The illuminatus! trilogy (55 page)

“Are you reading my mind right now?” Rebecca asked, still awed and nervous.

Saul laughed again. “It isn’t that simple. It takes years of training, and even then it’s like an old radio
full of static. If I ‘tune in’ right now, I’ll get a flash of whatever’s in your head, but it will be so jumbled with other things that relate to my resonance in one way or another that I won’t know for sure which part is you.”

“Do it,” Rebecca said. “I’ll be more comfortable with you if I see a sample of whatever-it-is that you’ve become.”

Saul sat down on the bed beside her and took her hand. “Okay,” he said thoughtfully, “I’ll do it aloud, and don’t be afraid. I’m the same man, darling, there’s just more of me now.” He inhaled deeply. “Here goes … Five million bucks. Never find her where I buried her. 1472. George, don’t make no bull moves. Unify the forces. One helping hand deserves another. New York Jew doctors. Remember Carcosa! In quick and out quick, a cowboy. They’re all coming back. Lie down on the floor and keep calm. It’s a League of Nations, a young people’s League of Nations. One was for fighting, the other for fun …
Good Lord,”
he broke off and closed his eyes. “I’ve got a whole street and I can see them. They’re still singing. ‘We rose up in arms and none failed to come, we’re the Vets of the Sex Revoloooootion!’
What the hell?”
He turned to her and explained, “It’s like a split-screen movie, but split a thousand ways, and with a thousand soundtracks. I only pick up a few random bits. When one jumps out like that last one, it’s important; I’ll bet that street is in Las Vegas and I’ll be walking on it myself in a few hours. Anyway,” he added, “none of that seemed to come from you. Did it?”

“No,” she said, “and I’m glad. This takes some reorientation. When you said you’re going to show me in a few days, did you mean show me how to do it?”

“You
are
doing it. Everybody is. All the time.”

“But?”

“But most of the time it’s just background noise. I can teach you to become more aware of it. Learning to focus—to pick out one person and one time—that takes years, decades.”

Rebecca finally smiled. “You sure did go a long way in a day and a half.”

“If it were a year and a half,” Saul said simply, “or a century and a half—I’d still be trying to find my way back to you all through it”

She kissed him. “Yes, it’s still you,” she said, “just
more
of you. Tell me: if we both studied it for years and years could we get to the point where we were reading each other’s minds constantly, tuned in on each other completely?”

“Yes,” Saul said, “there are couples like that.”

“Mm. That’s even more intimate than sex.”

“No. It
is
sex.”

An intimation came to Rebecca, like a voice whispering far down at the end of a dark hall, and she knew that some part of her already knew, and had always known, what Saul was about to explain. “Your new friends who taught all this,” she said quietly. “They’re way ahead of Freud, aren’t they?”

“Way ahead. For instance, what am I thinking now?”

“You’re feeling horny,” Rebecca grinned. “But that’s not my background noise, or telepathy, that picked that up. It’s your breathing and the kind of light in your eyes and all sorts of other small cues that a woman learns to recognize. The way you moved a little closer after I kissed you. Things like that.”

Saul took her hand again.
“How
horny am I?” he asked.

“Very
horny. In fact, you’ve already decided that you’ve got time enough and
that’s
more important than talking …”

Saul touched her cheek gently. “Did you read that from kinesic cues, or was it the background noise or telepathy?”

“I guess the background noise helped me to read the cues …”

Saul glanced at his watch. “I have to meet Barney Muldoon in the lobby in exactly fifty minutes. How
would you like to hear a scientific lecture while you’re being laid? That’s a perversion we’ve never tried before.” His hand moved down from her cheek to her neck and then began unbuttoning her blouse.

(“There’s a Morituri bomb factory in your building,” Cassandra Acconci said flatly. “On the seventeenth floor. The name on the buzzer is the same as yours.”

“My brother!” Milo O. Flanagan bellowed. “Right under my nose! That freaking faggot!”)

