Within six months Gruad has formed an organization called the Party of Science. Their banner is an eye inside a triangle which in turn is surrounded by a serpent with its tail in its mouth. The Party of Science demands that Atlantis publish the natural laws Gruad has discovered and make them binding on all with systems of reward and punishment to enforce them. The word “punishment” is another addition to the Atlantean vocabulary coined by Gruad. One of Gruad’s opponents explains to friends of his that it means torture, and everyone’s fur bristles. Ingel Rild announces to a gathering of his supporters that Gruad has proven to his own satisfaction—and the demonstration runs to seventy-two scrolls of logical symbols—that sex is part of what he calls Evil. Only sex for the good of the community is to be permitted under Gruad’s system, to keep the race alive.
A scientist called TON LIT exclaims, “You mean we must be thinking about conception during the act? That’s impossible. Men’s penises would droop, and women’s vaginas wouldn’t get moist. It’s like—well, it’s like making the shrill mouth-music while you are urinating. It would take great training, if it can be done at all.” Ingel Rild proposes the formation of a Party of Freedom to oppose Gruad. Discussing Gruad’s personality, Ingel Rild says he checked the genealogical records and found that several of the most agitated-energy people in all Atlantean history were among his ancestors. Gruad is a mutation, and so are many of his followers. The energy of normal Atlanteans flows slowly. Gruad’s people are impatient and frustrated, and this is what makes them want to inflict suffering on their fellow humans.
Joe sat up with a jolt. If he understood that part of the movie, Gruad—evidently the first Illuminatus—was also the first homo neophilus. And the Party of Freedom, which seemed to be the origin of the Discordian and JAM movements, was pure homo neophobus. How the hell could that be squared with the generally reactionary attitude of current Illuminati policies, and the innovativeness of the Discordians and JAMs? But the film was moving on—
In a disreputable-looking tavernlike place where men and women smoke dope in pipes that they pass from one to another, while people grope in couples and groups in dark corners, SYLVAN MARTISET proposes a Party of Nothingness that rejects the positions of both the Party of Science and the Party of Freedom.
After this we see street fighting, atrocities, the infliction of punishment on harmless people by men wearing Gruad’s eye-and-triangle badge. The Party of Freedom proclaims its own symbol, a golden apple. The fighting spreads, the numbers of the dead mount and Ingel Rild weeps. He and his associates decide on a desperate expedient—-unleashing the lloigor Yog Sothoth. They will offer this unnatural soul-eating energy being from another universe its freedom in return for its help in destroying Gruad’s movement. Yog Sothoth is imprisoned in the great Pentagon of Atlantis on a desolate moor in the southern part of the continent. The Atlantean electric plane bearing Ingel Rild, Ton Lit and another scientist drifts, trailing feathery sparks, to a landing in a flat field overgrown with gray weeds. Within the Pentagon, an enormous black stone structure, the ground is scorched and the air shimmers like a heat mirage. Flickers of static electricity run through the shimmering from time to time, and an unpleasant noise, like flies around a corpse, pervades the whole moor. The faces of the three Atlantean sages register disgust, sickness and terror. They climb the nearest tower and talk to the guard. Suddenly Yog Sothoth takes control of Ton Lit, speaking in an oily, rich, deep and reverberating voice, and asks them what they seek of him. Ton Lit lets out a terrible shriek and claps his hands over his ears. Froth slips from the side of his mouth, his fur bristles and his penis stands erect. His eyes are delirious and suffering, like those of a dying gorilla. The guard uses an electronic instrument that looks like a magician’s wand topped with a five-pointed star to subdue Yog Sothoth. Ton Lit bays like a hound and leaps for Ingel Rild’s throat. The electronic ray drives him back and he stands panting, tongue hanging loose, as the Pentagon first and then the ground begin to soften into asymptotic curves. Yog Sothoth chants, “Ia-nggh-ha-nggh-ha-nggh-fthagn! Ia-nggh-ha-nggh-ha-nggh-hgual! The blood is the life…The blood is the life …” All faces, bodies and perspectives are skewed and there is a greenish tinge on everything. Suddenly the guard strikes the nearest wall of the Pentagon directly with his electronic wand and Ton Lit shrieks, human intelligence coming back into his eyes together with great shame and revulsion. The three sages flee the Pentagon under a sky slowly turning back to its normal shape and color. The laughter of Yog Sothoth follows them. They decide that they cannot release the lloigor.
