"I would imagine the author killed himself, or is in a mental hospital by now," the novelist went on thoughtfully.

"He's dead," Drake said grudgingly. "But I won't give you any more clues. It's fascinating to see how well you're doing on your own."

"This is the interesting line," the novelist said. "Or three lines rather. 'I would hear it, the Circuit Court would hear it, and the Supreme Court might hear it. If that ain't the payoff. Please crack down on the Chinaman's friends and Hitler's commander.' You swear this author was American?"

"Well, he came of German ancestry," Drake said, thinking of Jung's theory of genetic memory. "But Chancellor Hitler would hate to admit it. His people were not Aryan."

"He was Jewish?" the novelist exclaimed.

"What's so surprising about that?"

"Only that scarcely two or three people in the whole world, outside the inner circle of the n.a.z.i Party, would understand what was meant by the Chinaman and Hitler's commander. This author must have delved very deeply into occult literature-things like Eliphas Levi, or Ludvig Prinn, or some of the most closely guarded Rosicrucian secrets, and then made a perfectly amazing guess in the right direction."

"What in the world are you talking about?"

The novelist looked at Drake for a long time, then said, "I hate to even discuss it. Some things are too vile. Some books, as your Mr. Poe said, should not allow themselves to be read. Even I have coded things in my most famous work, which is admired for all the wrong reasons. In my search for the mystical, I have learned things I would rather forget, and the real goal of Herr Hitler is one of those things. But you must tell me: who was this remarkable author?"

("He just called me," Luciano told Maldonado, "and I got this much at least: he's not a shakedown artist. He's aiming big, and he's big already himself. I'm getting my lawyer out of bed, to run down all the best Boston families, and find one with a son who shows signs of having the old larceny in his heart. I bet it's a banking family. I can hear money in a voice, and he has it") Drake was persistent, and finally the novelist said, "As you know, I refuse to live in Germany because of what is happening there. Nevertheless, it is my home, and I do hear things. If I try to explain, you must get your mind out of the arena of ordinary politics. When I say Hitler does have a Master, that doesn't mean he is a front man in the pedestrian political sense." The novelist paused. "How can I present the picture so you will understand it? You are not German ... How can you understand a people of whom it has been said, truthfully, that they have one foot in their own land and one foot in Thule? Have you even heard of Thule? That's the German name for the fabulous kingdom the Greeks called Atlantis. Whether this kingdom ever existed is immaterial; the belief in it has existed since the dawn of history and beliefs motivate actions. In fact, you cannot understand a man's actions unless you understand his beliefs."

The novelist paused again, and then began talking about the Golden Dawn Society in England in the 1890s. "Strange things were written by the members. Algernon Blackwood, for instance, wrote of intelligent beings who preexisted mankind on earth. Can you take such a concept seriously? Can you think about Black-wood's warnings, of his guarded phrases, such as, 'Of such great powers or beings there may conceivably be a survival, of which poetry and legend alone caught a flying memory and called them G.o.ds, monsters, mythical beings of all sorts and kinds'? Or, Arthur Machen, who wrote of the 'miracles of Mons' during the Great War, describing the angels, as they were called, and published this two days before the soldiers at the scene sent back reports of the incident. Machen was in the Golden Dawn, and he left it to rejoin the Catholic Church, warning, 'There are sacraments of Evil as well as of Good.' William Butler Yeats was a member, too, and you must certainly know his remarkable lines, 'What rough beast/ Its hour come round at last/ Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?' And the Golden Dawn was just the outer portal of the Mysteries. The things that Crowley learned after leaving the Golden Dawn and joining the Ordo Templi Orientis ... Hitler suppressed both the Dawn and the Ordo Templi Orientis, you know. He belonged to the Vril Society himself, where the really extraterrestrial secrets are kept ..."

"You seem to be having a hard time getting to the point," Drake said.

"Some things need to be approached in hints, even in allegories. You have taken mescaline with Klee and his friends, and spent the night seeing the Great Visions. Do I need to remind you that reality is not a one-level affair?"

