The fourth week was, to be frank about it, definitely bizarre. Canvera discoursed at length on the lost civilization that once existed in the Gobi Desert and denounced those, such as Brion Gysin, who believed it had destroyed itself in atomic war. Rather, he asserted, it had been obliterated when the Illuminati arrived from the planet Vulcan in flying saucers. "Remember the Alamo" was now replaced by "Remember Carcosa," Canvera having discerned that both Ambrose Bierce and H. P. Lovecraft were describing this tragic Gobian society in their fiction. The hippies were again delighted- this was the funky kind of trip that had originally made Canvera a mock folk hero among them- and they especially appreciated his call for the U.S. to abandon the next moon shot and launch a punitive expedition to Vulcan both to wipe out Illuminism at its source and to avenge poor Carcosa. The WHORE regulars, however, were again upset; all that concern with Carcosa struck them as creeping one-worldism.
The fifth week, Canvera took a new turn, denouncing the masses for their stupidity and proclaiming that the boobs probably deserved being governed by the Illuminati since most of them were too dumb to find their own behinds in a dark room even using both hands. He had been browsing through a volume of H. L. Mencken (sent to him over a year earlier by El Haj Stackerlee Mohammed, ne Pearson, after one of his put-prayers-back-in-the-public-schools tirades); but he had also been pondering an invitation to join the Illuminati. This document, which came in an envelope with no return address, informed him that he was too smart to stay with the losers all his life and ought to climb on the winning side before it was too late. It added that membership dues were $3125, which should be put in a cigar box and buried in his back yard, after which it promised "one of our underground agents will contact you." At first, Canvera had considered this a hoax- he received many put-ons in the mail, together with pornography, Rosicrucian pamphlets, illustrated with the eye-and-pyramid design, and pretended fan letters signed by such names as Eldridge Cleaver, Fidel Castro, Anton Szandor Levay or Judge Crater, all of course cooked up by his Lincoln Avenue audience. Later, however, it struck him that 3125 was five to the fifth power and that convinced him a True Illuminatus was indeed communicating with him. He took the $3125 out of his savings account, buried it as instructed, made a pro-Illuminati recording as a gesture of good faith and waited. The next day he was shot, several times, in the head and shoulders, dying of natural causes as a result.
(In present time again, Rebecca Goodman enters the Hotel Tudor lobby in answer to the second mysterious phone call of the day, while Hagbard decides George Dorn needs to be illuminized further before Ingolstadt, and Esperando Despond clears his throat and says, "I want to explain the mathematics of plague to you men…")
Actually, poor old Canvera's death had nothing to do with the Illuminati or with his former compatriots in WHORE. The man had been practicing the libertine philosophy of his post-AUM phone editorials and had tampered with Cassandra Acconci, the beloved daughter of Ronald Acconci, Chicago Regional Commander of God's Lightning and a long-time contributor to KCUF. Acconci arranged, via State's Attorney Milo A. Flanagan, for the local Maf to do a hit on Canvera. But there are no endings, any more than there are any beginnings; it next developed that Canvera's seed lived on in wedlock with Cassandra's ovum and was in danger of becoming a human being within her previously trim abdomen.
