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

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

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

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

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

"Are your people out of the way?"

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

(a.s.sumption A is that the Illuminati spider ships were under remote control.) The sea is crueler than the land. Sometimes.

(None of the evidence is consistent with a.s.sumption B.) Hagbard reached out a brown finger, let it rest on a white b.u.t.ton on the railing in front of him, then pressed it decisively. That's all there is to it That's all there is to it, he said.

But that wasn't all there was to it. He had decided, coolly and in his wrong mind, that if he was a murderer already the final gambit might as well be one that would salvage part of the Demonstration. He had sent George to Drake (Bob, you're dead now, but did you ever understand, even for a moment, what I tried to tell you? What Jung tried to tell you even earlier?) and then twenty-four real men and women were dead, and now the bloodshed was escalating, and he wasn't sure that any part of the Demonstration could be saved.

"No remission without blood! No remission without blood, brothers and sisters...No remission without the blood of our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ!"

I got into the Illuminati in 1951, when Joe McCarthy was riding high and everybody was looking for conspiracies everywhere. In my own naive way (I was a soph.o.m.ore at New York University at the time) I was seeking to find myself, and I answered one of those Rosicrucian ads in the back of a girlie magazine. Of course, the Rosicrucians aren't a front in the simple way that the Birchers and other paranoids think; only a couple of plants at AMORC headquarters are Illuminati agents. But they select possible candidates at random, and we get slightly different mailings than those sent to the average new member. If we show the proper spirit, our mailings get more interesting and a personal contact is made. Well, pretty soon I swore the whole oath, including that silly part about never visiting Naples, which is just an expression of an old grudge of Weishaupt's, and I was admitted as Illuminatus Minerval with the name Ringo Erigena. Since I was majoring in law, I was instructed to seek a career in the FBI.

I met Eisenhower only once, at a very large and sumptuous ball. He called another agent and myself aside. "Keep your eye on Mamie," he said. "If she has five martinis, or starts quoting John Wayne, get her upstairs quick." quick."

Kennedy I never even talked to, but Winifred (whose name in the order is Scotus Pythagoras) used to b.i.t.c.h about him a lot. "This New Frontier stuff is dangerous," Winfred would say testily. "The man thinks he's living in a western movie. One big showdown, and the bad guys bite the dust. We'd best not let him last too long."

You can imagine how upset I was when the Dallas caper began to throw light on the whole overall pattern. Of course, I didn't know what to do: Winifred was my only superior in the government who was also a superior in the Illuminati, but I had a lot of hunches and guesses about some others, and I wouldn't want to bet that John Edgar wasn't one of them, for instance. When the feeler came from the CIA I went on what these kids today call a paranoid trip. It could have been coincidence or synchronicity, but it could have been the Order, scanning me, and ensuring that my involvement would get deeper.

("Most people in espionage don't know who they're working for," Winifred told me once, in that voice of silk and satin and stilettos, "especially the ones who only do 'small jobs.' Suppose we find a French Canadian separatist in Montreal who's in a position to provide certain information at certain times. We certainly don't ask him to work for American Intelligence. That's no concern of his, and even inimical to his real interests. So he's approached by another very convincing French Canadian who has 'evidence' to prove he's an agent of the most secret of all Quebec Libre underground movements. Or, if the Russians find a woman in Nairobi who has access to certain offices and happens to be anti-Communist and pro-English: no sense in trying to recruit her for the MVD, right? The contact she meets has a full set of credentials and just the right Oxford tone to convince her he's with M.5 in London. And so it goes," he ended dreamily, "so it goes ...") My CIA contact really was CIA; I'm almost absolutely willing to give odds around 60-40 on that. At least, he knew the proper pa.s.swords to show that he was acting under presidential orders, whatever that proves.

It was Hoover himself who ordered me to infiltrate G.o.d's Lightning. Well, he didn't pick me alone; I was part of a group, and a rousing pep talk he gave us. I can still remember him saying, "Don't let their American flags fool you. Look at those lightning bolts, right out of n.a.z.i Germany, and, remember, the next thing to a G.o.dless Commie is a G.o.dless n.a.z.i. They're both against Free Enterprise." Of course, as soon as I was admitted to the Arlington chapter of G.o.d's Lightning, I found out that Free Enterprise stood second only to Heracleitus in their pantheon. J. Edgar did get some queer hornets in his headgear at times-like his fear that John Dillinger was really still alive some place, laughing at him. That was the dread that turned him against Melvin Purvis, the agent who gunned Dillinger down in Chicago, and he rode Purvis right out of the Bureau. Those of you with long memories will recall that poor Purvis ended up working for a breakfast cereal company, acting as t.i.tular head of the Post-Toasties Junior G-Men.