"Very well," Drake said. "Behind the Golden Dawn and the OTO and the Vril Society is a hidden group of real Initiates. There was a German branch of the Golden Dawn, and Hitler was a member. You want me to understand that to treat these sacraments of Evil and these beings from Atlantis as no more than fictions would be to oversimplify; is that right?"

"The Golden Dawn was founded by a German woman, carrying on a tradition that was already a hundred years old in Bavaria. As for these powers or beings from Thule, they do not exist in the sense that bricks and beefsteak exist, either. The physicist, by manipulating these fantastic electrons-which, I remind you, have to be imagined as moving from one place to another without pa.s.sing through any intervening s.p.a.ce like a fairy or a ghost-produces real phenomena, visible to the senses. Say, then, that by manipulating these beings or powers from Thule, certain men are able to produce effects that can also be seen and experienced."

"What was the Golden Dawn?" Drake asked, absorbed. "How did it begin?"

"It's very old, more than medieval. The modern organization began in 1776, with a man who quit the Jesuits because he thought he was an atheist, until his researches into Eastern history had surprising results ..."

(It's him! Hitler screamed, Hitler screamed, He has come for me! He has come for me! And then, as Herman Rauschning recorded, "he lapsed into gibberish." And then, as Herman Rauschning recorded, "he lapsed into gibberish." The boss himself The boss himself, Dutch Schultz moaned, Oh, mama, I can't go through with it. Please. Come on, open the soap duckets. The chimney sweeps. Take to the sword. Shut up. You got a big mouth.) Oh, mama, I can't go through with it. Please. Come on, open the soap duckets. The chimney sweeps. Take to the sword. Shut up. You got a big mouth.) We've got two real possibilities, Lepke's lawyer reported. But one of them is Boston Irish and what you described was the old original Boston accent. The second one is probably your man, then. His name is Robert Putney Drake But one of them is Boston Irish and what you described was the old original Boston accent. The second one is probably your man, then. His name is Robert Putney Drake.

Standing before the house on Benefit Street, Drake could see, across the town, the peak of Sentinel Hill and the old deserted church that had harbored the Starry Wisdom Sect in the 1870s. He turned back to the door and raised the old Georgian knocker (remembering: Lillibridge the reporter and Blake the painter had both died investigating that sect) (remembering: Lillibridge the reporter and Blake the painter had both died investigating that sect), then rapped smartly three times.

Howard Phillips Lovecraft, pale, gaunt, cadaverous, opened the door. "Mr. Drake?" he asked genially.

"It was good of you to see me," Drake said.

"Nonsense," Lovecraft replied, ushering him into the Colonial hallway. "Any admirer of my poor tales is always welcome here. They are so few that I could have them all here on a single day without straining my aunt's dinner budget"

He may be one of the most important men alive, Drake thought, and he doesn't really suspect and he doesn't really suspect.

("He left Boston by train this morning," the soldier reported to Maldonado and Lepke. "He was going to Providence, Rhode Island.") "Of course, I have no hesitation in discussing it," Lovecraft said after he and Drake were settled in the old book-lined study and Mrs. Gamhill had served them tea. "Whatever your friend in Zurich may feel, I am and always have been a strict materialist."

"But you have been in touch with these these people?" people?"

"Oh, certainly, and an absurd lot they are, all of them. It began after I published a story called 'Dagon' in, let me see, 1919. I had been reading the Bible and the description of the Philistine sea G.o.d, Dagon, reminded me of sea serpent legends and of the reconstructions of dinosaurs by paleontologists. And the notion came to me: suppose Dagon were real, not a G.o.d, but simply a long-lived being vaguely related to the great saurians. Simply a story, to entertain those who enjoy the weird and Gothic in literature. You can't imagine my astonishment when various occult groups began contacting me, asking which group I belonged to and which side I was on. They were all terribly put out when I made perfectly clear that I didn't believe any such rubbish."

