Hamburger Zen For River Rhomboid

Hamburger Zen
Hank Harrison
Copyright 2009 Hank Harrison
Discover other titles by Hank Harrison at
Smashwords.com
For
Frances Bean and the memory of
Kurt Cobain and for the Oxners
With Special thanks to: Nelson Algren, Alain
Robbe-Grillet, Jean Cocteau, Diana Van den Berg,
Simon Vinkenoog, Dame Frances Yates, the late
John Michelle,Bob Marlowe and the other members
of my extended family.
River Rhomboid
What you think of me doesn’t matter…
You now hold gold in your hands.
David Dumb Dolphin
My name is Canyon Collins. I drew my first
breath in San Francisco in the first minute of the
first day in the first year of the twenty-first century.
As the first child of the new millennium my
responsibilities were awesome. My parents signed
exclusive contracts to display my cute, but very
naked, ass on worldwide down link.
I am an almost ugly man with a brutish wooden
face whittled by life. Storytelling often befalls the
uglier men. It has therefore become my duty to tell
you of my generation and how we changed the
world. I, personally wanted to leave it unchanged,
as good as when we found it, but the majority
wanted to change it—to leave their mark on it, as if
it was some graffiti laden school desk, about to fall
apart.
My duties as first child lasted about two years,
at which time I gradually faded into obscurity. My
Mom taught me how to read when I was three, first
Ferdinand the Pit Bull, then Where the Wild Things
Went, then on to the classics on e-book and fiche
and in old fashioned paper books. I played with
dozens of electronic gadgets, but I loved the books
the best, they had a moldy smell and a crinkly feel
to them. From that time on I wanted to make, write
and manufacture books, even though books were an
almost lost art form. I was about five. I remember
scribbling away in any weather, as if I was born to
write. At first I wrote letters to friends and
family—poetry too. Most of the adults I met would
say, “Hey kid, you ought ta write a book someday.”
Mom said the poetry lurks deep within her gene
pool.
At around age ten I began noticing radical
changes in the environment. Polar ice caps melted
faster than when I was four. Puddles of evaporated
steam formed in the Mohave Desert. Fish grew legs
in Antarctica. A new Daffodil species appeared
I guess I got in trouble when I asked a lot of
question my parents couldn’t answer. If I could give
any small piece of advice to gifted kids it’s that you
shouldn’t ask your parents questions they can’t
answer.
Terry Collins, my dad, taught me all about
beekeeping, but I stuck my head in a hive when I
was six and got swarmed on. I was stung so many
times I eventually grew allergic to honey, but I
learned about the bee dance... how the workers find
the pollen and do a dance to signal the others where
to go relative to the sun.
I guess I take after my uncle Dean, the famous
writer, of the clan Moriarity. He says the
Moriarity’s aren’t villains; it’s just that Sherlock
Holmes needed a bad guy and the Irish were
convenient. Uncle Dean lived in Ireland for a few
years and told me many stories. He said, “All you
need to do is go to Ireland and you’ll see yerself
walking down the street.” Ever since I’ve wanted to
visit Ireland, b but England is as close as I came.
I take after Uncle Dean in other ways too. I’ve
already written two books, but the journal you are
now reading may turn out to be my most important
work because—I swear on my grandmother’s grave,
wherever it is—that everything presented here is
factual.
Writing has always been fun, but I’m writing
out of fear now. Fear is an ugly, all pervasive
disease that seems to have infected everybody I
know.
This book is like a note in a bottle. I don’t know
who will read it, but I feel compelled to write it
anyway. I’m pasting it together from letters and
journal notes because a big black satellite, named
Excalibur—after the great sword pulled from a
stone by King Arthur—is threatening to destroy our
beloved planet and all life on its surface and
beneath its oceans. I hope that’s scary enough. Fear
is a great motivation. I can honestly say I’m scared
shitless.
Saint Bridget’s Day
Melifont
County Meath
No one is certain when Excalibur went astray,
but surely here is the final judgment. The dreaded
killer gizmo, described as a ‘killer satellite’ by
journalists, has created a global nightmare. It’s a
death ray, to be sure, but nobody knows where it is
or what it is. Nobody even knows how it got its
name. That’s why I think it’s a propaganda weapon.
First it’ll zoom in on a shiny pebble at the bottom of
a small creek west of the Pecos and melt it, then,
within a few minutes, or maybe three months later,
it’ll shoot at a window in the Europarliment in
Strasbourg. A few years ago, at a Rockies baseball
game, and for what seemed like no provocation,
Excalibur evaporated a hot dog vendor. All that
remained for the coroner was a stainless steel hot
box, a white cap and a huge glob of creamy Pink
Poupon. This turned out to be the first publicly
recorded homicide relating directly to Excalibur.
Last year the beam made a Popping sound as it
hit the archaic leaded glass of Westminster Abbey.
Two months ago Excalibur blasted a licorice
boutique in Amsterdam. Witnesses claim the stench
of licorice burning is worse than a skunk in a
catfight. About a month ago it fused a Cape Cod
fisherman’s waders to the deck—without killing
him.
Ten years ago, in Russia, Excalibur singed a
two-foot hole through the largest minaret in
Gorbagrad. But, that wasn’t the only Eurasian
report. A vegetable salesman from Kiev found
himself reduced to a three-foot stump—only his
identification bracelet remained. The stump began
to sprout hemp shoots the following spring. It seems
the guy had a pocket full of Ruderalis seeds when
the beam struck. Orthodox Ukrainians called it a
miracle.
My fellow Americans suspected everybody, but
themselves. Xenophobes from Brownsville to
Penobscot attributed Excalibur to the Japanese, but
Excalibur son hit the imperial grandson’s cottage
near Kyoto, with him in it. Japan went into
mourning; dozens of devotees committed hara-kiri
and the United Nations stopped blaming them for
the world trade imbalance.
The world now depends on a small, almost
invisible, satellite that has gone out of
control—more proof, if any be needed, that the
human race has little say in its own destiny. Nobody
can explain it. Excalibur behaves oddly. The
intensity and interval of the shots appear to be
random, but I wonder if it really is random. It’s a
particle beam, but nobody can analyze it without
lethal consequences. Sometimes it shoots into deep
space, hitting nothing. Sometimes it’ll pop a piece
of space debris or an asteroid with diminished force.
This led not a few observers to conclude that the
device was saving its big hits for earth. One
columnist in St. Louis called it a deep space
peashooter, but the majority of readers continue to
believe that Excalibur is a random engine of
destruction with marked similarities to the
Phoenician deity Balor of the evil eye, an equal
opportunity wraith who demands sacrifices of an
increasingly hideous nature.
Who is behind Excalibur? Anything left over
from Star Wars rusted long ago, or so everybody
thought, especially after world peace broke out at
the height of the depression, but there it was, a
rogue blackbird hardly visible by telemetry. My
thoughts shifted to more sinister questions, like who
launched Excalibur? Originally it may have been
humanitarian in nature, but it obviously developed
ominous functions. I knew it was evil when rock
stars, pilots, doctors and politicians, the most
egocentric creatures in the world, began to worship
it.
The International Green Party presidium
thought it was more benevolent than wrathful, a
departure from their usual ludite stance. To the
more religious tribes and the remnant Rainbow
people, Excalibur represents the invisible God,
grunting from the depths of the firmament.
Myros Rokinos, the noted mythograpaher,
likened the Excalibur phenomenon to Kronos
munching his children in synch with the orbit of
Saturn. Is Excalibur functioning in a synchronized
manner or is it malfunctioning in an asynchronous
manner? The first question suggests the most
morbid scenario of all, because if Excalibur were
working to perfection someone, with the greatest
gift for evil in recorded history, must have
programmed it.
We may never know Excalibur’s true origins or
the name of its designers. Eleven years ago three
astronauts and one cosmonaut burned up on a
mission to dismantle the thing. They reported
hearing spoken warnings on a seldom-used radio
frequency. Five minutes later the shuttle and its
operators disappeared without a trace. One thing is
certain, whoever controls this deathly spritzer
managed to upset the course of evolution on Earth.
So far, no written records have turned up.
Deciphering Excalibur is like trying to find the
Rosetta stone in a marble quarry the size of the
Pacific Ocean.
I have a wild idea that my wife knows the
answer. She’ll be here soon. In the meantime I must
keep writing. It’s therapy for me. I have to tell our
side of it.
The world economy has gone into a post
anarchy phase. The droughts attributed to Excalibur,
the brush fires, the smoke layer, the green house
effect, the global warming and the fluctuating ‘zone
hole’ (caused by warps in the earth’s pseudo
magnetosphere) are driving me positively toxic—to
say nothing of the smog from the worn out cars and
the pollution caused by the spilled battery gels when
the electric cars broke down. It’s like Cuba in the
1970s. Any old car that can stay alive will stay
alive, any new car, any new thing, will have to
justify its very existence against the threat of
Excalibur.
Blame points its knobby finger at Excalibur for
a litany of less lethal nastiness. Most seaside
climates are now so salty that the paint on the
already aging cars began to peel in large flakes. The
rural landscape changed aesthetically too. Most
interstate highways were ghostly and took on the
visage of the legendary Route 666, the Beastly road
with derelict gas stations and dead motels on every
bend.
The urban environment didn’t fair much better.
In Manhattan, the dog shit, already a problem
before Excalibur grew increasingly toxic, especially
after a thaw when the icy sidewalk embankments
melted to reveal the accumulations of millions of
canine forays. The World Health Council posted a
global warning. Bull Mastiffs were the only dogs fit
to patrol the streets. These drooling lions of chaos,
once hated by the upper middle class, are now
worth a king’s ransom. It used to be if you owned a
Saab you owned a Mastiff, now its’ “If you own a
house big enough to house the dog you own one.
Machinery and Gucci loafers weren’t the only
things soiled by Excalibur. Average citizens, in
increasing numbers, developed mold allergies. The
global fungal balance went off the charts. People
with sensitive skin were developing ringwort.
Mushrooms were growing ten feet in
circumference. New species of toadstools started
showing up all over the globe. Once benign fungi
became wildly aphrodisiac. The Shitake strain
became especially hallucinatory creating a vast
black-market trade in Oregon. You send your
money in and they send you a wet log. You put the
log in your window facing south and Voila! . .
Shrooms.
America and England, the only countries in the
world to have avoided a true implementation of
social democracy, remained aloof, opting not to
send CARE packages full of Brillo pads and
toothpaste to the starving villages in Asia because
theorists, still operating under the random event
assumption, believed the Pakistanis were behind the
Excalibur launch. As time went on the Pakistani
hypothesis proved untenable. The beam struck
Pakistan at least twice. The first shot caused
unprecedented floods. The second shot was a direct
hit on their food abundance gardens. One wag
punned that the Pakistani’s were behind Excalibur
because they were the only people capable of
shooting themselves in the ‘food.’
Things are getting better here in Ireland. I could
at least get an accurate perspective on things. As
long as I can feel pain or force a smile Excalibur
would be the least of my problems. The human race
is no longer majestic or noble. Excalibur has
paralyzed the entire population of earth—ten billion
sentient souls.
Someone has orchestrated a new reality and it
isn’t nice. It is as if Edgar Allen Poe, fractured on
crack cocaine, designed the world in ten minutes in
a dank room in Baltimore. In spite of that
depressing forecast I feel OK. While the rest of the
overpopulated planet lives in morbid fear of a
random particle beam, I live in morbid fear of the
people who want to control it, or rather those who
have lost control of it.
I also live in fear that what happened at Chartres
would recur. The sniper shot that ricocheted
between the columns and the blood splattered on the
labyrinth, like a voodoo sacrifice, told me all I
wanted to know. Anna, my wife and probation
officer, left me at Amiens. Then I ran back here to
Ireland. She knows where to find me, so I wait in
my hermetic silence and scribble out this book, not
knowing what will become of it, not knowing who
would want to read it.
Living with Anna has been the wildest
experience of my life. I need her. She’s burned into
me. Sounds corny I know, but I just let it all hang
out. At Chartres we witnessed an assassination and
at Amiens she saw an angel in a beam of light. I
don’t hide my emotions anymore. I’ll always
remember Anna’s serene repose as she stared up at
the rose window in the apse at Amiens—her bare
knees gracing the cold, tessellated octagon that
forms the maze. She trembled and smiled as if lost
in a beatific reverie. The original stained glass
window, still intact after at least ten centuries, threw
down tints and hues, bathing her in color. I held her,
but she had no use for her body. All Anna could say
was, I’m leaving. I’ll see you in Ireland. I thought
she was kidding, so I took a snooze on Saint Jude’s
bench. She vanished ten minutes later, leaving only
a whispered voice echoing around the pillars.
Two notes turned up as I scurried around the
room looking for clues. The first is private,
romantic and sentimental and I’m not going to
reprint it here. The second wrenched my gut—it
reads:
I figured it out. Don’t worry. Go to Ireland,
write your book, and stay put. Don’t go back home,
whatever you do. I need you over here.
Love Annnnnahhh !!
The signature was important. It’s the sound she
makes when she has an orgasm. I repackaged my
rucksacks, but I had no wheels. Anna ripped off the
Rover. I think she managed to unlock the mystery
of Excalibur, but why couldn’t I go along? I wanted
to chase after her, but I knew better. Besides I
missed the old green sod of Eire now unified under
a green flag with a golden harp in the middle, like
the Finnian flag of the Georgian era. Maybe we
were getting too close.
OK, I’ll do it. It was bizarre, but I went along
with the program. To assure my own survival I ran
back to the auberge and paid a few days in advance.
The omniscient concierge smiled knowingly and
mentioned, in his stultified English, that the fire
would be warm every night and there would be
more mulled wine. I grabbed some fruit and cheap
wine at the shop down the cobbled lane and
motored my way upstairs hopefully to nod off in the
creaky double bed. Nothing helped. Anna took one
of the gold nuggets given to us by Dolphin and left
the other one on the counter in a clear plastic
Optidisk holder. I sucked on that for at least an
hour, but nothing helped. A cloud of self-pity
poured over me. I cried that night. I just drank and
sobbed and listened as Edith Piaff’s La Vie en Rose
faded into Steve Nicks singing Tango in the Night.
Eventually a crust of tears sealed my eyelids. I
had to feel my way to the sink and make a hot
compress just to get them open. The shadows
passed quickly each day, and as each shadow
swooshed by I could feel more wisdom pouring in,
more confidence.
I didn’t feel dumped on. Anna was on a quest.
Marrying a warrior bitch puts you through a special
baptism unheard of in the world of accountancy.
Still I couldn’t just stand there with my hat in my
hand. The main goal was to acquire transportation. I
occupied at least three days looking for a car or
truck. I assumed I would have the best luck
knocking about behind barns and repair places. Hell
an airplane would do. I wasn’t sure I’d find
anything useful in the bone yards, but on the fourth
day I stumbled onto a reasonably intact vintage
Lavarda motorcycle in café racer trim. The last
registration expired in 1975. I wasn’t hoping for
much, but I took a philosophical attitude toward the
bike. I suspected the 1975 air in the tires was
fresher than the stuff people were currently
breathing in Paris.
My Imp sez, “Have another hit of fresh air,” an
obvious reference to an old Quicksilver Messenger
song uncle Neal used to play while we were riding
down the road in his Packard.
I was lucky enough to find an abandoned
workshop, the anodized roof leaked and the rain
was crunching cold, but hey, things could’ve been
worse. The bike occupied the only dry corner in the
shed and one of the doors revealed a complete
metric tool kit. Some might think that only
diamonds and gold constitute a treasure trove, but to
me those tools were treasures fit for a king.
A little more shuffling and dumpster dipping
yielded a heavy duty working battery from a
discarded Kawasaki Ceramco 1500cc Connoisseur.
I also rescued the pannier boxes from a once noble
BMW. These I fastened to the Lavarda with ropes
and belts. Normally all of this would have been
petty theft, but I was almost invisible to the locals.
The first week of grease and mud passed
quickly. I soaked and rebuilt the carbs at least three
times, finally realizing that the jets needed
microscopic polishing. I fashioned new gaskets
from thin slices of indoor-outdoor carpet dipped in
beeswax. I also boiled and filtered the collected oil
from numerous vehicles, but discovered more
problems once I popped the low-end case. The
crank bearings were intact, but the lay shaft had a
big crack in it. It might have taken me fifty
kilometers up the road then Kaaablaam! It would
take me at least another week, working with hand
tools, to machine another cog from an old SAAB
camshaft so I decided to move my stuff into the
shed. Besides the creaky bed at the Pension Etoile
reminded me of Anna, not that Anna is creaky or
anything, but the bead, the real deal funky antique
last place we slept together.
Although I was socially invisible I managed
meals from a roving bun vendor and drank
rainwater captured in a plastic bucket. I had soap
and shaving gear in my kit and I remember
washing-up in a rain barrel surrounded by algae, but
everything else was a blur—getting that damned
bike running was my only goal.
I set up the saddlebags so that I would have
really great tools and a small supply of oil and gas.
The gas I managed to swipe turned out to be twostroke with oil in it from an equally vintage
lawnmower engine. Billows of blue smoke coughed
through the 2 into 1 exhaust system. A tweak on the
jets and a fourth rebuild got the mill spinning. I
scavenged a hilariously oversized gas filter from a
DAF truck and attached it so that all fuel would
have to get sucked into this trap before it got into
the carbs. I broke out laughing when I realized this
is exactly how a sewer system operates.
My blood rushed the first time I sensed the
basket case might run. A merciful tractor driver sold
me five gallons of real four star and I was off to
Ireland.
I packed a blanket and the shaving gear, taking
special care of the AV camera, and set out north
around noon. The wind chill factor made the air
colder than an Eskimo’s doorstop. The Italian
engine didn’t appreciate the salvaged Bosch spark
plugs. The big Amal jets sucked gas, gas and more
gas. Oh, I had the clams sure enough, but there
wasn’t any place to spend ‘em. The first day on the
road produced a hairline crack in the fuel pod. I
plugged it with silicon caulking compound salvaged
from an unfinished housing tract, but it took
overnight to cure. I had a half roofed chateau style
bungalow to sleep in. It was so cozy I considered
settling in, the place even had a small stream
babbling nearby, but I promised Anna I would go
back to Ireland—no time to dawdle.
I soon discovered that many of the stripped
vehicles still had a few abandoned liters of gas in
them. The next day I made a total of one hundred
sixty kilometers; siphoning gas as I went. At dusk
an elderly Renault turbo, with no seats or
windshield, provided a stale gallon of gas and a
roomy place to crash. I slept at least six hours. The
midnight tractor company provided another liter.
My mouth grew acidic from all that
siphoning—burpaseous after eating cantaloupe, and
drinking a rubber boot full of stolen goat’s milk, but
it was worth the effort. I cranked away at the crack
of dawn and hit sixty for the first time.
The mantra of a well-tuned motorcycle can’t be
beat for keeping up one’s spirits. The razor-sharp
fog sparks your brain and the rap of the pipes
drones your keen freakiness to sleep—it’s also an
ideal drug for pushing back the sleepiness, sad
reveries, childish feelings of abandonment and the
wine fog. I didn’t notice the bleakness on the
roadsides while I was with Anna—she made life
sparkle. Now, with despair on every face, I race to
Ireland, an incurable Celtophile.
The Gallo Roman road widened to three or four
lanes in a few places and for occasional bursts I
could get on the throttles and hit fourth gear. As I
raced, head down behind the faring and windscreen,
eyes up, toes asleep, boots crammed tight against
the offsets, I couldn’t help thinking that as long as
Excalibur held the human race hostage every
Hungarian and Jew, every Bogomil and Parisian,
every Brit, Yank and Indian would be, at this very
moment, daydreaming about his or her old flame,
kids or other lost loved ones. These recurrent and
maudlin daydreams are the preoccupation of every
refugee, every hostage, and every prisoner. I see a
sense of abject loss in the Tarot and I can never
bring myself to interpret the card honestly. I always
try to shield the client from the emptiness of this
card. In truth we are all prisoners to the new order.
I wasn’t the only separated soul. The ferry
terminal and adjacent parking lots, each pub I raced
past, became a demarcation camp for hundreds of
pilgrims, most of them more rootless than myself.
Most hostelries went back to a full blown
medieval barter economy, meaning you made beds
or did laundry in exchange for your lodging. I
cooked, and most of the time the innkeepers would
beg me to stay, but I needed to get on with it.
My skin tingled to the bleeding point—no
goggles or helmet, the scarf; silk, but dirty. The
lambskin bomber jacket leaked and the engine
shorted more than twice. The old wires often
glowed blue arcing the magneto in the night mist.
One night Lukas, prince of darkness, the bane of all
motor cycloid riders in Europe, forced me to tuck in
under an Elm or road tunnel at twenty minute
intervals. During these stops I would use the small
bellows I swiped from the fireplace at the auberge
to blow dry the entire electrical system. I soaked the
little gold nugget Dolphin gave us, my half of the
booty, in the scarf and dripped the water down my
throat. It bathed my insides in strange warmth, not
unlike the effects of Napoleon brandy.
It took five travel days and five hard working
days at bed and breakfast places to get from Amiens
to Dieppe, a short distance a few decades ago, now
a trip traversable most efficiently by donkey cart.
The Roman Legions made better time. I tried to take
a side road around St. Elesius Domini, but the
smaller roads were impassable by motorcycle and
dangerous as there was much looting in the villages.
Occasional informants mentioned that the ferry still
ran from Dieppe to Rosslare, in Ireland, once a
week or whenever it got full. This meant large
queues of travelers would be bunching up on the
dock.
Every hotel I saw was full and the conversation
was Tower of Babelish. Travelers gaunt and drak,
airy and pastel, thick with fat and slow with
marrow, coagulated at every railroad junction and
bus stop. Strangers shared beds and mated, but
nobody fought or argued. Disease seemed endemic.
No matter how drunk they got life to the French
remained numb, bleary eyed. It could have been a
scene from Camus’ le E’tranger or an outtake from
"Last Year at Marienbad, " the classic film by Alain
Resnais, only recently colorized and re-released on
Pinkray.
I selected a clean looking auberge near the
Dieppe terminus. I can’t remember the name of the
place, but it was reverting to the Dark Ages, as is
everything else in the region. It wasn’t easy
munching on a stale baguette coated with a thin
layer of synthetic butter. This loaf was the
centerpiece in a midnight petit dejeuner consisting
of hard Camembert and an almost fresh brioche
dipped in something that presented itself as honey.
This had to be washed down with mucho vino.
“Hey, what’d I expect?”
Food was scarce, wine was unregulated and
everybody developed hemorrhoids from drinking
excessive amounts of VIN rouge. The suggested
cure was drinking equal amounts of vin blanc.
According to broadcast accounts most of the
people in central Europe were wandering around
aimlessly because Excalibur set fire to their fields,
perhaps this is why the French called Excalibur
Etoile du Morte. Most folks grew accustomed to it,
but a number of local economies failed. Peasants,
joined to the land by blood for centuries, were now
mere shadows on the roads. Many principalities
encouraged this homeless mania and it worked for a
while—the infamous children’s crusade must have
been similar, but the troubles start when the
populations settle in. Only the warrior caste can
survive as suburban hunter-gatherers. Luckily the
motorcycle made me invisible.
∞∞∞
Where is Anna? I stood staring at the window at
Amiens for hours after she left. I saw a dusty
window, in bad repair, a huge rose window with an
inverted star in the middle, but it didn’t move me to
run off and leave my lover stranded in the rain—it
isn’t everyday one sees an assassination.
Even the magnificently restored Amiens, could
not bring the unwashed back to worship, but the
pigeons were strictly devout. They bring in straw
from the fields and then coo in plain song like a
choir of castrated monks as they build their nests.
Humans don’t deserve such a marvelous shrine.
Perhaps only pigeons are hip enough to enjoy the
light that shines through the huge stained glass
windows. Except for the pigeons I still couldn’t see
what Anna saw—a revelation about the window
that’s all. Every time I tell somebody about it they
think I’m kidding. Why would a wife or lover leave
when everyone else was holding tight to his or her
families? How can I explain? Anna is an impulsive
genius. She is guided by an inner faith. She relies on
an omni directional gyroscope, part child’s
toy—part astrophysics. I knew I couldn’t stop her.
She’ll use that girl thing to find me when she’s
ready. Since I know I can’t find a better babe, I’ll
just wait, but the separation is killing me, physically
and mentally. I can feel the life force draining away.
Celibacy is not my style and yet I know I have to
stay alive, if not for myself, if not for Anna, then at
least for spite.
Excalibur is a terror weapon, but who pulled the
trigger and who stood behind the plan? We needed
to know who or what organization controls it. Her
comment, precisely before she pressed her private
part on my leg was, “Find out how and you find out
who.”
“Yes, but do you find out why?”
Her answer sounded final. “You may never
know why. Why, by its very nature, is inconclusive
and contains chaos. ‘Why’ is there a ridge pole
between yin and yang?”
A night boat arrived, late, as usual. Once on
board most wandering souls, including me, simply
retired to their cabins or sleeping bags. I slept the
whole way across waking only to worry about
whether the Lavarda could survive long enough to
get me from Wexford to Slane.
I had trouble firing the bike on the dock at
Rosslare. The weaseling of it told me it was on its
last legs. The diagnosis worsened, as I got under
way. The cam bearings were going out of round. I
could tell by the lowered response between second
and third and the rough idle. I pressed on through
the Bog of Allen and over the hillocks of County
Kildare, but I had a feeling I’d be walking the last
lap.
From Naas in Kildare I made the back roads to
bypass Dublin trying to get to Meath by hook or by
crook, mostly by crook. I did manage to get to
Edenderry before the cam went out completely. I
said a prayer for the once great machine, now dead
along the roadside. Here lay before me, with the
grass peeking up between its spokes, a green and
chrome dead horse originally designed to go 150
kph.
The death of the Lavarda wasn’t all tragedy. I
left the motorcycle with a curious guy named
Padraig and his yank wife Alish who fed me and
gave me a room for the night. At first I thought he
wanted to scavenge the tires and battery, but as I
left he told me he really wanted to restore it. When I
told him the cam fried out somewhere between
Chartres and Rosslare he simply smiled and said,
“Oy, no wee problem that, but we’ll bang out a
billet for it, have no fear.”
I didn’t. After walking a mile out of sight and to
the crossroads, I hitched a ride to Tara, once the
home of Kings, now and the home of a rubbish
dump. I caught a second ride to Dun Boyne in a
silage truck. The smell didn’t bother me.
Journal Entry
Oestera
The Celts in Ireland after Excalibur don’t seem
as bad off as their cousins in Normandy. Village life
remains intact here in this meadowland, along the
River Boyne, a wide rolling expanse referred to in
the famous book titled The Cattle Raid on the Plain
of Emman Macha. Locally it is called Mel, the land
of milk and honey, it lends its name to the famed
Melifont Abbey. The valley isn’t quite as fertile as
it once was. Twentieth century chemicals did more
damage in a short time than was done in all the
thousands of years of natural farming combined.
The only cash crops guaranteed to grow are cabbage
and sprouts. Even the sacred spud goes bad every
twenty-two years, something to do with the
sunspots,
I’ll wait here for a reunion with my wife or die
in the process. This is the nature of the alchemical
marriage. I guess it’s romantic, or maybe stupid. I’ll
wait here for Anna or extreme unction whichever
comes first.
Excalibur is a huge Hippopotamus swimming
over our heads—wallowing in the pure vacuum of
space waiting for its next cosmic burp. Nobody
seems to control it, and yet it seems to be doing the
bidding of a sinister master.
Excalibur has become a black space shark
swimming into eternity, misguided, ready to fire
that final blast that would turn Earth into a large
version of the planet Mercury. Mass suicide? Is that
possible?
No nuclear holocaust is going to occur, only us
whimpering pea-brained humans eking out an
existence. The human race is observing its own
demise. For centuries religious prophets predicted
the end of the world. To make the prophets happy
the media created doomsday so it would have
something on film. Eminent people are turning
away from organized religion, perhaps because they
see it as the source of the doom prophecies.
End of Journal entry
My house on the Boyne stood derelict on its
knoll—window shutters drawn tight. The laughter
of old parties ghosted the place. The hoof sockets
etched into the brick where the toll captain’s wife
milked the cow in the eighteenth century still
captured rainwater. I walked up the hedge-lined
boreen, past the Iron Gate. The slate roof was
thankfully intact. It’s getting close to twilight and
me without a flashlight. The doorknocker brass, in
the shape of the head of Mithras, is green with
disuse. I didn’t feel like breaking into the house so I
slept on the blanket in the warm pump house in the
Ros Na Rig mill just down the road. The next day I
obtained a small hatchet and a big knife from my
old shed, two ancient tools guaranteed to assist me
on my proposed four-mile trek into Drogheda. I
could have walked the main road or hitched a ride
on Tom’s donkey, but instead I made my way along
the riverside paths once used by the ferrymen and
the fairies. These were now suffocating with gorse
and brambles, but if one looked closely enough,
perhaps with the eye of an archaeologist, one could
reconstruct the famous bend and the salmon weirs.
The bungalow-studded hills of the town broke the
horizon six hours later.
Drogheda is, on the surface, a dingy little
market town at the mouth of the Boyne, but
underneath the funky exterior you can just keep
digging. It is one of the oldest continuously
occupied towns on earth. Human habitation
settlements at Drogheda are at least 7,000 years old.
The Norman arch in the center of town remains
black with soot and blood to commemorate the
martyrs to Cromwell’s genocide–their heads set on
spikes around the city walls. I stopped into the big
church to see the severed head of the blessed Saint
Oliver Plunkett, still in its shrine. I begged him for
his guidance. He told me everything would be OK,
as long as I had money.
The estate agent went out of his way to fix tea.
Over scones and sticky buns I learned that, for a
small finder’s fee (payable in advance), I could
easily rent the riverside house that once belonged to
the trout Anglers society. The only string attached
was that I had to fix the damned place up at my own
expense and provide electricity for the
archaeological society digging in the next field
over, near the slate mine. It shocked me to hear that
the house had, except for the short stay of a retired
Russian cosmonaut and her family, stood
uninhabited for many years.
I inventoried the now aging AV 5-chip LoLux
camera, with Leica lenses and I inventoried the
contents of the ditty bag and a few tools, saved from
the bike, with the books from my last sojourn, the
computer, its scanner and printer and the
Ementhaler Global radio. To receive these goods I
simply paid my fee, signed an old-fashioned paper
contract and picked up the equally old-fashioned
latchkey. The agent, Mr. O’Mahoney (pronounced
O’Marhonee), reminded me that Siobhan
O’Sullivan delivered a few boxes of papers and
some kitchen utensils a few years ago. We set off in
his motorized contraption—very proud of it he was
too—across the plains of Mel, still verdant and very
much saturated with mystery. I asked, “Well Mr.
O’Mahoney, what ever happened to Joe Rock.”
The car screeched around a sharp curve, “Oh
haven’t you heard, Mr. Rock drowned in the Boyne
last winter?”
“Oh that’s too bad… so who drives the cab
now?” I asked, saddened by the information.
Another bump passed beneath us before my
agent answered, “Nobody right now, but we’re
working on it.” He winked as he spoke.
So there I sat, Mr. O’Mahoney driving the lowly
likes of me up to my once stately Georgian
hermitage. An hour later I realized why he wouldn’t
come in. The distinct smell of rotten tapestries
entered my nostrils as I squeezed the door upon.
The draperies looked like a linen sale at a moth
convention. The place was also cold and was likely
to stay cold since electricity fell by the wayside ten
years ago. True, hardly anybody in Ireland missed
paying those bizarre USB rates, but, because I had
no access to natural gas, paraffin or wood, and
being a Yank, I felt maybe I could work in a small
electric fire. In the course of my browsing I found
the coal bin bereft of its namesake, although a good
supply of turf blocks came in handy. For the first
two weeks water came, one reluctant bucket at a
time, from a pump outside, said to be a holy well.
Fat chance.
Yet Another Journal Entry
Probably three months later
I have few face-to-face visitors, although I can
feel dozens of shy eyes peering at me as I walk
down the road. I’m sure the faces will appear
eventually, the Irish are far too curious to stay shy
for long… maybe that’s why they call this place the
valley of the squinting windows.
Life isn’t bad here along the river of the Milky
Way, but Anna is constantly in my thoughts as I
sweep the final caterpillars out of the bottom
kitchen. What used to suffice as Saint Patrick’s Day
is come and gone with little fanfare? The air is clear
and I have wrestled the house away from the
banshees. I remain free of health problems, always
one step ahead of blue blight or the tree toad virus. I
guess Dolphin’s gold nugget helps and I have begun
to raise bees. I let the nugget sit in a glass of well
water then drink the water with a drop of Royal
Jelly every day. This gives me a buzz that comes
directly from the bees. I call it the Bees Knees.
I illuminate the rooms with fat and stumpy
beeswax candles that I buy from the monks at
Melifont Abbey. Melifont means fountain of honey
in Norman French. The monk known only as
Francis supplied me with a hand woven hive, very
old fashioned and conical, probably inspired by
Minoan creations. A wonderful queen bee came
with it. Francis and his pals beamed broadly, their
noses bright red and incandescent. I asked, “When
do I get the drones and the worker bees?”
Brother Francis replied, “Sure now, just place
that little hive your holdin’ on a ledge in the back of
your house and in a few days you’ll have a swarm
so big you’ll be beggin’ for mercy.”
The other monks fell down in gales of laughter.
As I walked away from the ancient abbey I could
here Francis calling to me, “And don’t go naked
what ever ya do!” More peels of laughter rang out
as I carried my small woven prize carefully away. I
suppose one of the window squinters told them they
saw me with my shirt off trying to catch some sun
in my back yard a few days earlier—news travels
fast around here and a Yank with his shirt off in his
bare feet is a big deal.
I entertain myself by reading and writing and
there’s a nightly broadcast in Gaelic from RTE
Dublin. Believe it or not I’m learning the old Irish
language. The nutrition isn’t bad either. The
basement croft kitchen, built around a seventeenth
century iron hob, is really just a big walkin fireplace
with niches built into it, upon which you boil your
Dandelion tea, beans and stew. I catch salmon in the
Boyne and prepare it in a recipe that I call “Twice
poached salmon.” Once a month, certainly no more,
I savor a leg of lamb and about once a week I can
buy a whole chicken at the grange farm down the
road toward Slane.
For daily eats I crush my own hazelnuts into
butter for spreading on oatcakes. I also pick wild
berries on the widow Dunfrey’s land and ferment
them into a wine, which I use for medicinal
purposes—big vitamin C kick.
Occasionally Mrs. Dunfrey herself joins me in a
bottle wee dram of Courvoisier—for medicinal
purposes, don’t cha know. At least once a week I
cook sprouts and spuds and nettle cakes with butter.
This is tricky, you have to learn to grab the nettles
in just such a way or they’ll numb your hands for
days. A fly fisherman who uses my road to get
down to the Boyne, showed me how to grab Nettles
using a Lilly leaf from the marsh pond, but I have
seen a few locals actually grabbing them bare
handed. It’s a magic trick I’ll probably never learn.
The dairyman from Knowth delivers milk in
bottles on the front porch. I also get a ration of eggs
and cheese, which appear mysteriously on my
unscrubbed redbrick doorstep, once each week.
When I asked how this miracle occurs the locals
say, “It’s the wee folk.”
I have no fat on me and yet I pour fresh cream
down my gullet everyday, whenever I can rest it
away from the Jackdaws, I pour it over boiled oats
and drink it in my tea—beats the hell out of stealing
goat’s milk in a Wellington boot. For recreation I
take a slash of poteen (pah cheen) with sloe berries
in it. The berries turn the 200 proof alcohols pink.
It’s good for chain saws and sore feet too. The Irish
immigrants to the United States brought this
formula with them. In the Smoky Mountains it
became known as White Lightning. I crave
marijuana occasionally, but that’s out of the
question. You can’t grow weed outdoors in Ireland
and I haven’t got seeds anyway.
I’m alive by Cartesian standards, but according
to Buddha I’m dead as a doornail. The village white
beards patronize me and in return I slip an
occasional five Euro note in the nappy of the
poorest child at mass. I’m not a Catholic, but it’s
pleasant to go to mass anyway. As long as you
don’t take communion it’s OK.
My house stands between two old chimneys.
The large chimney holds up the east wall and
plunges down to the basement—half of it takes care
of the hob, the other warms the mahogany mantled
brick fireplace in the study. The walls are green, but
it’s an emerald green and the library shelves have a
faded gilt trim.
The west room is feminine in nature,
watermelon plaster walls, and white trim with a
leather seat around the brass fireplace. A huge gilt
looking glass crowns the chalk white Adam’s style
mantle. A broken grandfather clock, which shows
the sun and the phases of the moon, stands to the
side of a notched plank floor, which doubled as the
basement kitchen ceiling. The floor planks support a
threadbare, but real, Sarouk, but anyone sleeping
below could hear every noise and every footstep
tread upon that carpet. This ensemble, and a fake
Louis XIV parquetry escritoire and chairs, stand
before a set of tall shuttered Georgian windows that,
in good weather, open to the outside for both
Southern and Northern exposure.
The downstairs kitchen is black with soot,
charming against the cracked green walls. The
enamel is not sufficient to hold back the lime
deposits and the rising damp. The wood fired Aga
oven, a mid-twentieth century improvement, is
always warm and gives me hot water for bathing
and washing the wooden trenchers. A Pine press
displays the few bits of crockery I managed to
marshal for the bachelor life.
The roof on the little croft in back, a dry
building at least five hundred years old, is being
rethatched on a government historical site grant,
Five expert thatches from the Ebo tribe in Nigeria
are carrying out the contract because nobody in
Ireland knows how to thatch anymore. The tourists
don’t notice the unique African knots and the odd
little amulets sewn into the fluting. I like the Ebo
men. They don’t burden themselves with prejudice
and they suffer boredom beautifully. They’re main
boredom pincher, the viper juice that cleans they’re
clocks and squeegees their windshields is a
homebrew they call “Crapo.” This full-bodied
fermented porter stagnates in special clay pots for a
secret amount of days until tested and approved by
the head “head.” This witches brew creates a
passable malaise and an itchy nose in anyone who
drinks it, except the Nigerian dudes—them it
animates into a working frenzy. The scrumpy like
stupor I acquire from drinking it, (I still don’t know
what they put in it, old coffee grounds and apple
peels I think) helps me tolerate what seems like the
end of the human race.
The Dutch now run the world. The only useful,
or even trustworthy, rule of law comes out of the
World Court in The Hague. The Canadians, oversee
the earth’s ecology as a whole. I’m sure I’m living
in the twenty-first century, but I husband a Nanny
goat on a rope tied to a stake in my nineteenth
century garden. The cottage I live in, although
Victorian, stands next to a greenhouse which
doubles as a woodshed, garage, stable and atrium in
the shape of a large thatched conical hut, identical
to the houses built six thousand years ago by the
Larne flint culture. Could this be another paradox in
the time net?
The cob pony doesn’t bother the goat when she
comes. A stiff rope soaked in alum prevents her
from eating the rutabagas. On the other hand, the
horse doesn’t forage for legumes and tubers, and
won’t eat certain weeds, so, in a way; I manage to
appreciate the balance of life.
I guess I can’t complain. Nobody is starving in
my immediate vicinity. If you want fish you have a
sea full of ’em. The little hive given to me by the
monks yields jars of comb honey and Royal Jelly,
but scant little bee pollen. If you want pollen, which
is the best vitamin pill on earth, you must go about
disturbing the wild hives in the hazel groves along
the river. This is no fun. Every time I go down there
I recall brother Francis and the other monks
warning me against nakedness.
End of Journal Entry
Rock Doktor
Before Excalibur started its lethal escapades I
was a clinical and urban anthropologist, at least by
training. I did a little forensic work, dabbled with
writing and took clients by referral. My wrong
turning came when I felt compassion for the fucked
up souls of this planet, and a few who claimed they
originated on another planet.
I wasn’t after money. The big money comes
from shrinking the heads of the rich kids, but I got
bored with rich kids. They never get their ass kicked
by reality and their parents are way too conceited to
train them to duck when the shit flies. They get
bewildered. They drop out, but thy can’t drop back
in. I preferred to work with people who really need
the help; people who get their ass kicked every day.
My clients were usually whores, pimps, perverts,
queens, TV’s, cons, failed writers, defrocked
priests, violent rock drummers who kick people in
the groin, herpes sufferers, disassociative bass
players and other kinds of plague victims. Some
times I throw a Tarot spread for them, sometimes I
just sit and listen.
They never had a peso and a fixed fee would
have discouraged them. This depressing economic
state forced me into flex hours on top of the flex
payments—why make appointments when
musicians and hookers never show up on time
anyway? I call it the Thessalonians Funk syndrome.
Sometimes I would hang out with the clients on a
house call or we would meet on the streets or in a
park and just cruise. It’s the only way I could get
the job done.
Most people who ‘really’ need help are also
broke. This puts me in a perpetual double bind
between survival and ethics. To solve this problem I
set up a fair, if not bizarre schedule of fees as
follows:
Bill of Fare
√ Trauma due to witnessing the rape of a sibling
by a parent FREE.
√ Teenager with broken limb due to being
pushed downstairs by really nasty mother $5.00.
√ Massively obese gay guy with anal problems
$200.00 per hour.
√ Rock star, any malady ......................1% of
lifetime earnings.
√ Everybody else is on a sliding scale Cash!
My shrink style has always been directive.
Instead of coercing my clients into screaming I
screamed at them. This did me a lot of good. Carl
Rogers and the other great masters do not
recommend it, but it works for me. My philosophy
is, “You came to me for advice, OK here it is, do it
or get the hell out of my face, there are ten more
people sitting out in the hall.”
Like Socrates, or Kafka’s Country Doctor, or
the voodoo woman, people pay me off in
contraband. I guess I’m guilty of receiving stolen
dreams. I took chickens, food vouchers, and
discount coupons, On-line subscriptions videos of
old Washington Biplane concerts, and mucho
marijuana. I often swapped this stuff for food and
always got enough to keep the rent going.
Motorcycles love me. Maybe that’s why I have
never owned an automobile. I can drive. Everybody
in Alta drives, but who needs a car in a city of two
million stacked on end in high rise earthquake proof
towers. One of my clients, grateful for the rescue,
recently donated a perfectly swell Hardly Jefferson
Black Widow. Unfortunately this one had the clutch
blown out, but what can one expect for a fifty-yearold motorcycle.
Over the years my beloved loft evolved into a
California arts and crafts revival museum with
heavy influences from Klimpt, Frank Lloyd Wright
and early heavy metal. The heavy metal part came
from the fact that Rodney spent much time fixing
the Black Widow’s clutch in my dining area. I
surrounded myself with beautiful and supernal
things. A small Folon serigraph, Le Homme Bleu,
hung above my Warmking wumbaawa cot. A real
Jasper Johns encaustic American flag target, handed
down to me by my mom, hangs in the bedroom,
above the Mahogany bedstead which still has holes
in it where I shot it with my Pellato Rifle. Two
slightly bruised Khang Hsui vases, the blue and
white ones with the plum blossoms, sit atop the
book shelf bolted down with clay and screws and
glue to keep them from flying in an earthquake. A
Mission daybed, two oak panel lamps, a white oak
nursing rocker that creaks badly, and a one drawer
desk from an old draw bridge filled out the place
handsomely. I kept my pistol in the desk drawer…
loaded. I also kept an office, which I called
“Ground Zero” on the ground floor of my building.
This sparsely decorated command center, located
right on Hashberry Street proved convenient for my
clients since most of them were way too freaked to
give the elevator voice commands. The elevator,
affectionately named Johnny Otis, wasn’t
programmed to understand slang anyway.
Most of my clients were acid heads burnt out
from being ‘on the bus,’ two decades too long. An
occasional stressed out flight attendant jittered in as
a referral from Freebird Air, from which I received
a small retainer, and, not surprisingly, I saw an
assortment of social workers and up market shrinks.
These are the preppy types, apolitical liberals,
neither radicals nor fascists, who hung out like
sheep at Caslon Institute in Big Stir just long
enough to latch onto the richest ‘meal ticket’ of the
opposite gender they could find.
I still can’t figure out why the preppy types
wandered into my life at all, perhaps it was my
fascination with horses and dogs, but mostly, I
assumed, they came into my life because they knew,
through some perverse sense of intuition, that I
catered to whores and junkies. I guess they thought
if I could do a good job with the ungodly types and
the cult of the hopeless, I could do something for
them—for the most part they were right. They too
were hopeless in their own way… really lost souls.
With the exception of a few close friends I
guess I was a lost soul too. I always looked forward
to hearing from JoJo and Izzy Mansoo from
Vancouver because they sent me hilarious full
production optidisks with completely vulgar texts.
Mansoo even succeeded in making Hitler’s sex life
funny. On a semiannual basis Hal and Sharon filled
in for the brother and sister I never had and Rodney
the rainbow man, who could fix anything, was sort
of like my sidekick, at least in the old days. I met
these folks during my clinical internship. They
somehow link me to my past. Without them I would
probably float along aimlessly. Hal and Sharon’s
last holiday card implied they’re doing real well for
themselves running some kind of gambling school
at the Jockey Hall in Vegas.
Anyway, shrinking heads for no money, in an
age when nobody believes in psychology was a
definite obstacle to my self-esteem. This was a
really unappreciated gig. On the other hand it
wasn’t all-bad. With middleclass clients a
psychologist has only to compete with the
worshippers of Zany Krishuna, but in the junk lane
in the Haight-Ashbury and in Chicago’s old Clark
Street and down in Soho in Manhattan, psychology
competes with homicide and all the other ‘cides.’
The mainstream shrink must compete with
schedules and bankrolls and credit cards and state
health boards, but my only goal was to see the
patient stop squirting white death into rusty veins
from pewter crusty spoons. My main goal was to
get them off Skank and cracked U4iA—political
drugs provided by fascists who want the best minds
of my generation, and every other generation, to rot
in the streets. If they’re stoned they can’t revolt!
They can be revolting, but they can’t strike a blow
for independence. Like when generation x turned
into generation zoo.
I could only call myself successful if I could
convince one cold gong kicker, shivering for
another black and constipating pipe, to dump the
bag and see into the bare halogen reality
surrounding all of us. I was a barter clinician, a
crook by transference, and a helping hand, sick by
sympathy, guilty by association, on trial by ordeal.
To remedy this I put myself back into therapy
for six months. The outcome of those days playing
GO with Floyd, a wise guy who only shrunk other
shrinks, was wonderful. He would sit and pet his
West Highland Terrier and twist Bonsai stems while
I rapped. During those sessions I made a firm
decision to write a book or maybe more than one
book. To counter balance my introspection I spent
every spare moment huddled in my loft indulging
my expeditionary dreams. In that other life I was an
archaeologist deciphering the true nature of the
protoceltic civilizations in Western Europe.
Floyd encouraged me to keep on writing and
chase down my archaeology dream. My ideas were
great, but I couldn’t write beyond the upper division
English placement exam level and my sense of
humor was fading, this I attribute to watching too
many Pinkray 4-d video discs. I started listening to
sextalk on the radio, but that got boring. To rescue
my sense of humor I wrote a satire titled The
Electronic Battlefield that came out as a short book
of essays—a loose collection of tongue-in-cheek
pieces on early 21st century technology and how it
made our present civilization so weird, but many
readers took it seriously and it eventually got
snapped up by a prestigious electronic book club. I
didn’t have the heart to tell them it was satire, so I
just shut up and spent the money, which was
considerable. Don’t get me wrong, Electronic
Battlefield was no bestseller, it didn’t stay in hard
card format long enough, but it went through many
printings and I was constantly updating it.
The book also made me a smash on the rubber
chicken circuit. Talking tongue-in-cheek, to
gargling executives who own their own penguin
suits, convinced me that the battlefield club consists
of twerps with lethal toys and wives (with bondage
proclivities) who suffer silently though the pain of
estrogen withdrawal. I think that’s where I made my
mistake. I must admit, looking back on it, I should
have stayed at that satirical level; because when you
take satire seriously it blows up in your face. Still, I
liked the act of writing, the passion of banging the
key or scribbling moist Oak Gall on a blank sheet. I
wasn’t good at it, but it is a form of therapy, akin to
bungee jumping, or hang gliding and better than
drugs for sure.
I could still tell a clean joke in mixed company
so I occasionally found myself at symposia filling in
for the token office bound shrink. For reasons as yet
completely inexplicable, the entire psychology
community on the West Coast thought of me as and
oddball visionary, scrubbed enough to pass for one
of the boys without offending anyone. I disliked
these people very much and yet they embraced me
superficially and made me a gift of their innermost
secrets, mainly that they were latent
homosexuals—both genders—not at all from the
warrior caste, though they were helping to wage
wars all over the globe.
About two years after Electronic Battlefield I
managed to get a serious paper published in a
highly respected learned journal titled New
Thought. This one is a speculative inquiry into the
man machine riddle titled Intellimimesis, a reprint
of which I sent to the renowned scholar Dame
Frances Bates in London. I hoped I could spend a
few hours with her as I had done twenty years
earlier during my postgraduate days at the Warburg
Institute. Imagine my surprise when I received a
card from her inviting me to hangout at the
Warburg the next time I visited. This made my
plans roll faster. A visit with Bates, by itself, was
worth the entire trip. Now If I could just stretch the
dates to include a long sabbatical everything would
be hunky snarky.
Around this time a car club gang, known as the
Streamliners, six guys who owned one red and
black, 1957 Studebaker Commando between them,
albeit in perfect condition, started calling me the
Rock Doktor, spelled with a ‘k’ to denote my
honorary membership. This honor was awarded
because I managed to help the head honcho’s girl
friend whose name began with ‘K.’ The Little Boys,
a rival gang, with no car, but plans to steal one
soon, got pissed off and threatened to kick ass on
the Streamliners if they didn’t drop me from their
hall of infamy. Apparently I ‘belonged’ to them
because I also helped out the main dude’s sister in a
rape case, wherein she was the perpetrator. With
these two powerful street forces fighting over me I
felt like a virgin in a whorehouse. I won acclaim in
their eyes, but I had no idea why. I was a gang
member by default and I guess you can’t belong to
more than one gang.
As time went on the two gangs agreed to make
my street name official. They even took me down to
a playground wall where they painted my name in
big red and blue letters. After my initiation I saw
DOX and DOK ZEE tagged all over town. They
couldn’t spell, but I got the message—X and Z were
big letters in their alphabet soup. It is a great honor,
very cabalistic.
To them, and the other sewer rats, I was a “Mass
Babe.” This inspired me to write another essay
titled Doxology, the autobiography of a rock doctor.
This one managed to wend its way into the
sociology literature in French and German. I have
no idea how this happened. I wrote the piece as a
kind of joke, but the academic world, especially in
London, thought it was hip.
My London connections proved to be big
trouble for me. About twenty years ago I was lucky
enough to receive a Boardman scholarship to study
in London as part of my graduate education. My
first student sojourn along the Thames lasted about
a year. I was 24 at the time. A few goofy British
sociologists believed, like their dweebish American
counterparts, that I enjoyed access to the hip
underground in San Francisco. Whew! When I
returned to Alta California I thought for certain I
would never hear from the Londoners again, but to
my dismay many of these people stayed in touch
with me over the years, read all of my papers and
wrote me letters constantly, even when I
purposefully failed to reply. Anyway, every so
often, especially after International Social Science
Review reprinted Doxology, a gaggle of these daft
gits, wives or husbands or love mates in tow,
showed up in San Francisco and pressured me to
take them ‘around.’ After that I took at least twenty
groups around in a three-year period, and the only
people I was happy to see were Hal and Sharon
O’Brian from Bowen Island near Vancouver, in
British Columbia.
Occasionally I managed to get the two sides of
the tracks to cross without short-circuits. My upper
class white colleagues, especially the Londoners,
loved slumming so I became, by attrition, the token
hipster. I made Cream Crane’s gossip column at
least twice a year and, just for kicks, I took whole
coveys of techno hags on slum tours down to the
backend of South Beach, to a dive called PINKS. I
gave them my standard rap, “Hey, are you guys sure
you wanna’ go in here?” They would always nod
rapidly in the affirmative. I took the nods as a queue
to tender forth a colorful slice of history. “This used
to be a freeway and then it became a t-shirt factory
for a while, Hinterland Productions I think they
called it, now it’s full of freaks and hookers!” But
no matter how I discouraged them you can bet your
ass that’s the first place they wanted to go.
On one occasion a personnel director from Bent
Kurt Engineering, hobnobbing on my handholding
tour, discovered one of his top security employees
cavorting in drag, and all hell broke loose, but
nobody blamed me. I played the role of Chiron
guiding the innocent across the river Styx. It was
my job to introduce the mysteries of bop to the
squares and hope they would understand.
My dad armed me well for this kind of cultural
land mine saying, “Squares want to be hip so much
they’ll pay almost any price.” I realized the one
thing Rockhead Engineers and undercover cops
wanted more than anything else in the whole
fucking world was to be hip, to get that Bohemian
passport. These dudes were closet hippies! They’d
sell their sisters for a single backstage laminate pass
to a Hateful Djed concert.
In an attempt to incorporate anthropology into
my spiel I tried to explain the alienation so
prevalent in the alternative subcultures. I would say,
“Well folks it all boils down to Intellimimesis!” My
audience would scratch their beards, both genders,
and nod knowingly. I knew they were full of crap
because I invented the word less than three years
earlier, but I obligingly answered their questions
over espresso with opera singers yelling in my ears
or in bars with juke jive pouring from a
reconditioned pre-World War II Rockola. Mostly
they’d wait till we got into the car, and then they’d
harangue me with questions. I would then spill forth
my standard “hipness isn’t everything” speech
ending with three axioms:
• All healing is self-healing.
• People are alienated because they perceive no
justice.
• Socially sick people cannot heal themselves
until their social matrix is repaired.
I told my Silicon Valley friends that the downand-out are down on technology because they don’t
see it as an empowering force; they see computers
as the tools of their suppressors.
I added phrases like ‘weak enculturation’ and
‘poor superego processes’ and ‘lack of enrichment’
and ‘platykurtic learning curves’ and of course that
old standby, ‘no bread.’ None of the tourists knew
what I was talking about, (or gave a shit for that
matter), but it usually shut ‘em up for the rest of the
ride home.
This tour guide phase lasted about three years
during which, to keep my sanity, (and at the
suggestion of Floyd the shrink) I wrote every
chance I got. I knocked out articles, letters, and
notes, even poetry. I was actually improving as a
writer, thinking maybe I found a hidden talent here
and I noticed I wasn’t half as lonely as I used to be.
During this time I managed to develop a
correspondence, through the Little Boys, with a guy
named Sean O’Bannon, an ex-gang banger living in
Ireland. Apparently the Little Boys had a link with
the Sinn Finn party in Ireland and Sean wanted me
to come over for a tour of Irish archaeological sites.
I guess he heard about me through his old tag pals.
You wouldn’t think a street punk would have
anything to do with the stars and the stones, but you
learn something everyday. Anyway Sean’s invite to
Ireland gave me a solid goal.
Floyd, the Bonsai master, stood by me, but he
knew I would flee my native home, and he tried to
prepare me for my exit. I envisioned a new bumper
sticker:
Run or Die !
Sort of like “Don’t Tread on Me,” only in
reverse.
In spite of my sudden writing success I needed a
more reliable source of cash. Nobody can live in
Europe without a cash source from stateside and
publishers are never reliable, even Gilke, who is
more charitable than most, especially when you beg
on Christmas Eve.
Months went by. Yuletide proved a bitter cold
bugger, but a whole mess of money warmed my
butt in the form of a grant transferred to me by a
well-known therapist named Helena Merkell in
Minneapolis.
Helena was no square. I first met her in
undergraduate school. We became pen pals and
managed to send each other holiday and birthday
cards every year. Secretly I thought there might be a
future in the relationship, but it was one sided.
Helena is a hunkaholic. Hey, it wasn’t all bad. In
her younger days she lived with Nate Gates who
ripped of a whole bunch of rock bands in the city.
Gates became a recluse in Malibu with a price on
his head, so Helena dumped him like a hot knish
and set out for Montana. At least she introduced me
to the antics of Dumb Dolphin—the leftover 1990’s
militant, one of the leaders of the thirteenth
generation. My life changed radically after that.
Assault on Muzix
From the Desk of:
Helena Merkell, Ph.D.
University of Minnesota
Department of Psychology
Minneapolis, Minnesota
En Re: The Suicide of Dumb Dolphin
September 2
Dear Canyon:
I’ve recently uncovered an interesting case, one
that fits into your research on computer and technoalienation and one that originates in your fair city
and frankly this one troubles me.
The client’s went by their gang names and
claimed a mysterious man named Dumb Dolphin as
their leader. Dumb Dolphin was not homicidal or
schizophrenic, but there’s a rumor floating around
that he was recently in a highway accident and is
presumed dead.
The first client to sign up for group therapy was
a guy named Mr. Bootes. Bootes claims Dolphin
turned up face down in a sand dune after
purposefully driving his motorcycle over a cliff.
Can you confirm? It must have been in the papers
out there?
Apparently Dumb Dolphin, if he existed at all,
was charismatic enough to run a gang of terrorists
from a booth in an Irish pub in San Francisco called
the Sword & Dagger out on Geary Boulevard.
Mr. Bootes tells me that the overall group
mission was motivated by the assumption that the
seemingly respectable elevator music company
known as Muzix was brainwashing people at the
supermarket through use of subliminal suggestions,
via ultra and subsonic tones, coded into velveteen
renditions of Beatle’s classics. This entire operation
was supposedly computer controlled and automated
by a secret fraternal organization operating under
the auspices of three or more government
consultancy firms and think tanks such as, the
Hudson River Group, The Institute for Modern
Studies, and the influential Rhine Corporation. But,
according to Bootes, all of these groups pale by
comparison to the contribution made by Danforth
University. Danforth and affiliates seem to be the
moving force behind the conspiracy. One institute
in particular, Danforth Research Institute, is known
for its skill in military logistics.
Bootes further tells us that Dumb Dolphin
worked for years to track down the main Muzix
mind control computers only to discover that they
were located in a large chamber, once used for
Masonic York rite, initiation ceremonies, inside
Mount Shasta, in Northern California. It hasn’t been
used since before World War II because nobody
goes through the more difficult and expensive York
rite, but it was used again recently.
My client believes, or at least has deluded
himself into believing, that this huge initiation
chamber was structured like a labyrinth and was
accessible only through a maze or corridors or by a
forcible entry from outside. He was told that the
corridors were lined with hieroglyphics and that the
hieroglyphics were op codes for the Central
Processor. Bootes added that the whole thing was
written in an archaic banking language called LISP.
By all accounts, the sabotage attempt, which
took place in the fall, was simple enough. A dwarf,
who was also an explosives expert, known only as
“The Snail,” was hired to drill vertically and pack
the dynamite. Two of the members of the assault
team, known only by their code names, one named
Sirius, one named Charlotte Rousse and another
skinny guy named Spotted Dick—they seem to
name themselves after stars or puddings—reports
having seen an interior chamber through the
crevices in the mountain. It was confirmed that a
small ceremonial room, cut by the original military
engineers was still functional.
Charlotte tells the story in such vivid detail that
it must be authentic. Mr. Bootes mentions that
pitons were attached to secure safety lines after
which the drilling of the room cavity began with
gusto.
The outcome was as predictable as the outing
was strange. The dynamite did not go off. A second
attempt was not possible because people below, bit
actors engaged for a remake of North By
Northwest, spotted the marauders and alerted the
rangers. Furthermore, a crowd of Lutheran tourists
from Bismarck, North Dakota, determined to
mingle with the bogus movie stars, reported the
antics to their local newspaper. One eyewitness says
she saw one of the climbers use a spray can to
write: ‘R. Mutt’ on the room walls as he made his
escape. Is this a reference to the Duchamp Dada
urinal?
Two participants escaped by paraglider to
waiting cars and the others backpacked through
brush many miles to a prearranged rendezvous. It’s
a miracle no one got hurt. They all met again back
in Minneapolis in a rundown basement at 2727
Portland Avenue South, made final plans for a
getaway, exchanged addresses, had an orgy and
then went their separate ways.
A few joined the Green War group and saved
one entire whale while bilking the public for
millions with a computer in Chicago. Some went
into the computer industry in Boston and the Silicon
Valley, on the assumption that they would refinance
another assault on Muzix with their pooled
earnings. A few others joined Hari Krishna in
Amsterdam and ran that tired old travelers check
scam under different names. The remainder came
back here to Minneapolis. Geekman turned out to
be a financier from St. Louis Park, another one
turned out to be a cross-dresser from Edina and a
third, a woman novelist known as Karen
Milquetoast hailed from Eden Prairie.
Since the plastique failed to detonate and since
no damage occurred, I felt it ethical to continue
treating the clients without recourse to the police. In
the ensuing sessions I discovered a worldwide
(Bootes claims it’s intergalactic) network of
indi_viduals suffering from similar delusions and
fugue state amnesia all caused by a close shave with
antimatter. I suggested to both Bootes and Charlotte
that they invite other members of the raid_ing party
to therapy sessions. I did this to further check on the
degree of schizoid distortion.
After much prodding they told me that the entire
plan was hatched by David “Dumb” Dolphin in a
second story flat in Dinky Town, adjacent to
campus. At least forty people were involved. The
money for the operation was not swindled by
threatening to blow up the Federal Reserve banks
all at once, as was re_ported in the press here.
Instead the equipment was paid for with very old
Dayton/Hudson chits. You know, those engraved
bits of colored paper with Mary Tyler Morose
likeness in the middle.
Full attendance at the sessions was high only
long enough to fill me in on the details of the plot
and to assure me that the event did take place. The
vari_ous members began drifting off to points
unknown once they were certain someone had made
a rational record of their escapades. I did some
checking. The raid was real. Dolphin’s antics hit the
news fiche here in a big way. The B. Dalton news
service, recently linked to a Psionics scandal, did a
two-page spread on it. Clearly political motives, of
a creative and nonscheduled type, were driving the
process.
My clients assure me that the raid was not a
delusional prank. They claim that Dolphin showed
them clear evidence that someone was using Muzix
to create world wide negative feelings and mood
swings. They would not discuss just what this
evidence was, but it must have been convincing.
They also hinted that Muzix used a complex
auditory code as an uplink. Later sessions revealed
that many of the Mount Shasta participants were
members of an eccentric secret society dedicated to
the fight against fascism. Bootes inserted an exotic
story about a long-distance death ray being placed
in orbit in spite of congressional disapproval. Could
this be true?
So, I found myself in the midst of a very
fright_ening and radical mélange. A few of the
members are still in Minneapolis. I see them now
and again hanging around gun stores, but most of
the group members went out to San Francisco. I
naturally thought of you since you have many
underground contacts there. Should I follow up or
simply let it go? Feel free to bill me for expenses as
I have a modest grant and hope to work the whole
thing into a book eventually.
Helena
I stapled my reply to the file:
Canyon Collins Phd
Denormo Towers
Haight & Masonic
San Francisco, Alta California
Imbolc
Dear Helena:
I finally found space to sit down and absorb
your letter. The syndrome you describe troubles me.
My clients feel alienated by computers too.
At this time I am only able to piece together a
few relevant shards for you. The book you suggest
is feasible as I think the reading public feels a subtle
increase in alienation. This reminds me of the
anxiety my parents felt. This background anxiety
was traceable to constant paranoia about a nuclear
accident or attack, but this anxiety went away
around the turn of the millennium when the general
disarmament began. Now we have similar
symptoms arising, almost as if someone wanted to
revive the old anxiety.
So far this is what I can deduct: Dumb
Dolphin’s hospital name was baby boy Ignatz, and I
don’t blame him for changing his name. Word is he
got alienated after putting his entire trust in
Psionics, at INSULIN Associates, a deep psyche hot
tub joint out here. His association with Psionics lead
to a bout of sensory deprivation experiments with
an anesthetic, predominantly used in veterinary
practice, called Freezeamine, which may have done
damage to his diencephalons, and his liver, to say
nothing of his emotional states, this would explain
the grandiosity. On the other hand let us not put the
guy down without a fair hearing. Who knows what
motivated him. Some say he was an inspired genius.
Others feel he was just a burnout.
Freezeamine induces paralysis with bad side
effects. It’s especially dangerous when taken for
recreation and of course that’s what Dumb Dolphin
did. Rumors circulate that he set up a Freezeamine
goofer’s cell in a loft on Folsom street in South
Beach. That may be why your group split for the
West Coast.
Dolphin held an advanced degree in physics
from Danforth but earned a meager living as a
programmer at Rockhead. He also kept pet raccoons
in his studio up on Hayes Hill where the Bay to
Breakers race used to separate the wimps from the
runners. The raccoons lived on Lorna Doone
shortbread cookies. During that time he hung out
with a strange rightwing physicist named Laffcadio
Marafatti at the Cafe Trieste in North Beach.
Marafatti and his cronies have loose links to the
Institute for Monetary Studies, a think-tank and
publishing company founded by an ex-admiral and
CIA operative.
Dolphin grew partial to Belfast Blasters, a drink
made with Ginger Beer from Northern Ireland and
151 Barbados Rum. This little imbibtion blows your
head off. I can’t figure out how he held down a job,
but my contact tells me he took the train everyday
and sobered up en route. The Marafatti crowd
patronized him until he ran out of clams. That’s the
way it is in parasite village. The only guy that
helped him, when he was down and out, was a dude
from Montana, you might know him, named Bob
Briklin.
After Dolphin trashed the studio on Hayes
Briklin tried to help him set up a living space on
Vallejo Street near Joe DiMaggio’s shrine for
Marilyn Monroe. It contained two stuffed chairs and
an unstrung sofa, but by then he was so deeply into
Freezeamine and Blasters all he could do was talk
about splitting for France and how many different
agencies were after him.
The Hateful Djed, his favorite band, shook the
walls between piss runs, but occasionally he would
slap on an obscure disc from Jerry’s Acolytes, a
punish cover band made up of the grandchildren of
the Hateful Djed and the older children of the
faceless top hat group, the Residents. This band also
played club dates calling themselves the Speeeeeeed
Boys. They lived in the fermentation vats in an old
Sky Blue Waters brewery during their punk revival
phase, referring to themselves and the other smelly
vat dwellers as, “Vat Rats.” Dolphin often went
over there for spontaneous jam sessions. Those gigs
were truly cacophonous. Dolphin said he liked the
chaotic symmetry of their sound. It reminded him of
“A rhythm band recital in an autism clinic.” But
what the hell, to Dolphin it was recreation and the
acoustics gave the ensemble a prescient sound.
If you wanted to meet Dolphin you could
occasionally catch him on Friday nights at the Low
Bridge, a swank sex club on Straight Street. This
place holds the distinction of being closed for sound
pollution more often than any dive in town.
Even though he was working as an engineer and
programmer down at Rockhead in Valley View,
Dolphin found time to volunteer as a teacher at
Project Artaud, (R Toad) an odd assortment of loft
spaces located in an old foundry in the outer
mission near General Hospital.
Just before his motorcycle incident, he turned
out ten legendary notebooks (the Hamburger Zen
doxology) all the while dropping huge doses of
Hypoderm cough syrup mixed with espresso and
Romilar. During one of these sessions he wrote a
song, dedicated to Miles Davis, titled Miles
Nervine.
Overall he was about as eccentric as a “Gong
Kicker” could get. He might not have been playing
with a full compliment of Mahjong tiles, but he was
way ahead of the competition. He claimed he knew
how to bring the government down without firing a
shot, but nobody believed him.
After the “Assault on Muzix,” the code-name
for his raid on Mount Shasta, he returned to San
Francisco.
His favorite Optidisk was The Guns of the
Nazarene. It was as if he was the reincarnation of
Maynard Donnelly, the old nabob who departed this
mortal coil while watching Ice Station Donkey
repeatedly on top of a pyramid hotel in Texico. I
guess he thought he was a pharaoh.
A burnt out blues guitarist named Keith
Blumfeldt turned out to be the one friend Dolphin
had. To the best of Briklin’s recollection, Keith was
a drunken ex rock star with a bad U4iA habit whose
father invented the little milk pitchers shaped like
cows used for creamers in diners, you know the
ones where you pull the cow’s tail and the synthetic
half and half, pours out of the cow’s mouth.
Blumfeldt inspired Dolphin to go full blast on
the Hamburger Zen journals and one of them is
dedicated to Keith. Dolphin could, believe it or not,
sleep on speed, so he could drive Keith around. It
sounds apocryphal, but Briklin swears it’s a true
account. Of course it all took place many years ago.
I’m sure everybody in that crowd was alcoholic and
drugged to the nines. Their motto was: “Nothing in
moderation.”
Dolphin must have imploded when Blumfeldt
OD’d. According to the newspaper account Keith’s
naked body turned up in a parked Probe Cyclone,
with the airbags blown out. He didn’t crash he just
took some old car and drove until the Coffin Nail
vodka and a designer drug called Papaveer,
deposited him on a city street. The story goes that
he killed himself after his therapy at the Danforth
Sleep Center failed. Again there’s that Danforth
connection. It’s a right wing think-tank down in
Menalto, a laser development campus, and the
venue for a very strange series of mind control
studies. I’ll check it out when I get time.
My mom says they used to encourage
communists on campus just so they could study
them.
The assault on Muzix was the pinnacle of
Dolphin’s career. One of his trainees, not in your
group I presume, blew up the New Army computer
lab in Racine and another built a nuclear device in a
Halliburton case. The older members of the raid
seem to have inherited a gene for breaking
computer codes with the most meager of devices,
this in spite of their parents hatred of technology.
It’s amazing how they all got away from the police
and the rangers on that Mount Shasta caper. I think
the almost doing it was almost as good as actually
doing it, if you know what I mean? Maybe Dolphin
was on to something after all.
Clare Luce Cannon, a journalist with a
spelunking background, penetrated the secret room
inside Mount Shasta about a month later. She thinks
the room served the Eureka Masonic Lodge.
More than one mystery remains. Clare found
optical cables of the kind used to connect
mainframes to the WorldNet in a small room behind
a dormant lava fissure which she code-named “
Rolando.” This room was called the Optic Xiasthma
but the computers, if they ever really existed, were
gone when she finally breached the inner chamber.
All she could find was the mysterious tag:
TAKI 181
In a number of locations.
A second group of journalists tunneled up
through the river entrance to discover another
anteroom—so maybe they found the same room
reported by Clare Cannon. The contents of this
chamber remain undisclosed. No mention of the
Taki181 tag.
Although Dolphin did not find computers inside
of Mount Shasta, the possibility that a cult is trying
to brainwash people through the cover of piped
music is not invalidated.
The failure to expose Muzix didn’t discourage
Dolphin. If anything the Mount Shasta caper made
Dolphin a populist hero. Even the radicals in the
Native American movement applauded his actions.
Within twelve months everyone in the underground
from the Emerald City to old Amsterdam knew
about the caper.
While interviewing people for this research I
heard references to a super weapon, “Excalibur.” Is
this a paranoid fantasy? Please advise. I suggest we
co-author a journal article, as this case is a real
ripsnorter.
Canyon
Hardly Jefferson
My last letter to Helena went unanswered so I
sent her another envelope two weeks later, this one
contained a copy of the first letter plus a fresh letter
designed to probe this weird Dumb Dolphin case
more fully. My curiosity was tweaked, but Helena
wasn’t tweaking on the same frequency. I thought
she might be in physical danger. I sent her a fax,
followed by a get-well card. Still no reply. I was
forced to resort to that lowest of techniques, a phone
call, you know the little hand held device that
allows people who can’t write, to communicate over
vast distances. The call was brief. I would write yet
another letter and make it gossipy as she was no
longer serious about the world and was leaving her
practice altogether.
From the Desk of
Canyon Collins
No date
Dear Helena:
Sorry I got you out of the shower. I almost hung
up when a man answered. Anyway, and for what
it’s worth, here is more about Dolphin and the
Muzix nose caper.
Dolphin did not drive over a cliff; he just drove
into a sand dune at around sixty miles per hour. I
guess he chose the Pacific Coast Highway because
it’s considered the beatnik’s burial ground. This
highway runs anywhere from Coos Bay Oregon to
San Simoom or even L.A. Some hippies claim it
extends from Juno to Los Cabos, or even from the
Bearing Straits to Terra del Fuego. It’s a Pacific
Rim kinda thing.
Anyway, the emergency clinic in Flash Moon
Bay pronounced him DOA at 18:00 hours on
Saturday the 14th of February (Valentines Day) and
claimed his neck broke at the fifth cervical
vertebrae on impact. The accident took place at
Arroyo de las Frijoles, translated as Bean Hollow,
which is down the road from Pescadero, but the
Bean Hollow road does not go back to civilization,
it winds up into the coastal range and gets lost in the
canyons, where only a Samurai motorcycle freak
could find peace at seventy miles per hour.
The accident stopped traffic on old Alta
highway for two hours. A civilian spectator, a local
woman whose name was given as Tilly Frutio,
eager to get her two bits in, said Dolphin did it on
purpose, like the dunes were ten pins and he was the
bowling ball. At least nobody else was hurt.
One of the cops on the scene turned out to be
the ambulance driver’s brother. They assumed the
nut who ploughed his Fat Bob into the dune was the
same guy on the driver’s license, but they never
really compared the ID with the face on the stiff. As
usual the emergency crews were taking care of first
things last. The blood on the road and the crowds of
picnic people and two gay guys trying to get to the
nude beach stood in the way. According to one
pretzel vendor it was the most festive scene since
the Earthquake of 2010.
Sounds like Dolphin was either killed or faking
a suicide. When his friends came to claim the body
they found one of those thick notebooks in his pack.
They sent all of his effects to his parents in Sonoma.
Curious eh? Bob Briklin claims the series of
notebooks, titled Hamburger Zen, Vols. I thru X,
contain Dolphin’s overall philosophy, a brief course
on explosives, a number of hand-sketched road
maps and other stuff, all-relating to alchemy and the
Gothic cathedrals.
According to Briklin, Hamburger Zen (in toto)
is a dangerous series and could never be published
in its undiluted form. I suspect they went
unpublished for more than one reason i.e., Speed
freaks can’t write for diddily squat. Still, it may
prove invaluable in trying to piece together, not so
dumb, Dolphin’s personality.