It was in G.o.d's Lightning that I read Telemachus Sneezed Telemachus Sneezed, which I still think is a rip-roaring good yarn. That scene where Taffy Rhinestone sees the new King on television and it's her old rapist friend with the gaunt cheeks and he says, "My name is John Guilt"- man, that's writing writing. His hundred-and-three-page-long speech afterwards, explaining the importance of guilt and showing why all the anti-Heracleiteans and Freudians and relativists are destroying civilization by destroying guilt, certainly is persuasive-especially to somebody like me with three-going-on-four personalities each of which was betraying the others. I still quote his last line, "Without guilt there can be no civilization." Her nonfiction book, Militarism: The Unknown Ideal for the New Heracleitean Militarism: The Unknown Ideal for the New Heracleitean is, I think, a distinct letdown, but the G.o.d's Lightning b.u.mper stickers asking "What Is John Guilt?" sure give people the creeps until they learn the answer. is, I think, a distinct letdown, but the G.o.d's Lightning b.u.mper stickers asking "What Is John Guilt?" sure give people the creeps until they learn the answer.

I met Atlanta Hope herself at the time of the New York Draft Riots. That was, you will remember, when G.o.d's Lightning, disgusted with reports that the FBI was swamped in two years' backlog in draft resistance and draft evasion cases, decided to organize vigilante groups to hunt down the hippie-yippie-commie-pacifist sc.u.m themselves. As soon as they entered the East Village-which harbored, as they suspected, hundreds of thousands of bearded, long-haired and otherwise semi-visible fugitives from the Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Taiwan, Costa Rica, Chile and Tierra del Fuego conflicts-they began to encounter both suspects and resistance. After the third hour, the Mayor ordered the police to cordon the area. The police, of course, were on the side of G.o.d's Lightning and did all they could to aid their mayhem against the Great Unwashed while preventing reciprocal mayhem. After the third day, the Governor called out the National Guard. The Guard, who were mostly draft-dodgers at heart themselves, tried to even the score, and even help the Dregs and Drugs a bit. After the third week, the President declared that part of Manhattan a disaster area and sent in the Red Cross to help the survivors.

I was in the thick and din of it (you have no idea how bizarre civil war gets when one side uses trash cans as a large part of their a.r.s.enal) and even met Joe Malik, prematurely, under a Silver Wraith Rolls Royce where he had crawled to take notes near the front line and I had crept to nurse wounds received while being pushed through the window of the Peace Eye Bookstore-I have scars I could show you still-and a voice over my shoulder says that I should put in the fact that August Personage was trapped in a phone booth only a few feet away, suffering hideous paranoid delusions that in spite of all this chaos the police would trace his last obscene call and find him still in the booth afraid to come out and face the trash can covers and bullets and other miscellaneous metals in the air-and I even remember that the Rolls had license plate RPD-1, which suggests that a certain person of importance was also in that odd vicinity on some doubtless even odder errand. I met Atlanta herself a day later and a block north, on the scene where Taylor Mead was making his famous Last Stand. Atlanta grabbed my right arm (the wounded one: it made me wince) and howled something like, "Welcome, brother in the True Faith! War is the Health of the State! Conflict is the creator of all things!" Seeing she was on a heavy Heracleitus wavelength, I quoted, with great pa.s.sion, "Men should fight for the Laws as they would for the walls of the city!" That won her and I was Atlanta's Personal Lieutenant for the rest of the battle.

