"The only hypothesis that mathematical logic will accept, when all the known data was fed into a computer, is that the fourth carrier is the procurer who disappeared, Mr. Carmel. Experiencing no symptoms himself, he is unaware that he carries the world's most dangerous disease. For reasons of his own, which we cannot guess, he has been hiding since he disposed of the woman's body. Probably, he feared that the corpse might be found and a case of manslaughter or homicide could be made against him. Or he might have a motive completely unrelated to her death. Only twice has he contacted other human beings. I would suggest that his contact with Miss Quint was typical of their professional relationship; he either hit her or had sex relations with her. His contact with Dr. Naismith and Mr. Chaney was some sort of accident- perhaps the crowded elevator that has been suggested by Mr. Despond. Otherwise, he had been, as it were, underground.
"This is why we only found three cases instead of the thousands or millions we feared.
"However, the problem still remains. Carmel is immune, will never know he has the disease unless he is told it, and will eventually surface somewhere. When he does, we will learn of it through the outbreak of Anthrax Leprosy Pi cases in the vicinity. At that point, the whole nightmare begins again, sir.
"Our best hope, and the computer backs me on this, is public disclosure. The panic we tried to avoid will have to be faced. Every medium of communication in the nation must be given the full facts, and Carmels description must be circulated everywhere. This is our last chance. The man is a walking biological Doomsday Machine and he must be found.
"Psychologists and social psychologists have fed all the relevant facts about this case, and about previous panics and plagues, into the computer also. The conclusion, with ninety-three percent certainty, is that the panic will be nationwide and martial law will have to be declared everywhere. Liberals in Congress should be placed under house arrest as the first step, and the Supreme Court must be stripped of its powers totally. The Army and the National Guard will have to be sent into every city with authority to override any policies of local officials. Democracy, in short, must cease until the emergency is ended."
"He's not an anarchist," the Secretary of the Interior said. "He's a goddam fascist."
"He's a realist," said the President, clear-minded, crisp, quick on the uptake and stoned clear round the corner of schizophrenia by his usual three tranquilizers, a stronger dose of amphetamines than usual, and loads of those happy little Demerol tablets. "We start implementing his suggestions right now."
And so those few tattered remnants of the Bill of Rights which had survived into the fourth decade of the Cold War were laid to rest -temporarily, it was thought by those present. Dr. Filiarisus, whose name in the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria was Gracchus Gruad, had completed on the day known as May Eve or Walpurgisnacht the project begun when the first dream of Anthrax Leprosy Pi was planted in Dr. Mocenigo's mind on the day known as Candelmas. These dates were known by much older names in the Illuminati, of course, and the burial of the Bill of Rights was expected, by them, to be permanent.
(Two hours before Dr. Filiarisus spoke to the President, four of the world's five Illuminati Primi met in an old graveyard in Ingolstadt; the fifth could not be present. They agreed that all was going as scheduled, but one danger remained: nobody in the order, however developed his or her ESP, had been able to trace Carmel. Leaning on a tombstone -where Adam Weishaupt had once performed rites so unique that the psychic vibration had bounced off every sensitive mind in Europe, leading to such decidedly peculiar literary productions as Lewis's The Monk, Maturin's Melmoth, Walpole's Castle of Otranto, Mrs. Shelley's Frankenstein, and DeSade's One Hundred Twenty Days of Sodom-the eldest of the four said, "It can still fail, if one of the mehums finds the pimp before he infects a city or two." Mehums was an abbreviation for all descendants of those not part of the original Unbroken Circle; it meant mere humans.
"Why can none of our ultra-sensitives find him?" a second asked. "Does he have no ego or soul at all?"
"He has a vibration but it's not distinctly human. Whenever we seem to have a fix on it, we're usually ' picking up a bank vault or the safe of some paranoid millionaire," the eldest replied.
"We have that problem with an increasing number of Americans," the third commented morosely. "In that nation, we have done our work too well. The conditioning to those pieces of paper is so strong that no other psychic impulse remains to be read."
The fourth spoke. "Now is no time for trepidation, my brothers. The plan is virtually realized, and this man's lack of ordinary mehum qualities will prove an advantage when we do fix on him. No ego, no resistance. We will be able to move him at our whim. The stars are right, He Who Is Not To Be Named is impatient, and now we must be intrepid!" She spoke with fervor.
The others nodded. "Heute die Welt, Morgens das Sonnensystem!" the eldest cried out fiercely.
"Heute die Welt" all repeated, "Morgens das Sonnensystem!")
But two days earlier, as the Leif Erikson left the Atlantic and entered the underground Ocean of Valusia beneath Europe, George Dorn was listening to a different kind of chorus. It was, Mavis had explained to him in advance, the weekly Agape Ludens, or Love Feast Game, of the Discordians, and the dining hall was newly bedecked with pornographic and psychedelic posters, Christian and Buddhist and Amerindian mystic designs, balloons and lollypops dangling from the ceiling on Day-Glo-dabbed strings, numinous paintings of Discordian saints (including Norton I, Sigismundo Malatesta, Guillaume of Aquitaine, Chuang Chou, Judge Roy Bean, various historical figures even more obscure, and numerous gorillas and dolphins), bouquets of roses and forsythia and gladiolas and orchids, clusters of acorns and gourds, and the inevitable proliferation of golden apples, pentagons and octopi.
The main course was the best Alaskan king crab Newburg that George had ever tasted, only lightly dusted with a mild hint of Panamanian Red grass. Dozens of trays of dried fruits and cheeses were passed back and forth among the tables, together with canapes of an exquisite caviar George had never encountered before ("Only Hagbard knows where those sturgeon spawn," Mavis explained) and the beverage was a blend of the Japanese seventeen-herb Mu tea with Menomenee Indian peyote tea. While everyone gorged, laughed and got gently but definitely zonked, Hag-bard-who was evidently satisfied that he and FUCKUP had located "the problem in Las Vegas"-merrily conducted the religious portion of the Agape Ludens.
"Rub-a-dub-dub," he chanted, "O hail Eris!"
"Rub-a-dub-dub," the crew merrily chorused, "O Hail Eris!"
"Sya-dasti," Hagbard chanted. "All that I tell you is true."
"Sya-dasti," the crew repeated, "O hail Eris!" George looked around; there were three, or five, races present (depending upon which school of physical anthropology you credited) and maybe half a hundred nationalities, but the feeling of brotherhood and sisterhood transcended any sense of contrast, creating instead a blend, as in musical progression.
"Sya-davak-tavya," Hagbard chanted now. "All that I tell you is false."
"Sya-davak-tavya," George joined in, "O hail Eris!"
"Sya-dasti-sya-nasti," Hagbard intoned. "All that I tell you is meaningless."
"Sya-dasti-sya-nasti," all agreed, some jeeringly, "O hail Eris!"
If they had services like this in the Baptist church back in Nutley, George thought, I never would have told my mother religion is all a con and had that terrible quarrel when I was nine.