"But," Drake asked perplexed, "why did you pick up more and more of these hidden occult teachings and incorporate them in your later stories?"

"I am an artist," Lovecraft said, "a mediocre artist, I fear-and don't contradict me. I value honesty above all the other virtues. I would like to believe in the supernatural, in a world of social justice and in my own possession of genius. But reason commands that I accept the facts: the world is made of blind matter, the wicked and brutal always have and always will trample on the weak and innocent, and I have a very microscopic capacity to create a small range of esthetic effects, all macabre and limited in their appeal to a very special audience. Nevertheless, I would that things were otherwise. Hence, although a conservative, I support certain social legislation that might improve the conditions of the poor, and, although a poor writer, I try to elevate the status of my own wretched prose. Vampires and ghosts and werewolves are worn out; they provoke chuckles rather than terror. Thus, when I began to learn of the old lore, after 'Dagon' was published, I began to use it in my stories. You can't imagine the hours I have spent with those old volumes at Miskatonic, wading through tons of trash-Alhazred and Levi and Von Juntzt were all mental cases, you know-to sift out the notions that were unfamiliar enough to cause a genuine shock, and a real shudder, in my readers."

"And you've never received threats from any of these occult groups for mentioning Iok Sotot or Cthulhu outright in your stories?"

"Only when I mentioned Hali," Lovecraft said with a wry smile. "Some thoughtful soul reminded me of what happened to Bierce after he he wrote a bit frankly on that subject. But that was a friendly warning, not a threat. Mr. Drake, you are a banker and a businessman. Certainly, you don't take any of this seriously?" wrote a bit frankly on that subject. But that was a friendly warning, not a threat. Mr. Drake, you are a banker and a businessman. Certainly, you don't take any of this seriously?"

"Let me reply with a question of my own," Drake said carefully. "Why, in all the esoteric lore which you have chosen to make exoteric through your stories, have you never mentioned the Law of Fives?"

"In fact," Lovecraft said, "I did hint at it, rather broadly, in 'At the Mountains of Madness.' Have you not read that? It's my longest, and, I think, my best effort to date." But he seemed abruptly paler.

"In 'The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,'" Drake pursued, "you quote a formula from Eliphas Levi's History of Magic History of Magic. But you don't quote it in full. Why was that?"

Lovecraft sipped his tea, obviously framing his answer carefully. Finally he said, "One doesn't have to believe in Santa Claus to recognize that people will exchange presents at Christmas time. One doesn't have to believe in Yog Sothoth, the Eater of Souls, to realize how people will act who do hold that belief It is not my intent, in any of my writings, to provide information that will lead even one unbalanced reader to try experiments that will result in the loss of human life."

Drake arose. "I came here to learn," he said, "but it appears that my only possible function is to teach. Let me remind you of the words of Lao-tse: Those who speak do not know; those who know do not speak.' Most occult groups are in the first cla.s.s, and their speculations are as absurd as you think. But those in the second cla.s.s are not to be so lightly dismissed. They have left you alone because your stories appear only in magazines that appeal to a small minority. These magazines, however, have lately been printing stories about rockets and nuclear chain reactions and other matters that are on the edge of technological achievement. When these fantasies start coming true, which will probably occur within a decade, there will be much wider interest in such magazines, and your stories will be included in that renaissance. Then you will receive some very unwelcome attention."

Lovecraft remained seated. "I think I know of whom you are speaking; I can also read newspapers and make deductions. Even if they are mad enough to attempt it, they do not have the means. They would have to take over not one government but many. That project would keep them busy enough, I should think, to distract them from worrying about a few lines here and there in stories that are published as fiction. I can conceive of the next war leading to breakthroughs in rocketry and nuclear energy, but I doubt that even that will lead many people to take my stories seriously, or to see the connections between certain rituals, which I have never described explicitly, and acts which will be construed as the normal excesses of despotism."

"Good day, sir," Drake said formally. "I must be off to New York, and your welfare is really not a major concern in my life."