Atlanta remembered me from the Riots and I was summoned to organize the first tactical strikes against Nader's Raiders. If I do say so myself, I did a commendable job; it earned me a raise from the Bureau, a tight but genuinely pleased smile from my CIA drop, a promotion to Illuminatus Prelator from Winifred-and another audience with Atlanta Hope which led to my initiation into the[image] , the supersecret conspiracy for which she was really working. (The , the supersecret conspiracy for which she was really working. (The[image] is so arcane that even now I can't reveal the full name hinted in those initials.) My secret name was Prince of Wands E; I got the Prince of Wands by picking a Tarot card at random, and she gave me the E herself-from which I deduced that there were four other Princes of Wands, together with five Kings of Swords, and so forth, meaning that the is so arcane that even now I can't reveal the full name hinted in those initials.) My secret name was Prince of Wands E; I got the Prince of Wands by picking a Tarot card at random, and she gave me the E herself-from which I deduced that there were four other Princes of Wands, together with five Kings of Swords, and so forth, meaning that the[image] was something special in even esoteric realms, since it was a worldwide conspiracy with no more than three hundred ninety members (five times the number of cards in the Tarot deck). The name fairly suited me-I wouldn't want to be Hanged Man D or Fool A-and I was happy that the Prince is known for his multiple personalities. was something special in even esoteric realms, since it was a worldwide conspiracy with no more than three hundred ninety members (five times the number of cards in the Tarot deck). The name fairly suited me-I wouldn't want to be Hanged Man D or Fool A-and I was happy that the Prince is known for his multiple personalities.

If I had been three and a half agents before (my role in G.o.d's Lightning a fairly straightforward one, at least from GL's point of view, since I was only asked to smash, not to spy) there was no doubt that I was four agents now, belonging to the FBI, the CIA, the Illuminati and the[image] and betraying each of them to at least one and sometimes two or three of the others. (Yes, I had been converted to the and betraying each of them to at least one and sometimes two or three of the others. (Yes, I had been converted to the[image] during their initiation; if I could describe that most amazing ritual you would not wonder why.) Then came the Vice President's brainstorm about economizing on agents, and I began to get transferred on loan to the CIA frequently, whereupon the Bureau discreetly asked me to report anything interesting that I observed. This, however, I perceive as a further complexification of my four-way psychic stretch and not as the inevitable, irrefragable and synergetic fifth step. during their initiation; if I could describe that most amazing ritual you would not wonder why.) Then came the Vice President's brainstorm about economizing on agents, and I began to get transferred on loan to the CIA frequently, whereupon the Bureau discreetly asked me to report anything interesting that I observed. This, however, I perceive as a further complexification of my four-way psychic stretch and not as the inevitable, irrefragable and synergetic fifth step.

And I was right. For it was only in the last year that I entered the terminal stage, or Grumment Grumment as the Order calls it, due to those curious events which led me from Robert Putney Drake to Hagbard Celine. as the Order calls it, due to those curious events which led me from Robert Putney Drake to Hagbard Celine.

I was sent to the Council on Foreign Relations banquet carrying the credentials of a Pinkerton detective; my supposed role as private d.i.c.k was to keep an eye on the jewels of the ladies and other valuables. My real job was to place a small bug on the table where Robert Putney Drake would be sitting; I was on loan to IRS that week, and they didn't know that Justice had standing orders never to prosecute him for anything, so they were trying to prove he had concealed income. Naturally, I also had an ear peeled for anything that might be of import for the Illuminati, the[image] and the CIA, if my Lincoln Memorial contact really was CIA and not Military or Naval Intelligence or somebody else entirely. (You can be sure I often meditated on the possibility that he might be Moscow, Peking or Havana, and Winifred told me once that the Illuminati had reason to believe him part of an advance-guard fifth column sent by invaders from Alpha Centauri-but Grand Masters of the Illuminati are notorious put-on artists, and I didn't buy that yarn any more than I bought the tale that had originally brought me into the Illuminati, the one about them being a conspiracy to establish a world government run by British Israelites.) Conspiracy was its own reward to me, now; I didn't care what I was conspiring and the CIA, if my Lincoln Memorial contact really was CIA and not Military or Naval Intelligence or somebody else entirely. (You can be sure I often meditated on the possibility that he might be Moscow, Peking or Havana, and Winifred told me once that the Illuminati had reason to believe him part of an advance-guard fifth column sent by invaders from Alpha Centauri-but Grand Masters of the Illuminati are notorious put-on artists, and I didn't buy that yarn any more than I bought the tale that had originally brought me into the Illuminati, the one about them being a conspiracy to establish a world government run by British Israelites.) Conspiracy was its own reward to me, now; I didn't care what I was conspiring for for. Art for art's sake. Not whether you betray or preserve but how you play the game. I sometimes even identified it with the[image] notion of the Great Work, for in the twisting labyrinths of my selves I was beginning to find the rough sketch for a soul. notion of the Great Work, for in the twisting labyrinths of my selves I was beginning to find the rough sketch for a soul.