Meanwhile Gruad has called his closest followers, known as the Unbroken Circle of Gruad, to announce that Kajeci has conceived. Then he shows them a group of manlike creatures with green, scaly skin, wearing long black cloaks and black skullcaps with scarlet plumes. These he calls his Ophidians. Since Atlanteans have a kind of instinctive check on themselves that prevents them from killing except in blind fury, Gruad has developed these synthetic humanoids from the serpent, which he has found to be the most intelligent of all reptiles. They will have no hesitation about destroying men and will act only on Gruad’s command. Some of his followers protest, and Gruad explains that this is not really killing. He says, “Atlanteans who will not accept the teachings of the Party of Science are swinish beings. They are a sort of robot who has no inner spiritual substance to control it. Our bodies, however, are deceived into feeling as if they are our own kind, and we cannot raise our hands against them. Now, however, the light of science has given us hands to raise.” At this meeting Gruad also addresses his men for the first time as the “illuminated ones,”
At the next meeting of the Party of Freedom the Ophidians attack, using iron bars to club people to death and slashing throats with their fangs. Then the Party of Freedom holds a funeral for a dozen of its dead at which Ingel Rild gives an oration describing the ways in which the struggle between Gruad’s followers and the other Atlanteans is changing the character of all human beings:
“Hitherto, Atlanteans have enjoyed knowledge but not worried over the fact that there is much that we do not know. We are conservative and indifferent to new ideas, we have no inner conflicts and we feel like doing the things that seem wise to us. We think that the things we feel like doing will usually work out for the best. We consider pain and pleasure a single phenomenon, which we call sensation, and we respond to unavoidable pain by relaxing or becoming ecstatic. We do not fear death. We can read each other’s minds because we are in touch with all the energies of our bodies. The followers of Gruad have lost that ability, and they are thankful that they have. The Scientists dote on new things and new ideas. This love of the new thing is a matter of genetic manipulation. Gruad is even encouraging people in their twenties to have children, though it is our custom never to have children before we reach a hundred. The generations of Gruad’s followers come thick and fast, and they are not like us. They agonize over their ignorance. They are full of uncertainty and inner conflict between what they should do and what they feel like doing. The children, who are brought up on Gruad’s teachings, are even more disturbed and conflict-filled than their parents. One doctor tells me that the attitudes and the way of life Gruad is encouraging in his people is enough to shorten their life spans considerably. And they are afraid of pain. They are afraid of death. And even as their lives grow shorter, they desperately seek for some means of achieving immortality.”
Gruad tells a meeting of his Unbroken Circle that the time has come to intensify the struggle. If they can’t rule the Atlanteans, they will destroy Atlantis. “Atlantis will be destroyed by light,” says Gruad. “By the light of the sun.” Gruad introduces the worship of the sun to his followers. He reveals the existence of gods and goddesses. “They are all energy, conscious energy,” says Gruad. “This conscious and powerfully directed and focused pure energy I call spirit. All motion is spirit. All light is spirit. All spirit is light.”
Under Gruad’s direction, the Party of Science builds a great pyramid, th
ousands of feet high. It is in two halves; the upper half, made of an indestructible ceramic substance and inscribed with a terrible staring eye, floats five hundred feet above the base, held in place by antigravity generators.
