are not in order No because there are no magicians and even Hagbard is mostly a fraud and a con man even if he means well No because I’m not Pope Joan if there ever was a Pope Joan No because like the song says I’m not a queen I’m a woman and the wrong color woman to boot No because there will be rivers of blood and the earth will be shaken before we can overturn Boss Charlie because it isn’t a simple one-night symbolic Armageddon like Hagbard fooled them all into thinking No because Hagbard is some kind of magician and put us all on his own trip for a while, but the real world isn’t a trip it’s a bummer No because the lovers don’t live happily ever after what happens is that they get married and get into debt and live in slavery ever after and I’ve got to find something better than that No because none of us are driving the car it’s the car that’s driving us No because it’s like that old joke “Balls” said the queen “if I had
them I’d be king” and “Nuts” said the prince “I’ve got them and I’m not king” and “Crap” said the king and thirty thousand royal subjects squatted and strained for in those days the king’s word was law Hagbard would call it anality and sexism and ageism but it just comes down to the women and children getting all the crap right in the face and a few males owning everything the truth is all in the old jokes especially the bad jokes I’m still tripping but this is true they can always say your papers are not in order No because sometimes you’ve got to be a hermit and then come back later when you’re together No because the wheel keeps spinning and doesn’t give a fuck if there’s going to be any change it’s got to be that some human being somewhere does give a fuck No because I’ve never found a way to shut Simon’s mouth and make him listen No because Jesus Christ was a black man and they’ve even lied about that he was another black man they killed and they won’t admit it No because death is the currency in every empire Roman or American or any other all empires are the same Death is always the argument they use No because the whole world can go to the Devil and I’m taking care of Mary Lou No because look at that professor they killed at the UN building and none of them arrested yet No because there’s a perpetual motion machine inside me and I’m learning to let it run No because I’ll put a curse on all of them I’ll burn them I’ll condemn them I’ll have the world No because look what happened to Daddy and Mommy

“It’s grade 5 and moving up toward 6,” Igor Beaver shouted into the phone.

“You idiot, don’t you think I can tell that from here?” Dr. Troll shouted back. “My bed was bouncing around like it had Saint Virus’ dance even before you called.” His emotion was merely professional anger at the student’s failure to obey orders; Grade 5 is nothing to get excited about if you’re a Californian, and even Grade 6 causes anxiety only among tourists or believers in the famous Edgar Cayce prophecy…John Herbert Dillinger, one of those believers, was already in the garage, pajama tops tucked in to hastily donned trousers, bare foot on the starter…But Smiling Jim climbed blissfully upward, enjoying total communication with nature, the mystic rapture of the true hunter before he gets his chance to open fire and blast a chunk of nature to hell …

YOU MAY MOCK AND YOU MAY JEST BUT AT THE LAST JUDGMENT THE SMILE WILL BE WIPED OFF YOUR FACE

“He’s heckling the preacher,” Mama said. “A small beginning, certainly, for the kind of destiny he seems to be choosing.”

“He’s heckling himself,” the Dealy Lama pronounced. “Christianity, rightly understood, is an encounter with Death. He’s still struggling with that problem. He wants to believe in the symbolism of the Resurrection, but he can’t. Too much intellect—King of Swords—keeping the reins on his intuitive—Prince of Wands—aspect.”

“Well, maybe,” Drake said calmly. “But suppose He was type A. Now, if He got a transfusion at the last minute …”

The nest was in sight. The bird was invisible, but Smiling Jim recognized the characteristic eagle’s nest on a peak only a few hundred yards above and to the west. “Come home, baby,” he thought passionately, unstrapping his rifle. “Come home. Daddy is waiting.”

Hagbard took another belt of the brandy and repeated: “The Saures were not Illuminati. Neither were Weishaupt or Hitler. They were frauds, pure and simple. First they deluded themselves, then they deluded others. The real Illuminati, the
, have never been involved in politics or in any form of manipulating or coercing people. Our interests are entirely elsewhere.
Do what thou wilt
is our law. Only in the last few decades, as the fate of the earth seemed to be hanging in the balance, have we taken any direct action. Even so, we have been cautious. We know that power corrupts. We have acted chiefly by not-acting, by what the Taoists call
wu-wei
. But then things got out of hand. They moved too fast…We fucked up somewhat. But only because total inaction seemed to mean total disaster.”

“You mean you, as an official of some sort in the
, infiltrated the fake Illuminati and became one of their top Five, intending to undo them nonviolently? And it didn’t work?”

