Around a table sat men and women costumed from various eras of human history. Joe recognized Indian, Chinese, j.a.panese, Mongol and Polynesian dress, also cla.s.sical Greek and Roman, medieval and Renaissance. There were other outfits more difficult to recognize at first glance. A flying Dutch board meeting, Joe thought to himself. They were talking about the Illuminati, the Discordians, the JAMs and the Erisians.

A man wearing a steel breastplate and helmet with gold inlay and a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee said, "It is now possible to predict with ninety-eight percent probability of accuracy that the Illuminati are setting up Fernando Poo for an international crisis. The question is, do we raid the island and get the records now, making sure they're not endangered, or do we wait and take advantage of the trouble as a cover for our raid?"

A man in a dragon-embroidered red silk robe said, "There will be no way to take advantage of the trouble, in my opinion. It will seem like chaos on the surface, but underneath the Illuminati will have everything very much under control. Now is the time to move."

A woman in a translucent silk blouse whose little vest did not hide her dark, rounded b.r.e.a.s.t.s, said, "You realize this could be a lovely scoop for your magazine, Mr. Malik. You could send a reporter there to look into conditions on Fernando Poo. Equatorial Guinea has all the usual problems of a developing African nation. Will tribal rivalries flare up between the Bubi and the Fang, preventing the further development of national cooperation? Will the poverty of the mainland province lead to attempts to expropriate the wealth of Fernando Poo? And what of the army? What, for example, of a certain Captain Jesus Tequila y Mota? An interview with the captain might prove to be a journalistic coup three years from now."

"Yes," said a big woman in colorfully dyed furs who played incessantly with the carved leg bone of some large animal. "We don't expect C. L. Sulzberger to grasp the importance of Fernando Poo until the crisis is upon the world. So, if advance warning is desirable-as we think it is-why not through Confrontation?" Confrontation?"

"Is that why you asked me here?" said Joe. "To tell me something is going to happen in Fernando Poo? Where the h.e.l.l is Fernando Poo, anyway?"

"Look it up in an atlas when you get back to work. It's one of several volcanic islands off the coast of Africa," said a dark-skinned, slit-eyed man wearing a buffalo hide decorated with feathers. "Of course, you understand that you could only hint at the real forces at work there," he added. "For instance, we wouldn't want you to mention that Fernando Poo is one of the last outcroppings of the continent of Atlantis, you know."

Mao Tsu-hsi was standing beside Joe with a gla.s.s containing a pinkish liquid. "Here, drink this," she said. "It will sharpen your perceptions."

A man in gold-braid-encrusted field marshal's uniform said, "Mr. Malik is the next business in order on our agenda. We are to educate him, to some extent Let's do it, to that extent."

The lights in the room went out. There was a rustling at one end, and suddenly Joe was looking at a brightly lit movie screen.

WHEN ATLANTIS RULED THE EARTH.

The t.i.tle appears in letters that look like blocks of stone piled on top of one another to form a kind of step pyramid. It is followed by shots of the earth as it looked thirty thousand years ago, during the great ice ages, showing woolly mammoths, saber-toothed tigers and Cro-Magnon hunters, while a narrator explains that at the same time the greatest civilization ever known by man is flourishing on the continent of Atlantis. The Atlanteans do not know anything about good or evil, the narrator explains. However, they all live to be five hundred years old and have no fear of death. The bodies of all Atlanteans are covered with fur, as with apes.

After seeing various domestic scenes in Zukong Gimorlad-Siragosa, the largest and most central city on the continent (but not the capital, because the Atlanteans do not have a government), we move to a laboratory where the young (one hundred years old) scientist GRUAD is displaying a biological experiment to an a.s.sociate, GAO TWONE. The experiment is a giant water-dwelling serpent-man. Gao Twone is impressed, but Gruad declares that he is bored; he wishes to change himself in some unexpected way. Gruad is already strange-unlike other Atlanteans, he is not covered with fur, but has only short blond hair on top of his head and a close-cropped beard. In comparison to other Atlanteans he seems hideously naked. He wears a high-collared pale green robe and gauntlets. He tells Gao Twone that he is tired of acc.u.mulating knowledge for the sake of knowledge. "It's just another guise for the pursuit of pleasure, to which too many of our fellow Atlanteans devote their lives. Of course, there's nothing wrong with pleasure-it moves the energies- but I feel that there is something higher and more heroic. I have no name for it yet, but I know it exists."

Gao Twone is somewhat shocked. "You, as a scientist, can talk of knowing knowing something exists when you have no evidence?" something exists when you have no evidence?"

Gruad is dejected by this and admits, "My lens needs polishing." But after a moment he bounces back. "And yet, even though I have my moments of doubt, I think my lens really is clear. Of course, I must find the evidence. But even now, before I start, I feel that I know what I will find. We could be greater and finer than we are. I look at what I am and sometimes I despise myself. I'm just a clever animal. An ape who has learned to play with tools. I want to be much more. I say we can be what the lloigor are, and even more. We can conquer time and seize eternity, even as they have. I mean to achieve that or destroy myself in the attempt."

