The Illuminatus! Trilogy полностью

"You haven't noticed it?" Joe smiled loftily. "There are very few of us who are really Christians. Most of the membership are just a little bit lavender, know what I mean? I think it's one of our biggest problems, and we ought to bring it out into the open and discuss it frankly. Clear the air, right? For instance, take the way Smiling Jim always puts his arm around your shoulder when he talks to you-"

Cotex interrupted, "Hey, mister, you're pretty darn bright. Just now hit me like a flash- some of the men here, when Smiling Jim showed those beaver shots to prove how bad some magazines are getting, they really shuddered. They didn't just disapprove- it really honest-to-Pete revolted them. What kind of man actually finds a naked lady disgusting?"

Go, baby, go, Joe thought. The AUM is working. He quickly derailed the conversation. "Another thing that bothers me. Why don't we ever challenge the spherical earth theory?"

"Huh?"

"Look," Joe said. "If all the scientists and eggheads and commies and liberals are pushing it in our schools all the time, there must be something a little fishy about it. Did you ever stop to think that there's no way- just no way at all- to reconcile a spherical earth with the story of the Flood, or Joshua's miracle, or Jesus standing on the pinnacle of the Temple and seeing all the kingdoms of the earth? And I ask you, man to man, in all your travels have you ever seen the curvature anywhere? Every place I've been is flat. Are we going to trust the Bible and the evidence of our own senses, or are we going to listen to a bunch of agnostics and atheists in laboratory smocks?"

"But the earth's shadow on the moon during an eclipse…"

Joe took a dime out of his pocket and held it up. 'This casts a circular shadow, but it's flat, not spherical."

Cotex stared into space for a long moment, while Joe waited with suppressed excitement. "You know something?" Cotex said finally, "all the Bible miracles and our own travels and the shadow on the moon would make sense if the earth was shaped like a carrot and all the continents were on the flat end-"

Praise be to Simon's god, Bugs Bunny, Joe thought elatedly. It's happening- he's not only gullible- he's creative.

I followed the cop- the pig, I corrected myself- out of the cafeteria. I was so keyed up that it was a Trip. The blue of his uniform, the neon signs, even the green of the lampposts, all were coming in super bright. That was adrenalin. My mouth was dry- dehydration. All the classic flight-fight symptoms. The activation syndrome, Skinner calls it. I let the cop- the pig- get half a block ahead and reached in my pocket for the revolver.

"Come on, George!" Malik shouted. George didn't want to move. His heart was thumping, his arms and legs trembling so hard he knew they'd be useless to him in a fight. But he just didn't want to move. He'd had enough of running from these motherfuckers.

But he couldn't help himself. As the men in blue shirts and white helmets came on, the crowd surged away from them, and George had to move back with the crowd or be knocked down and trampled.

"Come on, George." It was Pete Jackson at his side now, with a good, hard grip on his arm, tugging him.

"Goddam it, why do we have to run away from them?" George said, stumbling backward.

Peter was smiling faintly. "Don't you read your Mao, George? Enemy attacks, we retreat. Let the Morituri fanatics stand and get creamed."

I couldn't do it. My hand held the gun, but I couldn't take it out and hold it in front of me any more than I could take out my penis and wave it around. I was sure, even though the street was empty except for me and the pig, that a dozen people would jump out of doorways yelling, "Look, he took it out of his pants."

Just like right now, when Hagbard said, "Button up your asshole. We're in for a fight," I stood frozen like I stood frozen on the embankment above the Passaic.

"Are you on an ego trip playing at being a revolutionary?" Carlo asked.