"Good day," Lovecraft said, rising with Colonial courtesy. "Since you have been so good as to give me a warning, I will return the favor. I do not think your interest in these people is based on a wish to oppose them, but to serve them. I beg you to remember their att.i.tude toward servants."

Back out on the street, Drake experienced a momentary dejection. For nearly twenty years he's been writing about them and they haven't contacted him. I've been rocking the boat on two continents, and they haven't contacted me. What does it take to make them show their hand? And if I don't have an understanding with them, anything I work out with Maldonado and Capone is written on the wind. I just can't afford to deal with the Mafia before I deal with them. What should I do-put an ad in the New York Times: "Will the All-Seeing Eye please look in my direction? R. P. Drake, Boston"? For nearly twenty years he's been writing about them and they haven't contacted him. I've been rocking the boat on two continents, and they haven't contacted me. What does it take to make them show their hand? And if I don't have an understanding with them, anything I work out with Maldonado and Capone is written on the wind. I just can't afford to deal with the Mafia before I deal with them. What should I do-put an ad in the New York Times: "Will the All-Seeing Eye please look in my direction? R. P. Drake, Boston"?

And a Pontiac (stolen an hour before in Kingsport) pulled away from the curb, several houses back, and started following Drake as he left Benefit Street and walked back toward the downtown area. He wasn't looking back, so he didn't see what happened to it, but he noticed an old man coming toward him stop in his tracks and turn white.

"Jesus on a pogo stick," the old man said weakly.

Drake looked over his shoulder and saw nothing but an empty street. "What is it?" he asked.

"Never mind," the old man replied. "You'd never never believe me, mister." And he cut across the sidewalk toward a saloon. believe me, mister." And he cut across the sidewalk toward a saloon.

("What do you mean, you lost four soldiers?" Maldonado screamed into the phone.

"Just what I'm saying," Eddie Vitelli, of the Providence gambling, heroin and prost.i.tution Vitellis, said. "We found your Drake at a hotel. Four of the best soldiers we've got followed him. They called in once to say he was at a house on Benefit Street. I told them to pick him up as soon as he comes out. And that's it, period, it's all she wrote. They're all gone, like something picked them off the face of the earth. I've got everybody looking for the car they were in, and that's gone, too.") Drake canceled his trip to New York and went back to Boston, plunging into bank business and mulling over his next move. Two days later, the janitor came to his desk, hat in hand, and asked, "Could I speak to you, Mr. Drake?"

"Yes, Getty, what is it?" Drake replied testily. His tone was deliberate; the man was probably about to ask for a raise, and it was best to put him on the defensive immediately.

"It's this, sir," the janitor said, laying a card on Drake's desk. Drake looked down impatiently and saw a rainbow of colors-the card was printed on some unknown plastic and created a prismatic effect recalling his mescaline trips in Zurich. Through the rainbow, shimmering and radiant, he saw the outlines of a thirteen-step pyramid, with a red eye at the top. He stared up at the janitor and saw a face without subservience or uncertainty.

"The Grand Master of the Eastern United States is ready to talk to you," the janitor said softly.

"Holy Cleopatra!" Drake cried, and tellers turned to stare at him.

"Kleopatra?" Simon Moon asked, twenty-three years later. "Tell him about Kleopatra."

It was a sunny afternoon in October and the drapes in the living room of the apartment on the seventeenth floor of 2323 Lake Sh.o.r.e Drive were pulled back to reveal a corner window view of Chicago's Loop skysc.r.a.pers and the whitecap-dotted blue surface of Lake Michigan. Joe sprawled in a chair facing the lake. Simon and Padre Pederastia were on a couch under an enormous painting t.i.tled "Kleopatra." She looked a good deal like Stella Maris and was holding an asp to her bosom. The eye-and-pyramid symbol appeared several times in the hieroglyphs on the tomb wall behind her. Sitting in an armchair opposite the painting was a slender man with sharp, dark features, shoulder-length chestnut hair, a forked brown beard and green eyes.