The scene shifts to a banquet hall where INGEL RILD, a venerable Atlantean scientist, has called together prominent Atlanteans to celebrate a s.p.a.ce research achievement, the production of a solar flare. Ingel Rild and his a.s.sociates have developed a missile which, when it strikes the sun, can cause an explosion. He tells the marijuana-smoking gathering, "We can control to the second the timing of the flare and to the millimeter the distance it will spring out from the sun. A flare of sufficient magnitude could burn our planet to a crisp. A smaller flare could bombard the earth with radiations such that the area closest to the sun would be destroyed, while the rest of our world would suffer drastic changes. Most serious of all, perhaps, would be the biological changes these excessive radiations would bring about. Life forms would be damaged and perhaps become extinct. New life forms would arise. All of nature would undergo a tremendous upheaval. This has happened naturally once or twice. It happened seventy million years ago when the dinosaurs were suddenly wiped out and replaced by mammals. We still have much to learn about the mechanism that produces spontaneous solar flares. However, to be able to cause them artificially is a step toward predicting and possibly controlling them. When that stage is reached, our planet and our race will be protected from the kind of catastrophe that destroyed the dinosaurs."

After the applause, a woman named KAJECI asks whether it might not be disrespectful to tamper with "our father, the sun." Ingel Rild replies that man is a part of nature and what he does is natural and can't be construed as tampering. Now Gruad interrupts angrily, pointing out that he, an unattractive mutation, is the product of tampering with nature. He tells Ingel Rild that the Atlanteans do not truly understand nature and the order that controls it. He declares that man is subject to laws. All things in nature are, but man is different because he can disobey the natural laws that govern him. Gruad goes on, "With humanity we can speak, as we speak of our own machines, in terms of performance expected and performance delivered. If a machine does not do what it is designed for, we try to correct it. We want it to do what it ought ought to do, what it to do, what it should should do. I think we have the right and the duty to demand the same of people-that they perform as they do. I think we have the right and the duty to demand the same of people-that they perform as they ought ought to and to and should should perform." An aged and merry-eyed scientist named LHUV KERAPHT interrupts, "But people are not machines, Gruad." perform." An aged and merry-eyed scientist named LHUV KERAPHT interrupts, "But people are not machines, Gruad."

"Exactly," Gruad answers. "I have already considered that. Therefore, I have created new words, words even stronger than should should and and ought ought. When a person performs as he or she should and ought, I call that Good; Good; and anything less than this I call and anything less than this I call Evil." Evil." This outlandish notion is greeted with general laughter. Gruad tries to speak persuasively, conscious of his lonely position as a pioneer, trying desperately to communicate with the closed minds all around him. After further argument, though, he becomes threatening, declaring, "The people of Atlantis do not live according to the law. In their pride, they strike the sun itself, and boast of it, as you have, Ingel Rild, this day. I say that if Atlanteans do not live according to the law, a disaster will befall them. A disaster that will shake the entire earth. You have been warned! Heed my words!" Gruad strides majestically out of the banquet hall, seizing his cloak at the door and sweeping it about him as he leaves. Kajeci follows him and tells him that she thinks she partly understands what he has been trying to say. The laws he speaks of are like the wishes of parents, and, "The great bodies of the universe are our parents. Isn't that so?" Gruad's naked hand strokes Kajeci's furred cheek, and they go off into the darkness together. This outlandish notion is greeted with general laughter. Gruad tries to speak persuasively, conscious of his lonely position as a pioneer, trying desperately to communicate with the closed minds all around him. After further argument, though, he becomes threatening, declaring, "The people of Atlantis do not live according to the law. In their pride, they strike the sun itself, and boast of it, as you have, Ingel Rild, this day. I say that if Atlanteans do not live according to the law, a disaster will befall them. A disaster that will shake the entire earth. You have been warned! Heed my words!" Gruad strides majestically out of the banquet hall, seizing his cloak at the door and sweeping it about him as he leaves. Kajeci follows him and tells him that she thinks she partly understands what he has been trying to say. The laws he speaks of are like the wishes of parents, and, "The great bodies of the universe are our parents. Isn't that so?" Gruad's naked hand strokes Kajeci's furred cheek, and they go off into the darkness together.

Within six months Gruad has formed an organization called the Party of Science. Their banner is an eye inside a triangle which in turn is surrounded by a serpent with its tail in its mouth. The Party of Science demands that Atlantis publish the natural laws Gruad has discovered and make them binding on all with systems of reward and punishment to enforce them. The word "punishment" is another addition to the Atlantean vocabulary coined by Gruad. One of Gruad's opponents explains to friends of his that it means torture, and everyone's fur bristles. Ingel Rild announces to a gathering of his supporters that Gruad has proven to his own satisfaction-and the demonstration runs to seventy-two scrolls of logical symbols-that s.e.x is part of what he calls Evil. Only s.e.x for the good of the community is to be permitted under Gruad's system, to keep the race alive.

A scientist called TON LIT exclaims, "You mean we must be thinking about conception during the act? That's impossible. Men's p.e.n.i.ses would droop, and women's v.a.g.i.n.as wouldn't get moist. It's like-well, it's like making the shrill mouth-music while you are urinating. It would take great training, if it can be done at all." Ingel Rild proposes the formation of a Party of Freedom to oppose Gruad. Discussing Gruad's personality, Ingel Rild says he checked the genealogical records and found that several of the most agitated-energy people in all Atlantean history were among his ancestors. Gruad is a mutation, and so are many of his followers. The energy of normal Atlanteans flows slowly. Gruad's people are impatient and frustrated, and this is what makes them want to inflict suffering on their fellow humans.

Joe sat up with a jolt. If he understood that part of the movie, Gruad-evidently the first Illuminatus-was also the first h.o.m.o neophilus h.o.m.o neophilus. And the Party of Freedom, which seemed to be the origin of the Discordian and JAM movements, was pure h.o.m.o neophobus h.o.m.o neophobus. How the h.e.l.l could that be squared with the generally reactionary att.i.tude of current Illuminati policies, and the innovativeness of the Discordians and JAMs? But the film was moving on- In a disreputable-looking tavernlike place where men and women smoke dope in pipes that they pa.s.s from one to another, while people grope in couples and groups in dark corners, SYLVAN MARTISET proposes a Party of Nothingness that rejects the positions of both the Party of Science and the Party of Freedom.

