"That's the weapon the Illuminati plan to use to immanentize the Eschaton?" asked George. "Why don't we destroy them now?"

"Because they're under a protective biomystic field," said Hagbard, "and we can't. I did want you to see them, though. When the electrical, Astral, and orgonomic vibrations of the American Medical Association, amplified by the synergetic clusters of sound, image, and emotional energy of all these young people responding to the beat, bring that Nazi legion back to life, it will call for nothing less than the appearance on the field of battle of the goddess Eris Herself to save the day."

"Hagbard," George protested disgustedly. "Are you telling me Eris is real? Really real and not just an allegory or symbol? I can't buy that any more than I can believe Jehovah or Osiris is really real."

But Hagbard answered very solemnly, "When you're dealing with these forces or powers in a philosophic and scientific way, contemplating them from an armchair, that rationalistic approach is useful. It is quite profitable then to regard the gods and goddesses and demons as projections of the human mind or as unconscious aspects of ourselves. But every truth is a truth only for one place and one time, and that's a truth, as I said, for the armchair. When you're actually dealing with these figures, the only safe, pragmatic and operational approach is to treat them as having a being, a will, and a purpose entirely apart from the humans who evoke them. If the Sorcerer's Apprentice had understood that, he wouldn't have gotten into so much trouble."

SHE'LL BE WEARING RED PAJAMAS
SHE'LL BE WEARING RED PAJAMAS
SHE'LL BE WEARING RED PAJAMAS WHEN SHE COMES

Approaching the outskirts of the crowd, Fission Chips saw a group of musicians who were obviously English from their dress and hair style. Their name, he saw on the biggest drum, was Calculated Tedium, and the guitar play had a canteen strapped to his hip. It reminded 00005 of how thirsty he was, and he asked, "Pardon me, do you know where I could get some water or a soft drink?"

"Take a snort from my canteen," the guitarist said affably, passing it over. He pointed to the west. "See that geodesic plywood dome there? It's a bleeding giant Kool Aid station set up by the Kabouters and guaranteed to hold out even if the crowd doubles in size before this is over. I just filled the canteen from there, so it's fresh. You can get more over there any time you need it."

"Thanks," 00005 said warmly, taking a long, cold, delightful swallow.

He had a very low threshhold for LSD. The world began to seem brighter, stranger, and more colorful within only a few minutes.

(The joker was actually Rhoda Chief, the vocalist who sang with the Heads of Easter Island, and who had inspired much admiration in the younger generation—and much horror in the older— when she named her out-of-wedlock baby Jesus Jehovah Lucifer Satan Chief. A former Processene and Scientologist, currently going the Wicca route, the buxom Rhoda was renowned through show biz for "giving head like no chick alive," a reputation which often provoked certain Satanists on the Linda Lovelace for President Committee to send very deadly vibes in her direction, all of which bounced off due to her Wicca shield. She was also possibly the greatest singer of her generation, and firmly believed that most human problems would be solved if the whole world could be turned on to acid. She had been preparing for the Ingolstadt festival for several months, buying only the top-quality tabs from the most reliable dealers, and she had crept into the geodesic Kool-Aid station only a few moments earlier, dumping enough pure lysergic acid diethylamicte to blow the minds of the population of a small country. Actually, the idea had been subtly planted in her consciousness by the leader of her Wiccan, an astonishingly beautiful woman with flaming red hair and smoldering green eyes who had once played a starring role in a Black Mass celebrated by Padre Pederastia at 2323 Lake Shore Drive. This woman called herself Lady Velkor, and often made jokes about her memories of 18th-century Bavaria, which Rhoda assumed were references to reincarnation.) On April 10, while Howard made his discovery in the ruins of Atlantis and Tlaloc grinned in Mexico D.F., Tobias Knight, in his room at the Hotel Pan Kreston in Santa Isobel, concluded a broadcast to the American submarine in the Bight of Biafra. "The Russkies and Chinks have completed their withdrawal, and Generalissimo Puta is definitely friendly to our side, besides being popular with both the Bubi and the Fang. My work is definitely finished, and I'll await orders to return to Washington." "Roger. Over and out."

