The Illuminatus! Trilogy

In fact, the President of the United States had several severe migraines during the following weeks; but the atheistic rulers of Moscow and Peking were less susceptible to magic. They never reported a twinge. But, wait, here is another performer in our circus, and one of the most intelligent and decent in the lot-his name is unpronounceable, but you can call him Howard and he happens to have been born a dolphin. He's swimming through the ruins of Atlantis and it's April 10 already-time is moving; I'm not sure what Howard sees but it bothers him, and he decides to tell Hagbard Celine all about it. Not that I know, at this point, who Hagbard Celine is. Never mind; watch the waves roll and be glad there isn't much pollution out here yet. Look at the way the golden sun lights each wave with a glint that, curiously, sparkles into a silver sheen; and watch, watch the waves as they roll, so that it is easy to cross five hours of time in one second and find ourselves amid trees and earth, with even a few falling leaves for a touch of poetry before the horror. Where are we? Five hours away, I told you-five hours due west, to be precise, so at the same instant that Howard turns a somersault in Atlantis, Sasparilla Godzilla, a tourist from Simcoe, Ontario (she had the misfortune to be born a human being) turns a neat nosedive right here and lands unconscious on the ground. This is the outdoor extension of the Museum of Anthropology in Chapultepec Park, Mexico, D.F., and the other tourists are rather upset about the poor lady's collapse. She later said it was the heat. Much less sophisticated in important matters than Nkrumah Fubar, she didn't care to tell anybody, or even to remind herself, what had really knocked her over. Back in Simcoe, the folks always said Harry Godzilla got a sensible woman when he married Sasparilla, and it is sensible in Canada (or the United States) to hide certain truths. No, at this point I had better not call them truths. Let it stand that she either saw, or imagined she saw, a certain sinister kind of tight grin, or grimace, cross the face of the gigantic statue of Tlaloc, the rain god. Nobody from Simcoe had ever seen anything like that before; indeed do many things come to pass.

And, if you think the poor lady was an unusual case, you should examine the records of psychiatrists, both institutional and private, for the rest of the month. Reports of unusual anxieties and religious manias among schizophrenics in mental hospitals skyrocketed; and ordinary men and women walked in off the street to complain about eyes watching them, hooded beings passing through locked rooms, crowned figures giving unintelligible commands, voices that claimed to be God or the Devil, a real witch's brew for sure. But the sane verdict was to attribute all this to the aftermath of the Fernando Poo tragedy.

The phone rang at 2:30 A.M. the morning of April 24. Numbly, dumbly, mopingly, gropingly, out of the dark, I find and identify a body, a self, a task. "Goodman," I say into the receiver, propped up on one arm, still coming a long way back.

"Bombing and homicide," he electrically eunuchoid voice in the transmitter tells me. I sleep naked (sorry about that), and I'm putting on my drawers and trousers as I copy the address. East Sixty-eighth Street, near the Council on Foreign Relations. "Moving," I say, hanging up.

"What? Is?" Rebecca mumbles from the bed. She's naked, too, and that recalls very pleasant memories of a few hours earlier. I suppose some of you will be shocked when I tell you I'm past sixty and she's only twenty-five. It doesn't make it any better that we're married, I know.

This isn't a bad body, for its age, and seeing Rebecca, most of the sheets thrown aside, reminds me just how good it is. In fact, at this point I don't even remember having been the ringmaster, or what echo I retain is confused with sleep and dream. I kiss her neck, unselfconsciously, for she is my wife and I am her husband, and even if I am an inspector on the Homicide Squad-Homicide North, to be exact-any notions about being a stranger in this body have vanished with my dreams into air. Into thin air.

"What?" Rebecca repeats, still more asleep than awake.

"Damned fool radicals again," I say, pulling on my shirt, knowing any answer is as good as another in her half-conscious state.

"Um," she says, satisfied, and turns over into deep sleep again.