Write soon or call me, maybe we can conclude
this underground history by simply forgetting about
it.
Love always
Collins
Elevator Music
A number of similar events came to public
attention the winter after the ballpark guy
spontaneously combusted in New Yankee Stadium.
Some people were calling Excalibur Elfin
Lightning, like it came from the Fairy Folk. The late
Allen Cohen at the San Francisco Oracle called it
“St. Elmo’s Firepower.” I knew that wasn’t right,
Excalibur was not a natural phenomenon. Excalibur
did not have the impact of a presidential
assassination, a lost war, or a major earthquake. It
did not rise to public awareness like a tornado
slapping into a suburb. Excalibur had a more subtle
impact. Like most major disasters, it hunkered
down in the media, bubbling up to the surface only
when the news mavens saw a fresh twist to the
story. Nevertheless the story wouldn’t go away. The
bloggers and radio people tried to treat it like a
flying saucer hoax, but the sprawled debris and the
puddle of mustard, mixed with the ooze of the hot
dog vendor, stood out vividly on national television.
Eventually everybody had their favorite image
of the destruction reeked by Excalibur. I choose the
ballpark venue because it presented the photo editor
in me with the goriest picture possible. :If it Bleeds
it Leads.” There were many photographs to choose
from since thirty thousand major league fans toting
200Mega vidcams saw the whole ugly process. The
Washington Post reported that various government
agencies were working on the problem at a
command center in Alamogordo, New Mexico. At
least somebody in the government had a sense of
irony since Alamogordo was one of the first Atom
bomb firing ranges. Maybe the government had an
inside track on Excalibur. Maybe somebody already
knew that Excalibur would have a larger impact on
the human race than the Atom bomb.
Months went by with no explanations from the
government, press or independent observers. It was
as if the whole thing was a fluke. But there were
leaks. I managed to get a mind-boggling download
called the Dollenger Report through a closed
hatband computer network.
Life would no longer be the same for me in my
plush brocade chair. The report contained bits of
information that didn’t appear anywhere else,
devastating bits of data that seemed to kick a gong
in my head. According to the reports the zappings
were starting to form a pattern. The inference was
that Excalibur wasn’t operating at random. It further
hinted that the mosaic of stickpins in the world map,
created by Excalibur’s hits, and had the
characteristics of an earth controlled ion beam gun.
That’s all they said. I figured they were about right.
It was the first rational comment that mentioned a
particle beam under human control.
My palms started to sweat. There was
something creepy coming over my modem. As I
scanned the screen a bolt shot through my neck. Not
only did the report mention that the zappings might
be coming from a satellite, it mentioned the name of
the damn thing. The Dollenger Report was calling it
“Excalibur.” Imagine my surprise when I saw that
name on the screen? This was the very same name
given to the long distance electron gun the
mysterious David Dolphin was yelling about years
ago. Was it the same thing?
My psychologist’s mind urged me to find out
more about Dolphin. The Excalibur thing was a
bestseller for sure, every journalist’s dream come
true, like getting world rights to the life story of the
first black woman president. Now, I wasn’t a
journalist, but I knew a good story when I saw it.
I spent hours each day on Dolphin and his cult. I
thought a few notes would be in order, but it got
bigger than that, more intense. I finally saw a direct
connection between the papers I was plowing over,
the notebooks from Helena and the real thingee in
the sky. I started by compiling a basic inventory of
reports sent to me by Helena. I turned it into a
database containing about two hundred records,
each with about fifty fields. Some of these fields
could go about fifteen pages or more. I finally ran
the whole thing on a network called: “Not Well,” an
online conference for freaks with computers and
head problems. I thought maybe I’d get feedback. I
spent months looking for other networks that could
lead me to a direct connection between Dolphin and
Excalibur, but I hit ten dry wells in a row.
Another year went by. I was still doing my
counseling work and daydreaming about the
archaeology gig to Ireland, but this Excalibur riddle
was becoming an obsession. When the ‘Not Well’
grapevine dried us, as networks inevitably do, I
thought it best to contact an official agency. First I
tried the F.B.I, which everybody knows is an
anagram for FIB. They were courteous, but gave me
the well-practiced run around denying any
knowledge of Excalibur or its zappings. I thought
this strange since by now there were reports of more
mysterious combustions and the satellite theory was
an open secret mentioned on optivision on Sunday
talk shows.
Where the FBI was diffident the Department Of
Defense (DOD) was plain scary. Two weeks of
dealing with its demonic bureaucracy convinced me
that DOD stood for Doctors of Deception. I tried to
get through to somebody in charge only to discover
there probably wasn’t anybody in charge.
Each call passed me through a gauntlet of well
trained inquisitors with voices of the mid-south
type, probably recently out of Vanderbilt, indicating
that I was speaking, by way of a trunk line, to a
team of desk jockettes in Knoxville. No male voices
were present. The most common question, phrased
in various ways, was, “Why do you want to know?”
Or “What can you tell us?” On one or two occasions
the voice du jour would drop her Oleander
composure long enough to make a slip of the
tongue. Instead of saying, “Let me ask you a
question,” she would say, “Let me ax you a
question.” The really dumb ones would say “Let me
ass you a quession?” All I could deduce from this
vocal masking was that the DOD was damned
paranoid about Excalibur and spent a great deal of
time training daddy’s little girl to field questions.
Now, any normal researcher might assume the
DOD was behind Excalibur, but this front-end
defense by an army of amazons hinted strongly that
the DOD didn’t know shit. They just didn’t want
anybody to know what they did or didn’t
know—ever. This gave them the freedom to be
stupid, and we all know what a luxury that is.
I plodded on. Each agency drained my time
equally. Nobody knew much and everybody was
afraid to speculate.
My invigorated hunt for the secret behind dark
star made a mockery of my already diminished
social life. I spent most of my spare time looking
through declassified reports available online. My
freaky clients became my only link with other
human beings. The poor bastards kept dropping in
without an appointment or referrals and I couldn’t
turn them out.
Whore Haulin’ Red was the most fun. I got paid
for him because his probation officer sent him to
me. He was a red haired conk and process hi-yella
man with freckles. When he came to see me he
wore a railroad engineers cap and overalls, but I
spotted him South-of-Market one night sporting a
Smithsonian classic zoot suit with a snap-brim hat
and an embroidered silk shirt.
During our sessions Red cracked jokes and
reminisced about the whores he pimped for. He
would always talk about them as One Lady or Best
Girl and Trick Girl, like they were horses. To him
these women were chattel, like goats to a cheese
salesman. Buy, sell, swap or occasionally, when
duty required, slaughter. You see, like all pimps,
Red was a sociopath, born in a brothel in the
shadow of a space base near Galveston, Tejas—like
his father before him. The judges and social
workers and prison wardens who called him a
criminal were themselves drunks, peepshow
creepers and weekend junkies… you know the
Valium commandos. Red could get arrested for his
crimes, but his customers generally couldn’t, and
according to Red—who claims to be a “straight sex
man”—the customers were mostly kinky.
Red’s girls confirmed that they serviced men
who, on any given night, might be caught bribing
their way into Big Brothers of America to catch a
glimpse of a little boy’s ass. Red’s customers, like
mine, were the horny husbands of the frigid wives
who used their children as collectables. Red didn’t
own any property except his whores, because he
knew he’d be losing it someday, but his customers
believed in the illusion that owning a mortgage on a
windy old Cape Cod saltbox becomes a privilege of
race. To Red that house in Truro is the same as his
string. He was fond of saying, “Hey man we’s all
ho’s now and again.”
Now, however class distinctions weren’t so
obvious. Rich hippies and black surgeons moved
into the neighborhoods and the square folks moved
out, because after the downfall of capitalism in the
West, I guess that’s when I was in high school, the
only people that could cut it were the rich hippies
and the hip minorities. The white folk just moved
down a rung. My Mom and Dad went through that
change a long time ago. We were kinda poor when I
started high school, but by the time I finished
graduate school my dad was worth two million.
This isn’t uncommon. The lines were blurring
between the classes and races long before Excalibur
went up. Excalibur simply put an end to all the
bullshit and affect. No longer could the average
middleclass nitwit dream of becoming a land baron
or a slave master or even a pimp. No longer could
the lumpen liberals, the people my folks called
Yuppies, reconnoiter their quarter acre like
medieval lords.
Excalibur also helped me understand people like
Red. I found more honesty, real honesty is always
brash, with people like him than with the nouveau
riche country gentlemen married to grand dames
with inherited money, or with the pseudo hippies
and technocrats, who drop synthetic U4iA on
weekends and, after a foray to Bali, declare
themselves enlightened. These are the ones who
dabbled in Tarot cards and used to be the life of the
party until they got to be about forty. That’s when
their kids turned on ‘em. The third generation mega
punks like the ones who followed Dumb Dolphin to
the ends of the earth. Once their kids reminded them
of their mortality they started to get way fidgety.
Before the mega punk craze, an absolute fascist
reality, the forty-year old mom and dad took death
with sober and resolute determination, the fear was
always there but it remained screwed under the
breastplate where it belonged.
Now, a new situation arises. Excalibur pops into
the sky and the world staggers. The infant,
christened in the high church not fifteen years
earlier, surfs off on a skateboard and drops
mescaline like holy wafers. The Bar mitzvah boy
takes off with the Hateful Djed and disappears. The
once faceless hangman now has eyes and a chin, a
nose and eyebrows, flesh tones and animation.
Observe closely, the hangman is yuse guys. That’s
when mom and pop realize they never lived because
they took no risks. They missed that British
motorcycle rally in Racine. They skipped over the
hang glider meet and shied away from jumping into
the Royal Gorge suspended from nothing more than
a surgical hose. They never yearned to lather a
Percheron mare at twilight over the fields and
famine walls of Mayo. Red didn’t have those
problems. His whole life was a risk. To paraphrase
Red, “Jus gettin’ outta bed in de morning is a death
defyin’ feat.”
An unexpected letter arrived the day after Red’s
last session.
From the Desk of:
Helena Merkell, Ph.D.
University of Minnesota
Department of Psychology
Minneapolis, Minnesota
January 21
Dear Canyon:
I hate to cop out on you but I can’t collaborate. I
met a hunk. A wonderful guy, a bricklayer named
Harold. No jokes please. I am not a brick. This
wouldn’t be odd but Harold insists I drop all this
stuff about coo coos, he calls my clients coo coos,
isn’t that sweet?
Anyway Harold gets blind jealous and, although
he can’t read or write a single word, I know he
loves me. The possibility of a book collaboration
with any colleague could pose problems for Harold.
He can’t read and detests any one who can. His
rustic side appeals to me, plus his ignorance gives
me control over the situation. He’s such a refreshing
change from the urbane isomorphs I’ve been dating
in Dinky Town. I therefore leave the whole thing in
your lap. You can develop it or chuck it, and you
can bill the granting agency in New Haven for the
expenses. I’ll understand whatever you decide.
There is very little to report concerning the raid
on Musix. Of the original seven in the group, three
are still hanging in with other therapists and one
woman underwent a spontaneous remission. She
went right out and got a job. In the last session I
conducted I
Heard about a homicidal maniac from the fringe
of the Dolphin crowd, someone they call on to do
the “wet” work. He answers to the name,
Maximum, although his real name is Howzit
Hangin. His parents must have been very cruel.
Rumors have it that he has no external sex organs,
which by all calculations makes him real mean.
Maximum prefers the mas_culine gender form of
address at all times. Most of his friends call him
“Sir.” Two years ago he impaled a fellow student
with a javelin simply for refer_ring to him as “it.”
His favorite movie is Nightmare Alley with Tyrone
Power.
This geek is dangerous and bears a grudge. He
or she said he or she was going out to the West
Coast to “fix Dolphin’s wagon,” whatever that
means? You may want to interview ’it’ if ’it’
catches up to you. Maximum is six foot eight, with
ginger hair, wears motorcycle boots and fondles a
titanium rosary. The tattoo of a flying eyeball on his
forehead is a dead giveaway. Charlotte claims
Maximum is a polymorphic androgyn who dresses
in trisexual attire most of the time.
I won’t be at this address after next month as
Harold and I are going to Canada. Harold got hired
to build houses in the tar sands. Besides, I think I’m
pregnant. All I want now is Harold and bliss.
I’ll have the university forward my disks in
audio only format, all the notes I collected, plus
Dolphin’s letters and diaries are in a big fiber box.
Please wish Harold and me good luck.
As always
Helena
The Dumb Dolphin case was bugging me. I was
still no closer to figuring out why or even when the
launch took place so I busied myself with Helena’s
grant applications and transfer papers. I left final
instructions on the database still hoping to hear
from somebody on the information highway who
might give me a lead-connecting Dolphin with
Excalibur. The only clue I got was a bulletin board
response from a laser scientist who felt the name
Excalibur came originally from a device based on a
copper Excimer laser used to clean up deep space
photographs. Beyond this I accomplished almost
nothing except a significant reduction in my
caseload. I felt ripe for a break.
The world’s economy was much like a pinball
machine on tilt with no replay. People were
freaking beyond any cure and yet there was a layer
of survival underneath it all. In spite of the
hardships most people believed that the depression
that took place at the turn of the millennium could
never happen again. They were wrong. The book
business, to use only one example, was choking to
death because the distributors had a monopoly on
what gets read. This wouldn’t be so bad if the
distributors could read and write, but most of them
were really ignorant. Psionics and other cults
controlled one third of the distribution network.
Comfort in air transport was dicey at best. Rich
travelers were forced to sit next to the peasants ever
since the International Flight Council mandated
single class service. One old joker called it “Thirst
Class.”
Evolution was taking place right before my eyes
and it wasn’t pretty. A spate of uncontrollable forest
fires broke out on a global scale. It seemed like
Excalibur was targeting crucial survival locations.
In Brazil an entire mahogany forest burned for more
than a year. In that time frame Excalibur blasted the
Transvaal veldt so often it remained perpetually on
fire, wiping out hundreds of already endangered
species. This benefited the Afrikaners, but not the
Africans. Dust and cinders from the fires got into
the atmosphere and carried around the equator
blocking the sun and the natural ventilation process
in the upper atmosphere. Krakatau and Pompeii did
the same on a limited scale, but this appeared to be
the end of the globe.
One biologist suggested this might be the
second coming of the Watson-Crick model in full
scale. New forms of DNA might be developing in
the soupy seas. Sargasso’s were forming in
normally temperate zones. In one spot, near the
Panama Canal, so many ships bogged down in
seaweed that salvage was impossible. Two whole
container ships full of electric Hondas rusted solid
at sea. Piracy was commonplace.
It was hard to blame all of this on Excalibur
since major atmospheric changes took place in 1994
and earlier. Furthermore Excalibur seemed to be
blasting at random, but with variable intensity.
Because oceans it would most often strike at sea,
although no one has ever, predominantly cover the
Earth actually seen it strike at sea. Dry spells were
also attributed to it. You couldn’t get coffee in
Brazil or butter in Holland anymore. Mortgages
were collapsing on a global scale. The banks didn’t
have the personnel to process the foreclosures so
everybody became a squatter of one sort or another.
Most homeowners were essentially squatting in
their own property. Each country’s economy was
deteriorating at its own speed. Those countries
accustomed to suffering began to thrive while
spoiled economies, the lard eaters, went belly up.
Strangely, most post offices became immediately
more efficient. The junk mail stopped.
It became the trend to order everything by
delivery. Cafe society shifted to a company called
Federal Espresso. Every time I got hold of his or her
wiriest stuff, called ‘Bolt Upright,’ I wrote a letter
to somebody on my almost rusty Macintosh PC
ProQuinta running the obsolete Uniplex operating
system, but still running. My best efforts were
epistles to Gerard van den Putten a translator in
Amsterdam, Izzy Mansoo, an old Canadian
compatriot of many travels and Sean O’Bannon the
archaeological con man in Dublin.
I especially enjoyed writing to Jack Roberts in
West Cork. Jack was a sorcerer of sorts and always
wrote back. His letters described his archaeological
quests for proofs of ancient astronomy in Cork and
Sligo and he convinced me that there is something
in the air and water in West Cork that makes it
different from the rest of Ireland. He also drew my
attention to some interesting statistics. For example,
there are more readers per capita in Cork City than
in any other place on the planet. Good old Eire only
slid back one notch while the rest of the world slid
back four or five—Yanks included. So in spite of its
lack of indoor plumbing, Ireland—like New
Zealand—was becoming a neat place to live. There
would be no culture shock in Ireland because
Ireland refused to urbanize. If the Irish Electric
Service Board turned off all power on the island
most people wouldn’t bat an eye.
Writing about Ireland also sharpened my writing
skills, which were awful in spite of the money
dribbling in from The Electronic Battlefield and
online interactive magazine articles. This goes to
show how easy it is to fake your way through life.
At this stage I didn’t care where the money came
from. I registered my seat by online service. I
wasn’t sure how much longer paper money was
going to mean anything. Every indication hinted
that fresh tires and dried beans were more valuable
than money so, as part of the preparations for my
slithering exit, and to make sure the money went to
the correct bank, I informed the National Health
Board in Bethesda that I would continue my
research in Europe and that my bonus travel award
should be transferred to the Bank of Ireland, Parnell
Street, Dublin. On May Day I’d be splitting… my
first time on the old sod.
The Box
The recycled fiber box from Helena—marked
on all sides with the logo of the University of
Minnesota and shipped with edible popcorn
insulation—contained tapes and notes collected
from her group sessions. A glance at the bill of
lading told me there were many oddments in the
box, including some optidisks, some weird jewelry
and some interesting student snapshots taken by
Helena, none of which were of Dolphin.
The first hard item out of the box was a copy of
the letter I sent back to Helena. Then I pulled out a
letter from Dumb Dolphin to Polly Peptide. It
contained no address or date only the scribbled
musings of a speed freak on a coffee rush. I looked
at five more letters before I drew the conclusion that
Dolphin’s mental state was complex. His ideas were
scary, even profound, but definitely not the
incoherent rumblings of a lunatic:
A perfect computer can never be superior to a
perfect human since there is no such thing as a
perfect human. Only the star nursery knows the true
nature of perfection. What we see as superiority or
inferiority is nothing more than a gradient of greater
or lesser imperfections.
Helena’s bank transferred her grant money to
my account within the month. Obviously Helena
was too busy being bucolic in the Alberta Tar Sands
to manage a small matter of thirty thousand old
American dollars—worth their weight in platinum
in any offshore context. She told me it was going to
be ten thousand or so. Now I find out I have thirty
thousand credits. That’s more than almost anybody
I know.
In spite of the windfall I remained anxious about
my upcoming trip to Ireland. Now you may ask why
this embarrassment of riches didn’t refresh my
sagging psyche. How many new pairs of socks can
one guy buy? I was stone depressed, and if you stay
that way too long it can do more damage than
persistent diarrhea. High-speed night rides on the
newly repaired Black Widow motorcycle pumped
no new endorphins. I wanted out. Out of the
sagging gutless nights of the once glittering city, out
of the bohemian rat race. Grits! I would have, at that
moment, settled for a horse ranch on the
Sacramento River—anything but midnight traffic
jams and metallic music.
Ireland seemed like a peaceful place. I received
correspondence from Jack Roberts in Cork swearing
he stumbled onto an important dig site in West Cork
near Clonakilty. Coincidentally, that happened to be
the exact point of origin of my great great
grandmother on my father’s side, so Ireland it
was—an adventure to be sure.
That was the good side. On the really shitty side
I thought it was rude of Helena to draw me into this
dementia then just dump the whole case in my lap.
She must have sensed I was a sucker for alienated
folk heroes. Maybe she thought I could help the
Dolphinites. Nice thought, but I couldn’t help
anybody anymore. I could barely help myself. My
star gazing dream was growing dim and the paler it
became the freakier I got. Normally a good rest
works wonders with me, like the time I took the
seashore cure with the Kitchell sisters in Truro. I’ll
never forget watching the moonrise at sunset in the
Cranberry bogs. The light changes from gold to
silver and so does your head, its alchemical, but no
amount of R&R was going to charge the old battery
this time. I felt like I needed a brand new solar cell.
The brass knuckles in the pit of my stomach
were urging me to get out of town. I was in split and
get ready mode and I didn’t really want to dig into
the big box. It was just too big. Besides my closets
were already crammed with file cabinets and the file
cabinets were crammed with case histories and
income tax stuff and contracts, the accumulated
detritus of a wasted life.
I managed to skim everything in the box in a
few day’s time, making a list as I went. I then
checked this list against Helena’s partial inventory
and the shipping manifest. Unfortunately, the empty
box was still in the middle of the living room and its
contents began walking all over the bedroom. There
was only one thing to do… take the box over to
Rodney’s palatial stucco mausoleum in the Sunset
district. I knew the box would be safe there because
Rodney never threw anything away.
Rodney, my old school chum, lost his wife to
cancer years earlier and was raising his kids alone,
looking for a new wife and building guitars. The
guitar shop took space in his basement, which was
partitioned into areas of decreasing usefulness. I
knew I could store the box in the back somewhere
because he let me store my Black Widow Hardly in
there. The clutch was fine now, but the rain put a
damper on any wild rides to Skylonda.
The electro cab arrived in about an hour, but it
took ten minutes to wedge the box and me into the
back just beneath the sun sensors.
Rodney wasn’t home, but one of his kids
recognized me as the guy with the black and red
motorcycle and let me in. I wedged the heavy
graphite box into a dry corner just beyond the seat
of an old Aleph Romano. Rodney would never
move the Aleph because he hides his dope and his
cash directly under the transmission
I left a hundred amerunits on the kitchen table
and made my apologies to his daughter who was
trying to fix the sonic dishwasher as I left. I walked
home through Saint Francis Woods. The fountain
was turning green as it did every Saint Patrick’s
Day.
Helena transferred all remaining grant moneys
to me and I immediately began packing the stuff I
would need for my expedition.
Over the next month or so my loft became a
staging area… clothing in one room, survival
medicine in another, cameras and books and disks
and computers on the guest room bed and
miscellaneous stuff in a pile in the living room, just
beneath the oil of Pan and the Satyrs by Joffra, a
Dutch surrealist.
I suspected this Dolphin caper would get trickier
and I was right.
Dox Splitz
Everybody on Earth knows about Excalibur
now, but nobody knew much about it when I made
my travel plans for Ireland. Apparently Excalibur
spread wild fires from Manitoba to North Dakota,
although at the time everyone attributed the fires to
the drought. The world market in soybean protein
and ethanol collapsed when the prairie fires went
critical in Kansas. Pork bellies were nonexistent on
the Chicago exchange. People began moving their
pigs indoors more and more, not to eat them, but to
keep them safe from others who might eat them.
Vegetarianism was very chic indeed. Fights sprang
up over its bitsy backyard gardens and bat guano
sold at premium prices.
On the morning of my departure I yawned fifty
times, a confirmation signal. I was doing the right
thing. The small Sarouk runner was soft under my
bare feet. I would miss it. At dawn I walked the
boards of my almost secret second story loft looking
at the trappings of my collected life, but I needed to
run. My parents must have felt this torturous mood
on those mornings when they bundled me out to the
big blue bus, on our way to the next college or
beach or forest.
Journal Entry
May Day May Day
05:00 Hours PST
Time to bail out. Time to boil that final oatmeal,
wash the bowl and dry the utensils. If all goes well
I’ll be would be back in eight lunar months and
maybe collect everything and ship it over for good.
Time to split for Ireland.
The Airport Jitney service will arrive in ten
minutes. I arranged to have the mail forwarded to
the Dublin GPO by adjusting my online account this
morning. A big sigh of relief accompanied my last
look around. I will take the leather bag stuffed with
unnecessary items and a few blank A/V camdisks.
On my final trip to the medicine cabinet I threw in
four months supply of FalconD, a sure-fire panacea,
placebo and headache remedy. I’m traveling light
headed today.
End of journal entry
The steel door snapped shut behind me as I
hefted the Ostrich skin portmanteau. The bag was
from Ecuador, and, if you trace out the chain far
enough its manufacture probably caused the tearing
down of five old stand mahogany trees, but I
couldn’t do anything about that now. The corridor
skylights cast an eerie glow as I twisted the card key
in the slot lock for the final time. A grotesque vision
of the cobwebs that would soon spread over my loft
came to me as I descended alone, in the hydro lift. I
saw my chairs and tables and paintings and rugs
covered in dust perfectly preserved in a half rotten
state like the wedding banquet in Great
Expectations. Besides the aforementioned Joffra
there must have been fifty thousand clams worth of
art on the walls, including a Sierra Miwok basket
collection and a huge Miro encaustic. Although I
longed for a Pit Bull I owned no pets, so the usual
cat and canary scenario didn’t apply. I hoped the
camphor coated muslin sheets would keep the mites
and mealy bugs to a minimum.
I would not pine for any particular woman
either. I was down to the three F’s: fingers, flybys
and fag hags. I met an occasional burnt lady
executive, an ex-gun-moll, a cute and racy
stewardess, a defrocked nun, an occasional candy
striper, a female and heterosexual drag race driver,
who had gone over 376 MPH in her heyday, and
some social butterflies. None of these relationships
were even remotely serious so no goodbyes were
necessary. Liberated or not, age and an army of bull
dykes were against me, even the airline hostess was
bisexual.
The chartreuse electro van cut a small glowing
hole in the dark early morning. The Bright Blue Cab
Company must have merged with the Banana
Yellow Company to get this thing. I could afford a
limo, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself,
Hashberry Street is no place to announce that you’re
going to leave your loft unattended, so I wound up
in this slime green dowagers hump with the inertial
engine. The chauffeur (none dare call them cabbies
anymore) was one of those shark like dudes with a
mysterious background—maybe an ex-con. His
inbred face gave off the pallor one gets only in
Folsom or Attica, but he sang well, Madam
Butterfly, I think.
I sighed a bit and settled in for the ride. My
beloved San Francisco and its erratic skyline
receded into the fog. A billboard sign for a new
synthetic booze called WEIRD flew by. It featured
Sully Jesus Rap Like Hell interviewing bird headed
dwarfs. The slogan read:
Ya gotta be WEIRD in Fog City!
Well, I guess I just wasn’t weird enough. The
population of the old city used to flush in and flush
out like the tides in the Amsterdam canals, but after
the depression people just stayed and lived on top of
each other in an a bad imitation of Kowloon.
Suddenly there were more kiss-asses than Asses to
kiss and I hated the vibes given off by all those
nouveau designer drugs in all of those nouveau
designer clubs. Sutra’s Baths (closed down as a
notorious knocking shop) was nothing compared to
the new place called the Glory Hole.
In the old days San Francisco sparkled like a
mizzen deck on the Bounty. The glass paved streets,
once lined with hope and gold, were now merely
blood red bricks mortared with bloodied glue. The
hills and gutters and alleys became both angular and
curved simultaneously. The sky scape shifted to
vertical with the influx of Hong Kong money. The
peace of the old city drained out about twenty years
ago. Wrong geometry and negative space, bland
facades and antiVitruvian values replaced the
traditional scale of the city. The shadow play and
chiaroscuro of the place, something that stays the
same in Paris or Rome year in and year out, faded to
black. My beloved hometown was now a finicky,
garish place. Yes, the Victorian houses survived,
but even they couldn’t stand up to the scale of the
new city.
Last year the permanent population went over
four million for the first time in history. The sheer
biomass of this seething tub of humanity weighed
down the native population until they too oozed into
the quaking sand. The last time I took a walk
downtown I saw gangs of plastic over coated
hospital sailors stooping to find cigar butts in the
shadows—Jake Leg crystal freaks and freebase
winos looking for a tit like pipe to suck, each
unique in his or her last stage dereliction. The City
hasn’t been the same since the sex tourists took
over. Permanent resident perverts replaced the old
dears that once held forth on every street corner.
The groppo boys on Lake Street don’t play chess in
the pavilion anymore and the Zen master doesn’t
laugh at the Bocce Ball players at Aquatic Park.
Laughter exists no more in San Francisco, a city
once dependent on laughter.
Living in the ruins of this once great town was
like living in modern Pompeii or an excavation of
the Greek amphitheater at Eleusis. There were no
dateable layers, just walls and empty rooms to
remind you of a former glory.
My thoughts turned to Dolphin as the cab
locked on to the main magnet cable. Forty miles per
hour, slow but sure. The driver said, “Hey buddy,
mind if I take a snooze.”
I shed one last tear for the city as it smallified in
the rear view screen. “Sure why not?” What else
could I say? That’s when my thoughts turned to
Dolphin. He left town two years ago in a big black
Ziploc bag. At least I was alive. But maybe Dolphin
wasn’t dead after all. I remember seeing an
unsigned letter, now safely tucked away in the big
box at Rodney’s, to the effect that Dolphins grave
was unmarked. Even stranger, his parents, when I
talked to them on the cable link, could not give me
the location of his final resting place.
Strange disappearances interested me long
before I heard of Dolphin. I couldn’t buy the story
that Mozart wound up in a pauper’s grave. One
theorist thought he went on to greater heights
disguised as Eric Satti and yet another argued that
Virginia Wolfe based Orlando on Mozart’s secret
life. As a teenager I repeatedly read Phillip Wiley’s
The Disappearance. In this novel all the women just
evaporate one day.
Usually you share a jitney ride to the airport
with at least four other refugees, but today, as the
tidal wash turned to freeway, I sat alone. In my
solitude I considered Baudelaire’s melt down into
opium and hashish and the bizarre resurrection of
Emiliano Zapata as a white horse. About two
months before I left I compared various resurrection
cases to the flaming deaths of Jacques De Molay,
Joan of Arc, the witches burned at the stake in
Salem by the Puritan, Cotton Mather, and the
Monks in Vietnam.
I even went so far as to order the discs of Eddy
and the Cruisers and the two sequels. I kept track of
Elvis too. On last sighting he was managing a stock
exchange in Portland. I don’t think Dolphin wanted
to be a martyr or a ghost or even an immortal. I
think maybe Dolphin was more like Edward
Jarre—the French pataphysician—who, on his
deathbed, after a life of complete debauchery and
ether intoxication, said, “Fetch me a toothpick.”
I found it strange that so many people have tried
this ploy. Its like you don’t know if the person is
scamming or sincere. Did they fall to foul play or
are they just getting out of a bad marriage. You
never can tell. Is the Christian resurrection just
another example of the myth of the disappearing
angel? Where do the archangels Michael and
Gabriel fit in?
My Uncle Dean went through the disappearance
scene way before I was born. The whole story was
drilled into my head at family get-togethers. That’s
how I feel so close to it I guess. If you have
somebody in your family who just disappears it
leaves a ghostly hole in your soul. Maybe that’s
why so many people tell me they’ve seen Uncle
Dean all over the place. Maybe that’s why I admire
people who can just walk away from it all. Was I
now one of them? You bet!
Uncle Dean’s pal Ken Crazy; the SNORD
award winning writer, the guy who wrote “Some
Came Over the Barbed Wire Fence,” the guy who
faked a drowning death way back in 1965, had
nothing on Dolphin or me. This ride was to be my
alchemical exit. I too would vanish, at least
temporarily.
The funk mobile turned eastward beyond
Candlestick Bend as the driver let out a silent, but
deadly, fart. This is something travelers just have to
get used to these days. The gaseous blue silhouette
of Mount Diablo loomed up instead of sunrise. I
thought I was watching pictures of Jupiter.
The driver mumbled in exotic tongues as his
tingle timer buzzed his smelly ass awake. The dash
pod flashed a signal letting him know that the auto
directional stripe would let go in 300 meters. If he
was still asleep he would be sidelined and fined and
I would probably miss my plane.
Just before the airport off ramp, which can not
be negotiated on autopilot, I remember seeing a
redneck couple in a Saki burner pickup with an old
bumper sticker faded and hanging from the rear
bumper, right next to the tow hitch with the greasy
tennis ball jammed over it. I could just make out the
letters, it read:
AMERICA LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT!
I noticed the rednecks waving to me. He knew,
by some uncanny power, that I was leaving, but I
possessed uncanny powers of my own. I would
wake up the next morning looking at the green
meadows of Ireland, but this guy would wake up
next to his hulk of a woman and he’d still be stuck
with his rice burner.
In every other country in the world, especially
in Celtic countries, people were preparing for
mummeries, May Pole festivals and other pagan
survivals. The Japanese were getting ready for
Bodhidharma birthday and the Cherry Blossom
Festival. The Commies had a May Day and the
Mexicans celebrated Cinco de Mayo, but the skin
heads only celebrate Thanksgiving and the Fourth
of July when the real vengeance comes out; when
the veins pop red in the neck; when the
jowls—caused by too many deep-fried
doughnuts—turn firm. “Yus sah, dos r’ dah daze
‘cause on d’ Fort of Joolie you kin fire off yer gun
in d’ back yaaaahwd and on Taanksgivin’ you
celebrate the masacree of da injuns.” I don’t mind
‘em, but I wish they’d go to a library occasionally.
I could almost here the redneck whispering to
his woman in that beat up Japanese truck, “Look y
onder ma, a dyed in the wool rich hippy, I’ll bet cha
he’s a retired admural ur sumtin.”
She turns to him, her mole encrusted chin
flapping, and says, “I think it’s gettin’ to be hangin’
weather don chu pa?”
He spits a chaw of real Redman tobacco in my
direction. It befouls his own dust-encrusted vehicle
as he says, “Yup, sure is ma.” The wife nods and
reaches under the seat for the shotgun. My driver
senses danger and accelerates away.
It’s hard to believe I remember such images. So
many years have gone by since then, but that image
of mom and pop hatred in their plastic wrap truck
with the two cycle ceramic engine just won’t fade.
I giggled as I jotted a line paraphrasing the great
colonial patriot Tom Payne:
The price of freedom is constant
vigilantes!
My rapping driver, whose flatulent condition
continued as I disembarked his vehicle, thanked me
for a big tip, but even that didn’t bring him up to the
smile level.
The gravity of what I was doing settled on me as
I got the bags together. My first check of the airport
scanner showed a major delay across the board. I
fell into a zombie walk through the airport. “There
he goes folks, Hypno the Magnificent,” sans
entourage.
Plane time seemed like an eternity away. All
travelers who get to the airport three hours early
deserve a Naugahyde rash and a permanent case of
MSG somnambulism. My recent schlitzie haircut
would last until it grew out on the other side of the
Atlantic, but I could feel it growing. I was ready,
but not very ready. I couldn’t do much about the big
ears and bad manicure, and I was seriously
underweight, not jaundiced, but I felt a yellow tinge
coming on. What the hell, nobody’s perfect.
In the bar I started groping for reasons to cancel
the trip. I couldn’t find any. Going was better than
turning into a mushroom or getting lynched or
dying of the latest toilet seat disease.
A HiDef show, on one of those channels that
run the ticker tape under the ads, was hawking the
one ounce turn of the millennium gold collectors
coin—triangle in shape. The original face value was
three hundred and sixty old dollars, but Sotheby’s
just sold one for fifty times that amount.
Time was for killing. Planes left when they got
full, so I started sorting files in the already
overloaded Halliburton case sipping on a new brand
of beer called “Unreasonable Facsimile.” This was
the yeast stuff grown from spores developed in free
orbit and transported back to earth to grow into god
knows what. This stuff made you burp. People
would go around professing their love for this brand
of beer by burping loudly in public. The ads even
encouraged this profligate behavior and, if you said
anything to anybody about it they called you a
square. In England they added honey flavoring to it
and called it: “Space Mead.” I guess body cavity
noises are the hip thing these days.
“First call for boarding
Aer Lingum direct flight 102 to Dublin!”
The speech-synthesized voice came out shrilly:
“Will steerage passengers please enterthrough
the cattle hatch.”
I was steerage and proud of it. Amazing how
these old nautical terms migrate into air travel eh?
Boarding was a matter of pushing past a large
crowed of very aged nuns and priests flying to
Ireland on comp tickets?
Hitler’s Last Request
The engines were godly smooth and the take off
was quick, hardly standard practice for an old scow,
but I just couldn’t afford a new ride.
Tears sweated out as the engine noise blended
into a drone. I was leaving my home turf for an
uncertain future. The gut gurgling pain under my
money belt told me I wouldn’t be back soon. A long
transpolar flight lay ahead.
Mary Rochester, red hair and all, unbelievably
beautiful and clean, polished in everything she did,
appeared to be an angel. She put the snake tongue to
the language, an Anglo-Irish hiss with just a hint of
a Gaeltalch brogue. Mary stood well schooled and
proper, but with just that extra bit of swish designed
to give her control over any normal male libido.
Later I overheard her reading in Irish to a group of
kids. So, here was Mary Rochester passing around
out-of-date in-flight magazines and mothering
children. Her perfume made me really horny and
the dumb game panel didn’t help. The airlines like
to call these things entertainment centers, but they
are just really a set of goggles embedded into the
back seat of the guy in front of you. I asked Mary
how they worked. She said, “All ye have to dooo iss
reach oup and puell ‘dem out of dis socket.” She
handed me a microwave hot towel as I began
fumbling the old technology, but lingered just long
enough to make one final suggestion, “If you’d ever
be needin a cold towel Mr. Collins, you have only
to ask.” I got the message. The airline only offered
cold towels to horny guys and swooners.
The food, in spite of Mary’s ministrations,
looked and tasted like it was cooked in a chuck
wagon on a cattle drive. Mary winked as she
brought my bottle of Real McCoy porter, “I see sir,
and ya don’t like the Brit beer?”
“No, No, I prefer the real thing,” hoping to
intone a republican message. I think she got it,
because she smiled a freckled smile and swished ten
percent more as she walked away. She wore the
green striped apron with a big bow in the back as if
it were a mint candy wrapper. I sipped the umber
liquid of my ancestors until my nose began to heat
up, and then went back to my thoughts.
I noticed that skinhead mega punk clones are
everywhere these days. The Seattle grundge Mafia
just wasn’t strong enough to displace them. I
thought the surf Nazi thing petered out when the
last kelp harpy died, but I saw a zine on the plane
about punks in the South and their connection with
the synthetic drug cartels. They push old-fashioned
Skag that goes to feed the self-indulgent habits of
the grungiest. That scares me. Hey! Why shouldn’t I
be scared? Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean
my fears are unfounded.
Dolphin must have felt this way too. He wasn’t
Jewish, but he knew about the holocaust first hand.
According to his journals he did some consulting
for a pioneering computer outfit called IMSAI that
was a hot bed of racism, sexism and Eberhardtism.
In short IMSAI was a breeding ground for little
Hitlers, mainly because it championed Eberhardt’s
WithIT program.
In a journal dated 2036 Dolphin tells how
people were recruited from the streets and offered
big jobs at IMSAI if they would go through the
WithIT program. If they didn’t go through the
training they weren’t hired. If they did go through,
and they managed to survive, they were hired, but
were coerced into donating 50% of their salary to
WithIT. Various employees, already on half salary,
would be fired immediately if they refused the
WithIT indoctrination. They called it training, but it
was brainwashing plain and simple. This was not
only unethical it was unconstitutional, but it didn’t
seem to matter much because WithIT training,
emerged from Psionics, the ultimate mind warp of
the twentieth century.
Dolphin figured the whole damn movement was
unethical at the foundation and was obviously an
offshoot of the Ancient Order of Psionics and
original mind warp scam based on science fiction
postulates too numerous (and dumb) to go into here.
Actually, WithIT meant to give up your unalienable
civil rights. You can’t really give up your rights, but
you can be driven into slavery, which is almost the
same thing. If enough people become voluntary
slaves the need for civil rights disappears and rights,
per se, become an illusion.
Along these lines I downloaded the following
article from the Chicago Solar
Secrets of Psionics
By Ben E. Ball & Happy Hicks
The Church of Psionics, freed of its income tax
obligations by the Global revenue division, is
spending 114 million International Trade Units to
preserve the voluminous writings of their presumed
deceased founder Small Don Rooney. The works
will be etched on thin gold plates to preserve them
forever. These books are stocked in an underground
vault in California designed to protect the writings
during a nuclear war. No mention was made of
earthquake contingency plans. The elaborate
strategy was revealed in documents the group filed
with the Global Revenue Service as part of its
successful, four-decade battle to win tax-exempt
status. The victory culminated this month after a set
of negotiations that started in 2021.
The documents reveal the Byzantine structure of
the organization. Basically it is a rabbit warren
made up of dozens of smaller franchises called
“clubs.” These storefront operations can be found
from St. Petersburg Russia to St. Petersburg Florida.
Some of them push “social betterment” in the
ghettos (If you give all of your savings to the cult
you will surely rise above your birth station) while
others focus on celebrities. One group tracks the
royalties from Rooney’s estate, right down to his
oddball paintings, which depict witchcraft and
demoniacal themes. Another franchise safeguards
the church from persecution by liberal government
agencies. The club oversees sales of Rooney’s
Scriptures—containing 800,000 pages of writing,
5,000 taped lectures and 50 films—and is
responsible for the vault and the golden plates.
As in any large organization, cash flow is a
problem and parishioner’s donations are key. These
donations take many forms, but come largely as
fees for healing services, which the church calls
‘Scabbing’ or ‘Blowing Off.’ At the highest level
this process is called ‘Blasting.’ All of these highly
secret and controversial techniques are supposed to
rid the mind of negative thoughts and reactions.
They idea is to have a blank mind. This is not a new
idea by any means. Buddhism has championed this
technique for more than 2500 years.
Expense strategies aren’t clear. Most of the fees
go toward fighting the constitutional separation of
church and state. This is paradoxical since they hide
behind the church rubric themselves.
Less orthodox religious activities, including
witch cult rituals and orgies are detailed in the
documents as well, but these activities are limited to
the very top echelon of the organization. All lower
beings must remain celibate until they are blown or
blasted. Church members pay annuities, but even
more money is derived from membership rallies.
Fundraisers receive commissions on donations.
$5,000 to $1 million donors are offered special
status buy-ins. One can only imagine what you get
for a million clams.
No mention was made of the rumor that
Psionics had been filtering money to the secret
government to finance various black bag jobs.
-30Dolphin also mentioned that Eberhardt’s
‘Tarnishing’ Seminars derived from Rooney’s
pseudo psychic magical cults, implying that deep
beneath the Psionics and WithIT facade lived a
dormant anti-Semitism and racism unparalleled
since the days of Hitler. Rooney hated Jews and
blacks and minorities from his beginnings as a
white trash witchcraft hustler with the order of the
Golden Dawn, a black magic cult influential on
Hitler at an early period. This again demonstrates
the principal—once attributed to venereal
disease—that what goes round comes round.
With his success in the Golden Dawn order well
in hand, Rooney spread his abominable disdain for
human rights to every pseudo pod in his empire. He
called each unit in his network a ‘club.’ In reality
the ‘clubs’ were fully functioning fascist cells
disguised as a hodgepodge collection of storefront
diddle parlors. Wiccans, Druids and Zen Buddhists
were his only opposition because they could prove a
natural path to enlightenment.
According to Helena, many of the people who
joined Dolphin on his nose expedition were onetime IMSAI employees who trace their
dysfunctional side to the Wolf Eberhardt
experience. Dolphin wrote about a beautiful woman
named Pam Saunders, one of the few who survived
IMSAI with no brain damage, who called WithIt:
Psychic Junk Food! She is quoted as saying;
“WithIt looks like spiritual food, but don’t count on
it for spiritual nutrition.”
$$$
Clearly Dolphin’s crews were disillusioned with
WithIT so Dolphin became their de facto leader.
This bunch broke away, but others weren’t so lucky.
Dolphin stated it clearly in one of his journals:
Illiteracy is the most destructive disease of the
twenty-first century. It breeds in poverty and is
cultivated by those who would keep slaves. The
suspension of human rights that follows in its wake
is the greatest earthly source of private anguish and
public torment.
I guess the most evil thing Psionics ever did was
sue the Cult Alert Society by going before a
Psionics judge and then, after winning a fixed
judgment, burning all of their confiscated
documents. I wanted to publish the cult Awareness
Newsletter many years ago, but the whole ten years
of their research seems to have been lost. They had
documents on Psionics and their affiliates, but also
kept files on every known cult on the planet.
Dublin
The green and gold cucumber plane touched the
old sod at dawn. I practice a heliocentric religion so
I can’t allow myself the vanity of using the words
sunrise or sunset, it is sufficient to say dawn and
dusk. The moon was full and still visible on the
horizon.
Going through security at SFOX airport was
slightly more lax than a skin search at a Ku Klux
Klan rally, but Dublin is just the opposite. Nobody
is smuggling bombs into or out of Ireland these
days and if you dress as a priest or nun you’ll be
invisible. Arrival was a simple matter of waking up
the young officer snoozing on duty and pressing
him for a swipe of his magical rubber stamp. The
computer wasn’t even on. I could have smuggled a
Jet Ski. I haven’t seen anybody sleep on duty since
my last visit to Cabo when I was in college.
My pen pal, O’Bannon, met me at the Dublin
security exit. He was one of those tall Norman
influenced Celts with the wide shoulders and the
triangular body. He was also a descendant of the
Tuatha de Dannan, the Melesians and the Picts. He
didn’t have an ounce of fat on him so he couldn’t
have been from the south and he didn’t have red
hair so he couldn’t have been a Dal Riad, or an
O’Neal from the far north. No, my man Sean was
from the very middle of Ireland, Roscommon. It
was all a matter of tribes in Ireland. You have to
know which one you came from and then go and
stay in your clan home county and hope you are
adopted.
If you’re fat with a big belly you go to Cork. If
you have high cheekbones you go to Mayo. It’s the
law.
So, there was O’Bannon, on my first day in
Ireland’s eye, a typical overcast and blustery day.
He was a tall skinny guy, strong and streamlined
with an aggressive walk. To prove it he wore a pair
of Jesuit black brogans for shoes and carried an
army kit bag over his shoulder. Unfortunately he
insisted on driving the car. That’s when I realized
he learned to drive in stolen cars in Brooklyn, and I
was uneasy with it. Ireland is unkempt, not
manicured like England. The hedgerows grow
overmuch and Sean was always hitting them. I
made an excuse to drive as soon as possible.
We were almost run over by two bicycles and a
small truck as O’Bannon and I slipped into the old
Roller-skating rent-a-wreck—you couldn’t get a
new car in Ireland—even then. That’s when I
realized driving in Ireland is Kamikaze heaven.
Guys that learn to drive in Brooklyn, even Irish
cats, are far too careful, and as uncle Dean once said
’Beware the careful driver.’ In Ireland you can’t
take the time to be careful. The roads aren’t
crowded, but people are suicidal and drunk here. I
felt lost as Sean began to drive away from the
airport. I wasn’t getting my bearings so I insisted he
pull over and let me drive. He didn’t like it. This
was not a good way to start off a limited
partnership, but if Sean continued to drive we
wouldn’t have any partners to put into it. On the
other hand Sean was an excellent navigator, he
loved being the expedition coordinator and he spoke
in the old American slang, “So that’s hip with me
man, I’m here for the gig… for to blow babe.”
The hedgerows sped past the sunlit morning
green. Sean was quick to point out that Ireland has
always been a paradise for exiles. Even in the first
minutes after we got on the back roads between
Tara and the Fairyhouse racecourse I knew I was
becoming a man without a country, right out of one
of those Classics Illustrated comic books. But the
thrill of the archaeological chase seemed worth the
alienation, maybe that’s what Dolphin went
through. He was onto something and his alienation
wasn’t important anymore. I could care less about a
hotel or Dublin; I wanted to go back in time as far
as possible, as soon as possible.
Within an hour Sean navigated me to the edge
of a field from which he pointed out the most
amazing site in Europe. From the top of a ridge
along the River Boyne I could look down upon the
oldest, large scale computers in the world.
Hundreds of temple mounds dotted the landscape.
These are huge stone structures dotted with quartz,
sequins of ancient rocks that glisten in the sun. I
almost couldn’t believe it. Along with his stories
Sean brought me up to date on scientific research.
By measuring, filming, and sketching every stone
O’Bannon came to the conclusion that these huge
mounds were not tombs, as the conservative
interpreters would have us believe, but huge
observatories dedicated to the stars, moon and sun
and the planets visible to the naked eye.
O’Bannon specialized in taking folks into the
monuments at night to demonstrate sunbeams,
moon dials and all sorts of other wonders. He was
initiating me into the club of midnight. I was an
unwitting pawn in his small band of Guerrilla
Archaeologists, hooked on the Stone Age.
Brug na’ Boinne, which in Irish Gaelic means
“Temple Complex on the River of the Cow
Goddess,” began it’s healing process as soon as I
laid eyes on the place. During that first day
O’Bannon showed me everything in the River
Boyne and Newgrange from the outside. The inside
tour would take considerably longer. My mind was
blown by ten simple piles of stones and dirt, almost
as old as the worship of the moon. Once in the
presence of the ancient ones, for their spirits clearly
inhabit these grounds, I realized one visit wasn’t
going to be enough. Newgrange is massive, the
mound itself takes up almost five acres and it’s only
part of a triple spiral, a complex of three mounds,
each a separate component of the entire sacred
precinct.
Sean explained that, in almost every case, the
temple mounds of Western Europe—especially
those bordering the Atlantic—are found in multiple
groupings and indicate multiple settlements.
The three major Irish mounds, Knowth,
(Gnobda) meaning ‘knowledge,’ Dowth meaning
‘darkness’ and Newgrange meaning ‘new sun,’
from ‘Anna,’ the Irish name for the harvest
Goddess, stand within easy walking distance of the
river road and represent the astronomy and
geographic knowledge of tribes almost lost in
antiquity.
The Egyptian pyramid builders, the architects of
Stonehenge, even the Phoenicians and the
navigators who sailed the world in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, drew upon knowledge handed
down from these computers. Nobody believed this
at first. An early explorer named Martin Brennan
brought it to public attention way back in the
middle 1970s, but he disappeared and it took an
entire generation to prove his research. It also took
millions of dollars from Texans and other Yanks
and a few Germans to save the mounds.
These stone computers measure the year by
correlating the activities of the sun and the moon
with an astonishing degree of precision. Like
Stonehenge the passage temples can only be fully
appreciated if seen as parts of a larger machine and
as a network. The now famous Carnac alignments,
on the mainland near the village of Vannes in
Brittany, date to 3600 BPE and were built at least
fifteen hundred years before the Egyptian temple of
the same name. Surely a reverse connection exists.
The Irish mounds are about the same age.
Only the rhomboid Pyramid overlaps
Stonehenge in age and only the bank and ditchdigging phase of Stonehenge overlap the final
stages of Newgrange. In other words the Irish and
French mounds are older than the other sites.
O’Bannon explained that Newgrange is the
youngest of the three mounds in the Boyne valley
and yet it is older than any pyramid or stone
building in the world. The information flow
between France, Ireland Scotland and Wales around
six thousand years ago was deep indeed.
I stayed at Sean’s place in Dublin that night, a
one-bedroom attic on Upper Fitzwilliam Street, the
longest pure Georgian facade in Europe. The next
day we walked down through Saint Stephan’s
Green to Bewley’s Tea Hall on Grafton Street. It
was still the Dublin of Joyce more than two
centuries after Jimmy penned the borthday traipsing
of a bloomish Jew along the quays that hold the
Anna Liffy to its course under the Penny Bridge and
past the Adam and Eve monastery of the
Franciscans.
I stopped to look at houses for rent and chat
with Latin scholars on the way to breakfast. Dublin
is still great for teatime chats of great weight and
depth. The estate agents love to display the old
country houses in the windows. A yank can still get
a bargain, but most of the Irish live in what we used
to call tract homes. Imagine my surprise when I
located a Georgian country manor on the Boyne,
across the river from Newgrange, twenty-seven
miles from Dublin.
I knew I didn’t want to go back. Sleep was the
cure, at least for the moment. I didn’t need a high
colonic just yet.
I moved into my Georgian on the Boyne the
next day. This was easy enough. Joe Rock, red
faced and drunk from too many Canadian whiskeys,
met my five bags and me at the train station in his
camouflage Willy’s. Joe wasn’t much for chat. He
was just plain drunk and very focused on his
navigation. The weather was good so the plywood
was off.
I was dog bone tired, but Joe wanted to gaggle a
bit at the door. His tip was huge enough and came
with a promise of another fare in two days time. His
dented fender didn’t disappear down the boreen
until twig light beckoned him home to the mime
sahib. The highly agitated Jackdaws gargled their
last shrill song of the day as I went around lighting
fires and turning on the heaters. The fires went out,
the heaters staid on solar, the doors stayed locked
and I slept for a week. I ate little, showered once
and kept going back to bed.
Exile in Ireland
I saw recurrent visions of my loft rotting away
back in the Denormo Towers in San Francisco. The
paintings and lithos hung slightly askew. Cobwebs
were taking over the closets. The books were
absorbing a microspore that will eat any natural
paper. My glorious months of exile ticked on. If it
weren’t for the poster collection and the Miro
etching and those wooden chairs and tables I
probably wouldn’t care. The big house on the
Boyne was a real home. Oh, yes it was pretentious
to the eyes of the locals and anybody that lived in it
was a big sucker, but so what? Sucker was my
middle name. I fit the role perfectly.
The old leaded Georgian doors and the slate
roof hid a multitude of treasures including a marble
fireplace in every room, brick ovens in both
kitchens and a place in the basement where the first
tenants kept a cow and a butter churn more than two
hundred years before my arrival. Compared to this
my loft on Hashberry Street was a squat and three
times the price per square foot. Which would you
choose? I knew I would have to travel to London
and the Continent soon, but for now, I was enjoying
the solitude of this great house and its ghostly
spirits.
Jack, Sean and I must have made fifty field trips
that year. Our friendship grew hale and hardy
because our research efforts overlapped only
slightly. It was a true team effort, drunken, but
eventful. With the exception of Sean’s need to be
the king of archaeology in the Dublin pubs, we had
no ego conflicts.
Staleen Cottage became a de facto observatory
for the mounds across the river. They dug up a
whole village right next to the place in 2007. My
Georgian shutters and long velvet drapes served as
apertures for a working model of Newgrange. The
use of hand communicators proved that
measurements at Dowth and on my bedroom floor
were identical within a millisecond. I intended to
transfer these readings to a full-blown computer
model when I got back to electronic civilization.
We also used the kitchen wall on the other side of
the house to mark out sunset positions at all three
mounds and Loughcrew.
The high point of my sojourn in the Boyne
Valley took the form of a sneak attack on
Newgrange on my second Winter Solstice in
Ireland. Use of the passage tumulus for research on
the precise Solstice day was out of the question
because that’s when the foreign dignitaries and
scientists show up, congratulate each other and
record opt flicks of themselves Sean figured
Christmas morning would be a less surreal time to
see the beam.
I guess I was lucky that year. An Irish Winter
can never promise sunny mornings and you must
deduct at least six or seven days on account of rain
at sunrise. This means there were about three actual
days out of the eleven available for us to sneak in
and do our research. According to Jack the skies
have been cloudy for the entire eleven days on
many occasions, so seeing the beam at all can be
iffy.
Predictably expeditions of a nefarious nature
have their drawbacks. Jack showed up without his
magical keys and the expedition looked doomed,
but Sean held a hole card. He befriended the great
grandson of Charley Hickey, who used to be the
curator at Newgrange before its excavation in the
1960s. Old man Hickey made it his duty to escort
people into the temple chamber to see the Solstice
beam for the price of a bottle of Black Bushmaster.
From drinking with Charley Hickey IV, who lost an
arm in an auto accident, Sean learned that
Christmas day was the best time to sneak into
Newgrange because, for some odd reason, the sky
was usually clear on Christmas morning.
Charley IV dropped us off then went on home to
his family in Drogheda. So we snuck into
Newgrange on Christmas morning and, sure
enough, the sky was as bright as a brass button.
I was prepared for ducks as Hickey’s Halogens
faded down the road in the dark of morning. The
three of us crawled under the fence, crossed the
green lawn apron, wandered past the standing
stones and opened the iron gate with Jack’s pass
key, Sean first, me second and Jack bringing up the
rear. Jack was always double-checking the security
when we pulled our black bag jobs. We would have
to lock up and walk back to my place, but it was
worth every calorie.
Once inside we crawled along the corridor, past
the chevron and undulate petroglyphs almost worn
thin from at least 5000 years of contact with
tourists. It took ten minutes to pack all the
equipment and our shivering anatomies to the center
chamber of the mound—about sixty-five feet inside
the temple. Sean suddenly snapped on a
photovoltaic light that cast an eerie orange glow
into the chamber from its hiding place known only
to the curators and Sean. He explained that this
would be turned off when the beam came in.
We maintained a ritualistic silence as we sat
cross-legged on the floor beneath the oldest, fully
corbelled, ceiling in existence. Newgrange is a heart
shaped mound with a cruciform chamber at its
center. Three smaller rooms surround the central
chamber. The rear chamber houses a basin stone
and the famed triple spiral. Sean took his position
there. The east chamber houses a huge water basin
that gave me a perch with an aerial view. Jack took
a position in the west chamber that houses a table
stone, probably used for kneading bread.
Most people think the sunbeam enters
Newgrange at dawn, that would be about 7:00 AM,
but it actually comes in about 9:45 because the sun
must first ascend to a 20° angle in the sky to clear a
hill, that forms a false horizon, directly across the
river. The ancient builders did this to assure the
sun’s rays would penetrate the temple and
collimate.
We sat for about an hour in a near trance state.
The chamber was strangely warm. One would think
it would be cold in winter, but like the King’s
Chamber in the Great Pyramid, the interior of
Newgrange remains at or near room temperature all
year, another tribute to its builders.
Eventually Jack opened a leather shoulder bag. I
thought he was going to take a picture, but instead
he removed a football-sized stone, with a deep
spiral grove carved into it. This stone featured a
topknot carved into the upper portion. The whole
process astonished me. Jack was full of surprises,
but this beat the hell out of me. He then stood up
and carried the spiral stone to the central basin. It
was a perfect fit. Jack then pulled a long thin piece
of hemp twine from the case and wrapped the
middle of the rope around the spiral stone about
three times. It looked like a large children’s top with
a bulging bottom waiting to be spun. He gave one
end of the string to me while he held onto the other.
We sat on either side of the main chamber looking
at each other. Jack discovered the missing convex
stone—the mystery stone so long rumored, but
never located—being used as a doorstop in a local
farm house. Hey, no wonder they were so secretive
about it. The government would have confiscated
the stone instantly.
Sean began to chant Zen sutras and tap a teak
stick on a stone next to him. The chanting went on
for about five minutes, and then he stood up and
walked toward the basin and the spiral stone with
the twine attached. Now, it was Sean’s turn to work
some magic. From a velvet bag he removed an
eight-sided quartz crystal, originally a paperweight
of the type one sees in fine crystal stores in Vienna.
Sean carefully placed the crystal in the center of the
spiral, on the topknot, above the twine. It fit
perfectly like a corneal ruby plucked from the eye
of Shiva. Sean then turned off the lights as he
returned to his position in the North chamber. The
only light remaining in the room was the digital
control array blinking on my camera.
After waiting for, what seemed to be twenty
minutes, a faint glow appeared in the Eastern
portion of the chamber. A coherent beam was
forming before our eyes. The first vertical diopter
forms when the beam grazes the standing stone
outside. The first horizontal concentration occurs
when the beam passes through a roof box with eight
‘X’ markings. The photons in the beam are now
spiraling. A second vertical and a second horizontal
aperture form as the beam passes two upright stones
in the shaft. The floor also rises and the path way
curves slightly. By the time the beam reaches the
inner chamber it has collimated into a sharp tip,
somewhat like the blade of a broadsword. At this
point the X, Y and Z components of the beam
became fully collimated. I was observing a
primitive laser.
The time was exactly 10:01 Green Witch. As I
sat in awe I realized the force of the sunlight outside
(Source) was driving and equalizing the shaft of
light inside. It moved as the earth rotated, so what
we were watching was the earth’s axial rotation in
relationship to the stationary sun, a heliocentric
phenomenon, created by simple architects more
than six thousand years earlier, but still operating
perfectly. The beam entered through at least four
separate apertures. It began as a yellowish light and
evolved to an almost orange color as it moved.
Whoever built Newgrange knew the sun was at the
center of the planetary system.
Along with its lateral motion through the
chamber the beam was penetrating deeper into the
rear of the chamber so that as it went through the
entire arc it seemed to move back and forth across
Jacks chest two or three times. I realized from my
sophomore anthropology class, that I was watching
the mating of heaven and earth, the beam was the
lingum vitae and the chamber was the utero occluda
of the great cosmic marriage. We were observing
the annual intercourse of the sun with its earth, but
the final stage was yet to come.
As the beam made its way across the floor it
straightened and stood still momentarily in front of
the basin stone holding the crystal. I could feel Jack
gradually tightening the twine so I did the same.
The room exploded with flares of color when the
beam hit the crystal. It was splitting again, now
dividing itself into its color components. Now the
light was pure white and the crystal was radiating
every color of the spectrum. I couldn’t believe the
beauty of it. No emotion or experience in my life
will equal what I was observing. Not only were we
witnessing the mating of the sun with the earth, we
were also observing the exact moment of
conception.
Jack must have been having a similar spiritual
experience because I could hear him breathing
heavily across the chamber and I could feel him
tugging on his end of the twine, the top stone began
to pivot so slightly and the prisms of color moved
around the room. He then whispered to me to adjust
my end of the cord in the reverse direction. I did so
and the stone obliged. Spectral colors danced
around the room as the beam headed toward the
triple spiral and Sean in the rear chamber.
Sean removed a small pressure bottle from his
coat and began spraying it around the cavern. Later
he told me it contained distilled water with about
1% glycerin. To my further amazement I could
make out two faint beams emerging from the crystal
on an east west axis. Each if these extended to
various geometric markings on the huge
surrounding stones. Jack’s niche displayed a wheat
sheaf pattern; mine displayed undulating shapes,
and Sean’s held the spiral. Obviously these were the
three building blocks of the Neolithic cosmic
alphabet. We were recreating a Stone Age
lightbeam and rebirth ritual.
The moment of brilliant conception faded after
the sun outside moved away from dead center, but
the beam continued on its journey. Now it was
forming the product of the conception. The mystery
lightbeam was now revealing the identity of the
child who would emerge from the mating of heaven
and earth. I realized I was now observing a cross
shaped stylus writing a poem based on the markings
on the stones, an illuminated cross worshipped by
Neolithic pastoralists some four thousand years
before the advent of Jesus of Nazareth. It wasn’t
science fiction. We were actually operating
something similar to a perfectly collimated
lightbeam that performed an astronomical ritual.
This entire mound was truly a temple and the
passage within the mound can only be described as
a heliostat.
The camera caught all of it, even the shots of
Sean’s hiking boots as he stumbled around the
chamber spraying the distilled water. After striking
each of us directly between the eyes the beam
moved across the East wall then down the floor and
finally out of the cavern.
The illuminated dial on my wristwatch read
10:18. Seventeen minutes after the light beam first
came in we were plunged again into total darkness.
The three guerrilla archaeologists sat there for a
while. It seemed like an empty slice of eternity, but
eventually Jack began to gather up the spiral stone
and the twine. I took this as a cue and bundled up
the camera and its precious contents. Sean sat there,
frozen in time, doing Tibetan OM mantras. That
may have been inappropriate, since we don’t know
what music the mound builders played or sang, but
if I were to guess I’d say the sounds Sean was
making were not much different from the chants
originally used.
I could see them snickering as they watched my
face turn from confusion to awe. My initiation into
the Sean and Jack club, the club of midnight, turned
out to be an authentic recreation of the Neolithic
lightbeam ritual. This made me a true Guerrilla
Archaeologist. I mean, these two dudes, loopy as
fleas on a long dog, managed to figure out a
mystery that has eluded scientists and philosophers
for at least three hundred years. All I could say was,
“Oh Wow!” Jack was smiling like a Buddha. Sean
sat without emotion. No drug could have equaled
how I felt at that moment.
I felt greatly privileged. No human being with a
modicum of sensitivity could ask for a better
Christmas present. Fewer than two hundred people
in recorded history have actually seen the lightbeam
enter the mound and only us three had, up to that
point, seen the beam split into prisms. I shot one last
series of the carved stones surrounding the temple
and a few of Sean and Jack emerging from the
opening before the winter fog swirled around us. A
storm was brewing. We got away clean. The walk
home was cold, but who could care? Later that day,
at sun set, we would be able to see the same beam
enter the chamber at Dowth and disappear never to
return until next year.
On the walk across the fields toward Donore
village we discussed how the mere witnessing of
this phenomenon is the essence of the ritual. You
don’t have to do anything. All you have to do is go
to the site, watch the event, get your mind blown,
then walk home like thousands, or even millions of
people in the ancient era must have done. The light
from the beam itself, the actual photons that entered
your eyes were sufficient to keep you stoned for the
rest of your life. I felt obliged to pass those few
photons on to others through the magic of the
digital stereopticon. A miracle took place that day.
This light, once seen, never fades.
It took two gills of the Black Bush to persuade
Sean to explain how the beam emerges from
Newgrange and continues on to Dowth. He slurred
as he spoke, but since we were all stumbling over
clods from the Battle of the Boyne it didn’t matter
much. Sean began a discourse. “At Dowth a
diffused light presents itself just before dusk at the
mouth of the cavern at Winter Solstice. There, two
crystals, set in sockets in a huge altar stone, form
the first aperture. The lightbeam then enters the
chamber, sweeps along the floor of the shallow
cavern, strikes a stone marked with undulate
patterns, pertaining to the moon and tides. It then
creeps into a side chamber hits another reflector and
snaps out. The evening beam does not leave the
chamber. That is why this mound is known as the
place of sleep, the pathway to the night world.
The thrill of being in on a major discovery was a
turn-on I’ll never forget. No drug imaginable could
duplicate the experience because we were
communicating directly with the architects of a lost
civilization. It was almost as if we were observing
the first communion, a communion with the
primordial Trinity—the God, the Goddess and the
ghostly lightbeam. In modern terms this would
translate to: Matter, Antimatter and light.
As we walked we discussed the possibility that
the beam observance ritual is linked to the creation
of a sacred psychedelic ergot or mushroom bread.
We all agreed that the Winter Solstice ritual at
Newgrange portrays the consumption of sacred
bread baked with salt water, barley, and yeast the
components prepared within each of the chambers.
This sounds a great deal like the ritual of Holy
Communion in Christianity, maybe even an early
form of that same ritual. The filtered rain water,
deposited in the basin of the East chamber by
capillary action, is mixed with sea salt. This
becomes the life’s blood of the great mother. The
bread, possibly an ergot alkaloid or mushroom
product, harvested with the Emir or rye grain, was
the body of the sun god, the holy bread of rebirth.
The lightbeam is the Holy Ghost.
Once we got home and stomped in front of the
fire for ten minutes we agreed to continue doing
research together. Jack suggested we all try to get
together to go to Stonehenge for Summer Solstice
the following year. At the time the trip to
Stonehenge seemed like an outing with the Girl
Scouts. I had no idea how prophetic and harrowing
it would be. I drove them to Dublin the next
morning.
Sean continued to check the exact occurrence of
any megalithic astronomy event as close as
Wicklow or as far away as Egypt from his third
floor garret in Dublin. When I asked him if he
thought that kind of research would hold up under
scrutiny he said, “Copernicus didn’t have to go to
the sun to see that the planets revolved around it,
did he?”
I suspect he could check moon alignments all
over Ireland simply by observing the pencil marks
on his kitchen wall. Meanwhile, Jack was doing
cartographic sketches down in Skiberreen and
sending them up to us by mail and the occasional
groupie. I felt like a real contributor for the first
time because my speculations seemed to help Sean
and Jack visualize the ancient people, the faces and
clothing and lifestyle at work behind the abstract
math models.
By doing Sean’s brand of lazy man’s research
with or without a computer, we could correlate our
data and cross check observations. For the spiritual
quest seeing the beam is sufficient, but for science
rapping about it isn’t enough, there has to be some
calculus in it somewhere, especially since Jack and
Sean were trying to prove that each mound
portrayed a single node in a vast network.
According to Jack, Brug na Boinne was the original
Greenwich observatory and the rest of the mounds
were extensions of it, each adjusted for local time.
I started to see a comparison between the
Excalibur beam and the ancient light beams found
in the Neolithic mounds, but Sean didn’t agree with
the simile. His beam was benevolent and the
Excalibur beam was malevolent. We didn’t see each
other again until we started preparing for our trip to
Stonehenge.
Five months went by in a blizzard of work.
Work, work, work, that’s all I could think about. I
came over here to get a vacation and all I could do
was work my ass off. Not a good sign. For once in
my rude little life I wanted to meet a woman and
settle in for a nice cozy marriage, maybe even a
child and a dog named Sluggo.
On the telephone Sean mentioned that he
wanted me to meet a self-styled guru named Axel
Tervik, when we visited Bath, although frankly
Sean didn’t know if ‘Tervik’ was his real name. I
wasn’t in the mood to meet a new guru, but I
suspected I would be meeting this guy whether I
liked it or not.
Journal Entry
Beltaine
I worry about Anna. She may be hung-up a few
miles from here. Mail delivery is sporadic in
Ireland. I have a feeling she’s in New York trying to
get a ship direct to Ireland. I owned a phone the first
time I staid in this house, but the lines are down
now and that’s the way its going to stay I guess.
The pony finally kicked the sow out of the
turnip patch this morning. Biggest thing that
happened all week.
End of Entry
Stoned at the Henge
We rented a maroon Daimler Van den Plas
from Heathrow. This was a sturdy ‘Replicar,’ a five
eighths scale model of a 1997 saloon. The fugeeen
thing went fast, burn-ass fass. Naturally I paid for it,
so technically I can’t say “we” rented a Daimler, but
it got Sean and Jack and me to Stonehenge in style.
Jack and Sean drank poteen and beer and
giggled nervously as I drove south on the M4,
Slough, toward the West Country. This once wild
and mysterious land was starting to wear thin and
looked ragged on the edges. I remember seeing
pictures of the M4 when it was first built in the
1970s. Then it looked like a small, wide, but
unobtrusive road banked on either side by wheat
fields and rolling hills. Other pictures showed teams
of rescue archaeologists’ frantically digging up
artifacts within view of the cement spreaders,
perhaps this was the picture I should have
remembered. The fast lane slowed with lumps of
meadow grass growing out of the cracks, attesting
to the speed of the usual traffic. Now it looked like
any other oil covered, cracked and beatific highway.
I broke the silence, “Who is this Axel Tervik
anyway?”
Sean rolled down the window for a blast of cold
air, “Oh he knows about you, I mentioned your
book.”
“Which one?”
“The Electronic Battlefield, I guess, I also told
him you’re way too educated for a man of your
station in life.”
I thought aloud, “Well, yes, you’re right about
that, I should be rich, but I’m not applying for a job
am I?”
“No, but he found your book fascinating.”
Jack chimes in, “Hey you’ll love it man, we’re
going to go score some hash and hang out for a few
hours that’s all?”
“Right, Right, I can see the picture now—garlic
breath, four guys in a room drinking tea and sherry,
smoking hash, hell we’ll get bored in ten minutes. I
hate it already.”
Jack says, “Blimy mate, ain’t ya neber ‘erd o’
male bonding?”
“Hah, that old term faded in the early 1990s and
so did your fake cockney accent, didn’t you tweak
to the fact that white women invented the concept
of sensitivity and bonding to give their hubbies a
semblance of class. It’s like trying to teach table
manners to a Chimpanzee on Angel Dust.”
Sean says, “He’s right ya know Jack, some
males are way over bonded as it is.”
I muttered, “More like bondage, if ya ask me.”
Jack laughed quietly at this, peering out over a
copy of The London Tattler, that the last person to
hire this car must have left in the rear glove box.
The sun was getting low in the afternoon sky. Sean
reminded us that the earth was tilting that way and
that there was no such thing as a sunset.
“How long before Stonehenge?” I asked, hoping
I wouldn’t have to resort to a map.
Sean the navigator pops up, “Yeah, don’t worry
turn off at the sign marked Salisbury, you’ll see it.”
The quasi-Daimler hummed along ingesting the
perfect 14.5 to 1 mixture of moist air and synthetic
petrol. Neat ceramic engine, you get the idea of the
original, but you can’t get that toned vroom sound. I
heard it on Optidisk so many years ago. You can get
it with a motorcycle though. My mom claims she
loved it and every time she heard a Triumph
Bonneville go by she’d smile and say, “The old
sound is still around.”
Riots at Stonehenge are traditional. Every year,
at Summer Solstice—especially since they turned
the joint into an international peace zone, refugee
camp and conference center—homeless pagans
from all over the globe try to take it over and every
year the Peelers bash people senseless. This is
useless because the banshees (milk fairies) are
already senseless on scrumpy mixed with LSD.
They also smoke opium boilers and they don’t give
a dram about their heads, or private parts.
The bashing started in the early 1970s, at the
first Glastonbury Pyramid festival, now a legend,
but the confrontations in the West Country had
intensified recently. Two years ago the normal
Summer Solstice skirmish grew into a medieval
battlefield. Third generation punkers, equipped with
straight razors and tire irons, aided by a cadre of
steel clad cops wielding thermal and
electromagnetic stingers, cracked down on a large
group of pacifists and as usual, the long hairs lost.
Jack convinced me this year would be different. We
were lucky enough to get there in time for the
lightest battle on record. Everyone was having a
smashing good time—much blood, tear gas and
screaming, but no dead bodies.
Jack narrated the history of this strange melee as
we paid for our “all areas” laminate pass at the VIP
gate. “Last year the cops waited until the skin heads
and longhairs finished bashing then waded in to
strip jewelry and chits from the unconscious.”
Sean laughed with typical glibness, but I was
curious. “They can’t really sell that swag can they?”
Jack gave me the doubtful eye, as if I was
completely stupid, “Hey mate every county council
keeps a pawn shop nearby, or didn’t cha know?”
I was incredulous, “No I had no idea, and the
only government pawn shop I’ve ever seen is in
Amsterdam.”
Jack came back, “Raaight mate, great things
start in Amsterdam, but there ain’t no questions
asked in these English pawn shops.”
Sean chimed in his precise observation, “Let
them keep the booty, it’s an easy way to keep a
police force. You ought to know about it, they’ve
been doing that in the States since the Civil War.”
He was right, how could I forget that. Cops
always get to keep the loot. It sort of compensates
them for not being big-time hoods. “The county
councils keep a big percentage, but these guys
manage on the swag.” Jack added.