After this we see street fighting, atrocities, the infliction of punishment on harmless people by men wearing Gruad's eye-and-triangle badge. The Party of Freedom proclaims its own symbol, a golden apple. The fighting spreads, the numbers of the dead mount and Ingel Rild weeps. He and his a.s.sociates decide on a desperate expedient--unleashing the lloigor Yog Sothoth. They will offer this unnatural soul-eating energy being from another universe its freedom in return for its help in destroying Gruad's movement. Yog Sothoth is imprisoned in the great Pentagon of Atlantis on a desolate moor in the southern part of the continent. The Atlantean electric plane bearing Ingel Rild, Ton Lit and another scientist drifts, trailing feathery sparks, to a landing in a flat field overgrown with gray weeds. Within the Pentagon, an enormous black stone structure, the ground is scorched and the air shimmers like a heat mirage. Flickers of static electricity run through the shimmering from time to time, and an unpleasant noise, like flies around a corpse, pervades the whole moor. The faces of the three Atlantean sages register disgust, sickness and terror. They climb the nearest tower and talk to the guard. Suddenly Yog Sothoth takes control of Ton Lit, speaking in an oily, rich, deep and reverberating voice, and asks them what they seek of him. Ton Lit lets out a terrible shriek and claps his hands over his ears. Froth slips from the side of his mouth, his fur bristles and his p.e.n.i.s stands erect. His eyes are delirious and suffering, like those of a dying gorilla. The guard uses an electronic instrument that looks like a magician's wand topped with a five-pointed star to subdue Yog Sothoth. Ton Lit bays like a hound and leaps for Ingel Rild's throat. The electronic ray drives him back and he stands panting, tongue hanging loose, as the Pentagon first and then the ground begin to soften into asymptotic curves. Yog Sothoth chants, "Ia-nggh-ha-nggh-ha-nggh-fthagn! Ia-nggh-ha-nggh-ha-nggh-hgual! The blood is the life...The blood is the life ..." All faces, bodies and perspectives are skewed and there is a greenish tinge on everything. Suddenly the guard strikes the nearest wall of the Pentagon directly with his electronic wand and Ton Lit shrieks, human intelligence coming back into his eyes together with great shame and revulsion. The three sages flee the Pentagon under a sky slowly turning back to its normal shape and color. The laughter of Yog Sothoth follows them. They decide that they cannot release the lloigor.

Meanwhile Gruad has called his closest followers, known as the Unbroken Circle of Gruad, to announce that Kajeci has conceived. Then he shows them a group of manlike creatures with green, scaly skin, wearing long black cloaks and black skullcaps with scarlet plumes. These he calls his Ophidians. Since Atlanteans have a kind of instinctive check on themselves that prevents them from killing except in blind fury, Gruad has developed these synthetic humanoids from the serpent, which he has found to be the most intelligent of all reptiles. They will have no hesitation about destroying men and will act only on Gruad's command. Some of his followers protest, and Gruad explains that this is not really killing. He says, "Atlanteans who will not accept the teachings of the Party of Science are swinish beings. They are a sort of robot who has no inner spiritual substance to control it. Our bodies, however, are deceived into feeling as if they are our own kind, and we cannot raise our hands against them. Now, however, the light of science has given us hands to raise." At this meeting Gruad also addresses his men for the first time as the "illuminated ones,"

At the next meeting of the Party of Freedom the Ophidians attack, using iron bars to club people to death and slashing throats with their fangs. Then the Party of Freedom holds a funeral for a dozen of its dead at which Ingel Rild gives an oration describing the ways in which the struggle between Gruad's followers and the other Atlanteans is changing the character of all human beings: "Hitherto, Atlanteans have enjoyed knowledge but not worried over the fact that there is much that we do not know. We are conservative and indifferent to new ideas, we have no inner conflicts and we feel like doing the things that seem wise to us. We think that the things we feel like doing will usually work out for the best. We consider pain and pleasure a single phenomenon, which we call sensation, and we respond to unavoidable pain by relaxing or becoming ecstatic. We do not fear death. We can read each other's minds because we are in touch with all the energies of our bodies. The followers of Gruad have lost that ability, and they are thankful that they have. The Scientists dote on new things and new ideas. This love of the new thing is a matter of genetic manipulation. Gruad is even encouraging people in their twenties to have children, though it is our custom never to have children before we reach a hundred. The generations of Gruad's followers come thick and fast, and they are not like us. They agonize over their ignorance. They are full of uncertainty and inner conflict between what they should do and what they feel like doing. The children, who are brought up on Gruad's teachings, are even more disturbed and conflict-filled than their parents. One doctor tells me that the att.i.tudes and the way of life Gruad is encouraging in his people is enough to shorten their life spans considerably. And they are afraid of pain. They are afraid of death. And even as their lives grow shorter, they desperately seek for some means of achieving immortality."

Gruad tells a meeting of his Unbroken Circle that the time has come to intensify the struggle. If they can't rule the Atlanteans, they will destroy Atlantis. "Atlantis will be destroyed by light," says Gruad. "By the light of the sun." Gruad introduces the worship of the sun to his followers. He reveals the existence of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses. "They are all energy, conscious energy," says Gruad. "This conscious and powerfully directed and focused pure energy I call spirit. All motion is spirit. All light is spirit. All spirit is light."