There was a hawk-faced wop at Drake's table, very elegant in a spanking new tuxedo, but the cop in me made him as illegit. Sometimes you can make a subject precisely, as bunco-con, safe-blower, armed robber or whatnot, but I could only place him vaguely somewhere on that side of the game; in fact, I a.s.sociated him with images of piracy on the high seas or the kind of gambits the Borgias played. Somehow the conversation got around to a new book by somebody named Mortimer Adler who had already written a hundred or so great books if I understood the drift. One banker type at the table was terribly keen on this Adler and especially on his latest great book. "He says that we and the Communists share the same Great Tradition" (I could hear the caps by the way he p.r.o.nounced the term) "and we must join together against the one force that really does threaten civilization-anarchism!"

There were several objections, in which Drake didn't take part (he just sat back, puffing his cigar and looking agreeable to everyone, but I could see boredom under the surface) and the banker tried to explain the Great Tradition, which was a bit over my head, and, judging by the expressions around the table, a bit over everybody else's head, too, when the hawk-faced dago spoke up suddenly.

"I can put the Great Tradition in one word," he said calmly. "Privilege."

Old Drake suddenly stopped looking agreeable-but-bored-he seemed both interested and amused. "One seldom encounters such a refreshing freedom from euphemism," he said, leaning forward. "But perhaps I am reading too much into your remark, sir?"

Hawk-face sipped at his champagne and patted his mouth with a napkin before answering. "I think not," he said at last. "Privilege is defined in most dictionaries as a right or immunity giving special favors or benefits to those who hold it. Another meaning in Webster is 'not subject to the usual rules or penalties.' The invaluable thesaurus gives such synonyms as power, authority, birthright, franchise, patent, grant, favor and, I'm sad to say, pretension. Surely, we all know what privilege is in this this club, don't we, gentlemen? Do I have to remind you of the Latin roots, club, don't we, gentlemen? Do I have to remind you of the Latin roots, privi privi, private, and lege lege, law, and point out in detail how we have created our Private Law over here, just as the Politburo have created their own private law in their own sphere of influence?"

"But that's not the Great Tradition," the banker type said (later, I learned that he was actually a college professor; Drake was the only banker at that table). "What Mr. Adler means by the Great Tradition-"

"What Mortimer means by the Great Tradition," hawk-face interrupted rudely, "is a set of myths and fables invented to legitimize or sugar-coat the inst.i.tution of privilege. Correct me if I'm wrong," he added more politely but with a sardonic grin.

"He means," the true believer said, "the undeniable axioms, the time-tested truths, the shared wisdom of the ages, the ..."

"The myths and fables," hawk-face contributed gently.

"The sacred, time-tested wisdom of the ages," the other went on, becoming redundant. "The basic bedrock of civil society, of civilization. And we do share that with the Communists. And it is just that common humanistic tradition that the young anarchists, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, are blaspheming, denying and trying to destroy. It has nothing to do with privilege at all."

"Pardon me," the dark man said. "Are you a college professor?"

"Certainly. I'm head of the Political Science Department at Harvard!"

"Oh," the dark man shrugged. "I'm sorry for talking so bluntly before you. I thought I was entirely surrounded by men of business and finance."

The professor was just starting to look as if he spotted the implied insult in that formal apology when Drake interrupted.

"Quite so. No need to shock our paid idealists and turn them into vulgar realists overnight. At the same time, is it absolutely necessary to state what we all know in such a manner as to imply a rather hostile and outside viewpoint? Who are you and what is your trade, sir?"

"Hagbard Celine. Import-export. Gold and Appel Transfers here in New York. A few other small establishments in other ports." As he spoke my image of piracy and Borgia stealth came back strongly. "And we're not children here," he added, "so why should we avoid frank language?"

The professor, taken aback a foot or so by this turn in the conversation, sat perplexed as Drake replied: "So. Civilization is privilege-or Private Law, as you say so literally. And we all know where Private Law comes from, except the poor professor here-out of the barrel of a gun, in the words of a gentleman whose bluntness you would appreciate. Is it your conclusion, then, that Adler is, for all his naivete, correct, and we have more in common with the Communist rulers than we have setting us at odds?"

