"We're gonna save the earth, aren't we, Joe?" Hagbard yelled. "Gonna save the earth, that right?"

"Jesus saves," said George. He began to sing: I've got the peace that pa.s.seth understanding Down in my heart, Down in my heart, Down in my heart.

I've got the peace that pa.s.seth understanding Down in my heart- Down in my heart-to-stay!

Hagbard and Stella laughed and applauded. Harry Coin shook his head and muttered, "Takes me back. Sure does take me back."

Joe took a few steps away from George, moving so he could face Hagbard across the table. "What do you mean, save the earth?"

Hagbard looked at him stupidly, his mouth hanging open. "If you don't know that, why are you here?"

"I just want to know-we're going to save the earth, but are we going to save the people?"

"What people?"

"The people that live on the earth."

"Oh-those people," said Hagbard. "Sure, sure, we're gonna save everybody." everybody."

Stella frowned. "This is the silliest conversation I've ever heard."

Hagbard shrugged. "Stella, honey, why don't you go on back to the Leif Erikson?" Leif Erikson?"

"Well, f.u.c.k you, Charley." Stella stood up and flounced off, her peasant skirt swinging.

At that moment a little wall-eyed man tapped Joe on the shoulder. "Sit down, Joe. Have a drink. Sit down with George and me."

"I've seen you before," said Joe.

"Perhaps. Come, sit down. Let's have some of this good Bavarian beer. It has great integrity. Have you ever tried it? Waitress!" The newcomer snapped his fingers impatiently, all the while staring owlishly at Joe through lenses as thick as the bottoms of beer gla.s.ses. Joe let himself be led to a chair.

"You look exactly like Jean-Paul Sartre," said Joe as he sat down. "I've always wanted to meet Jean-Paul Sartre."

"Sorry to disappoint you, then, Joe," said the man. "Put your hand into my side."

"Mal, baby!" Joe cried, attempting to embrace the apparition and ending up hugging himself while George, bleary-eyed, stared and shook his head. "Am I glad to see you here," Joe went on. "But how come you're doing Jean-Paul Sartre instead of your hairy taxi driver?"

"This is a good cover," said Malaclypse. "People would expect Jean-Paul Sartre to be here, covering the world's biggest rock festival from an existentialist point of view. On the other hand, this is Lon Chaney, Jr., country, and if I started showing up as Sylvan Martiset, with a face covered with fur, I'd have a mob of peasants carrying torches looking for me all over town."

"I saw a hairy chauffeur today," said George. "Do you suppose it was Lon Chaney, Jr.?"

"Don't worry, George," said Malaclypse with a smile. "The hairy people are on our side."

"Really?" said Joe. He looked around. Hagbard Celine was the hairiest person at the table. His fingers, hands, and bare forearms were black with hair. The stubble of his beard came high up on his cheekbones, just below his eyes. On the back of his neck the hair didn't stop growing, but continued down into his collar. Stripped, Joe thought, the man must look like a bear rug. Many of the other people at the table had long hair or Afro haircuts, and the men had beards and mustaches. Joe remembered Miss Mao's hairy armpits. The peasant blouses on the women in this room hid their armpits from examination, George, of course, had that shoulder-length blond hair that made him look like a Giotto angel. But, Joe thought, what about me? I'm not hairy at all. I keep my hair in a crew cut because I prefer it that way. Where does that leave me?

"What difference does hair make?" he asked Malaclypse.

"Hair is the most important thing in this society," said George. "I've tried repeatedly to explain that to you, Joe, and you've always never listened. Hair is the whole thing."

"Hair in this society at this moment is a symbol," said Malaclypse. "However, there is a real aspect to hair which enables me, for instance, to look around this room and surmise that many of these people are enemies of the Illuminati. You see, all humans were once fur-bearing."

Joe nodded. "I saw that in the movie."

"Oh, yes, you saw When Atlantis Ruled the Earth When Atlantis Ruled the Earth, didn't you?" said Malaclypse. "Well, hairlessness, you'll recall, was Gruad's peculiarity. Most of the people whom the Illuminati permitted to live-and to eventually become recivilized, Illuminati-style-were mated with or raped by descendants of Gruad. But the fur-bearing gene, found in all humans before the catastrophe, has not disappeared. It is quite common in enemies of the Illuminati. My suspicion is that if we knew the histories of ELF and the Discordians and the JAMs, we'd find that they go back to Atlantean origins and preserve to some extent the genes of Gruad's foes. I'm inclined to believe that hairy people, in whom the genes of Atlanteans other than Gruad predominate, are inherently predisposed to anti-Illuminati activities. Conversely, people who work against the Illuminati are also likely to favor lots of hair. These factors have given rise to legends about werewolves, vampires, beast-men of all kinds, abominable snowmen, and furry demons. Note the general success of the Illuminati propaganda campaign to portray all such hirsute beings as fearsome and evil. The propensity for hairiness among anti-Illuminati types also explains why lots of hair is a common characteristic of bohemians, beatniks, leftists generally, scientists, artists, and hippies. All such people tend to make good recruits for the anti-Illuminati organizations."