Under Gruad's direction, the Party of Science builds a great pyramid, thousands of feet high. It is in two halves; the upper half, made of an indestructible ceramic substance and inscribed with a terrible staring eye, floats five hundred feet above the base, held in place by antigravity generators.

A band of men and women led by LILITH VELKOR, chief spokeswoman for the Party of Nothingness, gathers at the base of the great pyramid and laughs at it. They carry Nothingarian signs: DON'T CLEAN OUR LENSES, GRUAD- GET THE CRACK OUT OF YOUR OWN.

EVERY TIME I HEAR THE WORD "PROGRESS" MY FUR BRISTLES.

THE SUN SUCKS.

FREEDOM DEFINED IS FREEDOM DENIED.

THE MESSAGE ON THIS SIGN IS A FLAT LIE.

Lilith Velkor addresses the Nothingarians, satirizing all Gruad's beliefs, claiming that the most powerful G.o.d is a crazy woman and she is the G.o.ddess of chaos. To the accompaniment of laughter she declares, "Gruad says the sun is the eye of the sun G.o.d. That's more of his notion that males are superior and reason and order are superior. Actually, the sun is a giant golden apple which is the plaything of the G.o.ddess of chaos. And it's the property of anyone she thinks is fair enough to deserve it." Suddenly a band of Ophidians attacks followers of Lilith Velkor and kills several of them. Lilith Velkor leads her people in an unprecedented attack on the Ophidians. They storm up the side of the great pyramid and throw the Ophidians down to the street, killing them. Amazingly, they succeed in wiping out all the Ophidians. Gruad declares that Lilith Velkor must die. When the opportunity presents itself, his men seize her and take her to a dungeon. There an enormous wheel has been constructed with four spokes in the shape [image]

Lilith Velkor is crucified with ropes, upside down, on this device. Several members of the Party of Science lounge about, watching her die. Gruad enters, goes to the wheel and looks at the dying woman, who says, "This is as good a day to die as any." Gruad remonstrates with her, saying that death is a great evil and she should fear it. She laughs and says, "All my life I have despised tradition and now I despise innovation also. Surely, I must be a most wicked example for the world!" She dies laughing. Gruad's rage is unbearable. He vows that he will wait no longer; Atlantis is too wicked to save and he will destroy it.

On a windswept plain in the northern regions of Atlantis a huge teardrop-shaped rocket with graceful fins is poised on the launching pad. Gruad is in the control room making last-minute adjustments while Kajeci and Wo Topod argue with him. Gruad says, "The human race will survive. It will survive the better purged of these Atlanteans, who are nothing but swine, nothing but robots, nothing but creatures who do not understand good and evil. Let them perish." His finger strikes a red b.u.t.ton and the rocket hurtles on its way to the sun. It will take several days to reach there, and meanwhile Gruad has gathered the Unbroken Circle on an airship which takes them away from Atlantis and into the huge mountains to the east in a region that will one day be called Tibet. Gruad calculates that by the time the missile strikes the sun, they will have been landed and underground for two hours. The sun rides blinding yellow over the plains of Atlantis. It is a beautiful day in Zukong Gimorlad-Siragosa, the sun shining down on its slender, graceful towers with spiderweb bridges spiraling among them, its parks, its temples, its museums, its fine public buildings and magnificent private palaces. Its handsome, richly furred people gracefully stride amidst the beauties of the first and finest civilization man has ever produced. Families, lovers, friends and enemies, all unsuspecting what is about to happen, enjoy their private moments. A quintet plays the melodious zinthron, balatet, mordan, swaz and fendrar. Over all, however, the great eye on the side of Gruad's pyramid glares horrid and red.

Suddenly the sun's body rages. Coiled flames, b.a.l.l.s of gas, roll out. The sun looks like a giant fiery arachnid or octopus. One great flame comes rolling toward the earth, burning red gas which turns yellow, then green, then blue, then white.

There is nothing left of Zukong Gimorlad-Siragosa, except the pyramid with its upper segment now resting on the base, the antigravity generators having been destroyed. The baleful eye looks out over an absolutely flat, burnt-black plain. The ground shakes, great cracks open. The blackened area is a great circle, hundreds of miles in diameter, beyond which is a dark brown and still desolate wasteland. Thousands of cracks appear in the brittle surface of the continent, the strength of whose rocks has been destroyed by the incredible heat of the solar flare. A tide of mud starts crawling over the empty plain. It leaves only the top of the pyramid, with the great eye, showing. Water sweeps over the mud, at first sinking in and standing in pools, then rising higher so that only the tip of the pyramid sticks out of a great lake. Under the water enormous parallel fissures open in the ground on either side of the blackened central circle. The midsection of the continent, including the pyramid, begins to sink. The pyramid falls into the depths of the ocean with cliffs rising on either side of it to the parts of Atlantis that still remain above the ocean. They will remain for many thousands of years more, and they will be the Atlantis remembered in the legends of men. But the true Atlantis-high Atlantis-is gone.

Gruad stares into his crimson-glowing viewplate, watching the destruction of Atlantis. The light changes color, from red to gray, and the face of Gruad turns gray. It is a terrible face. It has aged a hundred years in the last few minutes. Gruad may claim to be in the right, but deep down he knows that what he has done isn't nice. And yet deep down there is satisfaction, too, for Gruad, long tortured by unreasonable guilt, now has something he can really feel guilty about. He turns to the Unbroken Circle and proposes, since it appears that the earth will survive the cataclysm (he was not really sure that it would), that they plan for the future. Most of them, however, are still in shock. Wo Topod, inconsolable, stabs himself to death, the first recorded time that a member of the human race has deliberately killed himself. Gruad calls upon his followers to destroy all remains of the Atlantean civilization and then, later, to build a perfect civilization when even the ruins of Atlantis have been forgotten.