"Let me illuminate illuminate you further," Celine said-and the way he p.r.o.nounced the verb made me jump. Drake's blue eyes flashed a bit, too, but that didn't surprise me: anybody as rich as IRS thought he was, would you further," Celine said-and the way he p.r.o.nounced the verb made me jump. Drake's blue eyes flashed a bit, too, but that didn't surprise me: anybody as rich as IRS thought he was, would have have to be On the Inside. to be On the Inside.

"Privilege implies exclusion from privilege, just as advantage implies disadvantage," Celine went on. "In the same mathematically reciprocal way, profit implies loss. If you and I exchange equal goods, that is trade: neither of us profits and neither of us loses. But if we exchange unequal goods, one of us profits and the other loses. Mathematically. Certainly. Now, such mathematically unequal exchanges will always occur because some traders will be shrewder than others. But in total freedom-in anarchy-such unequal exchanges will be sporadic and irregular. A phenomenon of unpredictable periodicity, mathematically speaking. Now look about you, professor-raise your nose from your great books and survey the actual world as it is-and you will not observe such unpredictable functions. You will observe, instead, a mathematically smooth function, a steady profit accruing to one group and an equally steady loss acc.u.mulating for all others. Why is this, professor? Because the system is not free or random, any mathematician would tell you a priori a priori. Well, then, where is the determining function, the factor that controls the other variables? You have named it yourself, or Mr. Adler has: the Great Tradition. Privilege, I prefer to call it. When A meets B in the marketplace, they do not bargain as equals. A bargains from a position of privilege; hence, he always profits and B always loses. There is no more Free Market here than there is on the other side of the Iron Curtain. The privileges, or Private Laws-the rules of the game, as promulgated by the Politburo and the General Congress of the Communist Party on that side and by the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve Board on this side-are slightly different; that's all. And it is this that is threatened by anarchists, and by the repressed anarchist in each of us," he concluded, strongly emphasizing the last clause, staring at Drake, not at the professor.

The professor had a lot more to say in a hurry then, about the laws of society being the laws of nature and the laws of nature being the laws of G.o.d, but I decided it was time to circulate a bit more so I didn't hear the rest of the conversation. The IRS has a complete tape of it, I'm sure, since I had placed the bug long before the meal.

The next time I saw Robert Putney Drake was a turning point. I was being sent to New York again, on a mission for Naval Intelligence this time, and Winifred gave me a message that had to be delivered to Drake personally; the Order wouldn't trust any mechanical communication device. Strangely, my CIA drop also gave me a message for Drake, and it was the same message. That didn't jar me any, since it merely confirmed some of what I had begun to suspect by then.

I went to this office on Wall Street, near the corner of Broad (just about where I'd be toiling at Corporate Law, if my family had had its way) and I told his secretary, "Knigge of Pyramid Productions to see Mr. Drake." That was the pa.s.sword that week; Knigge had been a Bavarian baron and second-in-command to Weishaupt in the original AISB. I sat and cooled my heels awhile, studying the decor, which was heavily Elizabethan and made me wonder if Drake had some private notion about being a reincarnation of his famous ancestor.

Finally, Drake's door opened and who stood there but Atlanta Hope, looking kind of wild-eyed and distraught. Drake had his arm on her shoulder and he said piously, "May your work hasten the day when America returns to purity." She stumbled past me in a kind of daze and I was ushered into his office. He motioned me to an overstuffed chair and stared at my face until something clicked. "Another Knigge in the woodpile," he laughed suddenly. "The last time I saw you, you were a Pinkerton detective." You had to admire a memory like that; it had been a year since the CFR banquet and I hadn't done anything to attract his attention that night.

"I'm FBI as well as being in the Order," I said, leaving out a few things.

"You're more than that," he said flatly, sitting behind a desk as big as some kids' playgrounds. "But I have enough on my mind this week without prying into how many sides you're playing. What's the message?"

"It comes from the Order and the CIA both," I said, to be clear and relatively above-board. "This it is: The Taiwan heroin shipments will not arrive on time. The Laotian opium fields are temporarily in the hands of the Pathet Lao. Don't believe the Pentagon releases about our troops having the Laotian situation under control The Taiwan heroin shipments will not arrive on time. The Laotian opium fields are temporarily in the hands of the Pathet Lao. Don't believe the Pentagon releases about our troops having the Laotian situation under control. No answer required." I started to rise.

"Wait, d.a.m.n 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."

