Robert Wilson - The Illuminatus! Trilogy

They walked back the same way they had come. At the entrance to the corridor where George's cell was, the Sheriff opened the door and yelled, "Come and get him, Charley."

George's guard, his face pale and his mouth set in a lipless line, took George by the arm. The corridor door clanged shut behind the Sheriff. Charley took George to his cell and pushed him in wordlessly. But at least he was three-dimensional now and less like a marijuana phantom.

Harry Coin wasn't there. The cell was empty. George became aware of a shadow in the corner of his vision. Something in the cell next to him. He turned: His heart stopped. There was a man hanging from a pipe on the ceiling. George went over and stared through the bars. The body was swaying slightly. It was attached to the pipe by a leather belt which was buckled around the neck. The face, with the staring eyes, was that of Harry Coin. George's glance went lower. Something was coming out of

Harry Coin's midsection and was dangling down to the floor. It wasn't suicide. They had disemboweled Harry Coin, and someone had thoughtfully moved a shit-can under him for his bloody intestines to dangle into.

George screamed. There was no one around to answer him. The guard had vanished like Hermes.

(But in Cherry Knolls mental hospital in Sunderland, England, where it was already eleven the following morning, a schizophrenic patient who hadn't spoken in ten years abruptly began exhorting a ward attendant: "They're all coming back-Hitler, Goering, Streicher, the whole lot of them. And, behind them, the powers and persons from the other spheres who control them…" But Simon Moon in Chicago still calmly and placidly retains the lotus position and instructs Mary Lou sitting in his lap: "Just hold it, hold it with your vaginal wall like you'd hold it with your hand, gently, and feel its warmth, but don't think about orgasm, don't think about the future, not even a minute ahead, think about the now, the only now, the only now, the only now that we'll ever have, just my penis in your vagina now and the simple pleasure of it, not a greater pleasure to work toward…" "My back hurts," Mary Lou said.)

WE'RE GONNA ROCK ROCK ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK TO NIGHT

There are Swedish and Norwegian kids, Danes, Italian and French kids, Greeks, even Americans. George and Hagbard move through the crowd trying to estimate its number-200,000? 300,000? 500,000? Peace symbols dangling about every neck, nudes with body paint, nudes without body paint, long and dangling hair on boys and girls alike, and over all of it the hypnotic and unending beat. "Woodstock Europa," Hagbard says dryly. "The last and final Walpurgisnacht and Adam Weishaupt's Erotion finally realized."

WE'RE GONNA ROCK ROCK ROCK TILL BROAD DAYLIGHT

"It's a League of Nations," George says, "a young people's League of Nations." Hagbard isn't listening. "Up there," he points, "to the Northwest is the Rhine, where die Lorelei was supposed to sit and sing her deadly songs. There will be deadlier music on the Danube tonight."

WE'RE GONNA ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK TONIGHT

(But that was still seven days in the future, and now

George lies unconscious in Mad Dog County Jail. And it began-that phase of the operation, as Hagbard called it-over thirty years before when a Swiss chemist named Hoffman climbed on his bicycle and pedaled down a country road into new dimensions.)

"And will they all come back?" George asked.

"All of them," Hagbard answered tightly. "When the beat reaches the proper intensity… unless we can stop it."

("Now I'm getting it," Mary Lou cried. "It's not what I expected. It's different from sex, and better." Simon smiled benignly. "It is sex, baby," he said. "What you've had before wasn't sex. Now we can start moving… but slowly… the Gentle Way… the Way of Tao…" They're all coming back; they never died- the lunatic raved at the startled attendant- You wait, guvnor. You just wait. You'll see it.)

The amplifiers squealed suddenly. There was too much feedback, and the sound went off into a pitch beyond endurance. George winced, and saw others hold their ears. ROCK, ROCK, ROCK, AROUND THE CLOCK. The key missed the lock, turned and cut Muldoon's hand. "Nerves," he said to Saul. "I always feel like a burglar when I do this."

Saul grunted. "Forget burglary," he said. "We might be hanged for treason before this is over. If we don't become national heroes."

"A fanfuckingtastic case," Muldoon grinned. He tried another way.

They were in an old brownstone on Riverside Drive, trying to break into the apartment of Joseph Malik. And they were not merely looking for evidence, both tacitly admitted-they were hiding from the FBI.

The call had come from headquarters just as they were finishing the questioning of associate editor Peter Jackson. Muldoon had gone out to his car to take it, while Saul finished getting a full physical description of both Malik and George Dorn. Jackson had just left and Saul was picking up the fifth memo, when Muldoon returned, looking as if his doctor had just told him his Wasserman was positive.

"Two special agents from the FBI are coming over to help us," he said woodenly.

"Still ready to play a hunch?" Saul asked calmly, pushing all the memos back in the metal box.

Muldoon merely called Pricefixer back into the cafeteria and told him, "Two feds will be here in a few minutes. Tell them we went back to headquarters. Answer any question they ask, but don't tell them about this box."

Pricefixer looked at the two older officers carefully and then said to Muldoon, "You're the boss."

He's either awfully dumb and trusting, Saul had thought, or he's so damned smart he's going to be dangerous someday.

"Now," he asked Muldoon nervously, "is that the last key?"

"No, I've got five more beauties here and one of them will-here it is!" The door opened smoothly.

Saul's hand drifted toward his revolver as he stepped into the apartment and felt for a light switch. Nobody was revealed when the light came on, and Saul relaxed. "You look around for the dogs." he said. "I want to sit down and go over the rest of these memos."

The room was used for work as well as living and was untidy enough to leave no room for doubt that Malik had been a bachelor. Saul pushed the typewriter back on the writing desk, set down the memo box and then noticed something odd. The whole wall, on this side of the room, was covered with pictures of George Washington. Standing to examine them more closely, he saw that each had a label-half of them saying "G.W." and the others, "A.W."

Odd-but the whole case had overtones that smelled as fishy as those dead Egyptian mouth-breeders.

Saul sat down and took a memo from the box.

Muldoon came back into the living room and said, "No dogs. Not a goddam dog anywhere in the whole apartment."

"That's interesting," Saul remarked thoughtfully. "You say the landlord had complaints from several other tenants about the dogs?";

"He said everybody in the building was complaining. The rule is no pets and he enforced it. People wanted to know why they had to get rid of their kittens when Malik could have a whole pack of dogs up here. They said there must have been ten or twelve from the noise they made."

"He sure must love those animals, if he took them all with him when he went into hiding," Saul mused. The pole vaulter in his unconscious was jumping again. "Let's look in the kitchen," he suggested mildly.

Barney followed as Saul methodically ransacked the refrigerator and cupboards, finishing up with a careful examination of the garbage.

"No dog food," Saul said finally.

"I noticed."

"And no dog dishes either. And no empty dog-food tins in the garbage."