The Illuminatus! Trilogy Part 36

"You're so smart," said Hagbard, pinching her b.u.t.tock and causing George to flinch.

"Don't pay any attention to him, George," said Mavis. "He's a little bit nervous, and it's making him silly."

"Shut the f.u.c.k up," said Hagbard.

Beginning to feel anxious himself, wondering if the n.o.ble mind of Hagbard Celine was being overthrown by the weight of responsibility, George turned to look out at the empty ocean. Now he saw that it wasn't quite empty. Fish swam by, some large, some small, many of them grotesque. All were totally eyeless. An octopoidal monster with extremely long, slender tentacles drifted past the submarine, feeling for its prey. There was a covering of fine hairs on the tips of the tentacles. A small fish, also blind, swam close enough to one tentacle to set up a current that disturbed the hairs. Instantly the octopus's whole body moved in that direction, the disturbed tentacle wrapped itself around the hapless fish, and several others joined in to help scoop it up. The octopus devoured the fish in three bites. George was glad to see that at least the blood of these creatures was red.

The door behind them opened, and Harry Coin stepped out onto the bridge. "Morning, everybody. I was just wondering if I might find Miss Mao up here."

"She's doing her stint in Navigation right now," said Hagbard. "But stay here and have a look at the Sea of Valusia, Harry."

Harry looked all around, slowly and thoughtfully, then shook his head. "You know, there's times when I start to think you're doing this."

"What do you mean, Harry?" asked Mavis.

"You know"-Harry waved a long, snakelike hand-"doing this, like a science-fiction movie. You've just got us in an abandoned hotel somewheres, and you've got a big engine in the bas.e.m.e.nt that shakes the whole place, and here you've got some movie cameras, only they point at the screen instead of away from you, if you know what I mean."

"Rear projection," said Hagbard. "Tell me, Harry, what difference would it make if it wasn't real?"

Harry thought a moment, his chinless face sour. "We wouldn't have to do what we think we have to do. But even if we don't have to do what we think we have to do, it won't make any difference if we do it. Which means we should just go ahead."

Mavis sighed. "Just go ahead."

"Just go ahead," said Hagbard. "A powerful mantra."

"And if we don't go ahead," said George, "it doesn't matter either. Which means that we just do go ahead."

"Another powerful mantra," said Hagbard. "Just do go ahead."

George noticed a small speck in the distance. As it got closer, he reccognized it. He shook his head. Was there no end to the surrealism he'd been subjected to in the last six days? A dolphin wearing scuba gear!

"Hi, man-friends," said Howard's voice over the loudspeaker on the bridge. George cast a glance at Harry Coin. The former a.s.sa.s.sin was standing open-mouthed and limp with astonishment.

"Greetings, Howard," said Hagbard. "How goes it with the n.a.z.is?"

"Dead, sleeping, whatever it is they are. I have a whole porpoise horde-most of the Atlantean Adepts-watching them."

"And ready to perform other tasks as needed, I hope," said Hagbard.

"Ready indeed," said Howard. He turned a somersault "All right," said Harry Coin softly. "All right," right," he said more firmly. "It's a talking fish. But why the h.e.l.l is it wearing an oxygen tank and breathing through a f.u.c.king mask?" he said more firmly. "It's a talking fish. But why the h.e.l.l is it wearing an oxygen tank and breathing through a f.u.c.king mask?"

"I see we have a new friend on the bridge," said Howard. "I got the mask from Hagbard's on-sh.o.r.e representative at Fernando Poo. After all, a porpoise has to breathe air. And there is no surface in most of this underground ocean. It's water all the way to the top of the cavernous chambers that contain it. The only place I can get air near here is by swimming up to the top of Lake Totenkopf."

"The Lake Totenkopf monster," said George with a laugh.

"We'll moor the submarine in Lake Totenkopf later today," said Hagbard. "Howard, I'd like you and your people to stand by tonight and tomorrow night. Tomorrow night be ready to do a lot of hard physical work. Meanwhile, stay out of the way of the n.a.z.is-the protection they're under is particularly aimed at sea animals, since that was the presumed greatest danger to them. We'll have oxygen equipment as needed for any of your people who want it. Tell them to try to avoid surfacing on the lake unless absolutely necessary. We don't want to attract more attention than we have to."

"I salute you in the name of the porpoise horde," said Howard. "Hail and farewell." He swam away.

A little later, sailing on, they saw in the distance an enormous reptile with four paddles for swimming and a neck twice the length of its body. It was in hot pursuit of a school of blind fish.

"The Loch Ness monster," said Hagbard, and George remembered his little joke about Howard's surfacing in Lake Totenkopf. "One of Gruad's genetic experiments with reptiles," Hagbard went on. "He was really queer for reptiles. He filled the Sea of Valusia with these plesiosaurlike things. Blind, of course, so they could navigate in darkness. Think about that-eyes are a liability under certain conditions. Graud figured monsters like that would be another protection against anybody finding Agharti. But the Leif Erikson Leif Erikson is too big for Nessie to tangle with, and she knows it." is too big for Nessie to tangle with, and she knows it."