(Frank Sullivan, capitalizing on his only real asset, was operating in Havana as a Cuban Superman, using the name Papa Piaba, when the Brotherhood spotted his resemblance to John Dillinger. "Gosh," he said when they made the offer, "five thousand dollars just to take two ladies to a movie one night? And it's only a practical joke, you say?" "It'll be a very funny joke," Jaicapo Mocenigo promised him. And the Smithsonian acquired Mr. Sullivan's asset as one of their most interesting relics.)

WE'LL KILL THE OLD RED ROOSTER

(Hagbard was accompanied by Joe Malik when he returned to the stateroom. "You go to the beer hall in Munich," he was saying, "and steal any item, anything at all, as long as it's obviously old enough to have been there the night he tried the Putsch. Then you rejoin the rest of us in Ingolstadt. Understood?")

WE'LL KILL THE OLD RED ROOSTER

Lady Velkor, wearing a green peasant blouse and green hotpants, looked around the geodesic Kool-Aid dome. A man in a green turtleneck sweater and green slacks caught her eye, and she walked over to him, asking, "Are you a turtle?"

"You bet your sweet ass I am," he answered eagerly and so she had failed to make contact— and owed this oaf a free drink also. But she smiled pleasantly and concealed her annoyance.

WE'LL KILL THE OLD RED ROOSTER WHEN SHE COMES

Robinson and Lehrman of the Homicide Department actually started the last phase of the operation. I was in New York to see Hassan i Sabbah X about a new phase of Laotian opium operation (I had just come from Chicago, after staging that conversation with Waterhouse for Miss Servix's benefit), and I decided to check with them for those little nuances that can't go into an official report We met in Washington Square and found a bench far enough from the chess nuts to give us some privacy.

"Muldoon is on to us," Robinson told me right off. He was wearing a beard; I figured that meant he was currently in a Weather Underground group, since he was too old to pass for under twenty-one and get into Morituri.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

He made the usual reply: "Who's ever sure of anything in this business? But Barney is pure cop through and through," he added, "and his instincts are like dowsing rods. Everybody on the force knows we've infiltrated them by now, anyway. They even make jokes about it 'Who's the CIA man in your department?'— that kind of thing."

"Muldoon is on to us, all right," Lehrman agreed. "But he's not the one I worry about."

"Who is?" I brushed my walrus mustache nervously; being the first pentuple agent in the history of espionage was starting to grind me down. I really wasn't sure which of my bosses should hear about this, although the CIA certainly had to be told, since for all I know Robinson and Lehnnan might be reporting to them twice, having another contact as a fail-safe check on my own integrity.

"The head of Homicide North," Lehnnan said. "An old geezer named Goodman. He's so damned smart, I sometimes wonder if he's a double agent for the Eye themselves. His mind jumps ahead of facts just like an Adeptus Exemptus in the Order."

I looked up at the statue of Garibaldi, remembering the old NYU myth that he would pull his sword the rest of the way out of the scabbard if a virgin ever walked through Washington Park. "Tell me more about this Goodman," I said.

("Check out the pair on that chick," a Superman said enthusiastically.

("Watermelons," a second Superman agreed enthusiastically. "And you know how us cullud folk dig watermelons," he added, licking his lips.)

("Skin!" the first cried.)

("Skin!" the second agreed.)

(They slapped palms, and Clark Kent came out of his reverie. Having sampled the Kool-Aid a while earlier, he was beginning to float a little, although not yet aware of what was happening—he just felt a rather unusual tug of memory from his days as an anthropologist, and was deeply concerned with a new insight about the relationship between the black Virgin of Guadalupe, the Greek goddess Persephone, and his own sexual proclivities—and he came out of it with a start, looking at the woman whose breasts had inspired such reverence.)

("Son of a bitch," he said piously, his mouth spreading in a grin.)

