The Illuminatus! Trilogy

Then I remembered that the old Lama in Dallas had said he was sending me to the final battle between Good and Evil. This was probably it, right here, right now, this night in Ingolstadt. A bit breathtaking to think of that. I wondered when the Angels of the Lord would appear: bloody soon, I hoped. It would be nice to have them around when Old Nick unleashed the shoggoth and Saint Toad and that lot.

So I toddled out into the streets of Ingolstadt and started sniffing around for the old sulphur and brimstone.

And half a mile below and twelve hours earlier, George Dorn and Stella Maris were smoking some Alamout Black hash with Harry Coin.

"You haven't got a bad punch for an intellectual," Coin said with warm regard.

"You're pretty good at rape yourself," George replied, "for the world's most incompetent assassin."

Coin started to draw back his lips in an angry snarl, but the hash was too strong. "Hagbard told you, Ace?" he asked bashfully.

"He told me most of it," George said. "I know that everybody on this ship once worked for the Illuminati directly or for one of their governments. I know that Hagbard has been an outlaw for more than two decades-"

"Twenty-three years exactly," Stella said archly.

"That figures," George nodded. "Twenty-three years, then, and never killed anybody until that incident with the spider ships four days ago."

"Oh, he killed us," Harry said dreamily, drawing on the pipe. "What he does is worse than capital punishment, while it's going on. I can't say I'm the same man I was before. But it's pretty bad until you come through."

"I know," George grinned. "I've had a few samples myself."

"Hagbard's system," Stella said, "Is very simple. He just gives you a good look at your own face in a mirror. He lets you see the puppet strings. It's still up to you to break them. He's never forced anyone to do anything that goes against their heart. Of course," she frowned in concentration, "he does sort of maneuver you into places where you have to find out in a hurry just what your heart is

saying to you. Did he ever tell you about the Indians?"

"The Shoshone?" George asked. "The cesspool gag?"

"Let's play a game," Coin interrupted, sinking lower in his chair as the hash hit him harder. "One of us in this room is a Martian, and we've got to guess from the conversation which one it is."

"Okay," Stella said easily. "Not the Shoshone," she told George, "the Mohawk."

"You're not the Martian," Coin giggled. "You stick to the subject, and that's a human trait."

George, trying to decide if the octopus on the wall was somehow connected with the Martian riddle, said, "I want to hear about Hagbard and the Mohawk. Maybe that will help us identify the Martian. You think up good games," he added kindly, "for a guy who was sent on seven assassination missions and fucked up every one of them."

"I'm dumb but I'm lucky," Coin said. "There was always somebody else there blasting away at the same time. Politicians are awfully unpopular these days, Ace."

This was a myth, Hagbard had confided to George. Until Harry Coin had completed his course in the Celine System, it was better if he believed himself the world's most unsuccessful assassin rather than face the truth: that he had goofed only on his first job (Dallas, November 22, 1963) and really had killed five men since then. Of course, even if Hagbard wasn't a holy man any longer, he was still tricky: maybe Harry had, indeed, missed every time. Perhaps Hagbard was keeping the image of Harry as mass murderer in George's mind to see if George could relate to the man's present instead of being hung up on his "past."

At least I've learned this much, George thought. The word "past" is always in quotes for me, now.