Robert Wilson - SCHRODINGER'S CAT TRILOGY

"Research is your art and your religion," said the Japanese monk, speaking for the first time. "What a person truly is, in any universe, is the Buddha Nature," he added blandly. He knew that he existed in this continuum only to make that one Dharma revelation, so he immediately resumed his impassive silence.

The others decided that the monk's remarks made no sense.

"What do you think, Dr. Axon," Loup-Garou asked rhetorically, "if only a few people had sex in their lives, and the majority were, not merely ascetics, but simply unaware of sex-deaf, dumb, and blind to the erotic side of life? Would you not think that was at least a little bit odd, a symptom, perhaps, of some pathology? ArrrrrrrrrghH!"

He had discovered the Rehnquist in his Lobster Newburg.

And the chef arrived from the kitchen, exasperated as only a French chef can be exasperated. "The goats!" he cried. "Once again it is that they march!"

But Loup-Garou was still going "arrrgh," like a man with the death rattle.

"What is it?" Ms. Gebloomenkraft asked him, her eyes full of motherly concern.

"It's nothing-nothing," Loup-Garou gasped. "Just a touch of heartburn." He was still in shock, thinking the Rehnquist might be a hallucination. But if you were naive enough to talk about hallucinations, the results might be rubber sheets, electroshock, windows with bars on them.

"The goats," the chef repeated, with emphasis. "They will not be governed. They march again, I tell you!"

Loup-Garou took another peek. The Rehnquist was still there. It was a great big one- ithyphallique, as the anthropologists would say. This was Madness, or else something unspeakable was afoot.

Billy began to sing, off key:

Four goats and ME,

They came to TEA,

They came to STAY,

They stayed all DAY,

Oh, my! Oh, me!

Four goats and ME!

At this point he fell face down in his Lobster Newburg.

"Bill-uh isn't accustomed to fine French wines," Dr. Carter said, his genial smile beginning to look just a bit forced.

While Loup-Garou was struggling with the enigma of the Rehnquist in the Lobster Newburg, in Paris, Justin Case was speaking to a man from the Saudi Arabian delegation to the U.N., in New York.

"This is actually ah rather trivial," Case said awkwardly into the phone. "You see, many years ago an Arab resigned from this job and left behind a note in Arabic, and well um after staring at it for twenty-six years, I'm a bit bored with the mystery and I'd like to have the answer…"

"Certainly, certainly," said the voice in the receiver. "I'd be glad to help. Can you sound it out?"

"Well, he wrote it in the European alphabet," Case said. "So I guess it's more or less phonetic. I'll read it to you. Um:

Qol: Hua Allahu achad: Allahu Assamad; lam yalid walam yulad; walam yakun lahu kufwan achad

Did you get that?"

"Most certainly," said the electronic voice. "It's one of the most famous verses in Al Koran. In English it would be-of course, it loses most of its beauty in translation- but, roughly, it means God is He who has no beginning and no end, no size and no shape, no definition, and no wife, no horse, no mustache."

"Ah, yes," Case said. "Well, thank you very much, and I'm sorry for having taken your time with such a trivial matter."

He hung up, staring into space in a bemused manner.

"No wife, no horse, no mustache," he repeated aloud.

Something certainly had gotten lost in the translation.

When Dr. Dashwood returned from lunch he was accosted in the ORGRE parking lot by another sailor, who said his name was Lemuel Gulliver.

"In the course of my Travels in Diverse Lands," Gulliver said, "I came once upon a Race of perfectly Enlightened Beings who looked like Horses and talked like G. I. Gurdjieff. When they inquired of me regarding the Laws and Customs and Manners of my people, concerning which I was at some pains to Inform them correctly and fully, they expressed great Astonishment and keen Horror, saying that they never heard of such a Tribe of Conscienceless Rascals and Filthy Scoundrels in all of creation. This estimate of the Human Race, as you can well imagine, dismayed me no little bit, and I endeavour'd to defend our species-"

"Yes, yes," Dashwood said, "but I'm in a hurry, you understand…"

"These equine Philosophers," Gulliver went on as if he had not heard, "were not impressed by any of my Words and said plainly to me that if our Theologians were not the worst Lunatics in creation, then certainly our Lawyers were the worst Thieves. They averred further that if what I told them of our Doctors were true, we were wiser to resort to Plumbers or Blacksmiths, who are no more Ignorant and a great deal less Greedy, Avaricious, and Rapacious."

Dashwood was stung by these words. "It takes a long time and a lot of money invested to get through medical school," he said angrily.

"I explained that to my equine Philosophers," Gulliver replied, "but they did not accept it as a Valid Argument; for they asserted, any Thief or Scoundrel when apprehended will give you Justifications in Plenty for his Misdeeds, but the Judicious are not Fool'd by such Rationalizations, and-they said further-those who prey not upon any chance Passerby, but upon the Sick and the Disabled and the Dying are, without doubt, the most Rapacious and Rascally of the Yahoo Tribe (for such was their Name for our Species)."

"Your friends sound like a bunch of damned Communists," Dashwood said.

"Nay," Gulliver protested. "They live in the State of Nature, without Bureaucrats or Commissars of any kind. And, I might add, Sir, their Opinion of our Doctors was based on my showing them an ordinary Medical Bill, at which they inquir'd of me the Average Income of the Doctors who present these Bills and the Average Income of the Unfortunate Patients who must pay them or be left without Treatment to Die in the Streets. Their comments on this were of such Disgust and Anger that I dared not show them a Psychiatrist's Bill, lest their opinion of our Species, already Low, should sink Lower than Whaleburger, which is, as you may know, at the bottom of the Ocean."

"Oh, Abzug off," said Dashwood, really angry now.

He rushed into ORGRE and left Gulliver standing on the sidewalk.

Back in New York, the phone was ringing again in the office of Abu Laylah at the Saudi Arabian Consulate. Still high on the new kef, Abu Laylah lifted the receiver leisurely.

"I say, is this the Saudi Arabian Consulate?" asked a very British voice.

"Oy vay, have you got the wrong number!" Abu Laylah replied in a thick Yiddish accent.

"Oh," the voice said, taken aback. "Veddy sorry."

Abu Laylah went on packing happily. He had been fired that morning and was thoroughly enjoying himself screwing up all incoming calls before leaving.

Just a few minutes ago he had convinced some Infidel that the most sublime verse in the Koran was full of nonsense about horses and mustaches.

The Invisible Hand Society had its headquarters in Washington, just off Dupont Circle, in the same building which housed the Warren Belch Society.

Clem Cotex, the president of the Belchers, had noticed the name of the Invisible Hand on the building directory a long time ago. He liked it, because he liked mysteries. He enjoyed wondering about the Invisible Hand-ers and speculating on what esoteric business could justify such a name.

Were they the Nine Unknown Men who rule the world? The local branch of the Bavarian Illuminati? The traditionalist faction of the old Black Hand, out of which the Mafia and Cosa Nostra had grown?