A band of men and women led by LILITH VELKOR, chief spokeswoman for the Party of Nothingness, gathers at the base of the great pyramid and laughs at it. They carry Nothingarian signs:
DON’T CLEAN OUR LENSES, GRUAD—
GET THE CRACK OUT OF YOUR OWN
EVERY TIME I HEAR THE WORD “PROGRESS” MY
FUR BRISTLES
THE SUN SUCKS
FREEDOM DEFINED IS FREEDOM DENIED
THE MESSAGE ON THIS SIGN IS A FLAT LIE
Lilith Velkor addresses the Nothingarians, satirizing all Gruad’s beliefs, claiming that the most powerful god is a crazy woman and she is the goddess of chaos. To the accompaniment of laughter she declares, “Gruad says the sun is the eye of the sun god. That’s more of his notion that males are superior and reason and order are superior. Actually, the sun is a giant golden apple which is the plaything of the goddess of chaos. And it’s the property of anyone she thinks is fair enough to deserve it.” Suddenly a band of Ophidians attacks followers of Lilith Velkor and kills several of them. Lilith Velkor leads her people in an unprecedented attack on the Ophidians. They storm up the side of the great pyramid and throw the Ophidians down to the street, killing them. Amazingly, they succeed in wiping out all the Ophidians. Gruad declares that Lilith Velkor must die. When the opportunity presents itself, his men seize her and take her to a dungeon. There an enormous wheel has been constructed with four spokes in the shape
Lilith Velkor is crucified with ropes, upside down, on this device. Several members of the Party of Science lounge about, watching her die. Gruad enters, goes to the wheel and looks at the dying woman, who says, “This is as good a day to die as any.” Gruad remonstrates with her, saying that death is a great evil and she should fear it. She laughs and says, “All my life I have despised tradition and now I despise innovation also. Surely, I must be a most wicked example for the world!” She dies laughing. Gruad’s rage is unbearable. He vows that he will wait no longer; Atlantis is too wicked to save and he will destroy it.
On a windswept plain in the northern regions of Atlantis a huge teardrop-shaped rocket with graceful fins is poised on the launching pad. Gruad is in the control room making last-minute adjustments while Kajeci and Wo Topod argue with him. Gruad says, “The human race will survive. It will survive the better purged of these Atlanteans, who are nothing but swine, nothing but robots, nothing but creatures who do not understand good and evil. Let them perish.” His finger strikes a red button and the rocket hurtles on its way to the sun. It will take several days to reach there, and meanwhile Gruad has gathered the Unbroken Circle on an airship which takes them away from Atlantis and into the huge mountains to the east in a region that will one day be called Tibet. Gruad calculates that by the time the missile strikes the sun, they will have been landed and underground for two hours. The sun rides blinding yellow over the plains of Atlantis. It is a beautiful day in Zukong Gimorlad-Siragosa, the sun shining down on its slender, graceful towers with spiderweb bridges spiraling among them, its parks, its temples, its museums, its fine public buildings and magnificent private palaces. Its handsome, richly furred people gracefully stride amidst the beauties of the first and finest civilization man has ever produced. Families, lovers, friends and enemies, all unsuspecting what is about to happen, enjoy their private moments. A quintet plays the melodious zinthron, balatet, mordan, swaz and fendrar. Over all, however, the great eye on the side of Gruad’s pyramid glares horrid and red.
Suddenly the sun’s body rages. Coiled flames, balls of gas, roll out. The sun looks like a giant fiery arachnid or octopus. One great flame comes rolling toward the earth, burning red gas which turns yellow, then green, then blue, then white.
There is nothing left of Zukong Gimorlad-Siragosa, except the pyramid with its upper segment now resting on the base, the antigravity generators having been destroyed. The baleful eye looks out over an absolutely flat, burnt-black plain. The ground shakes, great cracks open. The blackened area is a great circle, hundreds of miles in diameter, beyond which is a dark brown and still desolate wasteland. Thousands of cracks appear in the brittle surface of the continent, the strength of whose rocks has been destroyed by the incredible heat of the solar flare. A tide of mud starts crawling over the empty plain. It leaves only the top of the pyramid, with the great eye, showing. Water sweeps over the mud, at first sinking in and standing in pools, then rising higher so that only the tip of the pyramid sticks out of a great lake. Under the water enormous parallel fissures open in the ground on either side of the blackened central circle. The midsection of the continent, including the pyramid, begins to sink. The pyramid falls into the depths of the ocean with cliffs rising on either side of it to the parts of Atlantis that still remain above the ocean. They will remain for many thousands of years more, and they will be the Atlantis remembered in the legends of men. But the true Atlantis—high Atlantis—is gone.
Gruad stares into his crimson-glowing viewplate, watching the destruction of Atlantis. The light changes color, from red to gray, and the face of Gruad turns gray. It is a terrible face. It has aged a hundred years in the last few minutes. Gruad may claim to be in the right, but deep down he knows that what he has done isn’t nice. And yet deep down there is satisfaction, too, for Gruad, long tortured by unreasonable guilt, now has something he can really feel guilty about. He turns to the Unbroken Circle and proposes, since it appears that the earth will survive the cataclysm (he was not really sure that it would), that they plan for the future. Most of them, however, are still in shock. Wo Topod, inconsolable, stabs himself to death, the first recorded time that a member of the human race has deliberately killed himself. Gruad calls upon his followers to destroy all remains of the Atlantean civilization and then, later, to build a perfect civilization when even the ruins of Atlantis have been forgotten.