"Kleopatra," said the man, "was an instant study. Would have made her Polymother of the great globe itself, if she'd lived. She d.a.m.ned near brought down the Roman Empire, and she did shorten its life by centuries. She forced Octavius to bring so much Aneristic power to bear that the Empire went prematurely into the state of bureaucracy."

"What do I call you?" said Joe. "Lucifer? Satan?"

"Call me Malaclypse the Elder," said the fork-bearded man with a smile that seemed to beam through endless shifting veils of warm self-regard.

"I don't get it," said Joe. "The first time I saw you, we were all terrified out of our minds. Though when you finally showed up looking like Billy Graham, I didn't know whether to laugh or go catto. But I know I was scared."

Padre Pederastia laughed. "You were so terrified, my son, that you were trying to climb right inside our little redhead's big red bird's nest. You were so frightened that that hefty c.o.c.k of yours"-he licked his lips-"was squirting juice all over the carpet. Oh, you were terrified, all right. Oh, my, yes."

"Well, I wasn't so scared just at that moment you mention," said Joe with a smile. "But a little later, when our friend here was about to appear. You were terrified yourself, Padre Pederastia. You kept hollering, 'Come not in that form! Come not in that form!' Now we're all sitting around the living room behaving like old chums-and this-this being being here is reminiscing about the good old days with Kleopatra." here is reminiscing about the good old days with Kleopatra."

"They were terrible days," said Malaclypse. "Very cruel days, very sad days. Constant wars, tortures, ma.s.s murders, crucifixions. Bad times."

"I believe you. And what's worse, I can understand what it means if I believe you, and I can live knowing that you exist. And even sit down in this living room and smoke a cigarette with you."

Two lit cigarettes appeared between Malaclypse's fingers. He pa.s.sed one to Joe. Joe drew on it; it tasted sweet, with just a hint of marijuana.

"That's a corny trick," said Joe.

"Just so you don't lose your old a.s.sociations to me too quickly," said Malaclypse. "Too quick to understand, too soon to misunderstand."

Padre Pederastia said, "The night of that Black Ma.s.s, I simply had worked myself up to the point where I totally believed. That's what magic is, after all. The people who were here that night relate to left-hand magic, to the Satan myth, to the Faust legend. It's a quick way to get them involved. It worked with you at the time, but we've brought you along fast, because we want more help from you. So now you don't need the trappings."

"You don't have to be a Satanist to love Malaclypse," said Malaclypse.

"In fact, its better if you're not," said Simon. "Satanists are creeps. They skin dogs alive and s.h.i.t like that."

"Because most Satanists are Christians," said Joe. "Which is a very m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic religion."

"Now, just a minute-" said Padre Pederastia with some asperity.

"He's right, Pederastia," said Malaclypse. "n.o.body knows that better than you-or me, for that matter."

"Did you ever meet Jesus?" Joe asked, awed in spite of his skepticism.

Malaclypse smiled. "I was was Jesus." Jesus."

Padre Pederastia flapped his hands and bounced up and down in his chair. "You're telling too much!"

