The Illuminatus! Trilogy

"Wait, damn it," Drake said, frowning. "This is more important than you realize." His face went blank and I could tell his mind was racing like an engine with governor off; it was impressive. "What's your rank in the Order?" he asked finally.

"Illuminatus Prelator," I confessed, humbly.

"Not nearly high enough. But you have more practical espionage experience than a great many higher members. You'll have to do." The old barracuda relaxed, having come to a decision. "How much do you know about the Cult of the Black Mother?" he asked.

"The most militant and most secret Black Power group in the country," I said carefully. "They avoid publicity instead of seeking it, because their strategy is based on an eventual coup d'etat, not on revolution. Until a minute ago, I thought no white man in the country even knew of their existence, except those of us in the FBI. The Bureau has never reported on them to other government agencies, because we're ashamed to admit we've never been able to keep an informer inside for long. They all die of natural causes, that's what bugs us."

"Nobody in the Order has ever told you the truth?" Drake demanded.

"No," I said, curious. "I thought what I just told you was the truth."

"Winifred is more closed-mouth than he needs to be," Drake said. "The Cult of the Black Mother is entirely controlled by the Order. They monitor ghetto affairs for us. Right now, they predict a revival of 1960s-style uprisings for late summer in Harlem, on the West Side of Chicago, and in Detroit. They need to up the addiction rate at least eighteen percent, hopefully twenty or twenty-five percent, in all those areas, or the property damage will be even more enormous than we are prepared to absorb.

"They can't do it, if they have to cut their present stock even more than it's already cut. There just has to be more junk in the ghettoes or all hell will break loose by August."

I began to realize that he had used the word "monitor" in its strict cybernetic meaning.

"There's only one alternative," Drake went on. "The black market. There's a very cunning and well-organized group that's been trying to crack the CIA-Syndicate heroin monopoly for quite a while now. The Cult, of the Black Mother will have to deal with them directly. I don't want the Order involved at all- that would make it messy, and besides we'll have to crush this group later, when we're able to pierce their cover."

The upshot of it was that I found myself on One Hundred Tenth Street in Harlem, feeling very white and un-bulletproof, entering a restaurant called The Signifying Monkey. Walking through a lot of hostile stares, I went direct to the coffee-colored woman at the cash register and said, "I've got a tombstone disposition."

She gave me a piercing look and muttered, "Upstairs, after the men's room, the door marked Private. Knock five times." She grinned maliciously, "And if you're not kosher, kiss your white ass good-bye, brother."

I went up the stairs, found the door, knocked five times, and one eye in an ebony face looked out at me stonily. "White," he said.

"Man," I replied.

"Native," he came back.

"Born," I finished. A bolt slipped on a chain and the door opened the rest of the way. I never did find out whose idea of a joke that password was- they had lifted it from the Ku Klux Klan, of course. The room I was in was heavy with marijuana smoke, but I could see that it was decently furnished and dominated by an enormous statue of Kali, the Black Mother; I had visions of weird Gunga Din

rites and shouts of "Kill for the love of Kali!" There were four other men in the room, hi addition to the one who let me in, and two reefers were circulating, one deosil and one widder-shins.

"Who you from?" a voice asked in the murk.

"AISB," I answered carefully, "And I'm to speak to Hassan i Sabbah X."

"You're speaking to him," said the tallest and blackest character in the bunch, passing me a reefer. I took a quick, deep draw and, Christ, it was good. I'd been half addicted ever since the March on the Pentagon in 1967, where I walked right behind Norman Mailer part of the way, and later fell in with some hippies who were sitting on the steps smoking it. I say I was half addicted since then, because two of me believe, as a loyal government employee, that the old government publications claiming marijuana is addicting must be true or the government wouldn't have printed them. Fortunately, the other two of me know that it isn't addicting, so I don't go through very bad withdrawal when it's scarce.

I started to outline the situation to Hassan i Sabbah X but the other joint came around, widdershins, and I took a drag on that. "A man could get stoned doing this," I said facetiously.

"Yeah," a satisfied black voice agreed in the gloom.