The Illuminatus! Trilogy

"Very well. You might have made a good detective if your- illness- hadn't prevented your promotion. You do have a quick, skeptical mind. Let me try another approach- and I wouldn't be using such tactics if I weren't convinced you were on the road to recovery; a true psychotic would be driven into catatonia by such a blunt assault on his delusions. But, tell me, your wife mentioned that just before the acute stage of your- problem- you spent a lot of money, more than you could afford on a patrolman's salary, on a reproduction of the mermaid of Copenhagen. Why was that?"

"Damn it," Saul exclaimed, "it wasn't a lot of money." But he recognized the displaced anger and saw that the other man recognized it too. He was avoiding the question of the mermaid… and her relation to the unicorn. There must be a relationship between fact number one and fact number two… "The mermaid," he said, getting there before the enemy could, "is a mother symbol, right? She has no human bottom, because the male child dare not think about that area of the mother. Is that correct jargon?"

"More or less. You avoid, of course, the peculiar relevance in your own case: that the sex act in which you caught your mother was not a normal one but a very perverted and infantile act, which, of course, is the only sex act a mermaid can perform- as all collectors of mermaid statues or mermaid paintings unconsciously know."

"It's not perverted and infantile," Saul protested. "Most people do it…" Then he saw the trap.

"But not your mother and father? They were different from most people?"

And then it clicked: the spell was broken. Every detail from Saul's notebook, every physical characteristic Peter Jackson had described, was there. "You're not a doctor," he shouted. "I don't know what your game is but I sure as hell know who you are. You're Joseph Malik!"

George's stateroom was paneled in teak, the walls hung with small but exquisite paintings by Rivers, Shahn, De Kooning, and Tanguy. A glass cabinet built into one wall held several rows of books. The floor was carpeted in wine red with a blue stylized octopus in the center, its waving tentacles radiating out like a sunburst. The light fixture hanging from the ceiling was a lucite model of that formidable jellyfish, the Portuguese man-of-war.

The bed was full size, with a rosewood headboard carved with Venetian seashell motifs. Its legs didn't touch the floor; the whole thing was supported on a huge, rounded beam that allowed the bed to seesaw when the ship rolled, the sleeper remaining level. Beside the bed was a small desk. Going to it, George opened a drawer and found several different sizes of writing paper and half a dozen felt-tipped pens in various colors. He took out a legal-size pad and a green pen, climbed on the bed, curled up at the head and began writing.

April 24

Objectivity is presumably the opposite of schizophrenia. Which means that it is nothing but acceptance of everybody else's notion of reality. But nobody's perception of reality is the same as everybody's notion of it, which means that the most objective person is the real schizophrenic.

It is hard to get beyond the accepted beliefs of one's own age. The first man to think a new thought advances it very tentatively. New ideas have to be around a while before anyone will promote them hard. In their first form, they are like tiny, imperceptible mutations that may eventually lead to new species. That's why cultural cross-fertilization is so important. It increases the gene-pool of the imagination. The Arabs, say, have one part of the puzzle. The Franks another. So, when the Knights Templar meet the Hashishim, something new is born.

The human race has always lived more or less happily in the kingdom of the blind. But there is an elephant among us. A one-eyed elephant.

George put the pen down and read the green words with a frown. His thoughts still seemed to be coming from outside his own mind. What was that business about the Knights Templar? He had never felt the slightest interest in that, period since his freshman year in college, when old Morrison Gly

The sub's engine was vibrating pleasantly through the floor, the beam, the bed. The trip so far had reminded George of his first flight in a 747-a surge of power, followed by motion so smooth it was impossible to tell how fast or how far they were going.

There was a knock at the stateroom door, and at George's invitation Hagbard's receptionist came in. She was wearing a tight-fitting golden-yellow slack ensemble. She stared compellingly at George, her pupils huge obsidian pools, and smiled faintly.

"Will you eat me if I can't guess the riddle?" George said. "You remind me of a sphinx."

Her lips, the color of ripe grapes, parted in a grin. "I modeled for it. But no riddle, just an ordinary question. Hagbard wants to know if you need anything. Anything but me. I've got work to do now."

George shrugged. "You beat me to the question. I'd like to get together with Hagbard and find out more about him and the submarine and where we're going."

"We are going to Atlantis. He must have told you that." She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, rolling her hips. She had marvelously long legs. "Atlantis is, roughly speaking, about half way between Cuba and the west coast of Africa, at the bottom of the ocean."

"Yeah, well- That's where it's supposed to be, right?"

"Right. Hagbard's going to want you in the captain's control room later. Meanwhile, smoke some of this, if you want. Helps to pass the time." She held out a gold cigarette case. George took it from her, his fingers brushing the velvety black skin of her hand. A pang of desire for her swept through him. He fumbled with the catch of the case and opened it. There were slender white tubes inside, each one stamped with a gold K. He took one out and held it to his nose. A pleasant, earthy smell.

"We've got a plantation and a factory in Brazil," she said.

"Hagbard must be a wealthy man."

"Oh, yeah. He's worth billions and billions of tons of flax. Well, look, George, if you need anything, just press the ivory button on your desk. Someone will come along. We'll be calling you later." She turned with a languid wave and walked down the fluorescent-lit corridor. George's gaze clung to her unbelievable ass till she climbed a narrow flight of carpeted stairs and was out of sight

What was that woman's name? He lay down on the bed, took out a joint, and lit it. It was marvelous. He was up in seconds, not the usual gradual balloon ascent, but a rocket trip, not unlike the effect of amyl nitrate. He might have known this Hagbard Celine would have something special in the way of grass. He studied the sparkles glinting through the Portuguese man-of-war and wiggled his eyeballs rapidly to make the lights dance. All things that are, are lights. The thought came that Hagbard might be evil. Hagbard was like some robber baron out of the nineteenth century. Also like some robber baron out of the eleventh century. The Normans took Sicily in the ninth century. Which gave you mixtures of Viking and Sicilian, but did they ever look like Anthony Qui