The great beasts that inhabited Europe, Asia and North America die off as a result of mutations and diseases caused by the solar flare. All relics of the Atlantean civilization are destroyed. The people who were Gruad's erstwhile countrymen are either killed or driven forth to wander the earth. Besides Gruad's Himalayan colony there is one other remnant of the High Atlantean era: the Pyramid of the Eye, whose ceramic substance resisted solar flare, earthquake, tidal wave and submersion in the depths of the ocean. Gruad explains that it is right that the eye should remain. It is the eye of G.o.d, the One, the scientific-technical eye of ordered knowledge that looks down on the universe and by perceiving it causes it to be. If an event is not witnessed, it does not happen; therefore, for the universe to happen there must be a Witness.

Among the primitive hunters and gatherers a mutation has appeared that seems to be spreading rapidly. More and more people are being born without fur and with hair in the same pattern as Gruad's. The Hour of G.o.d's Eye has caused mutations in every species.

From the Himalayas the rocket ships of the Unbroken Circle, painted red and white, swoop out in squadrons. They sweep across Europe and land on the brown islands where Atlantis used to be. There they land and raid a city of refugees from the Atlantean disaster. They kill many of the leaders and intellectuals and herd the rest aboard the ships, fly to the Americas and deposit the helpless people on a vast plain. Far below their route of pa.s.sage lies the Pyramid of the Eye at the bottom of the Atlantic. The base of the pyramid is covered with silt and the break where the upper part of the pyramid had floated on antigravity projectors is also covered. Still the pyramid itself towers over the mud around it, taller by three times than the Great Pyramid of Egypt, the building of which lies twenty-seven thousand years in the future. A vast shadow descends upon the pyramid. There is a suggestion in the darkness of the ocean bottom of giant tentacles, of sucker disks wide as the rims of volcanos, of an eye as big as the sun looking at the eye on the pyramid. Something touches the pyramid, and enormous as it is, it moves slightly. Then the presence is gone.

The pentagonal trap in which the people of Atlantis had heroically and brilliantly caught the dread ancient being Yog Sothoth has been, amazingly, undamaged by the catastrophe. Being on the southern plain, which was relatively uninhabited, the Pentagon of Yog Sothoth becomes the center of a migration of people who survived the disaster. Emergency cities are set up, those dying of radiation sickness are treated, A second Atlantis begins to take root. And then, from the Himalayas, the ships of the Unbroken Circle come swooping down on one of their raids, Lines of Atlantean men and women are marched to the walls of the Pentagon and there mowed down by laser fire. Then explosive charges are placed amid the heaps of bodies and the masked, uniformed men of the Unbroken Circle withdraw. There is a series of explosions; horrid yellow smoke goes coiling up. The gray stone walls crumble. There is a moment of stillness, balance, tension. Then the piled-up boulders of one side of the wall fly apart as if thrust by the hand of a giant. An enormous claw print appears in the soft soil around the ruins of the Pentagon. The masked men of the Unbroken Circle race frantically for their ships and take off. The ships dart into the sky, stop suddenly, waver and plummet like stones to explosive crashes on the earth. The surviving refugees scream and scatter. Like a scythe going through wheat, death sweeps among them in great arcs as they run in ma.s.sed mobs. Mouths open in soundless screams, they fall. Only a handful escapes. Over the scene a colossal reddish figure of indeterminate shape and number of limbs stands triumphant.

In the Himalayas, Gruad and the Unbroken Circle watch the destruction of the Pentagon and the ma.s.sacre of the Atlanteans. The Unbroken Circle cheers, but Gruad strangely weeps. "You think I hate walls?" he says. "I love walls. I love any kind of wall. Anything that separates. Walls protect good people. Walls lock away the evil. There must always be walls and the love of walls, and in the destruction of the great Pentagon that held Yog Sothoth I read the destruction of all that I stand for. Therefore I am stricken with regret."

At this the face of EVOE, a young priest, takes on a reddish glow and a demoniac look. There is more than a hint of possession. "It is good to hear you say that," he says to Gruad. "No man yet has befriended me, though many have tried to use me. I have prepared a special place for your soul, oh first of the men of the future." Gruad attempts to speak to Yog Sothoth, but the possession has apparently pa.s.sed, and the other members of the Unbroken Circle praise a new beverage that Evoe has prepared, made of the fermented juice of grapes. At dinner, later that day, Gruad tries the new beverage and praises it, saying, "This juice of grapes relaxes me and does not cause the disturbing visions and sounds that makes the herb the Atlanteans used to smoke so unpleasant for a man of conscience." Evoe gives him more to drink from a fresh jar, and Gruad takes it. Before drinking he says, "Any culture that arises in the next twenty thousand years or so is going to have the rot of Atlantis in it. Therefore I decree a noncultural time of eight hundred generations. After that we may allow man free reign on his propensity for building civilizations. The culture he builds will be under our guidance, with our ideas implicit in its every aspect, with our control at every stage. Eight hundred generations from now the new human culture will be planted. It will follow the natural law. It will have the knowledge of good and evil, the light that comes from the sun, the sun that blasphemers say is only an apple. It is no apple, I tell you, though it is a fruit, even as this beverage of Evoe's that I now quaff is from a fruit. From the grape comes this drink and from the sun comes the knowledge of good and evil, the separation of light and darkness over the whole earth. Not an apple, but the fruit of knowledge!" Gruad drinks. He puts down his gla.s.s, clutches his throat and staggers back. His other hand goes to his heart. He topples over and lies on his back, his eyes staring upward.

