Danny nodded, totally absorbed.

"From our point of view," Mama Sutra went on, "they are intolerably hideous in these manifestations. There is a reason for that. They were the source of the worst terrors experienced by the first humans. Our DNA code still carries an aversion and terror toward them, and this activates a part of our minds which the psychologist Jung called the Collective Unconscious. That is where all myth and art come from. Everything frightening, loathsome and terrible-in the folklore, in the paintings and statues, in the legends and epics of every people on earth-contains a partial image of a manifestation of the lloigor. 'As a foulness shall ye know Them,' a great Arab poet wrote."

"And they've been at war with us through all history?" Danny asked unhappily.

"Not at all. Are the stockyards at war with the cattle? It's nothing like war at all," Mama Sutra said sinply. "It's just that they own us."

"I see," Danny said. "Yes, of course. I see." He looked into his empty glass dismally. "Could I have another?" he murmured.

After Miss Mao had brought him another bourbon, he took a huge swallow and slouched forward in his chair. "There's nothing we can do about it?" he asked.

"There is one group that has been trying to liberate humanity," Mama Sutra said. "But lloigor have great powers to warp and distort minds. This group is the most maligned, slandered and hated people on earth. All the evil they seek to prevent has been attributed to them. They operate in secret because otherwise they would be destroyed. Even now, the John Birch Society and various other fanatics- including an evil genius named Hagbard Celine- struggle ceaselessly to combat the group of whom I speak. They have many names, the Great White Brotherhood, the Brethren of the Rosy Cross, the Golden Dawn… usually, though they are known as the Illuminati."

"Yes!" Danny cried excitedly. "There was a whole bunch of memos about them at the scene of the crime that started this case."

"And the memos, I would wager, portrayed them in an unfavorable light?"

"Sure did," Danny agreed. "Made them seem the worst bastards in history. Pardon me, ma'am." I'm getting drunk, he thought.

"That is how they are usually portrayed," Mama Sutra said sadly. "Their enemies are many, and they are few…"

"Who are their enemies?" Danny leaned forward eagerly.

"The Cult of the Yellow Sign," Mama Sutra replied. "This is a group serving one particular lloigor called Hastur. They live in such terror of this being that they usually call him He Who Is Not To Be Named. Hastur resides in a mysterious place called Hali, which was formerly a lake but is now just desert. Hali was by a great city in the lost civilization of Carcosa. You look as if those names mean something to you?"

"Yes. They were in the notes of the professor who disappeared. The other case that I was convinced was connected with this one."

"They have been mentioned- unwisely, I think- by certain writers, such as Bierce and Chambers and Lovecraft and Bloch and Derleth. Carcosa was located where the Gobi Desert is at present. The major cities were Hali, Mnar and Sarnath. The Cult of the Yellow Sign has managed to conceal all this rather thoroughly, although a few archeologists have published some interesting speculations about the Gobi area. Most of the evidence of a great civilization before Sumer and Egypt has been either hidden or doctored so that it seems to point to Atlantis. Actually, Atlantis never existed, but the Cult of the Yellow Sign carefully keeps the myth alive so nobody will discover what went on, and still goes on, in the Gobian wastelands. You see, the Cult of the Yellow Sign still goes there, on certain occasions, to worship and make certain transactions with Hastur, and with Shub Niggurath, a lloigor who is known in mystical literature as the Black Goat with a Thousand Young, and with Nyarlathotep, who appears either as a solid black man, not a Negro but black as an abyss, or else as a gigantic faceless flute player. But I repeat: you cannot understand the lloigor by these manifestations or cross sections into our space-time continuum. Do you believe in God?"

"Yes," Danny answered, startled by the sudden personal question.

"Take a little more of your drink. I must tell you now that your God is another manifestation of some lloigor. That is how religion began, and how the lloigor and their servants in the Cult of the Yellow Sign continue it. Have you ever had what is called a religious or mystical experience?"

"No," Danny said, embarrassed.

"Good. Then your religion is just a matter of believing what you have been told and not of a personal emotional experience. All such experiences come from the lloigor, to enslave us. Revelations, visions, trances, miracles, all of it is a trap. Ordinary, normal people instinctively avoid such aberrations. Unfortunately, due to their gullibility and a concerted effort to brainwash them, they are willing to follow the witches and wizards and shamans who traffic in these matters. You see, and I urge you to take another drink right now, every religious leader in human history has been a member of the Cult of the Yellow Sign and all their efforts are devoted to hoaxing, deluding and enslaving the rest of us."

Danny finished his glass and asked meekly, "May I have more?"

Mama Sutra buzzed for Miss Mao and said, "You're taking this part very well. People who have had religious visions take it very poorly; they don't want to know what foul source those experiences actually came from. The lloigor, of course, can be considered gods- or demons- but it is more profitable, at this point in history, to just consider them another life form cast up by the universe, unfortunately superior to us and even more unfortunately inimical to us. You see, religion is always a matter of sacrifice, and whenever there is a sacrifice there is a victim- and also a person or entity profiting from the sacrifice. There is no religion in the world- not one- that is not a front for the Cult of the Yellow Sign. The Cult itself, like the lloigor, is of prehuman origin. It began among the snake people of Valusia, the peninsula that is now Europe, and then spread eastward to be adopted by the first humans in Carcosa. Always the purpose of the Cult has been to serve the lloigor, at the expense of other human beings. Since the rise of the Illuminati, the Cult has also acted to combat their work and discredit them."

Danny was glad that Miss Mao arrived then with his third stiff bourbon. "And who are the Illuminati and what is their goal?" he asked, belting away a strong swallow.

"Their founder," Mama Sutra said, "was the first man to think rationally about the lloigor. He realized that they were not supernatural, but just another aspect of nature; not all-powerful, but just more powerful than us; and that when they came 'out of the heavens' they came from other worlds like this one. His name has come down to us in certain secret teachings and documents. It was Ma-lik."

"Jesus," Danny said, "that's the name of the guy whose disappearance started all this."

"The name meant 'one who knows' in the Carcosan tongue. Among the Persians and some Arabs today it still exists but means 'one who leads.' His followers, the Illuminati, are those who have seen the light of reason- which is quite distinct from the stupefying and mind- destroying light in which the lloigor sometimes appear to overwhelm and mystify their servants in the Cult of the Yellow Sign. What Ma-lik sought, what the Illuminati still seek, is scientific knowledge that will surpass the powers of the lloigor, end mankind's enslavement and allow us to become self-owners instead of property."

"How large is the Illuminati?"

"Very small. I don't know the exact number." Mama Sutra sighed. "I have never been accepted for membership. Their standards are quite high. One must virtually be a walking encyclopedia to qualify for an initial interview. You must remember that this is the most dedicated, most persecuted, most secret group in the world. Everything they do, if not wiped off the records by the Cult of the Yellow Sign, is always misrepresented and pictured as malign, devious and totally evil. Indeed, any effort to be rational, to think scientifically, to discover or publish a new truth, even by those outside the Illuminati, is always pictured in those colors by the Cult and all the religions which serve as its fronts. All churches, Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Moslem, Hindu, Buddhist or whatever, have always opposed and persecuted science. The Cult of the Yellow Sign even fills the mass media with this propaganda. Their favorite stories are the one about the scientist who isn't fully human until he has a religious insight and recognizes 'the higher powers'- the lloigor, that is- and the other one about the scientist who seeks truth without fear and causes a disaster. 'He meddled with things man should leave alone' is always the punch line on that one. The same hatred of knowledge and glorification of superstition and ignorance permeates all human societies. How much more of this can you stand?" Mama Sutra asked abruptly.