Saul Goodman had no idea that the room he was in had last been rented to George Dorn; he was conscious only of his impatience, not knowing that Rebecca was at that moment on an elevator approaching his floor… And a mile north, Peter Jackson, still trying to put together the July issue of Confrontation virtually singlehanded, dives into the slush pile (which is the magazine industry's elegant name for unsolicited manuscripts) and comes up with more fallout from the Moon-Malik AUM project of 1970. "Orthodox Science: The New Religion," he reads. Well, lets sample it, what the hell. Opening at random he finds:
Einstein's concept of spherical space, furthermore, suffers from the same defect as the concept of a smoothly or perfectly spherical earth: it rests upon the use of the irrational number, ?. This number has no operational definition; there is no place on any engineer's scale to which one can point and say "This is exactly ?," although these scales are misleadingly marked with such a spot. ?, in fact, can never be found in the real world, and there are historical and archeological reasons to believe it was created by a Greek mathematician under the influence of the mind-warping hallucinogenic mushroom Amanita muscaria. It is pure surrealism. You cannot write ? as a real number; you can only approximate it, as 3.1417… etc. Chemistry knows no such units: three atoms of an element may combine with four atoms of another element, but you will never find ? atoms combining with anything. Quantum physics reveals that an electron may jump three units or four units, but it will not jump ? units. Nor is ? necessary to geometry, as is sometimes claimed; R. Buckminster Fuller has created an entire geometric system, at least as reliable as that of the ancient Greek dope fiends, in which ? does not appear at all. Space, then, may be slanted or kiltered in various ways, but it cannot be smoothly spherical…
"What the ring-tailed rambling hell?" Peter Jackson said aloud. He flipped to the end:
In conclusion, I want to thank a strange and uncommon man, James Mallison, who provided the spark which set me thinking about these matters. In fact, it was due to my meeting with Mr. Mallison that I sold my hardware business, returned to college and majored in cartography and topology. Although he was a religious fanatic (as I was at the time of our meeting) and would, therefore, not appreciate many of my discoveries, it is due to this man's perverse, peculiar and yet brilliant prodding that I embarked on the search which has lead to this new theory of a Penta-hedroidal Universe.
W. Clement Cotex, Ph.D
"Far fucking out," Peter muttered. James Mallison was a pen name Joe Malik sometimes used, and here was another James Mallison inspiring this guy to become a Ph.D. and invent a new cosmological theory. What was the word Joe used for such coincidences? Synch-something…
("1472," Esperando Despond concludes his gloomy mathematical calculations. "That's the number of plague cases we might have right now, at noon, if the girl had only two contacts after leaving Dr. Mocenigo. Now, if she had three contacts…" The assembled FBI agents are gradually turning a pale greenish color from the neck up. Cannel, the only actual contact, is busy two blocks away stuffing money into a briefcase.)
"That's him!" Mrs. Edward Coke Bacon cried excitedly, addressing Basil Banghart, another FBI agent, in an office in Washington. She is pointing at a photo of Albert "the Teacher" Stern. "Ma'am," Banghart says kindly, "that can't be him. 1 don't even know why his picture's still in the file. That's a no-account junkie who once got on our most-wanted list because he confessed to a murder he didn't even commit." In Cincinnati, an FBI artist is completing a portrait under the direction of the widow of a slain TV repairman: the face of the killer, gradually emerging, combines various features of Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll, George Dorn and the lead vocalist of the American Medical Association, which group was at that moment boarding a plane at Kennedy International Airport for the Ingolstadt gig. Rebecca Goodman, rising in the Hotel Tudor elevator, has a flash memory of a nightmare of the night before: Saul being shot by the same vocalist, dressed as a monk, in red-and-white robes, while a Playboy bunny danced in front of some kind of giant pyramid. In Princeton, New Jersey, a nuclear physicist named Nils Nosferatu-one of the few survivors of the early morning shootings- babbles to the detective and police stenographer at his bedside, "Tlaloc sucks. You can't trust them. The midget is the one to watch. We'll be moved, all right, when the tear gas hits. Fun is fun. Omega. George's brother met the dolphins first, and that was the psychic hook that brought George in. She's at the door. She's buried in the desert. Any deviation will result in termination. Unify the forces. You hold the hose. I'll get Mark."
"I've got to start telling you the truth, George," Hagbard began hesitantly, as the Midget, Carmel and Dr. Horace Naismith collided in front of the doo
r of the Sands Hotel ("Watch the fuck where you're going," Carmel growled), and she was at the door, her heart was pounding, an intuition was forming in her mind, and she knocked (and Peter Jackson began dialing Epicene Wildeblood), and she was sure of it, and she was afraid of being sure because she might be wrong, and the Midget said to Dr. Naismith "Rude bastard, wasn't he?" and the door opened, and the door of Milo O. Flanagan's office opened to admit Cassandra Acconci, and her heart stopped, and Dr. Nosferatu screamed, "The door. She's in the door. The door in the desert. He eats Carmels," and it was him and she was in his arms and she was weeping and laughing and asking, "Where have you been, baby?" And Saul closed the door behind her and drew her further into the room. "I'm not a cop anymore," he said, "I'm on the other side."