"Sometimes we make it sound as if the Illuminati were the only menace on earth," said Joe. "Isn't it equally possible that people who are opposed to the Illuminati may be dangerous?"

"Oh, yes indeed," said Malaclypse. "Good and evil are two ends of the same street. But the street was built by the Illuminati. They had excellent reasons, from their viewpoint, to preach the Christian ethic to the ma.s.ses, you know. What is John Guilt?"

Joe remembered what he'd said to Jim Cartwright several years ago: Sometimes I wonder if we're not all working for them, one way or another Sometimes I wonder if we're not all working for them, one way or another. He hadn't meant it at the time, but now he realized it was probably true. He might be doing the Illuminati's work right now, when he thought he was saving the human race. Just as Celine might be doing the will of the Illuminati while thinking that he was preserving the earth.

George, bleary-eyed and smiling, said, "Where'd you meet Sheriff Jim, Joe?"

Joe stared at him. "What?"

"Hairlessness is the reason why Gruad and his successors were partial to reptiles," said Malaclypse, adjusting his thick gla.s.ses. "They had a real feeling of kinship. One of their symbols was a serpent with its tail in its mouth, which was intended to refer both to Gruad's Ophidian a.s.sa.s.sins and to his other experiments with reptilian lifeforms."

Joe, still shaken by George's question, yet not wanting to probe further in that direction, said, "All kinds of myths involving serpents crop up in all parts of the world."

"All of them go back to Gruad," said Malaclypse. "The serpent symbol and the Atlantean catastrophe gave rise to the myth that Adam and Eve, tempted by the serpent, fell into misery when they acquired the knowledge of good and evil. Just as Atlantis fell through the moralistic ideology of Gruad the serpent-scientist. Then there's the old Norse myth of the World Serpent with its tail in its mouth that holds the universe together. The Illuminati serpent symbol was also the origin of the brazen serpent of Moses, the plumed serpent of the Aztecs, and their legend of the eagle devouring the snake, the caduceus of Mercury, St. Patrick casting the snakes out of Ireland, various Baltic tales of the serpent king, legends of dragons, the monster guarding the fabulous treasure at the bottom of the Rhine, the Loch Ness monster, and a whole raft of other stories connecting serpents with the supernatural. In fact, the name 'Gruad' comes from an Atlantean word that translates variously as 'worm,' 'serpent,' or 'dragon,' depending on context."

"I'd say he was all three," said Joe. "From what I know."

George said, "I saw the Loch Ness monster today. Hagbard called it a she, which surprised me. But this is the first I've heard about this serpent business. I thought the Illuminati symbol was an eye in a pyramid."

"The Big Eye is their most important symbol," said Malaclypse, "but it isn't the only one. The Rosy Cross is another. But most widely copied is the serpent symbol. The eye in the pyramid and the serpent are often seen in combination. Together they represent the sea monster Leviathan, whose tentacles are depicted as serpents and whose central body is shown as an eye in a pyramid. Since each of Leviathan's tentacles is said to have an independent brain, that's not half bad. The swastika, which was a pretty important symbol around these parts some decades ago, was originally a stylized drawing of Leviathan and his many tentacles. Early versions of it have more than four hooks, and they often include a triangle, sometimes even an eye-and-triangle, in the center. A common transitional form is a triangle with the sides extended and then hooked to form tentacle shapes. There are two tentacles for each of the three angles, which yields a twenty-three. Polish archeologists found a swastika painted in a cave. The drawing dated back to Cro-Magnon times, not long after the fall of Atlantis, and there were twenty-three swirling tentacles around a beautifully executed pyramid with an ocher eye in its center."

George held his breath. Mavis had come into the room. Instead of the peasant-skirt outfit Hagbard had decreed, she was wearing what might have been called hot lederhosen, a very short, very tight pair of leather breeches that made her legs look fantastically long and underlined the round curves of her a.s.s.

"Wow-that's some attractive woman," said Joe.

"Don't you know her?" asked George. "Well, that puts me one up on you. You're going to meet her."

Mavis came over, and George said, "Mavis, this is Joe Malik, the guy who put me in the cell you got me out of."

