In the next two days, as the Leif Erikson slowly crossed the Sea of Valusia and approached the Danube, George discovered that Hagbard had, indeed, put all his mystical trappings behind him. He spoke only of technical matters concerning the submarine, or other mundane subjects, and was sublimely unconcerned with the role-playing, role-changing and other mind-blowing tactics that had previously made up his persona. What emerged—the new Hagbard, or the old Hagbard of days before his adoption of guru-hood—was a tough, pragmatic, middle-aged engineer, with wide intelligence and interests, an overwhelming kindness and generosity, and many small symptoms of nervousness, anxiety and overwork. But mostly he seemed happy, and George realized that the euphoria derived from his having dropped an enormous burden.
Miss Portinari, meanwhile, had lost the self-effacing quality that made her so eminently forgettable before, and, from the moment Hagbard passed her the ring, she was as remote and gnomic as an Etruscan sybil. George, in fact, found that he was a little afraid of her—an annoying sensation, since he thought he had transcended fear when he found that the Robot was, left to itself, neither cowardly nor homicidal.
George tried to discuss his feelings with Hagbard once, when they happened to be seated together at dinner on April 28. “I don’t know where my- head is at anymore,” he said tentatively.
“Well, in the immortal words of Marx, putta your hat on your neck, then,” Hagbard grinned.
“No, seriously,” George murmured as Hagbard hacked at a steak. “I don’t feel really awakened or enlightened or whatever. I feel like K. in The Castle: I’ve seen it once, but I don’t know how to get back there.”
“Why do you want to get back?” Hagbard asked. “I’m damned glad to be out of it all. It’s harder work than coal mining.” He munched placidly, obviously bored by the direction of the conversation.
“That’s not true,” George protested. “Part of you is still there, and always will be. You’ve just given up being a guide for others.”
“I’m trying to give up,” Hagbard said pointedly. “Some people seem to be trying to reenlist me. Sorry. I’m not a German shepherd or a draftee. Non serviam, George.”
George fiddled with his own steak for a minute, then tried another approach. “What was that Italian phrase you used, just before you gave your ring to Miss Portinari?”
“I couldn’t think of anything else to say,” Hagbard explained, embarrassed. “So, as usual with me, I got arty and pretentious. Dante addresses his readers, in the First Canto of the Paradiso, ‘O voi che siete in piccioletta barca’—roughly, Oh, you who are sailing in a very small boat astern of me. He meant that the readers, not having had the Vision, couldn’t really understand his words. I turned it around, ‘O oi che siete in piccioletta barca,’ admitting I was behind her in understanding. I should get the Ezra Pound Award for hiding emotion in tangled erudition. That’s why I’m glad to give up the guru gig. I never was much better than second-rate at it.”
“Well, I’m still way astern of you …” George began.
“Look,” Hagbard growled. “I’m a tired engineer at the end of a long day. Can’t we talk about something less taxing to my depleted brain? What do you think of the economic system I outline in the second part of Never Whistle While You’re Pissing? I’ve decided to start calling it techno-anarchism; do you think that’s more clear at first sight than anarcho-capitalism?”
And George found himself, frustrated, engaged in a long discussion of non-interest-bearing currencies, land stewardship replacing land ownership, the inability of monopoly capitalism to adjust to abundance, and other matters which would have interested him a week ago but now were very unimportant compared to the question which Zen masters phrased as “getting the goose out of the bottle without breaking the glass”—or specifically, getting George Dorn out of “George Dorn” without destroying GEORGE DORN.
That night, Mavis came again to his bed, and George said again, “No. Not until you love me the way I love you.”
“You’re turning into a stiff-necked prig,” Mavis said. “Don’t try to walk before you can crawl.”
“Listen,” George cried. “Suppose our society crippled every infant’s legs systematically, instead of our minds? The ones who tried to get up and walk would be called neurotics, right? And the awkwardness of their first efforts would be published in the all psychiatric journals as proof of the regressive and schizzy nature of their unsocial and unnatural impulse toward walking, right? And those of you who know the secret would be superior and aloof and tell us to wait, be patient, you’ll let us in on it in your own good time, right? Crap. I’m going to do it on my own.”