"What?" Rebecca noticed there was a new thing in his eyes, a thing for which she had no word.
"You can stop worrying that you'll get back on horse," he went on gaily. "And if you've ever been afraid of your sexual fantasies, don't be. We've all got them. Saint Bernards!"
But even that wasn't as weird as the new thing in his eyes.
"Baby," she said, "baby.What the hell is this?"
"I wanted sex with my father, when I was two years old. When did you have that thing about the Saint Bernard?"
"When I was eleven or twelve, I think. Just before my first period. My God, you must have been a lot further away than I ever imagined." She was beginning to recognize the new thing. It wasn't intelligence; he had always had that. With awe, she realized it was what the ancients called wisdom.
"I've always had a thing about black women, just like your thing about black men," he went on. "I think everybody in this country has a touch of it. The blacks have it about us, too. I was in one head, a brilliant black guy, musician, scientist, poet, a million talents, and white women were like the Holy Grail to him. And your fantasy about Spiro Agnew-I had one just like that about Ilse Koch, a Nazi bitch from before your time. It was the same thing in both cases, revenge. Not real sex, hate-sex. Oh, we're all so crazy-in-the-head."
Rebecca backed up and sat down on the bed. "It's too much, too fast, I'm scared. I can see you don't have any contempt for me, but, Lord, can I live knowing that somebody else knows every single repressed desire I have?"
"Yes," Saul said calmly. "And you're mistaken about Time. I can't know every secret, darling. I've only had a smattering of them. A handful. There are a dozen people right now who've been through my head the same way, and I can look any one of them in the eye. The things I know about them!" He laughed.
"It's still too fast," Rebecca said. "You disappear, and then you come back knowing thongs about me that I only half know myself, and you're not a cop anymore… What do you mean, you've joined 'the other side'? The Mafia? The Morituri groups?"
"No," Saul answered happily. "Much further out than that. Darling, I've been driven mad by the world's best brainwashers and put back together again by a computer that does psychotherapy, predicts the future and steers a submarine all at once. On the way, I learned things about humanity and the universe that it would take a year to tell you. And I don't have much time right now, because I've got to fly to Las Vegas. In two or three days, if everything works out, I'll be able to show you, not just tell you-"
"Are you reading my mind right now?" Rebecca asked, still awed and nervous.
Saul laughed again. "It isn't that simple. It takes years of training, and even then it's like an old radio would you like to hear a scientific lecture while you're being laid? That's a perversion we've never tried before." His hand moved down from her cheek to her neck and then began unbuttoning her blouse.
("There's a Morituri bomb factory in your building," Cassandra Acconci said flatly. "On the seventeenth floor. The name on the buzzer is the same as yours."
"My brother!" Milo O. Flanagan bellowed. "Right under my nose! That freaking faggot!")
"Oh, Saul. Oh, Saul, Saul," Rebecca closed her eyes as the mouth tightened on her nipple… and Dr. Horace Naismith crossed the lobby of the Sands, affixing the VSR badge to his lap'el, and passed the Midget again… "Well," the Attorney General told the President, "one solution, of course, is to nuke Las Vegas. But that wouldn't solve the problem of the possible carriers who could have hopped a plane already and might be anywhere in the country now, or anywhere in the world." While the President washes down three Librium, a Tofranil and an Elavil, the Vice President asks thoughtfully, "Suppose we just distribute the antidote to party workers and ride this thing out?" He is feeling more than usually misanthropic, having had an appalling evening in New York due to his impulsiveness in answering a personal ad which had touched his heart…
("Thank you Cassandra," Milo A. Flanagan said fervently. "I'm eternally grateful to you."
