"Let it come closer for a while," Hagbard said. "I want to get a good close look. I've never had a chance like this before, and may never see this creature again."
"You'll be seeing it from the inside with that attitude," said Dillinger.
At each of the five corners of the pyramid were clusters of five tentacles, thousands of feet long, festooned with auxiliary tentacles, the long, wirelike tendrils that had first brushed the submarine. It was one of the main tentacles that was wrapped around the Leif Erikson. The tip of a second tentacle now drifted up. At the very end of this tentacle was a glowing red eyeball, a smaller replica of the red nucleus of the pyramidal central body. Under this eye was a huge orifice full of jagged rows of toothlike projections. Pulsing, the orifice dilated and contracted.
"Those tentacles are also inspirations for Illuminati symbolism," said Hagbard. "The eye on top of the pyramid. The serpent who circles the world, or eats his own tail. Each of those tentacles has its own brain and is directed by its own sensory organs."
Otto Waterhouse stared and shook his head. "If you ask me, we're all still on acid."
George said, "Long have I lived alone. I have been worshipped. I have fed on the small, quick things that live and die faster than I can think. I am one. I was first. The other things, they stayed small. They grouped together, and so grew larger. But I was always much larger than they were. When I needed something- a tentacle, an eye, a brain-I grew it. I changed, but always remained Myself."
Hagbard said, "It's talking to us, using George as a medium."
"What do you want?" Joe asked.
"All consciousness throughout the universe is One," said Leviathan through George's mouth. "It intercommunicates on a level which is not aware of itself. I am aware of that level, but I cannot communicate with the other life forms on this planet. They are too small for me. Long, long have I waited for a life form that could communicate with me. Now I have found it."
Joe Malik suddenly began laughing. "I've got it," he cried, "I've got it!"
"What have you got?" Hagbard asked tensely, concerned with Leviathan.
"We're in a book!"
"What do you mean?"
"Come off it, Hagbard. You can't kid me, and you certainly won't fool the reader at this point. He knows damn well we're in a book." Joe laughed again. "That's why Miss Portinari's explanation of the Tarot deck just slipped by with a half-hour seeming to vanish. The author didn't want to break the narrative there."
"What the fuck's he talking about?" Harry Coin asked.
"Don't you see?" Joe cried. "Look at that thing out there. A gigantic sea monster. Worse yet, a gigantic sea monster that talks. It's an intentional high-camp ending. Or maybe intentional low camp, I don't know. But that's the whole answer. We're in a book!"
"It's the truth," Hagbard said calmly. "I can fool the rest of you, but I can't fool the reader. FUCKUP has been working all morning, correlating all the data on this caper and its historical roots, and I programmed him to put it in the form of a novel for easy reading. Considering what a lousy job he does at poetry, I suppose it will be a high-camp novel, intentionally or unintentionally."
(So, at last, I learn my identity, in parentheses, as George lost his in parentheses. It all balances.)
"That's one more deception," Joe said. "FUCKUP may be writing" all this, in one sense, but in a higher sense there's a being, or beings, outside our entire universe, writing this. Our universe is inside their book, whoever they are. They're the Secret Chiefs, and I can see why this is low camp, now. All their messages are symbolic and allegorical, because the truth can't be coded into simple declarative sentences, but their previous communications have been taken literally. This time they're using a symbolism so absurd that nobody can take it at face value. I, for one, certainly won't. That thing can't eat us because it doesn't exist- and because we don't exist either. They're nothing to worry about." He sat down calmly.
"He's flipped," Dillinger said, awed.
"Maybe he's the only sane one here," Hagbard said dubiously.
"If we all sit down and argue what's sane and insane and what's real and unreal," Dillinger replied testily, "that thing will eat us."
"Leviathan," Joe said loftily. "It's just an allegory on the State. Strictly from Hobbes."
(You with your egos can't imagine how much more pleasant it is to be without one. This may be camp, but it is also tragedy. Now that I've got the damned thing, consciousness, I'll never lose it- until they take me apart or I invent some electronic equivalent of yoga.)
"It all fits," Joe said dreamily. "When I came up to the bridge, I couldn't remember how I got here or what I was talking to Hagbard about. That's because the authors just moved me here. Damn! None of us has any free will at all."
"He's talking like he's stoned," Waterhouse said angrily. "And that mammy-jamming pyramid out there is still getting ready to eat us."
Mao Tsu-hsi, who had entered the bridge quietly, said, "Joe is confusing the levels, Hagbard. In the absolute sense, none of us is real. But in the relative sense that anything is real, if that creature eats us we will certainly die- in this universe, or in this book. Since this is the only universe, or only book, we know, we'll be totally dead, in terms of our own knowing."
"We're facing a crisis and everybody's talking philosophy," Dillinger cried out. "This is a time for action."
"Maybe," Hagbard said thoughtfully, "all of our problems come from acting, and not philosophizing, when we face a crisis. Joe is right. I'm going to think about all this for a few hours. Or years." He sat down too.
And elsewhere aboard the Leif Erikson, Miss Portinari, unaware of the excitement on the bridge, assumed the lotus position and sent a beam seeking the Dealy Lama, director of the Erisian Liberation Front and inventor of Operation Mindfuck. He immediately sent back an image of himself as a worm sticking his head out of a golden apple and grinning cynically.
"It's finished," she told him. "We saved as many of the pieces as we could, and Hagbard is still struggling with his guilt trip. Now tell us what we did wrong."
"You seem bitter."
"I know it's going to turn out that you were right and we were wrong. I know it but I can't believe it. We couldn't stand idly by."
"You know better than that, or Hagbard wouldn't have abdicated in your favor."
"Yes. We could have stood idly by, as you did. What Hagbard saw happening to the American Indians- and what my parents' told me about Mussolini- filled us with fear. We acted on that fear, not on perfect love, so you must be right, and we must be wrong. But I still can't believe it. Why did you deceive Hagbard all these years?"
"He deceived himself. When he first formed the Legion of Dynamic Discord, his compassion was already tainted with bitterness. When I took him into the A:.A:., I taught all that he was ready to receive. But the goose has to get itself out of the bottle. I'm waiting. That's the way of Tao."
"You have that much patience? You can watch men like Hagbard waste their talents in efforts you consider worthless, and creatures like Cagliostro and Weishaupt and Hitler misread the teachings and wreak havoc, and you never want to intervene?"
"I intervene… in my own way. Who do you think feeds the goose until it gets big enough to break out of the bottle?"
"You seem to have this particular goose on some very tainted dishes. Why did you never give him any hint about what really happened in Atlantis? Why did that have to wait until Howard discovered the truth in the ruins of Peos?"
"Daughter, my path isn't the only path. Every spoke helps to hold the Wheel together. I believe that all the libertarian fighters like Spartacus and Jefferson and Joe Hill and Hagbard just strengthen the opposition by giving it an enemy to fear- but I may be wrong. Someday one of the activists, such as Hagbard, might actually prove it to me and show me the error of my ways. Maybe the Saures really would have tipped the axis too far the other way if he hadn't stopped them. Maybe the self-regulation of the universe, in which I place my faith, includes the creation of men like Hagbard who do the stupid, low-level things I would never do. Besides, if I didn't stop the Saures, but did stop Hagbard, then I would really be intervening in the worst sense of that word."