The illuminatus! trilogy (84 page)

(At eight o’clock in Ingolstadt an unscheduled group called the Cargo Cult managed to get the mike and began blasting out their own outer-space arrangement of an old children’s song:

SHE’LL BE COMING ’ROUND THE MOUNTAIN WHEN SHE COMES

SHE’LL BE COMING ’ROUND THE MOUNTAIN WHEN SHE COMES

And, in Washington, where it was still only two in the afternoon, the White House was in flames, while the National Guard machine-gunned an armed mob crossing the Mall in front of the Washington Monument, a single finger pointing upward in an eloquent and vulgar gesture which only the Illuminati knew meant “Fuck you!” … In Los Angeles, where it was eleven in the morning, the bombs started to go off in police stations…And in Lehman Cavern, Markoff Chaney disgustedly pointed out a graffito to Saul and Barney: HELP STAMP OUT SIZEISM: TAKE A MIDGET TO LUNCH.

“You see?” he demanded. “That’s supposed to be funny. It’s not funny at all. Not one damned bit”)

SHE’LL BE DRIVING SIX WHITE HORSES

SHE’LL BE DRIVING SIX WHITE HORSES

SHE’LL BE DRIVING SIX WHITE HORSES WHEN SHE COMES

On April 29 Hagbard invited George to join him on the bridge of the
Leif Erikson
. They had been sailing through a smooth-walled tubular passage that was completely filled with water and was both underground and below sea level. It had been built by the Atlanteans and not only had survived the catastrophe but had been maintained in good condition for the next thirty thousand years by the Illuminati. There was even a salt lock, located, roughly, under Lyon,
France, which served to keep the salt water of the Atlantic out of the further reaches of the passage and the underground freshwater Sea of Valusia. The underground waterways were connected with many lakes in Switzerland, Bavaria, and eastern Europe, Hagbard explained, and if salt water were found in all of those lakes the existence of the weird subsurface world of the Illuminati would be suspected. As the submarine approached a huge circular hatchway barring the passage, Hagbard turned off the devices that rendered the craft indetectable. Immediately the enormous round metal door swung toward them.

“Won’t the Illuminati know we’ve activated this machinery?” said George.

“No. This works automatically,” said Hagbard. “It’s never occurred to them that anyone else might use this passageway.”

“But they know
you
could. And you guessed wrong about their spider-ships being able to detect you.”

Hagbard whirled on George, a hairy arm lifted to punch him in the chest. “Shut up about the fucking spider-ships! I don’t want to hear any more about the spider-ships! Portinari’s running the show now. And she says it’s safe. Okay?”

“Commander, you’re out of your fucking mind,” George said firmly.

Hagbard laughed, his shoulders slumping slightly in relaxation. “All right. You can get off the sub any time you want to. We’ll just open the hatch and let you swim out.”

“You’re out of your fucking mind, but I’m stuck with you,” said George, clapping Hagbard on the shoulder.

“You’re either on the sub or off the sub,” said Hagbard. “Watch this.”

The
Leif Erikson
had sailed through the round metal gateway, which closed behind it Here the ceiling of the underwater passage was about fifty feet higher than it had been in the section they just left, and the tunnel was only partially filling with water. The air seemed to be coming from vents in the ceiling. There was another metal hatchway in the distance down the tunnel.

“This lock is pretty big,” George said. “The Illuminati must have sailed some enormous submarines through here.”

“And animals,” said Hagbard.

The hatchway ahead of them opened, and fresh water
came pouring in. The water level in the lock rose until it reached the ceiling, and the
Leif Erikson’s
engines turned over and began to propel it forward once more. Now George is writing in his diary again:

Hagbard’s voice over the intercom jolted him out of his reverie. “Come on back up, George. There’s more to see.”

This time Mavis was on the bridge with Hagbard. As George entered, Hagbard withdrew his hand from her left breast in an unhurried movement. George wanted to kill Hagbard, but he was thankful that he hadn’t seen Mavis touching Hagbard in any sexual way. That would have been past bearing. He might have tested his new-found courage by taking a poke at Hagbard, and Goddess only knows what karate or yoga or magic would be the response. Besides, Mavis and Hagbard must be balling all the time. Who else but Hagbard would a woman like Mavis take for her regular lover? Who else but Hagbard could satisfy her?

Mavis greeted George with a comradely hug that made the entire front of his body ache. Hagbard pointed to an inscription
carved into the wall of the cave. There was a row of symbols that George didn’t recognize, but above them was something quite familiar: a circle with a downward-pointing trident carved inside it.

“The peace symbol,” said George. “I didn’t know it was that old.”

“In the days when it was put up there,” said Hagbard, “it was called the Cross of Lilith Velkor, and its meaning is simply that anyone who attempts to thwart the Illuminati will suffer from the most horrible torture the Illuminati can devise. Lilith Velkor was one of the first of their victims. They crucified her on a revolving cross that looked very much like that.”

“You told me it wasn’t really a peace symbol,” said George, looking wistfully back at the carving, “but I didn’t know what you meant.”

“There was a Dirigens-grade Illuminatus in Bertrand Russell’s circle who put it in somebody’s mind that the circle and trident would be a good symbol for the Aldermaston marchers to carry. It was very cleverly and subtly done. If the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament had thought about it, what did they need any kind of a symbol for? But Russell and his people fell for it. What they didn’t know was that the circle-and-trident had been a traditional symbol of evil among left-hand-path Satanists for thousands of years. So many right-wingers are secret left-hand-path magicians and Satanists that of course they spotted the symbol for what it was right away. That made them think the Illuminati were behind the peace movement, which threw them off the track, and they accused the peaceniks of using a Satanist symbol, which to a small extent discredited the peace movement. A cute gambit.”

“Why is it there on the wall?” said George.

“The inscription warns the passer-by to purify his heart because he is about to enter the Sea of Valusia, which belongs exclusively to the Illuminati. Traveling across the Sea of Valusia, you come eventually to the underground port of Agharti, which was the first Illuminati refuge after the Atlantean catastrophe. We are emerging into the Sea of Valusia right now. Watch.”

Hagbard gestured, and George watched, open-mouthed, as the walls of the cave that closed around them fell away. They were sailing out of the tunnel, but what they seemed
to be entering was an infinite fog. The television cameras and their laser wave-guides penetrated just as far into this lightless ocean that they were about to navigate as they had into the Atlantic, but this ocean was neither blue nor green, but gray. It was a gray that seemed to extend infinitely in all directions, like an overcast sky. It was impossible to gauge distance. The farthest depth of the gray around them might be hundreds of miles away, or it might be right outside the submarine.

“Where’s the bottom?” he asked.

“Too far below us to see,” said Mavis. “The top of this ocean is just a little above the level of the bottom of the Atlantic.”

“You’re so smart,” said Hagbard, pinching her buttock 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 fuck up,” said Hagbard.

Beginning to feel anxious himself, wondering if the noble 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 basement 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 assassin was standing open-mouthed and limp with astonishment.

“Greetings, Howard,” said Hagbard. “How goes it with the Nazis?”

“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,”
he said more firmly. “It’s a talking fish. But why the hell is it wearing an oxygen tank and breathing through a fucking mask?”

“I see we have a new friend on the bridge,” said Howard. “I got the mask from Hagbard’s on-shore 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 Nazis—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.”