"That's a little unfair," Joe said, taking Mavis's hands with a smile, "but I did send him down to Mad Dog."

"Excuse me," said Mavis. "I want to talk with Hagbard." She disengaged her hand and walked away. Both Joe and George looked stricken. Malaclypse merely smiled.

Just then a tall, stern-looking black man came into the room. He too was wearing Bavarian peasant costume. He went up to Hagbard and shook hands.

"Hey, it's Otto Waterhouse, the infamous killer cop and cop killer!" roared Hagbard, swilling down beer from his huge stein. Waterhouse looked pained for a moment, then sat down and surveyed the room through narrowed eyes.

"Where's my Stella?" he demanded gruffly. George felt his hackles rise. He knew he had no right of possession where Stella was concerned. But then, neither did this guy. Exclusive possession seemed the one type of s.e.xual relationship not practiced among the Discordians and their allies. There was a kind of tribal, general love among them which didn't prevent anybody from sleeping with anybody else. An unsympathetic observer might call it "promiscuity," but that word, as George understood it, meant using another's body for s.e.x without feeling anything for the person you were physically involved with. The Discordians were all too close, too concerned about each other as people, for the word "promiscuity" to fit their s.e.x lives. And George loved them all: Hagbard, Mavis, Stella, the other Discordians, Joe, even Harry Coin, maybe even Otto Waterhouse, who had just appeared.

Mavis said, "Stella's gone down to the submarine, Otto. She'll join us at the proper time."

Hagbard suddenly lurched to his feet. "Quiet!" "Quiet!" he roared. A silence fell around the smoky room. People stared at Hagbard curiously. he roared. A silence fell around the smoky room. People stared at Hagbard curiously.

"We're all here now," he said. "So, I got an announcement to make. I want you to all join me in drinking to an engagement announcement."

"Engagement?" somebody called incredulously. somebody called incredulously.

"Shut the f.u.c.k up," Hagbard snarled. "I'm talking, and if anybody interrupts me again I'll throw them out. Yes, I'm talking about an engagement. To be married. Day after tomorrow, when the Eschaton has been immanentized and all of this is over-lift your steins-Mavis and I will be married aboard the Leif Erikson Leif Erikson by Miss Portinari." by Miss Portinari."

George sat there still for a moment, absorbing it, looking at Hagbard. He looked from Hagbard to Mavis, and tears started to well up in his eyes. He stood and lifted his stein.

"Here's to ya, Hagbard!" he said, and he drew his arm back in a sidearm motion so as not to spill any of the beer and then let the whole stein fly at Hagbard's head. Laughing, Hagbard swayed to one side, a movement so casual it didn't appear that he was ducking. The stein struck the painted head of Emperor Henry IV. The painting apparently had been done on a heavy board, because the stein smashed to bits without marking it. A waiter rushed forward to wipe the beer away, looking reproachfully at George.

"Sorry," said George. "Hate to damage a work of art. You should have kept your head in place, Hagbard. It would have been less of a loss." He took a deep breath and roared, "Sinners! Sinners in the hands of an angry G.o.d! You are all spiders in the hand of the Lord!" He held out his hand, palm upward. "And he holds you over a fiery pit!" George turned his palm over. He noticed suddenly that everyone in the room was silent and looking at him. Then he pa.s.sed out, falling into the arms of Joe Malik.

"Beautiful," said Hagbard. "Exquisite."

"Is that what you meant by taking the woman away from him?" said Joe angrily as he eased George into a chair. "You're a s.a.d.i.s.tic p.r.i.c.k."

"That's only the first step," said Hagbard. "And I said it was temporary temporary. Did you see the way he threw that stein? His aim was perfect. He would have brained me if I hadn't known it was coming."

"He should have," said Joe. "You mean you were lying about you and Mavis getting married? You were just saying that to bug George?"

"He certainly was not," said Mavis. "Hagbard and I have both had it with this catch-as-catch-can single life. And I'll never find another man who more perfectly fits my value system than Hagbard. I don't need anybody else." As if to prove that she meant what she said, she knelt abruptly and kissed Hagbard's hairy left instep.

"A new mysticism," Simon cried. "The Left-Foot Path."

Joe looked away, embarra.s.sed by the gesture; then another thought crossed his mind, and he looked back. There was something about the scene that stirred a memory in him-but was it a memory of the past or of the future?

"What can I say?" Hagbard asked, grinning. "I love her."

More food arrived, and Harry Coin leaned over to ask, "Hagbard, are you dead sure that this G.o.ddess, Eris, is real and is going to be here tonight, just as solid as you and me?"

