The illuminatus! trilogy

by Robert Shea; Robert Anton Wilson

  “Whew,” said John-John Dillinger, emerging from the tent, “who would have thought the old man’d have so much come in him? She says she wants George in there after Mal.”

  The woman behind the veil was glowing. There was no light in the tent, save for the deep golden radiance that came from her body.

  “Come closer, George,” she said. “I don’t want you to make love to me now—I only want you to learn the truth. Stand here before me.”

  The woman behind the veil was Mavis. “Mavis, I love you,” said George. “I’ve loved you ever since you took me out of that jail in Mad Dog.”

  “Look again, George,” said Stella.

  “Stella! What happened to Mavis?”

  I circle around, I circle around …

  “Don’t play games with yourself, George. You know perfectly well that a moment ago I was Mavis.”

  “It’s the acid,” said George.

  “The acid only opens your eyes, George. It doesn’t work miracles,” said Miss Mao.

  I circle around, I circle around …

  “Oh, my God!” said George. And he thought: And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

  Mavis was there again. “Do you understand, George? Do you understand why you never saw all of us together at once? Do you understand why, all the time you wanted to fuck me, that when you were fucking Stella you were fucking me? And do you understand that I am not one woman or three women but an infinite number of women?” Before his eyes she turned red, yellow, black, brown, young, middle-aged, a child, an old woman, a Norwegian blonde, a Sicilian brunette, a wild-eyed Greek woman, a tall Ashanti, a slant-eyed Masai, a Japanese, a Chinese, a Vietnamese, and on and on and on.

  The paleface kept turning colors, the way people do when you’re on peyote. Now he looked almost like an Indian. That made it easier to talk to him. Why shouldn’t people turn colors? All the trouble in the world came from the fact that they usually stayed the same color. James nodded profoundly. As usual, peyote had brought him a big Truth. If whites and blacks and Indians were turning colors all the time, there wouldn’t be any hate in the world, because nobody would know which people to hate.

  Who the hell’s mind was that? George wondered. The tent was dark. He looked around for the woman. He rushed out of the tent. No one was looking at him. They were all, Hagbard and the rest of them, staring in awe at a colossal figure that grew ever taller as it strode away from them. It was a golden woman in golden robes with wild gold, red, black hair flowing free. She stepped over the fence that guarded the festival grounds as casually as if it were the threshold of a door. She towered over the Bavarian pines. In her left hand she carried an enormous golden orb.

  Hagbard put his hand on George’s shoulder. “It is possible,” he said, “to achieve transcendental illumination though a multiplicity of orgasms as well as through a multiplicity of deaths.”

  There were lights advancing down the road. The woman, now ninety-three feet tall, strode toward those lights. She laughed, and the laughter echoed across Lake Totenkopf.

  “Great Gruad! What’s that?” cried Werner.

  “It’s the Old Woman!” shouted Wolfgang, his lips falling away from his teeth in a snarl.

  The sudden cry “Kallisti!” reverberated through the Bavarian hills louder than the music of the Ingolstadt festival had been. Trailing a cometlike cloud of sparks, the golden apple fell into the center of the advancing army.

  The Supernazis might have been the living dead, but they were still human. What each man saw in the apple was his heart’s desire. Private Heinrich Krause saw the family he had left behind thirty years ago—not knowing that his living grandchildren were at this moment on the pontoon bridge across Lake Totenkopf, fleeing his advance. Corporal Gottfried Kuntz saw his mistress (who in reality had been raped and then disemboweled by Russian soldiers when Berlin fell in 1945). Oberlieutenant Sigmund Voegel saw a ticket to the Wagner festival at Bayreuth. Colonel-SS Konrad Schein saw a hundred Jews lined up before a machine gun that awaited his hand on the trigger. Obergruppenfuehrer Ernst Bickler saw a blue china soup tureen standing in an empty fireplace at his grandmother’s house in Kassel. It was brimful of steaming brown dogshit into which was plunged a silver spoon. General Hanfgeist saw Adolf Hitler, his face blackened, his eyes and tongue bulging out, his neck broken, spinning at the end of a hangman’s rope.