“Oh, Saul. Oh, Saul, Saul,” Rebecca closed her eyes as the mouth tightened on her nipple …
and Dr. Horace Naismith crossed the lobby of the Sands, affixing the VSR badge to his lapel, and passed the Midget again
… “Well,” the Attorney General told the President, “one solution, of course, is to
nuke
Las Vegas. But that wouldn’t solve the problem of the possible carriers who could have hopped a plane already and might be anywhere in the country now, or anywhere in the world.” While the President washes down three Librium, a Tofranil and an Elavil, the Vice President asks thoughtfully, “Suppose we just distribute the antidote to party workers and ride this thing out?” He is feeling more than usually misanthropic, having had an appalling evening in New York due to his impulsiveness in answering a personal ad which had touched his heart …

(“Thank you Cassandra,” Milo A. Flanagan said fervently. “I’m eternally grateful to you.”

“One helping hand deserves another,” Cassandra replied; she remembered how Milo and Smiling Jim Trepomena had helped her get the abortion the time she was knocked up by that Canvera character. Her father had wanted to send her to New York for a legal D & C, but Milo had pointed out that it would look kind of funny to some people for the daughter of a high KCUF spokesman to have an
official
abortion. “Besides,” Smiling Jim had added, “you don’t want to fool around with them New York Jew doctors. They might do dirty things to you. Just trust me, child; we’ve got the country’s
best-qualified criminal abortionists in Cincinnati.” Actually, though, the real reason Cassandra was blowing the whistle on Padre Pederastia’s bomb emporium was to annoy Simon Moon, whom she had been trying to get into her bed ever since she met him at the Friendly Stranger Coffee House six months before. Simon hadn’t been interested, due to his obsession with black women, who represented the Holy Grail to him.)

“Wildeblood here,” the cultured drawl came over the wire.

“Have you finished your review yet?” Peter Jackson asked, crushing another cigarette butt in his ashtray and worrying about lung cancer.

“Yes, and you’ll love it. I really tear these two smart-asses apart.” Wildeblood was enthusiastic. “Listen to this: ‘a pair of nursery Nietzsches dreaming of a psychedelic Superman.’ And this: ‘a plot that is only a put-on, characters who are cardboard, and a pretense of scholarship that amounts to sheer bluff.’ But
this
is the crusher; listen: ‘a constant use of obscene language for shock effect until the reader begins to feel as depressed as an unwilling spectator at a quarrel between a fishwife and a lobster-pot pirate.’ Don’t you think that will get quoted at all the best cocktail parties this season?”

“I suppose so. The book’s a real stinker, eh?”

“Heavens, I wouldn’t know for sure. I told you yesterday, it’s absurdly
long
. Three volumes, in fact. Boring as hell. I only had time to skim it. But listen to this, dear boy: ‘If
The Lord of the Rings
is a fairy tale for adults, sophisticated readers will quickly recognize this monumental miscarriage as a fairy tale for paranoids.’ That refers to the ridiculous conspiracy theory that the plot, if there is one, seems to revolve around. Nicely worded, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yeah, sure,” Peter said, crossing off
book review
on his pad. “Send it over. I’ll pay the messenger.”

Epicene Wildeblood, hanging up, crossed off
Confrontation
on his own pad, found
Time
next on the list, and picked up another book to be immortalized by his
devastating witticisms. He was feeling more than usually misanthropic, having had a disastrous evening the night before. Somebody had answered his personal ad about his “interest in Greek Culture” and he had thrilled at the thought of a new asshole to conquer; the asshole, unfortunately, had turned out to be the Vice President of the United States, who was interested only in declaiming about the glorious achievements of the military junta that had ruled in Athens, When Eppy, despairing of sex, had tried to steer the conversation to Plato at least, the VP asked, “Are you sure he was a Greek? That sounds like a wop name to me.”

(Tobias Knight and two other FBI agents elbow past the Midget searching for whores who might have been with Dr. Mocenigo the night before, while outside the VSR’s first contingent, the Hugh M. Hefner Brigade, led by Dr. Horace Naismith himself, marches by singing: “We’re Vet’rans of the
Sexule
Revolution/ Our rifles were issued, we had our own guns/ One was for fighting, the other for fun/ We rose up in arms and none failed to come,/ We’re Vets of the Sex Revoloooooooooootion!”)