I chanced another observation as we crept
deeper into the encampment, mud up the rims in
some places, “I guess it cuts the burden on the local
tax payers considerably.”
Jack laughed and coughed while trying to toke
on his pocket hookah, “Hey man there are no local
tax payers anymore. No one has paid taxes here for
at least a decade, except in Salisbury. The people in
Salisbury live off the revenue of the farms and the
National Trust so they manage to keep a quiet
village with taxes, proper cops, proper roads and so
forth, but three miles out of town it’s a nightmare,
there look for yourself.” Jack pointed to a gallows
with a fresh rope hanging from it.
I asked, “Is it real?”
He continued, “Maybe it’s symbolic, but so far
nobody has had the pluck to find out, it’s the way
things were in the days of the bloody Assizes.”
Sean finished up the conversation on authority
at Stonehenge, “Right again, the gallows assures
fewer fuckups, you know fewer bodies to
incarcerate and fewer still to patch up when the Iron
Heads get done. True, both factions simply limp off
the pitch to fight again another day, but at least ten
from each side were killed last year.”
We pulled over momentarily to observe all of
Salisbury Plain strewn with tactical tents of every
imaginable color. This sacred alluvial deposit, once
the center of civilization in Western Europe, was
now a desolate camp for wandering hebrephrenics.
Our wellys squished as we walked away from
the car. To the West stood the modern building
complex that housed the official agencies set up to
take care of the continually growing hoards.
Vendors sprang up for everything from diapers to
cough medicine. A cabbage cost as much as a
chicken because they both cost as much to raise.
Opium was cheap, but the penalty for growing your
own dope was the loss of a finger for each offense.
After three busts you’re gone to a work camp in the
Brazilian rain forest, and you don’t come back.
The people who camp at Stonehenge most of the
year are orphans. The area around this huge pile of
granite has become a clearing center for thousands
of third generation lost hippies and punks. Jack
snapped the corduroy collar shut on his oilskin as he
spoke, “It’s a place for people who never grew up.”
I answered with the same sense of amazement.
“Maybe they can find a family here.”
Jack replied as he shook his head, “Christ I sure
hope so.” O’Bannon stared at the smoke signals
rising from the tents. His only comment was to
announce that he was giving up smoking tobacco on
the Summer Solstice.
The drive to Stonehenge was short and we were
late. A sign, posted on the kiosk, told us that we
would receive a free bowl of soup and a
ploughman’s lunch with real cheddar cheese from
Cheddar Gorge chapel. We would press on to the
transit camp near Worthy Farm.
O’Bannon spoke groggily as we headed further
west, “The only explanation I can offer for the
persistent violence surrounding Stonehenge, is that
for centuries Stonehenge was a place of human
sacrifice.”
“That’s bullocks.” Jack mumbled.
I added, “The circle was begun in the Stone Age
and the original builders didn’t practice human
sacrifice.”
Jack nodded and gazed at his magazine.
I then offered my opinion, “I guess this
Victorian crap still floats down the mental sewers of
every nation once colonized by the British. We’ll
probably be digging it out for a few centuries.”
Jack laughed in a cynical tone, “Aye, don’t bad
rap my glorious nation mates. People get married
here and they come here to have kids so that the
tykes can list Stonehenge as their place of birth.
This sits well with the London councils as it keeps
the riffraff out of the city for the summer, which
may be the real purpose for the concentration camp
atmosphere now encroaching on all sides.” He
pointed to the wire mesh screen.
An hour of wheel spinning and slogging found
us at Worthy Farm, a rolling hectare of green land
looking down on the Somerset levels. Jack knew
everybody so we didn’t have to stand in queue. The
Cheddar cheese was real and the oat bread, toasted
over the fire, was filling. Jack scrounged us a regal
and motorized camper belonging to a Gypsy named
Rollo as the daylight faded. People of every type
dropped by to offer us scrumpy, tea and hash.
“When will it stop?” I asked.
“When will what stop?” Jack answered with a
question.
“When will people learn how to fend for
themselves?”
Sean seemed really angry with this. “Well, I
don’t know about that shit Collins, but I know how
to stop it.” Sean reached over and turned off the
hurricane lamps as he spoke, “The one rule
applicable to the entire encampment is that no
domicile shall be approached if the lights are out.”
Sean mentioned that he was going to stop
smoking that very night. This was impossible. He
always made his nonsmoking declarations around
me because he knew I was a shrink. He knew, and I
told him a bunch of times, just to be sure, that
nicotine is the worst and most fundamental
addiction. “You know Sean, nicotine is the leading
addiction. All other addictions, including booze and
opiates arise from smoking tobacco.”
Jack found a wench and stayed in her tent for
the night. I crashed on a goatskin. Rollo had another
bus to live in. I guess this was his guest bus. A huge
Wolfhound named Angus stood guard.
The next morning started badly. Rouwolfia
smoke mixed with nicotine and those damned
ginger bindy cigars came wafting in as the troops
began to gather outside. Jack must have had a rough
night because he was back whipping up a breakfast
for us.
“What’s going on,” I asked as I itched whatever
damage was done by whatever chiggers happened
to be on Angus during the night.
“Oy, its gathering time.” Jack says.
“What’s gathering time?” I had no clue.
Sean stayed up all night and is in the process of
firing his second hash oiler of the morning said,
“Gathering time simply means they are getting
ready to proceed, in a ceremonial fashion to
Stonehenge to watch the sunrise.”
I asked further, “Do you guys want to gather
with them?” Chanting and drum rolls from fingered
tambourines echoed through the farmland.
Jack was emphatic, “No, It’s awesome to see
fifty thousand people drop to their knees and
worship ancient stones, as their ancestors must have
done, but then seeing fifty thousand people doing
anything all at once is more than frightening to me.
It’s enough to get you into a fighting mood. My dad
told me one old rocker named Mick Jaguar was
famous for working his audiences into a violent
frenzy before his shows.”
Jack still hadn’t answered my question. “Yes,
but do you guys want to go over to Stonehenge to
see the big event?”
Both of my traveling pals said, “No,” with
emphasis on the “No” part.
We scrambled out of the trailer long enough to
smell the acrid turf block fires and hear the gristle
meat gurgling in the pans. We opted for apple juice
based protein shakes, and fired up to join the long
line of jitneys and campers driving away from
Stonehenge. Time to leave, we had seen enough.
The sun did rise that morning as it had done for
about a billion years and Stonehenge was about to
be visited by a swarm of human locusts.
As I drove out the main gate I asked, “Hey why
did you guys bring me here in the first place?”
Jack’s answer was friendly and yet mysterious.
“Oh man we just wanted you to see the hoards,
that’s all.”
“Nah, you two wanted a free ride. This
Stonehenge trip was just a sideshow.”
Both of my chastised passengers fell silent. Sean
busied himself in the back seat with his sketchbook,
while Jack read the local news fiche lifted from
Rollo’s loo. We hit a rather nastditty bump that
prompted Jack to make the observation, “When I
was a kid my mom and dad could make the trip
from Bath to London in four hours, now it takes at
least fourteen, if you’re lucky, and there ain’t no
flood.”
He was right. Between the ruts and the donkey
carts we needed a full day to get to Bath. Along
with abandoned vehicles, the roads themselves grew
worse with each passing storm. Some of the worst
roads were toll roads maintained by thug like local
rugby clubs and a fascist political society known, in
times past, as the Monday Club.
The Daimler was mercifully fast. Jack and Sean
snoozed into their crinkled bucket seats as we
hydroplaned over a rare open stretch through
Swainswick and down the steep hills toward the
mythical town of Bath, the capital of Avonshire.
Summer is rugged in Wessex. Bath, the old
Roman town, known for its mineral hot springs—a
pleasant enough place when tea dancing was the
rage—was currently receiving a download from the
piss god. Once stately homes now fell victim to
rising damp. Ghostly people shuffled along in torn
black anoraks as the rain fell in sheets.
Even the once festive streets implied a new
violent order was at work. Color muted with mud
and rust. Obviously the Stonehenge riot mentality
was spilling over. What was once a town in
harmony with nature was fast becoming a Mecca
for debauches. Jack said it reminded him of the
island of the damned, the place where bad boys
grow donkey ears.
The ghosts of the Romans and Druids were still
inhabiting Bath I guess, but the shells of once quaint
cottages told me the place was already dead. The
local white witch coven protested by carving huge
circles in the oats at harvest time, but this only
aggravated the situation and the local black witches
who, as usual, thrive on chaos. Clearly the 20th
century developers had gone unchecked. They over
fertilized this once pregnant land, almost as if a
scorched earth policy was in effect. I was depressed
again, but I quickly remembered the lightbeam at
Newgrange.
Images of my old college chums Sharon and Hal
came to mind. They went from heavy street gypsies
to Las Vegas big wigs in a few years. I made a
mental note to drop them a card.
Bath’s Bad Boy
Bath, or Aqua Sulis, (translated from Latin as:
healing waters lies at the center of ancient British
civilization, but the Roman hill and valley road that
takes you to Bath from Marlborough Downs was
not originally built by the Romans. The Romans
took credit for it, but in fact the mysterious
Windmill Hill people built the same urn ware folks
who built the first phases of Stonehenge about five
thousand years ago it. Oddly, even the Neolithic
people may have been copycats since the roadbed
itself was an Ice Age salt and flint trade route.
According to Sean no true intellectual could
travel to Bath without paying homage to Minerva
and the aforementioned American expatriate Axel
Tervik. Sean felt Tervik was charismatic enough to
do anything he wanted, maybe even run for
president. This made me even more dubious, not
only of Tervik, but of Sean’s sense of judgment. I
could forgive Jack’s gullibility, after all he was a
jolly type, but Sean was off the deep end on this
guy. They said women loved him, they told their
friends to drop by, they scored dope at his pad and
of course Baba Tervik fucked all comers. That’s the
way the guru game works. All gurus carry their
wisdom up their ass, portable and easily accessible.
Diseases like Cangachap, The Greek disease, and
French Virus AA, changed the role of the guru in
the early twenty-first century. But in areas like rural
Ireland and some parts of Bath, one could still
practice excess dibbling with little or no ill effects.
I still remember the bumper sticker on my dad’s
van:
Eschew the Guru!
Few did.
I knew we were going to sit-in on a think-tank
session, I mean every time Sean and Jack and I got
together for any length of time it was that way,
although the Tervik element was unpredictable. As
we drove up the hills of Bath, past the rows of
bookstalls, nutrition centers and antique stores, I
couldn’t help noticing that the local economy felt
healthy even when the world was experiencing a
depression. The vibes of Bath were heavier than
London, but sorta’ blue like it was a tune by Miles
Davis played on a medieval flute. Bath was
Georgian like Dublin, but not as funky. The town
stands on hills like San Francisco, rent is cheap,
unlike the petrol, but there’s a conservative tweedy
feel to the place. There are also more book stores
and antique shops in Bath than in London per
capita. Sean directed us to the Gazelle Buildings, a
four-story walk up on the middle terrace. Gaining
access to this virtual fortress is taxing. Jack
explained that Tervik has so many friends and
enemies he had to devise an entire range of bell
signals. With this system he screens his callers,
discourages bill collectors, avoids a number of
disruptive gentlemen from Porlock, and reduces his
anxiety about the invasion of his privacy. In other
words he’s paranoid, but too cheap to by a laser
lock. One must know which bell to push and how
often.
We rang the lower bell twice with a pause, then
three times, according to telephone instructions to
Sean before we left Dublin. A blandish face
appeared in the door peep, gaunt and adorned with
round wire spectacles.
“Tervik himself, answering his door?” Jack
muttered.
O’Bannon removed his funky Wellingtons and
his Gold Mylar Mars expedition field jacket, while
Jack was stomping his feet and unwrapping his
muffler. I didn’t feel like removing my crepe
driving slippers or the fluffy sheepskin coat I
managed to barter in a more peaceful moment at
Stonehenge, but I caved in to the pressure. I felt
uncomfortable leaving my wallet and passport
unattended, but you have to trust people sometimes.
This turned out to be a big mistake.
I whispered, “What no butler?” Actually, there
was a valet of some kind. A gaunt and fair
gentleman with milk allergy eyes, introduced as
Timeon, followed us down the corridors and up the
stairs, then just as suddenly disappeared into a side
room. This whole bell-ringing thing turned out to be
a paranoid ploy designed to throw us off the track.
As it turned out we were ringing the code for the
lower unit. In this way Tervik could allow us access
to his domain without revealing the upper level bell
code. We were escorted upstairs as if we were
characters in an unwritten Dickens novel. The stairs
creaked and the only light was a beeswax candle on
a pewter stick carried by our host.
Jack muttered, “Timeon lives in Butleigh, at the
center of a huge archaeological dig known as the
Somerset Zodiac, very fretful this Timeon.”
“What’s he doing here?” I asked.
Tervik ushered us into his inner sanctum so Jack
had almost no time to answer. “Antique dealer I
think, that’s all know.”
A thin slit of flickering light fingered out into
the hall as I cleared the silk and beaded partition.
Timeon was more than a valet. He could now
monitor our entire conversation.
Axel Tervik’s private aerie was anything but
normal. We could have been in anybody’s house in
Avonshire or Somerset, but the freak vibes in this
place were enough to place us in the House of
Usher. Tervik inhabited the upper two stories and
kept each room strewn with papers and chairs. The
place was also festooned with books—old books,
new books, books on the floor, dry books, damp
books, books on their way to the recycle shop,
books wrapped in newspapers and an entire estate
sale of Victoriana still in wooden crates. I couldn’t
detect the presence of a computer or a fiche reader.
He was obviously an old fashioned guy.
Tervik did not possess fine works of art. I saw
guns, swords, whips and mace balls, but he owned
no Rothko’s, no Picasso’s, no Futzie Nutshell’s, no
prints or even framed family portraits, only flock
wallpaper, and of course the obligatory gay
Georgian marble bust of Aristotle stuck in a niche
next to the antique pushbutton voice phone. He
didn’t even have a clock on his wall.
For private audiences Tervik used a little yellow
room that caught the afternoon sun, but, he
explained, he hardly ever took anyone in there as it
housed his rare manuscript collection, which, as it
turned out, wasn’t a collection or rare. This
explained why we were seated in the baby puke
green room with the rain stains showing under the
wallpaper. What Sean and Jack thought was highclass furniture turned out to be mock Chippendale
made from old stand, rain forest mahogany veneer.
Springs bonged out of the wing back chairs like
Slinkies at a pajama party. Threadbare draperies in
the Turkish Delight style covered the chesterfield,
while Tervik’s prize Himalayan—and very
smelly—cat owned a scratch pole covered with
machine made Belgian rugs in the Sarouk pattern.
Bits of old chairs and table legs were
smoldering in the small fire grate. A damp smell
permeated the room. It was late afternoon, but the
angular light cast a chill across the gabled roofs
revealing two deep porringers licked clean by cats,
but with the oatmeal-laden spoons stuck to the
bottom. My imp sez: “I think this guy’s a cannibal
nez pa?” 5
Tervik was not the blonde Norman or the redhaired Celt or West Saxon type common in these
hills. No, Baba Tervik was a genetic outsider. His
black Rasputinish hair looked like it was held down
with Slik. The hair formed a dark halo for his
bleakish stare that he focused like a cattle prod on
everyone he met. His shoulders hung over his
roundish frame and his paunchiness was a tribute to
gluttony. This guy was definitely a milk-fed pie
eater. Every time he opens the icebox door he thinks
of his mom.
Jack and Sean called Tervik “The Birdman”
because he once came to a party dressed as King
Bladud, the ancient Druid King of Bath. Legend has
it that old Bladud fashioned a set of bird wings for
himself and flew by moonlight across the roofs. He
crashed of course, in a pig sty. Axel made no such
claims, but the sentiment was right. It mattered little
that he showed no balls. The coffee house crowd in
Bath and the Stonehenge faction elected him the
underground mayor, an intellectual baron in a self
serving fife, an American colonial spreading the
can-do ‘massage,’ but in reality he was just another
bull-shiter running against the flow of manifest
destiny, eastward to find the soul of unified Europa.
After our first cup of tea Tervik left the room
briefly giving O’Bannon a moment to remind me
that we were in the presence of a great being and
how lucky we were to catch Baba Tervik at home
because he often stays in London in his flat on
Powys Crescent, but on this occasion, meaning the
Solstice riots, he was holding forth in his three floor
walk up overlooking the town. I wasn’t ready for
any mind crap, but I figure I’d go along for the kick.
In spite of my skeptical bent I promised both of
my pals I would withhold judgment until we had a
chance to chat. What the hell I was ready for a few
puffs of Dagga. I was ready to feel as strong as a
hundred camels in somebody else’s courtyard?
Wandering around Stonehenge and Avebury and
Silbury Hill for two days gets your dander up.
Note:
After handing me his card Axel withdraws into
an aloof gaze, watching me in particular through his
wizard black spectacles. He sizes me up like a
Cheetah searching a herd of Springbok for the
weakest target. While we settle in, he pretends to be
doing something important on his tragic home made
faxmodem/word processor, cobbled together by two
local dowsers. I couldn’t figure out why this guy
needed a word processor at all. Then I saw the laser
scanner sitting next to it. Obviously he scans other
peoples works, adds pepper and spice, a dash of salt
and it’s a brand new book. The French call him a
“reshuffler.” I call him a homicidal maniac. It’s just
that glint in his eye, an arrogance that allows him to
put himself above everyone he meets. He’s an
American with Toff English manners. What a
clown.
End of note
Tervik returned to the room and settled into an
upholstered chair scribbling on parchment as we
spoke. He loves to put on a show of writing with a
quill pen, but in reality he is a plagiarist. He was
great at making nibs with the hash-coated razor
blade, a tool he also used to chop cocaine. OK, OK,
so I’m a hypocrite. We smoked the hash, did some
old fashioned lines and finished another cup of tea
brought up from downstairs by a mysterious ravenhaired woman wearing a dashiki.
To keep the tedium to an absolute minimum we
looked at some of Axel’s latest trivia, but he knew
he couldn’t fool me or delay my probing questions.
My very presence in his inner sanctum bugged him
no end. He could control Jack and Sean, but I
owned the big-ticket education and he knew it.
That’s probably why he made certain the
conversation didn’t wax profound. I also knew
Tervik wouldn’t do anything to show himself stupid
so I devised a plan to bring the wanker out into the
dim light, at least long enough to embarrass him. It
was time to use the ace I had cleverly stashed up my
sleeve. I kept my mind crap ‘O’ meter tuned up just
in case.
This particular ace was an article on the research
of one Professor Derek Beane who managed to
decipher the codex of a small brass computer
brought up from a wreck in the Aegean by a Greek
sponge fisherman named Absorba. As I suspected
Tervik’s knowledge of ancient civilizations was less
than thin and he seemed terrified that I would be
interested in such a device.
The odd little Aegean computer discovered by
Beane, wasn’t electronic, but it fit the definition of a
true computer. Dolphin wrote many letters to people
in the Minneapolis group about it. In one of them,
addressed to Charlotte Rousse, he said:
“A computer is anything that computes!
Somewhere along the line people started to believe
a system needed to be electronic to be a true
computer, but anything that replaces one or more
functions of the human mind can be a computer.”
The article in Science Weekly, described
Beane’s barnacle encrusted gizmo as:
“…a skillfully crafted brass and copper
computer engine invented, by Aristarchus of Samos,
in the first century ad.”
This ancient geared contraption, located in
1900, remained hidden within its lime crust
encasement for almost a century. In 1974 or so,
someone displayed the foresight to use X-ray and
laser luminescence techniques to this barnacled
lump. To the amazement of everyone it turned out
to be a wind driven computer, a horological system
with intermeshing gears designed to carry out
computations and celestial observations accurately
enough to navigate the Earth’s circumference.
Photos taken by a Yale librarian who published
his findings in a paper titled: “An Ancient Greek
Computer” caused a flurry in the 1980s.
The issue remained quiescent for two decades
until Beane started writing about it in After Omni in
the year 2000. The ensuing controversy raged so
violently Beane was forced to resign his tenure at
Yale. To him this barnacle encrusted object was an
early computing device, with moving parts—an
analytical engine. According to Beane whoever
invented it was heliocentric and worked out an
algorithm for the harmony of the planetary orbits.
This, more than anything else, got him in trouble.
The advanced scholars of the twenty-first century,
like their counterparts in earlier centuries, could
barely accept heliocentrism themselves. The idea
that ancient people were heliocentric was out of the
question.
Groupies from the UFO fringe flocked to Dr.
Beane immediately after his termination at Yale, but
he rejected their attention choosing to become a
hermit and because he, more than anyone, knew
Flying Saucers were mind control stories invented
by the government to freak everybody out. Turns
out he authored several scenarios for disinformation
purposes as far back as 1970. No one has heard of
him since although the word is that he is now over
140, takes vitamins and lives quietly with his third
wife in the Adirondack… apparently he did write
one brief note to Dolphin:
In the mid-twentieth century the main academic
motto was publish or perish, now the rule is, publish
AND perish.
Professor Beane may have unveiled the mystery
to the most important object in archaeological
history, but because it didn’t fit into the agreed upon
canon of historical flow, he got sacrificed.
Ironically, three books about the discovery by
people other than Professor Beane came out after he
went into hiding. Each of these tomes tried to prove
that the Antikytheria mechanism, named after the
1900 submarine excavation site in the Aegean, was
proof we were visited by space men in ancient
times. In every interview Beane said, “I do not
believe in spacemen.” and “There is no such thing
as an extraterrestrial invention.”
So here I was, watching Tervik as he drifted
though his dank pad. I got that pukey feeling and
made a lame excuse to leave. My pals went along
only because I was the driver. Sean made some
whispering comment to the effect that he and Axel
should get together in London soon. As it turned out
Tervik was having a group in for a session “any
moment now” and, well you know, we weren’t
invited, at least I wasn’t. The tall dark haired
housekeeper winked at me as she carried a few of
the unwashed dishes into the kitchen. That’s when I
noticed a huge rack of antique rifles and handguns
decorating one wall of the reception room.
The wet air chilled up my sleeves as we drifted
out. Sean and Jack lagged a minute just to chat up
Tervik. The ochre and rust leaves from the few
remaining trees cat scratched across the cobbles
with each flurry. The acrid pong of burning turf
blocks etched my nostrils as I walked alone toward
the car. A summer storm with winter danger in it
howled in the wings. The next morning would be
night like and fierce. Jack and Martin looked like
two tykes getting ready for school on a stormy day
as they slipped on their boots and scarves. I could
hear their small talk and empty banter as they bid
mother Tervik a fond farewell.
It didn’t take long to connect the vibes with
reality. As I opened the car door I noticed a small
note flapping on the windshield. I almost gave it a
toss. At first I thought it was a circular for a free
fish & chips diner, but I felt the paper crinkle in my
grip—a fine vellum paper with a ragged edge, not
the texture one would expect for a circular.
Jack and Sean walked back to the car slowly
after slipping Tervik some bread for a future dope
score. They were always out of hash, but I kept a
chunk in my vest pocket, a chunk as big as a
thumbnail. I felt for it as I read the note. Adrenaline
jerked through my blood as the words flew up from
the note. It contained only three words in large bold
handwriting:
Dolphin is Alive !
I stuffed the paper in my jacket, hoping to keep
it under wraps until I could make discreet inquiries.
Up M4
Jack and Sean slid into the car quietly, as if I
disapproved of their lingering chat with Tervik and
Timeon. As we pulled away I could make out
Tervik’s lupine face peeping from behind a
Georgian shutter. I guess he was making sure we
were really on our way. He was now major domo of
the valley of the squinting windows, the Anglican
gossipmonger on the hill, and I was in his
jurisdiction without prior notice.
I thought to myself, “Creepy is as creepy does,
so maybe I should simply forget about Tervik. Eh?”
The imp says, “Shut up and drive!”
Sean made hollow apologies, “Tervik is a
renown philosopher. He’s also a mystic and a
computer systems analyst. He’s the author of seven
published books and is on the editorial board of the
Bath Gazette.”
I hated to disagree, “Sean, I hate to disagree, but
Tervik’s only clever in his own mind. According to
him he’s an authority on practically everything. He
became a soapbox lecturer and a pamphleteer in
true Hyde Park Corner tradition, except most of his
rap is superficial. Just ask him he’ll tell you.”
Jack muttered, “Eh Sean tells ‘em about
Tervik’s shady side.”
Sean flashed Jack a dirty look, “No need to
bring up bad Karma now.”
Jack continued, “No, no ya better tell ‘em.”
Sean says, “OK areole you tell him… pull over I
gotta take a pee.” I stopped along a Roman wall
sufficient for Sean to hop out.
Jack took advantage of Sean’s absence and
proceeded to spill the beans on Tervik, probably to
clear his own head on the topic. “You see this
Tervik bloke ‘ad a very bad rep way back in Brush
ton high school in Pittsburgh.”
I was amazed with Jack’s familiarity with
details of the old ghetto’s of Pittsburgh. “How do
you know what high school he attended?”
“Oh, it was in the clippings Sean collected from
one of Axel’s girl friends, I think they sort dated the
same lass fur a fortnight, if ya know what I mean?”
Jack winked.
I winked back. “OK so go on before Sean gets
back.”
Jack hurried the story along, “Rumors are that
he Mordred his fyrst wife when they were in
college—decapitated her and stuffed her in a
trunk—and he’s been hiding out over here ever
since. I’ve personally seen him jump violent, but
that’s all I can say. I was impressed until I found out
he used the publishing game to carry through a
massive con.”
I queried him further while Sean took an
obliging walk to check the horizon. Sean was
always trying to find lay lines, straight tracks and
crop marks in the landscape. Jack’s narrative grew
more and more bizarre. “Axel is known in the
publishing industry as Tervik the Terrible. The
books Sean was so impressed with are paste-up jobs
of dubious authorship and thin literary merit.” He
looked at me pleadingly, “Now ya know Canyon, I
work me arse off for ta get me maps and books
published rawight?”
I nodded, … “and it takes me years, but this
wanker pretends to be putting out two or three a
year.”
“Tell me more. This guy seems worthless. What
does Sean see in him?”
“Ah that’s the paradox don’t cha’ know. He has
power and Sean is mystified by power. Tervik’s
published most of his bogus broadsides in a series
called Rumpled Transactionalism, that’s what got
Sean hooked. Donations from randy American lady
mystics paid for most of the printing and
distribution. Sean received a few of these castoff
women, almost as gifts from Tervik.”
“Unbelievable.” I didn’t quite get the
connection, “I know Sean treats women like chattel,
but what’s that got to do with publishing?”
Jack whispered, “A few of the more enterprising
projects may have been sponsored with the
proceeds from the sale of the rubies and diamonds
he swiped or conned from the women he treated.
Now do ya see?”
I did. Jack carried on, “Tervik made big brass
with the books, again by exploiting horribly gullible
people. He would publish dense cheap monographs
and distribute ‘em through postal subscriptions. “
“Never on the Internet?” I asked.
“Oh hell no, that would be impersonal, Tervik
likes the personal touch.”
“So what. I still don’t get it.” I stared down the
tree-lined street looking for Sean. “How did he
make money on those books?”
“The plagiarism in itself, wouldn’t have been so
bad, hwell people plagiarize everyday, but he
charged an arm and a leg for ‘em —fifty Euros and
more—a rip-off pure and simple and he produced at
least five a year.”
“So how many did he print in each run?” I
asked.
“Thousands.” Jack answered quickly almost
clinching his teeth, “Not only did they make money,
a few found their way into normal distribution
channels and one or two received critical acclaim.”
“Now let me guess, success scared the shit out
of Baba Tervik right?”
“Right mate now ya got it.’ Jack’s Celtic face lit
up with a grin. “He just wanted to keep the store
front burning for his other scams that’s all.
Anything big would be too much publicity. You
should a seen him runnin’ when the Manchester
Guardian showed up for an interview.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“Sean showed me a box of Axel’s odd
pamphlets back in Dublin, so I’m vaguely aware of
Tervik’s literary efforts.” I nodded again in typical
Rogerian style. Sean came back to the car
noticeably relieved Jack took up the paper again.
You could cut the tension in the air with a golden
sickle, so I tried to make light of the deal. Sean said
nothing. He knew I was trying to build a sense of
buddy buddy.
Sean often bragged held no political convictions
of any kind—that’s how he survived so long in
Ireland—and neither did Tervik, at least on the
surface, but there was a hint of bigotry just under
his skin and I doubted anybody with hate in their
soul could be enlightened. Anyway Sean was great
at keeping his mouth shut. The IRA would have
screwed him blue long ago if he was political in the
wrong way, and besides the Jesuits and Opus Dei
have always been to the right of Caligula, when it
comes to the Jewish question. So, no matter how it
happened, Sean failed to notice the kinky fascist
theme running through Tervik’s doggerel. In my
estimation Tervik’s pamphlets were thinly disguised
propaganda essays from the Eberhardt sect
peppered with dumbest Psionics clichés and mind
slorp.
Sean continued to defend Tervik as we closed in
on the train depot, “He wasn’t into ripping off an
author’s work for money, and he was trying to keep
his diminishing publishing empire going, that’s all.”
I thought to myself, “Yeah he stole copyrights
like he stole jewels.” Later research yielded a
number of bizarre examples. For instance Tervik
was most proud of a pamphlet he claims to have
written on canine gender changes under the alias:
Monika Camden DAM. Imagine my surprise when I
saw a similar book published by a legitimate
publisher with the real Monika Cad den’s picture en
verso.
Tervik’s bulging catalog included such ditties
as: In Defense of Sacred Matzos, The Fall of New
York, A Modern Babylon, and a cynical antiabortion, anti-birth control epic titled: The Pope’s
Way. He also produced a spiral bound brochure
called: Jesus as Phallus, in what was, ostensibly, his
gay, or at least misogynist, phase. He also released a
pure plagiarism of Ovid in modern dress,
nicknamed “Love Power,” but ironically he stole it
from another plagiarist. The beauty of Ovid is that
even though he has been plagiarized by at least fifty
thousand nitwits over the centuries, the original
narration still shines through, you can still find the
real Ovid in there somewhere.
Sean went on defending Tervik, “One of his
funniest pamphlets received rave reviews in
conservative newspapers. It was another spiral
bound book titled The Portable Hitler, based on
literal quotes from Hitler taken out of context.
Unfortunately Sean had no idea what he was saying.
Fascists often put themselves down to get sympathy
from their own kind. Curiously enough I remember
seeing The Portable Hitler with the papers of Dumb
Dolphin, meaning that Dolphin made some contact
with Tervik or was at least familiar with his books.
That same shipment included an odd little political
tract suing for clemency for the dude who
assassinated the prime minister of Tristan de Cuna.
The title escapes me now, but the thing was edited
by an American expatriate from Amsterdam named
Don Levi who was also published a large format,
sex magazine called SHMUCK.
Side Bar:
Levi was notorious in his own way. As an editor
he sponsored such underground classics as: The
Sodomite Virgin, a pulp production containing very
explicit columns by Hamburg Freddie and Ms.
Shmuck. Sean and Jack knew nothing of this
connection.
At its zenith SHMUCK, I think it was issue
number seven, included the ultimate poster art
treasure, a full nude contortionist pose of the famed
Australian feminist Hermoine Greene who wrote
the Ms. Shmuck columns. This pose caused a
ruckus at Australia House back in London and a
buzz in Manhattan where hundreds of gay women
hung the picture on their walls after it showed up in
clear halftones in the underground paper known as
Free Spaghetti Dinner.
End
So here I was in Bath, driving a mock Daimler
through the Polden Hills glorifying a plagiarist who
breaks up chairs for firewood, hates women, and
lives in an armory strewn with unwashed dinner
plates, recently fired dueling pistols and unemptied
cat boxes. You would think a guy this unhygenic
would be a turnoff to women, but there’s no
accounting for taste. Still, we did manage to score
enough hash to get us to London and I was naturally
eager to hear all the gossip then circulating on the
cosmic circuit.
The Bath to London speed train was late as
usual, something about a cow on the tracks in
Somerton. I decided to wait for the train with Sean,
just to assure him I was happy with his scene. We
grew alienated as soon as I sensed he was an anti-
Semite underneath all of that bluster. The Avonshire
skies threatened rain in large amounts. I could at
least be civil to the man and wait with him, we did,
after all, see Stonehenge and Newgrange together.
As he pulled his stuff from the boot Sean informed
us that he would be taking the train further south to
Babcary and from there take a people mover to
Glastonbury where he would be meeting with some
witches late of his acquaintance. According to Jack
Glastonbury was swarming with witches, red, white
and black and he’d just as soon avoid the place.
Note: Later I heard Jack became a warlock of
his own coven in Limerick. Odd how things go eh?
Sean showed no proclivity for rituals black or
white, in any prior correspondence or conversation,
still you can never tell what lurks deep in deep
people. To this day I’m not sure if he went to
Glastonbury or if he doubled back to hang with
Tervik for a few days. Obviously Jack and I were
not in on whatever it was. We said our goodbyes
with no ceremony. The light beam was the only
bond we had left and that was being stretched to the
limit.
The Daimler cruised on autopilot once we
surfed our way through the winding streets and up
past the construction work on old Box Road. Jack
nodded off. There was a holographic deck in the car
so I fizzled into an old Fleetwood Mac release
featuring Sweet Omega from the early 1970s. The
same laser cartridge featured Silver Heels,
Rhiannon, and Tusk, very soothing, the best of
soothing. Those old Gaelic spirits hummed
themselves into one tiny spot right in the middle of
my head. This was the music my folks listened to
when they were growing up. It must have twanged
my pineal gland. I felt great. Hypnotized.
Whatever happened to Fleetwood Mac anyway?
A dark loneliness came over me during Jack’s
hashed out nod, but I knew he needed his sleep. I
would bed down in comfort at the Redstone this
night, soon to face the dreaded inquisitions of Dame
Bates, but Jack would be rattling off to his next
destination on the antiquated British Rail sleeper.
I drove carefully, listening to the music and
keeping my good eye on the rear view computer
screen and the occasional mega truck rolling by. It
was then that I noticed an abandoned manila
envelope on the shelf behind the rear seat. I tried to
wake Jack, but he was almost in a coma so I
decided to find a quite lay by and take a walkabout
and of course take a peek at the folder. The rain cut
my stroll short, no real leg stretching here, and the
night dark made it difficult to read, but eventually I
managed to analyze the contents of the envelope by
the light of the map light in the car. It was full of
clippings about Tervik, photos and letters that dated
back to about 1870. This guy didn’t look old, but
the assumption you make from this is that Tervik is
about two hundred.
Mesmer
According to this file Tervik, was really the
Great Grandson of Franz Anton Mesmer, the
oddball hypnotist who was expelled from Paris in
1778, or Friedrich the son of Mesmer. True,
Mesmer invented hypnotism, but he also, and
simultaneously, invented Brainwashing. Mesmer
began in Vienna studying, what he called, “Animal
Magnetism,” but he soon began to work miracle
cures on neurotics with psychosomatic illnesses, a
diagnosis which was poorly understood at the time.
Instead of soft-pedaling his techniques, he
claimed his cures were akin to miracles, which
naturally brought the house of Hapsburg down
around him. Born in 1734 to middle class parents
Mesmer left staid old Vienna, at around age 33, for
richer pickings in Paris, but even there his brashness
offended the medical community. Some say he ran
back to Vienna where he supposedly died in
obscurity, others say he studied alchemy and sailed
off for Pennsylvania, which fits Tervik’s origins
rather nicely. So now we are left with the idea that
Tervik is either Mesmer himself, or perhaps a
relative of Mesmer’s seed blended with the peasant
gene pool of the western colonial world.
Tervik’s healing sessions at Bath seem similar
to Mesmer’s Parisian practice. In Paris, sometime
after 1770, Mesmer held hypnotic-healing sessions
called “Baquetts.” On rainy days his clients would
sit around his chateau, one wonders where he got
the chateau, holding lightning rods in their hands
while their feet soaked in large copper pots full of
cold salty rainwater. This fleshy link was connected
to a ground cable stretched to the outside and across
a long roof between dormers. The roof was lead
covered. This human electrical cable promised to
bring up the telluric currents that would eventually
heal any ailment.
What any of this had to do with hypnotism is
beyond me, but I guess Mesmer saw a correlation.
In any case, Mesmer treated—or at least
entertained—any number of dignitaries especially
notable Odd Fellows.
Benjamin Franklin, who was actively recruiting
for Pennsylvania in Paris at the time, may have
discovered his lightning rod at one of these
sessions. Tom Jefferson too may have, at least,
heard about Mesmer’s parties because, at that time,
pseudoscience and true science were often not far
apart.
Unfortunately, as time went on, Mesmer went a
bit too far. After the Declaration of Independence
was signed, the Baquetts seemed to degenerate into
tiled meetings of the Hellfire club, replete with
disrobed ladies exposing their navels so that various
participants could drink wine there from. But
Mesmer’s claim that he had discovered the secret of
immortality hurt him the most. Even in naughty
Paris this was too much and the medical board as
mentioned earlier, expelled Mesmer forthwith.
Now I see why Tervik chose Bath to conduct his
bizarre pratique. Since Bath was traditionally a
town of water cures, I mean the Romans called it
Aqua Sulis for god’s sake; many people believed
that a mere pilgrimage to the town would bring
enlightenment. It follows that Tervik, seeing that
there was no contemporary witch doctor in
residence—unless tea dancing can be seen as a
wonder cure—took up Mesmer’s banner, and began
shrinking heads for fun and profit.
Tervik took advantage of the town’s reputation
for miracle cures by urging his patients to sniff
ether, carbogen, trim ethyl toluene and laughing gas
while soaking their pinkies, so of course there was a
slight shift in consciousness, but this could hardly
be considered enlightenment.
Predictably, many of his customers nearly
bought the farm from creepin’ pneumonia or
electrocution, and a few disappeared under
mysterious circumstances. When any adverse
reaction took place he simply passed it off as a sign
that the toxins were leaving the system. The patients
that showed true signs of morbidity took Riccola
horehound cough drops soaked in a strong
concentration of opium. The hypnotism helped, but
the cough drops helped most, their efficacy
accelerated by even larger sniffs of the ether from a
silk handkerchief. “How Victorian can ya get?” I
asked myself. I had to laugh at the gullibility of
Tervik’s audience, but apparently the wonka tanka
cure worked, although, for some reason, it was most
efficacious to rich middle-aged women.
Tervik’s followers were convinced he could
cure everything from arthritis to elephant tight ass,
but all he did was get them off salt and sugar, and
onto vitamins and DHEA. Waiting for the lightning
strike, soaking the feet in brine and the spanking
routines were completely unnecessary, except as
pleasure to Tervik.
But above all it was the sex that worked the real
cures. Sean, in a note attached to one of the
clippings, mentions that Tervik “Screwed ‘em so
hard they discovered parts of their bodies only
mentioned in anatomy books.” Naturally their pain
went away and, again, according to Tervik himself,
“Most of these women were non-orgasmic before
the treatments and multi-orgasmic after the
treatments.” He claimed he was “defridgidizing”
them.
Tervik felt perfectly at home in the swank
Palladian condos of restored Bath, but his real
habitat was—again according to Jack, who was now
wide awake and leafing through the Sean’s
envelope—the old torture chambers and other kinky
remnants of the Romans in Bath.
If I were to publish a criminal profile of Tervik
it would read: Caucasian male, black hair (dirty
with long pony tail) acne scars and high
cheekbones, Slavic type, slightly overweight and
overbearing…tattoos of skulls and snakes on both
arms to a point just below the elbows. Tervik has an
avowed hatred of the Irish. Believed to be a shot
caller for the Aryan Brotherhood. Suspect is known
to use poison and other insidious lethal measures
and is a high-ranking official of the Psionics cult.
He is also a high colonic werkmeister for the
Eberhardt training regime. Warning! Tervik may be
armed and is definitely dangerous. Approach with
caution.
Jack chuckled and went back to sleep. As I
pulled away I tucked the envelope with the
clippings into my leather case between the seats and
forgot about it, but I could not forget about Tervik.
An hour of blank minded driving went by. The
sky cleared and the halogen nightglow of greater
London painted the horizon. I could taste the brick
dust and smell the heavy metal oxides through the
wet air. The rain came down harder; it was
necessary to switch to the fast blade action. Then,
just as suddenly, the pelting turned to drizzle.
Dozens of dreadnought lorries plugged up the road
while Jack lay low like a tar baby, jus snoozing.’
Waking him wasn’t going to be easy.
“Jack, Hey Jack!”
“Unhunh.”
I rolled his tweed lapel up over his shoulder and
took a jerk. That did the trick. He’s up, not awake,
but up.
“What a ya want?”
“I need to know about the note.”
“Wha note? Firs it’s file now it’s note. Can’t cha
leev a body sleep mate?”
“Jack, please man, this is some serious shit, and
it’s the note I found on my windshield back at
Tervik’s.”
“OK, let me see it.”
At last I won about sixty percent of his attention
that might be enough. Jack was a smallish guy, but
he could put away huge glasses of porter and he was
the only guy I ever met who could eat hash and not
get wired. Jack looked the note over, looked at the
penmanship, smelled the paper and said, “Yeah, so
what?”
“So what?” Jack looked at me with a sheepish
face.
“So what! I’m scared shitless by that note
mate.”
Jack continued to look dumb, “Who’s this
Dolphin bloke?”
That’s when I finally zoomed in on reality. Sean
and Jack were on my case for months to loosen up.
They said I was like a dim bulb ready to supernova
right there in my very own socket. They were right.
I didn’t want to bother them with my suspicions
about Excalibur. They wouldn’t have believed me
anyway and their lightbeam research was about
twenty times more exciting than hang gliding down
Half Dome at Yosemite. The note meant very little
to Jack because he didn’t know who the hell
Dolphin was. He volunteered an explanation
anyway.
“Obviously Axel wrote the note and
commanded his dildo bearer, you know the woman
who served the tea, to paste it on your windscreen
or whatever.”
“Windshield ya dummy.”
“Yeah the windshield. Anyway, that might
explain some of it. Maybe he wanted to discourage
you from snooping into his affairs. Maybe you
threaten him. I noticed you two didn’t talk much.”
Jack looked again at the rumpled note written on
the bluish paper. “Yup, I’ve seen that handwriting
before. I think it was his butler Timeon. I heard him
slink out for a moment when we were upstairs—a
definite wrong bloke that Timeon.”
I nodded in agreement. “E ‘as a massive gun
collection in his reception hall, saw it once last year.
It’s awl most like he isn’t the butler at all.”
“Yeah, I saw that too as we were leaving. That
explains the chills I was getting, like something
from a snuff movie only real. And Timeon is in on
all the scams with him, I presume?”
“O course.” Jack seemed jittery, “I think they’re
lovers too, weird hunh?”
“A regular succubus, I’d say.”
“The bloke’s a classic psychopath, not a simple
asocial type, but a real ‘ard to capture psychopath.
He’s glib and icy like he’s on cocaine all da time.”
Jack surprised me with his knowledge of clinical
matters.
“I’ll bet he’s doing ‘syncoke,’ but I know what
you mean.” I reassured Jack.
“Nah mate, dis coke was real. I partied with him
last year before I found out how evil he was, Tervik
crashed out early, but ol Timmy jus rolls on all
night. Underneath the coke there’s this mask of
sanity. The two a dem seems sane, but they’s real
shape shifters, especially Tim. I should warn ya
though.”
He took my attention away from traffic. “What
do you mean warn me’?
“Well,” Jack hesitated, “Ya see mate these guys
are hooked up to an underworld apparatus
extending to North America from Maastricht in
Holland and beyond.”
“You mean they have connections in Moscow
too?”
“Oh sure, anywhere you can pawn a diamond
that’s where they’ll be.”
I gripped the wheel a little harder. “Look,
Jack… why don’t you tell me what you got me into
back there at Tervik’s pad?”
“OK, OK I will, but don’t say I didn’t warn ya.”
Jack hemmed and hawed a bit then said, “First off
ya guts to realize that the house he has in Bath is
only one of his places. Tervik smuggles furniture
and dope and does a few jewelry jobs just to spice
things up, in fact he smuggles dope in the jewelry,
and in fact the dope is the jewelry. I mean, it’s so
obvious, the guys got a money laundering scam
cookin’.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, he makes cocaine look like diamonds
and then pays duty on the stones. Clever eh?”
Jack was finally spilling his soul to me. I was
being initiated into the Tervik cult. I had a feelin’ I
wouldn’t be impressed, but I had to extract the data.
“So, he’s a regular Europa Express eh? What about
the healing sessions and the ladies who suck
laughing gas with their feet soaking in ice filled
copper pots.”
“Oh that, it’s just a front for him. I think you
Yanks call it ‘a kick-in-the pants.' Actually, he runs
a global scavenger service. He removes your
unwanted jewelry and recycles it into sleazy
designer drugs, you know the ones with a tendency
to turn your brain into fermented billboard paste.”
I wanted more; “You mean the dope recycles
itself into monetary units of various kinds?”
“Yeah, more or less. He just does the Baquetts
for publicity and to get babes. The money he
charges for those sessions wouldn’t cover ten
percent of his nut.” It’s laughing gas to him.
Jack, fully awake now, went on to describe
Tervik as a dark magician in white robes, a
manipulator who twists the anxiety, harbored in the
heart of every neurotic, “He seems like a real
energy vampire.”
Jack nodded in agreement as the traffic began to
move after a long stall, “Unfortunately Tervik never
learned how ta think. He may seem like an
intellectual, but the real brains, like you mate, ‘ave
him spotted. He wants power, but he hasn’t got the
wits and charm. He ‘urts a lotta nice folks on way.”
Jack opened up further, “I really ‘ave ta tell ya,
mate I’m damn happy Sean’s on the magnet to
Babcary. If he had stayed behind he might have
come a foul of Timeon.”
I was thinking of every negative possibility
now. “Who’s to say he isn’t going to just double
back and hang with Tervik and Timeon. You know
we didn’t see him board the Maglev did we?”
Jack sat stunned for a minute as the London rain
started again. “Hmmm, you may be right Canyon,
you may be raaght.” Jack then fell silent.
I felt a faint stirring, an ugly intuition. “Why do
I get the impression that this Timmy cat is an
antique dealer by day, but puts on satanic rituals in
the shrubbery around Glastonbury by night?”
“Goor, that’s who Sean was probably gonna
visit. Mainly because there’s always well-lubricated
and beautiful babes around his place. Sean don’t
like the middle class ones, that’s Tervik’s territory,
but Tim has his own place in Glastonbury.”
“How did you know?” I replied.
“I think I saw a calling card in one of Tervik’s
castaway books. Tervik uses ‘em for bookmarks.”
Imp says, “So he went to Penn State, big deal.”
We drifted into silence as the carbs sucked
blissful rain.
May Day
The bluish note placed on the Daimler
windscreen setoff tingle bells in my aging
diencephalon. The script seemed familiar. I thought
maybe I had seen it gracing a letter in the big box
from Helena. Could I be retracing Dolphin’s steps?
The tingles grew louder by the minute. I ripped the
note in quarters and tossed the fragments to the
Hampshire dales as Jack’s snoring edged in and out
of consciousness. I hoped the mere tossing of the
paper would keep the witches and their spells at
bay, but hope was scarce in these parts. Witches
were no longer nature worshippers, the sibyls of
jolly old England were now hi-tech and had grown
into a cult of self-centered poisoners, bent on riding
chaos to it’s final destination.
My personal life was still a soup of many
floating parts, but it was at least thickening. Dumb
Dolphin may be alive—who knows, stranger things
have happened, and Tervik knew Dolphin or at least
knew of him, but how did he know I was into Dumb
Dolphin? How did Tervik, Timeon or any of his
cronies, know Dumb Dolphin at all? I hadn’t
discussed the case with Jack until five minutes ago.
Maybe Sean told Tervik some off-the-wall story.
What is more important why leave me a note unless
it was to impress me with his all pervasive
knowledge? Parlor tricks don’t impress me.
Jack stopped his snoring and gestured at me
from the wrong side of the car: “We’ll?”
“We’ll what?”
“Well ooh da heawl is dis ear Dolfin character?”
“God, I must have been thinking with my mouth
engaged. “Oh, never mind, a code word, I guess.”
I went into my driving trance and conjured up
another dream woman. I was so deep into the vision
I almost missed the Ring Road for London.
London traffic now spent most of its time in a
post monarchical state of confusion. Broken bricks,
white and yellow flashing lights, hanging
gloom—all of it encroaching ever tighter around the
car. I took off my gloves and took a two handed
grip on the posh steering wheel.
London, once known as Lud’s Gate, doesn’t hit
you in the face like Paris. You sleaze into it. The
traffic gets thicker, but you can’t say you’re actually
in London until you traverse the Hammersmith
flyover. That’s when you must start looking for
street names.
Jack pipes up, “Ya wanna get to Chelsea,
Shepherds Buuuuush.” He yawned and stretched his
arms out so far I could hear his elbows cracking.
“You cun slow down and take a shortcut through
the back of Portobello Road market, or shoot for
Hyde Park, I wanna’ go to Victoria Station.”
I tried to put on a cockney accent, “Oh where’s
ya goin?”
Jack looked at me in disgust, “I toll ya ounce
already—Brighton. I’m going doun ta see me mum,
ant ta do a spot of wick dippin’ and some
gambling,’ they got a right nice casino in
Bryjton—Oh wait there’s the turn for Victoria.”
Victoria station hasn’t changed since Albert
Hapsburg passed on dressed as King Arthur in full
armor. The brick is sandblasted once each century
and the wrought iron filigree is constantly painted
with a black epoxy. Little pits appear in the bricks
were the sandblasters got carried away. New trains,
old tracks, lots of bad train wrecks over the years.
It’s nine on a bleak night and Jack has a date with a
pair of dice. He’ll sleep on the train then head for a
casino. I drop him off and we make a pact to meet
up again in Ireland, probably for Samhain or at least
Winter Solstice.
Double-parking the Daimler is OK. Jack got out
in the rain. He carried his one small bag in a
carefree manner. “See ya mate.”
The last thing he said to me was: “Good luck
with Dame Bates.” I replied, “Thanks, I’ll need it.”
I tipped my hat to him in cockney fashion as he
blended with the incoming commute crowds, the
people leaving the city late and the Friday night
revelers, hoping to catch a free show on the West
End or just get drunk in a friendly pub, arriving in
diminishing numbers. An empty feeling came over
me. I sensed I would never see Jack again. The
memory of watching the lightbeam come in at
Newgrange was all that would remain of him.
I was now lost in London, stopping to look at an
old AZ map every three blocks or so, but eventually
I got my bearings and made my way around Hyde
Park. One of my map stops turned to an assessment
of the immediate past. It’s still hard to believe how
fast it flashed by. My diary shows less than a year
and a half elapsing since O’Bannon met me at the
Dublin airport, but it seemed like two decades.
Now for my nights lodging. It takes me a day
after hangin’ out with “the boys” to dust off and put
on the ‘real me’ game face. To do this properly I
need a dreeky elegant kind of hotel. The Great
Redstone would do admirably.
22:00 hours Green Witch
Ahh yes, just the thing—the Redstone Rococo,
near the British Museum and Bedford Square, a
Victorian relic, like the Iroquois in New York. The
patina, laid on by years of abuse, covered a former
elegance. I often staid here as a student. It has
changed administrations many times, but no matter
how many times it changes hands this old pile
retains the phantoms of the poets and painters who
once did their mental gymnastics here. I was at
home, sort of, at last.
I stay at the Redstone because I have the
surrounding zone memorized from my student days
at the University. Call it nostalgia. I know all the
shops. I know where the post office is. I know when
people bring their dogs to the park in Russell
Square. I even know the owner of the Vibromat
laundry by his first name. Besides, Lenin and James
Joyce and Freud, and Michael Collins, all stayed at
the Redstone. The reputation of the Bloomsbury
Round Table, in the Redstone, is almost two
centuries old, hardly anybody remembers them. The
ghosts of the participants seem happy to be
forgotten, especially the spirit of Virginia Woolf.
Furthermore the place is famous with the 21st
century crowd because Cats, the 1980s musical, has
a cat going to heaven from the roof of the place,
probably because T. S. Elliot wrote the original
poems, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats in the
lounge there and maybe part of Murder In The
Cathedral. It’s the only traditional grand hotel
within two blocks of the British Museum, The
Warburg Institute, and the Architectural
Association, all places I need to visit to get my
literary fix for the year.
The steep front steps lead past the dusty
escallops to a smallish lobby, designed to herd the
traveler toward the grand travertine stairwell. This
Romanesque clone carries on into a mezzanine
featuring three large function rooms, each with
heavily worn carpets.
I tried to check in, but there were no cheap
rooms available. Soon a few cancellations would
come in and I’d get bedded down on standby. The
Redstone featured two bars, one boisterous and
smelly the other elegant and quiet. The quiet pub,
called the Walnut Room, seemed ideal for my
present state of mind so I shuffled in. It was full of
ghostly quiet, just peaceful enough to have a decent
meditation and a glass of drawn porter without
being dragooned by the boys in the little white truck
with no door handles on the inside.
The green leather and mirror lined bar was
empty except for the barmaid. I ordered a glass of
‘Tomba Juice,’ a very expensive concoction made
with equal parts of Vodka—Galliano and Triple
Sec. It tasted, more or less, real as I wolfed it down
and sagged in to a booth to wait for the desk clerk.
I sat there and melted, but the worries about the
note and Dolphin didn’t fade much. My mind,
usually light and airy, played host to shadows now.
I was cool. But if Jack says Tervik and his gang are
into satanic rituals and big time drug smuggling,
then what the heck, maybe the willies are justified.
My room call came about 22:30. “Mr. Collins your
suite is ready.”
“But I didn’t order a suite.”
The bell captain waxed elegant, “Well we know
sir, bein’ as the management has no singles ready,
you would be entitled to an upgrade, now wouldn’t
you?”
My eyes lit up, “How much of an upgrade, no
point in blowing Euros?”
The nautically clad captain, a tall obsequious
grebe, replete with epaulets, seemed perturbed at
my yank manners, “The full single rate of course
sir.”
“Yeah, I’ll take it.”
The sleep fairy spent most of her time twisting
my neck hairs. I do remember going up stairs,
taking a rickety elevator, popping open the little
fridge, eating a packet of Jimmy Carter’s Plantation
peanuts while watching the late edition of
International Desk. What do you think was at the
top of the news?
Excalibur zaps again!
This time it zapped a medical courier with
special medicine for a liberal big wig in France.
My bags, including the digicam, palm sized
fiche reader and the omnicorder, arrived from the
car. I tipped the deliveryman 2 ECU hit the bed and
blacked out. Well, not exactly. I nodded off to a
fitful sleep.
At dawn a bright red fire truck screeched to a
halt in a blue flame right at the foot of my bed. I
woke up sweating. All I could say was:
“By God... the son-of-a-bitch
is
Alive !”
Elvis Fulcanelli
David Dolphin, not so dumb and definitely not
dead, made his way past the postcard vendors,
stamp traders and small livre du pooche stands
lining the Seine.
His loneliness brought him to haunting the
esoteric and occult bookshops lining the Rue de
Paridis.
Dolphin made a habit of narrating his life with
his inner voice, listening to himself think as he
walked. If a great idea struck him he would stop,
lean against a wall and write it down in one of his
notebooks.
Today Dolphin thought about getting a dog.
Finally he would give in to his loneliness. First he
would go to the book shops, browse for an hour or
two and then set out on his quest for a canine
companion, something he has wanted to do since he
was a child. He thought perhaps he would locate a
Bouvier des Flandres and name her Sirius.
Bouvier’s were now in vogue in Paris were dogs
have traditionally been treated like citizens. Last
week he saw a picture of a Bouvier in a fashion
magazine with the title, Etoile de Bouvier, a black
dog standing next to a black Ferrari electric with a
gold star on the hood. An Algerian model wearing
the latest black and red fashions from Moscow
drove the Ferrari.
Later that evening he would tread on his way to
his usual coffee house. The same coffee house
denizens who told him about the gray markets told
him that the windows of the cathedrals held
medieval alchemical codes, the keys to the secrets
of the universe. He muttered to himself as he
walked, his pace quickening, “Could this be true?”
Dolphin took residence in Paris almost
immediately after his disappearance. His atelier in
the Hotel Du Suede, in the embassy district, was
adequate and inexpensive. He was living on money
stashed offshore in the Bahamas. The bank sent him
a small draft every month and he earned extra
money by translating science articles for the
Thompson and Siemens electronics conglomerate.
Frugality was essential for most people in Paris
after Excalibur, but thrift, to Dolphin, was a matter
of life and death. He spent little and managed,
through no purposeful action other than common
sense, to accumulate a sizable position in equities.
The money gave him some security, but he was
becoming a celibate loner.
He loved the way the city spread out like a giant
wheel, radiating from the spiral surrounding the Arc
de Triomphe. He mentioned the million views and
scenes in his diaries. To Dolphin, living in Paris
was like walking inside a kaleidoscope. He also
loved it because great fame and history exude from
every brick and yet you can lose yourself in a sea of
faces as you stroll the streets. Beckett lived in
perfect anonymity. Some say Balzac, who reached
entropy on an overdose of Turkish coffee, was alive
and working as a butcher in Montparnasse, and
Sartre, well he still bumblebees around the cafes.
May 1 was a special day for Dolphin because on
that day he was to meet Fulcanelli, the legendary
alchemist. Rumors circulated that Fulcanelli was
over three hundred years of age and that somehow
he managed to decipher the powder of immortality
from ancient alchemical texts. Dolphin didn’t
believe this, but he accepted the idea that if
someone was, even potentially, three hundred years
of age he would, by nature, be of good council
toward those treading the path of rebirth. Even a nut
case who thought he was three hundred would be of
some help. His solitude was wearing thin.
Dolphin mumbled to himself as he paced across
the Pont Neuf. What if this Fulcanelli really was
three hundred? He must have made new friends
dozens of times over the centuries. When your
original friends die off you have to start afresh with
a younger crowd so when the old ones get worn out
you can blend in with the young ones gradually.
The natal ego shell would be of little value to a
person who changed identities every twenty years.
He imagined living as an immortal in Paris. It
must be like joining a cosmopolitan branch of the
French Foreign Legion, you are almost in the army
but you live and work anonymously. You attract a
mystique. People begin to whisper that you hold
dark secrets and come from a shadowy past. That’s
when you have to move on.
Dolphin was not seeking immortality he was
seeking confirmation or denial of Fulcanelli’s
insight about the cathedrals. Fulcanelli agreed to
meet him, at six o’clock sharp, at a marble topped
table inside La Cupole. He would be recognizable
by his pinch-nez glasses, his paisley cape and his
black felt fedora.
Dolphin seated himself near the brass and
crystal doors of the famed bistro. In this way he
could scrutinize everyone.
The stranger arrived at 6:00 PM promptly. He
sported a full head of wiry, carrot red, hair neatly
combed so that his bright green eyes held sway in a
full arc. Dolphin assumed he was of Celtic or Norse
extraction, although his name hinted at an Italian
root somewhere in the past. Only months later did
Dolphin discovered that Fulcanelli was Basque, a
pure Cro-Magnon.
The master greeted Dolphin by his first name
saying: “David? Are you David Dolphin?”
The salutation disarmed Dolphin, “Uh yes I
am.”
“Good, let us order a Turkish coffee and a
brandy before we get too deeply into things shall
we?”
The two men were escorted to the center of the
cafe by monsieur Dagobert, who personally
removed Fulcanelli’s cape and fedora, gloves and
cane, without a word. David found out later that
Dagobert was the owner of the establishment.
Fulcanelli took his place on the velvet lined
marble bench, one of a hundred that line the famed
restaurant. Dolphin observed the man’s face closely.
He was obviously proud of his complexion and skin
tone. Dolphin assessed him to be about fifty years
of age, sixty at the most
He spoke in fluent and unaccented mid-Atlantic
English, punctuated by small French axiomatic
phrases. If not for his attire this smallish man with
the gentle eyes, could have been from Wayzata,
Minnesota. “Do you wish to speak with me?”
“Yes, yes, I would like to talk, I’ve heard so
much about you.” The stranger extended his hand in
a gesture of greeting, but instead of a traditional
handclasp he placed his first and middle fingers on
Dolphin’s wrist, almost like the fangs of a snake,
and pressed down as they shook hands. Dolphin
was expecting a brittle and mummified handshake,
but instead he felt the vital energy of a very young
man clasping his arm. Dolphin suspected the
handshake might have been a secret sign, a greeting
known only to initiates. Finally he was in the
presence of an authentic master adept and Dolphin
needed answers. Does the Philosopher’s Stone
exist? Is immortality possible? What role do the
Cathedrals play? Fortunately, for his pride, he never
got a chance to blurt out any of these rhetorical and
sophomoric probes. Fulcanelli turned quickly to
matters of nutrition; the first lesson began on an
earthly plane.
“How about a little bite to eat?”
Dolphin hated food from his speed days in San
Francisco so he just shrugged his shoulders and
nodded affirmatively.
Fulcanelli ordered salad epinard and steak tartar
for two—maybe this was his secret.
“Now about this question you have to ask, can
you not find information in the bibliotheca?”
“No, this is my own theory about what is
happening right now.” Fulcanelli was curious about
David’s current situation, how he came to disappear
and why. It was as if he was the healer of lost souls,
the special fixit man for fugitives from time. His
voice was soporific, droning. He could hardly be
heard above the increasing din and singsong that
typify the cafes in Montmarte, yet his voice came
through brightly. Deep down Dolphin could tell this
guy really cared. He could see weariness in
Fulcanelli’s eyes, but in the next moment he could
see wisdom beyond age, as if the master was able to
read knowledge written in the clouds.
The waiter was taking his time and the cafe was
filling up with boulevardiers and their dates. The
small man, presumed to be Fulcanelli, began to
speak. “I can tell you everything and nothing, you
may believe me or not, but I assure you no one
beyond a very small circle will understand even a
single word of what I am about to say. You need not
keep silent. I’ve read dozens of books that exhort
the alchemist to keep secrets, but there are no
secrets.”
Dolphin asked, “Why not?”
“Nobody will believe you under any
circumstances. If you wish you can shout these
things at the top of your lungs in a crowded theater.
You will only be embarrassed or possibly even
dragged away in a straightjacket. In the days when
the church dominated the world we maintained a
strict code of silence, but things are worse now.
Now people really don’t care and the rest do not
understand. This numbness of the soul is the real
social cancer we inherited from the old CapitalistMarxist dialogue. Neither of those systems worked
to propagate Democracy, only the alchemists see
the real nature of democracy. It is unnecessary to
swear anyone to secrecy. Do you understand?”
“Oh Yes, yes, I believe I’ve had that experience
already.” Dolphin looked stunned.
“Good, now before you ask me any questions let
us cover some basics, perhaps I can anticipate some
of your concerns.”
Monsieur Dagobert arrived with the spinach
salad adorned with almonds and croutons, capers
and anchovies. A young waiter served two cruets of
oil, one red, and one white. The red oil was an
extract of ripe Cabernet seeds and saffron. The
white oil was a pure extract of parsley and walnut
oils, scented with tarragon and basil. The smells
were aromatic beyond the pages of any cookbook.
The young waiter seemed to know Fulcanelli and
treated him with great respect.
Fulcanelli ate heartily after applying both oils to
the salad. Dolphin asked the inevitable question:
“Are you Fulcanelli?”
The answer came back quickly, “You may call
me that if you wish. I have many names. What do
you think of your salad?”
“Oh it’s fine, very fine, which oil shall I use?”
“That depends on how you feel. If you feel
jocular use the red. If you feel sorrowful or
meditative use the white…” He munched his way
through the salad as he spoke, “… or use both and
see what happens.”
Dolphin nodded, as he tasted the bittersweet oil
of the walnuts. The mysterious gentleman went on,
“You must be cognizant of your destiny from the
time you are a small child. You may not simply
disappear on a whim. It has to be something that has
been gnawing at you for many seasons and you
have to work on your strategy over a very long
period. We have many obstacles to clear before you
can even consider approaching the entrance to our
cave.”
Dolphin knew about the cave of the alchemists.
His heart raced as Fulcanelli went on. “First you
must be endowed with the natural memory of the
world and you must be intimate with the entire
memory of mankind, not simply the number of your
social insurance card or the names of your friends
or a few facts about your trade, but the entire
memory of the human race. You must be assured
that such a memory does exist and that you can
access it. Then you must strive to find it and use it.
Have you done that?” Dolphin could hardly answer.
The other humans in the restaurant faded. The
salad made no sense, hunger was in abeyance, but
Fulcanelli went right on munching. Dolphin noted
that his teeth were almost perfect. Not the teeth of a
three hundred year old man. Dolphin stuttered out
the inevitable, “err ah, no! No, I have not had that
experience.”
“Well you will, you will.” Fulcanelli buttered
his toast as he continued. “Next you must have
compassion, as in Christianity and Buddhism, but a
compassion of the mind as well as the heart. The
key to the alchemical transformation is democracy
and the very soul of democracy is compassion.”
Dolphin agreed as he sipped his mineral water.
“To have the amount of compassion you will
need you must be fortunate enough to have loving
parents who have provided you with an unbroken
home. This is as true in China as it is in New York.
The broken home is the most piteous of conditions,
the downfall of many who would be alchemists. Do
you understand?”
Dolphin nodded in silence.
“You must come from a place of harmony so
that you can identify harmony when you see it, so
that you can lead others to a place of harmony when
you have the chance. If you can do this you will
always have a home, a roof, a dwelling and the
support of friends. Without it you will fail, even
before you begin. Do you come from such a
family?” The man stared at Dolphin as if to extract
the truth at any cost.
Dolphin knew the conversation would cease if
he could not meet the criteria, however strange it
seemed. “Yes, my parents were good to me. I can’t
say they were great intellectuals, but they were
never cruel and they are still alive, still together and
living on the same small farm.”
Fulcanelli, relaxed his stare, “Yes, we know, it
is located in Sonoma California, the name means,
‘solar body’ it is an anagram.”
A long silence bristled around the table.
“David, you must finish your salad or the waiter
will not bring us the next course.”
David looked up from his untouched food.
“…I won’t go on unless you promise to finish
your meal.” The master chided.
“Uh oh yes, I’m listening so intently I forgot all
about food.”
“Nonsense boy you must eat, can you not digest
the aroma of the herbs and oils? That is the nature
of alchemy, to take in the very essence of
everything without striving for it.”
Dolphin crunched on a salty anchovy and
washed it down with spa water. Fulcanelli began
again. “Thirdly, you must have the elasticity of
body and mind sufficient to sustain the long
journey, not the strength of iron, but the nobility of
gold and the flux of silver. By the same token you
cannot abuse your liver, your eyes, your skin, your
heart, lungs or any other organs. Your capillaries
are of special importance as they are the seats of the
alchemical system. It is through the walls of the
capillaries that the soul energy transfers to and from
the living core. To preserve these structures you
must use the philosopher’s zinc and gold in a
tincture or procaine and boric acid. The gold
replaces the DHEA. I shall give you the proportions
as we progress.”
Dolphin could hardly keep up. He sat
astonished; “You mean I could study further with
you at some future date?”
Fulcanelli winked at him, “Oh you may, if you
wish, you will meet others too, but you must take
care of yourself. The metamorphosis is a shock to
the system; it can shatter the mind of the ill
prepared and prove fatal to the body of the
uninitiated. If you survive the shock of the
transition—and the loneliness that comes with
enlightenment—you will improve in stages.
Nothing in our craft happens suddenly. The
alchemical process works in stages just as the
original alchemists have implied, but although the
preparation of the Philosopher’s Egg is done with
ores and powders, and fragments of vegetable
matter, so you must evolve through nine internal
stages. The method I suggest here will strip away
your skin. You will also lose layers of egoism and
prejudice you didn’t know you possessed. Then,
and only then, will you develop an alchemical
mind."
“I doubt I can do that. It seems I am always of
two minds. I guess I’ve learned to see rationalism
and irrationality at the same time.”
“Ha, that’s a great laugh, if you were not in that
conflict I would not be here. Worry puts you at the
threshold of enlightenment. But please notice I said
‘threshold, he pointed a finger and made a hand
gesture that suggested climbing in stages, once you
have a clear mind you are only at the beginning, but
you can’t get this clear mind by joining a secret
society or Psionics. In Asia the Buddhists know that
a clear mind is the ultimate goal, but yogis who
meditate along the path of Patanjali know a clear
mind is only the source of the river, where the
glacier melts into water to form the holy river.
Beyond that the human mind can perform miracles
only dreamt of by the uninitiated.”
“Why do you tell me these things?”
“We have known of you since your ordeal on
the mountain in South Dakota. You have been in
Paris for almost five years. My spies knew who you
were two days after you took the first atelier on Rue
Evec in Cliché. I also know you currently live in the
Hotel du’ Suede and that you are a celibate. Paris is
a small town you see. It is large, but unlimited in
spirit and communication. I assure you I would not
be here if you were not the right man for the job.”
“What job?”
“Oh, we will come to that shortly, but I assure
you it won’t be easy, it will be painful and yet you
must endure. If need be you must develop the use of
three minds or five or seven, like the ancient Celts,
and, to do this job you must learn to develop many
personalities without losing track of them. If you
lose track of yourself you will be reduced to
hysteria, but if you can control the masques you will
be all things to all people. Alchemy, you see, is
doing the opposite of the expected. You will
eventually parade your cast of characters to suit the
occasion and you must always see the irrational and
the rational simultaneously, but all the masques
must be compassionate.”
Dolphin’s mind was rushing ahead. “Isn’t that
dangerous? Doesn’t the human mind fail when put
in such a forceful conflict?”
“Yes, it often does, but if you prevail—if your
mind can perform the supreme juggling act—you
will evolve to a plateau higher than anyone on
earth.”
The waiter arrived with the next course. Dolphin
sat watching in amazement as Fulcanelli attacked
his ground steak topped with a raw egg and capers.
“How do you like your steak, the master asked,
waving his fork for punctuation.
“Oh, I haven’t begun yet. What exactly is it?”
The old mans eyes brightened, “Ahha. It is the
chopped sirloin tips of an Andelusian bull served
raw. “The bull was tenderized by massage while he
is fattened on pure meadow oats and barley.”
“That’s fabulous.”
“Yes, and I am told this particular bull sired
over two hundred bullocks and heifers after he
earned his freedom by surviving in the ring. You
have before you one of the most wonderful forms of
protein in the world.”
“What do you mean, freedom? The bull was
slaughtered wasn’t he?”
Fulcanelli laughed “Yes, he was slaughtered,
but he died of boredom, just dropped dead one day.
That’s what happens to bulls. “Oh this is a secret
remedy for melancholia my son. Alchemists are
rarely vegans. Eat and I will tell you more.”
Dolphin took the first bite. The meat was soft
and cold, and of excellent flavor. The master
explained that this particular bull retired with honor.
He was so fierce the crowed roared and stomped
their feet to insist upon his freedom. “It doesn’t
happen often, but monsieur Dagobert knows where
to acquire such delicacies. One cannot have steak
Tar Tar in America because your cattle are too fat
and the fat retains poisons which pass into the
human brain and pancreas. This is why most
Americans are almost as stupid as the cows.”
Dolphin ate more of the meat. Steak tar tar was
obviously an acquired taste. Fulcanelli went on with
his narration. “Another medicine is made from the
colostrum or ‘beste’ of nursing cows. You simply
drink the first milk from a cow who has calved the
night previous and you can be cured of many ills. It
works well for both men and women.
Dolphin replied, “I’ve never heard of that.”
“Obviously there is much you haven’t heard.
You will soon discover that the natural eye, the eye
of truth, this good eye is separate from the eye of
loathing and envy. It controls your hormones and
the hormones control your balance. If you chart the
course of your life, in the manner I suggest to you,
you will grow beyond pain because you will
eventually give up the wrongful eye. You need do
nothing else but follow the principles of the adepts.
Soon you will fade into anonymity and people who
remember you will say you disappeared, but with
each disappearance you will be able to heal more
sickness.”
“I think I’ve already begun that process. I don’t
miss San Francisco or America.”
“Good, you are now a citizen of the world. You
must follow the creed of the original Knights
Templars. He looked in both directions before he
said anything more. “You must memorize the
phrase I am about to give you.”
Fulcanelli continued to savor the Andelusian
delicacy. Dolphin took a pen out of his pocket and
began to write on a paper napkin. The teacher
stopped him. “No, no you cannot write it down you
must commit it to memory and hold it next to your
soul. It contains the secret of secrets. Dolphin put
down the biro as the master whispered: Never ask
me from whence I came for I could not answer and
would be forced to move on.
A normal tone resumed as he spoke, “You must
cease to seek a guru, mentor or a surrogate parent.
The alchemist must not carry such baggage. You
must learn that to arrive at the threshold of alchemy
you must already be more enlightened than any
mentor. The very thought of entering the fraternity
of the alchemists makes you either spiritually
advanced or quite mad.”
Dolphin felt honored to be talking to the most
advanced alchemist in Paris, a city full of
alchemists, but he felt compelled to ask another
question. “Is it a fraternity? Are there others like
myself?”
Fulcanelli’s eyes sparkled. He replied quickly.
“Yes, ours is an ancient fraternity, more like a
family if you prefer. Our family, although small,
has, due to circumstances of arresting the aging
process, become extended beyond the normal
definition of family. We think of our fellow humans
as our children and you must learn to do the same,
unless you wish to return to the mortal path.
Children you see, require succor and since everyone
is the child of our particular family, we have an
awesome responsibility to provide for them all. We
simply can’t breed in the normal genetic sense. To
compensate us for the loss of our genetic children
we arrange to make matches to assure that children
of both genders will be born with certain gifts.
Dolphin asked for a further definition, “Gifts.”
“What exactly do you mean by giftedness?”
The alchemist obliged, “The worst catastrophe
occurs when a gifted child is abused. The abuse of
innocence is always tragic, but when a gifted child
is abused chaos reigns. This is the work of the black
practitioner, the avowed enemy of our fraternity.
You see, when a potential adept is abused the entire
human race loses ground. Then not only does that
child go wrong, not only is he or she a failure, a
missed opportunity, but as history has proven by
hundreds of despots from Caligula to Hitler, their
gift can be perverted and used for destruction or
worse simply removed from use so that mediocrity
will prevail over excellence. This we must work
against. It is the mission of the true alchemist.
