The Illuminatus! Trilogy

"Now I'll admit," Fission Chips said reasonably, "that I'm under the influence of some bloody drug from the Kool-Aid. But this simply cannot all be hallucination. Very definitely, thirteen people took their clothes off and started dancing. I quite certainly heard them singing 'Blessed be, blessed be,' over and over. Then a simply gigantic woman rose up from somewhere and all the sirens and undines and mermaids went back into the water. If this was Armageddon, it was not precisely the way the Bible described it Is that a fair summary of the situation?" The tree he was talking to didn't answer. "Blessed be, blessed be," Lady Velkor sang on, as she and her hastily assembled coven danced widdershins in their circle. The spell had worked: With her own eyes she had seen the Great Mother, Isis, rise up and smite the evil spirits of the dead Catholic Inquisitors whom the Illuminati had tried to revive. She knew Hagbard Celine would later be boasting in all the most chic occult circles that he had performed the miracle, and giving the credit to that destructive bitch Eris- but that didn't matter. She with her own eyes had seen Isis, and that was enough.

"Now I ask you," Fission Chips went on, addressing another tree, who seemed more communicative, "what the sulphurous hell did you see happening here tonight?"

"I saw a master Magician," said the tree, "or a master con man- the two are the same- plant a few suggestions and get a bunch of acidheads running away from their own shadows." The tree, who was actually Joe Malik and only looked like a tree to poor befuddled 00005, added, "Or I saw the final battle between Good and Evil, with Horus on both sides."

"You must be drugged too," Chips said pettishly.

"You bet your sweet ass I am," said the tree, walking away.

… I don't know how the courts will ever untangle this. With five of them shooting at once, and the Secret Service shooting back right away, the best crime lab in the world will never get the trajectories of all the bullets right. Who, among the survivors, will be tried for murder and who for attempted murder? Thafs the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question and… what?… oh…And now, ladies and gentlemen, on this sad occasion… uh… in this tragic hour of our country's history, let us all pay especially close attention to the new President, who will now address us.

Who's that jig standing over there? the new Chief Exec was asking somebody off camera when he appeared on the TV screens.

The Chevrolet Stegosaurus drove into the empty concert grounds and came to a slow halt. The guitarist stuck his head out the window and yelled to Lady Velkor, "What the hell happened here?"

"There was some bad acid in me Kool-Aid," she told him gravely. "Everybody freaked out and ran off toward town."

"Hell," he said, "and this was going to be our first big audience. We're a new group, just formed. What lousy luck."

He turned and drove off, and she read the sign on the back of the car: THE FERNANDO POO INCIDENT.

"How are you now, baby?" Simon asked.

"I know who I am," Mary Lou said slowly, "and you might not like the results of that any more than the Chicago police force will." Her eyes were distant and pensive.

Wolfgang and Winifred were very near shore when the dark, humped shapes rose out of the water around them. Winifred shrieked, "Wolfgang! For the love of Gruad, Wolfgang! They're pulling me down!" Her long blond hair floated for a moment after her head went under; then that too disappeared.

And then there were two.

The porpoises have her, Wolfgang thought to himself. He continued to swim madly toward shore. Something caught his trouser leg, but he kicked free. Then he was in the shallows, too close in for the sea beasts to follow. He stood up and waded ashore. And came face to face with John Dillinger.