Rebecca Goodman left the house at 3 P.M., hauling a shopping cart and walking past the garage. The nearest supermarket was a good ten minutes on foot, and big enough to keep her busy for a half-hour finding what she wanted and getting through one of those checkout lines. I slipped out of the car and walked right to the back of the house, perfectly secure from neighboring eyes in my Bell Telephone overalls.

The kitchen door had an easy slip-lock, and I didn't even need my keys. A playing card did the job, and I was in.

My first thought was to head for the bedroom— the old man from Vienna was right, and that's where you'll find the real clues to a man's character— but one chair in the kitchen stopped me. The vibes were so strong that I closed my eyes and psychometered it according to the difficult Third Alko of the A:.A:>. It was Rebecca herself: She had sat there and thought about shooting heroin. It faded fast, before I could read what had stopped her.

The bedroom almost knocked me over when I found it "Who would have thought the old man had so much hot blood in him?" I paraphrased, backing out It was a profan-

ation to read too much in there, and what I did scan was enough. As Miss Mao would say, this man was Tao-Yin (Beta prime in the terminology of the I). No wonder Rob inson kept talking about his "intuition." '

The living room had a statue of the Mermaid of Copenhagen that stopped me. I read it and chuckled; Lord, the hangups we all have.

One wall was a built-in bookcase, but Rebecca seemed to be the reader in the family. I started scanning experimentally and found Saul's vibes on a shelf of detective stories and a Scientific American anthology of mathematical and logical puzzles. The man had no concept of his own latent powers, and thought only in terms of solving riddles. Sherlock Holmes, without even the violin and the dope for relief from all that cortical activity. Everything else went into his marriage, that hothouse bedroom upstairs.

No; there was a sketchpad on the coffee table. His, according to the aura.

I flipped pages rapidly: all detailed, precise, perfectly naturalistic. Mostly faces: criminals he had dealt with professionally, all touched with a perception and compassion that he kept out of his work hours. Trees in Central Park; Nudes of Rebecca, adoration in every line of the pencil. A surprising face of a black kid, with some Harem slum building in the background—another touch of unexpected compassion. Then a switch—the first abstract. It was a Star of David, basically, but he had started adding energetic waves coming out of it, and the descending triangle was shaded—somewhere, in the back of his head, he had been working out the symbolism, and coming amazingly close to the truth. More faces of obvious criminal types. A scene in the Catskills, with Rebecca reading a book under a tree— something wrong, gloom and fear in the shading. I closed my eyes and concentrated: The picture came in with a second woman ... I opened my eyes, sweating. It was his first wife, and she had died of cancer. He was afraid of losing Rebecca too, but she was young and healthy. Another man. He thought she might leave him for a younger man. Well, that was the key, then. I flipped a few more pages and saw a unicorn—some more of the unconscious work that went into that erotic Star of David.

A quick scan of Rebecca's books then. Mostly anthropology, mostly African. I took one off the shelf and held it

Eros again, thinly sublimated. The other part of the key. As Hassan i Sabbah X once remarked to me, "Breathes there a white woman with soul so dead, she never yearned for a black in her bed?"

I returned everything to its place carefully and headed for the back door. I stopped in the kitchen to read the chair again, since relapse is as much a part of the syndrome in heroin addiction as in black-lung disease. This time I found what stopped her. If I say love, I'll sound sentimental, and if I say sex, I'll sound cynical. I'll call it pair bonding and sound scientific.

Slipping back into my car, I checked the time elapsed: seventeen minutes. It would have taken several hours to unearth as many facts by ordinary detection methods, and they would have been different, less significant, facts. A:.A:. training has certainly made all my other jobs easier.

There was only one remaining problem: I didn't want to kill anybody at this point, and a bombing would only get Muldoon in. Even having Malik disappear might only bring in Missing Persons.