  All of the men who saw the apple, in whatever form, began to fight and kill one another for possession. Tanks smashed into one another head-on. Artillerymen lowered the barrels of their guns and fired point-blank into the center of the melee.

  “What is it, Wolfgang?” said Winifred imploringly, her arms thrown in panic around his waist.

  “Look into the center of the battle,” said Wolfgang grimly. “What do you see?”

  “I see the throne of the world. One single chair twenty-three feet off the ground, studded with seventeen rubies, and brooding over it the serpent swallowing its tail, the Rosy Cross, and the Eye. I see that throne and know that I alone am to ascend it and occupy it forever. What do you see?”

  “I see Hagbard Celine’s teufelscheiss head on a silver platter,” Wolfgang snarled, thrusting her from him with trembling hands. “Eris has thrown the Apple of Discord, and our Supernazis will fight and kill each other until we destroy it.”

  “Where did she go?” asked Werner.

  “She’s lurking about somewhere in some other form, no doubt,” said Wolfgang. “As a toadstool or an owl or some such thing, cackling over the chaos she’s caused.”

  Suddenly Wilhelm stood up, his fingers clawing at empty air. In a frightfully clumsy fashion, as if he were deaf, dumb, and blind, he clawed and clamored his way over the side of the Mercedes that had belonged to von Rundstedt. Once out of the car, he took a position about ten feet away from his brothers and sister, turned, and faced them. His eyes stared—every muscle in his body was rigid—the crotch of his trousers bulged.

  The voice that came out of his mouth was deep, rich, oleaginous, and horrid: “There are long accounts to settle, children of Gruad.”

  Wolfgang forgot the sounds of battle that raged around him. “You! Here! How did you escape?”

  The voice was like crude petroleum seeping through gravel, and, like petroleum, it was a fossil thing, the voice of a creature that had arisen on the planet when the South Pole was in the Sahara and the great cephalopods were the highest form of life.

  “I took no notice. The geometries ceased to bind me. I came forth. I ate souls. Fresh souls, not the miserable plasma you have fed me all these years.”

  “Great Gruad! Is that your gratitude?” Wolfgang stormed. In a lower voice he said to Werner, “Find the talisman. I think it’s in the black case sealed with the Seal of Solomon and the Eye of Newt.” To the being that occupied Wilhelm’s body he said, “You come at an opportune time. There will be much killing here, and many souls to eat.”

  “These around us have no souls. They have only pseudo-life. It sickens me to sense them.”

  Wolfgang laughed. “Even the lloigor can feel disgust, then.”

  “I have been sick for many hundreds of years, while you kept me sealed in one pentagon after another, feeding me not fresh souls but those wretched stored essences.”

  “We gave you much!” cried Werner. “Every year, just for you, thirty thousand—forty thousand—fifty thousand deaths in traffic accidents alone.”

  “But not fresh. Not fresh! Perhaps, though, you can settle your debt to me tonight. I sense many lives nearby— lives you have somehow lured here. They can be mine.”

  Werner handed Wolfgang a stick with a silver pentagon at the tip. Wolfgang pointed it at the possessed Wilhelm, who shrieked and fell to his knees. For a moment there was silence, broken only by the sound of Winifred’s terrified sobbing and the crack of rifles and the chatter of machine guns in the background.

  “You shall not have those lives, Yog Sothoth. They are for the transcendental
illumination of our servants. Wait, though, and there shall be lives in plenty for all of us.”

  Werner said, “While we parley our army is destroying itself, and there will be no lives for anyone.”

  “Really?” said the thick voice. “How has your plan gone astray? Let me read you and learn.” Wolfgang felt goose pimples break out all over his body. He shuddered as coarse, boneless fingers dripping with slime turned the pages of his mind.

  “Mmm—I see. She is here, then. My ancient enemy. It would be good to meet her in battle once again.”

  “Are your powers equal to hers?” said Wolfgang eagerly.

  “I yield to none” came the proud reply.

  “Ask him why he’s always getting trapped in pentagons, then,” said Werner in a low voice.

  “Shut up!” Wolfgang whispered savagely. To the lloigor he said, “Destroy her golden apple and release my army to move ahead, and I will withhold the power of this pentagon and give you all the lives you seek.”