"You still have doubts?" Hagbard asked loftily. "If you have seen me, you have seen Our Lady." And he made a campy gesture.

The man really is going ape, Joe thought. "I can't eat any more," he said, motioning the waiter away and feeling dizzy.

Hagbard heard him and shouted, "Eat! Eat, drink, and be merry. You may never see me again, Joe. Somebody at this table is going to betray me, didn't you know that?"

Two thoughts collided in Joe's brain: He knows; he is a Magician He knows; he is a Magician and and He thinks he's Jesus; he's nuts He thinks he's Jesus; he's nuts. But just then George Dorn woke up and said, "Oh, Jesus, Hagbard, I can't take acid."

Hagbard laughed. "The Morgenheutegesternwelt Morgenheutegesternwelt. You're ahead of the script, George. I hadn't started to hand the acid out yet." He took a bottle from his pocket and dumped a pile of caps on the table.

Just then, Joe distinctly heard a rooster crow.

Cars, except for official cars and the vehicles of the performers, their a.s.sistants, and the festival staff, were banned within ten miles of the festival stage. Hagbard, George, Harry Coin, Otto Waterhouse, and Joe pushed their way through shuffling crowds of young people. A VW camper carrying Clark Kent and His Supermen rolled past. Next a huge, black, 1930s-vintage Mercedes slowly made its way past cheering kids. It was surrounded by a square of motorcyclists in white overalls to keep eager fans away. Joe shook his head in admiration at the gleaming supercharger pipes, the glistening hand-rubbed black lacquer, and the wire-spoked wheels. The landau top of the car was up, but, by peering inside, Joe could see several crew-cut blond heads. A blond girl suddenly put her face to the window and stared out expressionlessly.

"That's the American Medical a.s.sociation in that Mercedes," George said.

"Hey," said Harry Coin, "we could pitch a bomb into their car and get all of them right now."

"You'd kill a lot of other people, too, and leave a lot of unfinished business hanging fire," said Hagbard, looking after the Mercedes, which slowly disappeared down the road ahead of them. "That's a nice machine. It belonged to Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt, one of Hitler's ablest generals."

An elephantine black bus carrying the AMA's equipment followed close behind the Mercedes. Silently it trundled past.

WE'LL KILL THE OLD RED ROOSTER WE'LL KILL THE OLD RED ROOSTER The Closed Corporation was generally recognized to be the most esoteric and experimental of all rock groups; this was why their following, although fanatical, was relatively small. "It's heavy heavy, all right," most of the youth culture said, "but is it really rock?" "but is it really rock?" The same question, more politely worded, had often been asked by interviewers, and their leader, Peter "Pall" Mall, had a standard answer: "It's rock," he would say somberly, "and on this rock I will build a new church." Then he would giggle, because he was usually stoned during interviews. (Reporters made him nervous.) In fact, the religious tone was rather prominent when the Closed Corporation appeared in concert, and the chief complaint was that n.o.body could understand the chants that accompanied some of the more interplanetary chords they employed. These chants derived from the Enochian Keys which Dr. John Dee had deciphered from the acrostics in the The same question, more politely worded, had often been asked by interviewers, and their leader, Peter "Pall" Mall, had a standard answer: "It's rock," he would say somberly, "and on this rock I will build a new church." Then he would giggle, because he was usually stoned during interviews. (Reporters made him nervous.) In fact, the religious tone was rather prominent when the Closed Corporation appeared in concert, and the chief complaint was that n.o.body could understand the chants that accompanied some of the more interplanetary chords they employed. These chants derived from the Enochian Keys which Dr. John Dee had deciphered from the acrostics in the Necronomicon Necronomicon, and in modern times had been most notably employed by the well-known poet Aleister Crowley and the Reverend Anton Lavey of the First Church of Satan in San Francisco. On the night of April 30 the Closed Corporation ritually sacrificed a rooster within a pentagram (it gave one last despairing crow before they slit its throat), called upon the Barbarous Names, dropped a tab of mescaline each, and departed for the concert grounds prepared to unleash vibes that would make even the American Medical a.s.sociation turn pale with awe.

WE'LL KILL THE OLD RED ROOSTER WHEN SHE COMES "I just saw Hagbard Celine," said Winifred Saure.

"Naturally he'd be here with all his minions and catamites," said Wilhelm Saure. "We've got to expect to go right down to the wire on this."

"I wonder what he's planning," said Werner Saure.

"Nothing," said Wolfgang Saure. "In my opinion he's planning nothing at all. I know how his mind works-head full of Oriental mystical mush. He's going to rely on his intuition to tell him what to do. He hopes to make it more difficult for us to antic.i.p.ate his actions, since he himself doesn't know what they will be. But he's wrong. His field of action is drastically limited, and there's nothing he can do to stop us."