"For me, trust is total or nonexistent," said Malaclypse. "I perceive that I can trust Joe. I wasn't the original Jesus, Joe, the one they crucified. But-this happened a few centuries after I experienced transcendental illumination at Melos-I was pa.s.sing through Judea in the persona of a Greek merchant when they crucified Jesus. I met some of his followers the day he died, and I talked with them. If you think Christianity is a b.l.o.o.d.y religion as it is, this is nothing to what it would have been if Jesus hadn't seemed to come back. If the seventeen original apostles-five of them have been purged from the records-had been left on their own, they would have pa.s.sed from horror and terror at Jesus's death to vindictive fury. It would have been as if Islam had come seven centuries earlier. Instead of slowly taking over the Roman Empire and preserving much of the Greco-Roman world intact, it would have swept and mobilized the East, destroyed most of Western civilization and replaced it with a theocracy more oppressive than Pharaonic Egypt. I stopped that with a few magic tricks. Appearing in the persona of the resurrected Jesus, I taught there was no need for hatred and vengeance after my death. I even tried to get them to realize that life is a game by teaching them Bingo. To this day, n.o.body understands and critics call it part of the commercialism commercialism of the Church. The sacred Tarot wheel, the moving Mandala! So despite my influence, Christianity focused obsessively on the crucifixion of Jesus-which is really irrelevant to what he taught while he was alive-and remained a kind of death worship. When Paul went to Athens and made the link-up with the Illuminati, who were using Plato's Academy as a front, the ideology of Plato combined with the mythology of Christ to deliver the knockout blow to pagan humanism and lay the foundations for the modern world of superstates. After that, I changed my appearance again and took the name of Simon Magus and had some success spreading ideas contradictory to Christianity." of the Church. The sacred Tarot wheel, the moving Mandala! So despite my influence, Christianity focused obsessively on the crucifixion of Jesus-which is really irrelevant to what he taught while he was alive-and remained a kind of death worship. When Paul went to Athens and made the link-up with the Illuminati, who were using Plato's Academy as a front, the ideology of Plato combined with the mythology of Christ to deliver the knockout blow to pagan humanism and lay the foundations for the modern world of superstates. After that, I changed my appearance again and took the name of Simon Magus and had some success spreading ideas contradictory to Christianity."

"You can change your appearance at will, then," said Joe.

"Oh, sure thing. I'm just as quick with a thought projection as anybody." He pushed his pinkie thoughtfully into his left nostril and worked it around. Joe stiffened; he didn't care to watch people picking their noses in public. He looked resolutely over Malaclypse's left shoulder. "Now that you know as much as you do about us, Joe, it's time you started working with us. Chicago, as you know, is the Illuminati nerve center in this hemisphere, so we'll use this town to test AUM, a new drug with astonishing properties, if ELF's technicians are correct. It's supposed to turn neophobes into neophiles."

Simon slapped his forehead and shouted "Wow, man!" and started laughing. Pederastia gasped and whistled.

"You look blank, Joe," said Malaclypse. "Has no one explained to you that the human race is divided into two distinct genotypes-neophobes, who reject new ideas and accept only what they have known all their lives, and neophiles, who love new things, change, invention, innovation? For the first four million years of man's history, all humans were neophobes, which is why civilization did not develop. Animals are all neophobes. Only mutation can change them. Instinct is simply the natural behavior of a neophobe. The neophile mutation appeared about a hundred thousand years ago, and speeded up thirty thousand years ago. However, there has never been more than a handful of neophiles anywhere on the planet. The Illuminati themselves sprang from one of the oldest neophile-neophobe conflicts on record."

"I take it the Illuminati were trying to hold back progress," said Joe. "Is that their general aim?"

"You're still thinking like a liberal," said Simon. "n.o.body gives a f.u.c.k for progress."

"Right," said Malaclypse. "They were the innovators in that instance. All the Illuminati were-and are-neophiles. Even today, they see their work as directed toward progress. They want to become like G.o.ds. It's possible for humans, given the right methods, to translate themselves into sentient latticeworks of pure energy that will be more or less permanent. The process is called transcendental illumination, to distinguish it from the acquisition of insight into the true nature of man and the universe, which is ordinary illumination. I've gone through transcendental illumination and am a being composed altogether of energy, as you may have guessed. However, prior to becoming energy fields men often fall victim to hubris. Their actions cause pain to others and make them insensitive, uncreative and irrational. Ma.s.s human sacrifice is the most reliable method of achieving transcendental illumination. Human sacrifice can, of course, be masked as other things, such as war, famine and plague. The vision of the Four Hors.e.m.e.n vouchsafed to Saint John is actually a vision of ma.s.s transcendental illumination."

"How did you achieve it?" Joe asked.

"I was present at the ma.s.sacre of the male inhabitants of the city of Melos by the Athenians in 416 b.c. Have you read Thucydides?"

