"I'm not holding anything back," Mavis said gently.

"There's no field until both poles are charged."

"And I'm the dead pole? Go to hell and bake bagels."

After Mavis left, Stella arrived, wearing cute Chinese pajamas. "Horny?" she asked bluntly.

"Christ Almighty, yes!"

In ninety seconds they were naked and he was nibbling at her ear while his hand rubbed her pubic mat; but a saboteur was at work at his brain. "I love you," he thought, and it was not untrue because he loved all women now, knowing partially what sex was really all about, but he couldn't bring himself to say it because it was not totally true, either, since he loved Mavis more, much more. "I'm awfully fond of you," he almost said, but the absurdity of it stopped him. Her hand cupped his cock and found it limp; her eyes opened and looked into his enquiringly. He kissed her lips quickly and moved his hand lower, inserting a ringer until he found the clitoris. But even when her breathing got deeper, he did not respond as usual, and her hand began massaging his cock more desperately. He slid down, kissing nipples and bellybutton on the way, and began licking her clitoris. As soon as she came, he cupped her buttocks, lifted her pelvis, got his tongue into her vagina and forced another quick orgasm, immediately lowering her slightly again and beginning a very gentle and slow return in spiral fashion back to the clitoris. But still he was flaccid.

"Stop," Stella breathed. "Let me do you, baby."

George moved upward on the bed and hugged her. "I love you," he said, and suddenly it did not sound like a lie.

Stella giggled and kissed his mouth briefly. "It takes a lot to get those words out of you, doesn't it?" she said bemusedly.

"Honesty is the worst policy," George said grimly. "I was a child prodigy, you know? A freak. It was rugged. I had to have some defense, and somehow I picked honesty. I was always with older boys so I never won a fight. The only way I could feel superior, or escape total inferiority, was to be the most honest bastard on the planet earth."

"So you can't say 'I love you' unless you mean it?" Stella laughed. "You're probably the only man in America with that problem. If you could only be a woman for a while, baby! You can't imagine what liars most men are."

"Oh, I've said it at times. When it was at least half true. But it always sounded like play-acting to me, and I felt it sounded that way to the woman, too. This time it just came out, perfectly natural, no effort."

"That is something," Stella grinned. "And I can't let it go unrewarded." Her black body slid downward and he enjoyed the esthetic effect as his eyes followed her- black on white, like the yin-yang or the Sacred Chao-what was the psychoses of the white race that made this beauty seem ugly to most of them? Then her lips closed over his penis and he found that the words had loosened the knot: he was erect in a second. He closed his eyes to savor the sensation, then opened them to look down at her Afro hairdo, her serious dark face, his cock slipping back and forth between her lips. "I love you," he repeated, with even more conviction. "Oh, Christ, Oh, Eris, oh baby baby, I love you!" He closed his eyes again, and let the Robot move his pelvis in response to her. "Oh, stop," he said, "stop," drawing her upward and turning her over, "together," he said, mounting her, "together," as her eyes closed when he entered her and then opened again for a moment meeting his in total tenderness, "I love you, Stella, I love," and he knew it was so far along that the weight wouldn't bother her, collapsing, using his arms to hug her, not supporting himself, belly to belly and breast to breast, her arms hugging him also and her voice saying, "I love you, too, oh, I love you," and moving with it, saying "angel" and "darling" and then saying nothing, the explosion and the light again permeating his whole body not just the penis, a passing through the mandala to the other side and a long sleep.

The next morning, he and Stella fucked some more, wildly and joyously; they said "I love you" so many times that it became a new mantra to him, and they were still whispering at breakfast. The problem of Mavis and the problem of reaching total enlightenment had both vanished from his mind. Enjoying bacon and eggs that seemed tastier than he had ever eaten before, exchanging pointless and very private jokes with Stella, George Dorn was at peace.

(But nine hours earlier, at that "same" time, the Kachinas gathered in the center of the oldest city in North America, Orabi, and began a dance which an excited visiting anthropologist had never seen before. As he questioned various old men' and old women among the People of Peace- which is what ho-pi means- he found that the dance was dedicated to She-Woman-Forever-Not-Change. He knew enough not to try to convert that title into his own grammar, since it represented an important aspect of the Hopi philosophy of Time, which is much like the Simon Moon and Adam Weishaupt philosophies of Time and nothing like what physics students learn, at least until they reach graduate level studies. Only four times, he was told, had this dance ever been necessary: four times when the many worlds were all in danger, and this was the time of the fifth and greatest danger. The anthropologist, who happened to be a Hindu named Indole Ringh, quickly jotted in his notebook: "Cf. four yogas in Upanishads, Wagadu legend in Sudan, and Marsh's queer notions about Atlantis. This could be big." The dance went on, the drums pounded monotonously, and Carmel, far away, broke into a sudden perspiration…)

And, in Los Angeles, John Dillinger calmly loaded his revolver, dropped it in his briefcase and set a Panama hat on his neatly combed silver-gray hair. He was humming a song from his youth: "Those wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine…" I hope that pimp is where Hagbard says, he thought; I've only got eighteen hours before they declare martial law… "Good-bye forever," he hummed on, "old fellows and pals…"

I saw the fnords the same day I first heard about the plastic martini. Let me be very clear and precise about this, since many of the people on this trip are deliberately and perversely obscure: I would not, could not, have seen the fnords if Hagbard Celine hadn't hypnotized me the night before, on the flying saucer.

I had been reading Pat Walsh's memos, at home, and listening to a new record from the Museum of Natural History. I was adding a few new samples to my collection of Washington-Weishaupt pictures on the wall, when the saucer appeared hovering outside my window. Needless to say, it didn't particularly surprise me; I had saved a little of the AUM, after Chicago, contrary to the instructions from ELF, and had dosed myself. After meeting the Dealy Lama, not to mention Malaclypse the Elder, and seeing that nut Celine actually talk to gorillas, I assumed my mind was a point of receptivity where the AUM would trigger something truly original. The UFO, in fact, was a bit of a letdown; so many people had seen them already, and I was ready for something nobody had ever seen or imagined.

It was even more a disappointment when they psyched me, or slurped me aboard, and I found, instead of Martians or Insect Trust delegates from the Crab Galaxy, just Hagbard, Stella Maris and a few other people from the Leif Erikson.

"Hail Eris," said Hagbard.

"All hail Discordia," I replied, giving the three-after-two pattern, and completing the pentad. "Is this something important, or did you just want to show me your latest invention?"

The inside of the saucer was, to be trite, eerie. Everything was non-Euclidean and semitransparent; I kept feeling that I might fall through the floor and hurtle to the ground to smash myself on the sidewalk. Then we started moving and it got worse.