"Was this the earthquakes and tidal waves that you always read about?" George asked.

"No," said Hagbard with a curious closed expression. "It was manmade. High Atlantis was destroyed in a kind of war. Probably a civil war, since there was no other power on the planet that could have matched them."

"Anyway, if there'd been a victor, they'd still be around now," said George.

"They are," said Mavis. "The victors are still around. Only they're not what you might visualize. Not a conquering nation. And we are the descendants of the defeated."

"Now," said Hagbard, "I'm going to show you something I promised when we first met. It has to do with the catastrophe I've been talking about. Look there."

The submarine had risen high above the continent, and it was possible to see landscapes stretching for hundreds of miles. Looking in the direction in which Hagbard pointed, George saw a vast expanse of black, glazed plain. Out of its center jutted something white and pointed, like a canine tooth.

"It is said of them that they even controlled the comets in their courses." said Hagbard. He pointed again.

The submarine sailed closer to the jutting white object It was a four-sided white pyramid.

"Don't say it," said Mavis, giving him a warning look, and George remembered the tattoo he had seen between her breasts. He looked down again. They were above the pyramid now and George could see the side that had been hidden from him as they approached. He saw what he had half-feared, half-expected to see: a blood-red design in the shape of a baleful eye.

"The Pyramid of the Eye," Hagbard said. "It stood in the center of the capital of High Atlantis. It was built in the last days of that civilization by the founders of the world's first religion. It doesn't look very big from up here, but it's five times the size of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, which was modeled after it. It's made of an imperishable ceramic substance which repels even ocean sediment. As if the builders knew that to last it would have to survive tens of thousands of years of ocean burial. And maybe- depending on who they were- they did know that. Or maybe they just built well in those days. Peos, as you saw, was a pretty durable city, and that was built after High Atlantis fell, by the second civilization I spoke of. That second civilization reached a level somewhat more advanced than that of the Greeks and Romans, but it was nothing like its predecessor. And some malevolent force seemed bent on destroying it, too, and it was destroyed, about ten thousand years ago. Of that civilization we have the evidence of ruins. But of High Atlantis we have only records and legends dug up from the later civilization- and, of course, poetry from the Porpoise Corpus. This is the only artifact, this pyramid. But its existence and durability prove that as long ago as ten Egypts, a race of men existed whose technology was far advanced beyond what we know today. So advanced that it took twenty thousand years for that civilization's successor culture to disappear completely. The men who destroyed High Atlantis did their best to make it disappear. But they couldn't quite manage it. The Pyramid of the Eye, for instance, is indestructible. Though it's probable that they didn't want to destroy it."

Mavis nodded somberly. "That is their most sacred shrine."

"In other words," said George, "you're telling me that the people who destroyed Atlantis still exist. Do they have the powers they had then?"

"Substantially, yes," said Hagbard.

"Is this the Illuminati you told me about?"

"Illuminati, or Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria is one of the names they have used, yes."

"So they didn't start in seventeen seventy-six- they go a long way back before that, right?"

"Right," said Mavis.

"Then why did you lie to me about their history? And why the hell haven't they taken over the world by now, if they're all that powerful? When our ancestors were savages, they could have dominated them completely."

Hagbard replied, "I lied to you because the human mind can only accept a little of the truth at a time. Also, initiation into Discordianism has stages. The answer to the other question is complicated. But I'll try to give it to you simply. There are five reasons. First, there are organizations like the Discordians which are almost as powerful and which know almost as much as the Illuminati and which are able to thwart them. Second, the Illuminati are too small a group to enjoy the creative cross-fertilization necessary to progress of any kind, and they have been unable to advance much beyond the technological level they reached thirty thousand years ago. Like Chinese Mandarins. Third, the Illuminati are hamstrung in their actions by the superstitious beliefs that set them apart from the other Atlanteans. As I told you, they're the world's first religion. Fourth, the Illuminati are too sophisticated, ruthless and decadent to want to take over the world- it amuses them to play with world. Fifth, the Illuminati do rule the world and everything that happens, happens by their sufferance."

"Those reasons contradict each other," said George.

"That's the nature of logical thought. AH propositions are true in some sense, false in some sense and meaningless in some sense." Hagbard didn't smile.

The submarine had described a great arc as they talked and now the Pyramid of the Eye was far behind them. The eye itself, since it faced eastward, was no longer visible. Below, George could see the ruins of several small cities at the edges of tall cliffs that fell away into darker depths- cliffs that doubtless had been the seacoast of Atlantis at one time.

Hagbard said, "I've got a job for you, George. You're going to like it, and you're going to want to do it, but it is going to make you shit a brick. We'll talk about it when we get to Chesapeake Base. Now, though, let's go down into the hold and have a look at our acquisitions." He flicked a switch. "FUCKUP, get your finger out of your ass and drive this thing for a while."

"I'll see the statues later," said Mavis. "I've got other things to do just now."

George followed Hagbard down carpeted staircases and halls paneled in glowing, polished oak. At last they came to a large hall which was apparently paved with marble flagstones. A group of men and women wearing horizontally striped nautical shirts similar to Hagbard's were clustered around four tall statues in the center of the room. When Hagbard entered the room they stopped talking and stepped away to give him a clear look at the sculptures. The floor was covered with puddles of water and the statues themselves were dripping.

"No wiping them dry," Hagbard said. "Every molecule is precious just as it is, and the less disturbed the better." He stepped closer to the nearest one and looked at it for a long moment. "What do you say about a thing like this? It's beyond exquisite. Can you imagine what their art was like before the disaster? And to think the Unbroken Circle destroyed every trace of it, except for that crude, stupid pyramid."

"Which is the greatest piece of ceramic technology in the history of the human race," said one of the women. George looked around for Stella Maris, but she wasn't there.

"Where's Stella?" he asked Hagbard.

"Upstairs minding the store. She'll see them later."

The sculptures were unlike the work of any culture George knew, which was to be expected, after all. They were at once realistic, fanciful and abstractly intellectual. They bore resemblance to Egyptian and Mayan, Classical Greek, Chinese and Gothic, combined with a surprisingly modern-looking note. There were some qualities in the statues that were totally unique, though, qualities doubtless lost by the civilizations to which Atlantis was ancestral, but that might have been found in known world art, had there been other civilizations to preserve and emphasize them. This, George realized, was the Ur-Art; and looking at the statues was like hearing a sentence in the first language spoken by men.