Read Online The illuminatus! trilogy by Robert Shea, Robert Anton Wilson - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Robert Shea, Robert Anton Wilson
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Science fiction; American, Visionary & Metaphysical
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transfer him to be supervisor of a hydroelectric works in Outer Mongolia.”
“We don’t have any men in Fernando Poo,” a commissar said mournfully. “The Americans are imagining things again.”
“Well, how the hell can we withdraw men if we don’t have them there in the first place?” the Premier demanded.
“I don’t know. We’ve got twenty-four hours to figure that out, or—” the commissar quoted an old Russian proverb which means, roughly, that when the polar bear excrement interferes with the fan belts, the machinery overheats.
“Suppose we just announce that our troops are coming out?” another commissar suggested. “They can’t say we’re lying if they don’t find any of our troops there afterward.”
“No, they never believe anything we
say
. They want to be shown,” the premier said thoughtfully. “We’ll have to infiltrate some troops surreptitiously and then withdraw them with a lot of fanfare and publicity. That should do it.”
“I’m afraid it won’t end the problem,” another commissar said funereally. “Our intelligence indicates that there are Chinese troops there. Unless Peking backs down, we’re going to be caught in the middle when the bombs start flying and—” he quoted a proverb about the man in the intersection when two manure trucks collide.
“Damn,” the Premier said. “What the blue blazes do the Chinese want with Fernando Poo?”
He was harassed, but still he spoke with authority. He was, in fact, characteristic of the best type of dominant male in the world at this time. He was fifty-five years old, tough, shrewd, unburdened by the complicated ethical ambiguities which puzzle intellectuals, and had long ago decided that the world was a mean son-of-a-bitch in which only the most cunning and ruthless can survive. He was also as kind as was possible for one holding that ultra-Darwinian philosophy; and he genuinely loved children and dogs, unless they were on the site of something that had to be bombed in the National Interest. He still retained some sense of humor, despite the burdens of his almost godly office, and although he had been impotent with his wife for nearly ten years now, he generallyachieved orgasm in the mouth of a skilled prostitute within 1.5 minutes. He took amphetamine pep pills to keep going on his grueling twenty-hour day, with the result that his vision of the world was somewhat skewed in a paranoid direction, and he took tranquilizers to keep from worrying too much, with the result that his detachment sometimes bordered on schizophrenia; but most of the time his innate shrewdness gave him a fingernail grip on reality. In short, he was much like the rulers of America and China.
And, banishing Thomas Edison and his light bulbs from mind, Saul Goodman looks back over the first eight memos briefly, using the conservative and logical side of his personality, rigidly holding back the intuitive functions. It was a habitual exercise with him, and he called it expansion-and-contraction: leaping in the dark for the connection that must exist between fact one and fact two, then going back slowly to check on himself.
The names and phrases flow past, in review: Fra Dolcino—1508—Roshinaya—Hassan i Sabbah—1090—Weishaupt—assassinations—John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King—Mayor Daley—Cecil Rhodes—1888 —George Washington….
Choices: (1) it is all true, exactly as the memos suggest; (2) it is partly true, and partly false; (3) it is all false, and there is no secret society that has endured from 1090 a.d. to the present.
Well, it isn’t all true. Mayor Daley never said
“Ewige Blumenkraft”
to Senator Ribicoff. Saul had read, in the
Washington Post
, a lip-reader’s translation of Daley’s diatribe and there was no German in it, although there was obscenity and anti-Semitism. The Weishaupt-Washington impersonation theory also had some flaws—in those days, before plastic surgery, such an undetected assumption
“We don’t have any men in Fernando Poo,” a commissar said mournfully. “The Americans are imagining things again.”
“Well, how the hell can we withdraw men if we don’t have them there in the first place?” the Premier demanded.
“I don’t know. We’ve got twenty-four hours to figure that out, or—” the commissar quoted an old Russian proverb which means, roughly, that when the polar bear excrement interferes with the fan belts, the machinery overheats.
“Suppose we just announce that our troops are coming out?” another commissar suggested. “They can’t say we’re lying if they don’t find any of our troops there afterward.”
“No, they never believe anything we
say
. They want to be shown,” the premier said thoughtfully. “We’ll have to infiltrate some troops surreptitiously and then withdraw them with a lot of fanfare and publicity. That should do it.”
“I’m afraid it won’t end the problem,” another commissar said funereally. “Our intelligence indicates that there are Chinese troops there. Unless Peking backs down, we’re going to be caught in the middle when the bombs start flying and—” he quoted a proverb about the man in the intersection when two manure trucks collide.
“Damn,” the Premier said. “What the blue blazes do the Chinese want with Fernando Poo?”
He was harassed, but still he spoke with authority. He was, in fact, characteristic of the best type of dominant male in the world at this time. He was fifty-five years old, tough, shrewd, unburdened by the complicated ethical ambiguities which puzzle intellectuals, and had long ago decided that the world was a mean son-of-a-bitch in which only the most cunning and ruthless can survive. He was also as kind as was possible for one holding that ultra-Darwinian philosophy; and he genuinely loved children and dogs, unless they were on the site of something that had to be bombed in the National Interest. He still retained some sense of humor, despite the burdens of his almost godly office, and although he had been impotent with his wife for nearly ten years now, he generallyachieved orgasm in the mouth of a skilled prostitute within 1.5 minutes. He took amphetamine pep pills to keep going on his grueling twenty-hour day, with the result that his vision of the world was somewhat skewed in a paranoid direction, and he took tranquilizers to keep from worrying too much, with the result that his detachment sometimes bordered on schizophrenia; but most of the time his innate shrewdness gave him a fingernail grip on reality. In short, he was much like the rulers of America and China.
And, banishing Thomas Edison and his light bulbs from mind, Saul Goodman looks back over the first eight memos briefly, using the conservative and logical side of his personality, rigidly holding back the intuitive functions. It was a habitual exercise with him, and he called it expansion-and-contraction: leaping in the dark for the connection that must exist between fact one and fact two, then going back slowly to check on himself.
The names and phrases flow past, in review: Fra Dolcino—1508—Roshinaya—Hassan i Sabbah—1090—Weishaupt—assassinations—John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King—Mayor Daley—Cecil Rhodes—1888 —George Washington….
Choices: (1) it is all true, exactly as the memos suggest; (2) it is partly true, and partly false; (3) it is all false, and there is no secret society that has endured from 1090 a.d. to the present.
Well, it isn’t all true. Mayor Daley never said
“Ewige Blumenkraft”
to Senator Ribicoff. Saul had read, in the
Washington Post
, a lip-reader’s translation of Daley’s diatribe and there was no German in it, although there was obscenity and anti-Semitism. The Weishaupt-Washington impersonation theory also had some flaws—in those days, before plastic surgery, such an undetected assumption
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