("And it's not only a sin against God," Mr. Mocenigo shouts, "but it gives you germs, too." It is 1950, early spring on Mulberry Street, and young Charlie Mocenigo raises terrified eyes. "Look, look," Mr. Mocenigo goes on angrily, "don't believe your own father. See what the dictionary says. Look, look at the page. Here, see. 'Masturbation: self-pollution.' Do you know what self-pollution means? Do you know how long those germs last?" And in another spring, 1955, Charles Mocenigo, a pale, skinny, introverted genius, registers for his first semester at MIT and, coming to the square on the form that says "Religion," writes in careful block capitals, ATHEIST. He has read Kinsey and Hirschfeld and almost all the biologically oriented sexological treatises by this time-studiously ignoring psychoanalysts and such unscientific types-and the only visible remnant of that early adolescent terror is a habit of washing his hands frequently when under tension, which earns him the nickname "Soapy.")
General Talbot looks at Mocenigo pityingly and raises his pistol to the scientist's head…
On August 6, 1902, the world produced its usual crop of new humans, all programmed to act more or less 'alike, all containing minor variations of the same basic DNA blueprint; of these, approximately 51,000 were female and 50,000 were male; and two of the males, born at the same second, were to play a large role in our story, and to pursue somewhat similar and anabatic careers. The first, born over a cheap livery stable in the Bronx, New York, was named Arthur Flegenheimer and, at the other end of his life, spoke very movingly about his mother (as well as about bears and sidewalks and French Canadian Bean Soup); the second, born in one of the finest old homes on Beacon Hill in Boston, was named Robert Putney Drake and, at the other end of his life, thought rather harshly of his mother… but when the paths of Mr. Flegenheimer and Mr. Drake crossed, in 1935, one of the links was formed which led to the Fernando Poo Incident.
And, in present time, more or less, 00005 was summoned to meet W. in the headquarters of a certain branch of British Intelligence. The date was March 17, but being English, neither 00005 nor W. gave a thought to blessed Saint Patrick; instead, they spoke of Fernando Poo.
"The Yanks," W. said crisply, "are developing evidence that the Russians or the Chinese, or both of them, are behind this Tequilla y Moto swine. Of course, even if that were true, it wouldn't matter a damn to Her Majesty's government; what do we care if a speck of an island that size turns Red? But you know the Yanks, 00005-they're ready to go to war over it, although they haven't announced that publicly yet."
"My mission," 00005 asked, the fault lines of cruelty about his mouth turning into a most engaging smile, "is to hop down to Fernando Poo and find out the real politics of this Tequilla y Mota bloke and if he is Red overthrow him before the Yanks blow up the world?"
"That's the assignment. We can't have a bloody nuclear war just when the balance of payments is almost straightened out and the Common Market is finally starting to work. So, hop to it, straightaway. Naturally, if you're captured, Her Majesty's government will have to disavow any knowledge of your actions."
"It always seems to work out that way," 00005 said ironically. "I wish for once you'd give me a mission where Her Majesty's bleeding government would stand behind me in a tight spot."
But 00005, of course, was merely being witty; as a loyal subject, he would follow orders under any circumstances, even if it required the death of every soul on Fernando Poo and himself as well. He rose, in his characteristic debonair fashion, and headed for his own office, where he began his preparations for the Fernando Poo mission. His first step was to check his personal worldwide travel notebook, seeking the bar in Santa Isobel which came closest to serving a suitable martini and the restaurant most likely to prepare an endurable lobster Newburg. To his horror, there was no such bar and no such restaurant. Santa Isobel was bereft of social graces.
"I say," 00005 muttered, "this is going to be a bit thick."
But he cheered up quickly, for he knew that Fernando Poo would be equipped at least with a bevy of tawny-skinned or coffee-colored females, and such women were the Holy Grail to him. Besides, he had already formed his own theory about Fernando Poo: he was convinced that BUGGER-Blowhard's Unreformed Gangsters, Goons, and Espionage Renegades, an international conspiracy of criminals and double agents, led by the infamous and mysterious Eric "the Red" Blowhard-was behind it all. 00005 had never heard of the Illuminati.
