"And you think the old and wise should rule?" Joe asked. "That doesn't fit your character. This has to be another put-on."

"I don't think anybody should rule," Hagbard said. "All I'm doing- all the Higher Order of the A:.A:. has ever tried to' do-is communicate with people, in spite of their biases and fears. Not to rule them. And what we're trying to communicate-the ultimate secret, the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life-is just the power of the word No. We are people who have said Non serviam, and we're trying to teach others to say it. Drake was one of us spiritually but never understood it. If we can't find immortality, we can make a damned good try. If we can't save this planet, we can get off it and go to the stars."

"And what happens now?" Joe asked.

"More surprises," Hagbard answered promptly. "I can't tell you the whole story at this hour, with both of us fagged out at the end of an acid trip. We go back to the hotel and sleep, and after breakfast there are more revelations. For George as well as for you."

And later in the Bugatti, which, driven by Harry Coin, was grandly wafting Hagbard, George, and Joe around the south side of Lake Totenkopf, George asked, "Is Hitler really going to be buried anonymously in a Jewish cemetery?"

"It looks that way." Hagbard grinned. "His Israeli documents are excellent forgeries. He'll be lifted off that toilet by Hauptmann's men and gently deposited in the Ingolstadt Hebrew Burial Grounds, there to rest for all eternity."

"That will make me throw up once a day for the rest of my life," Joe said bitterly. "It's the worst case of cemetery desecration in history."

"Oh, it has a positive aspect," said Hagbard. "Look at it from the point of view of the Nazi leaders. Think how they'll hate being buried in a Jewish cemetery with a rabbi praying over them."

"Doesn't make up for it," said George. "Joe's right. It's in terribly bad taste."

"I thought both you guys were thoroughgoing atheists," said Hagbard. "If you are, you think the dead are dead and it hardly matters where they're buried. What's happening- you both getting religion?"

"I can think of nothing more likely to drive a man to religion than your company," said Joe.

"Burying them Nazis with a bunch of Jews is the funniest thing I ever heard," Harry Coin offered from the driver's seat.

"Go bugger a dead goat, Coin," George called.

"Sure thing," said Coin. "Lead me to it."

"You're incorrigible, Hagbard," said Joe. "You really are incorrigible. And you surround yourself with people who incorrige you."

"I don't need help," said Hagbard. "I have a great deal of initiative. More than any other human being I know. With the possible exception of Mavis."

George said, "Hagbard, did I really see what I thought I saw last night? Is Mavis really a goddess? Are Stella and Miss Mao and Mavis all the same person, or was I just hallucinating?"

"Here come the paradoxes," Joe groaned. "He'll talk for an hour, and we'll be more confused when he's finished."

Hagbard, who was sitting in a large swivel jump seat, swung round so he was looking over Harry Coin's shoulder at the road ahead. "I'd be glad to tell you later, George. I would have told you now, except that I don't like Malik's tone. He may not be intending to shoot me any more, but he still has it in for me."

"You bet," said Joe.

"Well, are you still going to marry Mavis?"

"What?" Hagbard swung round and stared at George with an expression that was almost a perfect replica of genuine surprise.

"You said that you and Mavis were going to be married aboard the Leif Erikson by Miss Portinari. Are you?"

"Yes," said Hagbard, "Miss Portinari will marry us later today. Sorry, but I knew her first."

"Then Mavis isn't really Eris?" George persisted. "She's just a priestess of Eris?"

Hagbard brushed the question away. "Later, George. She will explain it."

"She's even better at explanations than Hagbard is," Joe commented cynically.

"Well," said Hagbard, "getting back to Hitler and company, you have to realize that they will know about it if their bodies are buried in a Jewish cemetery. They are still conscious and aware, though they are not what we would normally call alive. Their consciousness-energy is intact, though there is no life in their bodies. They came to the Ingolstadt festival hoping that their young leaders would give them immortality. They've achieved immortality, all right But not a very nice kind. Their consciousness-energy has been gobbled up by the Evil One. Their identities still survive, but they will be helpless parts of the Eater of Souls, the foulest being in the universe, the only creature that can turn spirit into carrion. Yog Sothoth has claimed his own."

"Yog Sothoth!" said Joe. "I remember learning about Yog Sothoth. It was an invisible being trapped in a pentagonal structure in Atlantis. The original Illuminati blew up the structure and turned the creature loose."

"Why, yes," Hagbard said, "you saw that Erisian Liberation Front training film about Atlantis and Grayface Gruad, didn't you? Well, of course, the film isn't accurate in every respect. For instance, Yog Sothoth is depicted as killing people by the thousands. Actually, most of the time, except under very limited conditions, he has to have his killing done for him. That's how human sacrifice originated. And it was to get his killing done for him that he manipulated a great many events among the Atlanteans until old Grayface, the original moral sadomasochist, came along with his notions about good and evil. Man suffers because he is evil, said Gruad, and because he is small and helpless. There are vast powers in the universe, dwarfing us, who have to be placated. Gruad taught man to see ignorance, passion, pain, and death as evils, and to fight against them."

"Well… ignorance is an evil," said Joe.

"Not when it can be acknowledged and accepted," said Hagbard. "In order to eat, you have to be hungry. In order to learn, you have to be ignorant. Ignorance is a condition of learning. Pain is a condition of health. Passion is a condition of thought. Death is a condition of life. When Gruad taught his followers in Atlantis to see those conditions as evils, then he could teach them human sacrifice, persecution, and warfare. Yog Sothoth taught Gruad to teach his people those things, only Gruad never knew it."

"So Yog Sothoth is the serpent in the Garden of Eden," said Joe.

"In a manner of speaking," said Hagbard. "But you understand, the Garden of Eden myth was dreamed up and promulgated by the Illuminati."

"And who dreamed up the Gruad of Atlantis myth?" said Joe.

"Oh, that's true," said Hagbard solemnly.

"That's the biggest bunch of bullshit I ever heard," said Joe. "You're trying to claim that there's no such thing as good and evil, that the concepts were invented and taught to humans deliberately to fuck them up psychologically. But in order to maintain that you have to postulate that the condition of man before Gruad was good and that his condition afterward has been evil. And you have to make Yog Sothoth into a carbon copy of Satan. You haven't progressed one iota beyond the Judeo-Christian myth with that highfalutin' science-fiction story."

Hagbard roared with laughter and slapped Joe on the knee. "Beautiful!" He held up his hand in a distinctive gesture. "What I am doing?" he asked.

"You're giving the peace sign, only with your fingers together," George said, confused.

"That's what comes of being an ignorant Baptist." Joe laughed. "As a son of the True Church, I can tell you, George, that Hagbard is giving a Catholic blessing."

"Indeed?" said Hagbard. "Look at the shadow my hand casts on this book." He held up a book behind his hand, and they saw the head of a horned Devil. "The sun, source of all light and energy, symbol of redemption. And my hand, in the most sacred gesture of benediction. Put them both together, they spell Satan," he sang to an old tune.