The Illuminatus! Trilogy полностью

"Okay, okay, I think I've got most of it. Property is theft because the Illuminati land titles are arbitrary and unjust. And so are their banking charters and railroad franchises and all the other monopoly games of capitalism-"

"Of state capitalism. Not of true laissez-faire."

"Wait. Property is impossible because the world is a verb, a burning house as Buddha said. All things are fire. My old pal Heracleitus. So property is theft and property is impossible. How do we get to property is liberty?"

"Without private property there can be no private decisions."

"So we're back where we started from?"

"No, we're one flight higher up on the spiral staircase. Look at it that way. Dialectically, as your Marxist Mends say."

"But we care back at private property. After proving it's an impossible fiction."

"The Statist form of private property is an impossible fiction. Just like the Statist form of communal property is an impossible fiction. Think outside the State framework, George. Think of property in freedom."

George shook his head. "It beats the hell out of my ass. All I can see is people ripping each other off. The war of all against all, as what's-his-name said."

"Hobbes."

"Hobbes, snobs, jobs. Whoever. Or whatever. Isn't he right?"

"Stop the motor on this submarine."

"What?"

"Force me to love you."

"Wait, I don't…"

"Turn the sky green or red, instead of blue."

"I still don't get it."

Mavis took a pen off the desk and held it between two fingers. "What happens when I let go of this?"

"It falls."

"Where do you sit if there are no chairs?"

"On the floor?" If Iwasn't so stoned, I would have had it by then. Sometimes drugs are more a hindrance than a help. "On the ground?" I added.

"On your ass, that's for sure." Mavis said. "The point is, if the chairs all go away, you still sit. Or you build new chairs." She was stoned, too; otherwise she'd be explaining it better, I realized. "But you can't stop the motor without learning something about marine engineering first. You don't know what switch to pull. Or switches. And you can't change the sky. And the pen will fall without a gravity-governing demon rushing into the room to make it fall."

"Shit and pink petunias," I said disgustedly. "Is this some form of Thomism? Are you trying to sell me the Natural Law argument? I can't buy that at all."

"Okay, George. Here's the next jolt. Keep your asshole tight." She spoke to the wall, to a hidden microphone, I guessed. "Send him in now."

The Robot is easily upset; my sphincter was already tightening as soon as she warned me there was a jolt coming and she didn't really need to add that bit about my asshole. Carlo and his gun. Hagbard and his gun. Drake's mansion. I took a deep breath and waited to see what the Robot would do.

A panel in the wall opened and Harry Coin was pushed into the room. I had time to think that I should have guessed, in this game where both sides were playing with illusion constantly, Coin's death could have been faked, artificial intestines dangling and all, and of course Mavis and her raiders could have taken him out of Mad Dog jail even before they took me out of course, and I remembered the pain when he slapped my face and when his cock entered me, and the Robot was already moving, and I hardly had time to aim of course, and then his head was banging against the wall, blood spurting from his nose, and I had time to clip him again on the jaw as he went down of course, and then I came all the way back and stopped myself as I was about to kick him in the face as he lay there unconscious. Zen in the art of face-punching. I had knocked a man out with two blows; I who hated Hemingway and Machismo so much that I'd never taken a boxing lesson in my life. I was breathing hard, but it was good and clean, the feeling of after-an-orgasm; the adrenalin was flowing, but a fight reflex instead of a flight reflex had been triggered, and now it over, and I was calm. A glint in the air: Hagbard's pistol was in Mavis's hand, then flying toward me. As I caught it, she said, "Finish the bastard."

But the rage had ended when I held back the kick on seeing him already unconscious.

"No," I said. "It is finished."

"Not until you kill him. You're no good to us until you're ready to kill, George."

I ignored her and rapped on the wall. "Haul the bastard out," I said clearly. The panel opened, and two Slavic-looking seamen, grinning, grabbed Coin's arms and dragged him out. The panel closed again, quietly.

"I don't kill on command," I said, turning back to Mavis. "I'm not a German shepherd or a draftee. My case with him is settled, and if you want him dead, do the dirty work yourself."

But Mavis was smiling placidly. "Is that a Natural Law?" she asked.