Naturally, everyone accuses Evoe of poisoning Gruad. But Evoe calmly answers that it was Lilith Velkor who did it. He was doing research on the energies of the dead and had learned how to take them into him. But sometimes the energies of the dead could take control of him, so that he would be just a medium through which they act. He cries, "When you write this tragedy into the archives, you must say, not that Evoe the man did it, but Evoe-Lilith, possessed by the evil spirit of a woman. The woman did tempt me, I tell you! I was helpless." The Unbroken Circle is persuaded, and agree that since Lilith Velkor and the crazy G.o.ddess she worshipped were responsible for Gruad's death, henceforward women must be subordinate to men so such evils will not be repeated. They decide to build a tomb for Gruad and to inscribe upon it, "The First Illuminated One: Never Trust A Woman." They decide that since the lloigor is loose they will offer sacrifices to it, and the sacrifices will be pure young women who have never lain with a man. Evoe seems to be taking control of the group and Gao Twone protests this. To prove his dedication to the true and the good, Evoe declares, he has had his p.e.n.i.s amputated as a sacrifice to the All-Seeing Eye. He pulls open his robe. All look at his truncated crotch and immediately retch. Evoe goes on, "Furthermore, it is decreed by the Eye and Natural Law that all male children who would be close to goodness and truth must imitate my sacrifice, at least to the extent of losing the foreskin or being cut enough to bleed." Kajeci comes in at this point, and they plan a great funeral, agreeing that they will not burn Gruad as was the Atlantean custom, signifying that one is dead forever, but will preserve his body, symbolizing the hope that he is not really dead but will rise again.

There follow several thousand years of warfare between the remnants of the Atlanteans and the inhabitants of Agharti, the stronghold of the Scientists, who now call themselves variously the Knowledgeable or the Enlightened Ones. The last remnants of the Atlantean culture are destroyed. Great cities were built, then destroyed by nuclear explosions. All the inhabitants of the city of Peos are killed in one night by the eater of souls. Chunks of the continent break off and sink into the sea. There are earthquakes and tidal waves. Finally, only outcroppings like the cone-shaped island of Fernando Poo rise alone from the sea where Atlantis had been.

About 13,000 B.C. a new culture is planted on a hillside near the headwaters of the Euphrates and it starts to spread. A tribe of Cro-Magnons, magnificently tall, strong, large-headed people, is marched at gunpoint down from the snows of Europe to the fertile lands of the Middle East. They are taken to the site chosen for the first agricultural settlement and shown how to plant crops. For several years they do so while the Unbroken Circle's men guard them with flame throwers. Their generations pa.s.s rapidly, and once the new way of life has taken hold the Illuminated Ones leave them alone. The tribe divides into kings, priests, scribes, warriors, and farmers. A city surrounded by farms rises up. The kings and priests are soft, weak and fat. The peasants are stunted and dulled by malnutrition. The warriors are big and strong, but brutal and unintelligent. The scribes are intelligent, but thin and bloodless. Now the city makes war on neighboring tribes of barbarians. Being well organized and technologically superior, the people of the city win. They enslave the barbarians and plant other cities nearby. Then a great tribe of barbarians comes down from the north and conquers the civilized people and burns their city. This is not the end of the new civilization, though. It only revitalizes it. Soon the conquerors have learned to play the roles of kings, priests and warriors, and now there is a kind of nation consisting of several cities with a large body of armed men who must be kept occupied. Marching robotlike in great square formations, they set out over the plain to find new peoples to conquer. The sun shines down on the civilization created by the Illuminati. And below the sea the eye on the pyramid glares balefully upward.

THE END.

Lights flashed on suddenly. The screen rolled up into its receptacle with a snap. Blinded, Joe rubbed his eyes. He had a ferocious headache. He also had a ferocious need to urinate at once, before his bladder exploded. He'd had an awful lot of drinks at the plastic martini party, then made love to that Chinese girl in the cab, then sat down to watch this movie without once taking time out to go to the bathroom. The pain in his groin was excruciating. He imagined it felt something like what Evoe, that fellow in the movie, had experienced after he castrated himself.

"Where the h.e.l.l is the John?" said Joe loudly. There was no one in the room. While he was absorbed in the movie, they, doubtless having seen it before, had crept away softly, leaving him alone to watch the death of Atlantis.

"Christ's sake," he muttered. "Gotta take a leak. If I don't find the bathroom right away I'll pee in my pants." Then he noticed a wastepaper can under the table. It was walnut with a metal lining. He bent over and picked it up, sending new tremors of anguish through a body on the verge of bursting. He decided to use it as a receptacle, set it down again, unzipped his fly, took out his d.i.c.k and let go into the can. What if they all came trooping back into the room now, he thought. Well, he would be embarra.s.sed, but what the h.e.l.l. It was their fault for springing this movie on him without giving him a chance to make himself comfortable. Joe looked somberly down into the foam.

"p.i.s.s on Atlantis," he muttered. Who the h.e.l.l were those people he'd seen tonight? Simon and Padre and Big John had never told him about a group like this. Nor had they ever said anything about Atlantis. But there was the clear implication, if this movie was to be believed, that the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria might better be called the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Atlantis. And that the word "Ancient" meant a lot older than 1776.

