The Illuminatus! Trilogy

At this point, another character enters the book, Howard Cork, a one-legged madman who commands a submarine called the Life Eternal and is battling everybody- the anarchists, the Communists, the Diamond Jim Rhinestone heroin cabal, the Blind Tigers, the Enlightened Ones, the U.S. government-in-exile, the still-nameless patriotic Underground and the Chicago Cubs-since he is convinced they are all fronting for a white whale of superhuman intelligence who is trying to take over the world on behalf of the cetaceans. ("No normal whale could do this," he says after every TV newscast reveals further decay and chaos in America, "but a whale of superhuman intelligence…!") This megalomaniac tub of blubber- the whale, not Howard Cork- is responsible for the release of the famous late-1960s record Songs of the Blue Whales,

which has hypnotic powers to lead people into wild frenzies, dope-taking, rape and loss of faith in Christianity. In fact, the whale is behind most of the cultural developments of recent decades, influencing minds through hypnotic telepathy. "First, he introduced W. C. Fields," Howard Cork rages to the dubious first mate, "Buck" Star, "then, when America's moral fiber was sufficiently weakened, Liz and Dick and Andy

Warhol and rock music. Now, the Songs of the Blue Whales!" Star becomes convinced that Captain Cork went uncorked and wigged when he lost his leg during a simple ingrown toenail operation bungled by a hip young chiropodist stoned on mescaline. This suspicion is increased by the moody mariner's insistence on wearing an old cork leg instead of a modern prosthetic model, proclaiming, "I was born all Cork and I'm not going to die only three-fourths Cork!"

Then comes a turnabout scene, and it is revealed that Cork is actually not bananas at all but really a smooth apple. In a meeting with a pure Aryan with hollow cheeks, a long lean body, and a face that never changes expression, it develops that the Captain is an agent of the Underground which is called God's Lightning because of Heracleitus's idea that God first manifested himself as a lightning bolt which created the world. Instead of hunting the big white whale, as the crew thinks, the Life Eternal is actually running munitions for the government-in-exile and God's Lightning. When the hollow-cheeked leader leaves, he says to Cork, "Remember: the way up is the way down."

Meanwhile, the Gateless Gate swung creakingly open and I started picking up some of the "real" world. That is, I began to recognize myself, again, as the ringmaster. All of this information gets fed into me, entropy and negentropy all synergized up in a wodge of wonderland, and I compute it as well as my memory banks give it unto me to understand these doings.

But, as Harry Coin, I enter Miss Portinari's suite somewhat diffidently. I am conscious of the ghosts of dead pirates, only partly induced by this room's surrealist variety of Hagbard's nautical taste in murals. In fact, Harry, in his own language, had an asshole tight enough to shit bricks. It was easy, now, to accept that long-haired hippie, George, and even his black girlfriend as equals, but it just didn't seem right to be asked to accept a teenage girl as a superior. A couple days ago I would have been thinking how to get into her panties. Now I was thinking how to get her into my head. That Hagbard and his dope sure have screwed up my sense of values worse than anything since I left Biloxi.

And, for some reason, I could hear the Reverend Hill pounding the Bible and hollering up a storm back there in Biloxi, long ago, "No remission without blood! No remission without blood, brothers and sisters! Saint Paul says it and don't you forget it! No remission without the blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ! Amen."

And Hagbard reads FUCKUP'S final analysis of the strategy and tactics in the Battle of Atlantis. All the evidence is consistent with Assumption A, and inconsistent with Assumption B, the mathematical part of FUCKUP has decided. Hagbard grinds his teeth in a savage grimace: Assumption A is that the Illuminati spider ships were under remote control, and Assumption B is that there were human beings aboard them.

–Trust not a man who's rich in flax-his morals may be sadly lax.

"Ready for destruction of enemy ships," Howard's voice came back to him.

"Are your people out of the way?"

"Of course. Quit this hesitating. This is no time to be a humanitarian."

(Assumption A is that the Illuminati spider ships were under remote control.)

The sea is cruder than the land. Sometimes.

(None of the evidence is consistent with Assumption B.)

Hagbard reached out a brown finger, let it rest on a white button on the railing in front of him, then pressed it decisively. That's all there is to it, he said.