You see, darling, it all revolves around sex, but not in the sense that Freud thought. Freud never understood sex. Hardly anybody understands sex, in fact, except a few poets here and there. Any scientist who starts to get an inkling keeps his mouth shut because he knows he’d be drammed out of the profession if he said what he knew. Here, I’ll help you unhook that. What we’re feeling now is supposed to be tension, and what we’ll feel after orgasm is supposed to be relaxation. Oh, they’re so pretty. Yes, I know I always say that. But they are pretty. Pretty, pretty, pretty. Mmmm. Mmmm. Oh, yes, yes. Just hold it like that a moment. Yes. Tension? Lord, yes that’s what I mean. How can this be tension? What’s it got in common with worry or anxiety or anything else that we call tension? It’s a strain, but not a tension. It’s a drive to break out, and a tension is a drive to hold in. Those are the two polarities. Oh, stop for a minute. Let me do this. You like that?
Oh, darling, yes, darling, I like it, too. It makes me happy to make you happy. You see, we’re trying to break through our skins into each other. We’re trying to break the walls, walls, walls. Yes, Yes. Break the walls. Tension is trying to hold up the walls, to keep the outside from getting in. It’s the opposite. Oh, Rebecca. Let me kiss them again. They’re so pretty. Pretty pretty titties. Mmm. Mmm. Pretty. And so big and round. Oh, you’ve got two hard-ons and I’ve only got one. And this, this, ah, you like it, don’t you, that’s three hard-ons. You want me to take my finger away and kiss it? Oh, darling, pretty belly, pretty. Mmm. Mmm. Darling, Mmm. MMMMM. Mmm. Lord, Lord. You never came so fast before, oh, I love you. Are you happy? I’m so happy. That’s right, just for a minute. Oh, God, I love watching you do that. I love to see it go into your mouth. Lord, God, Rebecca, I love it. Yes, now I’ll put him in. Little Saul, there, coming up inside you, there. Does little Rebecca like him? I know, I know. They love each other, don’t they? The way we love each other. She’s so warm, she welcomes him so nicely. You’re inside me, too. That’s what I’m trying to say. My field. You’re inside my field, just like I’m inside yours. It’s the fields, not the physical act. That’s what people are afraid of. That’s why they’re tense during sex. They’re afraid of letting the fields merge. It’s a unifying of the forces. God, I can’t keep talking. Well, if we slow way down, yes, this is nicer, isn’t it? That’s why it’s so fast for most people. They rush, complete the physical act, before the fields are charged. They never experience the fields. They think it’s poetry, fiction, when somebody who’s had it describes it. One scientist knew. He died in prison. I’ll tell you about him later. It’s the big taboo, the one all the others grow out of. It isn’t sex itself they’re trying to stop. That’s too strong, they can’t stop it. It’s this. Darling, yes. This. The unifying. It happens at death, but they try to steal it even then. They’ve taken it out of sex. That’s why the fantasies. And the promiscuity. The search. Blacks, homosexuality, our parents, people we
know we hate, Saint Bernards. Everything. It’s not neuroses or perversion. It’s a search. A desperate search. Everybody wants sex with an enemy. Hate mobilizes the field, too, you see. And hate. Is safer. Safer than love. Love too dangerous. Lord, Lord, I love you. I love you. Let me more. Get the weight on my elbows, hold your ass with my hands. Yes. Poetry isn’t poetry. I mean it doesn’t lie. It’s true when I say I worship you. Can’t say it outside bed. Can only say love then, usually. Worship too scary. Some people can’t even say love in bed. Searching, partner to partner. Never able to say love. Never able to feel it. Under control. They can’t let us learn, or the game is up. Their name? They got a million names. Monopolize it. Keep it to themselves. They had to stamp it out in the rest of us, to control. To control us. Drove it underground, into background noise. Mustn’t break through. That’s how. How it happened. Darling. First they repressed telepathy, then sex. That’s why schizos. Darling. Why schizos break into crazy sex things first. Why homosexuals dig the occult. Break one taboo, come close to the next. Finally break the wall entirely. Get through. Like we get through, together. They can’t have that. Got to keep us apart. Schisms. Always splitting and schisms. White against black, men against women, all the way down the line. Keep us apart. Don’t let us merge. Make sex a dirty joke. A few more minutes. A few more. My tongue in your ear. Oh, God. Soon. So fast. A miracle. Whole society set up to prevent this. To destroy love. Oh, I do love you. Worship you. Adore you. Rebecca. Beautiful, beautiful. Rebecca. They don’t want us to. Unify. The. Forces. Rebecca. Rebecca. Rebecca.