Every gifted child may someday be one of us. It is
very critical. Immortality, to the alchemist is not the
immortality of the somatic body. The success of our
mission reflects our immortality. We must remain
celibate and yet make sure that a sufficient number
remain to continue the work. This we do by
adoption.
“Dolphin hesitated to ask, “How large is your
fraternity?”
The answer came back quickly, “I am sure of
about nine hundred and ninetynine, some say there
are thousands more in Australasia, Tibet and Africa.
I have achieved a small amount of publicity only
because I’ve inherited much of old Europe as my
territory. You might think of me as a traveling
salesman.”
With that Fulcanelli laughed loudly. Dolphin’s
questions grew bolder. “Do you have a line of
succession?”
“Oh yes, although it’s not well defined as is a
monarchy. Our line isn’t based on genetics. We are
not biblical scholars. We do not arise from the
Orient and yet, if you prefer biblical explanations,
we are of the line of Melchisidek and we trace
ourselves to Nicodemus, but I assure you we are not
Christian any more than Christ was Christian and
we are not strict practitioners of Islam or Judaism. If
you need to trace our praxis to a single point in time
you will find it with the bronze smelters of ancient
Switzerland or Wales and yet the religious elements
come from the ancient mound builders of the
Atlantic and from the cave painters. Actually the
cave artisans were the first real alchemists, they
worked with natural earth and pigments to achieve
astonishing effects that have lasted more than four
thousand years.”
Dolphin knew something of the cave at
Altamira and Lascaux as he had visited there last
spring. “You mean like the paintings of Lascaux?”
“Yes, but you should not misunderstand.
Although shamanism is the basis for all alchemy,
it’s not the final form and although our home is a
cave, it’s not the painted cave. Actually our cave is
the human body, what the Greeks called soma, and
for this reason each alchemist takes a variant of the
word soma for his or her name. Some are named
Amos. One of my names is Mosa and I’ve met
many named Asom. A master named Omas passed
this secret on to me. To demonstrate the nature of
the soul he went out of his body in the form of a
black dove. Four of us witnessed it near the city of
Albi not more than seventy years ago. He was under
no physical obligation to leave his body, but he
chose to do so to prove to us that it could be done at
will. A light beam penetrated his body on the exact
moment of Winter Solstice and he just disappeared.
Transcendence at will is a common practice in
Alchemy and is one of the great secrets.”
Dolphin gaped in astonishment, “Surly, this was
an illusion?”
“Yes, probably, even I cannot believe all that
I’ve seen. But your mission will soon present itself
to you. Right now the object of my life is to meet as
many members of our family as possible. For you
the experience of the alchemist will be different.”
He spoke as if he knew what would happen.
Fulcanelli made no mention of Excalibur,
something very much on everyone’s lips. So
Dolphin probed further, “What do you think of
Excalibur?”
The master’s voice grew woeful, “I glad you
mentioned it first. We fear Excalibur above all
things because it kills slowly.”
Dolphin lost his appetite as the master
continued. “World War I gave us Mustard Gas, but
World war II gave us a vast arsenal of horror
weapons including advanced chemical and nuclear
devices. By the end of the twentieth century the
human race managed to develop enough equipment
to blow itself off the planet. Excalibur is an
extension of those kinds of terrors, a mechanical
plague launched by demented people who seek to
control human destiny.”
“Can we reverse the effects of these weapons?”
Dolphin asked.“It sounds hopeless.”
“No, not hopeless merely absurd. People think it
would be impossible to hand a religious ritual like
alchemy down from the Ice Ages, but when we see
that the entire span is less than one hundred
thousand average life times, it doesn’t seem
impossible at all. This is the secret of the “begats”
in the book of Numbers.”
Dolphin wasn’t satisfied with this answer, It was
truthful and yet enigmatic. He knew that the
average life span of CroMagnon was less than thirty
years.
Fulcanelli laughed again. “Ah yes. Wandering
off into the wilderness is still a final rite of passage
cherished by elderly people in native cultures. Upon
the approach of death they allow themselves to be
devoured by bears or wolves, or set themselves to
sea to experience the final adventure. This is what
you must do. I know you faked your own suicide by
substituting your identification for that of a drunken
Heavens Henchman, a motorcycle gang member. Is
that not so?”
“Yeah. So what?” Dolphin was somewhat
defensive. After all his most delicate secret had
been flayed and served up as if it were a plate of
raw carrots. “I took advantage of an opportunity
that’s all. I was just walking down the beach one
day when this big motorcycle came flying at me.
The guy died instantly. I was the first guy to him so
I took out his picture ID and substituted my calling
cards, my library card and any other identification
that had no picture or fingerprints.”
“From there you escaped to Bath and then to
Paris.”
“Actually I spent less than a week in Bath,
certain fellows there didn’t suite me and then I
wenmt on to Amsterdam. How long have you
known about this?” Dolphin said in amazement.
“Almost since it happened.” The magician
glowed.
“Ah yes you must have run into Tervik in Bath,
is that it?”
“Yes. What an evil bastard.” Pure psychopath,
plain and simple.”
“I’m glad you met him. Tervik is the bastard
great great grandson of Anton Mesmer, he seems to
have inherited his blood line, but that story he tells
about actually being Mesmer, is ridiculus. Mesmer
did not work the transmutation and died in obscurity
in Baltimore just after the British burned
Washington.
Dolphin asked himself how this little redhaired
man could know about a motorcycle crash that took
place more than a decade earlier in California.
Fulcanelli continued, “I also know that you
deposited a large life insurance check.”
Dolphin turned beet red. All he could say was,
“OOPS, yeah, but that’s all but gone.”
“Oh, you need not be embarrassed.” Fulcanelli
interceded, “We alchemists dislike actuaries. They
are parasites on humanity. They wager that you will
die early. Their idea of life is a biblical statistic that
gives us a maximum of three score and five years to
live. To them everyday you live past sixty you’re
stealing their revenue. If you live to a ripe old age
it’s as if you have picked a forbidden fruit. We, on
the other hand look forward to each year with vigor.
Life is full of helping others. Charity is the real
tonic.”
Fulcanelli dabbed his lips with the linen
serviette while an expression of complete
fulfillment came over his face. “ Would you like
coffee or a brandy… very good Napoleon?” He
lifted his snifter higher. “Will you have a drop of
five star in your cappuccino?”
Dolphin doubted that anyone could live on
spinach salad and raw meat once every week, “No,
thank you it’s far too late for coffee and I don’t
drink.”
The master scrutinized Dolphin’s face as if he
were looking for telltale aging signs. His only reply
was almost psychoanalytic, “Hmmm, well you’ll
have a great deal of money now.”
The supper crowed gradually drifted off and the
espresso addicts, puffing madly on Turkish
cigarettes, filed in. Dolphin could not finish his
food, he felt mysteriously sated and in good humor.
After all he was having a dialog with the most
mysterious man in Europe.
Fulcanelli hinted that they should take a walk
down the Seine, “Perhaps a stroll will do us good
nez pa?”
“Yes, yes, that will be fine.”
Monsieur Dagobert magically sprang into
action, tuned, as he was, to Fulcanelli’s internal
radio. Dolphin noted a diamond pin neatly tucked
into Fulcanelli’s cravat, the diamond must have
been at least a full carat blue cape with many lights.
If this wasn’t Fulcanelli it was a rich imitator.
Monsieur Dagobert offered the check without a
word. He then stood at military attention looking
away as if to survey the scene. Fulcanelli reached
into his waistcoat pocket and extracted a small
silver snuff box. In it was a single gold nugget,
about the size of a large match head. Fulcanelli
placed this in a silk handkerchief and folded it. He
then placed the handkerchief on the tray. Dagobert
again, saying nothing, removed the tray and bowed,
a genuflect that Frenchmen reserve only for
diplomats and presidents. Now Dolphin was sure
this was Fulcanelli. Nothing more was said about
the gold or the odd method of payment.
Dyonisis
Fulcanelli and Dolphin inhaled deeply as they
tightened their scarves. The fertile earth that once
belonged to the Parisii tribe lay less than six inches
beneath the cobblestones. Once braced against the
Spring mists they sauntered toward the Ile de
France and its most famous edifice, the Cathedral of
Notre Dame. The master would soon demonstrate a
lesson from his magnum opus, Le Mystere de la
Cathedral.
Dolphin now felt free to ask questions that may
have been indiscreet in a restaurant, “May I inquire
why I’ve been selected?”
“Oh yes, you may inquire, but I am at liberty to
reveal only a few explanations, you must work
things out for yourself.”
“Well then, who else might I meet from this
alchemical family you speak of?” Dolphin
redoubled his efforts to pry information from the
teacher.
“Some would be familiar to you, others prefer to
remain in disguise. Some work from positions
within the government or the church, others pose as
street beggars. They will, I am certain, reveal
themselves to you as you move through this life into
the next. Besides no one knows all the others. It
would be impossible. I assure you there are at least
nine hundred in Europe alone and a few in North
America, far too few I might add. It is my fervent
hope that you may someday return to your native
land to carry on our work.”
You may want to travel to the Hague in the
Netherlands someday. The royal family of Holland
has been open to alchemy since the days of William
and Mary. You might also want to study the works
of the Hermetic symbolist painters. I own a modest
collection of symbolist paintings from Lenore Fini,
Diana Vandenberg and Joffra, but we have never
met. Still we share the same goals.”
“You see this?” Fulcanelli reached slowly into
his inner pocket and removed a special playing
card.
“Yes.”
“This card holds many secrets. It is a King of
Hearts painted by Diana Vandenberg on one of her
many visits to the Dordogne. Please note the King
looks like me.”
Dolphin stood closer to a halide street light.
“Ahha yes, I see.” Dolphin saw an exact likeness of
Fulcanelli on the kings face.”
“I did not pose for this portrait, nor did any one
send Diana a photograph and yet she knows exactly
what I look like.”
“She must be clairvoyant.”
“Oui, a vision has come to her and I am not the
only one depicted in the deck. She has done an
entire suite of fiftytwo cards depicting all of the
alchemists of Europe. It is an honor to be included.”
Fulcanelli spoke in rhythm with Dolphin’s
footsteps. Both men sensed a musk emitted from the
banks of the Seine. The wizard continued his lesson,
“None of us are poor, but some of us are extremely
wealthy and each of us has gone through the
loneliness you are now facing. You have few
friends is that not so?” Dolphin was forced to admit
it was true, his friends were gone because most of
them thought he was dead or because he simply
outgrew them.
A chill moved through the night. Hours seemed
like seconds as the men meditated at the river’s
edge. New skyscrapers cast moon shadows on the
old city as the master and his apprentice strolled
through its labyrinth. Night people passed, but they
appeared as specters in an invisible dimension.
Fulcanelli continued, “An alchemist survives by
controlling his cast of characters. You must busy
yourself by helping others. Perhaps you help them
breed their horses, or deliver their children. You
help them lift file cabinets, or give them sage
advice, but only when they ask for help. You cannot
go around forcing insights on people when they
refuse to learn.
“Who else might I meet in the family you speak
of?”
“Some say a secret group has formed whose
members have lived through many transformations.
A few mystics even believe Jesus and Buddha are
still alive, but I doubt this.”
“What do you mean by transformations?”
“Transformations are the changes you go
through between lives. I have gone through only
four. My first life lasted until I was sixtyfive, then
my family passed on, one by one, and I needed to
find a new identity. Originally I was a school
teacher, then I became a jeweler. For years I posed
as a retired diplomat and now I’m a publisher and
antiquarian.
Dolphin felt giddy, “I suspect you’ll be able to
use that forever.”
“Yes, so it seems, I’ll be an antique antiquarian
no less!” Two great laughs echoed through the
citrus gardens lining the path toward the cathedral.”
Fulcanelli continued, “I can tell you about one
very famous member of our fraternity who has
given his permission to reveal his identity.”
“Why? Isn’t concerned he will be exposed?”
“Not at all. He is too famous, he can no longer
be traced and no one will believe the story anyway.
“Who might that be? I’ll believe you.”
“Yes, I suppose you will. All right since you
insist, the name is Picasso, Pablo Picasso. He
disappeared much like your famous Elvis Parsley,
the movie star and singer.”
Dolphin grew enraptured at this revelation.
“Really? Is Elvis one of the fraternity?”
Fulcanelli replied guardedly, “I am not sure
about Elvis, some say he became an alchemist when
he was a soldier in Germany, but I do know about
Picasso. In his case, like Elvis I suppose, the
pressure of fame was ruining him. Pablo was ninety
and was starting to have to explain why he looked
sixty. He sired a son at age eightyone and he was
turning out at least one major painting each week,
and, as you know, they were priceless.”
“He was turning paint into gold right?”
“Yes exactly… and clay into platinum and tiny
strands of silk into tapestries worth more than a
Stradivarius, yet his life turned out badly. He was
miserable simply because he wasn’t free to work his
magic, the miracle of self transformation.”
“You mean he was transforming objects, but not
himself?”
“Oui Précis. Pablo’s family couldn’t, understand
his commitment to alchemy. He was growing surly
and lonely and acerbic. His mind was dying, so he
decided to work the final transformation.
Unfortunately he couldn’t vanish—he would be
missed and inquiries would be made. The only
proper technique was to stage a funeral. This he did
by enlisting the help of his valet who was also his
driver and confidant. We all knew it was a stunt
because he ordered the roses torn up at his estate.
This signaled the other alchemists that he was in
need of our council.”
Dolphin was embarrassed to ask such a probing
question and yet the teacher seemed to encourage
his queries, “What has become of him? I suppose he
became a monk and is living in seclusion, that’s
what I would do.”
Fulcanelli, threw back his head in the street lit
night, laughing again, “No, quite the contrary. You
can meet him if you like. He still paints, although
with an entirely different style, one of many he
perfected when he first found the secret of the rose,
the prime material, the red stone. He still walks the
beaches each morning and he appears as he did
when he was sixty years of age.”
“How does he feel now? Does he have regrets?”
“Not one. According to Picasso it’s the best
thing he could have done. The transition healed him
of stress and gave him a sense of humor. People
come up to him everyday and tell him he looks
exactly like Pablo Picasso and he stares them
straight in the eye and says, ‘I am Pablo Picasso.’
The people usually laugh and walk on as if they
were talking to a mad man. No one takes him
seriously, probably because no one believes life
extension is possible.”
Dolphin stopped for a moment. He too was a
victim of disbelief. A light boat tooted under the
bridge. “How can Picasso toy with such delicate
matters?”
“Oh I agree these are serious matters, but
Picasso has taught us a vital lesson about mass
media and gullibility in the twentyfirst century. The
most venerable among our fraternity has learned
from him. It’s the lesson of Phanes, that’s what we
call it.”
“Phanes, the god of light?”
“Yes, and light is wealth.”
Fulcanelli smiled as he spoke. “Pablo remains
wealthy and aloof, but he enjoys watching the
squabbles made over him and the controversy his
art provokes. He especially gets a kick out of the
unbelievable prices his works are fetching and do
you know what he does now?”
“Dolphin played along incredulously. “No I
can’t imagine.”
“He’s an art broker in Lisbon with 17
employees.”
“That is unbelievable.”
I’ll bet you can’t guess what he specializes in?”
“You’re right, I can’t.”
“Forged Picasso’s! Isn’t that stupendous? He
sells his own paintings and people can’t tell the
difference because they’re not forged at all.
Hilarious no? What does this tell you about the
human condition?”
“I don’t find it funny.” Dolphin answered.
“Why not?”
“Because it makes the human race out to be a
hopeless lot. Blind, arrogant and sheepish.”
“Well aren’t they?” The master questioned
Dolphin, halfjokingly.
“Perhaps, but what of the transformation itself?
Can we transform ourselves from sheep to gods?”
“Yes and gold can be made from antimony.”
There is a solemn nature to this business. A few of
the fraternity, the legendary ones, have gone
through as many as thirty transformations. We call
these great souls “Lazari” after Lazarus, the disciple
resurrected by Jesus.”
Fulcanelli halted the pace long enough to see the
phase of the moon as it broke through the clouds. It
was at first quarter—a Chesire Cat grin. Dolphin
spoke with humility, “You mentioned Lazarus. “
“Yes, the cult of Lazarus is based right here in
Paris, at Saint Sulpice.” Fulcanelli grinned
knowingly.
“I have read about them.”
“Their have been many books written about
them. They call themselves the Priory of Zion”
“This is the cult that believes they are
descendants of Jesus. Is this possible?
“Oui, I believe so, but the Priors of the cult of
Zion are not all related. They become powerful
based on the great works they achieve. They are the
underground popes, the pagan fathers of the
bohemian hermetic school and possibly the
descendants of the Cathars and the Rosicrucians.”
“Do you believe they have worked the
alchemical praxis? Do they possess the secrets of
the old masters like, Ray Lull, Nick Flamel and Al
Magnus?” Dolphin asked.
“You do have a sense of humor don’t you?” The
master seemed amused at the colloquial nick names.
Dolphin hoped Fulcanelli would explain the
mystery to him. “It is probable that Christ did sire
children, this is not blasphemous or unthinkable.”
“I agree,” Dolphin added, “but one cannot
assume Abraham Lincoln’s children would
automatically be as bright or as spiritually
enlightened as he.”
“Again you are correct, But what if Christ was
really continuing the rituals of the cult of Dyonisis.
If he was really Dyonisis returned to life, like
Lazarus.”
Dolphin answered quickly, “We would see a
whole new aspect to Christianity, wouldn’t we?”
The master nodded silent approval as all
mentors do when their students begin to understand,
“Dyonisians believe that everyone can be the son or
daughter of humanity. All pilgrims to the shrines of
Eleusis, or Compestelle hope to experience an
epoptic vision which will allow them to feel at one
with all other humans.”
Fulcanelli braced himself as the night air turned
their words into streams of fog. Dolphin sensed a
deep well of emotion in the little man. “In other
words the line of the tree of Jesse does not have a
monopoly on kindness and good works.”
Dolphin’s mind, burnt from years of drug abuse
and wandering began to focus. “You are saying that
the life and death struggle we all experience is
really just a struggle between egolessness and
survival.”
“Of course, mon amee, transcendence through
compassion is the basis for The Beatitudes and for
the mysteries of Dyonisis and for the mysteries of
Buddhism, Islam and Judaism. All the great
religions are the same. They all derive from the
same ancient roots.”
Dolphin saw the words ‘Beatnik attitudes’ flash
through his mind. He dare not mention this silly pun
to the master, but Fulcanelli’s abundant smile
showed him to be telepathic. Dolphin’s inner voice
raced ahead. Could it be possible that the core
process in alchemy was the regeneration of mental
gifts, such as telepathy, physiognomy , perfect
pitch, eidetic imagery and other dormant functions?
Did Fulcanelli hold the chemical keys to unlock
these lost powers?
Fulcanelli smiled knowingly, as if he could read
Dolphin’s mind. At last the master and the student
were on the same wavelength. Fulcanelli and
Dolphin were now walking in stride directly toward
the famed cathedral porch where the medieval
alchemists met at Winter Solstice, on the dark of the
moon, at Angelus. Dolphin was curious how
Fulcanelli located him, but decided to ask a less
direct question. “May I ask what I should do for
income? You have said you are a retired diplomat
and a publisher.”
“I said I was only posing as a retired diplomat. I
doubt any country would want to send me off on a
mission of political importance anymore, but other
sources of income flow my way on occasion.”
Dolphin needed money. He was disappointed at
this answer, but Fulcanelli continued, dropping
subtle hints along the way. “Besides which country
would I represent? I’ve lived in so many. No, I am
simply an intellectual and will always remain so. I
collect stamps and coins and take long walks. I am
also a collector of fine books, mostly of an
alchemical nature. On occasion I dabble in
publishing. You may have seen books with my
colophon in your browsing.”
The cathedral steps were covered with morning
dew, an alchemical solvent that would soon
evaporate Dolphins sorrows into a mist. He realized
that one of the silhouettes slithering about the book
stalls in the Sorbonne must have informed the
master of his presence in Paris. Dolphin stood
dismayed and happy at the same time. If he could
be located that easily who else could he expect? A
wet cadence echoed from the gargoyles and
buttresses as the two men began paused before the
great doors.
The massive rose window towered over them as
they entered the main portico. Fulcanelli explained
to Dolphin how the original ritual of the 22 stations
of the heart, the central allegory in the greater
mysteries of Eleusis, became the fourteen stations
of the cross. “We are doing it now, look.” Fulcanelli
pointed to the river looming over his shoulder and
to the baptistery illuminated by red candles in the
distant recesses of the cathedral. “We have crossed
the river and we are about to see the great mysteries
of the inner temple.”
Hermes
Dolphin’s mind reeled as two hawk faced
German priests walked by. Fulcanelli ignored the
ghostly forms, “Shall I give you some advise?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Good. Here is my card.” The wise man handed
Dolphin a vellum business card with raised
lettering:
Editions Flammel
Rue de la Hérmetiste 9
deuxeme etage
Paris
By Appointment Only
An e-mail or telephone number was not in
evidence.
“If you need me or if you need a specific book,
drop me a card at this address.” The older man then
took Dolphin’s wrist and pressed a small vial into
his hand, a quartz tube sealed with wax. They began
to walk again in silence. The cathedral’s great
interior pillars changed hues as they approached.
The great rose window radiated a profound joy and
the carvings of the keys to alchemy shone brightly.
It was dawn before they emerged. The light
show inside the cathedral was just beginning. The
sky was pink and the sunrise caressed the newly
sandblasted stones of the famed edifice. The
gargoyles took on new life in such light. Dolphin
stood in stunned silence, but the mentor’s peaceful
voice moved him back into focus. “You should
know that a fellow American is looking for you, a
man from San Francisco named Canyon Collins.”
“Where is he now?” asked Dolphin.
“Ahh, I see you are curious. Bon. You need a
friend at this point, loneliness can kill a growing
rose.” Fulcanelli bowed and doffed his fedora to a
diplomatic limousine on its way to an EEC meeting.
“This Collins fellow has made contacts in
London, but will be going back to California soon.
You should correspond with him immediately. He
knows you hold one of the secrets of Excalibur. I
know you have many questions, but they can wait.
You must help us rid the world of this astral plague
precisely as I helped rid the world of the nuclear
menace so many years ago.”
Dolphin sagged at the knees at the prospect of
such a daunting task. “How ill I know him?”
This Collins fellow is dark haired, tall and
slender, very healthy, very bright. I think he is a
psychologist by training, but moved beyond that
practice into the quest for truth through archaeology
and he has written articles and books. He suspects
you hold the key. Do you not remember the
research you witnessed near Danforth University so
many years ago?”
“Yes, I remember, the long distance death ray.”
Dolphin remained enthralled at the amount of
knowledge at Fulcanelli’s disposal, it was almost as
if he was plugged into a global database. How could
a man with no hint of technological expertise, have
access to so much data? He wondered.
Fulcanelli spoke in a deeper tone, “This will be
your test. You must help us stop Excalibur.” The
morning light illuminated his astute face revealing a
smooth skin. A gaggle of nuns, known as the Geese
of God, their winglike head dresses gently moving
in the wind, strolled by on their way to vespers.
They paid no attention to the two alchemists who
were now sitting on a small stone bench near the
great porch.
Fulcanelli explained that being one of the Lazari
does not guarantee immortality. “You see, we have
never experienced technology as dangerous as that
which drives Excalibur. It’s an amateur job and yet
it threatens life on earth. The fear of a weapon that
can cause the downfall of the world economy
replaces the nuclear anxiety so prevalent in the late
twentieth century.”
Dolphin understood, “Yes, they thrive on
anxiety, they need it to force their slavery on us.”
“Tre bon, mon amiee” Fulcanelli smiled
brightly, “Being a Lazari means only that one can
extend one’s life, hopefully with wisdom and
compassion, and for a very long time, but if a
device like Excalibur is allowed to ruin the entire
human experiment no amount of alchemy will be of
value.”
“How do you know so much about nuclear and
deep space logistics?” Dolphin asked.
“Enrico Fermi was an associate of ours, but he
exposed himself to radiation and died before he
could devise a plan to stop his own monster.”
“How did you finally do it?” Dolphin asked yet
another seemingly silly question.
“At first we were going to simply report
negative results and keep the whole thing a secret,
amongst seven or eight scholars, but Einstein was
ambitious and he warned that the secret was well
known and that eventually the Germans, even after
Hitler fell and the Russians and almost anybody
with a lust for power, would eventually start
blowing things up.”
“So what did yu do?”
“We made sure everybody had the ability to
work with the energy in a peaceful way, knowing,
even the dumbest people would eventually realize
that Nuclear Energy is very expensive and dirty. We
spent about a century getting rid of it, five
generations of our coworkers dedicate their lives to
reversing the damage and still it reeks havoc with
the environment. But Excalibur is worse than a
nuclear weapon because it’s entirely beyond our
control. It saps the moral strength of human beings
everywhere and it seems impossible to stop because
we do not know who invented it or why. The puzzle
encompasses many pieces.”
The court yard suddenly filled with school
children. Dolphin sat attentively as the master
spoke. There was no going back now, the goals
were crystal clear. “What needs to be done?”
The master answered quickly, “Well, we need
someone to operate from Alta California. This
Collins fellow, or someone close to him, will need
to seek out a certain American scientist named
Derek Beane.”
Dolphin’s nerves jumped a bit, “Yes, I know of
this Beane. He’s a hermit, lives in New York state I
believe.”
The master’s shrewd comments brought some
warmth to Dolphin’s almost frozen nerve endings,
“Yes, but do you know that he’s one of us? His first
major discovery, the Antikytheria device, is one of
ours. There were many such devices still in use less
than two hundred years ago, but they were
forbidden by the church, when they were found they
were seized as tools of the devil.”
“I thought as much. That brass, hand held
computer was the first laptop.” Dolphin replied. “It
is almost as if Beane is a reincarnation of Euclid.”
“Well did you know that Beane and Atanasoff
are really the same man?”
“No. You’re saying then that Derek Beane is
also the man who invented the microcomputer?”
“Yes. It’s hard to believe, but he was forced to
change his identity a number of times, as have I.”
“He also worked on particlebeam masers and he
worked for Maynard Donnelly. Beane knew
Donnelly personally.”
Fulcanelli’s eyes reflected Dolphin’s image as if
they were empty goblets, “Precisely, this is why we
must initiate you as soon as possible. Beane is not
as clear minded as he once was. His hermetic
domicile has closed him down a bit, but he is still
valuable. He may hold a secret to decoding
Excalibur.”
“Why do you think he’s so important to the
Excalibur problem?”
The master was patient with his inquisitive
student, “Because Excalibur isn’t random. We need
to decipher the timing sequence. Only then can we
begin to destroy it.”
Dolphin stiffened at the enormity of the task
before him, “Yes, but what has Beane got to do with
it.”
Fulcanelli answered in a quick whisper, “Beane
has the timing sequence almost figured out.”
The two men rose from the bench in unison and
began to stroll toward the river wall. The house of
the Goddess framed the sky behind them. Fulcanelli
continued his fatiguing task, “Excalibur was
probably designed by Americans, but we cannot say
why. We have met with many obstacles over the
millennia, but this satellite gun is beyond our ken.”
Dolphin saw a chance to relieve his masters
stress, “I’m happy to be in your acquaintance and I
realize how much this evening means to you, but I
must disagree. I know little of the art and yet I am
confidant the satellite was made through simple
technological processes, nothing alchemical or
magical except blind luck. I’m sure it can be
neutralized by reversing those processes. Gallium
Arsenate is a very ancient alchemical structure
worked hundreds of years ago to capture electrons
from lightening rods. Silicon deposition is simple
intaglio, something worked by the master Albrecht
Dürer. We can see it used in his etching called,
Melancholia.” I’m sure Excalibur is fallible.”
Fulcanelli grew distant, as if melancholia
afflicted him too. “Ah, the mere mention of Dürer
drives me into a deep reverie.” Both men grew
silent again.
It was now time to part. They could see the
cathedral’s facade reflected as they looked down
into the river. Dolphin’s eyes turned toward the
cathedral itself, there to focus on the sculpture of
the woman carved into the keystone of the main
porch. The eroded carving clearly depicts the
matronly figure of Le Notre Dame. She is holding a
book in her right hand and supporting a ladder with
nine steps in her left. This is not the Virgin, but the
patron mother of all alchemists.
Fulcanelli followed Dolphin’s line of sight, “We
are under the watchful eye of the Goddess are we
not?”
“Do you mean we are of the Goddess?”
“Yes, the Goddess and Hermes,” Fulcanelli
answered. “Ours is the oldest, continually practiced,
religion on earth. A few alchemists may work to
better the environment in California, and at one
time the region promised a golden future, but
hoards of opportunists threatened it’s serenity. None
of them realized that the place was already like
itself. I’ve read many books on the subject. It was as
if an amoeba scribbled on California’s blank slate,
there was no humanistic plan. The very greediest
people, those who thrive on chaos, rushed to
California in at least five major waves and stole
every natural resource, including water. The Pacific
Ocean was their only barrier.”
Dolphin asked, “Have you seen the Pacific?”
Hoping to change the subject away from the rape of
California.
Fulcanelli replied in a compassionate voice,
again as if he knew what emotion Dolphin was
experiencing, “No, unfortunately I have not been to
North America. It is not my world. I prefer to
cultivate the traditional life, but I hope people like
you will carry the retort of our gold and antimony to
your homeland. Perhaps you can do something to
rebalance the Earth. Excalibur became a reality in
California and the answer to its cessation lies in
California. It is as if Californians are as different
from other Americans as horses are from zebras.”
The virgin of the arch continued to bless them
as they spoke. “I agree, California is the real
alchemical cauldron. I guess it’s the most
appropriate place to both condemn and reprieve the
planet. What would you have me do about
Excalibur? I’ve known about it for a decade or more
and I think I know its purpose, but I can do nothing.
I am a small David against such a Goliath.”
The elder advisor grew tense, “We feel you
must seek help. You cannot work alone. You must
find, for example this man Collins. He has recently
discovered that you are alive. He is, even now, in
London, but we have reasonable assurances that he
will return to California shortly. It will not be
necessary for you to go to California, but if all goes
well he may be enticed to return here, to France at
some future date. I am sure he will be sympathetic.
He is an educated man and has an open mind. Those
who know him, and I assure you we do have
contacts everywhere, say he is a dedicated scientist.
He may know something about Excalibur as he has
contacts in the community of technicians. We do
not know who launched the satellite, but we feel
Collins will be our best chance. Once we discover
how and why it was built we can take steps to halt
the carnage it has caused. Do you understand?”
Another wave of astonishment swept over
Dolphin, “How can simple philosophers know so
much about affairs as far away as California, your
network must be huge?”
“Not at all. It is very small, but quite precise.
We have contacts in strategic locations all over the
world—embassies, if you prefer. Like fishermen,
we catch the gossip of those who visit the locations.
Mainly we deal through bookstores, as we must
only contact the truly educated, but we also hear
from travel guides and doctors.”
“You sound like Robinson Crusoe who tricked
the pirates into thinking he commanded dozens of
sailors, when all he did was tie strings to dozens of
muskets. Obviously you have dedicated minions,
people who work for and with you, a housekeeper
for instance or a printer or bookbinder?”
“Yes, I lead a tragically normal existence. I am
saddened when I watch the uninitiated ones
growing older. I was surprised when my
housekeeper told me she knew I was two or three
hundred years of age, she accepted it, as if it were a
common thing, but she would not like to be that old
herself, she was content with her lot.”
“Are all of your friend’s initiates?”
“No, not all. There are as many grades of people
as there are colors in a rainbow. Some think they
understand and don’t. Others hold the secret in their
hands and can’t recognize it, and a few know it and
cherish it and use it wisely, but all are good hearted.
The men and women who filter information to our
group are doing it out of kindness. Their work is
strictly voluntary.”
Dolphin grew curious about Fulcanelli’s
authority. “Does anyone report directly to you?”
“Ah yes, you mean other than yourself?’
Dolphin was flattered that this great alchemist
would consider him worthy of such a link.
Fulcanelli smiled, “Yes, yes I do, but it’s not a
mentorpupil relationship. Our organization is not
formal. One of my closest associates is the wife of a
slowwitted man. She is a perfect candidate for the
Lazari and for the transmutation. She works
diligently and yet her husband knows nothing of her
contacts with us. She loves him very much, but he
could never see her as a magi, that she will
undoubtedly become. So you see, I must use these
contacts to alleviate suffering. Finding Collins is
only one of our bits of work. He has recently been
to Stonehenge and Bath, in England, but he is in
danger. You are on the same track. It is important
that you meet and work out a strategy. You are both
Americans, both from the city of Saint Francis, and
both inclined to serve humanity whenever
possible.”
Dolphin spoke with humility. “I shall do what I
can.”
Fulcanelli grasped Dolphin’s hand and wrist as
he did at Le Cupole. The handshake was the same.
The fangs of the snake bit the wrist. The left arm
grasped the shoulder and both men stood at arm’s
distance making direct eye contact. “Now go my
son, you have all you need.”
The men parted and simply walked away.
Dolphin returned to his flat and made long and
detailed notes in his journal. The container
contained two gold nuggets eight times the size of
the one given to Monsieur Dagobert at La Cupole.
Dolphin knew immediately what they were. The
grand adept had passed on the raw ingredients for
the transmutation. The alchemical paradox now lay
in plain view on his small kitchen table.
Here Dolphin’s notebook falls silent.
Unfortunately, the pages are rarely dated and the
raw notes were never strictly chronological.
Dolphin’s journals were tidy and almost designed
for publication, but his notebooks were fanciful and
unkempt. The master must have sworn him to
secrecy or perhaps the things that Dolphin saw in
the cathedral were so dumbfounding he was moved
beyond words. The conversations at the restaurant
and on the porch of the cathedral were recorded in
the notebook, but it did not yield the secret of
secrets, the pages stood mute as to the secrets
imparted in the interior of the cathedral. But some
fragments were written down. On page twenty-two
Dolphin wrote—in large red crayon—the words:
“Revelations of Mithras@Amiens and Chartres.
The resurrection .... Christ is Dyonisis.” And
underneath, in small letters, Dyonisis Born 5400
BPE.”Kercado…
22 + Tarot = Rota* Samos
The question about the twin gold nuggets vexed
him. Should he use them for his own immortality or
should he divide the saturnated gold into that which
will be used for healing and that which will be used
to make more of itself.
Many years later Dolphin would conclude his
journal with the realization that both strategies are
necessary.
A Clown in the Retinal Circus
The beveled edge of the hotel’s oldest lead
windows, uncrossed my eyes. I kicked off the duvet
and did my morning warrior scream into the sneeze
free pillow, but even that didn’t wake me up.
The desk called to tell me I could have the suite
for a week, but the room wasn’t enough. I needed
cheering up before facing Frances Bates and I knew
just the guy: Izzy Mansoo of the Canadian
Broadcasting Guild, my old pen pal. Izzy told jokes
so well you were guaranteed to piss your pants. He
reported to a bar stool in the Crown and Scepter
near the CBG office. The morning was for killing,
might as well kill it with Izzy.
My breakfast tray was delivered by a different
guy than the porter from last night, a clever dude,
who nudged me closer to consciousness by
repeatedly tapping his key on the brass door hinges.
This can hardly be heard in the hallways, but inside
the room the tippitytap is deafening. I guess if you
don’t call in your order you get the default
breakfast, and it ain’t free. The cold repast consisted
of real Darjeeling tea, sterile packets of oatmeal, a
dried egg and a burnt banger of indiscriminate
origin.
As to reading material TrussHouse is of a mind
to provide its patrons with both The London Times
and The Manchester Guardian in fiche form, but I
was hardly of a mind to browse. Also on the tray, I
found a thin package festooned with a big French
customs sticker, tightly wrapped in hemp paper and
tied with a babyblue express string—no return
address. To my amazement the package contained a
notebook written by Ignatz Tankready (David
Dolphin). This was the same type of marbled and
perfect bound notebook I saw with Dolphin’s stuff
back in the States—the stuff in the big box.
The scene grew weirder by the hour. Big assed
Monarch butterflies—brown and orange, awakened
from their mossy pinewood stupor by a mean little
kid with a baseball bat—began jumping around my
rib cage. Who knew I was here? First Tervik, a
representative from hell, has one of his minions,
probably Timeon or the lurking maid from the
moldy flat, (who may have been a double agent) put
a note on my windshield telling me, like it was a
neon sign, that Dolphin is alive. Jack does not have
a clue. O’ Bannion is off chasing witch pussy and I
wake up with cold sweats in the middle of the night,
flashing on this Dolphin guy. What next? Am I
being punished for listening to too much Hateful
Djed music? The only thing that could put the
butterflies back into their mossy Jack Pines was
laughter or perhaps a scream. Laughter would have
to do. I was, after all, still in the confines of a hotel.
The muffled pillow gambit was out of the question
because if I did decide to scream I wanted
everybody to hear it.
The imp talked to me again, longer this time,
“OK. The first step in gettin’ out of here is to take
another shower. Put the damn notebook down and
take another shower, cold if at all possible.
Brrrrrr… Good boy. Now get dried off and go out
into the world, naked if possible and watch out for
killer bees.”
Mood now modified, bare butt still moist from
the shower, I inserted the London Times fiche into
the projector slot. Excalibur struck again, so what?
But, ah yes, very funny… Excalibur as editorial
cartoon. Op/Ed page shows a man and a woman
preparing to go to bed for the first time. Excalibur
lurks behind the moon. The woman says, “Will you
respect me in the morning? “The man, gazing out
the window, replies, “Yes, if I wake up!” I couldn’t
stop laughing. Maybe cynicism was setting in, but
the laugh cure quest was working already. I could
feel the polarities shifting in my heart.
The curious notebook grabbed my attention
again. “Now who did I know in Paris?” The
notebook displayed a title, as if it were ready for
publication: Hamburger Zen.
I couldn’t believe what I was holding in my
hands. Was this the famed notebook Gigilo Kim
told me about? Was this the personal diary Dolphin
carried in his rucksack the day he ploughed his
motorcycle into a sand dune near Pescadero? The
style was coherent and steady, not at all like the
wild flailing prose of Dolphin’s other notebooks,
yet an eerie similarity rang true. The book was
genuine because it contained the plans for the nose
expedition and a number of tribal names also
mentioned in correspondence from Helena when
she was still shrinking heads in Minneapolis. Polly
Peptide popped up a number of times. But who the
hell knew I was here? Only a handful of people
knew I was even in Europe, let alone England and
the Redstone.
9:58 Green Witch
I dressed, locked my new treasure into my sole
surviving Haliburton case and stuffed it under the
bed. At that point the butterflies gave way to a sense
of resolve. I was certain Dolphin held some clue to
Excalibur.
The normally quiet lobby was full of book
stalls. An antiquarian society reserved a meeting
room, as is their custom every third Saturday. One
of the attendees may have been instrumental in
delivering Hamburger Zen to my room. There was
no way I could check, too many tweedy types of
both genders milling about the lobby—like kids at a
carnival. A curious red haired man in a cape and
fedora saluted me as I headed out the brass doors to
find Mansoo.
I would now set out for downtown to visit
Mansoo or go the other direction toward High Gate.
Dame Bates was on line, important, a hurdle in my
career and, in my sad career, she represented a
onceinalifetime shot. I couldn’t blow it. Facing her
in less than seven hours, was going to be worse than
facing my doctoral dissertation committee and
eightyeight times as rewarding. Bates didn’t suffer
fools and the members of my dissertation
committee were fools. Giving me a doctorate proves
they were fools.
I also wanted to do some research into the real
life of Lady Ada Lovelace, the daughter of the
famed poet, Lord Byron and her applications of
Babbage’s analytical engine. Lovelace may have
been the first alienated computer junkie on record
and Bates—well she was just plain alienated.
Hamburger Zen
London moves slow and steady like Neptune.
It’s not speedy like New York and it’s much older
and chunky. The visit to Stonehenge and Bath was
kinda like a party, but once in London you’ve got to
get some work done. I hungered for the sanctity and
solace of the library stacks.
So here I am in this work mode, but the vibes
are wrong, I can tell when I’m going to get into
something that’ll interfere with the work, something
heavy. It gnaws at you like the pain crab from a
ViperRub commercial. I can still see the little green
crab with its trident like teeth gnawing into the soft
meat of my lumbar region.
The nose was off too. I could smell something
oozing around the next corner, Tervik’s moldy
reek—obviously bad news. No butterflies, but my
life was a paradox, with enough weirdness to drain
the endorphins out of a marathon runner’s blood.
Later, around tea time, Dame Frances would revive
me, as a pilgrimage revives a flagellant, as a crawl
around the Kabbah revives a pilgrim to Mecca. At
quarter to five I would make my voyage to the
oracle of Bates, the greatest expository writer in the
English language, in any media, and then I would
be pure and whole—fat chance. She’ll probably
crucify me.
I found the Daimler warmed and ready to go in
the underground car park. I threw a big tip at the
scabby faced valet as I cleared the rococo doorway.
The wild sound of new BSA Bantams on delivery
rounds buzzed me to the Canadian Broadcasting
Guild in the garment district, a zone loaded with
private film studios in diminishing magnitudes.
Parking was rough, but I wedged it in, then walked
two blocks to Middle Goodge Street. To my utter
dismay CBG was closed for the Canada Day bank
holiday weekend and Mansoo was nowhere to be
seen, not even at the local grubby pub. He wasn’t in
touch with his geopager service either. Worse yet,
the bright morning sky closed in. I was again
headed face first into the needle nosed rain.
I remembered Jack’s words, “Don’t panic mate,
it’s only a beam of light.” I drove all around
Regents Park and down to Chelsea Embankment,
finally finding a parking place on the river near
Cheney Walk. Then, I guess, to get the lead out of
my spleen, I walked about three miles back to
Knightsbridge in a ripped Burberry trench coat and
wet retrostyle Hush Puppies.
11:32 Green Witch
Harrod’s
I figure the best way to bone up for Bates, at
least for a guy with a big appetite, is to wander
through the tessellated floors of Harrod’s
department store. At that time Harrod’s enjoyed an
exclusive pipeline to the surviving salmon fishers in
Aberdeen, said to be founded in the late twentieth
century by Lord Jethro of Tull. Harrod’s also sold
beer fed Black Angus and, if your taste runs to
lettuce and other greens, what uncle Dean used to
call ‘rabbit fodder,’ they had lots of it, and rabbits
too.
If the beef hall at Harrod’s is a temple to
Taurus, the fish hall must be a temple to Pisces.
This cool tile joint hasn’t changed in a almost two
centuries. The piscatorial parlor is decorated on all
sides by huge scallop shells and red ceramic fish
guarding real octopus and squid garnished with
lemon slices. Some Victorian architect designed the
market so that each drooling customer may admire
the various puddings and rare foodstuffs neatly
displayed in brass and crystal cases.
Money jumps out of your pockets in Harrod’s,
not because the prices are through the roof, but
because the place is crawling with pickpockets. I
got by on a few basics and I kept my money in my
shoe.
My next task was to find a secret gazebo in
overcrowded, South Kensington. As it turned out
drizzle makes for a bad sitdown and Londoners
don’t like to get that itchy bum condition that comes
with sitting in wet tweeds all day. After walking a
mile I selected a semidry bench under a large Yew
tree near Kensington Palace gardens and extracted
the contents of my lunch bag with great ceremony.
Imp sez: “Real food, what a rare treat.” Once
sated on a glutton’s portion of the duck pate,
munched down with Stilton, stale Euphrates
crackers and a fine claret, I settled into Hamburger
Zen. I thought perhaps I was practicing it already.
Although written in a rough, and frankly corny,
style Dolphin’s flashiest journal hinted at great
revelations to come.
At first I saw the author as a whinerboy, but as I
read further I sensed a deep understanding of
supernatural events. In addition to the stuff about
alchemy, and the tale about Maynard Donnelly and
the shroud, that was supposedly imparted by an
unnamed master while visiting the cathedral of
Notre Dame—Dolphin hints, on at least three
occasions, that he was planning some form of
disappearing act. Judging from internal dates he
must have begun writing Hamburger Zen sometime
between the nose expedition to Mt. Shasta and his
HardleyJefferson suicide. If nothing else
Hamburger Zen confirmed that Dolphin pulled off
an insurance fraud. This would alleviate his
boredom and get him off the financial hook. I guess
the old motorcycleinthesanddune trick worked
pretty well. In one place Dolphin mentions how he
envied Elvis Parsley, who also disappeared after
faking his own death.
This notebook, unlike the earlier works
attributable to Dolphin, seemed organized and
purposeful. I could tell the book was written in at
least two distinct periods many years apart. The first
section—uptight and sloppily produced in cheap
ball point penmanship—the later section written in
a relaxed hand, with a Mount Blanc. I also noted
that the first section of the notebook was political in
thrust whereas the later half, the fluid portion,
contained the aforementioned references to
alchemy, secret societies and the list of inventors
and their inventions that had been suppressed by
groups like Psionics. There was, for example the
name of the inventor who developed the water
carburetor, and the Swedish chemist who developed
a match good for 100 strikes. I noted also, at the
bottom of the list, the last name entered, the name
of an electronics engineer who had developed the
Blaboff device, the red box circuit that
automatically killed off any and all advertising from
an incoming television or radio signal. Why was
Dolphin interested in these people? Was he like
them? Had he invented something that was
suppressed? I suspected he was in Paris now
because, on the last page he mentions Notre Dame
and the Tuilleries as if he was looking at them.
The logic in this particular notebook was well
thought out and based on solid research. In
Dolphin’s mind something wonderful was about to
happen every second of every day, but this
wonderfulness was often made ugly by the
pessimism of the Hamburger heads. These antiZen
people live in Samsara or illusion. Buddha warned
us of this. When you come along and rub their
noses in reality they hate you. I guess to him
Hamburger Heads are the greasy meat eating
squares, the unhip ones, the spoilers of the gift, the
folks who need hipness injections directly into the
carotid artery because they hate life more than
anybody. In Dolphin’s opinion the hip people
should get control of the computer world, not just
its functioning surface, but the real decision making
level. Dolphin was out to stop the people he called
“Cold Warriors.” In the traditional GIGO postulate
any garbage was still garbage. In Dolphin’s
Hamburger Zen, garbage could, and often is, made
to look like Flemish chocolates. According to
Dolphin:
Fascists fear natural law and deism because,
down deep, they’re antiintellectual. They hate
constitutional democracy and do everything
possible to restrict its liberating forces.
Two pages later he says:
The fear of the organic world is at the root of
the fear of easy to use computers. The more organic
and intuitive computers become the more they
liberate the user. Slave masters hate intuitive
operating systems because they liberate the slaves.
Liberation breaks down the traditional
sadomasochistic relationship intrinsic in fascism.
In the next section Dolphin used alienation as a
perfect demonstration of Hamburger Zen:
Machines do not design themselves. They
merely reflect the moods of their designers. We
grow alienated from technology because we are
alienated from ourselves. The twentyfirst century
held the promise that all forms of pessimism would
be dumped. Instead, nihilism, the worst form of
pessimism, accelerated by designer drugs, has
become the default human condition. This benefits
the fascist mentality.
Hamburger Zen engaged me completely. This
last bit reminded me of my own dissertation. I was
so absorbed I hardly noticed the baglady juggling
carrots on the lawn. The church bell in the muse on
Catherine Street rang out the noon chime, exactly in
sync with Big Ben almost two miles up the Thames.
The bench was as cold as a casket, but there were a
few more salient passages in the notebook:
Modern creativity is still contaminated by
Calvinist inferiority. Anybody can be creative, but
only a few are gifted enough to sell their ideas. Cold
Warriors thrive on prejudice and spend their days
suppressing gifted ides and gifted people. The so
called information cults are the greatest suppressors
of all. People who innovate, in spite of suppression,
are liberators.
I closed the notebook and rested my eyes for a
moment. I agreed with the guy. I wasn’t sure how
he arrived at his conclusions, but I agreed with him,
especially when he said,
Anybody who puts faith in idiots is an idiot!
The dew rolled away, inviting another rain
wave. One item stood out in my mind as I walked
back to the car, apparently Dolphin possessed proof
that the Excalibur launching was anything but an
accident.
Big Ben
Geting back to Ireland and the big fireplace,
was my first priority, but reading Hamburger Zen
was bringing out subtle forms of despair, a side of
me I didn’t like. Dolphin’s style reminded me of
Camus and Beckett projected into the twentyfirst
century—existential, but not fatalistic.
I sat soaking up the musky vapors from the
bench, remembering the Hashbury and the hot Soho
days and how hippies are hated more than beatniks
and how punks are hated more than hippies and
how Jews are hated more than punks and how
Africans are hated more the Jews and how the big
fish eat the little fish right up to were the
Episcopalians eat the Presbyterians. But nobody
likes a cocky intellectual, let alone a happy one. If
you’re going to be a mind terrorist, a radical shrink
or a zappy guru, like Dolphin, you gotta know what
you’re up against. You have to be ready to die an
ignoble death. Camus went mortal in a flaming
Maserati. Kurt NoPain, the rock star blasted off in
his solarium and Jackson Pollack smoked and drank
himself out of it and Allan Mega Watts, the zen
guru, did it in the wiggle dance, in bed with two
whores on a houseboat in Sleazalito. I think
Rokerfeeler died the same way, in the saddle,
although they found him pondering his stamp
collection with his shoes on backwards. Beckett
simply waited around for the black ambulance and
Sartre drowned himself in the Delta of Venus. To
them life was nothing more than a prolonged act of
contemplative suicide, a joke played on mankind to
amuse Gods we will never see or know. I couldn’t
side with them, but I feared Dolphin had gone down
the Rabbit Hole.
The existentialists probably had the right idea,
but, for me, life was too painful, too beautiful, too
joyous to be absurd. My only salvation was my
ignorance. I don’t have faith, I don’t believe in a
vengeful or even a compassionate god, but
thermodynamics sure has a mean sense of humor
don’t it?
Reading Hamburger Zen for the first time, (I’ve
read it twenty times as of this writing) was a mind
numbing experience, but, like the White Rabbit in
Alice in Wonderland, I was running out of TIME,
that temporal pepper we put on all of our food. It
was drifting away. Dame Bates was still waiting
and the lunch crowds were passing quickly in the
drizzle.
13:00 Hours
TIME to get my ass in gear, full of lunch as it
was.
The newspapers were beginning to broadcast
strangely negative economic news. If I was back in
Alta I’d go up to a mountain and wait for the pain to
go away, but I’m here in London and it’s getting
worse. Throb.
Wooooooomba!
A big headache gnaws its way in.
Ahha yes—there’s Bootes pharmacy selling
powders and bromides.
Gulp!
Headache gone now.
The sky cleared briefly and so did the vascular
brain tweeb. That’s when I realized I was walking
down a sidewalk in London carrying a notebook
begun at least ten years ago and six thousand miles
away, although I was confident, based on fresh
looking margin notes, that it was recently edited in
Paris. I was probably the first person to read the
thing from cover to cover. It seemed fragmented
like a memory error in RAM and yet the thing hung
together like a long poem. I moved ahead on the
assumption that Dolphin wrote the notebook. He
was looking into an unpolished crystal ball and,
well, who knows? Maybe he saw something
floating around in there. I’ve always left the
omniscient voice to the people who play The Bead
Game, the great seers and bards of our world. Was
Dolphin a bard? A new talent on the worlds vast
stage?
Imp says. “I don’t know man, but you sure
ain’t.”
A hint of a rainbow formed in the afternoon
mist. Any hope for a fully
mature—magnetooptical—rainbow disappeared
when another sky full of rain appeared from the
North Sea. The first huge droplets naturally sent
London’s many park crawlers into an animated
strut. An overhanging Dutch Elm protected me for a
while, but the smell coming from the damp tree
reminded me of the Redwoods in Big Sur. Now I
was getting home sick. To make matters worse my
impish voice whispered in stereo, like it was
coming from an echo chamber, “What a whimpus.
You could write the next great evolutionary book.
Call it Survival of the Whimpest. Look man, just
walk to the car. Gather up the briefcase. Don’t
forget the Burberry, you nitwit.”
Reeeeverrrrrbbbbbbbb.
Boy is I stupid. According to Dolphin the
computer business became a combat zone between
those who empower people and those who suppress
democracy. Demos, the crazy idea that people can
be masters of their own destinies implies that
everybody should have equal access to computer
power, but the fascist element said; “Oh no! We
can’t have the unwashed many running around with
computers on their laps. A priest caste will be
necessary. But a growing, world wide, alternative
microcomputer culture, dedicated to reducing
alienation by raising awareness of the antiquity of
computers and to opening access to computer tools
for all people does exist. Dumb Dolphin was aware
of this trend. Even my Mom and Dad were into it
around the turn of the millennium. The notebook
got wet on the long sloppy walk from the bench to
the car. I must have looked geeky, people were
running from me in fear. Was I developing a case of
psychic body odor?
Imp says, “Hey man there’s no deodorant for
that.”
I slid the damp parking citation from the wind
screen and shut the door behind me. Imps says,
“Hey man it’s amazing what you get on your wind
screen in England these days isn’t it?” I never
answer him so I just sat in the leatherwood form
chair steaming for a long time in a continuing
homesick condition, longing for the solace of the
redwood cathedrals back home. The old growth
trees, almost extinct fifty years ago, remind me of…
“Hey wait a minute, maybe I can beat this yet. I’ll
pop over to Westminster Abbey and look for the big
trees inside, cedars I think.”
I pulled out down the river side and joined the
flow. I looked for spires until I found Parliament
and the Abbey. I crammed the Daimler into a
“Handicapped Only” zone and limped into the
Abbey, grasping at the holy water on my way. A
gardener with red hair gestured to me. I thought he
was trying to hassle me about the handicapped
zone. “Fuck you buddy, I’m handicapped too.” Not
very friendly of me I guess. Never did find out what
the guy really wanted.
Once under the secure boughs of the oldest trees
in England I tipped my beanie to Ben Jonson, and
began to pray. I thought a Greek paean to Thermos
and Aerie would do nicely. I grew calm and
peaceful for the first time since I left Ireland. I sat
on the medieval stone bench overlooking the
Cosmoti floor in the apse. This was the opus
magnum of the Cosmoti brotherhood, a secret
society of stone masons who specialized in terrazzo
spirals depicting the cosmos in miniature. Very
hermetic.
Dolphin’s Hamburger Zen, was clearly a book
within a book, one of many volumns in a series. The
next to last chapter page gave a detailed account of
how the ancient Chinese could carve seven inner
spheres from a single ball of ivory. Too bad the
elephants had to pay.
Time to see Bates. The storm wasn’t letting up,
but I had to trudge on. Westminster and the Cosmoti
would wait for a further inspection. Slow and easy,
I start up, defrosters roaring away. Now I knew the
difference between a Replicar and the real thing, the
real thing didn’t have to strain to defrost its wind
screen, this tiring yoke did. Puttputt, puttooie. I
would consider my self lucky to get back to the
hotel. The oncoming cars flooded by as if they were
windboats searching for a regatta. A Britannia XR
motorcycle emerged from the flood like a monster
with dimmed halogen eyes, just as I rounded
Russell Square corner.
The valet at the Redstone took charge of the
soaking Daimler at 15:30 Green Witch time. There
were some vague noises in the lobby, but I was only
interested in a warm bed. The sheets were cold. As
soon as they warmedup I would be permitted to nap
for an hour or so. Then I would don my proudest
armor, mount my hobby horse and rock over to get
stomped by Big Mama Bates—rain or shine.
Meeting Dame Frances
Saturday may seem like an odd day to have an
audience with the greatest philosopher alive, but
that’s the day Bates set aside for Yanks. I was
groggy from my nap, but managed to stagger out of
the bustling hotel into the dripping dark of the late
afternoon. “Well, well, good news, the storm blew
over without killing anybody. Dame Bates’ office
was just down the road on Bedford Square.
By the time I got to Store street, roughly in the
center of the University of London, I had tucked my
scarf down tight and was thinking of buying a hat.
The rain was gone, but the damned wind was wet.
People moved as fish in a child’s aquarium. A
homeless shell of a man drifted by. I could see my
face in his eyes. It coulda’ been me in the tattered
raincoat pushing the stolen grocery cart. I saw him
from my fifth floor window last night. I saw him
yesterday too, closeup. He passed me earlier today
as I handed the keys to the valet. Abject and
habitual terror etched the hollows that formed his
cheeks. Disappointment overshadowed his hulking
shoulders. He was probably a haughty commodities
broker until Excalibur blasted the Spanish orange
juice factories in Seville. Now he’s adrift on wet
cement. There but by the grace of god go I.
Bates weighed heavy on my mind as the
homeless man faded beyond the street lights. Her
writing style has a peculiar density to it, she has a
photographic memory and an IQ beyond count. In
her books and articles the words slip together like
wellmeshed gears, but the machine is large and
complex, with gears fashioned from titanium. She
says she has no control over her style, it was that
way when she was born and evolved as she grew
older. Rather than waste the gift, she used it to
become the world’s most renowned scholar in the
field of Medieval and Renaissance studies. She
wasn’t some bowtied tweed from Yale teaching
little grommets dressed from the L. L. Lentil
catalog, nor was she a Public School headmistress
doing battle with ‘Smarty’ sucking Sloane Rangers.
No, Dame Frances was the real thing, a true cerebe
formidable. She held an OBE, three Phds, only one
of them honorary, and spoke and wrote in four
modern and two dead languages—interchangeably.
She demonstrated this by rendering one lecture in
Provincial French, the next in the Greek of the
Neoplatonists and the third in medieval Latin.
Naturally she expected her students to take hand
notes—no digicams—which makes me, even now,
wonder why she was willing to work with me. I do
street Mexican, Brodjewenkel Dutch, Fratcured
French, a little Latino, not much Latin, and my
handwriting is so bad I can’t read my own notes.
In comparison to Bates, I was a poor writer,
lower than the lowest tabloid hack. At least the hack
gets organized fast and makes the deadlines, but I
write in fits and starts. I was lucky with The
Electronic Battlefield and the other stuff, but I had
no idea where I was going with my writing. Maybe
it was because I was struggling with the barriers
between fiction and nonfiction, a dichotomy she
probably transcended when she smeared the
contents of her diapers on the walls of her nursery.
She was also interested in my study of alienation.
I’ve never fathomed why.
So, this was my Gorgon. I was an ungartered St.
George going up against the worst conceivable
dragon, a massive smoke breathing intellect who
stood guard before the most opulent cave
imaginable. If I could sidle past Frances Bates, by
con, crook, batting my eyes or by actual scholastic
excellence, a doubtful choice on this list, I could
gain entrance to her secret cave and remain there in
serene scholastic repose for the rest of my life. This
particular Gorgon was guarding the cave of
knowledge known as the Warburg Institute, down
the street from the University of London. If you got
past dragon Bates you could hang out at the
Warburg. No Bates, no Warburg, it was that simple.
As you enter the Warburg from Bedford Square
you see a plain marble staircase dotted with niches
mounting upward. Originally there was only one
niche situated in the lobby, but the staircase was
widened after the Grants to Libraries Act of 2011.
Each niche stands atop an inlaid scallop shell, and
each displays a brilliant alabaster statue. The higher
up the staircase you tread the more esoteric the
meaning of the statues. It is an initiation. First
Demeter, then two lithe hunting dogs (Castor and
Pollax) at the feet of Orion. Next we see Bootes
hunting against a background of stars followed by
Cepheus the King on his throne. The next niche
held Cassiopeia also on her throne in ring of
circumpolar stars. Finally Saint Michael stands at
the top of the stairs pointing his sword upward.
Beneath his feet Draco, the huge dragon
constellation, squirms to break free. Each scholar
must journey past these sculptures on the way to the
stacks, but one must not gawk. Gawking is poor
form indeed.
The hydrolift from the mezzanine floor flowed
upward to the fourth floor where I would soon see
Dame Frances. As I rose I visualized myself
rewriting my paper in front of the big mahogany
and brick fireplace in the big house in Ireland—my
duck feet plodded forward, my eyelids turned to
stone. I was not Herakles or Cepheus and I could
not fathom what Dame Bates was going to ask. I
knew only that she had read the paper and somehow
saw merit in it—she told me so in a small postfiche
she sent to San Francisco and I haven’t heard from
her since.
I was purposefully early. Dame Bates would
eventually emerge from some part of the institute,
perhaps down the stairs from the stacks or up from
the private collections in the basement. She was all
over the building every day, even at the amazing
age of Eightyfive.
I titled my monograph Factors in Intellimimesis,
A study of Pseudointelligence. It surprised me to
learn that, although she hated most of the
twentyfirst century, Bates held strong opinions on
computers and cybernetics. Her love of things
technical came from her fascination with the
science of memory, a science she explored
exhaustively in her book titled, The Soul of
Memory. Bates believed that the human mind could
be expanded, almost infinitely, by mnemonic
discipline and exercise.
The thrust of my paper, based on observations I
made in industry, was that since the human mind
(and memory) expands with challenge and
discipline, the very discipline of developing
supraintelligent machines would, proportionately
expand the human mind. So, since the human mind
was ahead of the machine in its fundamental stages,
the machine could never catch up or surpass human
intelligence and, since the computer was dependent
on human intelligence for its very existence, and if
the human mind slid back on the evolutionary scale,
the machine would eventually also devolve or more
than likely atrophy from disuse and lack of
maintenance.
So, a computer, no matter how fast or
sophisticated, can never outshine the most
intelligent humans. It can out work them, but not
outthink them. If machine intelligence appears to be
on par or advancing over the human species it is a
mimicry of intelligence, not true intelligence, in
short, an illusion.
If the mind is expanded far beyond the norm, let
us say three standard deviations, the individual
becomes eccentric and is rejected by others or must
find a cult to join, as is commonly the case in
Psionics. This rejection stifles the growth process.
It’s like fish in a tank. They only grow to the
proportions of their environment. So, according to
my theory it’s not the brain that limits the expansion
of mind, but social factors. I also contended that if
enough humans believed the machines were
hyperintelligent the illusion would look real enough
to fool most people. In other words the whole
illusion would lurch ahead based on a selffulfilling
prophecy.
“Well, what are ya waitin’ fer?” The voice came
at the back of my neck like I was about to be
clobbered with a rolling pin. Along with her many
linguistic skills Bates possessed a cultivated ear for
Yanque dialects, a trick she picked up at the
University of Chicago while on sabbatical. She was
beaming with her hands curled inward on her hips,
“Well…” Her body language demanded a reply.
“I am Collins, er ah… Canyon Collins. I sent
you the paper titled Intellimimesis.”
“Right, not bad either.” She rolled the letter “R”
around in the back of her jaw like a walnut, still
affecting the Yankee accent, teasing me and yet
making me feel strangely at ease.
The imperious Doctor Bates towered before me,
shoes in hand, at least five feet ten inches tall. A
pair of those mysterious elastic bands, that only
women know about, supported her khaki military
stockings. A painful looking bunion peeked out of
her left sock. A rumpled floral print frock draped
from her shoulders and a leopard skin pill box
hat—right out of a classic Bob Dylan
tune—perched on her forehead.
Two animal eyes studied me as she balanced a
steaming cup of tea in her right hand against the
open toe wedgies in her left. Somehow she
managed to cram a rumpled pack of Craven A’s
between her thumb and the tea mug. I’ll never
forget the smell, one can hardly call it an aroma, of
those Craven A’s, the red pack, about half full,
stood out against the floral dress.
“Are we ready?” She asked, looking at me in
disbelief.
“Yes, as ready as I’ll ever be.”
Spartan is the only word for Professor Bate’s
office. Stacks and stacks of midtwentieth century
cigar boxes lined the olive green walls. Notation
cards on every conceivable topic winked out under
the half closed lids. The only concession to
aesthetics was a silver torque from the Bronze Age,
a collar used to hold up the linen garment of a
welltodo Druid, now tarnished with layers of black
and brown patinae, a magical object, perfect
symmetry—probably should have been in the
British Museum down the road. I stood by quietly
as she placed her cigarettes and shoes on her desk
with one smooth gesture. She then spun around in
her chair to leaf through a first edition of one of her
most profound books, Pico Della Mirandola and the
Hermetic Tradition. She was ignoring me, testing
me again.
“Shall we get down to business? I’ve read your
paper and it has merit. Not because it’s well written,
but because I agree with it” She smiled as if to
apologize for her arrogance. “What have you read
since you wrote it?”
I was happy to report that I reread The Soul Of
Memory prior to leaving San Francisco. I decided to
break the ice by bringing her news of the colonies.
“Did you know your book is being ripped off by
basketball players and parlor magicians who do
memory tricks for audiences in Las Vegas?”
“Oh Yes,” She replied, “Isn’t it wonderful to see
where your ideas end up?” I worried it would never
get out to the public. She fired up yet another
Craven A. “Have you read my monograph on the
mnemonic god?”
Again I was stunned. “No, I don’t think we have
that book in the States.”
Bates pulled out a thin staple bound pamphlet.
“This one didn’t make the big fiche ripoff. I’ve
never cared much about money, but this one was
never placed in mass circulation for some reason.
Very rare, this little tyke.” She beamed with pride
as she handed it over. 8
“Yes, but your royalties…?” She looked at me
in disbelief. “Listen, we are here to discuss your
paper not my royalties. I am not poor by any means.
I have no children, I have a pension and an
inheritance, and I’ve seen pain and suffering beyond
your wildest dreams.” I didn’t have the heart to tell
her about Whore Haulin’ Red and the streets of Fog
City.
“OK, let us move on.” She offered one final
comment, “After all, I didn’t invent memory, I only
wrote a book about it.”
After a long pause, in which she read a note for
her next class, she asked me if I had seen her book
on Giordano Bruno. I nodded yes, although, like
most of her books, one could hardly be expected to
understand it in one reading. “Good, then take this
one home and read it again as often as necessary,
and for Christ’s sake try to understand it. It’s about
Bruno and Pico Della Mirandola, but it’s also about
the illumination of the entire Renaissance.”
She signed the old fashioned book in pencil with
no dedication, closed the green buckram cover with
the gold stamping and offered it to me, saying, “I
would like you to have it. Please send me a report.
I’m eager to hear what you find of interest in it, if
anything.” I found the mere possession of the book
a profound compliment. She was her true self now.
The Ma Kettle accent drowned out by the
professorial voice.
I started to formulate a question, but stammered,
“Spit it out man, what is it?” She scowled at me as
she spoke.
“Well I read The Soul of Memory, but failed to
get a concise definition of memory from it. This
may be a literary or historical issue to you, but I am
looking at it as a psychologist.”
“Well well, you caught the ugly little seed
didn’t you.” She was gleeful, alive. I must have
pushed a button. I guess she did care about my
woeful little hypothesis after all. That’s why
everybody loved her so much.
Bates held her tutorials in fifteen minute
segments, she kept her appointments tight so that
when somebody was boring her she could dismiss
them without too much pain. We were approaching
the dreaded quarter hour mark and she hadn’t
kicked me out yet.
Thunder lived in London that day. Bates stood
looking out the window, trying to see some far
away place, maybe she was stretching herself back
in time—monitoring five or six dynamic brains at
the same time. When something interesting
happened she would simply turn her attention to it
briefly, record it in a main buffer and move on. This
was an epileptic like fugue, not amnesia but a
hypermemory state. A brain like that can not be
drowned by alcohol or drugs, better to be rude when
necessary.
I sat anxiously waiting for Bates to finish
processing. Eventually she returned to the real
world taking up the conversation at the exact point
where we left off. “I didn’t define memory in that
book because I wanted it to define itself for each
reader. I suspect the medieval prose writers had to
deal with a similar problem. The reading public has
always been amnesiac, that is why they love to read
fairy tales. Nobody has defined memory yet. You
are not the first to belabor the definition of
memory.”
I felt stronger now, like the earth mother was
urging me on. “Well, unfortunately I came to the
memory problem with an a priori definition I went
to psychology school on the West
Coast—behaviorism ya know?” But it was wrong. I
had to unlearn everything, then relearn in the
cognitive school. Wow what an exercise.”
She let out an “Ugh.” Then laughed. “I say, you
have come a long way!”
We both laughed at that. She was still looking
out the window. I could see the reflection of the
silver torque on the opposite wall. Bates was
observing the activities of two workmen repairing
the solar coils over on the roof of the Architectural
Association.
“Wasn’t Watson, the father of American
Behaviorism?” She asked.
“I replied with a puzzled, “Yes.”
That’s when she hit me with the bomb, “He died
a helpless alcoholic didn’t he?’
“Yes, but what’s that got to do with
Intellemimises? I didn’t subscribe to Watson’s
theories. In fact, I almost flunked out because they
were gagging us with Watson and his infernal
Calvinism.”
Bates seemed satisfied with my iconoclastic
reply. She went on, “Defining memory as a
behavior is another enigma.” She was lecturing
now, still staring outward, but locked into her text
window, “It’s a paradox you see. The true definition
of memory is nonCartesian, more from Plotinus
than Descartes, more from the Heretics than the
Christians, more intuitive than cerebral. In truth
memory is almost a metaphysical entity, although I
am loath to put these words in print for fear a hoard
of occultist will start buying my books. You see I
want to discourage those kinds of readers.”
I chimed in. “Well it worked.” The occult crowd
hates your stuff. Too hard to read I guess.”
Bates winced slightly as her voice took on a
decidedly nasal tone “Hurumphh they can’t read
anyway, or at least they don’t understand what they
read. Most people are literate, but they rarely
understand what the writer is on about?”
I had no answer for this so she went on to give
me her definition of the mental computer—she was
getting twitchy too. I think she needed another butt.
“The term computer seems to redefine itself in
every generation. The more complex the system, the
more difficult it is to define. The more the system
seems to move away from human control the more
alienated human beings become. I liked your paper
because you gave me a fresh perspective on this.”
I hesitated to let this go to my head. I couldn’t
believe I was getting a compliment from the
Gorgon. “Well, thank you. I’m glad somebody read
it. I’m convinced human beings never really get out
of control they just think they’re out of control.”
Bates scowled at me saying, “They’re too
damned lazy to build up their minds like the
ancients did. Some of us think of computers as toys
for games, others see them as bothersome
contraptions with a tolerable purpose.”
I sensed she was about to lay one of her
legendary tirades on me and I didn’t have to wait
long, “…but a computer can be any object or series
of objects, any mechanism or counting system, and
any combination of humans using tools—a painted
bone, a carved stick, a knotted rope (like the Quipa
in Peru) or a dripping candle.”
“So by this definition any clock or sundial is
also a computer. Is that right?” I hated to suggest
that this idea was common place six thousand years
ago.
“Of course. When I was a girl snooker parlors
used a series of wooden rings sliding over a wire to
keep track of points, this is like the Asian abacus.
Computers are everywhere if you look for them.”
Bates had a way of coaxing selfdisclosure out of
her victims, so I regaled her with tales drawn from
my expeditions in Ireland. Of special interest was
the long dialectic I had with O’Bannion while
sitting on the Hag’s Chair on top of Slibe na Kali. I
summed it up for her, “To the ancients, nature must
have been a giant computer, driven by light, motion
and shadow, the fundamental ternary paradigm. The
Neolithic computer was constantly keeping track of
interactive cosmogonies, weather systems, and
event cycles?”
She replied quickly. “I doubt you’ll find much
true intelligence in it. It’s so big the human mind
ascribes intelligence to it, but humans hate to bring
themselves down, most people think of the cosmos
as a living entity with some kind of shapeless
radiation. The old man with a beard idea died long
ago, admittedly, but we still haven’t got the guts to
face reality head on. When we do we will evolve to
the next step.”
We were on the same wavelength at last, So
what’s the next step?” I asked expecting some deep
answer.
She chortled as she rumpled the empty pack of
fags, “Haven’t a clue, not a clue young man.”
I laughed too. At least she thought I was young.
So I asked her what she thought about
developments in memory technology. “Do you
think things like memory metals and memory
plastics are misnamed. Things that seem to return to
their original shape, things that seem to have
memory at the molecular level?”
The chuckle faded. Her answer was sharp and a
bit scolding. “Of course they don’t have memory,
that’s a marketing term. I’m surprised you didn’t
pick up on this in your paper. Here is a classic
example of mimed memory. Hell man it even
supports your basic hypothesis. Why do the hippies
believe the rocks are alive at Stonehenge? Because,
like it or not, the original builders placed them to
enhance the memorization of celestial events. They
are alive with memory. Clearly, a difference exists
between using a stone for a mnemonic
marker—such as predicting when a tide will come
in or when the moon will be eclipsed—and
totemizing the stone. A significant difference exists
between yelling nonsense at the top of your lungs
and memorizing Hamlet. We shouldn’t confuse the
computer with the computer user.”
Her twitch grew calm as she stared right at
me… we both burst out laughing. In that moment of
synchronism we became friends. The ice was
melting. “Oh sure it could all be done in the mind.”
She was almost pleading with me to follow her
thinking on this. To make matters worse I was
scribbling away like I was in law school because
she wouldn’t let me use a zoomer or a miniscribe.
Smoke was filling the room and I sensed my time,
however well we hit it off, was drawing nigh. I
loved her, but not enough to get an asthma attack.
“Go on, go on,” she said. “What do you think?”
Imp says, I’ve always subscribed to the ageless
Irish axiom: “When given a wish, for three more.”
“Listen Dr. Bates, I can’t possibly keep up with
this in one day—do you think I could have
permission to visit the stacks. I’d like to track down
the Renaissance scholars who were dealing with
this?”
“You needn’t go as far back as the Renaissance.
Try looking into the life of Ada Lovelace?”
She butted out her cigarette, and bid me farewell
after signing a readers pass, good for a full year. I
was now beyond the Gorgon, sweating and
strangely refreshed. The stacks were the prize, the
damsel was waiting. I would, if I wore the white
gloves and the face mask, be allowed to peek at the
Codex Gorgeousness or the medieval alchemical
texts, one in particular titled The Triumphal Chariot
of Antimony by Basilus Valentinus. Hamburger
Zen mentioned this little tract more than once Bates
saw me to the door. “Now you must be going, I
have a class to prepare for.” She was always curt
with her best students. In her weaker moments she
confessed that she did this to prepare them for the
cold realities they would surely experience in the
real world. I simply stood up, gathered my notes,
and thanked her. By the time I made the three paces
to the door Dr. Bates had absorbed herself in a
reprint of a journal by the Tudor magus John Dee,
something about the conjuration of angels. A cold
vacuum formed in the office as I shut the door
behind me. It was as if I was never there.
