RAMA RAMA RAMA HAAAAARE
Two big rhinoceroses, three big rhinoceroses….
Dillinger made contact with the mind of Richard Belz, forty-three-year-old professor of physics at Queens College, as Belz was being loaded into an ambulance to be taken to Bellevue Hospital where X rays would reveal severe skull fractures. Shit, Dillinger thought, why does somebody have to be half dead before I can reach him? Then he concentrated on his message: Two universes flowing in opposite directions. Two together form a third entity which is synergetically more than the sum of its two parts. Thus two always leads to three. Two and Three. Duality and trinity. Every unity is a duality and a trinity. A pentagon. Sheer energy, no matter involved. From the pentagon depend five more pentagons, like the petals of a flower. A white rose. Five petals and a center: six. Two times three. The flower interlocks with another flower just like it, forming a polyhedron made of pentagons. Each such polyhedron could have common surfaces with other polyhedrons, forming infinite latticework based on the pentagonal unit. They would be immortal. Self-sustaining. Not computers. Beyond computers. Gods. All space for their habitation. Infinitely complex.
The howl of a siren reached the unconscious ears of Professor Belz. Consciousness is present in the living body, even in one that is apparently unconscious. Unconsciousness is not the absence of consciousness, but its temporary immobility. It is not a state resembling death. It is not like death at all. Once the necessary complexity of brain-cell interconnections is reached, substantial energy relationships are set up. These can exist independently of the material base that brought them into being.
All of this, of course, is merely visual structural metaphor for interactions on the energy level that cannot be visualized. The siren howled.
In the Three Lions pub, George said to Peter, "What was in that water pistol?"
"Sulphuric acid."
"Acid is just the first stage," said Simon. "Like matter is the first stage of life and consciousness. Acid launches you. But once you're out there, if the mission is successful, you jettison the first stage and you're traveling free of gravity. Which means free of matter. Acid dissolves the barriers which prevent the maximum possible complexity of energy relationships from building up in the brain. At Norton Cabal, we'll show you how to pilot the second stage."
(Waving their crosses over their heads and howling incoherently, the men of God's Lightning formed wavering ranks and marched around the territory they had conquered. Zev Hirsch and Frank Ochuk carried the banner that read "LOVE IT OR WE'LL STOMP YOU.")
Howard sang:
The tribes of the porpoise are fearless and strong Our land is the ocean, our banner's a song Our weapon is speed and our noses like rock No foe can withstand our terrible shock.
A cloud of porpoise bodies swam out from somewhere behind Hagbard's submarine. Through the pale blue-green medium which Hagbard's TV cameras made out of water, they seemed to fly toward the distant spiderlike ships of the Illuminati.
"What's happening?" said George. "Where's Howard?"
"Howard is leading them," said Hagbard. He flipped a toggle on the railing of the balcony on which they stood in the center of a globe that looked like a bubble of air at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. "War room, get missiles ready. We may have to back up the porpoise attack."
"Da, tovarish Celine," came a voice.
The porpoises were too far away to be seen now. George discovered that he was not afraid. The whole thing was too much like watching a science-fiction movie. There was too much illusion involved in this submarine of Hagbard's. If he were able to realize, in his glands and nerves, that he was in a vulnerable metal ship thousands of feet below the surface of the Atlantic, under such enormous pressure that the slightest stress could crack the hull and send water bursting in that would crush them to death, then he might be afraid. If he were really able to accept the fact that those little distant globes with waving legs appended to them were undersea craft manned by people who intended to destroy the vessel he was in, then he could be afraid. Actually, if he could not see as much as he was seeing, but only feel and sense things and be told what was happening, as in the average airplane flight, then he would be afraid. As it was, the 120,000-year-old city of Peos looked like a tabletop model. And though he might intellectually accept Hagbard's statement that they were over the lost continent of Atlantis, in his bones he didn't believe in Atlantis. As a result, he didn't believe in any of the rest of this, either.
Suddenly Howard was outside their bubble. Or some other porpoise. That was another thing that made this hard to accept. Talking porpoises.
"Ready for destruction of enemy ships," said Howard.
Hagbard shook his head. "I wish we could communicate with them. I wish I could give them a chance to surrender. But they wouldn't listen. And they have communications systems on their ships that I can't get through to." He turned to George. "They use a type of insulated telepathy to communicate. The very thing that tipped off Sheriff Jim Cartwright that you were in a hotel room in Mad Dog smoking Weishaupt's Wonder Weed."
"You don't want them too close when they go." said Howard.
"Are your people out of the way?" said Hagbard.
(Five big rhinoceroses, six big rhinoceroses…)
"Of course. Quit this hesitating. This is no time to be a humanitarian."
"The sea is crueler than the land," said Hagbard, "sometimes."
"The sea is cleaner than the land," said Howard. "There's no hate. Just death when and as needed. These people have been your enemies for twenty thousand years."
"I'm not that old," said Hagbard, "and I have very few enemies."
"If you wait any longer you'll endanger the submarine and my people."
George looked out at the red and white striped globes which were moving toward them through the blue-green water. They were much larger now and closer. Whatever was propelling them wasn't visible. Hagbard reached out a brown finger, let it rest on a white button on the railing in front of him, then pressed it decisively.
There was a bright flash of light, dimmed slightly by the medium through which it traveled, on the surface of each of the globes. It was like watching fireworks through tinted glasses. Next, the globes crumbled as if they were ping-pong balls being struck by invisible sledge hammers.
'That's all there is to it," said Hagbard quietly.
The air around George seemed to vibrate, and the floor under him shook. Suddenly he was terrified. Feeling the shock wave from the simultaneous explosions out there in the water made it real. A relatively thin metal shell was all that protected him from total annihilation. And nobody would ever hear from him or know what happened to him.
Large, glittering objects drifted down through the water from one of the nearby Illuminati spider ships. They vanished among the streets of the city that George now knew was real. The buildings in the area near the explosion of the Illuminati ships looked more ruined than they had before. The ocean bottom was churned up in brown clouds. Down into the brown clouds drifted the crushed spider ships. George looked for the Temple of Tethys. It stood, intact, in the distance.