"A long time ago,"

"Well, Thucydides had it wrong. He presented it as an out-and-out atrocity, but there were extenuating circ.u.mstances. The Melians had been stabbing Athenian soldiers in the back, poisoning them, filling them full of arrows from ambush. Some of them were working for the Spartans and some were on the side of Athens, but the Athenians didn't know which ones they could trust. They didn't want to do any unnecessary killing, but they did want to get back to Athens alive. So they rounded up all the Melian men one day and hacked them to pieces in the town square. The women and children were sold into slavery."

"What did you do?" said Joe. "Were you there with the Athenians?"

"Yes, but I didn't do any killing. I was a chaplain. Of the Erisian denomination, of course. But I was prepared to perform services to Hermes, Dionysus, Heracles, Aphrodite, Athena, Hera and some of the other Olympians. I almost went mad with horror-I didn't understand that Pangenitor is Panphage. I was praying to Eris to deliver me or deliver the Melians or do something, and she answered me."

"Hail, she what done it all," said Simon.

"I almost believe you," said Joe. "But every once in a while the suspicion creeps in that you're simply doing a two-thousand-year-old man routine and the b.u.t.t of the joke is me."

Malaclypse stood up with a little smile. "Come here, Joe."

"What for?"

"Just come here." Malaclypse held his hands away from his sides, palms turned toward Joe appealingly. Joe walked over and stood before him.

"Put your hand into my side," said Malaclypse.

"Oh, come on," said Joe. Pederastia snickered. Malaclypse just looked at him with a gentle, encouraging smile, so he reached out to touch Malaclypse's shirt. His hands still felt nothing. He closed his eyes to verify that. There was no sensation whatever. Thin air. Eyes still shut, he moved his hand forward. He opened his eyes, and when he saw his arm sunk into Malaclypse's body up to the elbow, he almost barfed his cookies.

He drew back. "It can't be a movie. I'd be almost willing to say a moving holograph, but the illusion is too perfect. You're looking right at me. To my eyes you are unquestionably there."

"Try a few karate chops," said Malaclypse. Joe obliged, swinging his hand like a scythe through Malaclypse's waist, chest and head. For a finale, Joe brought his hand straight down through the top of the being's head.

"I suspend judgment," said Joe. "Maybe you are what you say you are. But it's pretty hard to take. Can you feel anything?"

"I can create, temporary sensory organs for myself whenever I want to. I can enjoy just about anything a human enjoys or experiences. But my primary mode of perception is a very advanced form of what you would call intuition. Intuition is a kind of sensitivity in the mind to events and processes; what I have is a highly developed intuitional receptor which is completely controllable."

Joe went back and sat down, shaking his head. "You certainly are in an enviable position."

"Like I said, it's the real reason for human sacrifice," said Malaclypse. He, too, sat down, and Joe now noticed that the soft upholstery of his chair didn't sink beneath his weight. He seemed to rest on the surface of the cushions. "Any sudden or violent death releases a burst of consciousness energy, which can be controlled and channeled as any explosive energy can be. The Illuminati would all like to become as G.o.ds. That has been their ambition for longer than I care to say."

"Which means they have to perpetrate ma.s.s murder," said Joe, thinking of nuclear weapons, gas chambers, chemical-biological warfare.

Malaclypse nodded. "Now, I don't disapprove of that on moral grounds, since morals are purely illusory. I do have a personal distaste for that sort of thing. Although, when you've lived as long as I have, you have lost so many friends and lovers that it is impossible not to take the deaths of humans as a matter of course. So it goes. And, since I achieved my own immortality and nonmateriality as the result of a ma.s.s murder, it would be hypocritical of me to condemn the Illuminati. For that matter, I don't condemn hypocrisy, though it is also personally distasteful to me. But I do say that the method of the Illuminati is stupid and wasteful, since everybody is already everything. So, why f.u.c.k around with things? It is absurd to try to be something else when there is nothing else."