Lady Ada
Ada Lovelace, a woman of extreme
intelligence, the daughter of Lord Byron and the
world’s first modern computer programmer, turned
out to be a world-class opium addict and horse
gambler. According to her biographers, she was
horribly alienated and full of computer schmutz, so,
why did Bates hint that I should study Ada? It took
me two hours to realize that Bates was punning at
my expense, Bates meant I should study the old
military computer language called ADA and also
the great woman of that name. I think she felt I
would somehow solve a big problem by resolving
that strange coincidence. I studied all day, until the
security guard tapped me on the shoulder.
1730 Green Witch
Saturday Night
Still at the stacks swatting away to expand the
brain for no particular reason except to erase the
photographic slate that gets, more ponderous, duller
and more difficult to rotate. I am feeling better
because I’m mixing bygone phantoms and
nightmares into the brilliant visions found in the
books pillowed here. Maybe I’ll get a new idea
tomorrow. Anyway the Bates challenge is over. I
guess I won a few points. Sunday will be a sweet
thing. I’ll just kick back.
I don’t know why Londoners seem less bitten by
Excalibur than other metro dwellers. Some political
wags suggest that one particularly nasty bombing
might have been an Excalibur strike, but this is
unconfirmed. I doubt Excalibur would single out the
jam counter at Fortnum & Mason, come to think of
it neither would the mad bombers of the Congo.
Dropping tired was me. Knees shaky, liver
pulsing with every heart beat. I need to sweat, but
the only joggers I could see from my fifth floor
window were running from a bank job. A hot tub
would be nice, but they don’t believe in it in
London, not anymore. The plagues of 2021 ended
the communal bathing trip. Ouch! The psychic toll
taker demanded another payment. The pain forced
me to tithe more than my normal ten percent, yet
my survival mechanisms were still in place. For
solace, unlike scifi or Gothic romance freaks, I
withdrew into manuscript research.
1800 Green Witch
I could see why Dame Bates wanted me to study
Lovelace. Here were two supreme feminist
strands—almost two centuries apart. I found myself
knitting the computer into the Valoise tapestry,
comparing the original computer programs of the
tapestry makers, the knitting guilds of the Middle
Ages—through Jacquards automated loom cards to
Ada and her henchman Babbage. This is an entirely
curious and odd approach to the problem. Most
history books preach that Babbage invented the first
real difference engine, but it could not have been a
true analytic engine without Ada Lovelace. It’s the
old Software versus Hardware problem.
The reading was not restful. I was clumsy, eyes
fading, a skinny cluck in a woolly vest, dust all over
the shoes from trudging up and down the stacks,
and yet I was the guy who got the signed first
edition from Bates herself. I was the guy being
stretched on the rack between the Stone Age
computer and the computer from the Age of
Excalibur.
I grew fascinated with Ada. What a gal! She and
Bates had a lot in common. Both were tragic
figures, both were geniuses—way ahead of their
time—and both were women who shook the world.
Bates and Lovelace had the same problem. I could
see the wages of genius in both women. The merger
between intuitive brain and analytical mind,
something Edison and Leonardo held dear. Both
women—one I could shake hands with, one I could
only imagine—were clearly full of the food that
drives the analytical engine, full of the heart
pumping protein for all biological computers. OK
so maybe they weren’t belly dancers, not pink
triangle women, not your unbrainy beachbunnies or
your tweed skirted nymphomaniacs—or even your
asexual career types. No, these two are mothers of
the world, ravenously converting raw information
into bite size chunks of data to feed to little cheeps
like me.
Eighty years ago the American military
establishment developed a language designed to
make weaponry design and rocket mechanics easier
to work with. “ADA” was a subset of Fortran, so
named to honor Lady ByronNeal “Ada Lovelace,” a
practical lass who used a hand cranked brass gizmo
to wager, successfully, on groups of running
equines. In other words she played the ponies. The
government of 1980 had the same idea. They were
gambling on some very peculiar black ops and too
many people understood Fortran. ADA may have
been the moving language behind Excalibur,
according to Hamburger Zen, so you see how
coincidental, no more than coincidental, how
synchronous, this Ada Lovelace thing was. I still
wonder why Bates suggested I study Ada Lovelace.
Okay, so maybe there’s something else going on
here. The only way I to figure it out is to study
Lovelace and forget the damned language.
First of all Ada Lovelace had a shill. An older
man named Charles Babbage. Ada’s father
surrogate, gets credit for inventing the computer,
but in fact it was Lovelace. With out her ideas
Babbage wouldn’t have thought of the machine in
the first place. He was trawling around for an idea
that would get him in the Royal Academy and ADA
GAVE IT TO HIM. That’s how the computer was
invented folks. Babbage, was the first to
manufacture a working machine, which he called,
the “Difference Engine,” but Lady Ada thunk it up.
This machine would be thought of as a “kludge” in
modern computer argot, but it worked, and in those
days anything that worked became a fascinating
conversation piece.
Babbage’s engine—made by hand in a private
work shop—turned out to be a manually operated
thingamajig using an odd combination of finely
turned and polished gears and levers. Unfortunately,
the Newtonian saw it as an infernal machine, a
device of Lucifer designed to separate Aristotelian
man from intercourse with his god. I guess the
established group always sees the new kids on the
block as a threat, and their inventions as moral
insults. Isaac Newton ruled the world of science and
set the tone for all moral and intellectual matters,
however trivial. Babbage, with his plebeian
manners, had no chance until the pedigreed Ada
Lovelace came along. And even after they brought
out this infernal device Babbage ran across a
density of ridicule and scorn.
The welldocumented engine didn’t use bit level
logic. Like Stonehenge, somebody had to be there
to turn the crank, it was more a servo than an
automaton, it wasn’t electronic, it weighed about
100 pounds, which made it nowhere as useful as an
abacus, but still Ada’s brain box looked like a piece
of jewelry, a tribute to the clock maker’s art and it
dazzled the Greenwich observatory boys, but
Babbage didn’t get into the Royal Science Club.
The official ‘word’ decreed that the Difference
Engine was an impractical gizmo. The real reasons
for Babbage’s rejection were never stated. In truth
the fancy Dans typed Babbage, and his big hairy
hands, as too apelike. Furthermore everybody knew
Lovelace was really the force behind the engine.
That’s when she and Babbage decided to play the
ponies.
According to Dolphin’s Hamburger Zen, the
guys in the powdered wigs were the villains of the
piece, the true architects of the angst and alienation
of the twentieth century because they believed
natural time was arbitrary and their time, their
constructs, their idea of god, their dumb version of
time, sprang from a special blessing that applied
only to them. In reality they saw the Babbage
machine as a time saving device in a time when
saving time was a very dangerous idea.
In Dolphin’s words:
The Royal Academy saw the Difference Engine
as a labor saving device in a time when every task
was slave dependent. This happened with IBM a
few centuries later. Mastership over the slaves is a
secret power, like a negative Holy Grail passed
down from generation to generation. Plato set the
whole thing to music. The idea of the Republic has
always been to create more slaves.
§ § §
The sky glow between Summer Solstice and
Lugnasad was settling in on London as I put the
Lovelace books back on the shelves. It stays light
until midnight sometimes, but I was getting tired,
eyes, throbbing head scholars neck. Time for a tea
break. I needed a ‘pasty’ too.
By an odd coincidence, I noted a woman down
the aisle, busy bringing tea to one of the other
scholars, surrounded by at least twenty piles of
books having to do with Medieval troubadour
tradition.
The tea lady, approached me, saying, “Sorry sir,
would you care for a cup a Rosie?”
“Yes, please.”
“How about scones and jam”?
“Are they real?”
“Whatch a mean reawl?”
“I mean are they made from real oat flour and
with real sultanas.”
“Oh, right sir, made ‘em me self.” She put a
proud face on the wink so I took her word for it. I
realized I’ve been sitting in one position for about
three hours.”
“Right you are sir.” She poured the cup from
one of those awful stainless steel utility jugs. The
tea wasn’t exactly the stuff one might sip with the
old Queen, but her pinkish cream liquid was
probably as good as it could get in this attic of a
place.
The tea lady says “Normally we don’t serve tea
in the stacks, but today professor Williams from
Cardiff is in, very special don cha know… that’s
‘im over there.” She pointed to a thin faced man
with at least five leather bound folios spread over a
large table top. Williams stretched his arm through
the sleeve of his moth eaten cardigan and mustered
a faint wave.
“Hi.”
I waved back and smiled as I finished the
lukewarm tea in one swig. “Wonder what he’s
studying?” The scholars most critical question. If
you meet somebody up here you can bet they’re on
an interesting trip. The round faced serving lady
seemed so serene. How did she do it? Would I ever
achieve serenity?
“Would ya not like another wee cupa’ rosy,
sir?” She twinkles at me.
“Yes, thank you very much.” I sipped the stuff
in the mug, made already with sugar and milk as if
everybody wanted it that way.
“Pinch o’ Cardamom sir?” She asked, holding a
small shaker toward me.
“No, no thanks,” I waved off the shaker.
“… and so there you have it.” She smiled
graciously after the third sip, saying, “Is it to your
likin’ sir?”
I replied. “Oh yeah, sure real fine thank ya.” I
handed her a single Euro as she turned the cup
upside down on the rubber mat. I’ll never forget
watching her waddle her cart down the granite
corridor toward the elevator portal.
Usually the stacks are lit by dusty sunlight, but
now the sunlight was dimming even beyond dusk.
The green sky took over from grayblue. Black was
on the way with its load of moisture. I didn’t feel
like reading anymore, but I had no place to go
except the hotel. The dangling LoGee halogen that
illuminates the scholars shadowy life was my only
inspiration. professor Williams, and the other
readers, quietly closed shop, one by one, shuffling
home for the evening, but not this nitwit. The tea
revived me, so I plunged into the works of Raymon
Lull and Duns Scotus—narcotics for me.
The imp spoke impatiently, “So what, it’s your
life. You’re stuck with it so let us press on
pleeeaaase.” I hit the elevator about fifteen minutes
after the tea lady trotted her squeaky cart down the
hall.
The sign out procedure took some doing, I had
to fill out three separate forms as I was a visiting
scholar. The guard was eager to get rid of me. He
said, as he always does to stragglers, “Hey bucko I
almost locked you in up there… he laughs like he’s
in a movie. “We ‘ave lost a couple ‘at way don’t
cha know?”
I felt a bit woozy as I wheeled out the door. I
was so damned tired I could see paisley in the
leaves scattering about my feet. Maybe it was the
London pipes and the lead in the water. I ambled
past the Architectural Association and dozens of run
down B&B’s. The air was free of metal oxides for a
change.
Boudica’s Statue
Haunting the faux rococo corridors of the
Redstone
was at least twice as much fun as reading in the
Warburg. The elevator made way too much noise so
I slinked my way up the stairs. The tinsel and gilt
fades quickly and the corridors grow dingier as you
get farther away from the main staircase in the once
great Redstone. Finding the room wasn’t difficult,
but the lock jammed and the damned door creaked
loud enough to wake up Virginia Wolfe’s ghost.
Every noise and smell seemed intensified as I
plopped on the hard mattress and began a recent
facsimile edition of The Saragossa Manuscript, an
obscure compilation of interwoven stories from
Toledo in the Moorish period, a time when Cabala
was at its height in Spain. In his forward to the 2031
edition Bartolemeo Krazner argues for a late
Medieval date and feels the author was probably the
famed alchemist Ramon Lull.
I dozed off for what could not have been longer
than fifteen minutes and then woke up refreshed.
An odd energy boiled up from a region slightly to
the right of my spleen.
I scraped the mud off my face with cold water
from the brass and porcelain tap, the whiskers on
the graying beard seemed trim and pert, quite on
their own. I threw on some after shave, Gregorio I
think, the green stuff with the collagen in it. It
worked. The smell covered up the skanky aromas
that hang in a room to the depth of the plaster. I was
planning to take a stroll along the Thames that night
and I stuck to my plan. The clock said 10 and If I
stayed in the room I would be depressed to the point
of evaporation. A fresh shirt felt good too.
The rickety elevator opened on a bustling lobby
filled with cheery folk from many nations. To them
Excalibur was a distant hassle, better left to
someone else. So far so good. I felt woozy and
giddy at the same time, but good enough to venture
out into the blustery night.
I checked for mail and messages, no such luck,
but I was in for a pleasant surprise. As I made for
the revolving door I heard a voice calling my name
in a pleasant and educated Irish brogue, Dublin
branch. “Canyon, Oh Mr. Collins.”
I thought there for a moment it was the damn
imp on my shoulder affecting an effeminate posture,
but the voice came from Siobhan O’Sullivan, who
was connected to the real estate scene in Dublin. I
have no idea what she was doing in the vestibule of
the Redstone at that particular moment, but it
wasn’t objectionable I liked her name. It means
Joan in Americanese. She was in charge or rentals
at Lisney’s, that’s how we met, she was one of the
agents who showed me the stately manor house in
the first place. She also knew Sean O’Bannion, but
who in Dublin doesn’t? We went for drinks and a
couple of dodgy races at Leopardstown about six
months into my sabbatical, but nothing romantic
sprang forth. She was an urban Dublin lass and I
was one of those tourist squires that lives in the
mists of the ascendancy. I wasn’t remotely Catholic
and she wasn’t remotely pagan, at least neither of us
were Protestant, but she was possessed of great legs
and a terrific smile—two of my favorite fetishes. I
gulped, “Hey, hello there, what brings you to
London?”
“Oh, just here on business.” She glanced over
her shoulder. The business had something to do
with this aristocratic dude approaching from the
left. Still, I wasn’t surprised to see her in Londres.
The Dublin cognoscenti, good Catholics to a fault,
often shuttle to London for all manner of rude
activities that might otherwise raise a stir in polite
circles back home. But Siobhan was not here for an
abortion, of this I was reasonably sure. She was far
too much into yoga for that. I figured she was out
on the town seeing a few shows.
The main function room of the Redstone—still
surrounded with carved mahogany, dented by
patrons from bygone eras and continually polished
with Murphy’s Oil, was probably the best place to
meet normal folk in all of London. It wasn’t swank
like the Pierre in New York, but it carried an air of
crossroadity to it, a travelworn and ghostly air,
much like the grizzled Algonquin. During our short
conversation I noticed Siobhan’s increasingly
impatient bankertype glaringly mildly from a
distance—probably somebody from the thinktank
called the Irish Management Institute, I could tell he
was from the IMI because he was sporting that blue
stripped wool Curzon Street suit, a very svelte and
wellupholstered uniform. We cut the chat short. She
mentioned that my Georgian on the Boyne was on
the auction block and that my lease wouldn’t hold
water if the place changed hands, especially if a
retired Polish navy admiral, believe it or not, was
successful in his bidding. She said she’d look into it
for me when she got back. I would have liked to
evolve the conversation to something slightly more
amorous but the IMI gent was still fidgeting.
It was saddening to think I might lose that
wonderful place on the Boyne, but it had served its
purpose. I stashed very little of my stuff there
anyway—nothing I couldn’t live without. There
were some exotic books though. I would especially
miss the magnificent, and out of print, Survey of
Megalithic Art in Western Europe by Elizabeth
SheeTwoig and some notes on Dolphin’s early
poetry and of course the notes for two books I was
planning.
The doorman, knowing the Daimler was locked
snugly in the garage across the road, asked “Yes sir,
do you wish a cab?” I nodded “Yes” as I waved
goodbye to Siobhan and her beau.
The electrocab smeled spanking new and shiny
black. The driver was cordial, but I could see his
pulse racing in the veins on the back of his left hand
and under his collar. He was throbbing all over. I
chalked this observation up to the smarmish night
air and the fact that most London cabbies stroke out
from high blood pressure. I would have taken the
famed underground, if not for one of London’s
famed sit down strikes. My ears always pop in the
tube anyway.
I kept seeing pingpong balls flying out of the
corner of my eye. I wondered about the Irish house,
O’Bannion’s whereabouts and Excalibur. I also felt
ecstatic, like one feels when a good day promises to
continue for at least another hour. I tried to forget
the Ada Lovelace tragedy, although ugly thoughts
of Axel Tervik kept worming their way into my
brain. I told the driver I thought I’d wander over to
the Thames Embankment to view the revamped
Globe Theater facsimile. The cabby, didn’t talk
much. When I asked him what he thought of the
Excalibur affair he almost turned red. In the rear
view mirror I noticed a tear streaming down his
cheek. He saw me looking at him and tugged his
tweed cap down over his forehead. I tried to cheer
him with a quick rendition of the White Cliffs of
Dover, but no luck. “Let me out at Southwark.” I
paid the three pounds in rare sterling notes. He
started to smile. Sterling was worth double on the
gray market these days.
The last roses of the season were dancing for
me. The pink pingpong balls were gone. I felt good,
almost too good. I strolled down Southwark High
Street past Marshall Sea House, the bleak debtor’s
prison designed by Ingio Jones, the one with an
Irish franchise on Merchants Quay overlooking the
Liffy in Dublin. I think my ancestors must have
done time in there. I got so depressed I doubled
back toward the river.
The Thames was running hard. The river that
brought every known civilization to these banks
was full that evening, the water was graygreen. A
night mist was forming in the wake of the flood.
Water nymphs were doing pirouettes under the new
London Bridge. The ruins of St. Savior’s church
were being dug up to reveal a Mithraic grotto built
from scallop shells.
The London Post reported a gang war between
the Shepherd’s Bush skin heads and the Putney cafe
racers with at least six killed on the Shepherd’s
Bush side. Putney was Mortlake in Tudor times, and
today it was the lake of death again. The bodies
missing in the altercation would float downstream
and a few would appear, face down in the estuary
when the tide went out. A grim reality. You
couldn’t see the bodies yet, they were still under ten
or twenty feet of water, but the paper assured us that
they would bob up eventually. Why do they gang
bang? Was it poverty, overpopulation or Excalibur?
The late evening was taking on a thick and
hanging darkness just before the witching hour. In
spite of the ominous nature of the sky It was, all and
all, a rainless night and I was going to relax, maybe
even ogle some women along the way. But I felt
goofy, like I was on LSD. The hair stood up on the
back of my neck…
“Hey, that explains it—the dancing roses, the
pink pingpong balls. I’m on some kind of
dope...must have been that pinch of Cardamom.”
My head spun out at the thought that my head
was spinning, if you catch my drift.
“That’s why I saw the water nymphs skittering
across the Thames. That’s why I saw the cab
driver’s carotid sinus pulsing. These feelings and
good vibes, visions and fast changes weren’t just
coming on ‘like’ acid, they were acid—a massive
dose by the look of it...or maybe something newere,
something worse.”
Sweat formed on my palms for the first time.
“Jeezus, the tea lady got me!”
The face of Rosy McGee, the tea lady from the
Warburg stacks drifted by. She offered me another
pinch of Cardamom. I politely declined. I started
talking to myself:
“I went through the whole under_world scene in
Frisco and nobody ever dosed me. It has always
been taboo to encroach on another persons psychic
space—mainly because the idea of dosing people
against their will was a military concept designed to
alienate peoples unalienable rights.”
A copy of the Bill of Rights flew by.
“The greatest sin of all would be to dose a child,
since children are already high.”
Right then I felt like a child, raped and violated
and yet strangely above it all.
When I didn’t die right away I started to get
mad—hopping’ ass mad. My embarrassment began
mixing with outrage. This was a bad move but I
couldn’t help myself. I could feel another shot of
Norenephrin leaving my left kidney. My head was
throbbing like a badly stubbed toe. The survival
instinct cut in. I was now walking down Southwark
Street. The original Globe and Rose theaters
appeared on either side of me. I couldn’t see them,
but I could feel them. I needed to cross over to the
city side of the Thames. I needed to sit and rest
somewhere, preferably under a bench inside the
Inner Temple where the first Elizabeth held Star
Chamber meetings in an octagonal chapel, with a
tessellated pavement, a ceremonial room for the
Garter Knights, and the premiere performance of
the Twelfth Night.
Hey! What can I say? These are the thoughts
one thinks when one is about to die from an
overdose of an unknown drug.
The long grinding subconscious fear of the next
adrenaline rush, I guess it’s called phobophobia, is
worse than the initial shock reaction. I needed to get
my nervous system under control. I wish I had
studied my yoga a little harder. I couldn’t get scared
now. How many people did I bring down from bad
trips by teaching them how to control their energy?
What a weird fate. It’s like a cop shooting himself
with his own gun.
Battersea Park, Battersea Power Station, rebuilt
twice and rusted again. Ah, good back on Chelsea
side. I hate time-siders.
The original Globe now stood across the
Thames from me. The Rose and the Swan Inn and
the Bear Garden and what were left of the ghosts of
the Mermaid Tavern, where the newly formed
operative Masons, not yet Odd Fellows, would meet
and have pun fights and wit contests, it was full and
bustling. Inigio Jones designed stage sets and Elias
Ashmole gave the benediction. I was no longer in
the twenty-first century. The embankment was soft
and the air was balmy. I walked along tread ways
that were sometimes modern and sometimes muddy
paths.
This drug was unpredictable compared to
whatever else I used to drop. It felt like U4iA, the
pure stuff cooked up in Haifa or Zurich, but it was
stronger, more vexing, and less intellectual. It could
have been poison, maybe Muscaria, they say
mushrooms get ya’ real high before they kill ya,’
but so far the trip didn’t bother me, except that I
was tripping against my will.
Imp says, “Now that’s a long day my friend!”
I meandered for another hour at least. Traffic
was light. Nobody cared about drunken pedestrians
anymore. I walked down the Victoria Embankment
and on to the Mill Bank to the Westminster Bridge
or at least until I saw a huge bronze statue of a
woman in a chariot hovering over me. Was it a
Tarot card? I can’t remember which bridge it was,
but I’m sure Boudica, queen of the tribes of Britain,
was laughing at me. There she was on a big pillar in
her chariot, a great red headed Amazon—who,
ironically, poisoned her lover—triumphantly
guarding the river. The Boudica I knew from the
history books was soft, feminine, green eyed and
only angry when she was worked up—a bit Irish I
would think—but there she was in London, looking
much like a Germanic Liebenfrau, more buxom
than the diminutive queen ‘Vicky’ herself. The
statue must have been set there to lift the queen’s
spirits, somewhat like a face-lift or an elevator shoe,
a wig or a breast enlargement. Albert Hapsburg
commissioned a sculpture of himself as King Arthur
around the same time—very heroic.
The drug was possessing me now. I knew not to
fight it. I took Uncle Dean’s advice: “If you don’t
know...Go with the flow!”
Other prehistoric flashes came in loud and clear.
The Celts are almost forgotten to the street savages
who now inhabit London, forgotten except in
original town names like Lud’s Gate and cockney
slang and Boudica’s statue. I doubt the statue
looked anything like the real Boudica. Her tomb has
never been located. I visualized her with her chariot
ladies speeding behind the finest ponies, across the
downs of Kent overrunning Romans like dykes on
bikes.
Hey! Wait a minute! Is this Berkeley?
Phantasms in Elizabethan dress passed me on
the street. Obviously I was zigzagging back and
forth between time traps…first modern, then preChristian, then Victorian and now Elizabethan. This
isn’t LSD. Sweat poured from everything, and
everything was starting to blur. Knights charged
through traffic jousting with Marks and Sparks’s
delivery trucks. A few people were using small
Christmas trees for parasols.
Whatever it was it must have been mind
altering. This trip was the same vicious ploy Ursa in
d’ Bush would try on his human guinea pigs in the
old Hashberry, especially in 1968 in the Purple
Haze days.
It seems the CIA was conducting LSD
experiments on civilian populations—trying to
convince everybody rock and roll started in
Cleveland. My dad told me about it. Ursa’s last wife
Missy, ran off with a Ginseng guzzling bass player
from a group called Cold Mackerel and was never
heard of again, although rumor has it she achieved
immortality and is still pumping out strange
concoctions in Guatemala. Maybe she whipped up
this batch too. Who knows where she wound up or
what she managed to extract from tree toad serum
and Yage vines.
Cirrus clouds formed in my frontal lobe. Nice
sunset.
Whoever dosed me must have a reason, even as
I am losing mine. I felt myself forgetting
something—the opposite of de javu. Like never
seen before, but twice. I didn’t even know what I
was supposed to forget. It was like singing a song
backwards so when you played it backwards it
would sound forwardish.
What could they be after? What do I know
that’s so important? It was pleasant, I didn’t feel
toxic or poisoned yet, but why would anybody want
to just dose me? I guess this is what you feel like
just before you spontaneously combust. I sure hope
somebody scatters my ashes along the Boyne River
in Ireland. I’d hate to be scattered on this scummy
trickle of Bong water they call a river. Anything
sacred about it was killed a thousand years ago.
When the Celts left they took the river spirit with
them. OK so I’m bitter. So sue me.
The few boats still plying the Thames seemed
longer and slower than they really were, the colors
were brighter. Caves dedicated to Circe were
common along the path, each draped with colorful
votive candles and Periwinkle shells. Roman
centurions in full parade dress rode by on chariots,
but I wasn’t flipping out. It was all normal, or at
least that’s what I kept telling myself.
This trip may have seemed like a vast maze of
hallucinations, but, so far, it had not achieved the
one thing whoever doped me wanted—it didn’t
trigger the adrenaline. It’s the adrenaline that freaks
the freaks out. They go into a hypoglycemic coma.
You don’t O. D. on acid, you O. D. on various
steroids, in infinite combinations, secreted from
your own renal cortex. It’s like being a diabetic for
a day and a night.
Now if you are a rape victim you have two
choices—neither of them pleasant—you can lay
back and enjoy the ride or kick the shit out of your
assailant and, since whoever did this to me wasn’t
within kicking distance, I decided to ride it out.
Now this is exactly what the drug manufacturers
don’t want you to do. They want you to freak.
Theyprobably sold the drug to the Army as a freak
drug, but if you relax you can’t really freak.
Although I was angry I wasn’t about to ‘stay’ angry.
That would touch off more noradrenaline or some
adrenaloutin and then where would we be? Bad trip
right?
“So keep walking and get that shit out of your
system!”
That’s what my imp, whose voice seemed to be
coming from a brick tunnel, told me.
Whatever this designer drug was it wasn’t
strong enough to stop my inner voice.
Somebody must have been shadowing me tight
enough to know what kiosk I was studying in,
somebody who could dose one cup of tea and not
the rest of the thermos. To my knowledge, nobody
else at the library was dosed so, it had to be a real
closein job. I’ll have to deal with it later, the who
and why of it. Time to plunge in.
The modern era was fading, replacing itself, in
my demented cranial amphitheater, with an older
age, a reversal in history, this does happen you
know, a devolution, was taking place. Ancient
square rigger spice and grain ships and dozens of
barges full of cattle and sheep sucked themselves up
from the river bottom.
I crossed the river to the Southwark side
again—Nine Elms Lane. I wore the sheepskin vest
and I was carrying the Burberry, so I went down to
a candy shop and got all the glucose I could afford.
The woman must have thought me very strange
indeed. I knew I would soon have to hit off for
some secluded spot perhaps a kip under a bridge
across which Ben Franklin must have walked the
night the Masons initiated him into the Bristol
Lodge.
Whatever the drug may have been, it created the
odd effect of going back in time, not regressing to a
past life, but rather imagining the dream world so
intensely it becomes real and controllable,
contained in my own mind. It seemed as if the
visions themselves took place in an airtight
pearshaped alembic, like a womb made of the finest
crystal. Another parallel universe to consider.
An African guy on stilts walked by dressed in a
judicial wig and Chanel blazer. A fat woman with a
cigar walked by sideways.
Other than that it was about a regular trip.
Oops there goes the Tate Gallery recently
renamed “The Hockney.”
Maybe I was going to die, but the four mile
walk from the Globe to Chelsea Embankment was
entertaining. I was near Cheney Walk, where I
parked earlier that morning, in the rain. Imp says, “I
hope this is a round trip man.”
I thought I could hide under the next bridge
down the road, I think it’s called the Albert Bridge.
Rain came again in little bomblets around midnight.
I counted Big Ben bonging twelve times. That’s
when I saw myself face down in the mud.
A pack of Putney bikers zoomed by all dressed
in red and black, ghosts of the old A4 point to point
cafe racers.
The people I envy most in the
world—motorcycle night riders who worked
themselves to death to buy a BSA or a Norton and
then rode up and down A4 until they died on ride.
The remains of a Roman Temple dedicated to
Mithras passed beneath my feet.
I didn’t have time to do a full archaeological
dig—I was too busy feeling my way down the cut
stone steps, that led, I hoped, under the bridge. My
hands slid along the moist bronze balustrade until I
felt an ornate iron door handle. A slight pressure
and the door popped ajar. It was a small, dark, but
safe place. A seldom used utility closet. I lit a
lucifer. This would do. A mammal with a long tail
shot out from under my feet. I used my shoulder to
force the door shut behind me. At last I had found
my way to solitary confinement—the rightful place
for really bad boys.
Tears vomited out of my rusty lachrymal ducts
as I fell to a clump on the floor.
Printer’s Devil
Isaac Jaggard, a practicing Jew, in spite of
Puritan laws against Jewry in London, squints over
a candle as he proofreads a page of sonnets just
pulled. William Jaggard, Issac’s younger brother,
calls out to me in a high pitched tone, “Hoy, Martin
m’boy! Today I’ll make you an apprentice in
gravure, in brass plates as it could be a lucrative
side line for a devil like you.”
Issac strides out of his cubicle and grabs me by
the collar, “Now me boy, get your snoozing over.”
His wrists trembled. “We have the whole night of
work ahead of us. This offset of sonnets for the dark
lady won’t wait. Then in the morning we must print
the Gazette and you have to do all the mucking out
as well.”
I groaned and rolled out from under the table.
As an apprentice in this shop I was one of an elite
allowed to wait on callers like Blount who was Lord
Mountjoy in disguise. I called him BLOAT. As
much as I despised Bloat’s bilious manner I do owe
that he was the one who pulled me away from the
village fairs and folkways to work in London, and it
isn’t wasted, a chance of a lifetime for these green
bones. He says he scoured the West country for an
apt apprentice then, thankfully, gave me over to
Jaggard. He says he picked me because I was an
exceptional reader with a gift for the second sight,
whatever that might be.
Now I am the shop’s devil. My main job is to
lay the beds of wool under the papers, moisten
them, and look after the type blocks and ink supply.
I was also learning the engraving trade. I’m hungry
most of the time and I work my arse off for next to
nothing. Even so it is a good job. I’m allowed to
hear the most intimate conversations of the many
gentleman who were once printers to the revered
Queen, now gone some twenty years, and I’m
learning a trade. I was also able to meet the
common customers, mostly actors and other
pretenders many dressed as women. I saw and heard
everything and was never a gossip, yet I knew I
should write things down in a secret diary, one of
the things my Grandmother taught me as she had
studied with the monks of Glastonbury as a girl,
being raised, close to the Abbey, in Cat’s Ash
Hundred. She said keeping a diary would help my
education and memory.
This day the entry was about technical things,
about ways to mix ink and which flax oils to use
and which Dutchman at the Dutch gardens to bother
for paper goods and where to get them and how to
bribe Samson, the ink man, with some fermented
apple cider to get the best powders for the firm and
how to find my way to the Greyhound book shop in
Saint Paul’s Yard.
My diary also kept me from being too lonely.
The secret book was a chancy project, but it helped
me take some abuse while I was learning. Ben
Jonson told me that keeping a diary is part of the
job of the printer’s devil. I put my sketches in there
too. Ben much admired these and encouraged me to
keep up the work.
The plague was everywhere, but it was a
political sickness in some ways. Everybody on
Bankside knows the Globe was burned down by the
Puritans, although the crier says it was from a shot
fired for special effects during a staging of one of
the historical plays. In the official story the wadding
from the cannon landed on the thatch igniting it, but
this does not explain how the fire burnt the
foundation first?
Arguments went through the shop everyday. It
seemed as if everyone of substance was stabbing
everyone else in the back no matter what they did.
The object of success seemed to be not only to get
ahead, but to stop the others from success. I wrote
in my diary something I heard Jonson screaming as
he banged through the shop one day,
“He who practices compassion on the battlefield
doubles his enemies.”
He also said the back stabbing disease was
called “The Borgia,” that I don’t understand except
it was mentioned as an Italian disease and it was
thought of as very harsh by Jonson. Ben said
“Shakspur doeth that which is an Italian dance
called the Machievell.”
Most of the frequenters of the Bull and Bear and
the Goose Inn, knew me. The Goose was called the
Swan of Avon in recent times past, the Mermaid
was the bawdy drinking house and the Goose Grill
was the pudding and ale house next to the Mermaid.
I got around to them all eventually. I was still a lad,
but also one of the crowd. None of the poofy gadfly
gents fancied me and for that I was accepted even
more by the maids who fed and even bawdied with
me, for that I was right thankful, but careful was I to
not get poxed as some said it was from blood of
love boys who also fancy the cloven sex.
There was much intrigue shunting through the
print office at night. I learned there were secret parts
of the Bible included in certain of the plays and
books and that the Bible was a code book for others.
Some of the codes I learned from the printers and
the other print shop devils and I wrote them down in
my book. Most of the codes were locked into the
Book of Revelation in the King James version of
the Bible that began in this print shop in the reign of
Henry VII. Some of my friends said it was based on
seven unbroken seals and on the twentytwo major
Tarot cards and there are twentytwo chapters in the
Book of Revelation, but that can’t be mentioned
because, according to the Puritans, the Tarot is
worse than Jewry, it’s Wica, a magical practice of
the country folk who often have no choice but than
to dabble in low magic.
An astrologer and magician from Putney, named
John Dee, who turned to crazy antics after the queen
died, managed to get a book to Jaggard and much
discussed publishing it as it was on astronomy and
was secret. I thought it odd that the Sun should be at
the center of the planets and that the earth was a
small globe in the heavens and wasn’t as important
as the wanderers and something they spoke of often
called Belle Phoebe. I always believed the Earth
was important, but now I had a vision of it as a
round ball with the new world marked out clearly.
The stars and heavenly bodies were situated in the
book in proportion to the earth and I could see how
it could be navigated. Dr. Dee himself came into the
shop one day, starving and disheveled, seeking to
sell books rather than buy. Condell gave me some
money to give him and I got a chance to read some
of the books. By reading his volumes I was able to
know more about things said and unsaid. Mostly I
learned about high magic, which is natural magic,
the magic of mother nature, and low magic which is
spells and incantations and all of that. Dee was
trying both in order to see if one was stronger than
the other and he could not decide between them.
Both were needed to get by, I guess. I only found
out later that he was once the favorite of the queen
and was very old—some say even immortal.
I also learned a lot about music and the plays
that were produced, because only two each week
could be shown now and only in the two places and
even those to be closed soon by the Puritans who
saw the actors as debauched. I knew from reading
plays and from chat and seeing them rehearsed in
the streets and at Mermaid, that they weren’t only
plays, but really political satires and metaphors for
the New Learning taught by Dee, although most of
the Cheapside dumbshow missed the whole
meaning.
I heard a whisper that the printing of the plays
was a criminal offense and that the Puritans would
soon be closing down the printing presses, but not
engravers, so I knew I could still engrave tin and
copper and wood. Besides ‘twas more than once
told by James Merchant, and other friends of my
age doing well, and some of the hags at the
courtyards, that the plays were not for reading
unless for clews and codes of a kind akin to
witchery. The ones who knew the codes got the
inner meanings while the plain folk saw only the
spectacle.
I learned most of what I know about Shakspur,
and the plays so often a controversy these past ten
years since I’ve been apprenticed, from watching
this giant man named Ben Jonson and an architect
named Iggy Jones, drunk as lords, drawing wild
chalk marks, that they called skrying rings, on the
slate floor of the Mermaid public house as if the
slate was put there for such offerings. This was
better than school. Jonson even took me aside one
day and told me I would receive a much more
Platonic education here than at Oxford, for which I
much thanked him.
I don’t know why they trusted me. It was as if I
was a mascot of some kind, but many things they
talked about were not spoken of in the normal
congress of conversation. These ideas were not
Christian, not diabolical, but plain new and exciting,
although based on Ovid for Jonson and Vetruvius
for Jones, still new ideas for most souls. All the
secret things were full of mirth, very little was
concealed and yet an air of secrecy seemed to
surround all aspects of the actors art and the work of
the printer.
Jonson’s philosophy taught that all life was a
play played out within the plays on the stage and
each was a reflection of the other and all of it was
fed by joints of mutton on wood platters with
potatoes and washed down in the pubs with
hogsheads of ales and cider.
Some of the things were so secret I could not
even enter them into my diary. Blount said he
would cut off my ear if I passed on things I heard,
especially from the gentry. Jonson later told me he
took Blount to task for roughing on me in that
manner. That’s when he whispered me that Blount
was not needed in the complete plan. Jonson
mentioned a master plan on many occasions.
Jaggard’s shop made a clatter when the black
gang went to work. The type bars clacked like
wooden stones shuttling back and forth in trays. The
printers often grunted as they tackled down the
screw press. Another apprentice lasted only one day
when he dropped a full type tray during a pressing.
It was amazing to me how such a dormant machine
as a printing press could come to life. I thought the
whole show was as good as watching squirrels run
around a tree. The press is the tree standing in the
shadow. The printers are the squirrels scurrying
about the shop, shouting and casting lead and
antimony and carving letters.
Another one of my duties was to keep the lead
pots hot and the knives sharpened. I hated being
near the antimony as it hurt my lungs, but the rest of
the work was simply a matter of joining the
squirrels. Many an hour I spent polishing or just
staring at the printing presses while William and his
wife were home bundled in their eider down. I knew
nothing of Issac Jaggard’s life at home except, it is
rumored he was a Jew and slept on a brick of solid
gold. I also knew that certain broadsheets were to be
printed at night and that they were called the works
of the SCHOOL OF NIGHT. At first I thought it
was something like going to school at night. This
should indicate how simple I was.
Between outbursts the shop was a happy and
busy place. Jaggard even managed to stay jolly in
spite of his brick. Actors would come and go,
because it was a bookstore too and part of my job
was to sell the scripts of the plays to be staged at the
Globe Inn, a garden alehouse frequented by Jonson
which was a microcosm, as Jonson called it, of the
beloved Globe theater, the foundations of which
could still be seen in sooty outline down the road. I
wrote words like ‘macroglobus’ and foote in my
book, or I would never be able to remember them as
I was sure Jonson was making them up as he went.
He called it “Spelling” or “casting spells,” a form of
witchery—the drunker he got the better he spelled.
We also printed sheets of music so that
minstrels and bards of courtly raiment could
occasion the shop, but Blount was the biggest
printer because he held the exchequers stationers
account. Still the poets and musicians and actors
would come by for folios and I was surrounded by
the most intelligent people in London. It was odd
Jonson told me ninety nine per cent of London
couldn’t read and wouldn’t if they could, but I
possessed a zest for it. I knew I was lucky to meet
these various cognoscenti. I went to church often as
I knew I would get more holidays off from Jaggard
than anybody as he was of the forbidden Jewish
faith, although many Spaniards and Portuguese
Morenos practiced it in London all through, and
even the Catholics didn’t care. Only the Puritans
seemed to care about what religion, or none, a
person could practice. They were especially after
anything that had to do with The New Learning.
The poet’s works and the writer’s books were
sorted by me as a religion of my own although
Jones and Jonson called it a hermetic heresy. Jonson
called me Martin Labyr the ‘Librar’ on more than
one occasion and always encouraged me to whittle
at the wooden engravings and to graduate to brass.
Jonson’s play The Alchemist was popular and
Jonson used to come in and slip me flagons of cider
and cakes and dry tea leaves fresh off a ship,
probably nicked. Although once trim, Jonson was
now a fat, but wellrespected ‘rouge avuncular’ and
with the exception of a duel, that he won to his
regretbecause he was forced to support the victims
widow ever after—he was respected and feared.
Because he was fat he was licensed to have a sword
ten inches longer than anyone in London.
Jonson told me that the downfall of his dreams
began many years back in the reign of the old queen
who was called Gloriana Liza. King James I, now
on the throne, was of no help either. I wrote what he
told me into my diary. Jonson said the trouble began
with the murder of Christopher Marlowe—stabbed
in the eye. According to Jonson the deed was done
by the Odd Fellows . I asked, “But why would
masons kill a mason?”
Jonson scowled over at me, “Perhaps to shut
him up or because he betrayed the cause,” said
Jonson. But on another occasion I overheard Ben
and a crony speculating that Marlowe was done in
by the Puritans in an odd fashion as he publicly
announced his atheism in writing to both the
Queens court—in a long harangue against
God—and the Puritans. Furthermore he, like Martin
Luther, billed the door of St. Paul’s with his
polemic and was marked for example by any
manner of powerful men including the deacon of
Saint Paul’s.
Also according to Jonson Will Shakspur died
about that time and shortly thereafter his widow and
daughter began coming in from Stratford to collect
fees and generally upset everyone with their prattle.
I am not sure if the Marlowe incident was
connected, to the death of Will Shakspur, but
Jonson and Blount and Hemmings patronized
Shakspur’s family. They took him at his word that
he would reveal the purpose of their plot by voice,
if alive, and, by letter, if he should encounter an
unlikely demise.
Jonson said, “To the last he placed his name on
plays he did not write so that hundreds of future
generations will be in awe of a plagiarist while the
real object of their awe is beheld afore ye.” I did not
know what he meant by this, but much of what he
said I did not grasp. I learned elsewhere that at the
last Shakspur was tainted yellow and jaundiced and
was more in need of a priest before a physician.
Jonson said, “Will actually died of a tobacco purge
supplied by physicians once attendant on Sir Walter
Raleigh. It was an unlikely demise and the widow is
only carrying out her charge to get the money. She
is, however, not as difficult to work with as was
Will Shakspur because she is truly ignorant.” He
grunted fitfully, then went on, “We would never be
seen with him in public life.”
It seemed a bit odd to me that the nervous little
William Shakspur, as he was described by
Hemmings, was never asked to the Swan or the
Mermaid with Jonson and the rest. I sensed there
were large and furtive dealings going on because
the work by candlelight continued unabated and at
hours when the other printers in town had closed
shutter and barred up. Condell told me that they
operated this way to take advantage of the
unwavering habit of each and every Puritan to go to
bed at ten and rise at five each morning. So, from
about half ten to half four in the morning Ben and
me got a lot of work done.
My work was obdurate, but not without its
rewards. I read many books broadsheets and
pamphlets. I saw plebian stuff like broadsheets
against smoking tobacco a vial habit brought to
England by Walter Raleigh, and amazing stuff,
including Marlowe’s Tamburlaine and The
Massacre of Paris. I guess my reading skills began
when I learned to read in a hedge school, taught by
a minister of an odd faith in the old Gaelic language
and in the new English. This helped me get ahead in
the shop because now, in addition to stitching and
gluing the Spanish bindings, I could be of use as a
proofreader.
Mary, Lady Pembroke, whom all called SIRE as
a condition of honor and apparently also as a jest,
was the secretary of a society for learning. She
taught bright village children how to read in the
days and wrote poetry at night. Recently she
brought in her own poesy and her dead brother’s
long poem Arcadia to be published, partially
completed on the battlefield in Holland. In one of
her letters attached to the folio she claimed she was
the Shepherdess of Arcadia a priory in France. She
was presenting the book in a multilinguistic form so
that many new words came into the language in that
one book. Lady Pembroke was a great inventor of
new words. She and her party sought Ben Jonson
often and held greatest respect for him, he of low
birth did not aspire for high status as did
Shakspur—the one Inigo Jones called ‘usurer’. I
could never hear all of what they were saying, but
they all laughed in Jaggard’s office and said it
would be necessary to make Lady Pembroke’s
poetry anonymous, lest they be accused of
witchcraft by their Puritan customers, who after all
were constantly bringing in trade work—bread and
butter jobs. Hemmings, ever wary, suggested they
use a pseudonym instead, since an anonymous
work, especially a heretical one, would surely rouse
curiosity with the Puritans. Maybe we could have
got away with it when good Queen Bess was
around, but now with James wavering—one day he
acquits the witches, the next day he throws a
handful to the wolves—Jonson and the others could
never be sure.
All agreed the Puritans caused troubles
unknown before. In the meeting rooms, through a
crack in the wall, I heard Lady Pembroke speaking
in a subdued tone.
“We are freemen and yet we are without
freedom to speak as the obnoxious Knoxians are
constantly trying to rule from the pulpit with the
design to force free thinkers like us into one church
or another, and yet we are godly and believe whole
heart in a supreme being, so we are not atheists as
they accuse us.”
She then placed her brother’s Odd Fellows
apron and trowel on the table. I knew I should not
be seeing these things so I went on about my
business. The last thing I heard was Jonson saying,
“Gentlemen and lady, this shall be a tiled meeting,
will the Tyler please place an outside sentinel. A
man I had never seen before walked out and almost
caught me peeping though the wall.”Who goes
there?” He asked and I said, as I was told, “The
Grand Architect of the Universe.” I was then
escourted to a bench and told to shut up. Again all
of this shuting up, I did not like.
I knew of these secret meetings and other Odd
Fellows activities by signs left in paint on the city
walls at night, all in codes unintelligible to me.
Signs saying Hiram Abiff and Tubal Cain. Every
time Joinson saw one he winked at me and nodded.
I knew I had a secret I would have to keep alone,
because I was not supposed to know that Jonson
and Lady Pembroke and the others belonged to the
free Odd Fellows order. This much surprised me as
I was told that women are not allowed in the Odd
Fellows and that boys as young as me were never
allowed to meetings, but Jonson assured me I was a
special case. Later Jonson explained that he joined
because his uncle was a brick layer who worked the
craft grades until he entered the “Royal Arch.” He
talked freely. To this day I do not know why he
trusted me.
No matter what happened that year the talk
always focused on the activity of the Master
Rosecruz, who ever he was, and the Adams brothers
of the Dragon Society being persecuted in Somerset
and sent off to America in the New World. But they
were persecuted there too. I always thought it was
ironical that those who fled England for religious
freedom would persecute others even in the New
World.
My kip was fine and I earned some free time
away from work. As time progressed I was given a
bed in the warm rafters with a closing door up high
on hinges that afforded me a small room almost like
a carriage, this hard umber wood box carved with
flowers and stuffed away from the rest of the shop
was of a kind called Jacobean for the Jacobites, who
Jonson told me had an eye for sin, but knew not
how to compose a true book, although with beds
they did well.
On one occasion Jonson came swaggering into
the shop drunk as usual asking for books by Bacon.
I queried “Do you sire mean hog meat or the famed
Sir Frances which in any case we have neither, but
would a cake do?”
He laughed so hard a wind gust blew across the
shop. The glass panes shook in their frames. No one
else dare enter as Jonson went on bellowing and I
was the one encouraged to swap quips with him, as
if I was playing Pan to his Bacchus. I guess he was
like an uncle to me.
It was a day approaching the late summer of the
year and Ben Jonson wanted a book. “No boy, not
Fra Baco the twit who muddles up the judicial part
of my plays and Will Shakes—that damnable
grabber of souls—too, but Roger Bacon, the
Franciscan friar from three hundred years ago.”
“Never ‘eard of ’em. What ‘d he do?”
“Oh did you know Roger Bacon crafted a
brazen head that he made to speak through a steam
pipe apparatus and a tea kettle, that much amazed
the Dons of Oxford. Furthermore, this friar Roger
hit on the idea of ignitable powder to blast us all, if
not to hell then at least beyond our stage and our
time so that only mere bits of us be left for the
carrion?”
“Nay I did not know of him squire.”
“Don’t call me squire, I hate squire, four square
I be, on the level I be, but squire I be only for my
own desmenes which is a garret up on the roof next
to the pigeons, not much better than your own lad. I
see they have you tossed in a Jacobean bedsit
contraption now do they not?” He beckoned upward
with a tobacco stained finger from smoking those
clay pipes.
“Aye, that’s it up there.” I pointed to the closet
and bed they gave me in the rafters.
Jonson paid curious attention to that hutch. He
wanted an escorted tour. “I’ll be with you sire but I
have some concern for the slovenly appearance of
my humble closet.
“Aye my God!” Jonson let out more roaring bull
bellows. Like a forge, his lungs could melt a canon
for the fusiliers. “This puts ye in the middle of
things does it now?”
“Yes it does sire”
“Good then you can espy here for me and the
Blue Lodge.”
“I can what?”
“That’s right lad, I want nothing from you but
information and the love you have of letters so as
you shall do the correct thing when times come for
correctness.”
“You mean you want me to spy for you?”
“Aye, I mean that preecisitickally. When can ya
start?”
“I suspect soon sire. They pay no heed to me,
except when I am laggin’.”
Jonson dragged me out of the shop and across
the street to the wine bar were I bought cakes and
eggs. He drank the first tankard down without a
word and called for more ale then bowed his huge
argent mane until the serving maid arrived. “You
won’t have to spy on Hemmings or Condell or
Blount, but if you could just keep an eye out for
strangers, that would be useful.
“I’m flattered BbbBen. I stuttered.
“Aye quite soon we’ll be needin’ ya
boy—there’s much a foot here. We have the
factions fighting like dogs at bones left by the fair
Eliza and her sire and his sires the Henry’s. You
know James Stuart our gracious majesty sings forth
the Bible under his name now do you not?”
“Nay sire I have no idea.”
“Well he does. He fired the team we all wished
on, and now he has redactors from the Puritans
hacking away at the vellums like leather smiths
mending bad saddles. The real art of it is lost.”
“How can I help?”
He looked at me in disbelief. “Boy ye are a true
innocent ain’t ye? Yer winding’ the blessed things
off the presses are you not?”
“Aye sire, some, although I know not what they
might be. I have not time to read the folio pages in
most cases Condell proofs it all, on the spot.”
“Well then yr doin’ a good job of it.” He leaned
over, beckoning me closer for a private conference.
It seemed to me a hollow gesture since the noise
from the street was so raucous he could have
shouted a blasphemy and no one would have heard.
“Here’s the plan in simple terms.” He beckoned that
we should get out of this tiny wine bar and go over
to the Goose.
As usual the Goose was even more riotous than
the wine bar, but you could at least hear yourself
think and I was always well fed there, by the
serving maids, who pinched me on the bum
everyday, for good luck, so they said. The ceiling
bars hung with all manner of shirts flung up. The
Goose also had a mezzanine that had rooms off to
either side, some went for gambling and others were
lived in by what could only have been deaf, dumb
and blind people. The main room featured a Gothic
cross beam system consisting of eight trusses joined
with dowels and hemp twine, Cotswolds style. It
reminded me of the tithe barns in Somerset. The
interior vaulted space absorbed the sound further
deadened by the thick thatched roof all sooty on the
underbelly, but solid.
The place was stuffed with people from Surrey
and Chelsea, in town for shopping and the
occasional dalliance. Cases of the plague were
being reported here and there and yet, in the
daytime, people came out to the pubs as if there was
no problem whatever.
Once tankedup, his soiled boots firmly planted
in the sawdust and oat straw spread around the floor
like a well tacked shire horse retiring from the days
plowing, Jonson began recounting his contribution
to the magnum opus that he called The Complete
Works of William Shakespeare. I noted it was not
spelled [ Shakspur ] but rather Shakespeare. He was
not loud when he said these things, only loud
enough so that I could hear him over the constant
drone and clank of the serving maids. This was
secret business, but Jonson seemed to be recounting
an open story.
“Now listen my good son, this I tell ye, on the
best of intentions that you won’t believe me even if
I threaten to kill ya, but I must tell it anyway so you
listen up?”
“I’m listening sire, really I am.”
“Aright, then here we go. He leaned forward to
look me straight in the eye. “When I had much time
on my hands I would go to the Bell Inn and The
Pelican Mother and other diverse grottos and
drinking establishments now in shambles. In them
I’ve written plays and parts of plays about a man
who is into his cups greatly named Falstaff, a large
man, like myself, but not myself, if you know what
I mean?”
I nodded in the affirmative. Jonson went on
rambling so that I could not imagine how any man
could talk so longwinded and still make sense, but
he bore down on the topic like a Lurcher unto a
rabbit. “My Falstaff character possessed virtue and
fire and was quick into and out of trouble, me I plod
into trouble and dally in pain. Now then, this
Falstaff, Sir John to be exact, is the Greek Bacchus.
I first called him Old Castle or Toby Oldcastle but
only for one play and all the writers in the
combination agreed with Oxford the De Vere of the
house located near the London Stone and at Fish
Street where we plotted, again ignited by the cider,
that we should keep Falstaff in as a foil for
Shakspur, as we jested one who would Shake his
spear, might as easily fall on his staff. When ye read
it as ye will in folio soon as you proof it, the
Falstaff I write is the knight of the Celtic
underworld. This is the spot whence Falstaff goes
to. It is also King Arthur’s bosom in the play of the
Henry’s and in the tale of ye merry wives, moving
the pagan scenery from the dell at Avon to the dells
of Windsor. In either case the place is green and
fertile and full of flocks and ducks and barnyards.”
Jonson drifted off into drunken reveries. I shook
his gloved left arm and asked if he would be having
something to eat. “Nay, me boy, nahhhhhh. I shall
sup later. Herumphh. Now all I need is more cider.”
He banged the tankard down and began searching
the room for a waiter or maid which ever came first.
He was clowning for me. I could see it in the
corners of his eyes, yet he was serious about his
cider. His shoulders were set, as if he were the great
bear Ursus Major ready to pounce upon the salmon
of wisdom.
His cider finally came, but it placated him little,
he went on grumbling about Willie the Shake. “That
donkey thief Shakspur, the balding Will of Avon,
who I’ve told you betrayed our cause more than
once, like a Judas for a palm crossed with silver,
naught more than a Romany, who you would have
met in here buying plays when he came to town to
collect his ransom and then trot back to the wrong
Avon, as the Avon in which the sweet Swan paddles
is the Avon of the stone circles near the town of
Bath and fit to bathe in, while the Avon he says he’s
from is a wood were he poaches deer in the
muddiest rapids. He takes ransom for the use of his
name in the reuse of the works of others, a craven
cutpurse, without shame.”
I asked the obvious “Why did you not do
something about him sire? Is he not now gone to
meet his maker?”
“Why, I’ll tell you why, for there are many
reasons. Prime of all he is represented by council
even as he rots in his groats—a bloody Puritan
lawyer no less. True, I am represented by lord
Bacon who is peerless at the bar, and although the
many lawyers schooled at Inn of Courts disagree on
much, they fully agree on keeping Shakspur’s
mouth shut, even as he turns to dust because most
of the lawyers are masons and could be
compromised in their oaths. Shakspur,
unfortunately, knew details of the confabs of the
Garter Knights, the free Odd Fellows and even my
lowly combination of writers. He shakes us down in
death as in life and his name liveth on shakedown
street forever. Once he had fetched his miserable
coin he would go out and spend our money on filthy
excesses. Just after Marlow died Will the Pill fell to
the bottom of the pit and began running about with
musicians, the lowest mammalian form.
My eyes bulged as I contemplated Jonson’s
imagery. I wondered aloud, “What I can’t
understand sire is just how such lofty folk as you
and Lady Pembroke could let such a weasel rob
your nest.
“Ahha, aptly asked and so shall ye be
answered.” Ben rotated his hulk in the bench so as
to expose his cold side to the fire. “This willful Will
of Avon felt it necessary to frighten all the writers
of the plays with something akin to an executioner’s
ax, because he felt, even on his death couch, that he
could prosecute to the crown for to prove we plotted
to overthrow Eliza Gloriana when we put on the
play Richard the Second at the Queen’s Arms. It is
blackmail and untrue blackmail at that. We loved
that bitch as a king.”
Maude, the head serving maid, came by with
apples and Cheddar direct from Cheddar Gorge,
flirting with me as she worked away.
“She’s caught yer eye boy, yer dead meat now.
She’ll have ya so be careful. Do ya want ta hear
about this crass fellow Shakspur or would you
rather follow your tongue down to the wine cellar?
“Hmmm. Oh yes, let us hear more and I shall
have some apple.” I said in my most manly tone.
The thought of Maude courting me was folly, but a
heat rose over me anyway. Ben told me more, in
earnest.
“This cod bucket we call Shakspur also
threatened, and this was worse, to make our
writings public to the Puritans as he could prove, at
least to their suspicious satisfaction, that the plays
suborn witchcraft and black magic. The witches are
mentioned in the plays because most of the country
people who come into the plays are familiar with
the witchcraft in the shires and we are trying to
document the pagans as well as the Christians. And
you know Martin we are all Ionnaes the knowers of
Hermes. While Shakspur was a fatuous fool and
knows not of Hermes and the salvation of the New
Jerusalem that is our Globe and heart. But this is
bad because he also knows of our plans to begin a
new democracy for the New World, a New Atlantis
that Bacon has extolled based on discoveries of
Gilbert Humphrey and Drake.”
“Drake sire, a Goose you mean?”
“Aye, son a Golden Goose on a Golden Hinde
I’d say. Sir Frances came back to us with news of a
fabulous golden gateway far off on the way to
Cathay, and he claims he buried a plaque there with
the Indians and claimed it in the name of
Elizabeth.”
“What be this place named sire?”
“Oh well it has a Spanish name Calipha, but
Drake called it the Golden Gate.”
“Shakspur threatens that too does he?”
“Aye he does, and also to the world of free
thinkers he does a grave injustice by blocking us
from talking openly about escape to the New
World. To make him courtly we took him into our
lodge and gave him the title of the son of a glove
merchant, but he was naught more than a wild park
boy tamed by city smells. We have Inigo Jones, the
Welsh architect, well favored at the court of James,
building unbelievable theaters, illegal in some parts
of town, thrown up again to show the court what the
white fairies must have been able to conjure.”
Jonson made sense at last, but keeping up with
his rampage was difficult. I asked, “Why would
anyone be against you sire? You are of good
nature.”
The reply came quickly, “All know my good
humor is on time and that my wit be gentle and that,
most of all, I do not fancy Nancy boys and wish
women could be in the plays for sake of grace and
motion of their hips and my works, but it’s difficult
when Shakspur is producing the plays. He is a gross
shopper and buggerer. He started small, but soon
dug up dirt on everybody on Bankside except me
personally and I wonder why he did not point the
finger at me for some such perversion as he might
invent.”
“But sire, did he not die? If he be dead why now
are you afraid of him?”
“One should always fear The Dead my son.
They have friends with all manner of killing potions
and they care not for the brilliance of a mind.”
“You mean The Dead can hurt you from the
grave?” I asked.
“Of course boy. Now you see my pain and
sorrow. I am garroted by mediocre minds. I live in a
world where musicians are gods. What could be
worse?”
“I should think death itself would be worse
sire.”
“No my man, it is not. Be relieved that Shakspur
is gone to the Devil, but he has posted bonds all
over town and if his widow is not paid she is
instructed to inform the Puritans of our pagan
meanings and this would sore rub the crown. We no
longer fear our James the King, as he is in it with
us, but I do fear what he fears. The Puritans are
rabid dogs to be feared more than the blackest
plague. Shakspur, you see, caused us to miss our
opportunity. We would have gone and done the
books to wide circulation while Elizabeth was still
alive and when the Puritans were weak, but alas
now they are stronger than the monarchy itself. The
end of our dream is near. I see the pyre and the
gibbet on the horizon for our ilk and when the
Dragons leave for the New World they are put to
the pillory or to the noose as easily there as here.
I waited until he was done as I could see he was
not a little worked up.
“What killed him then?”
“Good you should ask. You might think some
one of us would poison him or run him through with
a saber on a dark night, but alas he died of his own
rot and stench and with no mystery. It was
consumption what ate him alive, constant ague and
runs. He went about with mad wenches and
buggered boys, goats what ever fell next to him, as
he was never home in Stratford and was unwanted
there. Even so, in a night sweat, I often see the
recurring visage of Shakspur as a goateed fiddler
appearing at the foot of my bed all poxed and
bleedin’ braying like a billy goat. It is the worst
night horror you could imagine. He shows up in my
dream like a dripping wax portrait, blistered from
the heat of a raging fire, pen in hand to taunt me. He
appears to others in our circle in a similar fashion.
Lady Pembroke sees him as a demon come from
hell through her smokestack and she too gets the
sweats.
“Do you not think people would simply laugh at
his accusations sire?”
“Ha! Thinks me you’ve missed the point ya
whelp. We hope future humanity will kindly judge
our work. If it were just my own arse I would never
mind, but it is the whole of the work I protect, the
whole that is thought of as blasphemous and pagan,
some say it is even subversive and altogether
treasonous, but it is our work, our club doing the
bidding of god the architect.”
I hated to ask anything obvious, but it seemed to
me to be a contradiction since the Puritans I met
couldn’t even read. “How do they know it is
treasonous sire when it is forbidden for them to read
anything but scripture?”
“Ha, you wonder that do ye? I’ll tell ya. They
don’t need to read. They don’t doubt anything. They
take it all on faith. They have special advisors who
do nothing but read to them in their meetings. They
set themselves up as custos morem for to condemn
a butterfly’s cocoon if it wiggles in a provocative
way. The Puritans would burn all the papers out of
your wee shop and then burn the shop for good
measure, and then burn you in the shop and then
burn the ashes in their hearths if they thought they
could ruin our work.”
“Why do they so hate anyone who worships
nature?” I asked.
“They despise anyone who seeks a balance in
the world and they fear anyone who has a
familiarity with the wild things and animals for fear
they will become animals themselves. It is the most
ungodly kind of ignorance, because God made us
bright so as to shepherd the animals, like Noah, but
the Puritans would curse all animals to extinction
before they would admit that we too are animals or
worse, grown up from those very animals. In order
to keep the plot alive I must submit to further
humiliations. Fra Bacon seeks, as part of the Rose
and Cross pact, as part of the Arcadians and the
stealth of the Shepherdess of Pembroke, to save the
works by making hundreds of different examples
and shipping them far and wide, even to New
London and to the other colonies, but he is elderly
now and snivels of his bastardy, as if being great
wasn’t enough. He seeks to be reinstated as the king
who sprang from the Queen’s womb at night, which
I vouch he possibly was her son as she slept with
many. But had he been King what would have
become of us? Perhaps I would have been worse off
than I now am, judging from his tendency to snivel.
I must admit the greatest man of our time was a
woman, the good Queen Bess ‘erself and ye ‘ad
better learn to live with it old cock.”
“You mean Queen Elizabeth was a good queen
and a writer too?”
“Aye, a writer and a poetess and a shepherdess
and a mean bastard who could kill with a dagger or
a stare or a crow quill pen. She knew her poisons
too.”
I knew only what my father had taught me of
politics so I coughed up my opinion, “At least a
Stewart is sittin’ on the Stone of Scone however
trembly it may be.”
Ben was moved by my comment, “True, ‘tis too
true. The crown trembles at the blazing rapiers of
the Puritans, but God only knows the crazy world
Bacon might have built if he had been king and
what would he have done with the Puritans? A
philosopher like Bacon is filled with air. No real
stuff, no blood ya see. To lead people you must
have stuff and blood and ride a horse until your
back breaks and arch a bow and aim it at the heart
of your enemy true like did the ancestral Celts
against the Romans.
I had read some Plato, in the books left to my
care, “Did not Plato see a Philosopher King on the
throne?”
“Yes boy, but in spite of Plato’s hope of a
Philosopher King, he still wanted slavery and we
can’t keep slaves as no man is truly better than any
other. Bacon should never be king as he would fall
pray to the quirks in his own philosophy and turn
the voice of the people into a moan and finally an
uproarish snivel.”
The pub sounds were dying down as the
merchants left for their afternoon affairs. Ben’s
voice adjusted to the change, he spoke quietly now.
I was scribbling notes with a charcoal stick as he
was in a long drunken soliloquy and I could not stop
or even slow him.
“Bacon and I, as you may have heard, have
spent feverish hours together as he wishes to place a
new cipher layer in the text of the folio book, this
great tome you see coming off the presses now, the
one Blount hopes to have a copy of as do I and
many others. But, even they shall not know the
codes and ciphers secreted lux interfolia and neither
shall you as long as you have a tongue or fingers
with which to write. None of my stuff is coded. My
contribution is fully on the surface for all to see. We
will leave Shakspur’s name on now, spelled:
SHAKESPEARE
because Bacon hath made cipher for that
spelling as key, but he alone did not write the folio
work. It matters little who hath writ what, since our
goal is to preserve every bit of the old hermetic
religion and our survival of it. It matters only that
the bookes be a vast museum of our heresy. Here I
can say no more.”
There was a long pause as he drank more plunk
and waxed melancholy. “What are ciphers Ben?”
No reply came from the almost corpse across the
table.
He raised his fist at me. “You mean I been
talkin’ all this time and you listened to the rats
instead?”
“No, I listened to you, but I wonder what you
mean when you speak of ciphers?”
“See this here piece of glass?”
He pulled an octagonally shaped flat object
from his inner pocket. I was amazed as it seemed to
reflect the fire light from the grill, but also sent
forth a pearlescent light of its own. “What is that
Ben?”
“This be an alchmardi stone, a skryer used by
Roger Bacon and passed on to John Dee and his
punk Kelley, who wasn’t Irish in the first place, but
took that name to disgrace the Irish. Well they used
it to look at the stars and to bring down angels as
helpers on earth. They could tell the color of a star
by it. They believed stars were the same as our sun
and were wondering if we humans would ever be
visiting them. They also owned another bit of glass
they could put at either end of a roll of papers and
see the wandering moon as a rough surface made of
lakes of dust.”
“In other words they knew it wasn’t green
cheese.”
“I doubt they even knew about green cheese.
This, is an eight sides stone, there are others of
other sides and shapes, but eight suits me, as our
late Globe was built from this idea of a scope of
eight sides that would reflect the heavens and so be
the first that could help the guises and speakers and
singers and actors memorize all the parts of heaven
and earth in our plays that they but act out for a
fiery moment on our stage, for we are all actors are
we not?”
I nodded comprehending nothing, but afraid to
disagree. He went on.
“Some of us build the stage. Others appear for
fleeting moments in life then fade as fast and still
others return in different roles, like planets in
differing orbits and wearing differing clothes with
variations in potency at each turning. Beneath it all
the same heart beats—it is the pulse of the great
mother. It is the first thing we hear in life and the
last mystery. Although we are all actors on our firm
stage of plank and wood, only a few become as
colorful and twinkle in the public eye as do the
fixed stars. Most of us are as dull as a pile of soot
when it comes to performing an act.”
He winked at me, but his meaning remained
unclear. “Still you have not told me, What is a
cipher?” I pressed the point.
“Well, let me see now, in Fra Bacon’s case a
cipher is binary, based on two. Sometimes a cipher
is based on the digits of the hand. Sometimes they
are based on the number eight, like the crystal, or
nine like the Nines Men’s Morris or sixes and
sevens. In Bacons most recent code there are two
states of logic, the naughts and crosses or tictactoe,
this was meant by Aristotle and others of the ages
passed so it can’t be wrong. I’ve seen a copy of an
book by St. Gildas of Glastonbury written originally
more than one thousand years ago. This book has
codes like Bacon’s in it. It is not a new trick but
only monks have used it before this.”
I thought I understood more now. I chimed in.
“So we use the code to create a smaller, deeper and
even more hidden message?”
“Yes, that’s it. The plays the thing, the play is
indirect and full of mummery, but the code is direct
although it seems indirect to the fool without the
key. Bacon has it figured so that even when you
have it deciphered you still have to interpret the
meaning. He says it may be four hundred years
before anyone invents a machine powerful enough
to crack the code. Bacon calls the code a
Computaire. He envisions a future where somebody
will figure it out backwards and then unravel the
whole thing like a silk curtain, but I doubt it. Bacon
is tired from the work and the ache of advancing
age and the odd cough mixtures he must take. I
think he’s gone dotty on us eh?” He laughed that
deep laugh, the Falstaff laugh.
Ben went on talking even though I was falling
asleep from the drone of his baritone. “Francis says
he has visions of the future. Of a New Atlantis that
will some day use his Computaire to compile
bookes and other knowledge and to track and see
things of great importance as such he feels the place
of the plays we attribute to Shakspur. This is a sad
and comical joke played on ourselves in hopes that
the people of the New Atlantis, which he finds
across the seas to New Found Land and Canada
where Dee and Gilbert Humphrey hath steered us,
would benefit.
“Does this New Atlantis exist sire, I mean really
exist?” I asked.
“Indeed it does, to the West after Drake himself
far on the other side by steering south to Terra Del
Fuego and then around to the North. It exists my
boy a beautiful new world across the seas, but it
only exists for the likes of you, not for me—I be too
old and of the old world. Already Dragons and
privateers leave for that land to seek all manner of
enterprise and you should go too. It is a rough land,
but free.
Jonson handed me a broadsheet soon to be
published called On the Colony of Virginia and its
Commerce. I sat bewildered at this advice, “Why
should I go sire, is it not good here any longer?”
Ben laughed heartily again, “Oh of course lad if
yer a saw bones or a grave digger business should
be brisk, Shakspur was our grave digger ‘til we dug
his deep.”
I heard him whisper aside, something that
sounded like, “…and all who are tempted to expose
our plan shall be in the same hole, by God.”
Ben was drunk, I heard him many times speak
ill of the dead and Shakspur directly, but tonight he
was even more bilious and violent than usual. “This
man Shakspur why do you still hate him so? Is he
not dead?” I asked.
Ben answered in a low trembling tone as his
face grew beet red, “That devil was an hotly sought
murderer who did learn to stab and poison with the
best of the Spainyards. It was not enough to hurt me
as my own plays stand out as proof that I, at least,
can write my own, also Marlow; Lady DeVere;
Derby, Phillip Sydney, and Oxford as well as
Rutland in both good and ill humors, even friar
Bacon but I pity those great minds that may come
after us. They will not have patronage, only
porridge. There will be no more freedom of
speech—that is why I hate him and his damnable
memory.”
I was now even more confused, “Why then sire
did you use his name when you had the chance to
change it and erase his name for all tyme?”
“My boy you are a clever one, too clever by
half,” Ben chided me. The beet redness was
draining from his face. His continence turned
normal rose pink as he went on. “Even I, who
knows much, shall not know the whole truth about
the Shakspur riddle, as it remains to do my task
with Lord Bacon of Verulum also known as
Viscount St. Albans. Only he will know the final
outcome, all else of the Raleigh Circle and the
School of Night are gone. You shall meet him soon,
and even if the poxed Shakescene—who is now
weighted down with cheap stones in a grave twelve
feet deep, so that the vermin would find his bones
easier and more tasty than a stack of ribs at a grill
house—knew of my graceful commission with Fra
Baco, he could do nothing nor undo our plan or our
folio as it is a simple Latin translation. If he but
knew what we were translating he would shite
himself into the Thames, but it matters little, as we
have turned tables on him. His widow shuts her
jaws with stiff coinage, and it is all we could ask
for. She stays out of town from fear of the plague in
any case. Next week we shall have to send the
money out to her by courier.”
“May I ask what role I must play in your
mystery drama sire?”
“What Bacon of St. Albans and I are doing is
making certain the work is solid in every way and
that all the contributors, there are about one hundred
in all, are recognized in both style and cypher. Now
do you know what a cypher is?”
I winked, “No, not really sire.”
He laughed knowing I would be silent about
what I did know. “Good, then you shan’t have
problem with the task I give you.”
“What task sire, other than what I already do? I
doubt I can do much. I am naught but a meager
printer’s devil.”
“Don’t worry boy, you are the brightest lad I’ve
yet seen. Will of Stratford, finished life with a crest
of arms hilarious, But we made him welcome at the
Dragons or the Odd Fellows s lodge to keep eyes on
him?”
“I know not?”
“I’ll tell ya’. Will the Shake is now no more
than a stack of papers and a grave full of barley
sacks. He is buried deep because the grave is empty.
No books were buried with him because he wrote
none. The real books will be buried with me in
Westminster in a small niche in the wall and with
bacon and with DeVere, but many will be sent to
New York and to Penn’s keystone state, being Odd
Fellows foundation and all. Each booke a venerable
source of all that we know. I am honored to know I
shall be buried in the great chapel, but I do not
deserve it as I take many others with me to my
grave.”
Shakspur, the small minded man from
Avonshire, poacher and killjoy, some call him a
Jacobite snitch, was constantly in a snit. All fame
and no power and only a little money. Nothing left
for to fashion his fame at home. He was in the third
stages of the French disease when last I saw him,
well fed and ill all and all. He claimed it was a
plague, but we all knew the true story. He buggered
swine methinks, but I can’t prove it except it was
his proclivity to remain a clever bumpkin from time
he left Stratford until he choked on his own malt.”
I listened intently as Big Ben chimed on. “Will
Shakspur tried to blackmail me as I once told him of
a tryst I had with a maid betrothed to a knight. It
was not true, but I still must suffer degradation to
such a clerk. I must never speak of this even now
because it was the spy Somerset, who dressed often
as a woman, came to my apartments with a message
from the Queen many years ago.
I was falling asleep again, but Ben’s strong
elbow bruised me awake. “So that you know, at
least your mind is clear my boy. When you see
Falstaff you are seeing the Great Green Arthur,
Herne the Hunter, Hu Gadran as rich in the
AngloSaxon and Gaelic language as he is in Greek
and Roman speech. Inigo Jones is of the Cymru and
he and I speak it and Irish and now Scots at court,
not great different from all them in root of tongue
only in the writing. With those living languages,
that you must have heard in gaggles in the streets,
rests the secrets of the stone circles we call Grails
and Grills or grids of time.”
“I’ve seen the stones on Salisbury Plain from
the roof of a coach on my way to London. Is that of
what you speak?”
“Yes and you have heard of King Arthur have
you not?”
“Yes sire, but only as a legend. Was he real?”
“No not real, but real enough so that every time
you see Falstaff, no matter where Shakspur uses
him, you see fertility and you see the God Bacchus,
who is Lugh and the Dagda and the cauldron he
bears and thus also when you see Falstaff you see
Arthur the size of a bear and Robin the hooded
bandit, the Green Man, Osiris and also Noden, the
Saxon the Saxon hero god, with his frying pan. The
cup Falstaff is always falling into is the Holy Grail
of ancient lore, a goblet of gold and silver filled
with wine as real as hell and heaven.”