First the towers appeared over the black-green tops of the pines. They looked like penitentiary guard towers, though in fact the men in them were unarmed and their primary purpose was to house spotlights and loudspeakers. Then the road turned and they were walking next to a twenty-foot-high wire fence. Running parallel to this was an inner fence thirty feet away and about the same height. Beyond that were bright green hillsides. The promoters of the fesival had chopped down and sold all the trees on the hills within the fenced-off area, bulldozed the stumps, and covered the raw earth with fresh sod. Already the green was partically covered by crowds of people. Tents had popped up like mushrooms, and banners waved in the air. Portable outhouses, painted Day-glo orange to make them easy to spot, were set at regular intervals. A vast hum of talking, shouting, singing, and music rose over the hills. Beyond the hills, beyond the central hill where the stage stood, the blue-black waters of Lake Totenkopf heaved and tossed. Even that side of the festival area had its fences and towers.

Joe said, "You'd think they were really worried about someone sneaking in for free."

"These people really know how to build this kind of place," said Otto Waterhouse.

Hagbard laughed. "Come on, Otto, are you a racist about Germans?"

"I was talking about whites. They've got good big ones in the U.S., too. I've seen a couple."

"I never saw one with a geodesic dome, though," said George. "Look at how big that thing is. Wonder what's in it."

"I read that the Kabouters were going to set up a dome," said Joe. "As a first-aid or bad-trip station, or something like that."

"Maybe it's a place where you can go hear the music," said Harry Coin. "h.e.l.l, size of this thing, you can barely see people on the stage, much less hear them."

"You haven't heard the loudspeakers they've got," said Hagbard. "When the music starts they'll be able to hear it all the way to Munich."

They came to a gate. Arching over it was a sign that declared, in red-painted Gothic letters: EWIGE BLUMENKRAFT UND EWIGE SCHLANGEKRAFT.

"See?" said Hagbard. "Right out in the open. For anyone who understands to read and know that the hour is at hand. They won't be hiding much longer."

"Well," said Joe, "at least it doesn't say 'Arbeit macht frei.'" 'Arbeit macht frei.'"

Hagbard handed in the orange week-long tickets for his group, and a black-uniformed usher punched them neatly and returned them. They were inside the Ingolstadt Festival. As the sun sank over the far side of Lake Totenkopf, Hagbard and his contingent mounted a hill. A huge sign over the stage announced that the Oklahoma Home Demonstration Club was playing, and the loudspeakers thundered out an old favorite of that group: "Custer Stomp."

Behind the stage the four members of the American Medical a.s.sociation stood apart and gazed out at the sunset. They were wearing iridescent black tunics and trousers. Members of other bands stood together and talked, many of the groups happy to be meeting each other for the first time. They even fraternized with a few intrepid kids who managed to infiltrate past the guards and make it to the back side of the stage hill. But white-suited attendants kept the public and fellow performers away from the American Medical a.s.sociation. This was generally accepted as the AMA's privilege. They were, after all, universally acclaimed as the greatest rock group in the world. Their records sold the most. Their tours drew audiences that dwarfed even those of the Beatles. Their sound was everywhere. As the Beatles had, for a time, expressed the new freedom of the '60s, so the AMA seemed to epitomize the repressive spirit of the '70s. The secret of their popularity was that they were so appalling. They reminded their fans of all the evils that were being daily visited upon them, and thus hearing and seeing them was like scratching a very bad itch. They suggested that perhaps youth had captured its oppressors or identified with them, and they momentarily turned the pain of the whole scene into pleasure. To learn how to enjoy suffering, since suffering was their lot, kids by the millions flocked to hear the AMA.

"Like a radiant heater," said Wolfgang. "We at the center. Our message projected into a bowl of vibrant young human consciousnesses. Ma.s.sively reflected by them back across the lake-into the lake to the depth of a mile. There, reaching the sunken army. Raising them, in a sense, from the dead."

"We are so close to realizing the dream of thirty thousand years," said Winifred. "Will we be able to do it? Will we be the ones who complete the work begun by great Gruad? And, if not, what will become of us?"

"Doubtless we will scream in h.e.l.l for all eternity," said Werner matter-of-factly. "What would you do to us if we failed?"

"We need fear eternity only if the Eater of Souls is on the scene," said Wilhelm. "And they've still got him imprisoned inside the Pentagon."

"Let no one speak of failure," said Wolfgang. "It is absolutely impossible for us to fail. The plan is foolproof."