  “Done!” said the voice. Wilhelm suddenly threw his head back, mouth wide open. A choking sound came from his throat. He collapsed on his back, spread-eagled. A strange, greenish, glowing gas rose from his throat.

  Werner jumped from the car and rushed over to Wilhelm. “He’s alive.”

  “Of course he’s alive,” said Wolfgang. “The Eater of Souls simply took possession of his body to communicate with us.”

  Winifred screamed, “Look!”

  The same phosphorescent gas, a huge cloud of it, now obscured the heart of the battle. It seemed to take a shape like a spider with an uncountable number of legs, arms, antennae, and tentacles. Gradually the shape changed, glowing brighter and brighter. A nearby tower on the festival grounds was as visible in the reflected light as if it were day. Then the glow faded, and the tower was silhouetted in moonlight. A great silence fell over the hills around Lake Totenkopf, broken only by the glad cries of the last contingent of festivalgoers as they made it safely to the opposite shore.

  “There’s no time to lose,” Wolfgang said to Werner and Wilhelm. “Round up some officers. See if you can find Hanfgeist.”

  Hanfgeist had disappeared. The highest-ranking officer surviving was Obergruppenfuehrer Bickler, visions of dog turds sadly fading in a mind that possessed only a horrid semblance of life. A quick survey showed the four Illuminati Primi that the Apple of Discord had cost them half their army.

  “Onward!” roared Wolfgang, and, tanks in the van, they smashed through the festival fence, raced over the hills, troops trotting double-time, and unhesitatingly charged out onto the bridge. Wolfgang stood in the back seat of the von Rundstedt Mercedes, his black-gloved hands gripping the back of the front seat, the wind blowing through his crew cut like a field of wheat. Suddenly, beside him, Wilhelm screamed.

  “What is it now?” yelled Wolfgang over the roar of his advancing army.

  “The lives we are about to take,” the voice of the lloigor grated. “They are mine, yes? All mine?”

  “Listen to me, you energy vampire. We have other debts to discharge, and other projects to complete. There are twenty-three of our faithful servants waiting in the Donau-Hotel to be transcendentally illuminated. They come first You’ll get yours. Wait your turn.”

  “Farewell,” said the lloigor. “I shall see you at the hour of your death.”

  “I will never die!”

  “Fool!” the voice shrieked with Wilhelm’s mouth. Suddenly Wilhelm stood up, threw open the door of the car, and hurled himself out into the lake. He struck with a huge splash, then sank like a stone. A greenish glow spread in the black water where he had gone down.

  And then there were four.

  Hagbard stood atop a hill, watching the tanks roll across the bridge, followed by the black Mercedes, followed by troop carriers and artillery, followed by trotting foot soldiers. He knelt beside a detonator and shoved down the handle.

  From end to end the bridge and those upon it disappeared in geysers of white water. The thunder of the explosions—demolition charges placed by the porpoise horde under the direction of Howard—re-echoed through the hills around the lake.

  The tanks went under first. As the front end of the command car sank under water, Werner Saure screamed, “My foot’s caught!” He went down with the car, while Wolfgang and Winifred, their tears mingling with the water of Lake Totenkopf, splashed about in the water with the few remaining Supernazis.

  And then there were three.

  Hagbard shouted, “I sank it! I sank the George Washington Bridge!”

  “Is anything changed?” said George.

  “Of course,” said Hagbard. “We’ve got them on the run. We’ll be able to finish them off in a few more minutes. Then there’ll be no more evil in the world. Everything will be ginger-peachy” His tone seemed sarcastic rather than victorious, George noted apprehensively.

  “Now I’ll admit,” Fission Chips said reasonably, “that I’m under the influence of some bloody drug from the Kool-Aid. But this simply cannot all be hallucination. Very definitely, thirteen people took their clothes off and started dancing. I quite certainly heard them singing ‘Blessed be, blessed be,’ over and over. Then a simply gigantic woman rose up from somewhere and all the sirens and undines and mermaids went back into the water. If this was Armageddon, it was not precisely the way the Bible described it. Is that a fair summary of the situation?”

  The tree he was talking to didn’t answer.