“By the way did you know that the old Earl of
Somerset was both man and woman. God endowed
him with both parts, I’ve seen so myself.” Made a
terrific spy she did.
Ben was getting drunker by the minute now. He
was repeating himself, telling the same story over
and over again, much like a narrator in an epic
poem.
“I could hardly believe that sire.”
“Ah yes ’tis true, that’s why we all care for you
devil Martin, because you are good and fair and the
hope of the world, and you shall be a rich man
someday if only you print the pages and shut thy
mouth. Boy, you are big enough now to be paid
more and paid for your sculpit work. But you are
full of health young man and soon you will be on
your own feet and so I give you one bit of advice:
“Stay away from buggerers!” He shouted so that the
whole street and the bar maids could hear. “It is foul
and time consuming and even ungodly. If you go to
the New World pay for your fair, don’t work your
way across or you will pay more than you bargained
for. I tell ye this because I like thee.”
“So what is your point sire?” I spoke
respectfully, but Jonson rambled on, grabbing me
close to his jowels as he spoke.
“I want you to run over to me when you see
actors at your shop, and write down their doings in
a wee booke, that is all. Keep track of Hemmings,
now a publican, but still working for a pound of
flesh, Condell a grocer, silent, but always on time
for his ransom, the wife of Will Shakspur and all of
his family. I nodded with wide eyes. Truthfully I
would help him.
“Tell me also if Puritans appear, if any should
ask probing questions and anything else you see as
odd on the day.”
Why sire? Why needs you this reporting?”
“You don’t need to know brat, but since I like
you, I’ll say only that we worry that Shakspur hath
told someone all he knew, prior to when he lost his
head. Even a small secret, in this guileful climate
would be enough to have us all hanged and enough
for the Purities to raise a crowd around us and what
would we see then but the downfall of the ancient
teachings?
“Who then did he tell?” I asked.
Jonson sobered remarkably as he whispered
more to me. “I do not know which one he told.
Neither Hemmings nor Condell can write a word of
Latin and can write only passable English, but they
once were good for elegant jape when the words
were supplied. I seem sure they are happy with the
retirement honorarium we have set out for the use
of their name so that the Puritans will think it is
their own Will Shakspur, whose sister and wife and
brother are strong Puritans. They do not know of the
ruse of the ciphers only that the payments come
each fortnight.”
Ben pulled out some drawings he wanted me to
copy for him. “It now resides with my violent and
infirm frame to pen this posy in the front of the
folio you see here rightly put for Master Shakspur
neatly cut, his head off from his neck. And you
Martin, I think you shall carve the face.”
“What?” I was full astonished and drowsy with
cider until I could think no more so Ben pulled me
up, threw a coin at the bar and walked me, more or
less dragging my feet, out of the inn. We paused at
a torch light on the slow walk to the print shop at
which time he pulled out the drawings again. “Yes
Martin you can do the gravure here. Look upon the
face of Bacon and this portrait of De Vere and try to
think of them as young men slight of frame, like
Sydney here seen in the book I shall give you in a
fortnight, and then sculpt away. Make a picture that
is all of us cabalists in composite, and the Queen
herself as a young lass for she, in truth, made no
small contribution.”
“What about you. Your head is larger than the
others combined.”
Ben laughed heartily at my jest. “Forget me and
my face as it is well fattened and would test the
skills of all gravers for we can hardly expect three
slight faces to not be given away by the huge snout
and jowls on my puss.”
“I’ll try to do the work justice, but I have no
tools.”
“Oh me lark, worry not. We’ll get you sharp
steel burrs and cutters and the strongest acid to etch
the softest copper plate in all the land. Only be sure
your aim runs true and the neck of the traitor
Shakspur be severed from his body or yours shall
surely be.”
“When shall I begin?”
“On the morrow son, this very day is not too
soon. You shall be famous Martin and you and I
shall write the rhyme for to place under your
gravure and your name shall go there as well. If you
are smart and silence the worms in your brain you
shall prosper long and see many wonders fly out
from these pages as ages pass, long after I am
parted this dirt, but if your lips flap to tell of our tale
you shall live only as long as it takes to trace the
song.
Here is a sketch, a death sketch at best. We took
that from Will as he died. He had a storehouse of
treasures in the embankment stores where he
hoarded wheat and oats—when the town was near
dead of plaque—and profited on it greatly, making
many more times it’s worth and the worth of the
Globe and making enemies for each groat he sold.
He was a mean thinker and was therefore not
afforded a charitable tomb, not by us at least.”
Jonson handed me the sketch with some
trembling to his hand saying: “Guard it well lad,
guard it well. When he tried to stealth the deed to
the Globe we knew he had gone too far. He was
also a liar and a braggart par excellence because he
claimed he caused the Globe to be built by his own
design when in fact it went up with the blood and
sweat of operational Masons and brick men like my
very own uncle. It was also through his bragging
and loud announcing that the Puritans had the Globe
burned down. I remember well seeing the flames
from my small window. It was the Rose of Heaven
and Earth our sacred stage, our Microcosmos
reflecting the work of Hermes. Yet, it did me some
good, as some small good comes from every
tragedy, that at least we would no longer hear the
vain beak of Will Shakspur feeding in our affairs.
Shakspur then became naught more than a knave
who may have been the only man in London who
truly deserved to be locked behind the solid stones
of Marshall Sea House. I would have given him up
for the release of an hundred simple unwashed
beggars who fell to the debtors crime to see him
gaoled with gougers like himself, shakedown artists
who trade on the guts of the genius and the hearts of
the workaday folk.”
We walked on now as the cider was in need of
pissing out of me at every corner I could find.
“Where shall I go with the rest of my life sire? It is
a question I have long considered. Clearly I’ll not
be comfortable in a town that is haunted by all this
politick.”
“Rightly spoke me boy. I suggest you go over
sea to New Amsterdam or better yet to the secret
land of the Golden Gate. This King shall soon fall
and with him topple all, even those in the New
Atlantis. I sup often at the Rose and Portcullis or the
Swan Grill almost anytime now for the rest of the
summer except when I must visit court and Winton
manor and the like. Bacon is too senile to travel so
that I must wander to his great pile in the wilds of
St. Albans. But in my place remember all that you
hear and see through your peep hole and steady
your hand for the portrait you are working on. Later
we shall severe the head of Shakspur aright, as it
should have been done. So that the head be a boar’s
like De Vere, but the body be a hog such as me or
even Bacon who does little but edit and pay out
some funds now remaining entrusted to him by
Eliza.”
We entered the shop near to the dawn hour
wherein the Puritans would be rising from their
grave like cots. I inquired on what peep hole he was
referring to and he promptly showed me with his
cane that the wood could be moved aside in one part
of the wall for me to see out. I mentioned to him
that I was sleeping off the ground now and that
made the rats under the typography table happy as
they could now have the tatters there and the lead
slugs from the type and the wood shavings to
themselves.
Jonson laughed. “Yes that’s moving up in the
world my boy, take it gradual, maybe some day
you’ll find a wench and buy a horse, but now all I
can tell you is something big is underfoot at this
shop and we must have your confidence if not your
help.”
“You have both sire.”
“Good then I bid you good day. Wouldn’t want
that doddering Blount catching me back behind the
counter. Here is something extra.”
As the huge headed man ambled out he turned
and tossed me a gold sovereign. My own, to keep, I
caught it, waved it at him and he left both smiling.
He must have known that was more than I earned in
all the days combined. Something big was going on.
∞∞∞
It’s breezy under the bridge. The little
custodians room keeps me warm, there must be a
steam pipe in the overhead. I’m not as frightened as
I was when the junk first hit me. I can ride it out. If
I was going to die from this formula it would’ve
happened by now. I’ll wrap up in the trench coat
and munch down some pastilles from a tin called
Tjocolade said to be the best from the Dutch.
Actually it came from Indonesia, from the factory
of the Baron Von Sickus. Yummm. Great glucose
hit.
I peeked out the steel door long enough to see
that the Thames was still flowing and that the
twentyfirst century world remained asleep. It was
well passed midnight, the pubs were closed. I could
have walked out but I wanted to see the end of the
movie. It was almost as if I was in control of the
dream.
Obviously I was on an astral trip, seeing what
happened in Shakespeare’s time, not pleasant, not
what the scholars think, but as if I was tuned into
the eternal photograph of this place, something the
yogis call the akashic record. In every portico in
England there stands a bust of the Immortal Bard,
but according to Jonson, this dufus wrote none of
the plays. Apparently, he was finally, after all the
deceits he could master, martyred or murdered or
left to rot of his own calumny. After his death he
was used by his enemies at the lodge. They had the
last laugh in the long run. He would be
immortalized, but so would the entire revenue of
literature for the entire age. How clever of them, the
true stage crafters and masters of irony that they
were, to cast the nit wit Will Shakspur in such a
golden role. The ultimate irony.
Tea and that Toblerone would have to wait, the
story was too exciting, the urge to dive back into
that dream world was too strong. Whoever dosed
me made a big mistake. I was starting to enjoy the
trip, foolhardy I know, but what the hell, as Ben
Jonson once said, “Life is beautiful then you die!”
∞∞∞
My spying began the very next day. Here comes
distributors and subscribers and booksellers
William Aspley and John Smetwick to pay a large
sum. Next, with the hour Blount arrives, takes
money from a velvet purse and leaves off sheaves
of paper, some with wax seals regal in nature with
the seal of Walsingham affixed to red ribbons. Later
I was told by Will Jaggard to take these sheaths
carefully to the back and to secret them in the dry
eves near the type table with extra care. He watched
me all the way, from back to front, but I could read
the cover through the thin wrappers. It was a play
named Hero and Leander of Christo Marlowe. I
wrote all this in the diary that I would show to Ben.
I worked for two days on normal chores and
saw nothing strange except that other printers were
being brought in from Saint Paul’s church yard, and
other places in the country for this job. One, who
was an expert typesetter was brought from Bedlam
Hospital, being only two miles up, for this single
job, a grand folio that comes before all other
printing in the shop. The other lads whispered that
he was driven mad by Blount forcing him to set
type faster than possible and breathing in lead
fumes.
The gold sovereign Jonson gave me burnt a hole
in my pocket. The spending dreams were worse
than the work at the shop. I was rich, but could not
spend the money. Jonson knew that when he gave it
to me. It was worth fifty marks or so, which, in my
mind made me rich beyond belief. I could have
almost bought a croft in the West Country or
traveled to Germany for a fortnight on only one
fifth of that amount or to Alexandria and back. I
could have even made it to the New World, which I
was thinking about more and more since Jonson
told me of Drake’s Golden Gate.
On the fourth day of spying for Ben I noted
something extraordinary going on in the street out
front, a huge weighty black carriage with many
guards and livery pulled by four matched
Hanovarians appeared in the cobbled court yard.
From the boot of this great coach, emblazoned with
royal seals I saw many reams of paper and folios
and quartos being removed, all in need of repair. I
was even made to help barrow these in. The coach
was made in Holland by Andres Von Den Fischer,
as that is what was inscribed on the foot board, but
there was no one inside. It was used now, only for
delivery of documents. There were so many vellums
in this load that I was forced to work into the night
stacking them, as though physical labor was my
payment for being able to read. Still, I would not
have the job if I could not read and it was my task
to sort them out before the morning. This I did, or at
least made a start of it.
As soon as Jaggard and Blount and the others
went away I dashed out to find Ben. This was not
easy. I could not hope to cash the coin as I would be
arrested on the spot, for what printers devil carries
in his pocket enough to buy a modest house? I could
only hail a vegetable wagon and say my master was
ill and would pay on arrival. This took some doing,
but one farm boy, name of Jack, was game after
much pleading. Of course I showed him the coin.
His eyes bulged out. He had driven his fathers
barley to market and was now returning home. He
would make a profit, I assured him, if he could
drive me toi and from the town square.
After weaving through crowds at a snails pace I
finally found Jonson across the bridge on the city
side. There he stood in the midst of the crowd on
the corner of Lombard and Fenchurch street, a
crowd he gathered by sheer argument. Ben was
attired in his blue waistcoat with the fob with the
funny blue letter “G” on the compass. He wore a
black shawl over his shoulder and arm in the style
of the Jews. Ben was disputing some odd point of
hermetic philosophy with the pie baker whose shop
door he was blocking. His stentorian tones rang out
and his vulgar references made the ladies titter, and
the Quaker elder blush beneath his flat hat. But that
was just a gloss, Ben was really showing people
how to debate. He was bringing esoteric wisdom to
the streets. It was something he called “free speech”
whatever that is. If I hadn’t heard him bellow so
often before I would have never found him.
Jack was exhausted after an hour at the reins, at
what must have been break neck speed for him, so I
begged him stay put until I returned with Jonson.
He assured me he would be glued to the spot for to
move might kill the horse. I winked at him as I
proceeded to tug through the middle class citizens
so well taught and dressed. They seemed to be the
younger sons and daughters of merchants out airing
their youthful ginger and petticoats—an unlikely
crowd for Jonson, but he was ever the corrupter of
youth, always on the prowl for new minds to bend.
The crowed had originally formed directly in front
of Oxford’s house but had moved on, in ambulatory
fashion, to the aforementioned pie shop. By the time
I bored to the front of the crowed Ben was rapping
his cane on “The London Stone,” an ancient
megalith said to be put there before the time of
Jesus. Jonson was outraged that the sacred stone
was being desecrated. He was protesting it being
made part of a wall for a new bank. I managed to
tug him away long enough for him to recognize me.
“My God Martin, me boyo what do ye here?”
Ben projects to the crowd as if he were on stage:
“ALREADY SUCH ALARM OUR JAMES’S
TIME DOTH MOVE MORE QUICKLY THAN IN
THE DAYS OF LIZA!”
“But sire, there is much you should know.”
Once aside I whispered in his ear as the crowd
moved about us. “The lost plays of Hayward have
been delivered in many carts full from St. Albans
and also those found in safe boxes at Vere House.”
He looked bewildered. “Nay Martin this be the
great Vere House standing before ye.”
“Yes sire, but these are the ones you said were
lodged with Lord Verulum at St. Albans.”
Giant Ben looked around and saw that no one
heard me. “I smell bacon frying. Do ye not smell it
also boy?”
“Nay sire, I smell only custard.”
“My God boy that’s it, that’s the watchful eye,
Bacon at last comes home. But I cannot quit here
yet, I’m arguing the antiquity of the London Stone,
that some fool hopes to tear up for a taffy shop or a
bank or both since pulling taffy and pulling cash is
about the same practice don’t cha think?”
“I wouldn’t know sire.
The crowed bubbled as Ben and I made our way
out. I realized then that he was drunk. His hulk
moved straight only because it was so huge. Any
smaller man would have fallen down. As we fled
the place he shook hands and gave signs in a Odd
Fellows style, occasionally stopping to whisper in a
few ears. Any corner in London was a stage for
Ben. When we got clear he asked me for a critique
of his performance. I wasn’t sure what he meant.
How could I critique his play, I wasn’t in on the
first act. “It is not my place to wonder about such
things sire only that you have been a good man and
are now forgetful of what you charged me with last
week, to espy what goeth on at Jaggard’s and so I
fly to you here if bookes should arrive.”
“Ahh yes, bookes.” Ben was pleased with the
swiftness of my errand. “How strange brother
Martin. Bookes, bookes, more bookes. Did you
know that Vere house, and all it’s contents,
including the library great and private, was granted
to the 7th Earl of Oxford, by the King Henry VIII
himself on the dissolution of Torington Priory that
stood adjacent here and contained many secret
papers of heretical nature which survived and were
returned into the manor?”
“I would like to learn more sire, but there is
haste about our transport who is not but a lad with
his fathers spud cart. I hired him on his way home
so to find you. Time is of the essence I should
think.”
“Right, so pay the man. He looked at Jack half
asleep in the empty burlap. “You have fifty marks
boy.”
“Nay sire, no one will cash such a rich coin.”
“All’s right I’ll pay him, but you see my
allowance has left me unable to get back.” He
showed me an empty pocket pulled out and a
pitiable mug on him. “This void is all I have.”
“It’s alright sire. I shall pay him from some
coppers at the shop… the lad well deserves it. I
suggest we haste to look at the masses of new
quartos brought in this very mornin, and the original
edition of OVID and all others brought in wheeled
carts. I do this only as you have directed.”
Jonson’s eyes rolled. “Yes rightly. Disputation
with these perfumed slaves can wait, how can a
crow be a peacock anyway?” He smacked his lips
with anticipation. “Let us be off then.”
Jack and I poured Ben into the wagon, at great
strain as the crowd moved on—a crowd that Ben
got fired up in the first place by filling them with
brandy and African coffee at Saint Michael’s Alley.
He knew the men would jabber on into the night
sipping from their purse flagons and pinching
dames and bawdizing while the seemingly demure
ladies ogled cod pieces and men’s rumps, but
maybe he planted a seed in one or two of them. He
was a starter of fires but never the pure arsonist.
“Oh God this pusillanimous nation.” Jonson
muttered as he boarded the cart with a beer jowl
grunt. I thought the Belgian shire horse named
“Hink” would soon tire, but Ben seemed as light as
a feather propped up as he was between a sack of
barley flakes and a bushel of whortles. If ever there
was a perpetual motion machine this horse was it.
Ben waved his cap at mocking passersby as he
shouted, “This system of levels where devils scurry
up burning ladders to pose as angelic hosts is a
fraud. Ours is a land of freedoms too numerous, a
punkish place where great minds, wrought of the
sperm of angels, stay frozen in obscurity.”
I turned to hush him up, saying “Quiet sire
you’ll spook the horse and call the warders.”
He took umbrage, “Oh small Martin, little finch,
drunk as I am, I think this place, this life, this vile
graveside curse, will ever be an ungodly exchange
run by coin collectors for the benefit of booksellers
who can not read. They exchange rounds of metal
for stolen herbs while golden pages rot in murky
shops or fall to the conflagrations of the mobs.”
Jonson then noddedoff muttering words I could
hardly make out above the urban din. “Each of us a
Phoenix… we whiff mad nepenthe then rise in
vapors as must have done the oracles of Delphi
gyrating on their tripod stools, entirely without
rungs or visible wings.”
He farted loudly and burped many times as he
spoke. The lad and I could not determine if he was
asleep or in his grog. More mumbling came from
his throat. “Each of us that writes our poesy and
plays, is a revelatory. Each a witness for the
twentytwo verses, each an Alpha and Omega, each
a beginning and an ending in one symphonic heart,
sustained for all of life. How wrong it is to stab and
duel between ourselves when, in head and heart,
eye, pen, music and dance, drink and drunk, politick
and love for the people, we are but one against this
land of imbeciles.”
A death cart full of plague victims passed us in
the outward direction. One of the corpses hands
dangled over the side and, when a bump was hit,
flew up and down as if in a wave. Jonson saw it and
began to sweat. “You see m’boy, it is an omen.”
Nay sire, The Dead salute you, that is all.” Ben
stood up in the cart and began to gesticulate wildly.
“The Dead salute me?—Never!” “They haven’t
even saluted themselves since they sang that
Anthem to the Sun.”
“Ben began to spew vomit over the side of the
cart, but for all of his shouts I could not make sense
of his words.
“Those who visit our plays—our wondrous
patrons, be they Knight or dairyman, Queen or
courtesan, they’re all fools. They munch their
hazelnuts with wild abandon. They stand on the
benches and scream from the balconies. Some
dance like spinning dervishes, others smell like
wharf rats, yet few of ‘em understand a word of
what we play and most of ‘em hate the Irish, berate
the French, detest the papists and banish Jews.
Heaven forbid an African should walk in, they
would tear him to bits, even if he were a King. Thus
we wrote Othello. In this our audience, nay the
mob, are like Puritans. They are colorfully
disorganized, and yet they conform in dress and
manner. They aren’t somber or sober, so they think
they’re free. In truth they are slaves to their ties and
dyes. They are our patrons and so we love one and
all, but we know what fears us most... that is that
they have no active principle against the Puritans
and therefore will cave in to the slightest pressure.
The first tongue of the lash will snap them, every
one, into a prisoners queue.”
Jack pointed out a group of black hatted men
coming down the lane ahead of us. “Please hush sire
you’ll raise the Puritans.”
Ben reluctantly seated himself on the barley
corn sacks as we pulled through Lugs Gate, but he
did not stop his prattle. Hah, Purites, Purites you
say, they are little more than mercantile peasants
wrapped in black silk, a color that absorbs all light a
color that betrays the nature of their hearts. Still, we
must educate all comers in hopes of enlightening a
rare few.” He spit out this last chunk, just as the
Puritans walked by.
Jonson fell dead silent as the cart slowed in
front of the print shop. Jack looked at us with
disbelief honestly expecting his payment. With a
wink Jonson produced a hidden coin from his glove,
a small silver mark handed up to the lad now
slumped over the reins. He brightened up at this. I
saluted him sharply as he and Hink slowly pulled
away. It was as much as his father would make in a
month.
As we entered the print shop I thought better for
precaution than to have to fish him out of the sewer,
all twenty one stone of ‘em. I took a lamp from the
back post to light our way, which Ben knew too
well already. Inside Ben showed his groggy
condition from the ride and the cider he had been
pumping in, but he screeched like a barn owl when
he first saw the heap of folios—wrapped, tied,
bound and unbound, scented, soiled and perfect in
leather cases. He went silent again thereafter and
seemed to sober up. Joy showed through his eyes as
he scanned the heap. “At last they have seen
wisdom. They are all here now.”
“What is here sir? You give me a gilded palm
with a long life line from the mound of Venus to the
plain of Mars to say to you what hath come. Now
that I have fetched you might I ask what is this
heap?”
“Hmmmm.” Jonson looked down on me with
eyes that glowed as if they were taken from a Ban
Dog about to fight. He stared so long at me I fell
down on the planks and into the sacks of paper set
all around. “Would you know if I told thee?”
“Not probably sire, but I noticed the furtive eyes
of the coachman from Saint Albans this day. He
seemed as if something of importance had come
about. Has it?”
“Aye, it has my son it has. How much you know
now already makes you a dead man.”
“What!” I was frightened, he seemed to mean
these words dreadfully.
“That’s right, we’re all dead now, so if you can
get away with some money and your skin. I suppose
you should know it, but I cannot tell everything as I
do not know everything, none of us does, not even
the King himself.”
Jonson bid me fetch some port and Stilton from
the hidden locker set aside by the Jaggard’s. I also
brought fine crystal and potato bread on a wooden
platter. It wasn’t enough, Jonson scowled and
pointed to the pantry as he cut a slice of cheese. I
went in and found a box of apples and a smaller
bottle of ale, but I hated to stealth in and out of
Jaggard’s office as he kept private books there in a
shelf, locked under glass. He said he would cut off
the hand of any who would touch them. Books with
names such as ARCADIA printed by him in years
gone by and sonnets in fine bindings much better
than the buckram we use now.
On my return I caught Jonson digging through
the paper heap as if it was his own trash. “Here is
the Stilton and ale sire. A loaf of black rye is also
here. Anything else is stale and not proud nor fit to
be eaten.”
“Good, good” he grunted. “Now boy sit down
here. I want to show you something.” Jonson pulled
out a page from a play and proceeded to tell me
stories about it. I’m going to tell you things and if
you tell any one at anytime you will almost
immediately drop dead.
I was stunned into silence.
“We are a cabal, that’s a secret name for a gang
of thieves all blood sworn to do a certain powerful
deed, a pagan thing. And although future critics will
wonder what good could ever come from a cabal
such as this we are it and we loved the world so
much that we gave our best writing over to the
gang. This gang that writ these plays and sonnets
dates back to Greek and Roman speech and before
to the days of Kings of Gaul only whispered and the
bards that wrote for those kings were also of a gang,
the same gang and the troubadours who wrote and
sang of Perceval. So when it’s said no good can
come from a gang of writers let it not be believed.”
Jonson kept looking at me with a fierce and
intense face, so red with blood up under the eyelids,
that it was me, I think, he was angry with, but he
assured me I was not the focus of his ire. Then he
said: “Almost everything we have done is laying
here on the floor Master Martin and your gliding
blade will soon sever the head of it for once and
ever. Yiseree, it is a pie, the fruit of it and the crust
of it working together did up this dung heap all
within an hermetic order vowed to keep the old
religion alive, for it balances the earth, and we shall
get away with it. The Countess of Pembroke herself
added a full ten thousand words from the French
and German. I and Fra Baco have been Latinizing
it, it’s been going on a long while this swindler’s
pavan, and yet I’ve grown to love it.”
Jonson was enraptured, so much so that he
drank the whole bottle of sweet wine and all but a
slice of the greenish crumble cheese. I managed to
grab a bite now and then. He said further on in the
night that I should read along with him here and
there for fun, as this whole pile would have to be
shipped soon to the new world and to other safe
keepings in diverze abodes and abbeys or else be
burned and dumped in the Thames, which would
oddly send the ashes back from whence they came,
back to the Eleusis and the Nile and the Avon and
the Boyne in Ireland and to the valley of the Loire
in White Britain.
He pointed out edit marks made years ago by
Marlowe and even Shakspur, and showed me copies
of the plays all performed and the few unperformed
that were now safe in print hidden for so long and
he even showed me how certain ciphers in the
French cipher language called ‘ordinateur’ were hid
in the new folios and how to read them. The one we
paid most attention to was the one about Bacon
being the bastard son of Elizabeth and Dudley, her
consort. Bacon would have been king if not for the
greed of his father who wanted also to be king and
the possible threat to him by Essex.
Jonson was muttering almost incoherently now,
“Oh what smut we peddle in these golden books
and what smut we wall up to hide, as bricks and
mortar… the true cipher.”
I described the herald’s coat of arms affixed to
the heavy black coach that brought the papers that
same afternoon. Jonson immediately knew it from
my description. “A Hog Rampant?”
“Yes sire, a boars head on a hog’s body standing
gules et rouge.”
“Yes Martin, but did you see a headless hog?”
For a hogs head must hang to become bacon! Ha Ho
Ho!” Jonson laughed harshly at his own jape, but
alas I found no humor in it. Still, he lie there on the
stack of papers, splitting his sides.
When he caught his breath he lifted a bunch of
the sheets above his head and shook them saying, “I
should tell ye divil Dreshout this here’s a
conspiracy to save the words of our language and to
make up the language to be better than French and
stronger than German and with more motion than
Romish Latin and yet still having all the weight of
Scot, Irish and Welsh and the tongues of the
Romans and Greeks and even the Egyptians. Every
jot we know about, the entire grain mill of heaven,
now lies before you on this threshing floor. Behold
the library of Alexandria, the Grail of knowledge!”
There was a long silence while we did just that.
He stood beholding the stack for what seemed to be
hours. “All the educated ones have been afraid for
years. Not that the fear meant much with the Queen
Astrea, when she was not in ill humor. As long as
she guarded us our path was simple enough, but
with her passing we have no special guard. James
cares and doesn’t as it fits his whim. Now Astrea
loved the plot. She laughed with us as an equal. You
would barely know she was a queen. She would
dispute and strongly loose an argument as if she had
won it, as it pleased her to laugh and wager as a
medicine for moods.”
“Where are the comedies sire, I see none?”
“I’ll say that my comedies, even edited for the
higher ground as they were, saved many a witless
swain and royal neck. For if she had not laughed on
any given night she too may have easily been killed
by an assassins sabot or arrow from a crowd—these
puritans stop at nothing. There were many like us
Martin. As you grow older and begin your own
print shop in the New World you may understand
what we are doing here. Maybe not, but the sparkle
in your eye tells me you grasp the condition of ink
on paper and how it can perpetuate graces and
crimes equally. They will move the stones of
Ludgate soon to make a bridge, a bank and a taffy
shop, so I cannot be sure what will happen to my
perishable papers and the De Vere’s—sister and
brother—and Fra Baco’s and Christopher Marlowe
and his band of merry poofters and the others of our
circle who you will find true in these books and the
clergy too, those with wit and sense, contributed
here and royalty.”
Ben paused to take another drink, but turned sad
when he realized the bottle was drained a full hour
ago. The twilight was starting in the windows.
Another question welled up inside of me. I needed
to ask it. “Are you the leader sire?”
“No, no Martin. There is no single mastermind,
unless of course it be me.” He again let out a huge
belly laugh, as if making a joke on himself, caught
his breath and went on. “…but Will Shakspur, who
I’ve told you was a swine and a plague carrier, got
wind of the secret and was going to turn the whole
effort, about two hundred and fifty years of work,
including Mallory’s imprisoned version of King
Arthur printed by Caxton, the whole New Learning,
all the magia, the ars naturae, what John Dee was
run out of Mortlake for—the whole blessed
movement would be sent back and wasted, even
some of the scribbles of the troubadours of the
original French regimen under the Normans would
be lost. So that we would grub worms instead of sup
on sweet words.
“Did you not try to stop him?”
“Stop him we did by giving him a bogus, and
slightly abusive, coat of arms and a patent, in name
only, on the plays for acting, but not a penny for the
plays in romance without the actors to bombast us
when we are not in the mood. This dummy patent
he then takes and makes the courts believe is true
because for him, the play’s the thing whereas for us
the booke holds all truth.”
“What did the queen have to say about such
affronts?”
“The queen was outraged and of a mind to
whack off the head of the poor writer who penned
Richard II, but alas the tower was full of high borne
conspirators. Our plan for Shakspur was small by
leagues. She was consumed with punishing Essex,
not because he was a failure with Tyrone, in
Ireland, but because Tyrone, if the truth be known,
and in true Irish style, was able to tempt our Lord
Essex with the bosom of many fair colleens and red
headed boys. When this was spied back to the queen
bee it stung her badly, so badly she put the very
messenger in irons for a fortnight.”
“This is the politick I do not understand. She
had the strength of a man, but the emotions of a
woman.”
“You study well lad, but you are not wise
enough to know the true depth of heart break or
policy abroad. The weight was on the queen and she
trusted a fop when a braver man would have
honored her name. She was not set off by the
political loss as much as she hated the lewd fugging
parties she heard of from her spies and witches. I
heard she spent many sick days washing her face
with oils and unguents to hasten herself vainly back
to youth after much loss of it in her cups, but to no
avail, she waxed speechless like her father before
her. She was never the same after Essex rose up,
and so our Venus, our Astarte, our Gloriana, the
queen of the pageant and the fairy faith, quickly
faded into hagdom.”
“So you and the others went into hiding. Is that
it?”
“Yes, obviously, we were compelled to hasten
the plays into a folio such as you see here ready for
print. We finally did point out Shakspur in one play
as the author, but when the Queen questioned him
she knew it was not him who done the writing as he
was far too stoopid. Besides she knew something
must be afoot since she herself made contributions
to Midsummers Nights Dream and others long ago.”
“But she must have been afraid by now of any
hint of clandestine activities and plots. She must
have been crazy with plots. My own mother told me
the Queen was constantly worried and moved, on
one occasion, to the country, near our village, to
avoid plots.”
“Right again, the Queen did favor the country
and went on many progressions... It was during one
of these, in a happy mood, that we then convinced
her that she herself was not meant to be the evil
Richard in the play and that the author, whoever he
was, meant no offense by it. The idea that many
plays contained treasons was dumped in her ear by
her treasurer Lord Cecil for his and Burleigh’s gain
and to distance themselves from the Essex plot, that
if the truth be known they did much help to hatch.
“You speak much of royal history, almost as if
you were a royal man yourself. Were things happier
after a few seasons of regret?”
“No, things were not happy after that and have
never been so. There was no rest in this world after
the beheadings of Mary of Scots and Essex.
Betrayal was the rule of the day. The dagger in the
back was swift and sure. The old school signs and
the pacts and oaths of honor were not strong enough
to sustain the dream of an enlightened world. The
few years before the queens ascension, to that rare
heaven where only monarchs are enthroned, were
hard for the gentry. My star rose only because I
could make them laugh, castle side and Cheapside
and Fish Street too. Eliza loved the intrigue and the
humor in my plays, even as age sucked the kingly
power out of her, a loss of strength sped up by
melancholia and the antimony powder in her wigs,
still she could laugh in all the right places.”
“What do you mean the powder of her wigs?”
“The Queen had white lead put in her face paint
to cover the scars of the small pox. Add to this the
mercury in her wig powder and we have a very
poison tablet to be sure. By the way, me boy—be
sure you don’t breathe the fumes of antimony if you
see a pot boiling to make type faces or such like.”
“Why sire?” I asked with honest alarm.
“It will turn your lungs green inside as it did to
Elizabeth. Why you could see the tears baking on
her fuming skin amidst the politics of those days.
She was infirm and needed to have her ankles
wrapped in camphor poultice like a crippled horse
to hobble to her privy where she used taxidermied
goosenecks to wipe her self. The jester made us all
laugh when he said, “The geese do tremble that the
Queen might have runny bowel and extinct the
entire species just wiping her arse.”
It was one night at Winton, during one of our
plays that the plot to save the art of the Tudor era
was put on firm footing. There we sat Heretics,
Catholics, Jews and Pagans all fighting against the
black cloud of Puritanism. All of us, including the
ailing Queen, saw the Puritan scourge as worse than
the Inquisition for they sought all of us as common
enemies and made no distinction that a man be a
member of a Blue Lodge, a Dragon Lodge, the
Order of the Golden Fleece, which were the Castle
Catholics in our midst, a Cabalist or Moreno, a
Garter Knight in the Queens Star Chamber or even
a Knight Templar.”
Jonson slurred his speech slightly as he
continued. “No matter who they was, if they wasn’t
Puritan they was living beyond redemption. This is
why each of us spent much time guarding our
rumps at all hours. Even now we fear the
roundheads will find our books and burn them with
glee.”
Again the aging head nodded and then woke up
with a start. “Shakspur saw his chance when
Christopher Marlowe fell into a trap for writing
against the Puritan theology, of which in Scotland
John Knox was dulling the minds of many who
were once sharp. It is of the nature of the Puritan
that they be the watchdogs of your morality even
when you don’t need a dog.”
“Yes, they pray for your soul even when you
don’t need it.” I spouted my own philosophy, but it
wasn’t wasted on Ben.
Ben chuckled. “Only a Puritan can speak of God
while chewing a bone. I’ve heard they were on to
Marlowe from almost the beginning of his career, as
he was an innocent like yourself when he first took
pen to write. What a brilliant mind and clever to be
lounging out with the likes of the Earl of Oxford. I
think he got somehow lost in the hedge maze at
Burleigh’s country estate, for he never possessed a
mind for stern intrigues. His life was a dalliance and
a quest for silk pants. Had he not the protection of
so high a patron buggerer as Burleigh, who kept
residence for Oxford de Vere at his great house,
Marlowe would have caused a street riot and the
Queen might have lost her cherished popularity.”
I asked, “What was the Marlowe affair really
about?”
“No one knows for certyne, came the reply.
“Marlowe was often drunk, not merry but bilious
and black hearted. He would come down from his
castle and start casting about stirring anarchy and
treasons. He wrote the Fairy Queen for her ya
know, and for this he was much in favor, then as
suddenly he was out again?”
Ben began to tremble at the knees like a
triumphant war horse embued with the spirit of the
battle. He took a breath and continued fingering the
parchments laid at his feet and all around. “Eh boy,
I asked ye a question. Did ya ever hear of the Fairy
Queene?”
“No, what is that?”
“The Fairy Queene is a play about the queen of
the fairies at court, the real guts of the court of
Elizabeth. She was forced by danger of the politics
to swear us all to secrecy, b ut Will of Avon sung as
he was a singer of plain song at the drop of a pint of
ale. If she had not done this herself, Marlowe,
through his indiscreet airing of his plays, might
have lost the Queen the vast net of witches she
keeps—even now, even after her death—in the
countryside. While she was alive the Wiccans kept
her abreast of news and politicals in the ridings.
Even in death they keep her secret. For each
progress she was well informed directly of all
matters.”
I was intimidated, but the story did not make
sense to me. “Yes, I said, but why was Marlowe
killed?”
“I said already we are not certyne. Marlowe
needed not to shout his ravings. He wasn’t the only
playwright to have called for revolution. We
thought through this idea for ourselves at various
meetings and we were basically in agreement. He
did not need to post his bulls on diverse trees or
church doors, as if he were the leader of a new
reformation or someone with a manifesto. He was
not speaking directly for me in any case, although
much that he spoke in his plays speaks for me. You
see Martin it weren’t the papists we were worried
about. The Queen was open to any envoy, she
maintained her spies with the papists, and many
Catholics remained loyal to her, but it is different
with the Puritans, they are zealots of a type the
world has never known. Not a man jack in the
crowd will betray their cause for land or love. No
’twas the wrath of the times, the Puritan thirst, that
not even the ethereal Bishop of the Church of
England could quench. They were an organized
mob fired up and thinking alike, and as they fed the
poor in the plague they gained bodies if not minds
and therefore converts to carry hatchets and torches
with which to raise and conflagrate libraries and our
beloved shrine the Globe and us if need be.”
I shrugged to show my confused ignorance.
“Look ye runt, here was a way to kill the writer
and his patron, in one blow. Yet, it was not any one
of us or even the Queen herself that fired them up as
much as their hatred of our beloved hermetism.”
Ben explained.
You mean it was politik?” I asked.
“Yes, we faced problems of embassy all over
Europe, problems disguising the tours of the Italian
philosophers when they came here to lecture,
especially Giordano Bruno. Bruno was here when
Elizabeth held a high and majestic court. He saw the
rise and fall, preached the hermetic doctrine far and
wide, spread the learning of Christian and Jewish
Cabala. It was a heart break village when we heard
he was jailed and burnt by a Jesuit named
Savonarolla. Giordano burned as a witch? I thought
this impossible, his angels were mine, his heaven
mine and all ours, but still he burnt as grizzly as a
porker on a spit.”
I was now curious about the Catholics at court,
so I asked him to clarify. He beamed at me as if I
should already know the answer, “The Catholics are
bad enough, but the Puritans are worse by six
furlongs. The few intellectuals among them
subscribe to Aristotle who championed slavery. I
might discourse rationally with a man of letters like
Savonarolla, even though I might still burn at the
end of the day, but the Puritans haven’t got the
verse to bandy and thus rely on the encapsulated
power of the black book, that preaches that any
word against the “Pure” word, carries its own
penalties in hell’s fire.”
“Can they send you to hell?” I asked, trembling
in my wooden shoes.
“Aye,” Ben nodded with a smile, “The Puritans
closed the theaters, burned books, and blamed it all
on the plague, which was to them the alchemical
science in which brewed the evil egg of heresy.
They called us socializers and couldn’t understand
why anyone would want to share any wealth at all
without a fee attached, for to them even the smallest
charity has your soul affixed.”
“You mean to them the price of charity was
your soul?” I asked.
“That’s right. Before you receive their charity
you must give up your pagan beliefs. This works
well with country folk, who sometimes don’t have
two sticks to rub together. They have never heard of
freedom, of Plato or of the Greek Demos except as
it is condemned. But this kind of charity frightens
me. At first I thought I could handle them as they
are stupid in small numbers, but in armies they
came. It is sad to play on the plagues grim
assurance, but their recruitment of plague survivors
did me a good turn. They began the plague in the
first place by killing off every cat in Europe on the
assumption that cats were evil spirits, but the cats
killed the rats and the rats carried the plague, at
least this is what the wizards speculate.”
Again I stood in awe of Jonson’s easy manner
with words. “You mean sire that the Puritans may
have brought the plague down on themselves?”
“Aye. That’s about correct. While they were
busy weighing the souls, and purses, of the victims
we, in the magic circle, snuck away from the river
and the stench of quick lime, back onto the fertile
plains of Avon where the ancient stories and the
stones still stand, not the muddy rill of Stratford
called Avon, but the clean water of Avonshire that
feeds Salisbury Plain and its stones. Inigo Jones is
mad for those heaps of stones you find on the
plains. Do you know them?”
“Aye sire, I have only twice seen any such
stones, while I was riding in a cart to Glastonbury
on way to visit my family and as I told you as I
came to London up the Marlborough Road across
Salisbury Plain I saw the great hedge of stones in
the distance.”
A rooster crowed in the butcher’s yard next
door. Jonson was droning on as the dawn broke
through the leaded windows. An orator he was that
and truly. I interrupted to ask: “Is there a God, if
Marlowe says there is not.”
“Aye, there is a God master Martin, and
whatever it is, be she a he or a she, it is older and
more powerful than any Roundhead in a flat hat and
waistcoat, could ever dream.”
He went back to his monologue, almost as if he
memorized the whole tale, only for my sake. “Worst
of all we were afraid we would be caught out at
twisting history. We wanted to write it to remain
clear for ages to come and yet streets run wild with
those who would twist the history of Christ himself
for the gain of a single body to their flock. We
wanted to untwist history one last time so that those
who see it in the future could see it twisted less than
usual. Tacitus is only one example of one who
would make history for profit. We loved our king
who passed on before I was born, but he was a poet,
he broke away from the Pope because he wanted to
begin a new world, a Greek and cabalistic world.
His divorces seem to muddy the history books, his
good deeds fall away, but he was an Arthur as was
his brother so named. The only one who knew his
true mind was the Dutch Queen who was at once
both homely and a strong witch of the Dutch school.
That was when Eliza, who was but a child and
schooled in all the languages, learned to trust the
Dutch in dealings of art, love and painting. It was
the Hollanders who warned her of the Puritans who
they were kicking out.”
A chill wind came through the loft, but Jonson
burned with a fever for words. He grabbed me by
the leather apron straps and growled at me once
again. “You be a dead man if ever a Puritan knows
what I’ve told you here this night, but in one year
more or less it won’t matter, for then it will be all in
one work, one book, spread like a coating of fine oil
all around the world. The hermetic seal will be upon
it and all knowledge of our age will be in it. It will
be a cathedral that can’t be pulled down. It will be
home for the new beams of light that shall descend,
for ’twas us who dun it master Martin and now you
too shall have a hand in the sport.”
Jonson spun me toward the light now
brightening in the eastern sky, soot fires shaded
dawn’s edge, mauve and black, but between all of
bleak London, shone a bright dot called the sun. He
said: “Behold the miracle!”
“Aye sir the sunrise.”
“No, you idiot, the illusion of light. There is no
such thing as a sunrise. The earth tips around each
day, while the sun stays at its station in the sky all
the time…”
This was a difficult idea for me to grasp.
“You see.” He bumped me to the left a little and
pointed a trembling fat finger out the
window—“The closed mind cannot allow the sun
too much play, for if it were true that the world
rotates and the sun is still, then it would compete
with the pulpitry played all about these days in the
Puritan church which teaches that man, and the son
of man, who is God incarnate, is at the center and
the sun is not at all to be idolized and especially not
the moon.”
Jonson was sweating heavily as if caught in a
religious fit, “The Globe, and what we did in it,
matched the street preachers pound for pound, but
it’s mighty eightsided heaven fell ablaze. They
know right well that from Helios onward to Luna
stretches true science and that their god would be
overshadowed. This science of the light, this finding
that the sun does not move, nor rise, neither does it
set, but yet always gives selflessly to warm the earth
and ignite the crops to grow and the cows to give
milk and the apple trees to give up cider, would be
our temple, not the blood built homely huts they call
churches, clean and ignorant every one, but temples
to the god of eternity.”
He pointed again and grabbed my collar. “This
is not a sunrise, the sun does not move. Remember
that. If it drives you mad then better off are you for
you will be taken for a fool, but if you mutter this to
anyone in serious discourse your head will depart
your shoulders faster than grease can find its way
through a Goose. If the Roundheads catch you the
last smell you will remember will be the skin of
your feet at the pyre. Think hard on this Master
Martin.”
I stood realizing the truth and strangeness of
Jonson’s words. I hardly understood what he was
trying to teach me and I certainly didn’t need his
warnings, since I had no intention of saying a word
to anyone, at any time, especially about such
matters as I could hardly understand. “Is this
mentioned in that heap of papers over there Ben?” I
pointed to the stack of papers and books brought in
by Bacon.
“Of course my lad, thousands of times, in every
way possible. The factors of the Sun and Phoebe
our moon and Virgin the Venus and the planets of
fairy fame, all there in a heap. You see, what we
discovered in English was a way to bring the
humanity of Gaelic and Greek and Latin back into
speech, back into the direct glyph, so that as the
people watched the plays they would have their
minds entertained and enlightened be they low born
or high.”
I felt I understood what he was saying, “The
spirit of the dead languages would then be
resurrected in the new plays and preserved in the
grand folio, is that it?”
“Aha! you’ve got it Martin!”
I continued my thought “…and so it matters
little whose name is on the bookes?”
He moaned with abandon. “Correct, m’boy
that’s it. Shakspur’s name was changed to
Shakespeare and several other spellings on
occasions. We all wrote under his name. The plot to
silence him was a quaint, but dangerous, idea of
Oxford’s, the 7th Earl, who we call De Vere. It
became a terrible mistake, done by a clever boy
playing pranks on his cronies, and it fired back at
him like a cannon punked with wet wadding.”
I was now curious about Ben’s role in the whole
scheme. “What happened to you when Shakspur’s
name was added to the plays?”
Ben’s voice was somber, “Well as you can
guess that grunt puss sold us to the highest bidder as
if the entire pool of knowledge was little more than
a cherry trifle. I fear it will be a struggle for many
ages to come. They make for the New WorldNew
Plymouth, even as we speak. I guess the Puritans
are, in some ironical way, Shakspur’s revenge from
the grave. They abstain from sex and so cannot get
a pox and yet they spill a worse pox on all free
thinkers.”
I asked about the others, “Where are the other
free thinkers now, if you don’t mind telling me?’
“Aye, tis sad my boy, very sad. We are all gone
except a few stragglers and now you young son, are
initiated into a secret order. Each contributed some
from the Golden Ass, others from the Golden
Fleece, still others from the Garter Knights and St.
George, but others, like myself a bricklayers
nephew. What better start to be a Mason of words?
It was necessary to hide it all in jest and cloak all
pagan knowledge in bawdy verse, or in some such
contributions as could be culled from the Scot John
Donne, and Greene afore he passed from life
cursing Will Shakspur on his bed, warning Marlowe
of him, which Marlowe needed no warning as he
was protected by the royal circle, but could not
make his own boyish way in the streets and was
stabbed in the eye as a commoner.”
“Do you not fear the power of the clean ones,
the ones who wear the black hats and ring bells
about town? Do you wonder about them?”
“No!” he thundered, “I do not wonder about
them I know them well. They hate everyone who
isn’t them. They hate the Irish whose Popishness is
not Popish as we have taken from the works of
Duns Scotus here, a man of letters and remember
Arthur and Falstaff also of the Celtic world. Do you
know why I changed the name of Falstaff from
Oldcastle?”
“Nay sire why?” The room was getting light and
I could see Jonson’s craggy huge head and the
silver strands over worked inside the skull as if it
was a waterdriven gear of great complexity, a clock
such as once I saw at Wells Cathedral, featuring
both solar and lunar progressions and a little man
named Jack Striker who sat atop the whole thing
kicking the gong on the hour.
He went on “…I changed the name because Old
Falstaff was the oldest damn character in all the
plays. He is Hu the Hunter and Dis Pater and
Nodens. It is not me you see. Well, it looks like me,
but beyond that Falstaff is anyone who is jolly and
loves a frolic. Future scholars will see me in Sir
John because Elizabeth said I looked much like her
father who also thought of himself as Hu Gadran,
the Celtic horned God. So horny was he, all in all.”
“Who are you speaking of? Oldcastle my boy.
Toby Oldcastle, the old Oldcastle, the fat one that
was murdered by his own gout, Father Christmas,
come with a bag full of light, he died sonless but not
childless, with only a Goddess left to take over.
” Who?” I asked scratching my head.
“The one they called Bolg. Ben whispered. “The
lightening god from the most ancient of times. He is
still here with us.
“I still don’t understand Ben. Who did write the
plays?”
Jonson leaned over me like a menacing cloud
full of rain. He jerked me up from the arm pit and
shouted, “Har!”
Looking in all directions first to test that no
one’s about and satisfied that we were dead alone
he bellows at me, like a bull caught in a mire. “THE
GOOD KING HENRY, eighth of that name, and his
father—the seventh of the name—writ the early
plays boy, and Elizabeth Gloriana added her own
edits and cuts and a few scenes to pleaseth her.
They saw to it that they got played, which is one
reason she stayed alive so long after many counted
her off to the green knolls of the Faeries. This is the
real secret, you lad, you ink bound scrup, so keep
yr’ tongue stuffed close to your teeth or, so help me
Herne I’ll come back from molting in a paupers
hole and grab the sun from out yr’ eyes. Do ye
follow me son?”
“Yes sire, I do, I do!”
“Good, now then take these papers and truss
them up for hiding and take this with you when you
go to the New World.” He handed me a heavy box
with copies of the plays in it and some poems that
had not been placed in the final folio. Timon of
Athens was in that box, but on top I saw one I did
not recognize. It was titled The Poison Maiden. Ben
said, you’ll love that one mate, when yr older. It’s
about the old queen Bess pining for her many
lovers, many of which she beheaded, but we could
dare not publish it. Better to let it drift away and be
found again in an old library in the Western World.”
Ben they pressed a sack with ten more gold
crowns into my gut, then shuffled out howling at the
moon as the dawn rose through the leaded windows.
I did not see him again. His affairs were far too rich
for my blood. I sculpted and engraved the head of
the man Ben called Shakescene, as instructed, and
left it in the folio collection, but after that I gave my
notice.
In less than a fortnight I was on board the
Falcon Gate to Nova Scotia, my small fortune
secure inside my garter—the books Jonson gave me
and others I salvaged tucked under my arm. I would
now make bookes in the new world. I had a trade
(and secrets of the trade) that would carry me on for
a very long time, although, as Jonson warned,
noone would believe how I got them.
Bottoming Out
The well meaning Bobby nudged me with his
black stick, hard, like he was gonna kick my ass,
but subtle like he might not if I move fast enough,
so I jumped up quick—farted, but he didn’t hear
it—and smiled a quick “Yesirrr,” in my best Yank.
He spoke in that half Cockney voice British cops
affect when they know your a tourist, “Muve on
now, moouve on!”
I guess I dozed off in somebodies yard on
Cheyne Walk. Traffic battered over the Battersea
Bridge. The bill towered over me as I tottered to my
knees, and finally, with some strain, to my feet. One
minute I was in a steel utility room under a bridge
and now my ears were poppin’ to the whir of
electrocabs. My nostrils tried to close tight so as to
not allow the hydrogyn22 bus fumes into my head.
Egged on by hunger and whatever acid the tea lady
poured into me, the old autonomic system forged on
almost without me.
Noticing my Burberry the Bobby simply said,
“Yank eh?” “Couldn’t find yr’ B&B last night eh?”
“Er ah yes, actually… no I’m at the Redstone
Hotel, lost my way and got fascinated by the lights
here, hope you don’t mind?”
“Well technitickally spekin’ it ain’t legal, but
we’ll put up wit ya’ for the bye and bye.”
He was tottering back and forth on his heels and
twirling his club, very stereotyped, like he was
giving a speech to a wayward Boy Scout. “Maybe
you’d better go on to church this mornin.”
Imp says, “Oh geez, it must be Sunday.”
I thought I had better say something compliant.
“Yes sir, got too involved with watching the river I
guess, heh, heh. So where can I find a jitney?”
“Not to worry mate, not tat tall, a cab stand can
be found recently up the embankment here or ye kin
take the tube like the rest of us.” He points the way
to Kings Road with his wellworn night stick. I could
smell the Verbena from his old ladies waxed table
mixing with the mildew gathering in parts of my
body that normally only see water from a shower
head. In spite of the stench I managed to wobble on
my way.
I felt pretty good for a guy who spent the last
twentyfour hours with Ben Jonson. I managed to
find a bathroom in a RollsRoyce garage and hoped
that the reflection would be kind. It was, the
cracked and fingerstained looking glass revealed no
kaleidoscopic scars. I had recently been to the core
of the Elizabethan furnace and emerged unscathed.
“Hmmm, good.” I look like I was drunkish last
night, the vinyl and cotton trench coat covers a
multitude of bad haberdashery—the torn shirt for
example, and the funky aroma of stale wino piss
emanating from the soles of my caravan shoes.
Now as I write I can remember the whole trip as
clear as the peal of a Waterford bell, but how I got
to the early seventeenth century from the
midtwentyfirst remains a puzzle. I suspect it had
something to do with Axel Tervik or his operators.
The rain made it a great morning. Optimists
love rain. I wasn’t dead, that made it a little better,
but the head swelled and I hurt all over. The fetal
position I must have been in all night was designed
for embryos and yogis and I was neither. I kept
mumbling to myself as I made my way along the
Thames, “Shit that was weird!” I actually took a trip
back in time. “What the hell kind of drug was that?”
I found a Sunday newsfiche. The dateline told
me I had lost a whole day and a night somewhere.
The headlines covered the international panel of
scientists convened to investigate Excalibur. The
panelists were convinced the beam satellite was also
responsible for a wide range of mass suicides and
generalized phenomenon originating from
background stress rather than the beam itself. I
agreed. There were also two paradoxical and
seemingly random serial killings in school yards,
giving the public the impression that the beam was
directly causing the mass killings. A forensics
expert thought the beam might incite people to
homicide. This was nuts. If somebody was already
as bent as a hairpin they might go whacko in a street
car for the thrill of it. The beam would have nothing
to do with it. Excalibur was becoming a scapegoat. I
almost felt sorry for it. I found myself whispering to
myself, trying to conjure up the imp as I walked
along Warwick Street and through St. James Park.
“What else? Next they’ll be blaming Herpes on the
death ray? Hey come to think of it—nah.”
I passed on the cab because I discovered I was
broke as a tin watch in a salt factory—no bread in
the pocket, and it was too early to cash my last
small denomination travelers check anywhere. Even
so a gnawing rat was eating the ropes in my gut. I
had no choice but to walk on toward Trafalgar. It
seemed like minutes, but it must have been hours
because I recall encountering a smattering of gaunt
and calcified sex party freaks, a few Aquascutum
bums and the occasional spouse swapper scurrying
to get across town in time to get to mass or church
or just home before the kids woke up. I saw a few
Elizabethan flashes out of the corner of my eye and
heard a few print shop sounds, but these were
probably a few serotonin nuclei turning into
ketones. I’ll never forget Ben Jonson. Amazing
what you can learn under a bridge.
I needed some change and some inhuman
contact so I headed out for the heavily guarded
AMEX Exchange on Haymarket. It’s just up the
street from Trafalgar that was recently resprayed
due to excessive graffiti and pigeon droppings. I
thought I made out ‘DOX,’ my old Frixo street
name, emblazoned on Nelson’s condom, but it was
just an advert for OxO synthetic beef. I sat on a
bench under the lion of the West waiting for the
office to open for its brief, but mandatory, Sunday
morning stint to accommodate Sixth Day Rollers
who were now common in London. You could tell
the SDR’s by their red clown noses and their floppy
shoes. You may think this is silly, but they weren’t
recruiting new people until they adopted Bozo as
their poster boy. Suddenly, about twenty years ago,
Bammo! They almost took over the planet. As I
ambled up to the exchange building I noticed a few
select souls, needing to make money transfers to
Asia, standing in line, but the doors would not open
until 0800 hrs.
As I joined the queue a number of small Brit
guys from Pakistan—with smaller brooms and
probably huge families—came down from the
direction of the Bob Marley theater working out
their workfare (or their jail sentences) by mucking
out the sidewalks and the streets in front of the
Bangerbar. Dung from horse drawn taxis mixed
with tossed out corsages, mylar synthbeer bottles
and paper sandals were everywhere in evidence.
The entire length and breadth of Haymarket Street
appeared to have been visited by a huge stable of
slow and incontinent horses, equine ghosts who
showed up at midnight, ate sausages instead of hay,
took a dump and then trotted on, leaving only this
rudimental evidence for us to ponder.
The Times Literary Supplement featured a new
edition of George Orwell’s Down and Out in
London and Paris. After, what seemed like an
eternity, a pokey man, resembling the farmer in
American Gothic, posed with a key ring instead of a
pitchfork, opened the door slowly. His eyes
inspected each soul as they shuffled across his
marble threshold.
The imp says, “Now here is a relic from the
twentieth century if ever there was one.” I thought
perhaps I was headed back in time again, but a
plastic balustrade leading to the teller’s windows
popped me into a modern frame of mind. My first
order of business was to go to the wall unit and
withdraw some Britling, the slang term for British
money, but the machine rejected the card and gave
out an ugly message:
“You have no money you dumb bastard!”
… or words to that effect.
This was the first alarm in a three alarm fire
taking place in my credit files. Somebody reported
my microcards stolen with arrest warnings. This
placed me in the delicate situation of having to
prove I wasn’t the guy who stole them.
AMEX was kind enough to cash the one small
travelers check I had, but it was touch and go. My
only mail was a magnaFax from Sharon and Hal in
Las Vegas, wondering where the hell I had gotten to
and inviting me to drop in on them when next I
should be in Vegas.
I ran out of the place stopping on the way only
long enough to look into the Burberry window,
located next door. I was thinking I might sell the
damn coat, but then I’d freeze… more panic came
over me… I paid the hotel bill before the card went
bad, but who knows how long the credit would last.
I had no assurances anymore. I got the impression
somebody was fucking with my brain chemistry.
My ability to breathe might be next. That’s when I
stepped in the only pile of horse dung remaining on
the street. The cadre of janitors had moved on to
muck out the National Gallery, but they left this one
street poop behind, and I managed to step in it.
What’s the odds on that?
I continued on foot to Shaftsbury Avenue then
up Southhampton Row. The once triangular
remaining chip of Toberlone, came in handy. It was
all I had left from the binge the night before.
Russell Square looked damned good as I
crossed the diagonal park walk. A women with two
Dalmatians, the dumbest dogs in creation, smiled at
me. The dogs smiled too. I tipped my fingers to my
forehead as if I had a cap wishing her good
morning. Nobody on the desk at the Redstone, not
even the ubiquitous bell captain. Whew! I could just
maybe slip by. I took the elevator, hoping it
wouldn’t crash to whatever hell the basement held
for me.
The Presidential Suite was still there with my
stuff still in it. The breakfast cart stood untouched
on its bimetallic casters. The coffee was real, cold,
but real. It ought to be at these prices. I drank the
whole carafe in one go. After a wash and a
wideeyed lie down and five reburned rashers and
two boiled eggs and toast and jam, also real, lo and
behold I got the idea that maybe I should open the
blue disk holder delivered with the toast. I popped it
in the Optireader supplied with every Gideons
Bible… more bad news.
Dear Canyon:
I’m placing your best art stuff into my garage,
next to your motorcycle. The rest of the stuff went
into a storage binnacle. You’re going to owe me for
this one
. This all happened because of the latest
shitforbrains rule that says rent control only applies
if the tenant is in active residence. I couldn’t figure
out what difference it makes if your there or not as
long as you pay the fees, but in Frixo that’s old
fashioned logic. The land lady was looking for any
excuse to up the rates. I just happened to be over
there borrowing your Faxaphone Zoomer.
Anything left in storage after one hundred years
I get to keep.
Seize Ya this side, if ever.
WRITE! RODNEY
The loft I left behind in Frixo took on a sudden
importance. Sure I was blase’ about it when I left,
but hell, I had no idea somebody was going to rape
my pad. The Picasso vase and the Henry Humble
and the Early Salor Turkmans were in jeopardy.
Hell just one signed Alton Kelly from my Uncles
ninety year old rock poster collection could bail me
out of almost any trouble. Good old uncle Dean, the
posters were his legacy to my dad and dad left them
all to me. I hated to cash in on even one of them.
Someday I’ll have a wall big enough to show them
all.
GRRRRTTTTSSS! Somebody was fucking me
over???
A pigeon, viewed as potential pate, appeared
cooing on the ledge just beyond the slightly open
window. My fiscal life, normally dreary anyway,
just got vaporized like spit on a hot rock?
Somebody wanted me stuck, stranded or slowed
down, but why didn’t they kill me off in some
obscure London mews?
I could still see Ben Jonson laughing his fat arse
off, waiting for me to join him in that great public
house in the sky. Maybe, whoever did it didn’t want
me gone, maybe they were calculating other plans,
cat and mouse games. If they were trying to scare
me it worked.
I was reasonably sure that both the credit
nullification and the drug in the tea cup, were done
by the same folks. Only the greatest paranoids
would think of two separate tormentors. Whoever it
was was big enough to make a Black Ops job look
like a ring toss
Imp says, “Hmmm, what about Hitler?”
∞∞∞
My internal I-Ching came up “Go Forth,” but I
stupidly let the return ticket expire and I couldn’t
even get back to Ireland.
I walked over to Hyde park and phoned Siobhan
O’Sullivan in Ireland, collect, only to confirm my
worst fears. Lisney’s decided to board up Staleen
Cottage, but my papers and computers were in safe
keeping in Drogheda. I didn’t want to put her on a
bummer about the grotesque events of the past few
days, so we spent the rest of the call talking about
her good fortune—the guy in the pin stripe suit
faded out, but a Flemish stock broker proposed and
she accepted.
One further bit of news came from that
conversation. Siobhan recited a rumor, currently
making the rounds in the pubs, to the effect that
Sean O’Bannion had mysteriously moved back to
Brooklyn. I knew it was true, because he always
wanted to go back to Brooklyn, he talked about it
all the time.
I sensed O’Bannion and Siobhan and Jack
Roberts were out of my life forever. What’s worse,
I may never be able to go back to Ireland. Maybe
O’Bannion took a walkabout like Dolphin, or,
heaven forbid, with Dolphin. Maybe he was smart
going back to Brooklyn. Maybe I should get my ass
out of here too.
Burnout In Beirut
The room took on a vacuum approaching half
an atmosphere, suffocating me, but I didn’t want to
go out until I put some kind of plan together.
California was still way far away. Now was the time
to see if the International brotherhood of journalists
was real. I decided to check in on Izzy again.
Maybe he would be around this time. Izzy the
journalist king of Highgate named Izzy Mansoo, a
Canadian. His boss was a Pictish looking genius
named Pat Brown. I had many drinks with them in
San Francisco and in London years ago. Maybe
Izzy wasn’t even in London any more, I have been
out of touch for a few months, but I had to try.
The phone rang out.
I didn’t panic.
That’s when I got the brilliant idea to call the
Canadian Broadcasting Group on the off chance
that somebody might be there on a Sunday. To my
undying gratitude honcho Pat Brown announced
himself.
“Hello Pat, sorry to call you on Sunday, but is
Izzy there?”
“Hell no, he’s in Beirut we think!”
“What do you mean ‘we think’?”
“Well that’s where we sent ’em eh?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know he was out of town.”
“He was supposed to interview the terrorists or
whoever steals the most Vuton luggage.”
“What?”
“He said they are fighting over who gets to buy
a rocket launch emplacement converted to a condo.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“Well it’s true.” Izzy says it’s peaceful there,
most of the time. There hasn’t been a kidnapping
since they resurrected Barabas ben Allah, so I can’t
figure it out. He’s is supposed to file copy and
report daily by uplink and then come home, but it’s
been about a month since we’ve heard anything
eh?”
“That’s odd!” I couldn’t hear very well. The
London phone service works well if you’re calling
from a big business like the CBG, but God help you
if you’re in one of those quaint, red, phone boxes
where London’s finest wine bar customers piss on
themselves.
“Listen Pat, I spoke to Izzy a few months ago by
phone from Dublin and he didn’t know a thing
about him going to Beirut!”
Pat was patient with me, “Hmmmm, right, well
that was before the Lebanese ambassador was shot
in front of the Diamond Hotel on the Park, you
knew Canadian Pacific owns the land and the hotel
across the walk from the London Diamond, eh?”
“No I didn’t,” I replied, “but I guess I do now. Is
that why saboteurs never hit the London Diamond
and why the Canadian Flag is flying over it?”
“Yeah yeah. Well, the president of Hyperion
was staying there and Mansoo was interviewing
him the next day and I was going over there for
dinner with the guy because he was going to give
me a Hyperion laptop to use and I saw the shooting,
right in front of my cab.”
“What shooting?”
“The Lebanese ambassador with the bullet in his
head, you idiot. Haven’t you read a news fiche
lately?”
“Not lately.” My terse reply covered the real
reason for my ignorance. How could I tell Pat I was
busy chasing down William Shakespeare, my stock
portfolio, my credit cards, my loft, the house on the
Boyne, Dumb Dolphin and my life in general, to
worry about another assassination—especially one
connected to Lebanon were assassination is an
everyday event.
Pat went on: “The Lebanese ambassador was
shot right there on the street in front of his hotel you
Dodo, right in front of my cab!”
“Oh great, so what’s that got to do with
Mansoo?”
“Simple, I couldn’t go to Beirut for a month or
so because I just got back, regulations prohibit too
many trips, but Scotland Yard needed me here
because I saw the whole damn thing, I even got a
look at the assassin, damn good shot too.”
“O.K so how does Mansoo fit into that?” I
asked.
“We sent him to Beirut instead of me.”
“Oh! So he’s in Lebanon on an assignment
covering for you eh?”
“You got it.”
I could only say, “Hmmmm.”
A human silence invaded the line. The crackle is
from London’s badly designed fiberoptic circuits
turning brittle. “Pat, I’m sorry I called at such a bad
juncture in your political history. Hope you get Izzy
home soon. I’ll call back. Sorry to disturb you.”
I started to hang up, but I could hear Pat
shouting in the distance. “No, no, hold on, hold on,
you forgot to tell me what you wanted?”
“Well, actually I was looking for an assignment
to cover some travel expenses so I can get back to
Californicate, if you know what I mean? You see
certain surrealistic events have occurred in my life
that you would not believe under the influence of a
gallon of authentic VVO.”
Pat’s fatigue was showing too, I could hear it in
his voice. “Yeah that’s been happening a lot lately.
It’s like the whole uncivilized world is having a
midlife crisis.” We laughed in unison knowing we
were both having a continual midlife crisis.
“How much do you need?” He asked.
“Oh about two thousand or a ticket and some
pocket money.”
“Hmmmm…” there was another long silence.
“OK, you got it,” he said.
Naturally I couldn’t believe my ears.
Pat wanted to know what species of
International Press credentials I owned. He assumed
I had been down this road before. “I don’t have
any.”
“What?”
“For Buddha’s sake Pat, I’m a psychologist not
a roving ink monger.”
“What the hell kind of an assignment does that
qualify you for?”
I could hear the dustoff coming so I gave it my
best at bat, “Frankly I was looking for something
more on the London side, like why are there so few
HardlyJeffersons in England, or something like
that.”
Pat’s voice seemed angry, “Do you want a ticket
home or not?”
I said, “Sure anything. What’s the assignment?”
Pat laughed. “Oh, nothin’ much. All you have to
do is go to Beirut and get Mansoo and file his damn
copy and get his ass back to London. You’re a
shrink so maybe you can work a miracle where
normal reporters would be powerless. Can you
handle it?”
“Sure…er uhn I guess. I work miracles all the
time.”
“OK, be at the CBG offices in the morning and
I’ll have you setup with passes and a package of one
hundred unit bills.”
“Why one hundred unit bills?” I asked
innocently.
“Because everything in Beirut, and I do mean
everything, goes for a multiple of one hundred
Amerclams. In a crisis Drachma don’t cut it do
they?”
“Hey, don’t ask me—you’re the boss.”
Pat continued his checklist, “Do you speak any
Arabic?”
“Shalom, that’s about it.”
He laughed again. My voice halted from last
night’s trip to the mysteries of Shakespeare, but I
guess Pat understood me. “Good you’ll need it. Do
you want the assignment?” (long pause)
“Of course, er ah gulp.”
“OK you’ll have a one way ticket to the states
and a thousand clams waiting for you at the Brita
terminal in Heathrow when, and ‘IF’ you get back
from Beirut. I’ll give you all the expense money for
the trip tomorrow. It shouldn’t take you more than
three days eh?” The Canadian accent came through
loud and clear.
“Sounds good to me.”
I packed, but couldn’t sleep that night. The note
stuck to the Daimler kept haunting me. “Dolphin is
Alive!” I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Funny
what goes through your mind the night before
you’re going to die. I could have thought about
Dame Bates or envision myself making love to a
rich nymphomaniac with a pot farm near Bolinas,
but the handwritten note gnawed at me. I could see
fleeting glances of Ada Lovelace and the cabal that
may or may not have written Shakespeare, but the
short note on blue laid paper—announcing
Dolphin’s well being—was a big neon sign in the
darkest possible night. I tried to cross my eyes,
staring at the bridge of my nose from inside, that’s
supposed to put you to sleep, but all I saw was the
cholesterol floaters announcing the eminent demise
of my optic nerve. Nothing worked. I decided to
call Izzy’s wife, Jo Lynn, in Highgate.
It wasn’t like Mansoo to not file his report on
time and Jo Lynn feared would be shot as a drunk
or crucified as an infidel, or both. If the Bedouins
took him they would mistake him for a distillery in
disguise and simply cut off his spigot, and if the
Christian religious nuts got hold of him Izzy would
soon convince them they were in the presence of the
evil one of prophecy. In either case he was a goner.
Then there was the matter of some missing
archaeologists. Izzy may have escorted them across
a nono line to seek the mythical Babylon.
Monday 08:00 Green Witch
Sleep impossible. I keep thinking of Tervik and
his guns. I wonder if he could have assassinated the
ambassador. Nicked myself shaving. Awkward
checkout. Worried they might check my credit
again, but I just skimmed out the front of the old
Redstone unscathed—the second close shave of the
day. The last things I grabbed was my precious
signed copy of Tervik’s book on magnetic healing
and of course Hamburger Zen.
I showed up at the CBG as scheduled.
After a brief run down on Mansoo’s potential
whereabouts–and my photograph attached to two
dozen laminated documents, none of which I could
read–I was off to Lebanon. Both Pat and Jo Lynn
hinted that I should be sure to ship back any hash
that Izzy may have by way of official courier, but
not to carry any on the plane as it would be death
for both of us under the current Hashamite regime,
you figure that out. Just before I took off Pat
noticed I was carrying Tervik’s pamphlet on
magnetic healing. “Wow man who is that guy?” Pat
spoke in an agitated tone.
“Oh some jerk named Axel Tervik, thinks he’s a
guru in Bath. It’s a joke.”
“Yeah, well that’s the guy.”
“What guy?”
“The guy that shot the ambassador Saturday
night.”
I was blown away, “Wait a minute, how do you
know that?
Pat grabbed the monograph from my hand and
held it up to my face, “Look here man, that’s the
guy.”
I hadn’t noticed before, but Tervik had actually
put his mug on the back of the book. Naturally I
gave Pat the book with the understanding that he
would show it to the peelers.
The only thing good about going to Lebanon is
the dry air. An anvil slid off my back as I drove the
last few miles toward the airport. The Daimler
sucked its last drop of gasohol just I turned it off at
the Megahertz counter. Romance over. Scary shit to
follow.
∞∞∞
The flight to Cyprus was uneventful, if not
solemn. Nobody on the Maltese airplane was
talking. It was like everybody needed to conduct
last minute meditations so critical, or so secret, that
they couldn’t even talk. I prayed uncertain prayers
to the uncertain god of thermodynamics.
Security was tight. Larnaka is a seaport city and
from certain hills you can see the shores of Lebanon
across the sea. Since any plane flying to Beirut
might be shot down for target practice we could
only hope to catch the powder blue hydrofoil run by
the United Nations. This meant a slow and groggy
two hour trip.
The taxi hustle between the airfield and the ferry
port was also frightening. It cost 100 clams just to
get out of the airport and the rumors were wild. The
old fashioned FM radio blasted out Joker Cola
commercials, as if I needed more speed at this
point. I detected a palsy in the English speaking
DJ’s voice, her larynx forsaken from so many
freaky days on the bad end of the beach. The night
of my arrival she reported that a Pachinko shell
from Beirut, aimed at Haifa did a loopdloop into a
school yard in downtown Larnaka. Nobody knew
what was next.
If you miss the last hydrofoil or flat bottomed
ferry you have to take a pig boat across—at night. I
can’t imagine how weird that would have been, all I
know is it takes twenty minutes to pass the USS
aircraft carrier Bathhurst, moored at anchor. The
thing is so big it looks like a scifi space freighter
close up. That’s when I realized I was in a war zone
and that I could get very dead, very fast. Before that
I was super street cool, Fog City cool, assuming I
could handle anything in the streets because I grew
up in the streets, but that was bull shit now. I could
handle a gang war, but I wasn’t prepared for flash
grenades and nuclear bullets. I also realized I had
experienced two neardeath traumas in less than
three days. I stepped off the ferry, walked three
scary blocks to the Commodore Hotel and checked
in.
The job of finding Mansoo was ridiculously
easy. I heard him laughing the minute I entered the
lobby. Izzy was not missing at all. I suspected as
much. He just didn’t want to report in. Instead he
decided to hold a drinking seminar in the lounge,
now converted to a disco at night and a bomb
shelter the rest of the time. Mansoo called it the
Crown and Scepter east.
As it turned out he did write his copy, a feature
on the use of bicycles in and amongst the rubble,
but unknown to him the story was held up in the
satellite delay. Fortunately he made notes, optis and
other helpful backups. I whipped out the Hyperion
hand held, the one with the Hyplar plasma screen,
also given to me by Pat Brown, and we went to
work that night. Everything went home by Freenet
the next day except us.
Hundreds of new wealth families flooded in as
equal numbers of broken souls shuffled out. The
urban headcount stayed the same only the faces
changed, an amazing demonstration of Archimedes
principle of displacement—a lot like San Francisco,
but in new Lebanon new wealth is measured in
minutes. The food chain and raw survival were on
display in every unbroken store window. Here, as
always, Arab replaced Christian, Christian replaced
Jew and the desert replaced them all. The threat of
sniper fire and intestinal worms (I could never
determine which was worse) was everpresent and
yet the Commodore Hotel remained unscathed. No
hell waves or chemical rain would attack the
Commodore. According to Izzy the place is
politically neutral because it was the only source of
real 150 proof Meyer’s Rum in the middle world.
