God of Tarot (25 page)

Brother Paul had no intention of dying in this quest. But neither did he intend to participate in any whitewash or rehash of personal prejudice. The ethics of his Order, and his own pride, required that he seek only the truth. The mission transcended his petty personal scruples. He had to give I A O a fair hearing.

“But is it actually necessary to—?” he asked plaintively, viewing the nude priestess. “If she is a modern-day worshiper of Abraxas, it would be in her interest to convince me her God was the one, when in fact he might
not
be.”

“True, true,” Therion agreed. “I hardly envy you your task.”

“And making love to her would not prove anything.”

“Unless, as in the battle with Temptation, it were a route to the innermost truth,” Therion said. “In that case it would be too bad not to call her bluff and leave this cup unsavored.”

“That doesn’t make sense!” But Brother Paul looked again at the priestess of Abraxas. If this
were
the God of Tarot, and if there were only one way to relate to that God, according to His ancient ritual of union…

“Have a sniff of this,” Therion said, opening another little box.

“No! Not more cocaine! That doesn’t solve anything!”

“This is not cocaine.”

“Oh.” Brother Paul relented and took a sniff.

“It is heroin,” Therion concluded.

But already the drug was taking effect. Brother Paul turned to the priestess. “So you want interaction,” he said boldly. “Well, I shall plumb you for the truth!” His own clothing fell away magically as he strode toward her.

He took her in his arms and kissed her deeply. Her cool, firm breasts flattened excitingly against his chest. His hands traveled down her arching back and across her sleek haunches, finally cupping her firm yet soft buttocks. What a specimen she was!

The kiss was magical; he had never experienced anything like it! He knew it was enhanced by the heroin, but didn’t care. He felt such mastery of himself that nothing mattered at all; he could enjoy this experience without any reservation.

Experience. There was man’s most deeply seated instinct: the craving for new sensations, the satisfaction of curiosity, variety and excitement and fulfillment! Experience. Every minute, every second was precious; he had to indulge himself to the utmost, because this was the ultimate meaning of life. Why should he sow, and not reap?

He released the priestess just enough to look at her face. She smiled.

“Stab your demoniac smile to my brain,” Therion said. “Soak me in cognac, kisses, cocaine.” He pronounced “cognac” so that it rhymed directly with “demoniac.”

This had the effect of stultifying Brother Paul’s ardor, despite the heroin. “Don’t you have somewhere to go?” he demanded.

“I am your guide. I must see you safely through this challenge.”

“You are afraid I will make love to the priestess?”

“I fear you will
not
, unless I guide you.”

“This is between me and my religion!”

“And your religion, like virtually all modern faiths, is fundamentally anti-sex. Your understanding of the subject is limited, though your instinct, were you ever to let it reign, is sound. Sex is good; love is the law; ignorance is evil.”

“But casual, thoughtless sex—”

“No man can get along on a continual diet of abstinence. A man must be permitted normal sexual expression, as God intended. He
must
express his natural urges, of whatever type, or wither away.”

“Still,” Brother Paul said uncertainly. He had his beliefs, but they were being sorely besieged by this logic and the woman in his arms.

The priestess knelt before him, as though in supplication, her breasts sliding excruciatingly down the length of his torso. “I adore thee, I A O!” she repeated.

“Hey, that’s not I A O!” Brother Paul protested. But then he realized that perhaps it
was;
she worshiped a serpent-legged God, so she sought the serpent in man.

Under her massage, that serpent rose and swelled like the forepart of a cobra. The skin of the head peeled back, releasing the faint scent generated in that special pocket—the scent that the knife denied to most Christians and all Moslems and Jews, in the guise of “health.”

But Brother Paul had never been subjected to that unkindest cut. His member was whole, and it functioned as God had designed it to. The scent of arousal wafted out. She inhaled that aroma. A beatific smile spread across her face. “I A O!” she breathed ecstatically, her breath caressing the organ.

“Love is the law,” Therion intoned. “Love under will.”

“Enough of this!” Brother Paul cried, drawing her hands and face away from his anatomy. He lifted her up, but she spun away and sprawled half across the couch. (Couch? Where was the cup? Oh—they were the same.) He pursued her, caught her with both his hands about her waist as she pushed herself up on the support, and brought his groin to her swelling posterior. Her hands, dislodged as her bottom was raised up, slid off the rim; the upper section of her body fell down inside the cup. Now she was bent forward at a right angle, her breasts flattening against the inner surface of the cup, her elbows braced at its depth, her face invisible within its shadow. But he didn’t need her breasts or arms or face. He guided his member by hand, found the place, and thrust.

He had imagined easy penetration of her exposed vagina, but it was not easy. There was some pain for him as he forced entry past constricted muscles, without sufficient lubrication. But the drug spurred him on; he was, after all, the Conqueror!

The climax was explosive: a nuclear detonation in a subterranean vault. The recoil flung him backward, breaking the connection. Simultaneously his heroin high collapsed; he felt tired and sick, pumped out, without ambition, irritable, and disgusted. The priestess had fallen out of the cup to the floor, outstretched, supine. Therion was squatting beside her, almost over her head. Maybe she was hurt; it had been quite a blast. Brother Paul didn’t care. He just wanted another sniff of H.

He staggered toward Therion. “Give it to me,” he rasped.

“I’m busy!” Therion snapped, still squatting. “I have to give her—”

Brother Paul’s nose was running and his stomach was cramping. Withdrawal symptoms, he knew. “Give me the stuff.”

Therion ignored him, concentrating on the girl.

“I want more smack, more junk,” Brother Paul insisted. “What do you call it these days? Horse? Snow?
Where is it
?”

Still Therion did not respond; he was still squatting.

Sudden rage engulfed Brother Paul. “You’re paying more attention to
her
than to
me
! You’re supposed to guide
me
!”