“I’m not holding anything back,” Mavis said gently. “There’s no field until both poles are charged.”
“And I’m the dead pole? Go to hell and bake bagels.”
After Mavis left, Stella arrived, wearing cute Chinese pajamas. “Horny?” she asked bluntly.
“Christ Almighty, yes!”
In ninety seconds they were naked and he was nibbling at her ear while his hand rubbed her pubic mat; but a saboteur was at work at his brain. “I love you,” he thought, and it was not untrue because he loved all women now, knowing partially what sex was really all about, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it because it was not totally true, either, since he loved Mavis more, much more. “I’m awfully fond of you,” he almost said, but the absurdity of it stopped him. Her hand cupped his cock and found it limp; her eyes opened and looked into his enquiringly. He kissed her lips quickly and moved his hand lower, inserting a finger until he found the clitoris. But even when her breathing got deeper, he did not respond as usual, and her hand began massaging his cock more desperately. He slid down, kissing nipples and bellybutton on the way, and began licking her clitoris. As soon as she came, he cupped her buttocks, lifted her pelvis, got his tongue into her vagina and forced another quick orgasm, immediately lowering her slightly again and beginning a very gentle and slow return in spiral fashion back to the clitoris. But still he was flaccid.
“Stop,” Stella breathed. “Let me do you, baby.”
George moved upward on the bed and hugged her. “I love you,” he said, and suddenly it did not sound like a lie.
Stella giggled and kissed his mouth briefly. “It takes a lot to get those words out of you, doesn’t it?” she said bemusedly.
“Honesty is the worst policy,” George said grimly. “I was a child prodigy, you know? A freak. It was rugged. I had to have some defense, and somehow I picked honesty. I was always with older boys so I never won a fight. The only way I could feel superior, or escape total inferiority, was to be the most honest bastard on the planet earth.”
“So you can’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it?” Stella laughed. “You’re probably the only man in America with that problem. If you could only be a woman for a while, baby! You can’t imagine what liars most men are.”
“Oh, I’ve said it at times. When it was at least half true. But it always sounded like play-acting to me, and I felt it sounded that way to the woman, too. This time it just came out, perfectly natural, no effort.”
“That is something,” Stella grinned. “And I can’t let it go unrewarded.” Her black body slid downward and he enjoyed the esthetic effect as his eyes followed her—black on white, like the yin-yang or the Sacred Chao—what was the psychoses of the white race that made this beauty seem ugly to most of them? Then her lips closed over his penis and he found that the words had loosened the knot: he was erect in a second. He closed his eyes to savor the sensation, then opened them to look down at her Afro hairdo, her serious dark face, his cock slipping back and forth between her lips. “I love you,” he repeated, with even more conviction. “Oh, Christ, Oh, Eris, oh baby baby, I love you!” He closed his eyes again, and let the Robot move his pelvis in response to her. “Oh, stop,” he said, “stop,” drawing her upward and turning her over, “together,” he said, mounting her, “together,” as her eyes closed when he entered her and then open
ed again for a moment meeting his in total tenderness, “I love you, Stella, I love,” and he knew it was so far along that the weight wouldn’t bother her, collapsing, using his arms to hug her, not supporting himself, belly to belly and breast to breast, her arms hugging him also and her voice saying, “I love you, too, oh, I love you,” and moving with it, saying “angel” and “darling” and then saying nothing, the explosion and the light again permeating his whole body not just the penis, a passing through the mandala to the other side and a long sleep.
The next morning, he and Stella fucked some more, wildly and joyously; they said “I love you” so many times that it became a new mantra to him, and they were still whispering at breakfast. The problem of Mavis and the problem of reaching total enlightenment had both vanished from his mind. Enjoying bacon and eggs that seemed tastier than he had ever eaten before, exchanging pointless and very private jokes with Stella, George Dorn was at peace.