Of course the Russians had the Lebanese Stoly
market cornered.
Izzy remained in a state of denial. About a week
earlier he spent the morning nodding through a
briefing with four Israeli generals. Upon leaving the
headquarters station he saw a young woman turned
into a cigar butt the size of a fire hydrant by an
incendiary grenade thrown by the warriors of the
Pasha Suldham. A few newspapers tried to blame
the girl’s death on Excalibur, but nobody was
falling for that fried ice cream.
We walked, talked and ate, then Izzy slept and I
stood vigil. Then I made coffee, which I brought
from London in packets. We walked some more,
raved some more and smoked some hash, but I told
him I would only smoke with him if he would take
the oxyGenb tabs and the 222 aspirins, which was
cool with him. The various medications degrogified
him enough to call Jo Lynn in London, who
promptly read him the riot act. My job was half
over. San Francisco sounded closer all the time.
I was sure Izzy was just fine, but we stayed
three more hot days in a bare room, waiting for a
plane out. During that time we took three mad two
hundred dollar limousine rides through the war zone
during a quasitruce. Israeli whisper planes dropped
free fake Vuton luggage, for those who would flee,
but the bars and dance halls were still going full
blast because they were the only places you could
obtain a glass of liquid that didn’t have typhoid in
it. Fresh fruit and staples were on sale between
fusillades in boarded up stores.
A convenient heat wave forced a very
convenient cease fire. Even people who have been
enemies for three thousand years can’t fight without
oxygen. We were happy to get out on that third
night because for some odd reason the airport
opened and shut like the jaws of a huge shark. Two
undercover Mounties showed up at our door and
just grabbed us and whoosh we were off to the
airplane. Luckily the jaws of the shark were wide
open as we made it past the machine gun gauntlet.
We boarded the Spanish built electrobus
sweating like Greeks in a sauna bath. So was
everybody else. As the bus lurched out I noticed
Izzy had developed a trolllike paunch. This is an
occupational hazard with modern journalists,
probably from sitting so many hours in front of the
worldscan. I had a chance to observe him in action
as he buzzed and rapped to everybody on the bus.
He was short and squat and his tongue hung out
under bulging drunken eyes, a reincarnation of the
Egyptian god Bes, brilliant and full of energy, an
accomplished pianist, but a better bullshiter. He
kept my spirits up the whole way home even though
we didn’t talk much. You would think he would
take a solemn stance as we spun through customs,
but instead he just kept on entertaining the crowed
and disarming everybody, even the cats with the
10mm Rascalnikoffs. Maybe, in a perverted way, he
was rescuing me.
Izzy schmoozd with the crowd on the platform
while I watched over my meal ticket. Silk clad
Italian diplomats mingled with the dregs of
humanity, each waiting to pay in diamonds for a trip
out of hell.
Naturally he started in on the rum as soon as he
got on board, but I was way too beat and depressed
to say anything about it. Izzy had a wife and home
to return to, but I faced an indeterminate fate. Still
and all, I needed to keep a smile on it. I didn’t want
to burden him with my big pile of pooh. He didn’t
seem surprised when I arrived, and at no time did he
ask me why I rescued him. He simply accepted that
I was Pat Brown’s handy choice. I never did tell
him about meeting Ben Jonson under the bridge.
Every surplus weapon in the world was pointing
at us as we taxied. My last impression of Lebanon
was the mortar emplacement in the airport road that
we could only see as we took off. It was also
difficult to believe that, less than three hundred
miles away, nude French bathers were soaking up
the sun on the beaches of Narbonne—the new
French Riviera.
The airport shark closed its mouth behind us
like a two dollar window at a flaky horse track.
Clang! Three planes got out that week and we were
on one of them. The Canadians somehow manage to
get Maple Leaf emblazoned 777’s in and out where
even a Piper, decorated with the Stars and Stripes,
would have been shot down. The plane was flawless
and technically perfect, but an overbooked flight is
still full of people. All luggage was carryon. The
cargo hold was full of dead soldiers, part of the
United Nations peace keeping forces. Izzy drank
and chatted with the folks as if it was a Club Med
charter flight. I guess he was used to it, but I was
numb. I guess he felt sorry for me because the only
coherent phrase Izzy spoke during the whole flight
was, “There’s lots of stuff that don’t appear in the
funny papers.”
We could not deplane in Paris due to customs
regulations so we fried on the runway for an hour
while the pilot filed a new flight plan. Izzy donned a
fez, left over from a Shriner’s convention in
Toronto, and managed to con some burly gentleman
into spouting excerpts from Hamlet in Pharisee.
“There’s more in heaven and earth Horatio than is
known in your philosophy.” I made a mental note to
look it up when I got back home. There was a
Hermetic ring to it. Something King Henry might
have written.
On descent I finally got Izzy to talk to me, “The
Christians and the Moslems get along on the plane
so why do they fight in Beirut?”
Izzy made a screwy face and a grunting noise
before answering, “Hey man it don’t matter what
religion they are, they’re Phoenicians. They’ve been
fighting for 4000 years, they don’t know anything
else. Have you never heard of Sidon and Tyre?”
I slept all the way to London. Even the snoring
Turks couldn’t wake me.
Dox Last Gig
Sunday 07:30 Green Witch
The landing at Heathrow was uneventful. Izzy’s
overly solicitous hugs were almost sarcastic, but it
was, underneath, a fond farewell. I knew I’d never
see him again. Excalibur was making life way too
weird, longterm friendships were impossible. The
tickets and the money appeared as if by magic at the
Air Canada desk.
Izzy walked toward the grimy gypsy cab ranks,
pausing to say goodbye before hoping in to reek
havoc on whatever poor soul would drive him in to
Highgate. I couldn’t go back to London and Izzy
couldn’t understand why. He took offense at my
refusals and feigned haughtiness—his way of
handling a sad situation. He bowed as if to
genuflect, doffed his fez and extended his hand in
friendship. Two Saudi’s, followed by streams of
slaves, jostled us as I reached for Izzy’s war stained
paw, he sidestepped me. I was the one who needed
the laugh cure and it worked. I fell right on my ass,
right there at the airport, with hundreds of
conservative onlookers gawking at such odd
behavior. Izzy jerked me up in one grunt and
hugged me hard. That’s when he slipped something
about the size of a small ring case into my outside
pocket saying, “Here you’ll need this.”
The last time I saw him he was flipping me the
bird as his jitney faded into the pea green morning.
A converted RollsRoyce aeropacker waited at
my designated gate. I welcomed the leather seats.
The image of Izzy wearing a fez, emblazoned with
the name of the AAHMES Shrine lodge, stuck with
me. I have no idea were he found that thing. I’m
sorry I took the money and ran. It would have been
an honor to escort a Canadian folk hero into
London, but I knew Izzy was only at home with his
fellow Nuffi’s and the other subgroups that make
Canada different from the United States.
The impish little voice that calls to me from the
place of broken windows whispered in my ear: “A
lot a peeple tink da fires in Beirut was started by der
zapper ray. What da ya tink?” I couldn’t think.
The Stratostreamer turned out to be a big
surprise. I thought they’d get me a seat on a
cattlecar on the way to Nome, but instead I got
diverted to this twentyfirst century suborbital rocket
ship, a silver and graphite needle wedge, half the
size of a 777b, but three times as fast.
The Rolls mobile took me about ten miles away
from the airport to a special docking station, where
the governments of both countries run everything
you own through an intense inspection. No radios,
no cameras, no chalk pads, zoomers or handybooks,
no pipe bombs and no hashish. I thought the
preboarding medical exam was a little intrusive—a
skin search in disguise, but then they didn’t want to
have a hijacker in orbit for very long.
The airlines, especially Albatross, finally got
wise and began using electronic surveillance. If you
have dandruff they’ll know it. If you want to fly at
titanium melting speeds you shouldn’t mind going
along with the program, which means your rectum
and other body cavities are fair game for any
customs agent or rentacop with a penchant for
plunging, mauling; fingering or scanning.
Of course many rewards await the intrepid
space cadets who load onto these buggers everyday,
speed being the first thing that comes to mind. This
huge flying wing with a tube in the middle is going
to get you anywhere in North America in two hours.
It wasn’t exactly uncomfortable either. There were a
few sensate rewards, aside from the skin search.
The Stratostreamer featured a buffet lounge that
made the conventional First Class look like a
window full of plastic sushi. They served real beer
and real wine and real meat and they used real
silverware, like in the days when my dad took me
on one of the last 777 first class flights for my
sixteenth birthday.
The depression of the unwanted acidoid trip, or
whatever it was, and the Beirut thing and the loss of
the credit lines began to fade the minute I heard
those engines winding up. One flight in this
contraption and your life changes for the better.
There was only one trouble. It couldn’t land in New
York or San Francisco. Not only was it illegal it
was impossible. To go that far that fast, you had to
get to New York before you started your descent.
Hell they only shut off the engines in New York.
The rest is a glide. Furthermore you can’t land at
LAX or SFO because you might overshoot and
wind up in Guam, so they shoot for The Maynard
Donnelly Stratodome, an extension of McLaren
Field in Las Vegas. The runway there is fourteen
miles long. It takes a half hour to taxi back to the
terminal. I guess I’ll be visiting Hal and Sharon
sooner than I thought.
The Mach meter on the forward bulkhead was
no longer relevant. According to the passenger next
to me, anything that goes over mach three is a
rocket. The mach scale is relevant for things you
can hear and see, but the stuff that goes on in this
anechoic hull at speeds approaching mach four, are
almost supernatural. If you couldn’t read a book,
you could entertain yourself with a liquid plasma
display set right in front of you. This gave any
passenger, at any time, access to call anybody,
anywhere, or observe the planes functions—except
fuel remaining—as a read out. I noticed nobody was
snoozing.
I just about passed out when the boost cut in at
Mach 3. I couldn’t feel any thrust at all, nor could I
hear air noises on the hull. My flesh was just dead
weight in a big golden slinky going boooinggg
through subspacespace, but the thrill of moving that
fast was overwhelming. The oxygen rich air brought
the drug stuff back for a minute. I could see the
leading edges glowing orange, but the pilot came on
and said that was normal. I tried to tell the
stewardess about the little furry things scurrying all
over the fuselage, but I thought better of it and
ordered an organic Jaëgermeister Wormwood Fizz,
also known as an Uncle Franz.
The Las Vegas docking bay was about the same
as the one in London, except nobody talked. Going
Mach 4 shuts every orifice in your body for two
days. A lunar rover, with the bouncy wire mesh
tires, took us to McLaren. In New York it would
have been a smelly petroleum bus with graffiti
sprayed all over it, but Dox or Dok, my honorary
graffiti name, was nowhere in evidence not at
Trafalgar and not in Vegas. Maybe I could get a
fresh start here or maybe this was gonna be Dox last
gig.
The bone scalding heat and the dark chocolate
tans on the holiday revelers disoriented me, I
thought I was back in Beirut. It’s been a long time
since I’ve seen a woman with an all over tan, in fact
it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a woman all
over. I thought maybe I should catch an airbus to
the Bay Zone, but I knew lots of people in Vegas,
why not check them out, maybe take a little
vacation. Boy were Sharon and Hal gonna’ get a
surprise.
Fooey Return
Security coming into Las Vegas is lax, unlike
LAX were it’s more like ExLax.The Strato
company gives you a few tokens to put in the slot
machines at the airport. I hit a medium sized jackpot
on the first token. This was enough to make a
straight satellite vucall to San Francisco, but before
I did I thought I’d better cast my fortune. I put a
single unit coin in the fortune telling slot and
selected IChing. I could have had my palm read or
done my Tarot in the same machine, but since I
spent my last two months hobbling my way through
a bad Tarot deck I thought I’d better go for the
clean, abstract, Asian stuff.
The I-Ching rolled out:
Fu Return: The wise man returns to the
beginning.
Imp says, “Oh no, not the beginning again!”
No, not exactly to the beginning, “Just almost,”
like most of the stuff that happens in most peoples
life it’s “just almost” most of the time. Vegas is
almost to San Francisco. I was now, for better or
worse, stuck in Vegas. Average temperature 33°
Centigrade. Could it be the gates of hell?
I appeared to be a star in somebody else’s bad
movie. The opening scene took place in a drunk
tank with me bunked up between Bukowski, Nelson
Algren and my Uncle Dean. I knew the caper would
eventually come to a violent Damon Runyon
snapper. Even more to the point, my life grew vivid
for the first time ever. I was in pain, but really alive,
almost like walking through a living book. The
Saragossa Manuscript is a such a book. Like
Cocteau’s Orpheus it has no middle, no end and no
beginning, and yet the images flow onward
incessantly creating a cluster fuck of wires and stars
and space debris.
Imp says, “No not Dante you jerk, think
Kerouac or even Papa Wimpeldong, the Nobel
laureate who won in 2022 for his massive tome
titled Spasms.”
Spasms. Hmmm. Sounds like something Tervik
might plagiarize.
Journal Entry
Vegas
Monday night one week before Samhain
Talked to Rodney again, just to tell him I was
back on the Yank side. He said my place on
Hashberry street looked like a whirlwind hit it.
Somebody was looking for notes or books or
something because they left the Miro and Picasso
intact. The landlady must have been in on it. After
that he moved the really valuable stuff into a
storage locker at his own expense, took the sofas
and file cabinets over to his place and waited to hear
from me.
What were they looking for and who were
‘they’? The Dragon Lady landlord, the one who
started out in a massage parlor in Vietnam, couldn’t
rip me off because she didn’t want legal hassles.
Rodney said the big box of Dolphin’s artifacts
remained untouched and the antique Nureal music
system with the stalwart 44,4 googleflop modem
and the patched together thermal printer still
worked. To add to this odd melange he managed to
salvage my antique, but functional 45.
KrugerGlucko automatic, a steelblue ceramic
model—clean as a whistle, a nonferrous, xray proof,
autopistol with the swivel holster. Who knows these
days right? I mean it wasn’t like I was out shootin’
up the town. I asked him, “Did ya find any shells?”
“Yep. Sure did. One of the original cartons.”
“About twenty five rounds otta’ be just right? If
I could only get those computers and phones up and
running I’d be on the offensive.”
Rodney laughed. He said it reminded him of the
time we almost had to shoot our way ON to the
campus just to attend classes. We both laughed.
“Hell man, sounds like ya had a good time.”
“Ya, that’s what they tell me. Yuk Yuk.” 9
“Whoever drugged me knew I was getting close
to the Dolphin mystery. That’s the only explanation
I have right now.”
“OK. Seez ya when ya gets up here.”
“Ya… Hang.”
Click.
∞∞∞
A Tinkerbell voice, not the imp of the Warburg,
he was too intellectual, but another voice from deep
inside, kept saying: “Fight these honky
motherfuckers!” This was a butch Tinkerbell. For
better or for worse, I always listen to the voice. So I
stifled the final battle cry and took a cab into Vegas
for a shower and a hard sleep.
The jackpot gave me enough money for three
days, then I’d have to get creative. I was talking to
myself in the cab—“This is one cookie they
should’ve left alone.” The cab driver, name of
Fazool, looked remarkably like the guy who drove
Mansoo and me around in Beirut. Maybe it was the
desert back drop in both places—same driving
school I guess.
Fazool turned out to be a Christian Syrian. His
mystical proclivities led him to assume I was
screwed up, and he was right. I got the belt to the
damned Burberry caught in the door. That’s when I
felt the little lump left in my coat pocket by Izzy as
we parted at Heathrow. I opened the jewel case in a
hurried rage. “What the hell is in here?” In my rush
to streak out in the Strato I completely forgot about
the lump. I just assumed the normally diligent skin
searchers in London would find it, but they just
passed over the coat altogether. They looked up my
ass, but not in my pockets. Very strange indeed.
Fazool watched my eyes bugged out. The ring
case was jammed tight with red Lebanese hash
about the size of four big sugar cubes, wrapped in
gold Mylar. Whew!
“I could have been busted!”
“Damn it Izzy, where’s your brain?”
Of course Izzy couldn’t hear me, but Fazool did.
He asks, “Veer to?” Scanning me to see if I’m
drunk, drugged or on my way to the hospital.
“Yu here on beezness?”
“No, no just visiting friends.”
Finally he set forth his medical opinion, shaking
his head knowingly: “You jet bad lag man!”
“Yeah, I guess so. More like Strato lag.”
He looked at the gold stick pin on my lapel, the
one they give everybody that flies on the Strato.
“Hey maybe you need a lighter jacket.”
He was right about that too. The only trouble
was I didn’t have one.
I wound up in the New Dunes’ lobby waiting
for a key. The unreserved room was cash for one
night, in advance. “Not too plush please.”
It wasn’t. The dime store paintings told me that,
but it did have a shower tapped right into the
Colorado.
I put the:
Disturb and Die!
sign on the door knob and bolted the door. The
decal on the inside of the door read:
The Management Is Not Responsible For
Articles Lost Or Stolen.
To Assure A Good Nights Rest
Please Bolt Your Door.
The disclaimer wasn’t reassuring, but I didn’t
much care. I headed straight for the bathing
facilities. In less than one minute I began to see the
pong of ages swirling down the drain. I hadn’t seen
water running under pressure since I left the
Redstone on the way to Beirut, but that was a cold
shower. This one was capable of parboiling a full
grown potato in twenty minutes—a warm fountain
in the garden of paradise. No more bidet baths for
this Irishman.
I could feel the jet lag draining away as the dead
skin sloughed off. The angst was leaving too. I
don’t know why I got those feelings in the shower,
but you gotta’ draw inspiration from the things
around you and the pins and needles of that water
slapping me in the face was inspiring. To hell with
the peace and love ethic, it was obviously time to
kick some Gluteus Maximus. From now on my
attitude was going to be halfway between a Super
Bowl game and a high speed traffic jam. Be polite,
but take no prisoners. I was stunned by the boldness
of my resolve in the face of such a badly mixed
metaphor.
Something snapped. I experienced another peak
moment right there in the shower—room 222 New
Dunes West. The steam fogged up the mirrors. My
bearded face, a face that used to be fat and was now
skinny, looked distorted as I shaved off the five day
stubble. Ben Jonson sailed down the drain with the
rest of the hairs. The same skinny swimmer’s body
that mocked me in Ireland and San Francisco,
mocked me now as I inspected myself for lice and
other vermin.
Crash! Kerrreeek. The vinyl lined bed shook for
a second then gave against my fading weight.
Unfortunately my sleep mechanism refused to cut in
and all I could do was twitch in a nervous twilight.
The computer and poison tea game was being
played by somebody bigger than Axel Tervik. I
knew I would have to get to the big guys and to do
this I would need money.
I was holding more than one ace. My Las Vegas
contacts still loved me. Whoever stole my party line
to the credit centrum didn’t know my big hearted
friends.
∞∞∞
The Chinese oracle kept coming up:
FU
RETURN
The Great Man Returns to his people.
The I-Ching oracle, which my folks tried to
memorize in the ancient times when everybody on
the streets had long hair, led me to wondering about
Dolphin again. I was never the great man in this
drama. No question now. If Dolphin knew about
Excalibur twenty years ago, then he was the great
man not I.
I dozed fitfully until the unstable air
conditioning turned the room into a dry sauna. A
dry summer in London is strange indeed, but here
the sky is orangish green, like an exotic catalpa
melon, and the sweat evaporates on your skin as
you bath in constant bone dry gusts.
Each hotel sets its own policy when it comes to
desweating its gambling guests. Most of the smaller
places do nothing. The New Dunes took a middle
ground. To combat any discomfort you have to
crank on an auxiliary air conditioner, little more
than an old fashioned swamp cooler jammed in the
window frame. I thought that by the middle of the
twentyfirst century somebody would have invented
a silent, cheap and effective air conditioner, but
Rolex makes the good ones and the bad ones double
as coffee grinders. The whoosh of cool air against
your sheetlined body keeps you awake. You appear
not unlike a cadaver in a morgue and a chill runs up
your spine. In a few minutes the whirling wet box
spews out trillions of accumulated germs and fungi
from all the people who have occupied the room
since the beginning of time… and then you die.
I ate a cow then called Hal from the optiphone
in the lobby, “Hal this is Canyon.”
“Canyon who?” I doubted he knew two
Canyon’s.”
“You know, Collins.”
“Gee whiskers, Canyon you old rat. Where are
you?”
“I’m at the Dunes.” A long silence hung at the
end of the line. “What’s a madder? Did I do
somethin’ wrong?”
“Well yes,” came the reply. “You didn’t come
over here right away—we’re hurt.”
“Now wait a minute dude, that’s ridiculous, I
had to wash off… you know make myself
presentable. I just blew in from Lebanon man, give
me a break.”
“Oh yeah we understand.”
Sharon’s on the screen now, “High Canyon, god
its good to see your voice again.”
“Yeah, same here. So is yuse guys up for a
visit?”
Oh, sure well come right up and fetch ya.”
“No need for that I want to walk over.”
“But its 110° F in the shade” She squeaked.”
“Yeah, but I need the exercise, I just ate three
strawberry waffles.”
“Oh well then you may need more than a walk,
we don’t have a gastric lavage unit here.”
We all laughed, “Hey I’ll make it don’t worry.”
“OK, but if you ain’t here in 20 minis we
gonna’ ramp up the paawsee.”
“I’m leaving now, OK? Maybe I’ll just play a
few hands of blackjack.”
Hal said. “Ooops.”
“Hey, what Ooops?”
Sharon chided me, “Get your ass over here man.
Getting money is easy in Vegas, there’s only one
rule, “Don’t Lose.”
“OK, bye”
click clunk.
I felt great after that phone call.
The New Dunes main exit corridor stood
mirrored gauntlet, barren except for my own
reflection. Beyond the brass doors one might find
heat and light. Hal and Sharon were up for a visit
from anybody with an exotic story to tell.
I sauntered out past the air curtain and into the
blasting heat. Blisters popped up from the
asphalt—the wavy heat lines blew out in vortices of
color.
The Imp says, “Um, hey idiot boy, maybe it
ain’t such a great idea to walk over there after all.”
The daydream didn’t last long. That damned
imp is always right. I got about one block down
Dunes road and collapsed in an equally hot jitney
shelter. Scenes of London and Dublin came back in
flashes. A slow minded nostalgia for the green of
Ireland came over me.
That’s when I felt Hal’s hand on my shoulder. “I
told you, you shouldn’t be walking out here. Dogs
and horses die out here everyday. You’ll drop like a
fig if you’re not used to it. What’s got into you?”
All I could say was, “Ugh!”
“Come on man get in the car.” Hal drove a
really big Bent Lee turbo, an Stype, gray in color,
the last of the series, with the laser road levelers and
a really big air conditioner. Whew!
“I laid my head back on the leather and smelled
it. “Home at lass, home at lass, Good god a mighty I
is home at lass.” I sang deliriously, mimicking the
black minstrels who roamed the Mississippi Delta
singing exaggerated songs for the white folk two
centuries earlier.
“Ain’t no racists ‘round heare is der?” I asked in
a joking voice.
Hall snapped back, “Lawd no sah, we lynch all
dem racists.” He cleared his throat, “Whay lass
week we dun hanged one of ‘em from da highest
cactus we got.”
“Was he happy ta go?” I asked, filling in with a
“Yuk, Yuk, Yuk.”
“Well, I can’t rightly say he went happy, but he
suoooore went quiet.”
“Oh I seez.” What was his name.”
“Hezakiah.” Yess sahr. Hezakiah White was his
name. We hung him hood and all.
We laughed so hard we almost wet ourselves.
Hal’s reference to an old Lord Buckley tape my dad
used to play over and over again, put us in a
nostalgia mood. It was especially poignant since
Buckley’s granddaughter LaurieLou was the exMayor of Vegas.
We were still laughing uncontrollably when I
waltzed into the penthouse.
Omega Vegas
The short ride to Hal’s condo, maybe three long
blocks, took about five minutes, but I passed out
again anyway. I could see white chunks of desert
dirt sprinkled on my green suede walking boots, but
nothing else.
Hal’s tropical air conditioner and the leather
seats were doing their best to assure my rescue. I
felt like a fluffy little jerk, but I knew I wouldn’t
have a heat stroke that day. All Hal could say was,
“Wow Canyon, you’re really here, Wow!” Like I
was some kind of celebrity.
“You know Hal, I’m glad you came along, I felt
an earthquake just before I fainted.”
After all those brogues, Lebanese chatters and
cockney ear jams, Hal’s ridiculous cowboy twang
took on a surreal quality. “Hell boy thaet weeren’t
no eerthquake thaet was a New Klee aR test.”
“Don’t tell me they’re still testing at Mercury?”
“Yeah, but we’re not supposed to know about
it.”
“Hmmm.” I passed out again. I woke up a
couple of hours later with an IcePak on my face. An
iris by Georgia O’Keefe, a real one, popped into my
peripheral vision. I was laid up in a swank pad, with
a view of the earth’s curvature. “I mumbled to
myself, “Very Olympian.”
A familiar voice lilted over my shoulder,” Yes,
we’re on the 94th level.”
I let out a whoop signifying my thanks.
“Sharon!” “Terrific!” She snatched me off the bed
and gave me a hug.
“Sometimes you can see heaven if you look
hard enough.” Sharon giggled as she spoke. “Hey
come on man let’s go.”
“Wait... wait, what are those white puffy things
hanging around outside the windows” I coughed.
“Those are clouds. And that’s the moon right
over there.” She pointed down and toward the
southeast. The moon was hovering at gibbous only
slighly above Sunrise Mountain?” Hal peeked
around the doorjamb and handed me his arm for
support.
“Hey man I’m not a feeb?”
“You look awful feebish to us.” Sharon nodded
as she tugged me along. “Strange that two hours ago
these feet could feel the rocks burning beneath me
and now my first staggering steps into the inner Las
Vegas world are going to be supported by 1500
square feet of New Zealand hand woven carpet.”
“Well sort of.” Sharon obviously thought my
entire ordeal was a big joke.
“What do you mean sort of?”
“Oh, well your right about the New Zealand
part, but you were wrong on two other points.”
“Oh really.” Hal beckoned me into the living
room, using a big pitcher of Memosa as a lure.
“What two were they?”
“Well first it isn’t 1500 square feet, it’s 1500
square meters, there’s an upstairs and a basement
you haven’t seen yet.”
“Oh well pardon me for living.” Hal stuck a tall
glass of the Memosa in my other hand. “Oh shit…
great.” I said, “Now I can’t even stagger, I may spill
this on your plush carpet here.”
“Don’t worry about it boy, drink up, it’ll make a
sissy out of ya.” Hal urged me on.
I glutted the frothy stuff down, picking up an
orange mustache along the way. This sent Hal and
Sharon into gales of laughter. “What’s so funny?”
Sharon was splitting her sides now, and pointing
at me. “And what the hell was the second thing I
was wrong about?”
Sharon broke away from the laugh riot long
enough to make an inquiry. “OK Canyon, how long
did you think you were knocked out?”
“Two hours, I’m sure of it.”
“Wrong man, two days, almost to the minute.
Lighting conditions are the same, but look at this.”
A screen with a full page of newsprint appeared
on the wall, see you came in on Wednesday
afternoon and here it is Friday. “
Hal zoomed the date line up for me. He was
right. I was toast for 49 hours. I sat passively on a
Victorian Empire chesterfield as Sharon and Hal
filled me in.
I guess you could say Sharon and Hal had done
well for themselves. They inhabited a 15 room
penthouse in Englebert Humperdink Towers on the
penultimate top floor. The floor above, originally a
seismic station for the underground nuclear blasts at
Mercury about fifty miles to the North, was now
sealed off, but Hal punched a hole in a corner closet
ceiling big enough to crawl through. The seismic
station was supposedly closed down when the
Russians and Yanks disarmed, but they were still
testing ‘something’ out at Mercury. The equipment
Hal saw was all brand new stuff, may have even
been related to a satellite.
I thought it odd that somebody would still be
blasting anything out there since the whorehouses in
Shamrock made them shut down years ago. Maybe
it wasn’t an old fashioned hydrogen warhead, but
something big enough to rattle the chandeliers at the
New Dunes and I was just paranoid enough—with
maybe a little sun fever thrown in—to think it
auspicious that the big bang would hit the very day I
arrived. Hal informed me that the shock wave was a
common occurrence. “When asked what the tremors
meant, the PR folks out at Mercury passed out the
same old lame press releases, mainly apologizing
for the inconvenience, but could we please try to
ignore the testing of the small neutrino devices
designed to blast tunnels and dig out canals. This
was of course bull shit, but what can anybody do?
The rumor circulated that in fact they were
developing shaped charge neutrino devices for
blasting mine shafts, the only trouble was that the
mines were on MARS!”
“I thought nuclear proliferation to space or the
near planets was interdicted by a United Nations
decree twenty years ago.” Hal just nodded and
shrugged his shoulders. “Must be another shadow
project.”
“Yeah there seems to be a lot of ’em these
days.”
Las Vegas is about a mile above sea level. The
town sits in the middle of a high altitude desert
covered with thin air that turns your skin to
parchment if you’re not careful. Hal went into a
Toastmasters routine when he spoke of Las Vegas,
“I guess you could say Vegas is the capital city of
all desert holes. Its ancient lake bed is constantly
adorned with haze mauve dawns and titty pink
dusks. In fact Vegas is the only desert city in the
world that boasts its own midnight sun.”
The trappings told me that they had made scads
of money since my last visit. Cold drinks are
forbidden in the desert, too much stress on the
system. I drank Hal’s Blois de Champagne cognac
from a Waterford snifter and looked around the
room. The card I wrote from Ireland peeked out
from under a fruit magnet on one of the three
refrigerators.
We came up with a plan that night. I would stay
with them for two weeks, play three hours at a
session, warm up on the five dollar tables and move
up to Green and Black chips… hopefully stacks of
’em. I would then pay back my bankrolls plus some
vig and split for San Francisco, or rather SillyPutty
land, just south of there. I guess they appreciated
the marriage counseling I did for them a quarter of a
century ago while we were all still in graduate
school.
As we spoke I could feel my old identity
coming back. I said, “I appreciate what you’re
doing for me, but frankly how did you make all of
this bread?”
Hal’s approach was simple. In his words, “We
knew exactly how they cheat and so we out cheat
‘em, that’s all.” Hal went on to explain the latest
shifty capers on the strip and I, in turn, loosened up
about my adventures abroad and about Dumb
Dolphin. I told them that I was determined to stay
afloat, if for no reason than to track down the
Excalibur connection.
Their eyes flashed at each other as soon as I
mentioned Excalibur, and I could sense them paying
closer attention. Sharon seemed curious, “What
could you possibly know to make somebody hassle
you that much?”
I could only give the same reply I gave the imp
every time he asked me the same question, “I don’t
know, I think it has something to do with this
Dolphin character. Whoever they are they’re
powerful as hell. They have the element of distance
and access on their side.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“No problem,” came my reply. “I’ve learned to
slice through the layer cake of society. I can blend
when necessary. My first step is to disappear until I
can gather resources and strength.” I could feel the
anger welling up from a hot spot in my back pocket
as I laid out my plans.
Hal broke in on my monologue, “Sounds like
you need money. What can you do for a gig?”
“Well I can shrink heads.”
They both laughed, “Not in this town buddy.
Shrinks are a dimeadozen. What else can you do?”
“I know how to count cards, I did it years ago. I
was run out of town, never wanted to go back—if it
weren’t for you people I probably would have taken
a northbound shuttle, but hell… you know, Vegas is
where the money’s at, and I did want to see a
friendly face or two, before I went back to a fate
worse than meth.”
“No, no, you have to stay with us. You’ll never
go back to Frixo. Hal rattled on like he was the
president of the chamber of commerce, “In order to
understand Las Vegas one must first understand
Nevada. There are only three million residents in
the whole damn state. Reno started growing big in
the late 1970s in competition with Vegas, and then
Atlantic City opened up and then river boat
gambling began on the eastern rivers and luxury
cruise ship casinos started up and finally the Native
American reservations took a big cut and the
various state lotteries and the card clubs and well,
you know Vegas lost business.”
Sharon added, “No matter how hard you try to
make it Vegas is going to remain a homely little off
the road Mormon, CB bar town out in bronco
country, in a basin on a mesa in a high desert along
the Colorado river and that’s about it.”
Sharon summarized Hal’s rap, “In other words,
Vegas is really three towns in one.”
“That’s right, The first Vegas, the original
Nevada Vegas, is best called Las Vegas out of
respect for the old locals. If you don’t call the place
‘Las Vegas’ and wear western garb during
Helldorado week they’ll throw you in jail for a
couple of hours on Fremont street until somebody
gets you some duds and corrects your speech
impediment. But Omega Vegas that’s special.”
“I vaguely remember Hal saying something
about Omega Vegas, a few years ago.”
“Right well its real, you’ll see,” Sharon winked
at me as she spoke, like there was an adventure
ahead.
I was among true friends at last, people who
respected me for my golden and least obvious asset:
I was born with a semieidetic memory. The thing
inside my head that remembers everything is a
blessing. I can do amazing feats of magic with it,
but it’s also a curse—I remember almost
everything, especially the ugly stuff. I’m further
cursed by the popular misunderstanding of a photo
memory. Everybody thinks I have a high IQ, but
I’m stupid most of the time. I envy fat people with
good minds because they can fuel their fire. I envy
dumb skinny people because they can pace
themselves, but an Irish mesomorph, kinda’ good
lookin, with a photo memory, ain’t good. It has
somethin’ to do with the genetics of the pineal
gland and the pyramidal tracts, I think. Anyway,
with an innate photomemory one has no recourse to
denial or repression as defense mechanisms. It took
me three decades to learn how to screen it all out.
Sharon and Hal were ectomorphs, that means
skinny, they were cerebral and tired easily, finding
themselves in constant need of noshing. Swimming
in their indoor pool was an ordeal for them, but they
knew I would enjoy a soak in the feverbath. Hal
could not float in any position except flat sand dab
on the bottom, but he could hold his breath for
hours. I loved it, mainly because I hadn’t seen a
swimming pool since Sutro’s Baths burned down.
After our swim I took some time to play with
the computers in Hal’s study. The results of the
third race at Pimlico Swamp came in as I sat before
one of the terminals which was hooked to some
unfathomable electronic brick thousands of miles
away. The messages that came in were from
hackers with protected code names like: “Cookin
Mama,” “Cool Breeze” and “Raider.” The screen
flagged: NO BET! Hal had the odds beat by at least
five percent, because he only bet when the odds
were above seven percent in his favor and the horse
was at least four to one.
I felt good about being somewhere. The fearful
little grumpies put into me by getting regressed
back to Shakespeare’s era and encounters with tiny
assholes like Tervik and experiences like racing
around to fetch Izzy back from the jaws of the
Moslem executioner seemed like fading twinges.
Las Vegas is fairyland for adventures like me. I
couldn’t lose. I tried to tell these stories to Hal and
Sharon, but they howled with laughter at almost
every line, as if it was all contrived, as if I were
reshuffling a legend. When I virtually begged them
to believe me they simply laughed all the more and
said, “Hey man we love you. You ought ta write a
book!”
I envied them. They were fifty or sixty years
old, at least, and yet they both looked like they were
in their thirties. They were a dyad in school and will
always be together. They got married once, got
divorced two years later, then got back together,
(that’s were I came in). They’ve been together ever
since, but never bothered to get married again, even
though there are two hundred wedding chapels in
Nevada.
They were magical allies, credible people who
didn’t think I was nuts. Sharon worked her way
through college as a runway model for Grommet in
San Francisco. They moved to Vegas because Hal’s
dad was a pit boss in the Seniors Casino in Blue
Light, Nevada, still going strong at the age of
ninetysix. Hal mentions him occasionally and brags
that he’s about one hundred and twenty now, but
nobody believes him. I met his dad once and he
looked about 65 to me. His secret to longevity was
to stay out of the sun and drink much branch water,
with nonsynthetic bourbon.
Although they seemed to have an
unconventional relationship many elements
appeared traditional to me. Sharon keeps the
household together, reads a lot and writes home
improvement articles for The Las Vegas Star. Hal
runs the business. I didn’t have the guts to ask them
why they didn’t have kids.
Hal is a dreamer, but he cooked meat loaf on
odd nights and took out the garbage. Sharon was the
cool one, wild underneath, but cool as creme de
menthe on a wet kiss. They were happy and still
maintained a fire in their life, a passion for beating
the system at every turn and a sense of humor. They
laughed loud and often as I told them the entire
Dumb Dolphin story. I only had time for a sketch,
but they got the picture.
Sharon was the first to believe the story,
because she read my book on The Electronic
Battlefield and was at least partially aware of my
focus. She seemed eager to offer help in solving the
mystery. It appealed to her writing instincts. It took
Hal a bit longer to grasp the saga. It took a huge
snifter of Napoleon Brandy and some coveted hash
to bring him around. They provided the brandy,
something you could still get in Vegas and hardly
anywhere else. I provided a tiny chunk of red Leb.
The late afternoon heat began to ebb beyond the
glass curtain wall that separated us from a fatal
drop.
Gyro Wheelbeck, the only abstract painter in
Vegas, still sporting a denim jacket and a goatee,
showed up with a jug of homemade wine. The party
got started afresh. I’ll never forget that day. There
was the resinous stuff all rolled up on the point of a
pin stuck through a match book cover, a simple ball
of tar fuming up under the glass tumbler and there
we were like a bunch of college dropouts, down on
our knees, contorting ourselves to get the soda
straws close to the glass. Huff and puff. Gyro held
his breath the longest, but then started yelling about
what a bunch of trouble we went through for this
little toke. Sharon came to my defense saying that if
I hadn’t taken my life in my hands to get to and
from Lebanon, we wouldn’t have the option.
They were both right I guess. It was nothing
more than a little chunk of the Levant, switched
from Mansoo’s fez to my cameras interior.
“Clearing customs at Las Vegas is kind of a joke.
The beagle they were using as a sniffer dog was
sniffing for dirty underwear.” joked as I pulloed out
a greta big chunk for Gyro.This seemed to make
him happy.
Gyro toyed with the chunk and sniffed it, “I
can’t beleive this stuff is still illegal.”
“Yeas, it is. The eyeball matron searched the
camera, but didn’t look through the lens.”
In a THC fog Hal ask me how my trip to Bath
and Stonehenge turned out. When I asked them how
they knew about the Bath episode they produced the
card I mailed from Swainswick. I told them about
O’Bannion and Jack Roberts and how Tervik was
the creepiest freak I had ever met. I also told them
about the strange note on the Daimler windscreen
and the riots at Stonehenge. They roared hilariously,
especially when I mentioned my encounter with
Ben Jonson under a bridge along the Thames.
Sharon went on a rampage, her flame red hair
leaping up and down as she spun around the living
room. “Nobody should be dosed by surprise no
matter what the circumstances, it’s mental rape.”
Hal, Gyro and I nodded in agreement. To do
anything else at this moment would certainly evoke
the Medusa.
“Sorry to tick you off like that, but I wish you
people would start believing me.”
“Oh… we believe “in” you Canyon, it’s just
that… we don’t believe your story.” Sharon calmed
down as she spoke. They encouraged me to go on
with my ripping yarn probably because they hadn’t
heard a tale like mine since they sat around
campfires singing nine courses of Sarasponda. The
madness was starting to take on a sane shape. A
cure was possible. I didn’t want to bore them with
the details of the Frances Bates visit as they weren’t
scholars, but I did mention Ada Lovelace and her
opium habit and how she was the first real
programmer. That’s when Sharon perked up and
said, “Sounds like somebody we know eh Hal?”
Hal winked as she spoke, “You mean Anna?”
Sharon winked.
“Yeah, for sure.”
“Ha! What a coincidence.”
I had no idea what these little asides meant. Hal
and Sharon were full of tricks and Gyro spent the
rest of the late afternoon and evening dancing his
ass off to private music. He was a trickster from
way back, you could see it in his paintings—a
peyote trip that turns into a crying womb, or a
disobedient dog playing a drum, signifying that the
dog was marching to a different drummer all of it in
desert mauve and pink with rainbows. Terrific stuff.
Along with some Macintosh furniture, and one
of Gyro’s mural frescoes, the O’Brians possessed a
very rare Mark Toby water color called “White
Writing.” They also had a rare pastel by Mark
Rothko—a beautiful double square fuzzy thing
titled “Skins” in thalo blue and crimson with a
fuzzy cadmium white and orange stripe that took
over the room. They also managed to squeeze in a
real Picasso aquatint and some amazing Orientalia.
Apart from the art and the huge silk and camel
hair Turkoman Bokkara in the living room, the
O’Brian’s penthouse was a preExcalibur computer
freaks paradise. Every database in the country was
online to Hal’s office, which he kept neatly tucked
away in his study. Hal was running two antiquated
Pippin Power Towers known as Octals, a late model
Kray system, compatible with mine, two other
kludge systems built up from salvage, a hand held
companion known as the ZoomBrick and a very
dead Pippin II gs with the strange initials “WOZ”
signed on the front panel. We never did figure out
what “WOZ” meant, but it had nice color.
Each of Hal’s systems fed into a dedicated
optical gigaflop modem running to and from every
major sports book, and every major race track in the
country. Hal was, in essence, a gambler’s gambler.
Hal says, “It’s not a gamble when you know who’s
gonna win.” He is also fond of saying, “It’s not that
the races and games are fixed it’s that these devices
give you such an edge you’d have to loose on
purpose.”
I asked them why they didn’t have online Black
Jack and they just tittered, saying, Hang on, you’ll
see, you’ll see.” They refused to elaborate.
I was developing a greater respect for Sharon
and Hal. Neither of them presented overtly bad
habits and they loved living down the road from
Liberace’s old museum. They loved Las Vegas and
they loved the ghost of Maynard Donnelly. They
didn’t even mind the Mormons, who pretty much
ran the town.
DEE 21
Night crawled in purple against the shadow of
Sunrise Mountain. My Augustine view of the stars
would soon be blotted out by the glow of the strip. I
wanted to dive back under that duvee, but Hal was
getting ready to take me over to his command post
at the Jockey Hall.
We sat around a while longer with Sharon
discussing Gyro’s rainbow period and how he was
better at bent leg Kachinas since he went and took
Peyote with Guru Gorman in New Mexico. Gyro
wasn’t into gambling, but the gamblers all bought
his paintings and he gave them two quanta of
gooder vibes than they had without the paintings. I
promised him I’d buy one with my winnings. He
wished me luck and evaporated down the elevator
shaft. Sharon fixed me a high protein shake and
offered me a handful of antioxidants. She didn’t
have to force me. This was a cure for sure.
Hal came into the stainless steel kitchen pulling
a thin duster over his Tek black Iron Man jump suit,
just the latest thing from Paris. “Hey, Collins get a
move on, We’ll be late.”
“Late for what?” I asked.
“Oh you’ll see, you’ll see… it’s a surprise,
believe me you won’t be disappointed.”
Sharon said, “Go ahead boys, I’ll be over later.”
I grabbed one of Hal’s less spectacular jump
suits and got ready as soon as I could. The first
wave of the hipro shake came on just as I finished
shaving. Under my breath I began to sing, “Stylin’
Stalin” by Dill Bert and the Devastation. Hal had
the Bent Lee revved up in front as I came out.
We took off up Flamingo and turned west on the
strip. The lights were just getting warmed up. I
stared at the old Excalibur hotel complex as if it
were a rotten pile of garbage, But Hal, still in the
guise of Mr. Chamber of Commerce, acted like he
was showing me the town, “The Excalibur looks
like a dream castle out of the Arthurian sagas.” Hal
has a habit of pointing out the obvious. “What do
you think of it?”
“I think it’s stupid, and, frankly, a bit seedy.”
He noticed the fear in my eyes as I observed the
rooks and turrets of the old casino, built in the early
1990s.
“Hey Canyon, don’t be paranoid, that hotel has
nothing to do with the satellite of the same name.”
I answered quickly, “Look Hal, you never
know, I’ve seen some weird shit lately. Half the
people in the world aren’t aware of the satellite or
its name.”
As we drove up to the Jockey Hall, the least
advertised and dimly lit place on the outer strip, Hal
introduced me to some new terminology, “Now
look Collins you’re going to have to learn a few
terms to survive in here.”
I couldn’t imagine what these terms could be, I
mean how much do you need to say in Black Jack,
“So, Hal, what do I need to know beyond ‘Hit
Me’?”
“Oh come on Collins times have changed,” Hal
sighed, “for one thing you’ll have to learn about
DEE 21.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh that’s the code name we gave to the super
Black Jack computer. He man you should know
about it, you studied at the Warburg didn’t you?”
I nodded a yes.
“It’s a simulation named after the Elizabethan
philosopher John Dee, one of the worlds greatest
cryptographers.”
“Oh yeah, now I’m with ya.” I couldn’t tell him
I knew all about Dee from studying with Dame
Bates, but I wasn’t much interested either. For some
strange reason I was getting snake signals from my
crotch. I could feel the angry spot in my back
shifting into the middle of my pelvis. For the first
time I noticed women walking around.
Imp sez, “Amazing what a little desert air can
do.”
The valet rolled the silver Bentley softly away
as we walked into the mirrored lobby. A strolling
fire eater, extinguished and smelling of white gas,
hit us up for coinage. Hal knew everybody so we
just popped into the executive elevator. “Am I
getting into a Fellini flick here?” I asked.
“No man it’s cool.” You’ll see, You’ll see.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that.”
Hal continues with his mayoral spiel, as if he
were trying to sell me a share in the place. “The
Jockey Hall comes complete with a disco, a full
gym, tennis and racket ball, an Olympic pool and
the “Binary Beanry,” a self descriptive restaurant.
“I’m impressed.” This time I told the truth.
“Good, Canyon, then you’ll love what’s
upstairs. The Jockey Hall has always appealed to
the sporting set and the computer crowed. That’s a
marvelous combination if you want to beat the
odds.”
The hydrolift slowed at the 41st floor. “The
Card Counters Consortium, also known as the 3C’s
or the Triple C Club, in formal circles, maintains a
full time office here, I’m the president.”
“My, My Hal how we have risen in the world.”
“Yeah ain’t it Awful?” Just think dis here old
cowboy doing so good for himself. Glad I got that
Yankee education.”
I knew Hal was putting me on, but he wasn’t
kidding about the office. We stood still in the lift
car as he read his throaty voice code aloud.
Five seconds ticked by, a camera eye zoomed in
then out again and finally the hyrdodoors whooshed
open.
“Now when I say ‘office’ I don’t mean kiosks
and room dividers.” Hal used a wide sweep of his
arm as we entered his “office.” A miniature casino
fanned out before us… a training area for discerning
players. Croupiers and faux pit bosses stood vigil
over a small green kingdom. I strained to see a
woman sitting in the lounge. Hal nudged me, “Hey,
don’t gawk, it’s all part of the atmosphere.”
Asking about the roulette wheels turned out to
be a big mistake. Hal grew sullen, “Roulette and
Craps are for losers pal, cards and sports are the
only way to win.”
As expected, stacks of sophisticated equipment
packed every office. For my first surprise Hal
seated me at a neutral work station saying, “Here
you play with this for a while, I have work to do.”
An attendant dressed in a black jump suit,
similar to Hal’s, offered me two fingers of real
VVVVO Canadian Rye in a big snort glass.
My first session was an exhaustive Q&A
exchange. DEE 21 was a play drill, a Black Jack
tutorial. The basic lesson focused on a winning state
of mind, that if you can’t win over your own
bullshit you’ll never win… anything.
The narrator calls himself John Dee. He appears
on your screen dressed in a green crushed velvet
jerkin setoff by a brocade collar. A blue leather
beret, with a swan feather in it finished the
ensemble nicely.
Doctor Dee will address you in any language.
Please select from the following menu:
English:
Polite Aussie
Pissed Aussie
Yank:
Ebonic
Funky White Boy
Good Ole Boy
Trucker
Jail house
Post Celtic:
Scouse
Geordy
Glaswegian
Canajun Eh?
Brit:
Gordonstoune Tof
Somersetesque
Sloan Square
IrishScots
French:
Parisian
Acadian
Langudoc (see Parisian)
Breton (see Cornish)
Creole
Cajun (see Acadian)
Quebecoise (see Acadian)
Spanish:
Castillian
Mexican
Fifth Generation Pachuko
Cubano
German:
Goetheese Only
Swahili
Scandanavian (generic)
Dutch
Limbourger
Wassenaurish
Nederlandicus
Others by special request
I pushed the Funky White Boy button.
“OK” He says, “Lets get started.”
Rule One: “Don’t glut yourself, snort coke,
smoke pot, drop crystal, bang crack, shoot smack or
drink booze before or during a Black Jack session.”
My turn to query came up in the AI engine:
“Why not?” “I can play stoned.”
Dee smirks and says, “Yes but you can’t win. If
your head’s blitzed so is your money.”
He then fades from the screen while you
observe a few closeup hands of Black Jack, using
the Jockey Hall system of course.
John Dee, the navigator, appears onscreen and
says,
Rule Two: “Plan your sessions as if they were
strategic armed robberies.”
This sounded bizarre, “Isn’t that a rather severe
approach?” I asked.
“No, not really. The casino owners think
counting cards is cheating, when in fact its just a
mental trick. So you have to get into stealth mode to
win?”
“Yeah, so you’re saying never play when you’re
sick or depressed or in an inferior mood or where
the music is loud?”
“Exactly, by the same token you should never
play where they push drinks at you. The object isn’t
to get you drunk the object is to get you to pee. A
pee nervous player waists money.”
This time a film strip came up, showing two
polite ways to turn down a drink with an aggressive
waiter or waitress. The fumes from the VVVVO
finally made their way into my nose.
Query: “How many rules are there?”
Answer: “How many do you need?”
Dee comes on and gestures me to move along.
“Hey man let’s go, we still haven’t got into the
math yet.”
“Oh boy, I can’t wait; not my best subject in
school.”
Rule Three: “Play only at two deck tables
twentyfive unit minimum and never play heads up
(one on one) with the dealer. Select a table with one
or two other players. Try to play at the head of the
table and reserve the second spot.” Dee points to the
spot with his Irish blackthorn.
Query: “Where did you get the Shillelagh?”
Answer: John Kelley give it ta me.” It’s actually
Hazel and I can giv ya a good crack if ya wannna
see it. Now can we get on with your lesson?”
Query: “Is there some special geometry to
sitting at the head of the table?”
Answer: “You bet dude. You get your cards
first, but you get to see everybody else’s before you
make a decision.”
Query:” Is there any special “best time” to play
blackjack?”
Answer: “Yes, that’s lesson number Four:
“Only play offseason and when there are no tourists
(amateurs) around, this means the Monday night
after Easter Sunday, Christmas Day, Thursdays
before payday, the second day after New Years eve,
during a rainstorm, during a strike and so forth.
Query: “What’s the best way to dress?”
Answer: “Use a comfortable disguise. Register
with a convention and play with your name tag on.”
An animated tutorial came on screen, this one
showed a poorly dressed drunk tapped out and
staggering home, while the cool guy sat in the
background counting his chips, and, we presume,
the chips of the destitute drunk. Dee comes on the
screen and says, “Tragic paradox eh Collins?”
“Its frightening.” I wondered if the god in the
machine could sense me sweating… “It’s dogeatdog
stuff.”
“Yeah money is that way. If you can’t dig green
stay out of the jungle.”
Query: “What if the system screws up?”
Answer: “The count always works. It’s a
mathematical certainty. If you’re losing at Black
Jack it’s because the casino is cheating or you are
beating yourself. Always quit when you sense any
irregularities. The cards are never wrong, but the
house will often put a shill or mechanic in on you.”
Query: “Are you serious?”
Answer: “Yes!”
I lost count of what rule we were at, or if there
really are any. Maybe the thing was bottoming out.
I’m always skeptical about these virtual reality
engines. They’re usually about as virtual as their
designers.
Query: “What rule are we on?”
Answer: “Nine.”
Query: “What is rule Nine?”
Answer: “Never play with house money. Go to
the bank first. Set up your line before the session
and never leave the casino without a return trip to
the cashier.”
This sounded like a good strategy, even I knew
better than to toy with the likes of Larry “The
Gorilla” Payne or Bippo Valens.
Query: “Is there a tenth rule?”
Answer: “Yes, it’s the last rule you’ll need right
now, and it’s a bitch.”
“What is it?
Alright, Dee intoned, you asked for it,
“Yes, Yes, come on man.” I begged the virtual
character to cough up the last rule.
“Never look up at the mirrors.”
Doctor Dee faded to his resting place deep
within the Gallium Arsenate subsystem.
∞∞∞
I wondered into Hal’s office rubbing my eyes
like a kid out of bed for a potty run. “I don’t believe
what I’ve just seen.”
“Pretty amazing eh?”
“We mold character here… a winning attitude.”
“That’s sweet, but the last item seemed a bit
cryptic.”
“What did you expect from a cryptographer?”
“I’m not sure.” “Wasn’t John Dee a kind of
scoundrel?”
“No that was his pal Edward Kelley.”
Hal closed his desk and walked toward the
sliding glass door, gesturing me to follow.
“Wait I want to get my drink.”
“Drink up Collin’s, we have a whole night
ahead of us.”
We settled into one of the conversation pits,
perfect lighting, perfect pollen free air. Hal
continued where Dee left off, “There is one thing
that distinguishes a winner from a loser in Vegas.”
“What’s that?”
“The loser comes into the casino ready to lose,
but the winner always visits the bank on the way
out. Losers, by definition, don’t even know where
to find the cage.”
“What about the mirrors?”
“Oh, yeah, that’s a dead give away. If you look
up they know your counting.”
“What about the symbolism of the cashiers
cage?”
“That’s easy.” Hal reached over and turned
down the noise level for the virtual casino. “How do
you expect to win if you don’t cash in your chips
after each session?”
“I dunno.” I shrugged my shoulders and threw
up my palms.
“I once knew a woman who never played unless
she could look over and see the damn cashier. The
only time she varied her routine was when she left
Vegas with about two million in her bedroll and on
that one occasion she looked up and flipped ‘em the
bird.”
Hal continued instructing me in a low voice, no
point in disturbing the trainees. “Money
management is the real secret to winning Black Jack
and the system we are using, the system I am sworn
never to divulge, is computer perfect—a gold mine,
an endless gold mine. I can only hint that it has to
do with winning against the flow. When things are
bad for “the house” they’re good for you.
As he spoke I realized DEE 21 was as bizarre as
Dolphin’s assault on Mt. Shasta and that basically
I’m a twentieth century fish way out of the water in
the soupy seas of the twentyfirst century. As we left
the Jockey Hall he suggested I try a solo cruise of a
few casinos to get my feet wet. We would meet
back at his place later. In parting he promised to
introduce me to the software developer on the DEE
21 project, probably tomorrow evening, someone I
would much enjoy meeting, he assured me. He
dropped me off in front of the Tropicana, prompted
me to go and throw a bouquet on the rose garden
out by the pool—“cause that’s where Bugsy the Sea
Gull is buried”—and assured me I was welcome at
their place.
My first session at the Tropicana was thrilling.
Five dollar chips and some greens on a double deck
and I took out about two thousand. I ordered a cup
of real Darjeeling tea. I felt strangely energized and
free. My paranoia ebbed rapidly.
I can’t remember exactly what happened that
night. I broke the rules, but won anyway. Maybe
there was such a thing as luck after all.
∞∞∞
The cab ride to the New Dunes was uneventful,
the driver moved like a shadow puppet. The room
still smelled of lamb, goat and rice dishes made up
for the Sheik of Sharja, but I was only staying long
enough to grab my suitcase, the camera gear, my
Passfiche, the burned out credit cards and
Hamburger Zen.
I tried to pay Hal something with my solo
winning when I got back to the Towers, but he
wouldn’t hear of it. They had a special treat lined up
for me. A tuxedo would be necessary.
17:12 hours
107° F outside.
Hal and Sharon insist I take a sauna. I refuse the
sauna. I think I need to get out of the desert, Beirut
was a sauna, but the cold blast of a thousand wet
needles opened me up real good. I watched the
optivax channel for an hour, helped Sharon fill
spinach cannelloni—then took a nap. The dreams
were incredible—golden light with lots of colors
and music.
Back safe with friends. Someone to watch over
me. No regrets, except for that credit card thing and
the lack of a wife and the gnawing agony of the
note about Dolphin being alive and the
notebook—and the pain in my groin. I made up my
mind to call Dublin the next morning and have my
stuff sent over, but I wasn’t sure where I would be
living. I knew I would have to get back to the Bay
Area eventually.
The tuxedo delivery man appeared at the door
with a perfect tux. It transformed me. Sharon
prepared a big salad and oysters to go with the
Cannelloni, but as she served them she made a
cryptic comment, “Hey eat your oysters. You may
need them.”
I had to wear a bib to avoid soiling my gold
paisley brocade cummerbund.
Blind Date
We finished the salad and watched the local,
always bummer, news. Two women went missing,
last seen on a plastic raft, one of those Hobie,
banana things, headed down the Colorado to find its
terminus—foul play was ruled out. The dessert got
‘em. Another segment on perennial strikes in the
Culinary Union. The interview with the Emir of
Bagustan, who spent a billion to rig up a
helioballoon large enough to move his entire harem,
proved humorous. It seems the guy couldn’t get it
up. The girls, some of them last seen on a show
called America’s Disappearing Women, claim they
never heard of Excalibur.
I looked forward to stepping out for a change. I
assumed we were eventually going out to do battle
at the Black Jack tables… why else would we be
dressing up? We took a cab over to the Jockey Hall
at around eight. The mauve mist sunset was
happening again, right at that stage were the sky
shifts to green immediately before dark, Venus and
Sirius rose in the southwester sky.
We were admitted through the tight security at
the club and the separate and private security at the
training suite on the fifth floor. As soon as we came
in sight of the training system, which was strung out
through many rooms, I came eye to eye with its
developer. I was so surprised my teeth nearly
dropped out. The inventor turned out to be a woman
who can only be described as a walking orgasm. I
wasn’t shocked by the gender, but rather that she
had managed to develop such a system within the
engineering community in the Silicon Valley, a
community which must be the most ferocious male
dominated zone in the world.
“Dr. Collins, I’d like you to meet Dr. Mann.”
Sharon had a near giggle in her voice as she
introduced us. I was having another surrealist
experience, it was either a dose of some bizarre
drug, like the one laid on me in London, or a vision
from a Dutch hermetic symbolist painting.
Anna Mann was, to my starving brain, a
Goddess—tall, double black hair, healthy in bone
and sinew—like Juno of the Romans. She wore a
modest, but fashionable black evening dress, offset
by a small antique Cameo and an emerald evening
ring, set with two fire opals from Australia. The
black curly hair, the freckles and the grayblue eyes
mean that her family probably came from County
Galway. A tiny gold ankle bracelet accented a
simple pair of sensible black pumps, lambskin with
black patent piping. Was this chick kinky? I
couldn’t get my mind off the ankle bracelet, I’m not
one for fetishes, but the turning of that ankle was
too much for the weary. I almost fell over staring at
her.
Sharon could see we were getting along so she
made an excuse to mingle leaving us alone in a side
gallery. Now, most blind daters are shy or
mortified, but not us. We began inspecting each
other as if we were buying horses. “Hmmm let’s
see, no navicular, clear eyes and great teeth.”
Anna’s animal soul, an unintellectualized atavism,
flared behind her eyes. She wasn’t a flirt, far too
mature for that, but she could lean into or out of any
conversation without saying a word.
DEE 21’s latest rev was a labyrinth game with
very hiresolution graphics, animation and surround
DMX sound. The audio track was designed to
distract the player with the typical sounds of an
actual casino. I was going to be the fourth person to
try the updated system. The object was to navigate
through a labyrinth while playing black jack on a
virtual table with a virtual dealer. Two of the first
three Guinea Pigs flipped out for a couple of days,
the other fellow went on to win a cool million. Two
out of three ain’t bad. Hey what the heck? I was the
FOOL in the Tarot and I was falling in love.
If ever there was a Lovely Rita Meter Maid she
was it. Anna’s programming career began as a
hobby. She held a doctorate in automated medicine,
but that bored her. Sharon told me later that Anna
was only comfortable around friends and in certain
clubs, because the dumbest men hit on her far too
often. Apparently the bright guys ran scarred. It
must be a pain in the neck to be beautiful and
brilliant, it goes against all stereotypes. Anna held
herself in with sensuality and confidence, but that
was the primal turn on for me, something that
probably turned eighty percent of the men in the
world right off. Besides she was going to run the
system with me in it. This made me nervous, but I
couldn’t back out. Hal was standing over by the wet
bar wringing his hands—what did he know that I
didn’t.
DEE 21 wasn’t a simple workstation game. To
play it you actually crawled inside a shelllike cabin
and took a prone position. “What do I do now?” I
asked innocently.
Anna’s voice came through the speaker system
inside the capsule, “You didn’t pay it you ride it.” I
could hear everybody laughing uproariously as the
main screen lit up. I was skeptical. Anna and Hal
were giggling away as they applied the EEG nodes
and the Galvanic Skin Response wires to my limbs.
So far the system was little more than a lie detector.
The object was to relax your body and liberate your
mind.
As the dealer began distributing the cards I
noticed other simulated players at the table, virtual
characters designed to distract the trainee. One
really sexy babe made alluring gestures in my
direction. I guess Anna put this scenario in to help
male players perfect their cool. Men often get their
sex drives crossed up with their banking routines,
this is why most men are poor as popcorn much of
the time. Only a woman, a truly heterosexual
woman, a women who genuinely likes men, could
design a simulation that could condition normal
men to unlink their testosterone drives from their
fantasies. I asked her about this,” Say how do you
develop a system that controls testosterone output?”
She seemed to like the question because she
answered it in a simple way, “I guess you just have
to think the whole thing through first, sort of
storyboarding as you go, its like making a movie.”
“Yes, but how do you train people to regulate
testosterone output?”
Its based on an old folk legend, everybody is
trying to get rid of testosterone and acquire
progesterone. In the teachings of the Tao, you must
push against gravity or it will crush you and you
must submit to the ocean or you will drown.”
That answer put me in another orbit. I was again
ready to turn on DEE 21.
The screen and goggles did most of the work all
I had to do was push one of three decision buttons
Green for “HIT” Red for “STAY” and Blue for
“OPTIONS.” Options brought up a double down or
split submenu. The buttons were used to make
decisions at any given screen prompt. Double
downs and splits were handled by a double click on
the first button, payoff and loss screen display
tallies were controlled on a toggle connected to the
blue button.
I finished my second, and last session with DEE
21, happily exhausted. The sounds were distracting
as hell and yet I was able to win, by sticking to the
count rules, known only to the consortium. As close
as I can remember the algorithm for the rules fit on
the back of a matchbook.
• Aces count as 1 1/2 points minus.
• Twos, eight’s and nines are neutral.
• Threes through sevens are scored as plus one
unit.
• All face cards and tens are scored as minus
one unit.
• Bet the count and only the count.
That’s it. It sounds easy, but it’s hard to master.
Sidewinder
Back at the penthouse Sharon broke out one of
her hand rolled Thai sticks. Hal promptly wandered
into his glowing computer wing and fell asleep on a
smelly old sofa he keeps there for good luck. I
guess it reminds him of his less affluent days.
After a drink Sharon stealthed off to lock up,
leaving Anna and I alone for the first time. We
managed to cozy out by the fireplace. The feel of
being with someone who understands every
sentence you could possibly string together is hard
to describe.
We could hardly speak. I started off in awe of
her and her accomplishments, she countered with
some sexual innuendoes relating to The Story of O
and whether it was written by a man, a woman or
the infamous Girodias? Her mind was linked with
the vibes of Victor Hugo. I therefore became Balzac
for a few minutes, running away from creditors,
while writing Saraphita. There was no need to keep
score here, two fine people getting bigger on each
other, closing off the Lilliputian universe long
enough to grow a new branch. We were like two old
Redwoods, the square root of both sets of DNA
factors. I felt good about being myself around Anna.
We held each other as long as possible. I passed
some of my angst about Europe and the Muzix
caper to her, she neutralized it and sent me back the
bundle with her pleas for help with the DEE 21,
which she felt was a monster on the verge of
madness—a Golem looking for fresh minds to
blow.
We made fierce private love in front of the
fireplace that night, nothing kinky, but certainly
active. Anna quickly dressed and urged me to do the
same. “Come on, lets have an adventure.”
“She grabbed the keys to the Bentley turbo as
she pulled me along by the sleeve. “Wait I can’t
wear this tux all night?”
“Oh sure you can this is Vegas remember.”
“The hydrolift went down smooth and fast.”
“Where are we headed?” I asked.
Anna looked me up and down, “Can you
dance?”
“Oh yeah, big Samba guy, love that Brazilian
stuff.” Almost before I could finish my sentence old
powder blue turbo was pulling up to the valet
parking behind the Trade Winds.
Anna said she felt like a prom queen in spite of
my robotic samba skills. A stiff rum punch helped
us to dance until the club closed. A sobering gully
washer hit as we left the club. “Oh terrific this will
be good for the desert flowers,” Anna exclaimed.
“Where to?” I asked hoping she might want to
drive to Mexico or some place far off.
“Just go south toward Boulder. I’ll show you the
road.”
“OK.” We followed the road southeast to the
desert along the Colorado below Boulder Dam and
looked at the half moon and held hands and ate the
brioche and Camembert we stole from Sharon’s
pantry. We held hands across the arm rest and I
could feel her energy pulsing in her fingers.
We made love again in the back seat—slow this
time. It was so good it would be pornographic to
write about it. The sun was rising appropriately over
Sunrise mountain at the peek of dawn—bluish
turning to a bright pink.
We discussed Anna’s family as the bright heat
warmed the leather.
“Your name… Mann?
“Yes?”
“…where from? What’s the derivation of that
name?”
“Its not from the Germanic form, as in Thomas
Mann. My mom said her grandfather came from
The Isle of Mann.”
“Oh so you’re Manx?”
“I Guess.” I took my mom’s last name.”
I wondered what she meant by this, but figured
she’d tell me in due time. “I’m shanty Irish from
Cork, no relation to Collins the rebel leader, but
you’re descended from the famed Manx seagoing
warrior race, the tribes of Mannanan. The whole
race has black wavy hair and deep green eyes, just
like you.
“She laughed heartily, “Man you really can lay
it on thick.”
“No really, I love Manxians.”
Anna swore me to deepest secrecy saying,
“Look, Canyon you’re a real sweet guy, I have
tingly feelings for you, but please don’t ask me
where I live or work right now because my job is
highly classified. Hal and Sharon don’t even know
about it. OK?”
“Yeah, sure.” I answered, “But I think you
should tell me something about yourself before I
fall madly in love with this steering wheel.” She
did. She told me all about herself, except where she
lived and where she worked. Her mother’s name
was Frances Mann Windgate Miller, a long and
barred tribute to her many temporary fathers, each
used as a temporary guardian for a blind trust fund
given to Anna’s mom by her anonymous sperm
donor.
As it turns out Anna’s mom, a Bezerkely
graduate, was a professional poetess and Tarot
reader who spent so much time teaching and writing
at Hills College for Women in Oaktown that she
didn’t have much time for Anna. In fact her mother
was so busy training fire walkers she didn’t have
time to go through a traditional courtship opting
instead for an artful insemination and a Type 3
marriage, that’s the one with the erasable name tags.
Anyway, because she was a highly respected poet
and dramatist she was entitled to select her sperm
from a bank of Nobel laureates, kept at, guess
where? Danforth Research hospital.
The true identity of Anna’s sperm donor father
was guesswork. She referred to him as “Biodad”
and knew only that he was a noble laureate, an
AllAmerican linebacker and an accomplished artist
who painted in the style of Max Ernst. Anna
quipped, “I hardly knew my dada.” After the
laughter died down she went on to explain her sense
of alienation.
“I guess you could say I’m both intellectually
and biologically a product of Danforth University,
known in the student underground as the Crimson
Planet.”
“When I went to school in the evil city, we had
a name for people from Danforth.”
“Oh really, what was it?”
“J. Raymond Danforth Junior Agrarians or just
plain “Dung Shovelers.”
“Oh yeah, everybody called us that.”
“You mean you knew about that old hack?”
“Oh sure, but the guys I went to school with
loved that name. Every time somebody chided
them, they always said “Where there’s muck there’s
money.”
“Yeah, Danforth does turn out its long stream of
millionaires doesn’t it?”
“That’s how the west was pioneered and that’s
how Silicon Valley began, right there in a garage
near Danforth.”
A small bird scurried across the hood of the car
and leapt up on a Joshua tree.
I grew curious about Anna’s emotional
equilibrium, the psychologist never sleeps I guess,
but after what she told me about her ersatz father I
figured maybe she wasn’t really as stable as she
looked. “How can you be so calm, tender and sexy
if you were raised in such a crazy quilt
circumstance?”
Anna smiled before she answered, “Oh actually
I wasn’t raised by my mom.”
This made me very curious, “Who then?”
Anna nodded, “Oh, that’s how I came to Vegas
in the first place. When I was about ten I moved to
Las Vegas. I was raised by a spinster aunt, a
friendly librarian named Nanna, whose
greatgrandfather was Robinson Jeffers, the poet
from Monterey. She’s the one that pointed out the
traditions linking the native Vegas population and
Alta California. You see when Vegas was first
building up most of the gamblers and tourists came
from Los Angeles. It was a class act. For years
gamblers from San Francisco went to Reno and
people from Los Angeles went to Las Vegas. But
L.A. Land got funky after the Vietnam war and the
big quakes so Las Vegas turned to San Francisco
for culture. Nanna shuttled me up to the Bay once a
month to see the museums and shows. And
naturally I went to college at Danforth.”
I could only blink in disbelief, “Wow what a
saga. Where does Vegas go for culture, now that it
still doesn’t have any?”
“Hey, wait a minute.” Anna slapped my arm.
“We have culture, we have the pirate ship that sinks
every twenty minutes and the fake jousts at Camelot
and hmmm... let’s see. Oh yeah the flashing lights
and the two guys who tranquilize the lions.”
“My eyes widened in disbelief, “Yeah that’s
reallll cultcha.”
Anna assured me I would see cultcha, if I stuck
around. “The trouble with Vegas is all the cultcha is
portable.” She joked..
We slept folded in the Donegal blanket. We
could hear the cold pebbles popping like grains of
corn in a microwave as the sun heated up the desert
floor. Our heads rested on the leather seats feeling
each others ghostly spirit until it grew too hot to
sleep. A light rain brought out Yucca blossoms and
a bunch of psychedylic toads repeating the same
word over and over again, “Buffo, Buffo.”
The leather smells blended with the snoogling
bodies, and all of it perched two feet above a
Sidewinder overlooking the Colorado River. An
odd scene to be sure. I knew it was a Sidewinder
when I got out to take a leak in my bare feet and
saw it slithering away in a bidirectional pattern
which only sidewinders can achieve. Pus the track it
left was real snaky. Whew! This city boy wasn’t
exactly hip to the desert. “How bad could that have
been?” I asked.
Anna smirked as she replied, “How bad is
death?”
She wanted to drive back, to test me I guess, but
since I have no objection to being chauffeured I
handed her the keys and slid over with my shoes
and socks in my right hand. She drove back to town,
wending her way through the back roads and cattle
paths she knew from her growing up days. We took
every interesting side road. The damn Bentley
proved it wasn’t built for such abuse by gasping a
few times. I took the turbo hiccup as a hint that we
should locate a more conventional route into town.
She drove me to Hal and Sharon’s tower and we
made a date to meet for late breakfast in two hours
at Michelle’s on Flamingo Road and Balmoral
Parkway, the crossroads of Route 666 and Route 66,
the frontier highway once known as “America’s
Main Street.” Anna loved to drive that damned big
car, I guess big fast cars were her one consceion to
flamboyance. I had no idea she would someday get
to know that same road by its more contemporary
name, the “Beast.”
Hal and Sharon were just jumping out of the
shower when I blasted in the door. Both of my hosts
wore eager grins. They wanted a blow by blow
description. They wanted to know everything that
happened in the back of the Bently. I told them
about nearly stepping on the Sidewinder to throw
them off the private stuff, but they pressed for the
‘gory’ details. In the name of discretion I had to say,
“Look man, I appreciate your hospitality, but the
naughty bits are none of your beeswax.”
Sharon laughed merrily, “Oh, then there were a
few naughty bits?”
I flashed a big boyish grin and a school
teacher’s frown wrapped up in one grimace. Hal
went back to the crossword and Sharon buried her
nose in the comedy fiche she had just inserted into
her lap reader. Even so, I caught the glint in their
eyes as I made my way to the bedroom. I asked,
“Why are you two so damned pleased with
yourselves?”
“You’ll see, You’ll’ see.” They replied in
unison.
“Damn it, that’s all you ever say.”
I stomped into the guest room, “When will I
see?”
Sharon just bowed from the waist and said,
“Soon, soon.”
“I don’t have an eon ya know.”
∞∞∞
I crashed briefly during which I dreamt I was
sleeping in a muffin tin.
Later that day the trio of residents from the
penthouse floor walked across the road to
Michelle’s to meet Anna. Michelle’s, established in
the seventies as a bakery, was still going eighty
years later. Each table was shaded from the white
heat by an antique red and blue Cinzano umbrella,
even though no one had seen or tasted Cinzano for
at least ten years.
Anna showed up as arranged, this time in a
stunning casual outfit—a gabardine safari suit with
big pockets. Her ensemble was rounded out by a
blue billed cap and a pair of orange tinted
Revowraps found in an antique shop. It was, by
now, obvious to everyone that something good went
down between us, but damned if I was going to
verbalize anything. Anna went right along with the
ruse, as if nothing had happened.
After fifteen minutes of chitchat, a very speedy
(real) espresso, and numerous speculations as to my
sex life, Hal suggested he and Sharon go out to
West Vegas for a shopping spree. “Why don’t you
an Anna go back to our place and take a sauna or
something.”
“What’s the deal with your damned Sauna man,
like the desert isn’t hot enough for you?”
“Oh sure, but its real nifty, go on, try it.” He
nudged me with a lascivious elbow to the ribs.
I looked at Anna and she nodded OK, so they
left in the big car. But we didn’t go back to the
Towers, we ordered a pitcher of Real Deel
microbrew and just sat there and talked until the late
afternoon breeze came up. Two full hours of divine
conversation flew by in what seemed to be about
two minutes. We walked arm in arm back to the
penthouse hoping maybe Hal and Sharon might
have extended their shopping trip, no such luck.