Then I remembered the dummies used by the clothier on the eighteenth floor, right above the Confrontation office. Burn the dummy just right before setting the bomb and it might work ... I drove back toward Manhattan whistling "Ho-Ho-Ho, Who's Got the Last Laugh Now?"

(The bomb went off at 2:30 A.M. one week later. Simon, leaving O'Hare Airport, where it was 1:30 A.M., decided he still had time to get to the Friendly Stranger and meet that cute lady cop who had so cleverly infiltrated the Nameless Anarchist Horde. He could get her into bed easily enough, since female spies always expect men to reveal secrets when they're in the dreamy afterglow with their guard down; he would teach her some sexual yoga, he decided, and see what secrets she might slip. But he remembered the midnight conference at the UN building after the bomb was set, and Malik's grim words: "If we're right about this, we might all be dead before Woodstock Europa opens next week.")

"Are you a turtle?" Lady Velkor asks again, approaching another man in green. "No," he says, "I have no armor." She smiles as she murmurs, "Blessed be," and he replies, "Blessed be" ... Doris Horus heard the voice behind her say "And how's the Miskatonic Messalina?" and her heart leaped, not believing it, but when she turned it was him, Stack . . . "Jesus," one Superman said to another, "does he personally know all the good-looking white chicks in the world?" . . . The Senate and the People of Rome were still tussling with Attila and His Huns, but Hermie "Speed King" Trismegistos, drummer with the Credibility Gap, watched placidly from only a few feet away, seeing them as a very complicated, almost mathematical ballet; he was concerned only with determining whether they illustrated the eternal warfare of Set and Osiris or the joining of atoms to make molecules. He knew he was on acid, but, what the hell, that must have been the Kool-Aid, another of Tyl Eulenspiegel's merry pranks . . .

The submarine rose above the plateau, lifting into the waters of Lake Totenkopf. Mooring it well below the surface on the shore opposite Ingolstadt, Hagbard and about thirty of his crew entered scuba launches and buzzed to the surface. Parked on a road beside the lake was a line of cars, led by a magnificent Bugatti Royale. Hagbard grandly ushered George, Stella, and Harry Coin into the enormous car. George was shocked to see that the chauffeur was a man whose face was covered with gray fur.

It was a long drive around the lake to the town of Ingolstadt. It was very much as George had imagined it, all turrets and spires and Gothic towers mixed with modern-Martian edifices straight from Mad Avenue, but most of the buildings looking like they had been put up in the days of Prince Henry the Fowler.

"This place is full of beautiful buildings," said Hagbard. "The big Gothic cathedral in the center of town is called the Liebfrauenminister. There's another rococo church called the Maria Victoria—I've always wanted to get 'stoned on acid and go look at the carvings, they're so intricate."

"Have you been here before, Hagbard?" Harry asked.

"On scouting missions. I know where all the good places are. Tonight you're all going to be my guests at the Schlosskeller in Ingolstadt Castle."

"We have to be your guests," said George. "None of us have any money."

"If you have flax," said Hagbard, "you can pay in flax at the Schlosskeller."

They went first to the Donau Hotel, which Hagbard said was the most modern and comfortable in Ingolstadt, where Hagbard had reserved almost all the rooms for his people. With every hotel in Ingolstadt bursting at the seams, it had taken a huge advance payment to bring this off. The hotel's staff jumped to attention when they saw the line of cars with Hagbard's splendid Bugatti in the vanguard. Even in a town crowded with celebrities, overrun with wealthy rock musicians and affluent rock fans from all over the world, a machine like Hagbard's commanded respect.

George, following Hagbard into the lobby, suddenly found himself face to face with two ancient, bent German men. One, with a long white mustache and a lock of white hair that fell over his forehead, said, in heavily accented English, "Get out of my way, degenerate Jewish Communist homosexual." The other old man winced and said something placating to his colleague in a soft voice. The first man waved his hand in dismissal, and they tottered toward the elevators together. Several more old men joined them as George watched, too surprised to be angry. Here, though, in the fatherland of that kind of mentality, the old man's hatred seemed historical curiosity to him more than anything else. Doubtless such men as that had actually seen Hitler in the flesh.