The great beasts that inhabited Europe, Asia and North America die off as a result of mutations and diseases caused by the solar flare. All relics of the Atlantean civilization are destroyed. The people who were Gruad’s erstwhile countrymen are either killed or driven forth to wander the earth. Besides Gruad’s Himalayan colony there is one other remnant of the High Atlantean era: the Pyramid of the Eye, whose ceramic substance resisted solar flare, earthquake, tidal wave and submersion in the depths of the ocean. Gruad explains that it is right that the eye should remain. It is the eye of God, the One, the scientific-technical eye of ordered knowledge that looks down on the universe and by perceiving it causes it to be. If an event is not witnessed, it does not happen; therefore, for the universe to happen there must be a Witness.
Among the primitive hunters and gatherers a mutation has appeared that seems to be spreading rapidly. More and more people are being born without fur and with hair in the same pattern as Gruad’s. The Hour of God’s Eye has caused mutations in every species.
From the Himalayas the rocket ships of the Unbroken Circle, painted red and white, swoop out in squadrons. They sweep across Europe and land on the brown islands where Atlantis used to be. There they land and raid a city of refugees from the Atlantean disaster. They kill many of the leaders and intellectuals and herd the rest aboard the ships, fly to the Americas and deposit the helpless people on a vast plain. Far below their route of passage lies the Pyramid of the Eye at the bottom of the Atlantic. The base of the pyramid is covered with silt and the break where the upper part of the pyramid had floated on antigravity projectors is also covered. Still the pyramid itself towers over the mud around it, taller by three times than the Great Pyramid of Egypt, the building of which lies twenty-seven thousand years in the future. A vast shadow descends upon the pyramid. There is a suggestion in the darkness of the ocean bottom of giant tentacles, of sucker disks wide as the rims of volcanos, of an eye as big as the sun looking at the eye on the pyramid.
Something touches the pyramid, and enormous as it is, it moves slightly. Then the presence is gone.
The pentagonal trap in which the people of Atlantis had heroically and brilliantly caught the dread ancient being Yog Sothoth has been, amazingly, undamaged by the catastrophe. Being on the southern plain, which was relatively uninhabited, the Pentagon of Yog Sothoth becomes the center of a migration of people who survived the disaster. Emergency cities are set up, those dying of radiation sickness are treated, A second Atlantis begins to take root. And then, from the Himalayas, the ships of the Unbroken Circle come swooping down on one of their raids, Lines of Atlantean men and women are marched to the walls of the Pentagon and there mowed down by laser fire. Then explosive charges are placed amid the heaps of bodies and the masked, uniformed men of the Unbroken Circle withdraw. There is a series of explosions; horrid yellow smoke goes coiling up. The gray stone walls crumble. There is a moment of stillness, balance, tension. Then the piled-up boulders of one side of the wall fly apart as if thrust by the hand of a giant. An enormous claw print appears in the soft soil around the ruins of the Pentagon. The masked men of the Unbroken Circle race frantically for their ships and take off. The ships dart into the sky, stop suddenly, waver and plummet like stones to explosive crashes on the earth. The surviving refugees scream and scatter. Like a scythe going through wheat, death sweeps among them in great arcs as they run in massed mobs. Mouths open in soundless screams, they fall. Only a handful escapes. Over the scene a colossal reddish figure of indeterminate shape and number of limbs stands triumphant.
In the Himalayas, Gruad and the Unbroken Circle watch the destruction of the Pentagon and the massacre of the Atlanteans. The Unbroken Circle cheers, but Gruad strangely weeps. “You think I hate walls?” he says. “I love walls. I love any kind of wall. Anything that separates. Walls protect good people. Walls lock away the evil. There must always be walls and the love of walls, and in the destruction of the great Pentagon that held Yog Sothoth I read the destruction of all that I stand for. Therefore I am stricken with regret.”
The illuminatus! trilogy Page 50