(But nine hours earlier, at that “same” time, the Kachinas gathered in the center of the oldest city in North America, Orabi, and began a dance which an excited visiting anthropologist had never seen before. As he questioned various old men and old women among the People of Peace—which is what ho-pi means—he found that the dance was dedicated to She-Woman-Forever-Not-Change. He knew enough not to try to convert that title into his own grammar, since it represented an important aspect of the Hopi philosophy of Time, which is much like the Simon Moon and Adam Weishaupt philosophies of Time and nothing like what physics students learn, at least until they reach graduate level studies. Only four times, he was told, had this dance ever been necessary: four times when the many worlds were all in danger, and this was the time of the fifth and greatest danger. The anthropologist, who happened to be a Hindu named Indole Ringh, quickly jotted in his notebook: “Cf. four yugas in Upanishads, Wagadu legend in Sudan, and Marsh’s queer notions about Atlantis. This could be big.” The dance went on, the drums pounded monotonously, and Carmel, far away, broke into a sudden perspiration …)
And, in Los Angeles, John Dillinger calmly loaded his revolver, dropped it in his briefcase and set a Panama hat on his neatly combed silver-gray hair. He was humming a song from his youth: “Those wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine …” I hope that pimp is where Hagbard says, he thought; I’ve only got eighteen hours before they declare martial law … “Good-bye forever,” he hummed on, “old fellows and pals …”
I saw the fnords the same day I first heard about the plastic martini. Let me be very clear and precise about this, since many of the people on this trip are deliberately and perversely obscure: I would not, could not, have seen the fnords if Hagbard Celine hadn’t hypnotized me the night before, on the flying saucer.
I had been reading Pat Walsh’s memos, at home, and listening to a new record from the Museum of Natural History. I was adding a few new samples to my collection of Washington-Weishaupt pictures on the wall, when the saucer appeared hovering outside my window. Needless to say, it didn’t particularly surprise me; I had saved a little of the AUM, after Chicago, contrary to the instructions from ELF, and had dosed myself. After meeting the Dealy Lama, not to mention Malaclypse the Elder, and seeing that nut Celine actually talk to gorillas, I assumed my mind was a point of receptivity where the AUM would trigger something truly original. The UFO, in fact, was a bit of a letdown; so many people had seen them already, and I was ready for something nobody had ever seen or imagined.
It was even more a disappointment when they psyched me, or slurped me aboard, and I found, instead of Martians or Insect Trust delegates from the Crab Galaxy, just Hagbard, Stella Maris and a few other people from the Leif Erikson.
“Hail Eris,” said Hagbard.
“All hail Discordia,” I replied, giving the three-after-two pattern, and completing the pentad. “Is this something important, or did you just want to show me your latest invention?”
The inside of the saucer was, to be trite, eerie. Everything was non-Euclidean and semitransparent; I kept feeling that I might fall through the floor and hurtle to the ground to smash myself on the sidewalk. Then we started moving and it got worse.
“Don’t let the architecture disturb you,” Hagbard said. “My own adaptation of some of Bucky Fuller’s synergetic geometry. It’s smaller, and more solid, than it looks. You won’t fall out, believe me.”
“Is this contraption behind all the flying saucer reports since 1947?” I asked curiously.
“Not quite,” Hagbard laughed. “That’s basically a hoax. The plan was created in the United States government, one of the few ideas they’ve had without direct Illuminati inspiration since about the middle of Roosevelt’s first term. A reserve measure, in case something happens to Russia and China.”
“Hi, baby,” I said softly to Stella, remembering San Francisco. “Would you tell me, minus the Celine rhetoric and paradox, what the hell he’s talking about?”