Hagbard grandly took a handful of room keys from the desk clerk. "For simplicity's sake, I've assigned a man and a woman to each room," he said as he passed them out. "Choose your roommates and switch around as you like. When you get up to your rooms you'll find suitable Bavarian peasant costumes laid out on the bed. Please put them on."

Stella and George went upstairs together. George unlocked the door and surveyed the large room with its two double beds. On top of one lay a man's outfit of lederhosen with silk shirt and knee socks, while on the other bed was a woman's peasant skirt, blouse, and vest.

"Costumes," Stella said. "Hagbard's really crazy." She shut the door and tugged at the zipper of her one-piece gold knit pantsuit She had nothing on underneath. She smiled as George regarded her with admiration.

When the group was assembled in the lobby, only Stella looked good in costume. Of the men, Hagbard looked most natural and happy in lederhosen—which was, perhaps, why he'd had the notion of dressing that way. Long, skinny Harry looked ridiculous and uncomfortable, but his buck-toothed grin showed he was trying to be a good sport.

George looked around. "Where's Mavis?" he asked Hagbard.

"She didn't come with us. She's back minding the store." Hagbard raised his arm imperiously. "On to the Schlosskeller."

The Ingolstadt Castle, a battlemented medieval building built on a hill, had a magnificent restaurant in what had formerly been either a dungeon or a wine cellar or both. Hagbard had reserved the entire cellar for the evening.

"Here," he said, "we'll rally our forces around us, have some fun, and prepare for the morrow." He seemed in an agitated, almost giddy mood. He took his place at the center of a big table in a blackened carved chair that looked like a bishop's throne. On the wall behind him was a famous painting. It depicted the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV barefoot in the snow at Canossa, but with one foot on the neck of Pope Gregory the Great, who lay prone, his tiara knocked off, his face ignominiously buried in a snowdrift.

"The story goes that this was commissioned by the notorious Bavarian jester Tyl Eulenspiegel when he was at the height of his fortunes," Hagbard said. "Later, when he was old and penniless, he was hanged for his anarchistic attitudes and his low Bavarian sense of humor. So it goes."

SHE'LL BE WEARING RED PAJAMAS

("There he is!" Markoff Chancy whispers tensely. Saul and Barney lean forward, peering at the figure ahead of them. About five-seven, Saul estimates, and Carmel was five-two, according to the R&I packet they had lifted from Las Vegas police headquarters . . . But who else would be down here, so far from the route of the guided tours? . . . Saul's hand moves toward his gun, but the other figure whirls on them, flashing a pistol, and shouts, "Hold it right there, all of you!")

SHE'LL BE WEARING RED PAJAMAS

"Oh Christ," Saul says disgustedly. "Hail Eris, friend— we're on the same side." He holds up his hands, empty. "I'm Saul Goodman and this is Barney Muldoon, both formerly of the New York Police Force. This is our friend Markoff Chancy, a man of great imagination and a true servant of Goddess. All hail Discordia, Twenty-three Skidoo, Kallisti, and do you need any more passwords, Mr. Sullivan?"

"Gosh," Markoff Chaney says. "You mean that's really John Dillinger?"

SHE'LL BE WEARING RED PAJAMAS WHEN SHE COMES

(Rhoda Chief, vocalist and apprentice witch, sampled some of her own Kool-Aid early in the evening. She swore until the day she died that what happened in Ingolstadt that Walpurgisnacht was nothing less than the appearance of a giant sea serpent in Lake Totenkopf. The beast, she insisted, turned, took its own tail in its mouth, and gradually dwindled to a dot, giving off good vibes and flashes of Astral Light as it diminished.)