"n.o.body 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 h.e.l.l 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 a.s.s 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 pa.s.sword 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 Gunga Din rites and shouts of "Kill for the love of Kali!" There were four other men in the room, in addition to the one who let me in, and two reefers were circulating, one deosil and one widder-shins. rites and shouts of "Kill for the love of Kali!" There were four other men in the room, in 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 Ha.s.san i Sabbah X."

"You're speaking to him," said the tallest and blackest character in the bunch, pa.s.sing 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 Ha.s.san 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. a satisfied black voice agreed in the gloom.

Well, by the time I explained the problem to Ha.s.san, I was so bombed that I immediately let him recruit me for the next step, on his rationalization that a white man could handle it easier than a black man. Actually, I was curious to contact this group of heroin pirates.

Ha.s.san wrote the address carefully. "Now, here's the pa.s.swords," he said. "You say, 'Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.' Don't say 'Do what you will'-they can't stand anybody f.u.c.king around with the words, it has something to do with magic. She replies, 'Love is the law, love under will.' Then you finish it with 'Every man and every woman is a star.' Got it?"

You can bet your a.s.s I got it. I was almost goggle-eyed. It was the pa.s.swords of the[image]

"One more thing," Ha.s.san added, "be sure to ask for Miss Mao, not not Mama Sutra. Mama isn't cleared for this." Mama Sutra. Mama isn't cleared for this."

(As the Braniff jet took off from Kennedy International, Simon was already deep into Telemachus Sneezed Telemachus Sneezed again. He didn't notice the preoccupied-looking red-headed young man who took the seat across the aisle; if he had, he would have immediately made the identification, again. He didn't notice the preoccupied-looking red-headed young man who took the seat across the aisle; if he had, he would have immediately made the identification, cop cop. He was reading, "Factory smog is a symbol of progress, of the divine fire of industry, of the flaming deity of Heracleitus.") HARRY KRISHNA HARRY KRISHNA HARRY HARRY.

Harry Coin didn't know what the drug was; Miss Portinari had merely said, "It takes you further than pot," and handed him the tablet. It might be that LSD the hippies use, he reflected, or it might be something else entirely that Hagbard and f.u.c.kUP had concocted in the ship's laboratory. Miss Portinari went on chanting: HARRY RAMA HARRY RAMA HARRY HARRY.

Obediently, he continued to stare into the aquamarine pool between them; she wore a yellow robe and sat placidly in the lotus position.

("I've gotta know," he had told her. "I can't go around with two sets of memories and never be sure which are real and which Hagbard just put in my head like a man puts a baby into a woman. Did I kill all those people or didn't I?"

"You must be in the proper frame of mind before you can accept the answer," she had replied remotely.) HARRY COINSHA HARRY COINSHA HARRY HARRY.

Was she changing the chant or was it the drug? He tried to keep calm and continue staring into the pool, as she had ordered, but the porcelain design around it was changing. Instead of two dolphins chasing each other's tails like the astrological sign of Pisces (the age that was ending, according to Hagbard), it was now one long serpentlike creature trying to swallow its own its own tail. tail.

That's me, he thought. A lot of people have told me I'm as thin and long as a snake.

And it's everybody else, too (he realized suddenly). I'm seeing what George told me the Self pursuing the Self and trying to govern it, the Self trying to swallow the Self.

But as he stared, fascinated, the pool turned red, blood red, the color of guilt, and he felt it reach out and try to pull him down into it, into red oblivion, a void made flush.

"It's alive," he screamed. "Jesus Motherf.u.c.king Christ!"

Miss Portinari casually stirred the pool, remote and calm, and its spiral inward slowly turned back to aquamarine. Harry felt himself blushing, it was only a hallucination it was only a hallucination, and muttered, "Pardon my language, ma'am."

"Don't apologize," she said sharply. "The most important truths always appear first as blasphemies or obscenities. That's why every great innovator is persecuted. And the sacraments look obscene, too, to an outsider. The eucharist is just sublimated cannibalism, to the unawakened. When the Pope kisses the feet of the laity, he looks like an old toe-queen to some people. The rites of Pan look like a suburban orgy. Think about what you said. Since it has five words and fits the Law of Fives, it is especially significant."

This is a weird bunch, but they know important things, Harry reminded himself. He looked deep into the blue spiral and silently repeated to himself, "It's alive, Jesus Motherf.u.c.king Christ, it's alive ..."