“Shit,” Therion said.

Brother Paul remembered; that was another name for heroin. “Then give me shit!” he cried.

A cup appeared before him, but it contained no white powder. Angrily he swung his fist at it, knocking it over. A green snake fell out, hissing. A foot of the god Abraxas? No, this was merely the symbol of Jealousy.

He was getting nowhere. His hot flash was converting into a chill. What had he gotten into? “Why should
you
be so self-assured,” Brother Paul demanded, “when
I
am so confused and sick! It isn’t fair!”

Therion looked up. ‘I am content because I comprehend my own essential nature,” he said. “I know what I am, and who I serve. I am at peace with myself. No victory, wealth, or woman can match that. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.”

“Then show me how to comprehend
my
essential nature!” Brother Paul cried. “There is the key to ultimate power!”

“You must seek it within yourself, extricating yourself from the prison of the senses,” Therion said. “Meditation, such as is sponsored by yoga—”

“No! I can’t wait for that. I want it now!”

“Then take the shortcut.” Therion held up a small capsule. “LSD.”

Brother Paul snatched it and gulped it down.

It was like a headlong rush into a maelstrom. Sensations were coming at him from all directions, and seeming to go out from him similarly. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches. He saw the room. The girl was still lying on the floor, her mouth open. Therion was still squatting over her. He saw all the furniture. The patch of sunlight from the window. He heard the wheezing of wind around the parapet, the baying of some distant animal, the ticking of an unseen clock. He smelled the leather couch, and the brass of the inside of the big cup, and dust from the floor, and the faint, sweet scent of a flower outside, somewhere. He tasted the remains of the capsule. He felt the cool stone floor under his feet, the caress of a trifling breeze on his bare body. All distractions, to be dispensed with!

He focused his awareness, shutting all external stimuli out. Now he saw light behind his eyelids, for they were not thick enough to make total darkness. He heard the sound of his own breathing, and of his heartbeat. He smelled his own breath, a touch of whiskey still on it. Whiskey? Oh—from that first drink, back at Temptation. His tongue tasted slightly bitter. He felt the tension of his muscles as they tightened to keep him balanced.

Actually there were many more than five senses, but most of the unnamed ones could be lumped under touch: feeling of discomfort, muscle tension, orientation. Distractions.

He sat down on the floor, assuming the crosslegged yoga position favored for meditation, and consciously relaxed. Gradually his bodily tensions melted away, releasing his mind.

It was like flying low over a landscape toward the sunrise. His half-random thoughts zoomed past like technicolor clouds, some formless, some beautiful, some menacing. Below was the castle, with the priestess lying like Sleeping Beauty within it, awaiting the kiss to restore her to consciousness, except that that was an expurgation. It was really the sexual act that would rouse her, making the life within her quicken, only they couldn’t tell children that (and why the hell
not
?) and in this case that act had put her to sleep instead. Priestess of Abraxas? What was such temple worship except ritualized prostitution? Prostitution, the oldest profession of woman. It would exist as long as men had the money and the urge and women had neither. How ironic that it should be combined with religion! Yet religion had about as great an affinity for the vices of man as any other institution.

The drug enhanced everything, providing a phenomenal visual, aural, and tactile experience. The Dragon of Temptation charged him, but was inflated like a hydrogen balloon until it exploded into harmless flame. Therion would say it had farted itself to death. The priestess of I A O again, opening her lovely body to him, crying, “I adore thee, I A O!” but he was no longer aroused. The suits of the Tarot, symbols flying up around him like the cards in
Alice in Wonderland
, male wands and swords thrusting through female cups and disks. Swiftly, in mere seconds, he abolished all these interfering thoughts. Gradually he oriented on his target: his own ultimate essence.

Now, in the distance, he saw the first glow of it— the effulgence of the Grail. Like the breaking of the dawn, that miraculous light expanded as he arrowed toward it. The disruptive presence of his superficial thoughts diminished, shining in pastel hues in the face of that solar brilliance; he coursed past them, unveiling the way to Nirvana.

At last the gleaming rim of it emerged, more splendid than any vision he had heretofore imagined. Onward he flew, bringing more into view: the magnificent curvature of the Holy Grail, hanging perfectly in the sky.

Now he saw that though the Cup itself glowed, as it had when it had floated past the astonished knights of King Arthur’s Round Table, this was a faint glimmering compared to its principal illumination. This brilliance was by virtue of its content—that deeply veiled shape whose light spilled out between canopy and rim.. The shape of his Essence!

Eagerly he moved toward it, certain now that he would perceive the glory that was his soul. What form would it take, that divine revelation? A giant, precious, bright crystal with myriad facets, a myriad-squared reflections? A godlike brilliance, gently blinding the mortal eye? An intangible aura of sheer wonder?

He came up to the monstrous chalice, that goblet of Jesus, the quintessence of ambition, and peeked under the glorious cover. There was an odor, awful and out of place, but he ignored it. Here at last was Truth, was Soul!

It was a huge, half-coiled, half-broken, steaming human turd.

8

Emotion

And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest
,

And desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem
.

And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven:

And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me
?

And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.*

* “to kick against the pricks”—i.e., to oppose the pricks of conscience
.

And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do
.

And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man
.

And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man: but they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus
.

And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink
.

THE BIBLE: King James Version ACTS IX: 1-9

Paul sniffed, trying to clear his nostrils of the stink of shit. He was driving a car, an old-fashioned internal combustion machine, wasteful of fuel. Therefore this was pre-MT Earth, oddly strange and just as oddly familiar. He knew this was another Animation, quite different from the last, but still a construct of some aspect of his imagination or his memory. Another direction governed by precession, whose laws he did not yet comprehend well enough to utilize consciously.