The Illuminatus! Trilogy полностью

"I'm not afraid of Capone or Lepke or Maldonado or…" The Dutchman's eyes brought back the hospital room. "I'm a pretty good pretzeler," he told Sergeant Conlon anxiously. "Winifred, Department of Justice. I even got it from the department." The pain shot through him, sharp as ecstasy. "Sir, please stop it!" He had to explain about DeMolay and Weishaupt. "Listen," he urged, "the last Knight. I don't want to holler." It was so hard, with the pulsings of the pain. "I don't know, sir. Honestly, I don't. I went to the toilet. I was in the can and the boy came at me. If we wanted to break the Ring. No, please. I get a month. Come on, Illuminati, cut me off." It was so hard to explain. "I had nothing with him and he was a cowboy in one of the seven days. Ewige! Fight… No business, no hangouts, no friends. Nothing. Just what you pick up and what you need." The pain wasn't just the bullet; they were working on his mind, trying to stop him from saying too much. He saw the goat head. "Let him harness himself to you and then bother you," he cried. "They are Englishmen and they are a type and I don't know who is best, they or us." So much to say, and so little time. He thought of Francie, his wife. "Oh, sir, get the doll a rofting." The Illuminati formula to summon the lloigor: he could at least reveal that. "A boy has never wept nor dashed a thousand kim. Did you hear me?" They had to understand how high it went, all over the world. "I would hear it, the Circuit Court would hear it, and the Supreme Court would hear it. If that ain't the payoff. Please crack down on the Chinaman's friends and Hitler's Commander." Eris, the Great Mother, was the only alternative to the Illuminati's power; he had to tell them that much. "Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast."

"He's blabbing too much," the one who wore the goat head, Winifred, from Washington, said. "Increase the pain."

"The dirty rats have tuned in," Dutch shouted.

"Control yourself," Sergeant Conlon said soothingly.

"But I am dying," Dutch, explained. Couldn't they understand anything?

Drake met Winifred at a cocktail party in Washington, in '47, just after the National Security Act was passed by the Senate. "Well?" Winifred asked, "do you have any further doubts?"

"None at all," Drake said. "All my open money is now invested in defense industries."

"Keep it there," Winifred smiled, "and you'll get richer than you ever dreamed. Our present projection is that we can get Congress to approve one trillion dollars in war preparations before 1967."

Drake thought fast and asked softly, "You're going to add another villain beside Russia?"

"Watch China," Winifred said calmly.

For once, curiosity surpassed cupidity in Drake; he asked, "Are you really keeping him in the Pentagon?"

"Would you like to meet him, face to face?" Winifred asked with a faint hint of a sneer in his voice.

"No thank you," Drake said coolly. "I've been reading Herman Rauschning. I remember Hitler's words about the Superman: 'He is alive, among us. I have met him. He is intrepid and terrible. I was afraid of him.' That's enough for my curiosity."

"Hitler," Winifred replied, not hiding the sneer now. "Saw him in his more human form. He's… progressed… since then."

Tonight, Drake thought, as the thunder rose to a maddening crescendo, I will see him, or one of them. Surely, I could have picked a more agreeable form of suicide? The question was pointless; Jung had been right all along, with his Law of Opposites. Even Freud knew it: every sadist becomes a masochist at last.

On an impulse, Drake arose and fetched a pad and pen from the bedside Tudor table. He began to scribble by the light of the increasing electrical storm outside:

What am I afraid of? Haven't I been building up to this rendezvous ever since I threw the bottle at mother when I was 1 1/2 years old?

And it is kin to me. We both live on blood, do we not, even if I have prettied it over by taking the blood money instead of the blood itself?

Dimensions keep shifting, whenever it gets a fix on me. Prinn was right in his De Vermis Mysteriis, they don't really participate in the same space-time as us. That's what Alhazred meant when he wrote, "Their hand is at your throat but you see them not. They walk serene and unsuspected, not in the spaces we know, but between them."

"Pull me out," the Dutchman moaned. "I am half crazy. They won't let me get up. They dyed my shoes. Give me something. I am so sick."

I can see Kadath and the two magnetic poles. I must unify the forces by eating the entity.

Which me is the real me? Is it so easy to flow into my soul because there is so little soul left? Is that what Jung was trying to tell me about power?

I see Newark Hospital and the Dutchman. I see the white light and then the black that does not pulsate or move. I see George trying to drive the Rolls in this damnable rain. I see the whiteness of whiteness is black.