It was clearly time to leave this place. He could try searching the offices, but he doubted whether he'd find anything, and, anyway, he was much too tired and hung over-not only from the alcohol he'd drunk, but also from the strange drug the Oriental girl had given him before the movie. Still, it had been a very nice drug. It had been Joe's habit since 1969, when he wasn't too busy and didn't have to get up early in the morning, to get stoned and watch late movies on television. He found this so enjoyable a pastime that he'd lost two girlfriends to it; they'd both wanted to go to bed when he was just settling down in front of the tube, laughing himself silly at the incredibly clever witticisms, marveling at the profundity of the philosophical aphorisms tossed off by the characters (such as Johnny's line in Bitter Rice: Bitter Rice: "I work all week and then on Sundays I watch other people ride the merry-go-round"-what a world of pathos had been expressed in that simple summation of a man's life) or appreciating, as one wordsmith does another, the complex subtlety of the commercials and the secret links between them and the movies into which they were inserted (like the slogan: "You can take the Salem out of the country but you can't take the country out of Salem," in the middle of "I work all week and then on Sundays I watch other people ride the merry-go-round"-what a world of pathos had been expressed in that simple summation of a man's life) or appreciating, as one wordsmith does another, the complex subtlety of the commercials and the secret links between them and the movies into which they were inserted (like the slogan: "You can take the Salem out of the country but you can't take the country out of Salem," in the middle of The Wolf Man) The Wolf Man). All of this capacity for appreciating movies had been raised to a new high with the drug Mao Tsu-hsi had given him, and added to this it was a full-color movie on a large screen uninterrupted by commercials or, come to think of it, by fnords-and commercials no matter how trickily interwoven with the plot of the movie did tend to seem seem like interruptions, even to one who was stoned enough to know better. It had been a great movie. The best movie of his life. He would never forget it. like interruptions, even to one who was stoned enough to know better. It had been a great movie. The best movie of his life. He would never forget it.

Joe tried the k.n.o.b of the boardroom door and it opened at once. He stopped, considering whether he should take out his pocket knife and carve "Malik was here" or some obscenity into the beautiful wood of the table. That would, he felt in an obscure way, let them know that he knew where they were at. But it would be a shame to spoil the wood, and besides, he was dreadfully tired. He walked through darkened outer corridors, staggered down the stairs and let himself out into the street. Looking toward the East River, he thought he could see light in the sky over Queens. Was the sun coming up? Had he been there that long?

A cab cruised by with its light on. Joe hailed it. Sinking into the back seat as he gave the driver his home address, he noticed that the man's name on his hack license was Albert Feather.

Well, here's that ladder now, Come on, let's climb.

The first rung is yours, The rest are mine.

Funny, thought Lieutenant Otto Waterhouse of the State's Attorney's Police. Every time things get hairy, that d.a.m.n song starts going through my head. I must be an obsessive-compulsive neurotic. He'd first heard the song, "To Be a Man" by Len Chandler, at the home of a chick he was balling back in '65. It expressed pretty well for him his condition as a member of the tribe. The tribe, that was how he thought of black people; he'd heard a Jew refer to the Jews that way, and he liked it better than that soul brother s.h.i.t. Deep down, he hated other blacks and he hated being black. You had to climb, that was the thing. You had to climb, each man alone.

When Otto Waterhouse was eight years old, a gang of black kids on the South Side had beaten him, knifed him and thrown him into Lake Michigan to drown. Otto didn't know how to swim, but somehow he'd pulled himself along the concrete pilings, clinging to rusty steel where there was nothing to cling to, his blood seeping out into the water, and he'd stayed there, hidden, till the gang went away. Then he pulled himself along to a ladder, climbed up and dragged himself onto the concrete pier. He lay there, almost dead, wondering if the gang would come back and finish him.

Someone did come along. A cop. The cop nudged Otto's body with his toe, rolled it over and looked down. Otto looked up at the Irish face, round, pig-nosed and blue-eyed.

"Oh, s.h.i.t," said the cop, and walked on.

Somehow Otto lived till morning, when a woman came along and found him and called an ambulance. Years later, it seemed logical enough to him to join the police force. He knew the members of the gang that nearly killed him. He didn't bother with them until after he got on the force. Then he found cause to kill each of the gang members-several of whom had by then become respectable citizens-one by one. Most of them didn't know who he was or why he was killing them. The number he killed made his reputation in the Chicago Police Department. He was a n.i.g.g.e.r cop who could be trusted to deal with n.i.g.g.e.rs.

Otto never did know who the cop was who'd left him to die-he remembered the face, more or less, but they all looked alike to him.

He had another oddly vivid memory, of a fall day in 1970 when he'd been walking through Pioneer Court and had ha.s.sled a dude who was giving out free samples of-of all things-tomato juice. Otto took a ten from the dude and drank some tomato juice. The guy had a crew haircut and wore horn-rimmed gla.s.ses. He didn't seem to mind having to pay a bribe, and he looked at Otto with an odd gleam in his eye as the tomato juice went down. For a moment, Otto thought the tomato juice might be poisoned. There were cop haters everywhere; many people seemed to have sworn to kill the "pigs" as they called them. But dozens of people had already drunk the juice and gone away happy. Otto shrugged and walked off.

Thinking back over the strange changes that had come over him, Otto always traced them back to that moment. There had been something in the juice.

It wasn't till Stella Maris told him about AUM that he realized how he'd been had. And by then it was too late. He was a three-way loser, working for the Syndicate, the Illuminati and Discordian Movement. The only way out was down-down into the chaos with Stella pointing the way.

"Just tell me one thing, baby," he said to her one afternoon as they lay naked together in his apartment in Hyde Park. "Why did they pick you to contact me?"

