Drake, now totally absorbed, turned the page. What he found seemed to be an anthropological report on an obscure tribe he had never heard of; he quickly recognized it as a satire and a parable. Putting it aside for a moment, he buzzed his secretary and asked to be connected with Gold and Appel Transfers.

In a moment a voice said, "G and A T. Miss Maris."

"Mr. Drake calling Mr. Celine," Drake's secretary said.

"Mr. Celine is on an extended voyage," Miss Maris replied, "but he left a message in case Mr. Drake called."

"I'll take it," Drake said quickly. There was a click as his secretary went off the line.

"Mr. Celine will send an emissary to you at the appropriate time," Miss Maris said. "He says that you will recognize the emissary because he will bring with him certain artworks of the Gruad era. I'm afraid that is all, sir."

"Thank you," Drake said hollowly, hanging up. He knew the technique: he had used it himself in moving in on the Syndicate back in 1936.

"You were fucking Stella?"

"Who says I was fucking anybody?"

Joe went in. The tent was as richly hung as that of any Moorish chieftain. At one end was a diaphanous veil, behind it a figure on a pile of cushions. The figure was light-skinned, so Hagbard had been lying about being in here with Stella. Joe went over and pulled the veil aside.

It was Mavis, all right, just as Joe had guessed. She was wearing harem pajamas, red but translucent, through which he could see her dark nipples and the full bush of hair between her legs. At the expectation of making love to her, Joe could feel his cock begin to swell. But he was determined to impose his head trip on this scene.

"Why am I here?" he said, still holding the curtain back with one hand, trying to assume a casual pose. Mavis smiled faintly and motioned him to sit down on the cushions beside her. He did so, and found himself automatically sliding to a half-reclining position. There was a faint suggestion of perfume from Mavis, and he felt the tension in his loins build up a little more.

"I need all the energies we can set in motion to defeat the Illuminati," said Mavis. "Help me, Joe." She held out her arms.

"Were you fucking Hagbard? I never did like sloppy seconds."

Mavis gave a little snarl and threw herself on him. She slathered her drooling lips over his and plunged her tongue deep into his mouth, at the same time pressing her thigh between his legs. Joe fell back and gave up struggling against her. She was just too goddamned attractive. In a minute she had his pants open and his stiff hot prick throbbing in her hand. She lowered her head over it and began sucking it rhythmically.

"Wait," said Joe. "I'm going to go off in your mouth. It's been a week since I got laid, and I'm on a hair trigger."

She looked up at him with a smile. "Eat me, then. I hear you're good at that."

"Who'd you hear that from?" asked Joe.

"A gay priest friend of mine," she said with a laugh as she undid the drawstring of her red trousers.

Joe explored the lips of her vulva with his tongue, reveling in the acrid, musky odor of her bush. He began a businesslike up-and-down, up-and-down motion with his tongue over her clitoris. After a moment he felt her body tensing. It grew more and more rigid. Her pelvis began to buck, and he clamped both hands on her hips and lapped away inexorably. At last she gave a small shriek and tried to drive her whole mons veneris into his mouth.

"Now fuck me, quickly, quickly," she said, and Joe, his pants pulled down and his shirttail flapping, mounted her. He came in a series of exquisite spasms and dropped his head to the pillow, beside hers. She let him rest that way for a few minutes, then gently nudged him to pull out and rolled to her side to face him.

"Am I dismissed?" Joe said. "Have I done my job? Released the energies, or whatever?"

"You sound bitter," said Mavis, "and sad. I'd like you to stay with me a while longer. What's bothering you?"

"A lot of things. I feel like I did the wrong thing. George is obviously in love with you, and you and Hagbard treat it as a joke. And Hagbard treats me as a joke. And both of you are quite obviously using me. You're using me sexually, and I'm beginning to think Hagbard is using me in other ways. And I think you know about it."

"You didn't take the acid, did you?" she said, looking at him sadly.

"No. I knew what Hagbard was doing. This is too serious a moment to play games about the Passion of Christ."

Mavis smiled. She pressed her body closer to him and began playing with his limp penis, rubbing the head gently into her bush. "Joe, you were raised as a Catholic. Catholics have a finer appreciation of blasphemy than anybody. That's why Hagbard chose you. How's your passion, Joe? Is it mounting?" Pressing her naked body against his, she whispered, "How'd you like to fuck the Virgin Mary?"

Joe saw his mother's face, and he felt the blood throbbing in his penis. Now he thought perhaps he knew what Hagbard meant when he said his mother was in the tent.

A little later, when he was in her, she said, "I am a perpetual virgin, Joe. And every woman is, if only you have eyes to see. We wanted to give you eyes tonight. But you refused the Sacrament. You've chosen the hardest way of all, Joe. If you're going to make it through this night you're going to have to find a way to see for yourself. By other means than the one Hagbard provided. You'll have to find your own Sacrament."

And after she came, and he came, she whispered, "Was that the Sacrament?"

He pushed himself up and looked down at the triangular red tattoo between her breasts. "No. You're not the Virgin Mary. You're still Mavis."

"And you still have to make the decision," she said. "Good-bye, Joe. Send George to me."

As Joe was dressing, feeling the weight of the pistol in his trouser pocket, Mavis rolled over so that she was lying on her stomach, not looking at him. Her naked buttocks seemed utterly defenseless. He looked at the pillow on which her bottom had been resting during their lovemaking. It was a cloth-of-gold pillow, and embroidered on it in swirling letters was the word KALLISTI. Joe shook his head and left the tent.

As he emerged, Hagbard was saying in a low voice to Otto Waterhouse, "… would have been up your alley if we hadn't had other work for you. Anthrax Leprosy Pi can wipe out the whole population of the earth in a matter of days."

Suddenly, the white of Hagbard's shirt, the gold of the tent cloth, the blazing spotlights of the festival, all were coming in super-bright. That was adrenalin. My mouth was dry-dehydration. All the classic flight-fight symptoms. The activation syndrome, Skinner calls it. I was so keyed up that it was a trip.

"Hello, Joe," said Hagbard softly. Joe suddenly realized that his hand was clenched around the pistol. Hagbard smiled at him, and Joe felt like a little boy caught playing with himself, with his hand in his pocket. He took his hand out quickly.

"She wants George," Joe said weakly. He turned his back on Hagbard to look down at the stage, where the sign, glowing in the darkness, said LOAF AND THE FISHES. They were singing, "I circle around, I circle around, the borders of the earth…"

On a pile of cushions behind a diaphanous veil at one end of the tent lay Stella, wearing nothing but a red chiffon pajama top.

"Were you letting Joe fuck you?" George said. "Joe has never fucked me," Stella replied. "You'll be the first person to do that tonight. Look, George, we've got to get every bit of available energy flowing to combat the Illuminati. Come over here and get the energies going with me."

"This is Danny Pricefixer," Doris Horus said. "I met him on the plane coming over."

("Holy Jesus," said Maria Imbrium, vocalist with the Sicilian Dragon Defense, "there are angels coming out of the lake. Angels in golden robes. Look!")