“It worked about as well as any activity on that level ever works,” Hagbard said somberly. “Most of humanity has been spared, for a while. And the wild free animals have been spared. For a while.” He sighed. “I guess I’ll have to begin from the A-B-Cs. We have never sought power. We have sought to disperse power, to set men and
women free. That really means: to help them to discover that they are free. Everybody’s free. The slave is free. The ultimate weapon isn’t this plague out in Vegas, or any new super H-bomb. The ultimate weapon has always existed. Every man, every woman, and every child owns it. It’s the ability to say
No
and take the consequences. ‘Fear is failure.’ ‘The fear of death is the beginning of slavery.’ ‘Thou hast no right but to do thy will.’ The goose can break the bottle at any second. Socrates took the hemlock to prove it. Jesus went to the cross to prove it. It’s in all history, all myth, all poetry. It’s right out in the open all the time.”

Hagbard sighed again. “Our founder and leader, the man known in myth as Prometheus or the snake in the garden of Eden—”

“Oh, Christ,” Joe said, slumping forward in his seat. “I have the feeling that you’re starting to put me on again. You’re about to tell me that the Prometheus and Genesis stories are really based on fact.”

“Our leader, known as Lucifer or Satan,” Hagbard went on, “Lucifer being the
bringer of light
—”

“You know,” Joe said, “I’m not going to believe a word of this.”

“Our leader, known as Prometheus the fire-bringer or Lucifer the light-bringer or Quetzalcoatl the morning star or the snake in the garden of Osiris’s bad brother, Set, or Shaitan the tempter—well, to be brief, he repented.” Hagbard raised an eyebrow. “Does that intrigue you sufficiently to silence your skepticism long enough for me to finish a sentence?”

“He
repented?”
Joe sat upright again.

“Sure. Why not?” Hagbard’s old malicious grin, so rare in the last week, returned. “If Atlas can Shrug and Telemachus can Sneeze, why can’t Satan Repent?”

“Go ahead,” Joe said. “This is just another one of your put-ons, but I’m hooked. I’ll listen. But I have my own answer, which is that there is no answer. You’re just an allegory on the universe itself, and every explanation of you and your actions is incomplete. They’ll always be a new, more up-to-date explanation coming along a while later. That’s
my
answer.”

Hagbard laughed easily. “Charming,” he said. “I must remember that the next time
I’m
trying to understand myself. Of course, it’s true of any human being. We’re all allegories
on the universe, different faces it wears in trying to decide what it really is…But our founder and leader, as I was saying, repented. That’s the secret that has never been revealed. There is no stasis anywhere in the cosmos, least of all in the minds of entities that possess minds. The basic fallacy of all bad writers—and theologians are notoriously bad writers—is to create cardboard characters who never change. He gave us the light of reason and, seeing how we misused it, he repented. The story is more complicated, but that’s the basic outline. At least, it’s as much as I understood until a week ago. The important thing to get clear is that he never aimed at power or destruction. That’s a myth—”

“Created by the opposition,” Joe said. “Right? I read that in Mark Twain’s defense of Satan.”

“Twain was subtle,” Hagbard said, taking a little more brandy, “but not subtle enough. No, the myth was not created by the opposition. It was created by our founder himself.”

“Wilde should be alive,” Joe said admiringly. “He was so proud of himself, setting paradox on top of paradox until he had a nice three- or four- or five-story house of contradictions built up. He should see the skyscrapers you create.”

“You never disappoint me,” Hagbard said. “If they ever hang you, you’ll be arguing about whether the rope really exists until the last minute. That’s why I picked you, all those years ago, and programmed you for the role you’d play tonight. Only a man whose father was an ex-Moslem, and who was himself an ex-Catholic and an ex-engineering student, would have the required complexity. Anyway, to return to the libretto, as an old friend of mine used to say, the error of Weishaupt and Hitler and Stalin and the Saures was to believe the propaganda our founder spread against himself—that, and believing they were in communication with him, when they were only in communication with a nasty part of their own unconscious minds. There was no evil spirit misleading them. They were misleading themselves. And we were trailing along behind, trying to keep them from causing too much harm. Finally, in the early 1960s—after a certain fuckup in Dallas convinced me that things were getting out of hand—I contacted the Five directly. Since I knew the real secrets of magic and they only
had distortions, it was easy to convince them that I was an emissary from those beings whom they call the Secret Chiefs or the Great Old Ones or the Shining Ones. Being half crazy, they reacted in a way I had not expected. They all abdicated and appointed me and the four Saures as their successors. They decided that we’re entering the age of Horus, the child-god, and that youth should be given a chance to run things—hence, the promotion of the Saures. They threw me in because I seemed to know what I was talking about. But then came the real problem: I couldn’t convince the Saures of anything. Those pig-headed kids wouldn’t believe a word I said. They told me I was over thirty and untrustworthy. I told you the truth was out in the open all the time; anybody with eyes in his head should have been able to interpret what’s been happening since the early 1960s. The great and dreaded Illuminati of the past had fallen into the control of a bunch of ignorant and malicious kids. The age of the crowned and conquering child.”