“The State is based on threat,” Stella said simply. “If people aren’t afraid of something, they’ll realize they don’t need that big government hand picking their pockets all the time. So, in case Russia and China collapse from internal dissension, or get into a private war and blow each other to hell, or suffer some unexpected natural calamity like a series of earthquakes, the saucer myth has been planted. If there are no earthly enemies to frighten the American people with, the saucer myth will immediately change. There will be ‘evidence’ that they come from Mars and are planning to invade and enslave us. Dig?”
“So,” Hagbard added, “I built this little gizmo, and I can travel anywhere I want without interference. Any sighting of this craft, whether by a radar operator with twenty years’ experience or a little old lady in Perth Amboy, is regarded by the government as a case of autosuggestion—since they know they didn’t plant it themselves. I can hover over cities, like New York, or military installations that are Top Secret, or any place I damned well please. Nice?”
“Very nice,” I said. “But why did you bring me up here?”
“It’s time for you to see the fnords,” he replied. Then I woke up in bed and it was the next morning. I made breakfast in a pretty nasty mood, wondering if I’d seen the fnords, whatever the hell they were, in the hours he had blacked out, or if I would see them as soon as I went out in the street. I had some pretty gruesome ideas about them, I must admit. Creatures with three eyes and tentacles, survivors from Atlantis, who walked among us, invisible due to some form of mind shield, and did hideous work for the Illuminati. It was unnerving to contemplate, and I finally gave in to my fears and peeked out the window, thinking it might be better to see them from a distance first.
Nothing. Just ordinary sleepy people, heading for their buses and subways.
That calmed me a little, so I set out the toast and coffee and fetched in the New York Times from the hallway. I turned the radio to WBAI and caught some good Vivaldi, sat down, grabbed a piece of toast and started skimming the first page.
Then I saw the fnords.
The feature story involved another of the endless squabbles between Russia and the U.S. in the UN General Assembly, and after each direct quote from the Russian delegate I read a quite distinct “Fnord!” The second lead was about a debate in Congress on getting the troops out of Costa Rica; every argument presented by Senator Bacon was followed by another “Fnord!” At the bottom of the page was a Times depth-type study of the growing pollution problem and the increasing use of gas masks among New Yorkers; the most distressing chemical facts were interpolated with more “Fnords.”
Suddenly I saw Hagbard’s eyes burning into me and heard his voice: “Your heart will remain calm. Your adrenalin gland will remain calm. Calm, all-over calm. You will not panic. You will look at the fnord and see it. You will not evade it or black it out. You will stay calm and face it.” And further back, way back: my first-grade teacher writing FNORD on the blackboard, while a wheel with a spiral design turned and turned on his desk, turned and turned, and his voice droned on,
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IF YOU DON’T SEE THE FNORD IT CAN’T EAT YOU, DON’T SEE THE FNORD, DON’T SEE THE FNORD …
I looked back at the paper and still saw the fnords.
This was one step beyond Pavlov, I realized. The first conditioned reflex was to experience the panic reaction (the activation syndrome, it’s technically called) whenever encountering the word “fnord.” The second conditioned reflex was to black out what happened, including the word itself, and just to feel a general low-grade emergency without knowing why. And the third step, of course, was to attribute this anxiety to the news stories, which were bad enough in themselves anyway.
Of course, the essence of control is fear. The fnords produced a whole population walking around in chronic low-grade emergency, tormented by ulcers, dizzy spells, nightmares, heart palpitations and all the other symptoms of too much adrenalin. All my left-wing arrogance and contempt for my countrymen melted, and I felt genuine pity. No wonder the poor bastards believe anything they’re told, walk through pollution and overcrowding without complaining, watch their sons hauled off to endless wars and butchered, never protest, never fight back, never show much happiness or eroticism or curiosity or normal human emotion, live with perpetual tunnel vision, walk past a slum without seeing either the human misery it contains or the potential threat it poses to their security…Then I got a hunch, and turned quickly to the advertisements. It was as I expected: no fnords. That was part of the gimmick, too: only in consumption, endless consumption, could they escape the amorphous threat of the invisible fnords.
The illuminatus! trilogy Page 48