In fact, 00005, despite his dark hair combed straight back, his piercing eyes, his cruel and handsome face, his trim athlete's body, and his capacity to penetrate any number of females and defenestrate any number of males in the course of duty, was not really an ideal intelligence agent. He had grown up reading Ian Fleming novels and one day, at the age of twenty-one, looked in the mirror, decided he was everything a Fleming hero should be, and started a campaign to get into the spy game. After fourteen years in bureaucratic burrowing, he finally arrived in one of the intelligence services, but it was much more the kind of squalid and bumbling organization in which Harry Palmer had toiled his cynical days away than it was a berth of Bondage. Nevertheless, 00005 did his best to refurbish and glamorize the scene and, perhaps because God looks after fools, he hadn't managed to get himself killed in any of the increasingly bizarre missions to which he was assigned. The missions were all weird, at first, because nobody took them seriously-they were all based on wild rumors that had to be checked out just in case there be some truth in them-but later it was realized that 00005's peculiar schizophrenia was well suited to certain real problems, just as the schizoid of the more withdrawn type is ideal for a "sleeper" agent since he could easily forget what was conventionally considered his real self. Of course, nobody at any time ever took BUGGER seriously, and, behind his back, 00005's obsession with this organization was a subject of much interdepartmental humor.
"Wonderful as it was," Mary Lou said, "some of it was scary."
'Why?" Simon asked.
"All those hallucinations. I thought I might be losing my mind."
Simon lit another joint and passed it over to her. "What makes you think, even now, that it was just hallucinations?" he asked.
ROCK ROCK ROCK TILL BROAD DAYLIGHT
"If that was real," Mary Lou said firmly, "everything else in my life has been a hallucination."
Simon grinned. "Now," he said calmly, "you're getting the point."
THE SECOND TRIP, OR CHOKMAH
Hopalong Horus Rides Again
Hang on for some metaphysics. The Aneristic Principle is that of ORDER, the Eristic Principle is that of DISORDER. On the surface, the Universe seems (to the ignorant) to be ordered; this is the ANERISTIC ILLUSION. Actually, what order is "there" is imposed on primal chaos in the same sense that a person's name is draped over his actual self. It is the job of the scientist, for example, to implement this principle in a practical manner and some are quite brilliant at it. But on closer examination, order dissolves into disorder, which is the ERISTIC ILLUSION.
–Malaclypse the Younger, K.S.C., Principia Discordia
And Spaceship Earth, that glorious and bloody circus, continued its four-billion-year-long spiral orbit about the Sun; the engineering, I must admit, was so exquisite that none of the passengers felt any motion at all. Those on the dark side of the ship mostly slept and voyaged into worlds of freedom and fantasy; those on the light side moved about the tasks appointed for them by their rulers, or idled waiting for the next order from above. In Las Vegas, Dr. Charles Mocenigo woke from another nightmare and went to the toilet to wash his hands. He thought of his date the next night with Sherri Brandi and, quite mercifully, had no inkling that it would be his last contact with a woman. Still seeking calm, he went to the window and looked at the stars-being a specialist, with no interest beyond his own field, he imagined he was looking up rather than out at them. In New Delhi aboard the afternoon TWA flight for Hong Kong, Honolulu, and Los Angeles, R. Buckminster Fuller, one of the few people to be aware that he lived on a spaceship, glanced at his three watches, showing local time (5:30 P.M.), time at Honolulu, his point of destination (2:30 A.M. the next morning) and present time in his home at Carbondale, Illinois (3:30 A.M. the previous morning.) In Paris, the noon crowds were jostled by hordes of young people distributing leaflets glowingly describing the world's greatest Rock Festival and Cosmic Love Feast to be celebrated on the shores of Lake Totenkopf near Ingolstadt at the end of the month. At Sunderland, England, a young psychiatrist left his lunch to rush to the chronic ward and listen to weird babble proceeding from a patient who had been decade-silent: "On Walpurgasnacht it's coming. That's when His power is strongest. That's when you'll see Him. Right at the very stroke of midnight." In the middle of the Atlantic, Howard the porpoise, swimming with friends in the mid-morning sun, encountered some sharks and had a nasty fight. Saul Goodman rubbed tired eyes in New York City as dawn crept over the windowsill, and read a memo about Charlemagne and the Courts of the Illuminated; Rebecca Goodman, meanwhile, read how the jealous priests of Bel-Marduk betrayed Babylon to the invading army of Cyrus because their young king, Belshazzar, had embraced the love-cult of the goddess Ishtar. In Chicago, Simon Moon was listening to the birds begin to sing and waiting for the first cinnamon rays of dawn, as Mary Lou Servix slept beside him; his mind was active, thinking about pyramids and rain-gods and sexual yoga and fifth-dimensional geometries, but thinking mostly about the Ingolstadt Rock Festival and wondering if it would all happen as Hagbard Celine had predicted.