There were many empty places at the big table when the Discordians sat down. Hagbard seemed in no hurry to order dinner. Instead he called for round after round of the local beer, of which enormous stocks had been laid in to prepare for the great rock festival. George, Stella, and Harry Coin sat together near Hagbard, and George and Harry discussed sodomy objectively, between long, thoughtful pauses and deep drinking. Hagbard sent the beer around so fast that George frequently had to swill down a whole stein in a minute or two, just to keep up. Various people came in and sat down at empty places at the table. George shook hands with a man around thirty who introduced himself as Simon Moon. He had a lovely black woman with him named Mary Lou Servix. Simon immediately began telling everybody about a fantastic novel he had been reading on the plane coming over. George was interested until he found out that the book was Telemachus Sneezed, by Atlanta Hope. He didn't see how anyone could take trash like that seriously.

Just around the time George was finishing his tenth stein of Ingolstadt's fabled beer and feeling quite woozy, a man who looked very familiar floated into his line of vision. The man wore a brown suit and horn-rimmed glasses, and his gray hair was crew-cut.

"George!" the man shouted.

"Yes, it's me, Joe," said George. "Of course it's me. That's you, Joe, isn't it?" He turned to Harry Coin. "That's the guy who sent me down to Mad Dog to investigate." Harry laughed.

"My God," said Joe. "What's happened to you, George?" He looked vaguely frightened.

"A lot of things," said George. "How many years has it been since I've seen you, Joe?"

"Years? It's been seven days, George. I saw you just before you caught the plane to Texas. What have you been doing?"

George shook his finger. "You were holding out on me, Joe. You wouldn't be here now if you didn't know a lot more than you claimed to when you sent me to Mad Dog. Maybe good old Hagbard can tell you what I've been doing. There's good old Hagbard looking over at us from his end of the table right now. What do you say, Hagbard? Do you know good old Joe Malik?"

Hagbard lifted a huge, ornamented stein of beer, which the management of the Schlosskeller had provided him as an honored guest. It was adorned with elaborate bas-reliefs of pagan woodland scenes, including tumescent satyrs pursuing chubby nymphs.

"How you doing, Malik?" called Hagbard.

"Great, Hagbard, just great," said Joe.

"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 passeth understanding
Down in my heart,
Down in my heart,
Down in my heart.

I've got the peace that passeth 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."

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?"

"Well, fuck 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 glasses. 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 Chancy, 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, 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 masses, 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. 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 glasses. "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 assassins 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 ass.

"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 sexual 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 sex 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 sex 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!" 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.

"Shut the fuck 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 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 God! 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 passed 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 sadistic prick."

"That's only the first step," said Hagbard. "And I said it was 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, embarrassed 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 goddess, 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 and 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. 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 assistants, 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 Association 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, all right," most of the youth culture said, "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 nobody 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, 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 Association 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 anticipate 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 Dayglo 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. "Hell, 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

UNO 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.'"

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 Association 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 Association. 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. Massively 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 hell 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."

Winifred shook her head. "Fools are precisely what it is not proof against. And you, Wolfgang, know that best of all."

It was dark now. The large tent made of cloth-of-gold was sheltered between the fence and a relatively secluded grassy knoll. There was greatest privacy here, because this corner of the festival area was farthest from the stage, and because the area was full of Discordians. Hagbard went into the tent and stayed there awhile. Joe and George stood outside, talking. George was thinking that Hagbard was probably in there with Mavis and he wished he could dash in there and kill the son of a bitch. Joe, agonizingly nervous, suspected that Hagbard was in the tent with a woman, probably Mavis, and he wondered it he should rush in and kill Hagbard while the Discordian leader was occupied. He kept his hand in his pocket, fingers curled around the small pistol.

I circle around, I circle around . . .

After about half an hour Hagbard emerged from the tent, smiling. "Go on in," he said to Joe. "You're needed in there."

George grabbed Hagbard's arm, trying to sink his fingers in. But the muscle felt like iron, and Hagbard didn't seem to notice. "Who's in there?" he demanded.

"Stella," said Hagbard, looking down at the stage, where the Plastic Canoe was playing.