Jesus, looking strangely hawk-faced and Hagbardian, rose from the pool. "This is my bodhi," bodhi," he said, pointing. Harry looked and saw Buddha sitting beneath the bodhi-tree. "Tat TVam Asi," he said, and the falling leaves of the tree turned into millions of TV sets all broadcasting the same Laurel and Hardy movie. "Now look what you made me do," Hardy was saying ... In a previous incarnation, Harry saw himself as a centurion, Semper Cuni Linctus, driving the nails into the cross. "Look," he said to Jesus, "nothing personal. I'm only following orders." "So am I," Jesus said, "My Father's orders. Aren't we all?" he said, pointing. Harry looked and saw Buddha sitting beneath the bodhi-tree. "Tat TVam Asi," he said, and the falling leaves of the tree turned into millions of TV sets all broadcasting the same Laurel and Hardy movie. "Now look what you made me do," Hardy was saying ... In a previous incarnation, Harry saw himself as a centurion, Semper Cuni Linctus, driving the nails into the cross. "Look," he said to Jesus, "nothing personal. I'm only following orders." "So am I," Jesus said, "My Father's orders. Aren't we all?"

"Look into the pool," Miss Portinari repeated. "Just look into the pool."

It was like each Chinese box had another Chinese box inside it; but the best of all belonged to Miss Mao Tsu-hsi. We were reclining in her trim but elegant pad on West Eighty-seventh Street, pa.s.sing a joint back and forth and comparing multiple ident.i.ties. We were naked on a bearskin rug, a dream come true, for she was my ideal woman. "I got into the[image] first, Tobias," she was saying. "They recruited me at a Ba'Hai meeting-they have cruisers out, looking for likely prospects, in every mystical group from Subud to Scientology, you know. Then Naval Intelligence contacted me and I reported to them on what the first, Tobias," she was saying. "They recruited me at a Ba'Hai meeting-they have cruisers out, looking for likely prospects, in every mystical group from Subud to Scientology, you know. Then Naval Intelligence contacted me and I reported to them on what the[image] was up to. I'm not flexible as you, though, and my loyalties tend to stay fairly constant-chiefly I was reporting to was up to. I'm not flexible as you, though, and my loyalties tend to stay fairly constant-chiefly I was reporting to[image] what I gleaned from Naval Intelligence. I did believe in the what I gleaned from Naval Intelligence. I did believe in the[image] basically. Until I met basically. Until I met Him" Him"

"That reminds me," I said, jealous of the worshipful way she said Him Him as if talking about a G.o.d. "If he's coming soon, shouldn't we get up and put some clothes on?" as if talking about a G.o.d. "If he's coming soon, shouldn't we get up and put some clothes on?"

"If you want to be bourgeois," she said.

While we were dressing, I remembered something. "By the way," I asked casually, "who are you spying on Mama Sutra for-the[image] , Naval Intelligence, or , Naval Intelligence, or Him?" Him?"

"All three of them." She was starting to pull her panties on, and I said suddenly, "Wait." I knelt and kissed her p.u.s.s.y one last time, "For the nicest Chinese box I've opened in this whole case," I said gallantly. That was my Illuminati training; as an FBI man, I was ashamed of such a perverted act.

We finished dressing and she was pouring some wine (a light German vintage from, of all places, Bavaria) when the knock came.

Miss Mao sidled over to the door in her slinky Chinese dress and said softly, "Hail Eris."

"All hail Discordia," came a voice from outside. She slipped the lock and a little fat man walked in. My first reaction was astonishment; he didn't look anything like the superintellectual superhero she had described.

"Hagbard couldn't come," he said briefly. "I'll handle the sale, and initiate you," you," with a glance at me, "into the Legion of Dynamic Discord, if you're really ready, as Miss Mao says, to battle every government on earth and the Illuminati to boot." with a glance at me, "into the Legion of Dynamic Discord, if you're really ready, as Miss Mao says, to battle every government on earth and the Illuminati to boot."

"I'm ready," I said pa.s.sionately. "I'm tired being a puppet on four sets of strings." (Actually, I know I just wanted a fifth set.) "Good," he said. "Put her there," and he held out his hand. As we shook, he said, "Episkopos "Episkopos Jim Cart-wright of the Mad Dog Cabal." Jim Cart-wright of the Mad Dog Cabal."