"One helping hand deserves another," Cassandra replied; she remembered how Milo and Smiling Jim Tre-pomena had helped her get the abortion the time she was knocked up by that Canvera character. Her father had wanted to send her to New York for a legal D amp; C, but Milo had pointed out that it would look kind of funny to some people for the daughter of a high KCUF spokesman to have an official abortion. "Besides," Smiling Jim had added, "you don't want to fool around with them New York Jew doctors. They might do dirty things to you. Just trust me, child; we've got the country's best-qualified criminal abortionists in Cincinnati." Actually, though, the real reason Cassandra was blowing the whistle on Padre Pederastia's bomb emporium was to annoy Simon Moon, whom she had been trying to get into her bed ever since she met him at the Friendly Stranger Coffee House six months before. Simon hadn't been interested, due to his obsession with black women, who represented the Holy Grail to him.)
"Wildeblood here," the cultured drawl came over the wire.
"Have you finished your review yet?" Peter Jackson asked, crushing another cigarette butt in his ashtray and worrying about lung cancer.
"Yes, and you'll love it. I really tear these two smart-asses apart." Wildeblood was enthusiastic. "Listen to this: 'a pair of nursery Nietzsches dreaming of a psychedelic Superman.' And this: 'a plot that is only a put-on, characters who are cardboard, and a pretense of scholarship that amounts to sheer bluff.' But this is the crusher; listen: 'a constant use of obscene language for shock effect until the reader begins to feel as depressed as an unwilling spectator at a quarrel between a fishwife and a lobster-pot pirate.' Don't you think that will get quoted at all the best cocktail parties this season?"
"I suppose so. The book's a real stinker, eh?"
"Heavens, I wouldn't know for sure. I told you yesterday, it's absurdly long. Three volumes, in fact. Boring as hell. I only had time to skim it. But listen to this, dear boy: 'If The Lord of the Rings is a fairy tale for adults, sophisticated readers will quickly recognize this monumental miscarriage as a fairy tale for paranoids.' That refers to the ridiculous conspiracy theory that the plot, if there is one, seems to revolve around. Nicely worded, wouldn't you say?"
"Yeah, sure," Peter said, crossing off book review on his pad. "Send it over. I'll pay the messenger."
Epicene Wildeblood, hanging up, crossed off Confrontation on his own pad, found Time next on the list, and picked up another book to be immortalized by his devastating witticisms. He was feeling more than usually misanthropic, having had a disastrous evening the night before. Somebody had answered his personal ad about his "interest in Greek Culture" and he had thrilled at the thought of a new asshole to conquer; the asshole, unfortunately, had turned out to be the Vice President of the United States, who was interested only in declaiming about the glorious achievements of the military junta that had ruled in Athens. When Eppy, despairing of sex, had tried to steer the conversation to Plato at least, the VP asked, "Are you sure he was a Greek? That sounds like a wop name to me."
(Tobias Knight and two other FBI agents elbow past the Midget searching for whores who might have been with Dr. Mocenigo the night before, while outside the VSR's first contingent, the Hugh M. Hefner Brigade, led by Dr. Horace Naismith himself, marches by si
nging: "We're Vetrans of the Sexule Revolution/ Our rifles were issued, we had our own guns/ One was for fighting, the other for fun/ We rose up in arms and none failed to come/ We're Vets of the Sex Revo-loooooooooootion!")
You see, darling, it all revolves around sex, but not in the sense that Freud thought. Freud never understood sex. Hardly anybody understands sex, in fact, except a few poets here and there. Any scientist who starts to get an inkling keeps his mouth shut because he knows he'd be drummed out of the profession if he said what he knew. Here, I'll help you unhook that. What we're feeling now is supposed to be tension, and what we'll feel after orgasm is supposed to be relaxation. Oh, they're so pretty. Yes, I know I always say that. But they are pretty. Pretty, pretty, pretty. Mmmm. Mmmm. Oh, yes, yes. Just hold it like that a moment. Yes. Tension? Lord, yes that's what I mean. How can this be tension? What's it got in common with worry or anxiety or anything else that we call tension? It's a strain, but not a tension. It's a drive to break out, and a tension is a drive to hold in. Those are the two polarities. Oh, stop for a minute. Let me do this. You like that?
The Illuminatus! Trilogy Page 41