At last there was a column of yellow light ahead. This was the light let into the Sea of Valusia by Lake Totenkopf. Hagbard explained that the lake was simply a place where the ceiling of rock over the Sea of Valusia had been soft and unstable enough to collapse. The resulting hole, being at sea level, filled with water. Debris falling down through the bottom of the lake had formed a mountain below the place where the roof of the Sea of Valusia was punctured.

"The Jesuits, of course, always knew that Lake Totenkopf connected with the Sea of Valusia and thus made possible easy contact with Agharti," Hagbard said. "That's why, when they gave Weishaupt the a.s.signment of founding an overt branch of the Illuminati, they sent him to Ingolstadt, which is right by Lake Totenkopf. And there's the mountain under the lake."

It loomed ahead of them, dark and forbidding. As the submarine sailed over it, George saw a cloud of dolphins circling in the distance. The mountain top had been sheared off in a fas.h.i.+on that seemed too precise to be natural; it formed a plateau about two miles long and one mile wide. There were what appeared to be dark squares on this gray plateau. The submarine swooped down, and George saw that the squares were huge formations of men. In a moment they were hovering over the army, like a helicopter observing troops on parade. George could clearly see the black uniforms, the green tanks with black-and-white crosses painted on them, the long, dark, upjutting snouts of big guns. They stood there silent and immobile, thousands of feet below the surface of the lake.

"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 a.s.sociation, amplified by the synergetic cl.u.s.ters of sound, image, and emotional energy of all these young people responding to the beat, bring that n.a.z.i legion back to life, it will call for nothing less than the appearance on the field of battle of the G.o.ddess Eris Herself to save the day."

"Hagbard," George protested disgustedly. "Are you telling me Eris is real? Really 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." 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 G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses 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 player 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, pa.s.sing 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 s.h.i.+eld. 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 diethylamide 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 astonis.h.i.+ngly beautiful woman with flaming red hair and smoldering green eyes who had once played a starring role in a Black Ma.s.s celebrated by Padre Pederastia at 2323 Lake Sh.o.r.e Drive. This woman called herself Lady Velkor, and often made jokes about her memories of 18th-century Bavaria, which Rhoda a.s.sumed 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 c.h.i.n.ks 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 Was.h.i.+ngton."

"Roger. Over and out."

(Frank Sullivan, capitalizing on his only real a.s.set, 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 their 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 a.s.set 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 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 a.s.s 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 Ha.s.san 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 pa.s.s 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 Lehrman might be reporting to them twice, having another contact as a fail-safe check on my own integrity.

"The head of Homicide North," Lehrman said. "An old geezer named Goodman. He's so d.a.m.ned smart, I sometimes wonder if he's he's a double agent for the Eye themselves. His mind jumps ahead of facts just like an Adeptus Exemptus in the Order." 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 cullud folk dig watermelons," he added, licking his lips. 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 relations.h.i.+p between the black Virgin of Guadalupe, the Greek G.o.ddess Persephone, and his own s.e.xual proclivities-and he came out of it with a start, looking at the woman whose b.r.e.a.s.t.s had inspired such reverence.

("Son of a b.i.t.c.h," b.i.t.c.h," he said piously, his mouth spreading in a grin.) 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[image] . It was Rebecca herself: She had sat there and thought about shooting heroin. It faded fast, before I could read what had stopped her. . 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 profanation 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 Robinson 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 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. 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 compa.s.sion 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 compa.s.sion. 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 Ha.s.san 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 s.e.x, 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.[image] training has certainly made all my other jobs easier. 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 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?" 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 s.e.xual 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 ill.u.s.trated the eternal warfare of Set and Osiris or the joining of atoms to make molecules. He knew he was on acid, but, what the h.e.l.l, 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 sh.o.r.e 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 h.o.m.os.e.xual." 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 a.s.signed a man and a woman to each room," he said as he pa.s.sed 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 s.h.i.+rt 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 a.s.sembled 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 p.r.o.ne, 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 att.i.tudes and his low Bavarian sense of humor. So it goes."

SHE'LL BE WEARING RED PAJAMAS ("There he is!" Markoff Chaney 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, flas.h.i.+ng 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 Chaney, a man of great imagination and a true servant of G.o.ddess. All hail Discordia, Twenty-three Skidoo, Kallisti, and do you need any more pa.s.swords, 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 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.) 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 Telemachus Sneezed, by Atlanta Hope. He didn't see how anyone could take trash like that seriously.

Just around the time George was finis.h.i.+ng 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 gla.s.ses, 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 G.o.d," 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.