The Illuminatus! Trilogy

And then I sat back and thought about Harry Coin. Once I imagined I could make it with him: there was something so repulsive, so cruel, so wild and psychopathic there… but, of course, it hadn't worked. The same as every other man. Nothing. "Hit me," I screamed. "Bite me. Hurt me. Do something." He did everything, the most agreeable sadist in the world, but it was the same as if be had been the gentlest, most poetic English instructor at Antioch. Nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing… The closest miss was that strange banker, Drake, from Boston. What a scene. I'd gotten into his office on Wall Street, seeking a contribution for God's Lightning. Old white-haired buzzard, between sixty and seventy: typical of our wealthier members, I thought. I started the usual spiel, communism, sexism, smut, and all the time his eyes were bright and hard as a snake's. It finally hit me that he didn't believe a word of it, so I started to cut it off, and then he pulled out his checkbook and wrote and held it up so I could see it. Twenty thousand dollars. I didn't know what to say, and I started something about how all true Americans would appreciate this great gesture and so on, and he said, "Rubbish. You're not rich but you're famous. I want to add you to my collection. Deal?" The coldest bastard I ever met, even Harry Coin was human by comparison, yet his eyes were such a clear blue I couldn't believe they could be so frightening, a real madman in a perfectly sane way, not even a psychopath but something they don't have a name for, and it clicked, the humiliation of whoredom and the predatory viciousness in his face plus the twenty grand; I nodded. He took me into a private suite off of his business office and he touched one button, the lights dimmed, another button, down came a movie screen, a third button, and I was watching a pornographic movie. He didn't approach me, just watched, and I tried to get excited, wondering if the actress was really making it or just faking it, and then a second film began, four of them this time in permutations and combinations, he led me to the couch, every time I opened my eyes I could still see the film over his shoulder, and it was the same, the same, as soon as he got his thing inside me, nothing, nothing, nothing, I kept looking at the actors trying to feel something, and then, as he came, be whispered in my ear, "Heute die Welt, Morgans das Sonnen-system!" That was the only time I almost made it Sheer terror that this maniac knew…

Later, I tried to find out about him, but nobody above me in the Order would say a word, and those below me didn't know anything. But I finally found out: he was very big in the Syndicate, maybe the top. And that's how I figured out that the old rumor was true, the Syndicate was run by the Order, too, just like everything else…

But that cold sinister old man never said another word about it. I kept waiting while we dressed, when he gave me the check, when he escorted me to the door, and even his expression seemed to deny that he had said it or knew what it meant. When he opened the door for me, he put an arm on my shoulder and spoke, so his secretary could hear it, "May your work hasten the day when America returns to purity." Even his eyes weren't mocking and his voice sounded completely sincere. And yet he had read me to the core, knew I was faking, and guessed that terror alone could unlock my reflexes: maybe he even knew that I had already tried physical sadism and it hadn't worked. Out on Wall Street in the crowd, I saw a man with a gas mask- they were still rare that year- and I felt the whole world was moving faster than I could understand and that the Order wasn't telling me nearly as much as I needed to know.

Brother Beghard, who is actually a politician in Chicago under his "real" name, once explained the Law of Fives to me in relation to the pyramid-of-power principle. Intellectually, I understand: it's the only way we can work, each group a separate vector so that the most any infiltrator can learn is a small part of the design. Emotionally, though, it does get frightening at times: do the Five at the top really have the whole picture? I don't know, and I don't see how they can predict a man like Drake or guess what he's planning next There's a paradox here, I know:

I joined the Order seeking power, and now I am more a tool, an object, than ever before. If a man like Drake ever thought that, he might tear the whole show apart.

Unless the Five really do have the powers they claim; but I'm not gullible enough to believe that bull. Some of it's hypnotism, and some is plain old stage magic, but none of it is really supernatural. Nobody has sold me on a fairy tale since my uncle got into me when I was twelve with his routine about stopping the bleeding. If my parents had only told me the truth about menstruation in advance…