  “Blessed be, blessed be,” Lady Velkor sang on, as she and her hastily assembled coven danced widdershins in their circle. The spell had worked: With her own eyes she had seen the Great Mother, Isis, rise up and smite the evil spirits of the dead Catholic Inquisitors whom the Illuminati had tried to revive. She knew Hagbard Celine would later be boasting in all the most chic occult circles that he had performed the miracle, and giving the credit to that destructive bitch Eris—but that didn’t matter. She with her own eyes had seen Isis, and that was enough.

  “Now I ask you,” Fission Chips went on, addressing another tree, who seemed more communicative, “what the sulphurous hell did you see happening here tonight?”

  “I saw a master Magician,” said the tree, “or a master con man—the two are the same—plant a few suggestions and get a bunch of acidheads running away from their own shadows.” The tree, who was actually Joe Malik and only looked like a tree to poor befuddled 00005, added, “Or I saw the final battle between Good and Evil, with Horus on both sides.”

  “You must be drugged too,” Chips said pettishly.

  “You bet your sweet ass I am,” said the tree, walking away.

  … I don’t know how the courts will ever untangle this. With five of them shooting at once, and the Secret Service shooting back right away, the best crime lab in the world will never get the trajectories of all the bullets right Who, among the survivors, will be tried for murder and who for attempted murder? That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question and…what?… oh…And now, ladies and gentlemen, on this sad occasion…uh … in this tragic hour of our country’s history, let us all pay especially close attention to the new President, who will now address us.

  Who’s that jig standing over there? the new Chief Exec was asking somebody off camera when he appeared on the TV screens.

  The Chevrolet Stegosaurus drove into the empty concert grounds and came to a slow halt. The guitarist stuck his head out the window and yelled to Lady Velkor, “What the hell happened here?”

  “There was some bad acid in the Kool-Aid,” she told him gravely. “Everybody freaked out and ran off toward town.”

  “Hell,” he said, “and this was going to be our first big audience. We’re a new group, just formed. What lousy luck.”

  He turned and drove off, and she read the sign on the back of the car: THE FERNANDO POO INCIDENT.

  “How are you now, baby?” Simon asked.

  “I know who I am,” Mary Lou said slowly, “and you might not like the results of that any more than the Chicago po
lice force will.” Her eyes were distant and pensive.

  Wolfgang and Winifred were very near shore when the dark, humped shapes rose out of the water around them. Winifred shrieked, “Wolfgang! For the love of Gruad, Wolfgang! They’re pulling me down!” Her long blond hair floated for a moment after her head went under; then that too disappeared.

  And then there were two.

  The porpoises have her, Wolfgang thought to himself. He continued to swim madly toward shore. Something caught his trouser leg, but he kicked free. Then he was in the shallows, too close in for the sea beasts to follow. He stood up and waded ashore. And came face to face with John Dillinger.

  “Sorry, pal,” said John, and squeezed the trigger of his Thompson submachine gun. Thirty silver bullets struck Wolfgang with the impact of clubs and threw him back into the water. All feeling was gone from his body, and he felt the foul tentacles closing around his mind and the murmuring, horrible laughter grew to a soundless roar, and the syrupy voice spoke to his mind: Welcome to the place prepared for you from everlasting to everlasting. Now truly you will never die. And the mind of Wolfgang Saure, imprisoned like a living fly in amber, knowing that it must remain so for billions upon billions of years, screamed and screamed and screamed.

  And then there was one.

  And Joe Malik, feeling as if he were sitting in an audience watching himself perform, walked over to that One and held out his hand. “Congratulations,” he said icily. “You really did it.”

  Hagbard looked at the hand and said, “You were more intimate the last time around.”

  “Very well,” said Joe. “My Lord, my enemy.” He leaned forward and kissed Hagbard full on the mouth. Then he took the gun out of his pocket and carefully fired directly into Hagbard’s brain. And then there were none.

  It was quite real; Joe shook himself, stood up, and grinned. Walking over to Hagbard, he took out the gun and handed it to him.

  “Surprise ending,” he said. “I read all the clues, just like you wanted me to. I know you’re the fifth Illuminatus Primus, and I know your motive for wiping out the other four is nothing like you’ve led us to believe. But I can’t play my role. I still trust you. You must have a good reason.”