"And you were fucking her?" Joe asked. 'To release the energies? And now I'm supposed to fuck her too? And George after me? And then everybody else? That's left-hand magic, and it's creepy."

"Just go in," Hagbard said. "You'll be surprised. I wasn't fucking Stella. Stella wasn't in there when I was."

"Who was?" George asked, thoroughly confused.

"My mother," said Hagbard happily.

Joe turned toward the tent. He would make one more effort to trust Celine, but then . . . Suddenly the hawk face leaned close to him and Hagbard whispered, "I know what you're planning for afterwards. Do it quickly."

SHE'LL BE WEARING RED PAJAMAS WHEN SHE COMES

On February 2 Robert Putney Drake received a book in the mail. The return address, he noted, was Gold & Appel Transfers on Canal Street, one of the corporations owned by that intriguing Celine fellow who had kept appearing at the best parties for the last year or so. It was titled Never Whistle While You're Pissing, and the flyleaf had a bold scrawl saying, "Best regards from the author,"'followed by a gigantic C like a crescent moon. The publisher was Green and Pleasant Publications, P.O. Box 359, Glencoe, Illinois 60022.

Drake opened it and read a few pages. To his astonishment, several Illuminati secrets were spelled out rather clearly, although in a hostile and sarcastic tone. He flipped the pages, looking for other interesting tidbits. Toward the middle of the book he found:

DEFINITIONS AND DISTINCTIONS

FREE MARKET: That condition of society in which all economic transactions result from voluntary choice without coercion.

THE STATE: That institution which interferes with the Free Market through the direct exercise of coercion or the granting of privileges (backed by coercion).

TAX: That form of coercion or interference with the Free Market in which the State collects tribute (the tax), allowing it to hire armed forces to practice coercion in defense of privilege, and also to engage in such wars, adventures, experiments, "reforms," etc., as it pleases, not at its own cost, but at the cost of "its" subjects.

PRIVILEGE: From the Latin privi, private, and lege, law. An advantage granted by the State and protected by its powers of coercion. A law for private benefit.

USURY: That form of privilege or interference with the Free Market in which one State-supported group monopolizes the coinage and thereby takes tribute (interest), direct or indirect, on all or most economic transactions.

LANDLORDISM: That form of privilege or interference with the Free Market in which one State-supported group "owns" the land and thereby takes tribute (rent) from those who live, work, or produce on the land.

TARIFF: That form of privilege or interference with the Free Market in which commodities produced outside the State are not allowed to compete equally with those produced inside the State.

CAPITALISM: That organization of society, incorporating elements of tax, usury, landlordism, and tariff, which thus denies the Free Market while pretending to exemplify it.

CONSERVATISM: That school of capitalist philosophy which claims allegiance to the Free Market while actually supporting usury, landlordism, tariff, and sometimes taxation.

LIBERALISM: That school of capitalist philosophy which attempts to correct the injustices of capitalism by adding new laws to the existing laws. Each time conservatives pass a law creating privilege, liberals pass another law modifying privilege, leading conservatives to pass a more subtle law recreating privilege, etc., until "everything not forbidden is compulsory" and "everything not compulsory is forbidden."

SOCIALISM: The attempted abolition of all privilege

by restoring power entirely to the coercive agent behind privilege, the State, thereby converting capitalist oligarchy into Statist monopoly. Whitewashing a wall by painting it black.

ANARCHISM: That organization of society in which the Free Market operates freely, without taxes, usury, landlordism, tariffs, or other forms of coercion or privilege. RIGHT ANARCHISTS predict that in the Free Market people would voluntarily choose to compete more often than to cooperate. LEFT ANARCHISTS predict that in the Free Market people would voluntarily choose to cooperate more often than to compete.

Drake, now totally absorbed, turned the page. What he found seemed to be an anthropological report on an obscure tribe he had never heard of; he quickly recognized it as a satire and a parable. Putting it aside for a moment, he buzzed his secretary and asked to be connected with Gold and Appel Transfers.

In a moment a voice said, "G and A T. Miss Maris."