"Because you hate n.i.g.g.e.rs," said Stella calmly, running her finger down his d.i.c.k. "You hate n.i.g.g.e.rs worse than any white man does. That's why the way to freedom for you lies through me."

"And what about you?" he said angrily, pulling away from her and sitting up in bed. "I suppose you can't tell the difference between black and white. Black meat and white meat, it's all the same to you, ain't it, you G.o.dd.a.m.ned wh.o.r.e!" wh.o.r.e!"

"You'd like to think so," said Stella. "You'd like to think only a n.i.g.g.e.r wh.o.r.e would lay you, a wh.o.r.e who'd lay anybody regardless of race. But you know you are wrong. You know that Otto Waterhouse, the black man who is better than all black men because he hates all black men, is a lie. It's you who can't tell the difference between black and white and thinks the black man should be where the white man is and hates the black man because he isn't white. No, I see color. But I see everything else about a person, too, baby. And I know that n.o.body is where they should be and everybody should be where they are."

"Oh, f.u.c.k your G.o.ddam philosophy," said Water-house. "Come here."

But he learned. He thought he'd learned everything Stella and Hagbard and the rest of them had to teach him. And that was a lot, piled on top of all that Illuminati garbage. But now they'd thrown him a total curve.

He was to kill.

The message came, as all the messages did, from Stella.

"Hagbard said to do this?"

"Yes."

"And I suppose, if I go along with this, I'll be told why later on, or I'll figure it out for myself? G.o.ddam, Stella, this is asking a lot, you know."

"I know. Hagbard told me you have to do this for two reasons. First, for the honor of the Discordians, so that they will have respect."

"He sounds sounds like a wop for once. But he's right. I understand that." like a wop for once. But he's right. I understand that."

"Second. He said because Otto Waterhouse must kill a white man."

"What?" Otto started to tremble in the phone booth. He picked nervously, without reading it, at a sticker that said, THIS PHONE BOOTH RESERVED FOR CLARK KENT. Otto started to tremble in the phone booth. He picked nervously, without reading it, at a sticker that said, THIS PHONE BOOTH RESERVED FOR CLARK KENT.

"Otto Waterhouse must kill a white man. He said you'd know what that meant."

Otto's hand was still shaking when he hung up. "Oh, d.a.m.n," d.a.m.n," he said. He was almost crying. he said. He was almost crying.

So now on April 28 he stood at a green metal door marked "1723." It was the service entrance to a condominium apartment at 2323 Lake Sh.o.r.e Drive. Behind him stood a dozen State's Attorney's police. All of them, like himself, were wearing body armor and baby-blue helmets with transparent plastic visors. Two were carrying submachine guns.

"All right," said Waterhouse, glancing at his watch. It had amused Flanagan to set the time for the raid at 5:23 A.M. It was 5:22:30. "Remember-shoot everything that moves." He kept his back to the men so they would not see the d.a.m.ned tears that insisted on welling up in his eyes.

"Right on, lieutenant," said Sergeant O'Banion satirically. Sergeant O'Banion hated blacks, but worse than that he hated filthy, lice-ridden, long-haired, h.o.m.os.e.xual, Communist-inspired Morituri bomb manufacturers. He believed that there was a whole disgusting nest of them, sleeping together, dirty naked bodies entwined, like a can full of worms, just on the other side of that green metal door. He could see them. He licked his lips. He was going to clean them out. He hefted the machine gun.

"Okay," said Waterhouse. It was 5:23. Shielding himself with one gloved hand, he pointed his .45 at the lock on the door. The instructions given orally by Flanagan at the briefing were that they would not show a warrant or even knock before entering. The apartment was said to be full of enough dynamite to wipe out the entire block of luxury high-rise apartment houses. Presumably the kids, if they knew they were caught, would set them off. That way they could take a bunch of pigs with them, preserve their reputation for suicidal bravery, protect themselves from giving away any information, use the explosives and avoid having to live with the shaming knowledge that they'd been dumb enough to get caught.

O'Banion was imagining finding a white girl in the arms of a black boy and finishing them off with one burst from his machine gun. His c.o.c.k swelled in his pants.

Waterhouse fired.

In the next instant he threw his weight against the door and smashed it open. He was in a hallway next to the kitchen. He walked into the apartment. His shoes rang on a bare tile floor. Tears ran down his cheeks.

"My G.o.d, my G.o.d, why have you forsaken me?" he sobbed.

"Who's that?" a voice called. Waterhouse, whose eyes had adjusted to the darkness, looked across the empty living room into the foyer, where Milo A. Flanagan stood silhouetted in the light from the exterior hall.

Waterhouse raised the heavy automatic in his hand to arm's length, sighted carefully, took a deep breath and held it and squeezed the trigger. The pistol blasted and kicked his hand and the black figure went toppling backwards into the startled arms of the men behind him.

A bat which had been sitting on a windowsill flew out the open window toward the lake. Only Water-house saw it.

O'Banion came clumping into the room. He took a bent-kneed stance and fired a burst of six rounds in the direction of the front door.

"Hold it!" Waterhouse snapped. "Hold your fire. Something's wrong." Something would really be wrong if the guys at the front door came through again, shooting. "Turn on the lights, O'Banion," Waterhouse said.

"There's somebody in here shooting."

"We're standing here talking, O'Banion. No one is shooting at us. Find a light switch."

"They're gonna set off the bombs!" O'Banion's voice was shrill with fear.

"With the lights on, O'Banion, we'll see them doing it. Maybe we'll even be able to stop them."

O'Banion ran to the wall and began slapping it with the palm of one hand while he kept his machine gun cradled in the free arm. One of the other men who had followed O'Banion through the service entrance found the light switch.