The Illuminatus! Trilogy

Suddenly, the white of Hagbard's shirt, the gold of the tent cloth, the blazing spotlights of the festival, all were coming in super-bright. That was adrenalin. My mouth was dry-dehydration. All the classic flight-fight symptoms. The activation syndrome, Skinner calls it. I was so keyed up that it was a trip.

"Hello, Joe," said Hagbard softly. Joe suddenly realized that his hand was clenched around the pistol. Hagbard smiled at him, and Joe felt like a little boy caught playing with himself, with his hand in his pocket. He took his hand out quickly.

"She wants George," Joe said weakly. He turned his back on Hagbard to look down at the stage, where the sign, glowing in the darkness, said LOAF AND THE FISHES. They were singing, "I circle around, I circle around, the borders of the earth…"

On a pile of cushions behind a diaphanous veil at one end of the tent lay Stella, wearing nothing but a red chiffon pajama top.

"Were you letting Joe fuck you?" George said. "Joe has never fucked me," Stella replied. "You'll be the first person to do that tonight. Look, George, we've got to get every bit of available energy flowing to combat the Illuminati. Come over here and get the energies going with me."

"This is Danny Pricefixer," Doris Horus said. "I met him on the plane coming over."

("Holy Jesus," said Maria Imbrium, vocalist with the Sicilian Dragon Defense, "there are angels coming out of the lake. Angels in golden robes. Look!")

("You're tripping on that Kabouter Kool-Aid, baby," a much-bandaged Hun told her. "There's nothing coming out of the lake.")

("Something is coming out of the lake," the drummer with the Sicilian Dragons said, "and you're so stoned you don't see it.")

("And what is it, if it isn't angels?" Maria demanded.)

("Christ, I don't know. But whoever they are, they're walking on the water.")

Wearing my long green feathers, as I fly,

I circle around, I circle around…

("Jesus. Walking on the water. You people are zonked out of your skulls.")

("It's just a bunch of surfers, wearing green capes for some crazy reason.")

("Surfers? My ass! That's some kind of gang of Bavarian demons. They all look like the Frankenstein monster wrapped up in seaweed.")

"Pricefixer?" said Kent. "Didn't 1 meet you five or six years ago in Arkham? Aren't you a cop?"

("It's a gigantic green egg… and it loves me…")

John Dillinger muttered to Hagbard, "That red-headed guy over there- the one with the black musician and the girl with the fantastic boobs. He's a cop on the New York Bomb Squad. Wanta bet he's here investigating the Confrontation bombing?"

"He must have been talking to Mama Sutra," Hagbard said thoughtfully.

SHE'LL BE WEARING RED PAJAMAS SHE'LL BE WEARING RED PAJAMAS WHEN SHE COMES

When Otto Waterhouse entered the tent, it was Miss Mao who was waiting for him. "I never fucked a Chinese broad," said Otto, stripping off his clothing. "I don't think Stella is going to like this."

"It will be okay with Stella," said Miss Mao. "We need to get all the energies moving to combat the Illuminati. And we need your help." She held out her arms.

"You don't have to ask twice," said Otto, crouching over her.

At 5:45 in Washington, D.C., the switchboard at the Pentagon was warned that bombs planted somewhere in the building would go off in ten minutes. "You killed hundreds of us today in the streets of Washington," said the woman's voice. "But we are still giving you a chance to evacuate the building. You do not have time to find the bombs. Leave the Pentagon now, and let history be the judge of which side truly fought for life and against death."

The highest-ranking personnel in the Pentagon (and, with revolution breaking out in the nation's capital, everybody was there) were immediately moved to underground bombproof shelters. The Secretary of Defense, after consulting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared that there was a 95 percent probability that the threat was a hoax, intended to disrupt the job of coordinating the suppression of revolution across the nation. A search would be instituted, but meanwhile work would go on as usual. "Besides," the Secretary of Defense joked to the Chief of Staff, Army, "one of those little radical bombs would do as much damage to this building as a firecracker would to an elephant."