The Illuminatus! Trilogy

The next morning, he and Stella fucked some more, wildly and joyously; they said "I love you" so many times that it became a new mantra to him, and they were still whispering at breakfast. The problem of Mavis and the problem of reaching total enlightenment had both vanished from his mind. Enjoying bacon and eggs that seemed tastier than he had ever eaten before, exchanging pointless and very private jokes with Stella, George Dorn was at peace.

(But nine hours earlier, at that "same" time, the Kachinas gathered in the center of the oldest city in North America, Orabi, and began a dance which an excited visiting anthropologist had never seen before. As he questioned various old men' and old women among the People of Peace- which is what ho-pi means- he found that the dance was dedicated to She-Woman-Forever-Not-Change. He knew enough not to try to convert that title into his own grammar, since it represented an important aspect of the Hopi philosophy of Time, which is much like the Simon Moon and Adam Weishaupt philosophies of Time and nothing like what physics students learn, at least until they reach graduate level studies. Only four times, he was told, had this dance ever been necessary: four times when the many worlds were all in danger, and this was the time of the fifth and greatest danger. The anthropologist, who happened to be a Hindu named Indole Ringh, quickly jotted in his notebook: "Cf. four yogas in

Upanishads, Wagadu legend in Sudan, and Marsh's queer notions about Atlantis. This could be big." The dance went on, the drums pounded monotonously, and Carmel, far away, broke into a sudden perspiration…)

And, in Los Angeles, John Dillinger calmly loaded his revolver, dropped it in his briefcase and set a Panama hat on his neatly combed silver-gray hair. He was humming a song from his youth: "Those wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine…" I hope that pimp is where Hagbard says, he thought; I've only got eighteen hours before they declare martial law… "Good-bye forever," he hummed on, "old fellows and pals…"

I saw the fnords the same day I first heard about the plastic martini. Let me be very clear and precise about this, since many of the people on this trip are deliberately and perversely obscure: I would not, could not,

have seen the fnords if Hagbard Celine hadn't hypnotized me the night before, on the flying saucer.

I had been reading Pat Walsh's memos, at home, and listening to a new record from the Museum of Natural History. I was adding a few new samples to my collection of Washington-Weishaupt pictures on the wall, when the saucer appeared hovering outside my window. Needless to say, it didn't particularly surprise me; I had saved a little of the AUM, after Chicago, contrary to the instructions from ELF, and had dosed myself. After meeting the Dealy Lama, not to mention Malaclypse the Elder, and seeing that nut Celine actually talk to gorillas, I assumed my mind was a point of receptivity where the AUM would trigger something truly original. The UFO, in fact, was a bit of a letdown; so many people had seen them already, and I was ready for something nobody had ever seen or imagined.

It was even more a disappointment when they psyched me, or slurped me aboard, and I found, instead of Martians or Insect Trust delegates from the Crab Galaxy, just Hagbard, Stella Maris and a few other people from the Leif Erikson.

"Hail Eris," said Hagbard.

"All hail Discordia," I replied, giving the three-after-two pattern, and completing the pentad. "Is this something important, or did you just want to show me your latest invention?"

The inside of the saucer was, to be trite, eerie. Everything was non-Euclidean and semitransparent; I kept feeling that I might fall through the floor and hurtle to the ground to smash myself on the sidewalk. Then we started moving and it got worse.

"Don't let the architecture disturb you," Hagbard said. "My own adaptation of some of Bucky Fuller's synergetic geometry. It's smaller, and more solid, than it looks. You won't fall out, believe me."

"Is this contraption behind all the flying saucer reports since 1947?" I asked curiously.

"Not quite," Hagbard laughed. "That's basically a hoax. The plan was created in the United States government, one of the few ideas they've had without direct Illuminati inspiration since about the middle of Roosevelt's first term. A reserve measure, in case something happens to Russia and China."

"Hi, baby," I said softly to Stella, remembering San Francisco. "Would you tell me, minus the Celine rhetoric and paradox, what the hell he's talking about?"