We used my key to waltz into the penthouse
only to find Sharon puttering in the kitchen.
“Hello, you two, where did you go?”
“Anna just told the truth, “Oh we sat at
Michelle’s for a couple of hours then just walked
back here.” Sharon nodded, “Un hunh good”
“How was your shopping trip?”
Oh great we found this terrific Asian gourmet
market.”
I called into the kitchen from the reception hall,
“Hey where’s Hal?”
“Oh he’s in the computer room.”
I found Hal in his electronic den discussing
tomorrow’s morning line at New Sportsman’s Park
in Chicago. He waved hello then waved me off,
giving me the famous five finger sign, meaning five
minutes.
Anna and I took a perch in the fountain area
near the huge fish tank. We eyed each other, then
the fish, then the gay Olympics on the foptivison
channel. We smooched and did a lot of ESP shtick,
but still no Hal or Sharon.
Hal finally came out to turn on the late football
game between the Portland Pioneers and the
Memphis Gold, preceded of course by hours of
moronic sports drivel. At the first quarter break,
during one of those interminably pastel Mexican
cerveza commercials, Hal stood up and said: “OK, I
guess you need some convincing, lets go!”
Anna and I nodded in the affirmative, hoping to
divert Hal from the topic. “Yeah, Hal, sure, sure.” I
answered.
The four of us hurried out of the penthouse
again, in broad daylight, found the underground
garage and bustled our way toward Hal’s prized
automobile, an incredibly expensive fiftyfive year
old, four place, British touring toy in metallic
bittersweet chocolate. Hal christened it Lagonda
O’Brian. As the solenoid activated doors swung
open Hal said, “My mechanic pays me to let him
work on it, what da ya think?” What could I say.
We were dumbfounded. I managed to bulge at the
eyes a bit, just to flatter him. “Wow!”
Hal laid his second astonishing trip on us as we
began another car craft penetration through the
desert. Sharon mentioned we were headed for Blue
Diamond, but basically we needed air conditioning
and it didn’t matter where we were going. The
mystery grew lighter as we nestled into the posture
perfect rear bucket seats with the beige felt foot
rests. We held hands. Anna didn’t need a joint or a
drink, she just grooved. By the time we crossed the
strip onto the west side Hal was raving on another
riff, like a carnival barker. This time the topic was
so secret it had to be discussed in a car going eighty
northbound on the way to Tonapah. Finally Hal
says, “OK here’s the real deal. We are now
consulting with the Nevada gaming commission to
ascertain whether or not Black Jack counting is
cheating or not. In the process, and to keep it out of
the papers, both the Diamond and the Golddust
allow our players to play straight count strategy in
front of sheiks and billionaires from all over the
world. They all think they can win big, but they
actually loose big because they aren’t trained. The
big pit boss in the sky finally realized that card
counters are the ultimate shills, so now we work for
the house, on a commission basis.”
Sharon said nothing. Obviously this was Hal’s
deal. If he was nuts she was nuts. They were that
way when I first met them in Frixo, crazy and
happy together a real case of follie et deux. I
humored him, nudging Anna to play along, she
winked at me as she asked the obvious question,
“Tell us more about the money?”
Hal went right on with his spiel, “The house lets
you keep ten percent of your winnings if they stake
you and fifty percent if you play with your own
money. In other words you’re a high class shill for
the house. The most you can make is fifty grand at a
sitting, but that ain’t dog food mate.”
“What the heck is going on?” I asked this
question with some humility on Anna’s behalf.
“Well you see, about five years ago the casino
owners realized they really couldn’t stop card
counting and since BJ is the most common game,
and since Nevada would be nothing but Billy goats
and Nazis without gambling, something had to be
done.”
“If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em right?” I asked.
“Right, except there’s a twist,.”
“What do you mean?”
Hal was happy to elaborate. He loved stochastic
models and luck theory. “Well, the first rung of the
card counting ladder is crowded with amateurs who
haven’t mastered basic strategy, they are known as
‘grinders’ or ‘mules.’ Next we have the... blah, blah
blah. Anna and I just listened as Hal asked Sharon
to finish the story. “Yeah, Sharon tell ‘em about
Henderson.”
Sharon nodded, “Oh yeah, Henderson,
Nevada—were the house is the only law. That’s
where I was shown the breaking cards that were
dealt on the last hand and was asked if I wanted the
same cards again? But Henderson ain’t the only
bogus place for Blackjack, the same kickout
strategy goes down in Atlantic City, Reno, London,
Amsterdam or Monte Carlo. If they want you to
bust out—you go bust.”
“So you see it’s natural to join forces.” Hal
added.
Anna and I looked at each other wide eyed.
“Now then I ask you,” Hal grew emphatic,
“What could be better than a warranty that the
house wouldn’t slip you any wonky cards, good or
bad, and that the cards would come down slow and
natural?”
“Ahhh that’s the rub” I said, “If you want to
cloud my memory put me to sleep with a slow
dealer or a fumble finger. I love the guys who float
the cards down or toss ‘em at you as long as they do
it at the same damn pace for the whole session.
Changing rhythms is the hardest adjustment I have
to make.”
The red rocks of the desert moved across the
tinted English windows as we made our way North.
I gulped in feigned embarrassment, “I don’t need
this ya know. I came to Vegas to find me a loose
cow girl in one of these dusty pooter bars out on
Boulder Highway, but I wound up with a mutant
brain in a swank gown with spiked heels and a nasty
mouth—nice body though!”
Anna comes back with, “Yes, see how catchy it
is?”
“Ha ha, where dja learn to rank on people like
that?”
“Oh, in my high school we called it “Dirty
Dues.”
I felt injured. I was losing the rap war for the
first time. My name would be removed from the
walls of flame in the HaightAshbury and on the
Bowery. No more Dox. Only anonymity for me. I
made a feeble retort simultaneously conceding
defeat, “I want a rematch and we’ll discuss Hal and
Sharon’s braverthanthounewworld over some
nonsynthetic Mumms how’s that?”
“Sounds O.K. to me. All agreed say aye.” I said,
Eye.
Anna said, “I.”
Hal and Sharon, admitting they were having fun
for a change, said, Aeyeee charisma!”
“Dis goil is mad, nez pa?”
“I, eye.”
Jackass Flats went cruising by. When we got to
Shamrock we turned around and headed straight for
the Jockey Hall. Hal managed to cruise the Lagonda
at a respectable 120 most of the way. Even the
tumbleweed couldn’t keep up. No radar anymore
out here, maybe it’s Omega Vegas after all.
We spent the next fortnight perfecting my Black
Jack strategies—twice a week in Anna’s machine;
twice a day in paradise; twice a week at the Gym &
Swim and twice a day at one club or another
actually playing Black Jack for real money under all
sorts of conditions. I think I put together about
thirtythousand units after expenses. For recreation I
went out to the Valley of Fire with Gyro and
watched him sketch lizards. I still can’t figure out
how he got those Giza monsters to just sit there and
pose for him.
A deepening homesickness, drove me
northward. Maybe if I got a blast of Pacific wind in
my face I’d wake up.
Anna and I had a quiet, tearful dinner at
Zappata’s. She would quit her monastic digs at the
Jockey Hall and stay with some friends out at
Bullhead for a few more days as she needed to work
on her tan, which I must admit was a great
confidence builder. A woman in my life was
medicine to my soul, but a woman with a brain, a
suntan and a Blackjack machine—WoW!
We throbbed an electric goodnight at the Jockey
Hall, but I didn’t go up stairs. The fire eater dude
was out in full regalia spitting napalm all over the
place, and getting paid for it, but we saw him only
as a reflection in our looking glass.
“Well, I guess this is it.”
“Yeah. Look me up when you get to my zone.”
“Where?” I asked, like a proper suitor.
“I have a gingerbread house.” She stroked my
neck as she looked into my eyes. I damn near
melted. “Call me.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be there with bells on.”
“But I do have one question.”
“What’s that?”
“Did you go to your prom?”
“No, I didn’t even have a prom.” Nanna wanted
me to go to the Vegas Cotillion, but Mama didn’t
approve of such things. How about you?”
“I went to so many schools having a prom at
any one of them never made sense.”
“OK then, let’s just say this is our prom date,
and we’ll take it from there.”
“Great.” A vortex formed as we moved apart.
I snuck out early the next morning feeling down
about leaving Hal and Sharon and about not
spending more time with Gyro. I left about ten
thousand in a bag on the table for Hal to invest in
the football games with a note for Gyro
commissioning him to do a painting. I wanted him
to paint me something that would commemorate my
trip. I also told him he would always welcome at
my house, wherever I might be.
∞∞∞
The shuttle to Bay Zone was smooth as silk. The
gym bag full of cash was neat too, but Anna’s
phonecel code was my greatest tresure, a treasure so
important I committed it to memory. Was it fate? I
kept asking myself the same question throughout
the brief flight home. “I wonder why I didn’t ask
her for her address or where she worked?” “Oh well
Hal knows. I’ll call him when I get settled.”
Imp sez: “Fat chance Canyon, you blew it.”
On Golden Ghetto
The Golden Ghetto (my terminology), now little
more than a vast appendage of San Francisco, is a
true ghetto because most people never get out. What
used to be called, “Silicon Valley” began civic life
in the 1780s as a fertile 71 hectre village located
between the precincts of two Franciscan missions.
In the century between 1776 and 1876 90% of the
Native American population died from the diseases
of the white man or just plain hunger. Any
remaining aboriginal souls were resorbed into the
uterine wall of the growing farm community.
Two centuries after the Franciscans founded the
missions Santa Clara valley evolved, or devolved
depending on your viewpoint, into the world
famous hitek manufacturing zone we read about in
history books. Around the year 2010, in the midst of
the great depression, somebody, with a vested
interest in the computer industry, tried to have the
name changed officially to “Silicon Valley,” but the
expression faded because modern solar trace
technology isn’t based on silicon.
I stayed in a swank hotel called the Palms Court
on Kings Highway in Menalto while I searched out
a more permanent pad. I paid a month in advance
with the Omega Vegas winnings and stashed the
remaining cash in the hotel safe. The gay manager
liked me, strictly platonic, he made that clear,
because he was married… to the bell captain, but he
was a good guy and I felt comfy. More than
anything I think he liked having my ninetythousand
clams in his safe. I remember him saying, “Very
little cash around these days, do you plan to spend it
soon?”
The palmlined and passivepink room with the
canopy bed and the wet bar was more than
adequate, nicer than the grimy flash burned room at
the Diamond in Beirut and more comfortable than
the stark decor at the New Dunes.
Room 9696 looked out over a creek which
housed at least a dozen homeless folk living in
refrigerator boxes pulled together in a circle with a
fire grate in the middle. Very Paleolithic.
Homelessness was supposed to have been
obliterated in the 1990s, but a new homeless person
was manufactured as each elderly hobo died
off—ghastly bad democracy I’d say.
The back bay window also gave me a
commanding view of El Camino Real and the
railroad trestle. In the mornings I would head out
for Woodside or Los Altos Hills because I knew
that area was absolutely secure and full of horse
people and rich eccentrics—my kind of geeks.
Somehow these small towns had survived the
onslaught of tourism, the advent of the twentyfirst
century population crunch and the constant inrush
of middle management worker drones from
Cleveland and Taiwan.
At night I would come back to the mauve and
green trim of my Palms Court room, sit in the dark
and wonder about Anna. I called her in Vegas, but
she was no longer in residence at the Jockey Hall
and I didn’t have the number for her friends in
Bullhead. I called her local number three times a
day and got the wrong number or no answer
everytime No answering machine either. To make
matters worse Gyro had no phone—never did—and
Hal and Sharon took their winnings to their place in
Los Cabos where they do hospital charities.
I busied myself with the outline of the book, the
fundamentals for the book you are now reading,
which would ultimately expose Excalibur, and of
course, I made plans for obtaining new credit. I
needed lots of credit to execute my vendetta. I also
needed a job to get back into the ebb and flow of
technology. Dolphin was very much on my mind
too. Every time I saw a Rockhead truck I thought
about him and his band of merry wizards. It was
easy to get pissedoff at Excalibur, mainly because
the papers were starting to carry stories about how
the Russians were also experimenting with “Death
Rays” at least eight decades ago. Dolphin, warned
us about such a device, but nobody listened.
Journal Entry
Autumnal Equinox
I walked the two miles over to the Danforth
campus and had a traipse around. Didn’t smell too
bad. Couldn’t find any death ray labs. Maybe
they’re underground.
Where the hell is Anna?
I called the Jockey Hall again.
Phhhttt!
She still doesn’t answer her phone. I tried
tracing her through the local chamber of commerce
and the university bursars office, but to no avail.
Bad Vibes!
She’s less than a mile from me and I can’t find
her. Sometimes the streets are so crowded now you
can’t move.
End of Journal Entry
Fall Fell
Indian summer always portends winter in the
Golden Ghetto. If there’s a cold breeze at sunset on
August 21st, it means your Winter’s gonna’ be
early. I nearly froze my huevos on the way home
last night. May need ‘em soon.
∞∞∞
The job in the optifab factory lasted about a
month, long enough to establish some instant credit
at the local pub. I also managed to tickle some
credit out of the wellpreserved owner of Duds for
Dudes, mainly because his father knew my uncle. A
picture of the pair, posed with other local beatniks
of their day, hung proudly on the wall above the
communications terminal. To get the credit I had to
listen to the story of how Dean died, a story, with
infinite variations, which nobody ever gets right. He
was not abducted by Martians and he was not
beaten to death by sex crazed amazons. Like so
many others these days it is entirely possible that
Uncle Dean is still out there spreading good vibes
like SantaClaus wherever he goes.
The Las Vegas money remained safe in the safe.
I didn’t want to cut deeply into it yet, just a little
pocket cash and enough to buy some very low
profile threads. The Duds for Dudes stuff was
readytowear—underjocks, socks, a handwoven
Canadian wool ski cap. If you wanted a few really
classy shirts you went to Svelte, directly across the
street. Fuchsia was the ‘in’ color that year, but black
is always cool for evening wear so I got the black
and gray Countess Moiré polymetal jumpsuit.
I worried about the money. Two weeks ago I
was flat busted under a bridge in London, now I’m
richer than I’ve ever been. What would happen if I
swaggered into this already overpopulated scene
and started flashing big paper around? No, the
fuchsia jumpsuit was out for me. I also tried a pair
of sturdy Jerkin flop sandals and a couple of pairs of
very nostalgic denims called “Retrofits.”
To keep busy, and to hold down the flashbacks
from the dope trip in London, and with Anna’s
phone number locked securely in my mnemonic
apparatus, I went to work at this atmospheric
Mexican restaurant called Pepe’s Nouveau Aztec
Imperiale and Dim Sum Palace, an eclectic menu to
be sure.
Pepe was a nice enough guy, a full blooded
Apache Indian, but with a last name like Von
Hoenstauffen I just couldn’t trust him all the way.
Still he paid on time and taught me how to whip up
many exotic dishes such as, Iguana Mollé, Mock
Turtle sushi and Pepe’s specialty du maison, Worm
Grub guacamole. The guacamole had to be made
with Pepe’s secret spice and only Pepe, or a
member of his immediate family, could toss it in. I
had to learn to make regular taco’s too.
I worked under the name Jerry Draper, an old
friend of mine who died of a heart attack four years
earlier after ten years of smoking coke dipped
oilers. That he drank way too many Black Velvet
boilermakers with Ephedra laced chasers may have
been a contributing factor.
Pepe’s first check got me a cracked plastic 2013
Mustang with a Volvo turbowagon backend on it
purchased from a benighted hippie who claimed to
be the leader of the Nudein Berkeley riots
at the turn of the millennium. My purchase
would give him enough cash to get him to
Stonehenge before next summer’s solstice riot. I
tried to tell him it was a waste of time, but he
wanted to go and slosh about naked, so who was I
to stand in the way? The guy was at least 70 years
of age and he was still looking for action. He too
claims he knew uncle Dean. God bless him. I
dubbed the car a Volvotang and drove it away with
some trepidation. It ran on anything, white gas,
diesel, gasohol, perfume even vodka, all very scare
in those days.
On a Tuesday night about 9:00 I was taking a
break behind the restaurant, trying to get a hit off a
doob given to me by the Mexican dishwasher—a
full carte verde kind of guy name of Felix . I was
drying the sweat under my shirt—the way you have
to do when you’re facing two solid hours of steam
and grease—when I decided to call Anna for the
umpteenth time. I mangled a token out of my
service pocket and tinkled it down the phone slot
precisely as five generations of Americans had done
since the invention of the pay phone. I expected
very little on the other end. The hallway to the
restaurant was dim and, as usual, the damn phone
stuck out between two unisex toilet cabañas.
Urgahhha… Urgahhha. The phone company
invents the most obnoxious noises… Urghhha. To
my astonishment she answered on the third
Urgahhha. Anna’s voice came through crystalline,
“Hello, Hello.”
…man this was it. If Vegas was true then this
would be tautological, if our romantic interlude in
Omega Vegas was a phantasm then I would simply
dip my head in a vat of steaming enchiladas and
shrivel up.
“Hello, Hello!”
Anna was probably wondering why a deaf mute
was calling her at this hour. “Ur, uh it’s me,
Canyon.”
Her reply was curt and to the point, “Well where
the hell have you been?”
“Me, wha da ya mean me? You haven’t been
answering your phone.”
“That’s crap man. I’ve been waiting to hear
from you for more than a month, but you haven’t
called.”
“Yes I have.”
“You have not.”
“Oh, yes I have.”
“Ooooh, no I would know about it for sure.”
“How do you know? You’re never home and
you don’t have an answering machine?”
“Yes I do… I have call forwarding and sonic
paging, you know the one that tingles your tits.”
“You mean you wanted me to call?”
“Of course dummy, do you think our prom date
in Vegas was a phantasm or something?”
My heart went into maximum pulse warp. “Hey!
I’ve been calling every day, sometimes two or three
times a day, but you haven’t been home.”
“Yes I have.”
“No you haven’t.”
“OK let’s not go through the ‘I told ya so’ stuff
again. When can I see you?”
She was calm now, “Wait a minute let’s check
this out.”
I agreed, “Why fool with romance when there’s
a mystery afoot eh?”
“Right, what string were you calling?”
I replied quickly, “Xr733244z35.”
“Ahaa! That’s not right!”
“What?” I couldn’t believe I was coding the
wrong string.
“You must have been dialing Mars man, the
string I gave you was Xr733244x34, you’re off by
two spots.”
“Well then how did I get you just now?”
“Oh I guess you finally misdialed!”
We both laughed so hard I did wet my pants and
shoes. Even my imp started laughing.
Felix confirmed my delirium as he passed me in
the corridor, “Hey man you’re pissing on your
zappatos. Good motta eh?”
Anna told me she worked at Danforth as a
systems analyst, which meant she did very little and
got paid a lot. I would arrive on her steps with bells
on the next day at meridian. I guess my socalled
photographic memory was slipping ever so slightly.
The Hormone Dance
Anna owned the only Queen Ann house on a
block once populated by chicken farms. But this
house held a secret. Anna pulled a scam to get it.
She found out who owned it, did a lot of research
and then, without the permission of the owner (or
his knowledge) had the house registered with the
State Historical Society and the Park and Recreation
Department. The asking price plummeted and the
courts canceled the demolition. A month later she
bought the place for peanuts and proceeded to
restore it. It’s now a tax free state landmark.
When I first saw the place it could only be
described as adorable. It had a masculine side to
it—its strength and age for example, but outwardly
it looked feminine. Anyway, saving this old pile of
sticks gave Anna inner confidence, which she
naturally passed on to me.
Two days after I moved in I called Rodney, my
old city pal whom I hadn’t called since I took that
first shower at the New Dunes. Although he was a
generous and faithful friend, he was also eager for
me to haul my junk down the peninsula as it was
messing with his home life, “You must be looking
for your gear eh?”
“Yes. I am. I guess you’re the only person to see
the loft before and after it was trashed, could you
see anything missing?”
Rodney paused to think it over, “No, they tossed
the books and spent an hour in your closet alone.”
I thought about the big box full of Dolphins
artifacts, “Hey Rodney, did you see a really big box
full of papers and notebooks around the Alfa
Romeo in your garage?”
Rodney thought my question over with great
care, “Yeah, but I haven’t touched it. Do ya think
they were lookin’ for that box?”
“Yes, could be,” I replied. “It contains major
notes, ya know… for a book I’m working on.
Maybe there’s some secret stuff in there too.”
Rodney had a way of reducing things to their
simplest terms. “So where do you want me to dump
this crap. My garage is full to the rafters and my
daughter wants to move her boyfriend in.”
I immediately thought of the fees, “Yeah, how
much do I owe you?”
Rodney was simple in the money area too,
“Fourteen hundred, but oh, hey just pay me
whenever.”
“No, I’ll pay ya when ya get down here.”
“You mean real cash?”
“Hey no problem, cash we got.”
The next day Rodney showed up in front of the
gingerbread house in a new WeRoll rental, a 1000
kilometer range Smooover made by Electrovan, all
fresh and very modern. When he saw the house he
said, “Hey man where’s Hansel and Gretel?”
Anna smiled at him, “We are Hansel and
Gretel.”
“Yeah and the witch ain’t far behind,” I added
in a whisper. Rodney knew what I meant.
The thought of my worldly goods stuffed in a
big closet in Rodney’s basement was devastating,
but I just chalked it up to experience. Besides
everything was there including the bungee bed, the
tufted steerhide couch and the Black Widow. I
identified the fat veetwin by the unmistakable turbo
protruding from its side. I could almost hear it
breathing in the back of the van. I couldn’t believe
my eyes or my good fortune. “Rodney you angel,
what a surprise.” I stuttered as I hurriedly unlaced
the muslin covering, “Now all I have to do is get it
running Wow!”
Rodney grinned like Stan Laurel, “It is
running.”
“What do ya mean?”
“Oh it didn’t take much, just a clutch.”
“Rodney your rhyming again.” Anna giggled as
she pulled off the covers.
It was good to see Rodney again, and it was
tough explaining why I couldn’t bear to visit the
city. We fixed him lunch from Anna’s garden and
tried to get him to stay overnight, but he was under
pressure to get back home to take care of his three
kids.
Before he left I convinced Rodney he should
keep an eye on the Cafe Trieste, just in case
anybody there might hear from Dolphin, or
whatever he was calling himself these days. He
agreed to go over to North Beach and sniff around
for me, promising weekly reports by faxafon or
voice.
It took me about two weeks to get adjusted in
the house, but a few cranks of the Black Widow
cleared the flies. Where do I put my shoes? Do we
wash our stuff separately or together? Anna hates
coconut. I love it!
A little suburban archaeology showed the house
constructed entirely from handcut clearheart
Redwood. Even the old lath behind the plaster was
redwood—no termites. Like most Victorians it
featured a gabled roof with dormers and a huge attic
stretching the length of the place. It also boasted
more than one secret closet and a bizarre corridor
leading nowhere. Anna hired blues musicians who
moonlighted as house painters to daub on the gray
and white with a crimson sash. ‘Vickis’ could be
financial cesspools and yet, according to Anna, the
fun of living in one was worth the sweat. I was
willing to try.
I began working feverishly on the outline for the
book. Between bike rides, up into the hills, which
hadn’t changed much. Add to this the house
husbanding and you see the silhouette of a first
class workaholic. I spent much of my spare time
watching Anna brush her hair, change her clothes
and fold the laundry. She wouldn’t let me touch the
laundry for reasons I have yet to fathom.
∞∞∞
Those were great times. The work went easy
and we fucked our brains out almost everyday,
sometimes two or three times—not an easy gig at
our middle years. Our private interludes were dream
states. We were lovers, friends, good room mates,
and we discussed the house often, but we always
made joking reference to our first scene in the back
seat of the Bentley at dawn in the Vegas desert
overlooking the Colorado river, with the sidewinder
under the car.
There was a fringe benefit to this domesticity
that could not have been foretold. Anna knew
enough about the total operation at DRI to sabotage
the payroll computer. She put a software worm in
the MegaNet. This is a simple background program
that runs with the payroll, but it’s disguised as a
network wide virus checker. If her name is not on
the list, the system goes down and nobody gets
paid. This little trick also gave her more than
enough access to make discreet inquiries.
We were getting liquid. Half of the Vegas
money was in the bank, in a vampire account, in a
nonprofit corporation that could not be traced to
me—the mail box was a drop address. We put all
credit in Anna’s nonprofit account. I was listed
under a pseudonym as one of her corporate officers
with a new social insurance number and birth date. I
even changed my new name a bit here and there to
avoid fraud and make it look like a computer error.
Journal Entry
Almost Samhain again
Every night I ride over to meet Anna in front of
DRI. I didn’t have to pick her up, we only live a few
blocks away, but I wanted to go through the
meeting ritual—something I missed out on as a kid
on the road with Mom and Dad and Uncle Dean.
Tonight we rode slow on the Hardley to one of the
Eucalyptuslined parking lots on Danforth campus.
Our ritual involves walking away from the bike to
have a kind of picnic meeting. Tonight she was
especially excited. This time she ‘borrowed’ a
financial report. I rubbed my orbitals as Anna
unfolded the file. I was actually looking at a laser
printout of my own erased accounts, the fiscal
detritus of a former life. Our mutual interpretation
was wobbly, but I could fill it in. Somebody was
able to monitor my network mail. Hell, they knew
about me as far back as Helena because they were
monitoring Helena before I put my big nose in.
End
∞∞∞
When I wrote Helena Merkell about Dolphin I
figured he might have been faking a suicide, but as
time wore on I figured he was dead, mainly because
he was taking unsafe drugs at an increasingly
unhealthy pace. I still didn’t believe it when I got
that blue note on the windshield in Bath, but
Hamburger Zen convinced me. If I had to make a
bet right now I’d say he was alive and in Paris, call
it a gut feeling, but if somebody wanted him dead
they fucked up. Anna and I assumed Dolphin knew
something about the long distance death ray, but,
because he shot off his mouth at the Trieste and
elsewhere, the bad guys got wind of it and
eventually found out he was leading an expedition
to Mt. Shasta.
The printout wasn’t our only source of
information. Anna worked with underground
hackers in remote locations—an electronic
sisterhood or brotherhood—gender didn’t matter
because they all had fake names. Anna went in as
Dr. Dee, but I wasn’t supposed to know her signon.
Days went on with no response from the network
then we would get two or three nibbles in one go.
JimJim from Tucumcarie thought maybe it was
space aliens planted in the aerospace industry five
hundred years ago, but we had to inform him that
there was no aerospace industry 500 years ago. He
insisted anybody who ever thought of doing the bird
thing was part of the aerospace industry, this
included Daedulus, Superman and Bladud of Bath,
so we humored him.
We decided to hire some of Anna’s network
friends, excluding JimJim, to research what role the
right wing thinktanks may have played in planning
Excalibur. In a few hours, literally between
breakfast and lunch, we hit the jackpot. It seems
everybody on the network, and we are talking ultra
fast Craymax gigaflop Gallium based systems, had
an opinion or a pet theory. Now this can be good or
it can be a pain in the ass as you have to read
through a lot of crap proffered by good natured
people. It’s like a child gets kidnapped and
everybody wants to help, except they aren’t helping
they are adding to the clutter. Not this time. Our
growing mosaic of printouts and fax messages and
laser copies and diskcards, when pieced together,
showed a weird pattern.
The day I arrived in Dublin the government ran
my passport number through G.O.T.C.H.A., the
InterGlobal police net. G.O.T.C.H.A. stands for
Global Online Terrorist and Crime Halt
Association. This is routine, nothing to be paranoid
about, except, unbeknownst to me, I got tagged as a
“watchaable,” a dangerous character who bears
observation, but who has no outstanding warrants.
To this day I have no exact idea how that tag got
online, nobody knew I was coming to Ireland,
except my bankers. HMMMM!
Naturally this check tied me to the Dublin police
computer. Sean O’Bannion’s name also cropped up
meaning they were probably watching exiles in
general and anybody associated with exiles. The old
CIA did it that way and so did the old KGB.
About a week later a real estate system in
Dublin ran the G.O.T.C.H.A inquiry again, this time
my file was superimposed on a credit inquiry placed
by Lisney’s for the country house I rented. My
friend Siobhan got an alert and took a copy of the
traffic but could do nothing to stop the transmission.
Coincidentally—and this stands as an example of
how one person’s bad Karma can get caught in the
web of other people’s bad karma—the house was
dumped on the rental market by the heirs of a
recently deceased slum baron, named Francis
Mullroony—a homicidal drag queen, hated by his
tenants and family alike. This could be one reason
why the cops didn’t launch much of an enquiry
when his body was found strangled by a Hermes
scarf, in Phoenix Park, near the Hole in the Wall,
draped in a mail order frock. 12
After that I was cybertoast. I was going to
develop my own web site, many years ago, but it
got too commercial and crowded Too much porn,
mafiosi and way too many child molesters, well
even one child molester is too many, but you
understand. Nothing on the web was free anymore
and, if I had spent a half million units to develop my
own site, it would have been trashed by now
anyway. Anna always told me, “Anything you can
put up some hacker can hack faster and better, so
why go on line at all?”
Nothing happened immediately, but somebody
was already linking me to my Hells’ Cargo bank
files back in Fogville. The overlay made the data
too heavy, too wide and very glitchy. My file lost
integrity and began to fragment, a clever ruse,
commonly used by hackers when probing a file
illegally. The two international inquiries
concatenated in the same database on the same
spooler, in the same second of the same day and
both kicked off flags. I guess I appeared larger than
life by the time I emerged from the net. I must have
seemed like a monster to the scanner detective at
the credit bureau, but they rented me the house
anyway.
About two months later someone from Paris,
who signed on as AT & T (maybe Axel Tervik and
Timeon or maybe Dolphin) took a peek at my file
over the nanogate. This took a scalded minute in
computer time, but it almost cost me my life.
The phantoms in this particular file were far too
scary to be mere coincidence. Whoever made the
request from Paris must have used a seeker module
hooked to the bot. Anna told me about an antivirus
missionary program called Forever Seeker. This
thing worked its way through the world web
endlessly seeking viruses and attacking them, but
she also mentioned that the same algorithm could
have been modified to seek key words in file
headers. Once the word EXILE was associated with
your file you were IT! Once the Seeker found you it
was your turn to hide.
A twinge in my neck told me to get hold of
O’Bannion to see if AT could have been Tervik, but
a number of ringouts to his bare windowed
holeinthewall in Brooklyn concluded in a
conversation with his brother Frank. It seems Sean
caught the place on fire smoking old craque. The
brother said Sean was in Spain at a hacienda near
Los Millares writing a book about the ancient
archaeological sites located beneath the streets of
Brooklyn. I even went so far as to send off a
faxaphone to American Express in Madrid with
almost no hope attached. I strongly doubted he was
going to Madrid. Sean was twisty that way. He only
traveled where the ratio of women to men was 71 or
better.
I tried not to let Anna see my inner rumblings,
but she knew my head was spinning. Hal and
Sharon called often and Rodney fed me weekly
reports about the Trieste including one
wellsubstantiated rumor that the Hashberry Freak
Linic was really a CIA front and that the Hateful
Djed were giving them huge sums of money as
bakshish, payoffs and bribes. Just as I suspected the
whole thing had grown into an infinite daisy chain.
According to Anna coincidence can’t explain all
the coincidences, somebody ate my records with
malice and forethought. Sure the inquiry may have
started with the Irish Gardi, but the final wipeout
went way beyond any computer now available in
Ireland. The chances that the whole episode was a
random glitch were in the stellar to zero range. One
day over coffee she told me, “Specific file erasures
don’t occur at random. Maybe a whole data bank,
but then hundreds of people would be complaining
and you would read about it in the papers. Besides a
glitch can not run down your pipe and zap your
backups.”
“What about the alterations?”
“Exactly,” She pawed her face as she spoke,
“Maybe your backups could melt down too, but
only a human being, with a strategy, could change
dates, falsify signatures, emulate a credit bureau and
perform other normal business functions in your
personal WEB account.”
“Of course.” I gave her a big hug. “You’re right.
A random accident might have killed one or two
lines of credit, but the rat got everything clean in
one pass and it was only me baby, not everybody in
AltaCal, only me.”
Anna calmly hugged me back, “What should we
do?”
“Burn the bastards!” I went hot headed
occasionally. Anna hugged me harder. “Burn the
bastards and all of their progeny.”
I lived three lives. The only one that seemed
straight took the shape of an industrial shrink in the
midst of a hitek slum. My second life focused on
being Anna’s old man, a new role for me. The third,
a deformed and distorted life, but real in every
respect, was that of a sleuth looking for a homicidal
hack monster who wanted me out of the picture and
off Dolphin’s trail. I wanted to meet this guy face to
face, maybe it was a woman, but the whole thing
had a yang mark on it—female homicidal hackers
are rare and very subtle.
I toyed with different faces, trying to visualize
my attacker. Was it the evil king Camloughlin from
Bortinco’s Chronicles, or was it perhaps
Torquemada, the grand inquisitor, holding a cross
dripping blood from the wounds of Christ. I would
probably never know, but each glimpse of a face lit
a fire under my ass and forced me to redouble my
efforts. Revenge is a killer, I can see that know, but
at the time I was really into it.
Anna’s constant soothements kept me in
balance. While searching through super secret files
in the DRI system she managed to access names
and addresses of people with high level clearances
who worked at both DRI and Rockhead between
2025 and 2045. Hundreds of names turned up,
mostly consultants and engineers, but a few Bingo’s
floated to the top. Ignatz Tankready AKA David
Dolphin, showed up on the list. It turns out Dolphin
was a super scientist before he took a bizarre turn
toward the outer realms. It astonished me to
discover that he worked on a certain Rockhead
project called: EBAR, which required a super secret
“Q” clearance. Something about a satellite, that’s all
we could ferret out.
The fiche data revealed other interesting names.
Laffcadio Marafatti and Arnie Schwartz, from the
Cafe Trieste, stood at the top of the list. The
government spy connection was there, the Odd
Fellows connection was there, but we still didn’t
know what they did or when, or even if the Trieste
cabal knew Dolphin worked at Rockhead, but
probability was high. They could have been
working on a problem in pure physics, harnessing
Bigbang waves or something, but it may have also
been more nefarious. I kept hoping our special
knowledge would lead me to Dolphin in some
fashion. I clued Rodney in by conventional phone
after he swept the wire for bugs. He was totally into
the intrigue, but I warned him to back off. I didn’t
want his children placed in danger.
Back at home the day to day stuff was
sometimes moody, but Anna’s DRI salary and Hal’s
sports book and a few other fiddles kept the golden
eggs rolling in. Anna figured we had accumulated
more money than the total earnings for both of our
lives to date. She demanded we spend some right
away. We finally found a clean, twice owned,
Mercedes CE 2500 shooting break, with the roof
rack. Anna loved big cars, something I learned on
our first date in Omega Vegas. Now we had two
working vehicles. We rode the Black Widow
around on weekends and took the Merc for longer
trips.
Two weeks of making the ten mile commute
from Menalto to Rockhead gave me the insight I
was searching for. Hanging out with Rockhead
executives and engineers also convinced me that
these guys were blind to what was going on in many
of the nooks and crannies of their complex
wonderland. I was listening to Chuck Berry singing
Maybelene when it hit me, As I was motivatin’ over
the hill, I saw Maybelene in a Coupe da Ville…
Maybelene why can’t ya be true…
Chuck Berry mornings are always good for
flashbacks. That morning I realized it would be easy
for a small, highly skilled and dedicated group to
secretly build a small satellite in some remote
corner of Rockhead if they had the right clearances.
They could chalk it up to research and development.
They couldn’t launch it from Rockhead, but hell it
could be moved out in a truck and launched from a
barge at sea.
The puzzle was starting to come together in big
chunks. I was pretty sure that Dolphin was still alive
and that the alienation episode and all that suicidal
bullshit was a cover. Dolphin’s Rockhead
assignment had something to do with sensitive
national defense matters and internal operations.
Maybe he fell down a manhole one day and landed
on top of Excalibur. Maybe he saw the plans for it
laying about on someone’s desk or maybe he
overheard a conversation in the lunch room. I had to
find out more and Anna gave me the strength to
continue the search. We were shapeshifters now.
Jerry Draper faded out about as fast as his henna
rinse.
I cut my hair short, let the grey tips grow out,
grew a mustache and lost twenty pounds. This
image looked a bit closer to my real self, but still
provided enough disguise to avoid old picture
identifiers.
Power to the Pitbulls
Most people think the end of the world will
come as a big apocalypse like Ragnorok, the age of
fire and gravel, or like a blast from Hell, but that’s
not the way it happens. Excalibur is a slow killer.
Now I know what Uncle Dean meant when he said,
“Look at that crap floating down your drain, see,
that’s the end of the world floating by.”
Endgame for mother earth begins when the ego
wants to live forever, but hardly anybody deserves
it. Biblical prophecies tend to exaggerate the way
the solar system, and I presume, the universe works.
Anna and I were among the few who believed that
Armageddon had come and gone a number of times
and was probably on its way back.
The quest for Dolphin’s secret and his link to
Excalibur took on a new meaning in our lives.
People continued to die from Excalibur’s
sideeffects. Crop blastings were common. Ships at
sea continued to sink mysteriously. On a local level
violent crimes increased markedly. The weather
remained unbalanced on a global scale. North
American experts defined a new greenhouse effect
called “Dripping Moisture,” a condition that was
only theoretical at the turn of the millennium.
French meteorologists called it Soliel Rouge,
translated by the popculture media as, Purple Noon
or Red Sunlight, but in any language it meant the
biosphere might implode any day. A mild Winter,
ten years long, like a drought in reverse, might
begin killing plants by the billions. The Krill
population, which depends on the cyclic melt of
Arctic ice, would shrink reducing Earth’s biomass
disproportionately.
The moon might also be effected. Lunar cycles,
such as tides, might shift enough to throw the planet
clock off by a few seconds each month. Chaos
theory tells us that the Earth would attempt to
correct itself, which could have an impact on the
already strained food supply.
A local wavelength news reader said, “Dripping
Moisture may not be in our bedrooms yet, but it
sure as hell is on our doorstep.”
Maybe so. The earth’s human populations
seemed to be bifurcating into three social classes…
those who owned slaves and big buildings, those
who had nothing and those who had next to nothing.
We had next to nothing, but because of our cash
position, we had a lot of next to nothing… and we
loved each other to boot, so we had more than a lot
of next to nothing. Our sullen neighbors, caught in
the middleclass squeeze, couldn’t figure out why we
were so happy.
As the weeks moved on through summer to
winter and back out to spring again, Anna showed
me how the king and queen hackers used ciphers,
cybernetics and the data highway to manipulate
reality. She was particularly peeved at one company
in particular.
“In the late twentieth century a now defunct
company called IBM, spent most of its money
convincing people it was a computer manufacturer,
when in fact it was little more than a sales force.”
Anna folded napkins when she got mad. I just
nodded and let her rant. “So, throughout the first
half of the twentyfirst century, when we thought we
were forging new technologies, all we were really
doing was entrenching downright meanness
disguised as Calvinism.”
“Oh Boy, I can see that in print. Do you mind if
I quote you?”
On the surface Anna and I have nothing in
common, but looking back on it, I can see how our
paths would eventually cross. My Dharma trail
looked a bit like the slime left behind by a Banana
Slug. I worked with acid heads in the city for a gig,
but dreamed of wild adventure. Man I sure got it.
O’Bannion’s lightbeam treasure, Stonehenge as a
punk kingdom and doorway to the afterlife, getting
dosed, going back to Shakespeare’s time,
Beirut/Mansoo, Vegas and now I’m in another
dream. This one features great sex, an
architecturally inspired redwood house sparkling
with elbow grease, great music and a family of
sorts, if you can call two vagabonds and a couple of
pit bulls a family.
Anna’s professional life consisted of
programming flight simulators from the old ADA to
the new XCybertext language, hence the idea for
DEE 21. Like a lot of women she spent her private
life waiting for the right guy to come along. How I
caught the magic ring is a constant puzzle. For at
least a decade before we met, Anna spent her days
dating a narrow spectrum of dorks. Each interlude
made her more alienated and yet she suffered
loneliness well because she didn’t live her life as a
reflection in her father’s eye. At fifty she taught
herself how to fly a Cassia Honey Bee in two weeks
and qualified for her scuba license on deep dive
equipment the next year.
When I explained my theory about or fated
meeting, Anna seemed doubtful. “Canyon, Canyon,
wohw boy, crank on the break man.” Anna gestured
wildly, trying to get my attention. “What’s the
common thread here?”
“Well, you certainly have a right to ask.” I
paused as long as I could to stretch out the tension,
also I had no idea how to answer her. I tried a
romantic approach, “We both need adventure to
make our lives whole, real adventure, scholastic
discovery, near death experience, and small daily
triumphs.”
“Why?”
“We’re warriors that’s all there is to it.”
“Ain’t many of them around.”
“Exactly, that’s why I figure our paths would
eventually cross.”
“You mean the call of the wild?”
“Something like that, more like the smell of the
wild.”
∞∞∞
In the summer, two years after we met in Vegas,
Anna and I felt secure enough to make a long term
commitment. We exchanged our marriage vows at
Bean Hollow on one of our picnic trips—close to
where Dolphin was supposed to have run the Hardly
Jefferson into a dune. A onelegged seagull named
Elmer caught black and white chocodisks in midair
while acting as our witness. The beach wind was
our preacher. The whole deal took less than five
minutes. For both of us marriage was an unguent for
the bruises of the last decade, and of course we kept
making money when everybody else was going
broke. Anna believed that the only way to secure
yourself against the faceless louts who run the
world is to make money, Amerclams, Eurobonds,
Rand Afrique and Ajayen. The object was to amass
a fortune and salt it away in such forms as could not
be touched by electronic probes or obscene doodles
from an unknown hacker.
We acquired Sluggo and Byte Mama from Petsin-Need as a brace. These two undershot
sweethearts watched the street and Anna’s furniture
and my Miro, especially when we weren’t home.
The dogs—good natured when wellfed—saved us
buckets of money on insurance. If we felt the house
was under threat we simply skipped Sluggo’s
dinner. This pissed him off. He couldn’t snooze on
an empty stomach so he menaced all passersby.
This is an understatement, when Sluggo barked, and
it was usually only one succinct bark, the brads flew
out of the window frames. In addition Sluggo’s jaw
pressure went beyond three hundred pounds per
square inch went he got all worked up. Anybody
stupid enough to make a move against Sluggo was
just plain suicidal.
Byte Mama was not a good guard dog. I
wouldn’t want to try her on for size in a dark alley
because her canine teeth stuck out from her jaw, but
she wasn’t quite as observant as her old man.We
chose Bull Terriers because they are the ugliest,
scariest looking dogs in the world. Sluggo moved
his eightyfive pounds of rednosed muscle and
ligament like a drill sergeant on parade. He was 8
and diagnosed with canine arthritis, but he could
chase a sneak thief ten blocks on a cold night.
Everybody was afraid of the dogs, but they were big
clowns. We didn’t care anyway because we didn’t
want to meet anybody who didn’t immediately like
the dogs.
The dogs were also mischievous, often taking
off to run amok in the park. The pair would sleep
under a tree all night then come home at 5:45 AM
when the dog catchers go out on serious patrol.
They always came home, right on the money, and
we never did figure out how they got in or out
without opening the doors. For convenience sake
we let them sleep on the sofa.
In spite of the dogs the house was neat as a pin,
mainly because we both kept after it everyday. We
fixed the roof, the laundry system got plugged into
an unused shower stall and we made other
adaptations. The antique Queen Anne was working
through it’s one hundred and seventieth year,
touching on three centuries—the end of the
nineteenth, the entire twentieth and the beginning of
the twentyfirst—and it was still going strong. It’ll
probably live long enough to see three more.
Redwood sure is good stuff. Too bad there is so
little of it.
The ground around the house was fertile too.
We grew a Thai pepper plant and some zooks and
some pear shaped tomato’s and marjoram and
society garlic. We called the geranium in front of
the house ‘Germanium’ because DRI was testing a
subnuclear fissionable material akin to Germanium
down the block and we thought the plant might start
glowing any minute, why not get a jump on the
horticulture of the future. I cooked in cast iron and
stainless steel pots because Anna showed me a book
on how aluminum pots bring on senility. Raw milk,
swapped for vegetables at the underground truck
stop, added a layer of insulation to our bodies—we
sensed we would soon be traveling to colder climes.
Marital bliss or not Excalibur remained vivid
and very much in the news. The economy continued
to list to starboard, but only a few wise observers
managed to connect the economy to Excalibur and
we could sense that the average citizen was losing
faith in the system. Fatalism was taking over. Folks
were starting to believe Excalibur couldn’t be
destroyed and that it contained a massive
thermonuclear capability even beyond its laser gun
capability. There was no evidence of this, but
people get into this doom thing. Newsfiche reports,
probably planted by the fuckers who launched it,
said that any attempt to destroy Excalibur would
destroy the planet Earth, and maybe a couple of
others. Dripping Moisture or (DM) came up again.
This condition occurs in exact circumstances,
usually in the northwest. Big drops appear in mid
air and clouds form over cars or peoples heads. But
just because science can’t explain something
doesn’t mean it’s from outer space or a sign the
earth is coming to an end. A new Ice Age is way
overdue anyway. Experts often disagree. Excalibur
was effecting the Van Allen belts and we were all
going to bake on the rocks like sea gull guano.
The worst doom story was that Excalibur could
fire at the tossing the moon off orbit and drowning
everybody in one final tsunami. To check on this
last theory we managed to trackdown an antiquarian
copy of Rodney Colins’ epic, A Theory of Celestial
Influence, a banned book in many universities.
Colin invented the idea of the cosmic trigger. If that
didn’t scare you there’s always the idea that a death
star named Nemesis orbits through the meteor belt
every twentysix million years and eventually it will
blow us to dust.
Anna and I were privately amused at all this
scare crap, but the potential for pandemonium was
very real and grew more intense every time a new
Excalibur story hit the news services. We laughed a
great deal, between heavy petting sessions we
would swap stories about our lives and about
Excalibur and what to do, if anything.
One balmy evening over a late tea I told her a
story from my boyhood days traveling with Mom
and Dad and Uncle Dean. “We went to a
demonstration in Washington D.C. when I was
about twelve. I remember my dad pointing to the
hermetically sealed Constitution and the Bill of
Rights with a tear in his eye.
“What did he say?” Anna asked.
“He said, ‘As long as this piece of vellum is
preserved under ten tons of granite we’re OK.”
Anna seas she sipped her Yerba Matte through
an ornate silver straw. ”If the Bill of Rights isn’t
burned into the heart of every free man and woman,
every child, every horse and plant and rock, then
how safe is it?” She declared. “What else do you
remember?”
“My mom squeezed my hand, pointed to the
documents and said, “They’re very delicate Canyon,
they’re living documents. All you have to do to get
rid of them is ignore them, make fun of them or
make them seem trivial.”
Envoy to the Quasigoths
Every couple needs a quest to unify their spirit.
In Hamburger Zen Dolphin wrote about an 18th
century alchemist named Flamel, who, with his wife
Rose, claimed to have made the transmutation.
Anna and I were just like that. Hamburger Zen was
a cook book of vaguely worded recipes which,
when baked in the correct oven, would eventually
develop into an ancient form of enlightenment. To
this end we decided to visit most of the old
alchemical sites in Europe. Planning alone would
take a full year.
It would be a multipurpose expedition—we
could search for the true nature of the Celts who
practiced a religion akin to Mithraism that included
the basis for alchemy, which was, eventually the
basis for all modern science and we could take our
vacation at the same time. Anna felt the Franks,
who inherited a lot from the Celts, managed to
insert this mystery religion into Christian ritual as
Christianity grew in France and Spain. This would
be just at the end of the Visigoth regime. Maybe, if
we were lucky, we could track down Dolphin.
The expedition idea took shape gradually
between housekeeping and painting, taking Byte
Mama and Sluggo on Frisbee runs while telling our
neighbors they were Irish Boxers. The Hispanic
kids saw right through the Boxer ruse. They called
the dogs Rojo Diabolos—Red Devils. We had to
buy Frisbees by the crate, mainly because Byte
Mama was very picky about her toys. She insisted
on the original Rammo brand Frisbee. It’s a difficult
thing to explain, but you sail the Frisbee to a normal
dog and you get it back in one piece, fit to sail
again, but when you get a Frisbee back from a Pit
Bull it has a ‘slightly’ degraded aerodynamic edge.
The game was over when the disc erodes into a
gnarled and mangled clump.
Soon after summer solstice we noted that the
entire Euroeconomy was in more turmoil than
usual. Store bought food grew scarce, overcrowding
became a problem and whole populations took to
the roads as they did during the plague years and the
Crusades and the two World Wars.
We felt we should stay informed so we
subscribed to three newsfiche and dozens of
magazines and journals. Obscure stuff, like Classic
Bike and the famed underground publishing fiche
Under the Desk Top by Bovett and Roads.
Flashes from the London drugging episode and
the Beirut burn out were few and far between, even
though Ben Jonson came back on occasion. A brain
scan showed no permanent damage, maybe a few
Glial cells burnt, but no real damage.
Cards from the unflappable Mansoo arrived
every month or so. It seems he became an honorary
chief of the Zulu during one of his assignments.
Anna kept me from dwelling on the paranoid
crap. I was only now realizing how much I had
missed. We designed a nutritional regime to help us
bulk up for the expedition. We both took the
notsosecret potion of apricot goo, bee pollen and
Royal Jelly. We also drank chelated mineral water
filtered through stalactite mud and watched our fat
intake. Meat was scarce, but we didn’t eat much of
it anyway.
I started working out with freeweights, because
Anna refused to lift objects over forty pounds—she
said it put excessive strain on the uterine ligaments
and abdominal muscles. She wanted to have a child
someday, and I was amazed. For the first time in my
life I surpassed 200 pounds on a bench press, then,
all of a sudden, I was doing reps of five. I had no
idea schlepping could be such a healthy pastime. If
Anna needed something hassled, carried, moved,
bangedout or opened by force I was her man—for
better or for worse. I wasn’t a violent guy, but I
loved this new power. Now I was truly
disguised—the flab was gone and I had energy. Not
just energy to do muscle tasks, but the small bursts
of energy you need to tie your shoes or do the
laundry. The short walks I used to take stretched
into miles.
Before I met Anna I was paranoid about losing
my identity in marriage. I called it the “JellyJar
Syndrome.” You see it all the time. The little lady
feigns weakness at the very sight of an unopened
jellyjar. “O Barry, can you open this for me?”
“Sure hon, I’m a big strong dude, I can handle
it.”
The guy then opens the jar, as if it were easy. In
the process he enslaves himself to his own ego and
to the will of the woman. Anna wasn’t like that. She
could cart boxes and hurl paving stones with the
best of the boys, but for this expedition, I was the
donkey. It needed to be that way.
We didn’t have a house full of friends, but a few
likeminded couples did flow in and out. Most of
them were dropins from the Lost Altos horsey set,
radicals from Bizerkley and couriers from Naow
Yourk, all of them brought gossip and fresh
news—the kind you can’t get on the airwaves, In
these cases, the Victorian became a bed and
breakfast inn. Anna would tell the stories about
research and the DRI rumors and I would make
drinks and pass the peacepipe and make sure the
dogs didn’t bug the caniphobes.
On the local scene news was getting scarce and
scarier. A coalition of Gray and Pink Panthers,
many old gays belonging to both groups, petitioned
the Menalto town council to investigate DRI’s
possession of toxic chemicals, biological warfare
and poison gases. This had been going on for sixty
years or more, but the town police chief was always
able to quell any publicity or spontaneous
gatherings. Now however, the bugs were out of the
bag. The town was run by an oligarchy and the old
police chief was long gone. When queried DRI
reported that, although it was true that a sixty year
old sample of unstable Iraqi nerve gas was still in
storage on the fourth floor, it was always kept at or
near 0° Kelvin and in an amount less than a
teaspoon. This seemed to appease the locals, but we
knew better. Two drams of that stuff—spilled on
the floor, at room temperature—would be enough to
wipe out the entire town a teaspoon could kill off
the whole county. We lived two blocks away. You
figure it out.
Radio Shack
We were happy as two squirt fish in a tide pool.
I had almost forgotten the London bummer. Anna
planned to quit her job and we were both dreaming
about our next expedition to Europe. On a sunny
afternoon in August, Lugnasad to be exact, we set
out on one of our traditional picnics. This time we
were headed for Big Basin to watch the sunset. For
reasons she promised to disclose as we went, Anna
wanted to take a ride through the old Silicon Valley.
We traveled the first ten miles south in speechless
contemplation. The Mercedes cruised through the
canyons of slab sided buildings like a paraglider. A
dry laminar wind set an eerie mood as it whistled
past the Nanoprene spoiler. A mystic serenity had
taken over the valley. Flocks of birds were moving
on the horizon. Nature was reclaiming its rightful
home. “What did I miss?”
Anna sighed in disbelief, “Hey this deterioration
has been a slow process… when was the last time
you came down here, Mister City Man?”
“Hmmm, You’re right, I guess I was an urban
dog before I went off on the flying cucumber.”
Anna answered quickly. As usual she had an
entire scenario figured out, “Many computer and
electronics firms couldn’t recover from the 8.2r
quake of 2037.”
“You mean the big shaker with the epicenter in
San Martin?”
“Yes, many of the companies pulled up stakes
and moved away, others diminished their work
force and relocated their corporate headquarters.”
An old garage built in 1912 and still functioning
stood proudly against the brambles and weeds that
have always been part of the Silicon Valley world.
“Boy look at that,” I marveled at how one old
building could still be standing amidst the rubble.
“Most of the abandoned factories and office
buildings were pulled down, one slab at a time.”
Anna explained.
“I can see that.” I said, “There’s a great deal of
overgrowth, but how do you explain these ferns and
this new vegetation?” I pointed to a large grove of
Scottish Broom as I drove.
“Ironically the buildings salvaged the land.”
“Can you clarify that?”
“I’ll try. You see the light industry did pollute
the water table, but the surface soil was often
protected by landscaping and the buildings
themselves, the cement slabs often acted to keep a
lid on erosion. The soil remained in a kind of time
capsule. The fertile ground finally emerged with its
face to the sun. Birds, and a few organic gardeners
did the rest.”
Obviously she was right. The valley was
regrowing. The fertile soil beneath the buildings
hatched life, just as it had done for eons before the
arrival of humans. “I remember riding a horse
named Rocinante through these fields as a child.” I
grew excited as we passed the old roads. “Those
heavily grafted pruneplumb trees were new then.” I
pointed to a small orchard. “Then the valley
driedup, the old windmills fell down, the marsh
grass and poppies turned brown and faded away,
now it’s coming back—a complete century cycle.”
“Un hunh.” Anna consulted the map index on
the passengers dash panel.
It felt good to abide in the vortex of Anna’s
quiet soul, even though the drab people in the drab
buildings we were passing often died before their
fortyfifth birthday. We looked bountifully healthy
by comparison. We both managed to quit salt and
animal fat, except for the fat in the raw milk, and
had already outlived our entire generation. We
knew we would eventually see our fiftieth living
together anniversary because we had the elixir of
life right in our pocket and we were well on our
way down the Morning Primrose path.
Anna worked with the immortality issue more
than I because she worked on early research on
nutrition and longevity for the second Mars
expedition, but today we were celebrating the return
of the classic balance.
The new valley wasn’t all bad. The horse
stables, I remember from my childhood were
coming back. That is when it dawned on me that
horses will always survive because the human
species hasn’t learned to do without them yet. Alta
California, now officially separated from Baja, was
again the equine west. Every canyon contained a
string of hand picked and green broke horses from
the Nevada Chaparral—mostly Appaloosa with
some Morgan or Andelusian thrown in. I especially
admired the buckskins with the black stripe down
there backs, they reminded me of Prjevalsky’s
Horse. A Ferrari dump truck whooshed by us. “Hey
what was that?” I asked.
Anna smiled glowingly, “Didn’t you see the
sign?”
“No it was going too fast.”
“It said, Equine Poop Scoopers.”
“Don’t tell me…”
“That’s right, you pay them to come to your
ranch. They remove the droppings and sell it to the
gardeners and farmers.”
“Wow, now that’s free enterprise at its highest.”
“Hey that’s not all, they also deliver hay and
oats.”
“You mean, the Poop Scoop guy gets paid at
both ends?”
“Yes, you could put it that way.”
I laughed for about a minute.
∞∞∞
“Pull, over here, Pull over.” Anna’s voice went
up an octave and she began bouncing up and down
on the seat. She pointed to an old orchard.
“Where?” I asked passively.
“Over by the big tree…” She almost jumped on
my lap, “…There, there.”
“OK, but I thought we were going to Big Basin,
that’s about fifteen more kilometers.”
“Never mind that, just pull over.”
The Mercedes parked easily in the dust, which
was everywhere so thick that wet and wrongish
things were growing in the cracked trees. We
gleaned two hats full of over ripe apricots before
she got down to the real reason for our outing, Gus
Spreckles, otherwise known as Glowmore Gus.
“That’s the house that Gus built.”
Anna elbowed me and curled her neck in the
direction of a 90 year old Eichler flattop on the edge
of the almost extinct orchard. I sat calmly for as
long as I could, but Anna just kept staring at the
house.
“Hey, when are you going tell me about this
guy?”
“Didn’t I mention Gus and Sally?”
“Maybe, I don’t remember, but what’s so secret
about it?”
“OK, I’ll tell you.”
Anna’s door sprung open as she pressed her
solenoid button, “Let’s go have our picnic under
that old tree over there.” She pointed to an
untrimmed white oak squirrel residence surrounded
by unloved apricot trees. We made our way under a
very rusty barbed wire fence and sat directly across
from the house. This single oak, still surviving in
the midst of senescent fruit trees was rooted in a
mound about six feet above the valley floor. It was
one of the only traditional California plots left, the
soil underneath had never been plowed. The tree
was at least two hundred years old. A water witch
would probably find a spiral aquifer beneath us. I
think the Portuguese farmers, who originally
planted the orchard more than a century ago,
flashed that the oak meant good root water and they
were right. Maybe that’s why the orchard made it so
long without human attention. The Oak gave the
wild bees a place to swarm and the bees pollinated
the orchards. Anyway this vantage point, shaded as
it was, provided a perfect view of the house, a house
Anna referred to as, “Sally’s house.” She wanted to
watch it for a while to see who lived there, if
anyone. She hadn’t, according to her cryptic
comments, visited these people in a long time and
she seemed amazed that the house was still
standing. It didn’t take long to realize that the house
was empty.
Anna began to unfold Sally’s story as we pulled
out the Taylor & Ng basket, filled with petite jellies,
two dongs of Sonappanoma wine, and a miniature
wheel of Creama, a local Brie surrogate.
Anna did a quick Zazen as I spread out the grub.
Her eyes followed the trajectory of a desiccated oak
cluster as it fell from an aerial branch. I noted the
absence of bees and ants as she began unwinding
the skein of her story, “One sunny Saturday, in
August, about ten years ago, I was cruising through
here with Queenie Graves and a tag along woman
named Mary, when we saw a hand painted sign
along the road”
Beepricots 4 Sale
“What’s a Beepricot?” I asked. “Queenie
mentioned something about how they’re a cross
between a plumb and an apricot, “They’re called
‘Pluots’ in France.”
Anna pointed to a ledge in front of the house.
“That’s were Sally laidout the plumbapricots and
jars of pollen and honey… she stood there in the
buff, chatting to neighbors while the cars sped
past.”
I took another squint at the abandoned house.
“She must have had openminded neighbors.”
“I think most of the early Silicon Valley types
were rugged individualists, not beatniks like your
uncle, not asexual careerists like my mother, but
almost pioneers.”
“Your right, these people were the last stand of
the California Gold Rush, this orchard was her link
with the past.”
Anna nodded agreement, “Sally recognized us
from a lecture Queenie gave at Mount Aloe Center
for the Arts… you remember me telling you about
Queenie, the ceramist?”
“Er yeah, vaguely, wasn’t she the lady who
blew up a kiln and found gold bullion under the
floor tiles?”
“That’s Queenie… she blew up a kiln by putting
odd bits of wet clay in it then reassembled the
bisque shards into a sculpture.”
“What did she call it?”
“I think it was called ‘Blown Away,’ she
donated it, and the bullion, amounting to about
200,000 clams, to the city on the proviso that they
do something for the young artists in the area, but
they trashed her sculpture, screwed off on the art
charity idea and kept the gold. She moved to Bowen
Island off Vancouver and I lost track of her. I guess
she’s still there.”
I had to get a word in edge ways, “Wait a
minute! You’re getting vague on me, where did
Sally get the Royal Jelly?”
“The fruit came directly from these organic
trees, she felt apricots loose their ability to cure
disease once they’ve been dusted in sulfur and she
got the Royal Jelly from a few wild hives she knew
about, but that was weird stuff.”
“What do you mean?”
“She claimed her Royal Jelly was a sure cure for
arthritis because it came from hybrid bees.”
“You mean crossbred bees?” I asked.
“Yes, didn’t regular California sage bees cross
with killer bees about fifty years ago?”
“Killer bees?” I made a sardonic face. “I think
our little picnic is turning into a scifi novella.”
It’s way beyond scifi boy, science fiction is a
dead medium. This is real.
“Yeah, well in my whole life I’ve never met
with even one itsybitsy killer bee.”
“I’m sorry you’ve led such a sheltered life in the
city, but down here in the country wild bees are a
big problem.” Anna started to lecture me hinting
that maybe I should get serious, “Those things
migrated north when the rain forest was cut
down—they somehow mutated along the way.”
I still wasn’t sufficiently serious, “Maybe they
got angry when they ran across Malo Pelegrosso 3
for the first time.” I added.
“Well, wouldn’t you?” Anna elbowed me, “I
don’t know how they mutated, maybe they landed
in a radioactive part of the desert or ate some bad
seed, but when they were crossed back with
domestic bees something radical happened.”
“What?”
“I’m not sure, neither was Sally. Wild bee
honey is scarce, but the Royal Jelly they
manufacture is full of weird enzymes, secreted by
their saliva, I guess.”
“Are you saying the cure for arthritis is bee
spit?”
“Sally seemed to think so, she had about twenty
customers, and they always came back for more.”
“Maybe they dug seeing her naked, what about
the nudity thing?”
“The cops never hassled her.”
“What about her kids?” I asked.
Anna loosened up a bit, a faint smile began to
form on her lips. “Her kids were hip because instead
of being embarrassed, as teenagers often are when
their parents parade immodestly in public, they
thought it was a hoot.”
“Sally was obviously slightly more eccentric
than say, three Dutch freaks on an acid trip in San
Francisco.”
“No, not that eccentric, she had a subtle side
about her, Queenie and I loved the whole charade,
but Mary—who was driving us that day, in a
Plymouth Puritan no less—was of Scots ancestry
from Fargo, North Dakota—we dubbed her Mary
Queen of Scots, but she wasn’t amused.”
“Well I am, please tell me more.”
“The three of us waltzed right into that
immaculate Eichler for some wine, like we lived
there.” Anna pointed across the road again. “It was
almost twenty years ago this week, an Autumn day
close to Lugnasad, the beginning of the harvest
season. I remember because the pickers had those
tall narrow ladders out in the fields and the
commercial ‘cots’ were drying, sulfuric and bright
orange, in the flats along the roads.”
“I thought you said she didn’t use sulfur?”
“She didn’t use sulfur, but the locals did… I got
the recipe for the apricot fat from her.”
“You mean the stuff we spread on our toast in
the mornings instead of butter?”
“That’s the stuff.”
“Hmmm, this story gets weirder by the
millisecond.”
“Sally said her apricot fat was an immortality
paste, but we were even more fascinated to learn
that Sally’s husband was a crew chief on the
notorious spy ship known as the Glowmore
Explorer.”
“You mean that Rockhead ship?”
“According to Sally the newspapers were
completely taken in by cover stories pumped out the
Donnelly Corporation, Sumana and Rockhead. I
knew this from my work at DRI, but Sally was
quick to tell us that there was much more going on
than a simple spy mission.”
“How could a spy mission be simple?”
“That’s a relative term, it was far more complex
than just snooping on another country.”
I munched down on a piece of Creama and
sourdough. Anna picked a bag of ripe apricots from
the nearest tree as she tried to explain Sally’s odd
behavior. “The whole ordeal had her traumatized.
She was blabbing to Queenie and me like a stoned
oracle on a tripod.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“We listened. Queenie, and I sat fascinated as
Sally, now dressed in a chenille housecoat—she
only got naked outside for some reason—rambled
on about Gus and the Glowmore. We tried to
change the subject, but Sally always went back to
the mysterious Glowmore project and how he was
getting screwed on his pay check and how his crew
was promised hazardous duty pay, but not getting
it.”
“What about Mary?”
“Her ears were burning. Sally swore like a
stevedore. She kept saying she wanted to go home.
Miss fuss budget, used the phone four times, she
hated long natters.”
“To say nothing of a naked apricot vendor.”
Anna smiled politely, “I just told you, she only
got naked outside, she wore that fuzzy housecoat
because the house was drafty.”
I can understand her problem, what with all the
wind blasting about there in the kitchen.”
“How did you know it was the kitchen?”
“Where else would it be?”
“Hmmm maybe,” Anna looked at me as if I had
hit on something new, then went on with her
seemingly tall tale. “Mary found herself far from
Fargo and way over her head in California. She was
an accountant for the Bobcat backhoe company.
They sent her to the West Coast to oversee a project
otherwise she would never have left North Dakota.
Her fidgitation soon ran into headache, nausea and
dizziness, especially when Sally fired up a couple of
joints from her back yard garden.”
“Joints?”
“Yeah, I smoked pot before I met you man.”
“OK, go on, I’m really fascinated now.”
Eventually we prevailed upon Mary to take a
snooze so that us three chickens could cluck on into
the night. Sally, herself a communicator and school
teacher, was not slow with the bon mot. Once Mary
crashed, we got down to some serious toke and pass
activities—aided by a carafe of Jamaica’s best Blue
Mountain. Sally’s kids, adapted to her zany antics
by this time, went on about their business. The
smallest boy didn’t chirp when he found Mary
crashed in his lower bunk, he just crawled right in
next to her.”
“What compelled you to stay so long?”
“I’m not sure, maybe the weed, maybe just
having fun for a change, anyway I locked on tight
when she began talking about her husband’s current
sea duty. It was a publisher’s dream.”
“Wait another sec will ya?” I had to interrupt.
We were well passed the last corner of the
Sonappanoma and a little tipsy. “What do you mean
a publisher’s dream?”
“Oh you know, it’s like when a big money high
risk publishing idea falls in your lap, and it works.”
I had to reply that I didn’t get it so Anna
explained. “OK, let’s assume you’re an acquisitions
editor for a major massmarket publishing house.
You’re reading the daily fiche on an airplane, the
stewardess knows you and starts asking questions
about your latest projects. The guy next to you
overhears this and starts to tell you his life story.
Now you’re a captive for at least three more hours.
Some fat hippie fellow sits down beside you and
tells you how his dad was a road manager for Moby
Grape.”
“Naturally he as the manuscript ready to go, am
I right?”
“That’s the idea.” Anna finished her wine.
“Obviously there’s not much hope in any of these
stories and yet, if you’re a dedicated editor, you
must wade through the Zircons to find the real
diamonds—you begin to dream about the big one.
Each editor hopes he or she will discover that one
big story that will make it all worth while, right?”
“Yes, I see what you mean. Every editor is on
the lookout for a good story, that’s the nature of the
job, but I guess the public abuses that function.”
“Exactly! But every once in a while a publisher
gets a chance to bid on a book that could be real
dynamite. I’m no editor, but I’m sure Sally’s story
had a book in it. It was so vivid, especially from her
husband’s perspective, that it became a movie as
she told it. We asked questions and she went on and
on, every detail was right. We had a ball that night,
I’ll never forget it. I mean you couldn’t rent an
optidisc that was any better.”
“Did you go on all night?”
“Yeah. It got so wild after the joints that I talked
Sally into putting the entire session on tape, redoing
many points and getting the continuity straight. The
tape is boring, but the raw facts were there. All we
needed was a vivid screen writer to liven up the
final draft. We used an old DAT deck and two
digital microphones, which the kids used for mock
rock and roll sessions after school. Queenie and I
spoke only enough to keep her rapping. We knew
we would get home OK because our chauffeur was
asleep in the bunk bed.”
Anna’s eyes were glowing as she recounted the
events that once took place in the rundown house
across the road. “Where are the tapes now?” I
asked.
“Oh, they’re in a box in our basement, but the
real mystery exists in that house over there.” Anna
pointed again, this time she left her finger in place
and sighted down her arm, like it was a rifle.
“What mystery?” I didn’t follow her reasoning.
“On the tapes Sally mentions a secret room.”
‘What”?
“Yup, do you wanna try to find it?”
I said, “Sounds great, maybe it will give us
some insight into covert activities a decade or two
ago, maybe Excalibur will pop up.” Secretly I
thought the whole ideas was bizarre, but not as
bizarre as my past five years. We both laughed
nervously. I wanted to walk right up to the house
and ring the door bell, but obviously there was
nobody home. Even from our vantage point across
the field we could see uniform cracks in almost
every window in the house—a bad sign.
Anna munched a gherkin. The sunlight angles
changed with every gust. I knew about the
Glowmore Explorer through our lectures at
Rockhead and through Hal and Sharon and Gyro in
Vegas. Sumana Corporation was Maynard
Donnelly’s front for buying up the casinos. What
better way for the National Security Commission to
launder money and recruit specialized covert
technicians? This guy Gus was turning out to be one
of the last hitek sailors of fortune.
Anna started toward the house giving me the
hurryup sign as if she was puling the steam whistle
on an antiquated locomotive. I gathered up the
picnic detritus and dumped it in the boot of the car,
picked up a 5 cell handbeam and two pairs of
Mercedes lambskin driving gloves, then ran to catch
up with her. She was in adventure mode and there
was no stopping her.
We approached the house with the degree of
caution one takes when crossing a dormant
minefield. I handed Anna the lambskin gloves,
“Here put these on,” I whispered.
The hardly hinged door opened easily, “Good,”
Anna whispered back. “No need to break a window
with the handbeam.”
I noted the absence of furniture, spider webs and
other insects as we entered. “Hey what’s the deal?
How come no insects inside or out?”
Anna moved ahead of me knowing I would
guard both flanks and the rear. “I think they spray
this area every month or so, because of the
commercial orchards near by.”
“What about the bees?”
“Oh,” Anna replied, “The bees are impervious
to whatever the spray.” A large oblong bee buzzed
aggressively through the open door precisely as
Anna finished her sentence.
“Well let’s make sure we scrub those apricots
before we eat ‘em, OK?” I asked.
Anna nodded her approval as the bee danced
wildly for a clue to the sun’s angle, found it to the
West by buzzing ferociously against a glass pane,
then just as ferociously flew out the door. I closed it
quickly.
“You know you’re right. Just because that guy
survives bug sprays doesn’t mean we have to poison
ourselves.”
The hardwood floors remained solid, but the
dust was thick from the dryness of the orchard next
door. A rusty SOS pad with a hint of blue soap
attached stuck to the kitchen sink leaving a crusty
ring. The toilets were missing. The bathrooms
housed ivy vines blossoming up through the pipes.
A huge stand of bamboo, fit for the largest Panda,
ruled the back yard.
“That’s were Sally grew her Indica plants.”
Anna spoke in a whisper, “This is suburban
archeology isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I agreed, “It’s like entering a hidden
vault or a lost cave. Like in Ireland only creepier.”
I followed Anna into the garage. She was
staring at a small slip of paper and a paper coffee
cup on the earthquake cracked cement slab floor, a
bare walled garage showed empty shelves built
between the old studs. “Don’t you think it’s
weird—nothing left behind?” I whispered.
She picked up the coffee cup and the slip of
paper. “Yes, I’ve been in at least two hundred
abandoned suburban houses and every one of
them…”
“… had at least a few rusty artifacts right?”
“Yup, there ain’t no randomness to it.
Somebody swept this place clean after Sally moved
out. Does she still own it?”
“Yes, technically, but like so many houses it
was taken over for back taxes, then simply
abandoned. The county just didn’t have the power
to develop the properties and nobody wanted to live
here after the quake.”
“And it’s a nice enough house, somebody
should have lived here, but nobody did. It’s not
haunted is it? Is that your big secret?” I asked.
Ann smiled beatifically, “Well yes it’s haunted
if you call spies spooks.”
“What gives you that idea?” She handed me the
coffee cup.
“See that? That’s a paper coffee cup.”
“Yea, so what?”
“Look at the logo embossed in the paper, like a
watermark, it isn’t obvious, but you can easily see
the raised edges of the design.”
I looked carefully at the side of the cup. “Jeez
look at that! An eagle crest in a circle of oak leaf
clusters!”
“Right it’s the state department. Some doofus
from the crew dropped his cup here, or else it blew
in with the wind, any way here it is.”
“Do you wanna fingerprint it?”
“No, the prints would only lead us to the
individual doofus who used the cup, he was a grunt,
we want the big doofus and big spooks don’t have
finger prints.”
We couldn’t locate the usual paint cans, light
bulbs or wellworn gloves. “Obviously this area has
been sterilized too.” Anna nodded in agreement.
I peered into the small utility bathroom and
noticed it was a bit cleaner than the rest of the
house. In my best Sherlock Holmes accent I said,
“My dear Watson, I think I’ll investigate this odd
little lavatory.”
Step for step we sidled into the tiny bathroom. I
shuffled into the shower stall for kicks. I guess I
wanted to catch some of Gus’ vibes, “I’ll bet Gus
took his showers out here. Private space and all.” I
said.
“Maybe…” Anna was never sure, her eyes were
scanning the ceiling, “Maybe Gus left something in
the woodwork, whad a ya think?”
“Doubtful, but we can but hope.” Anna moved
out of the room and, almost as a playful after
thought, shut the glass door on me, laughing
playfully as she moved back into the garage. “Hey,
let’s get out of here!” She chuckled again, it was the
worst cliché in film writing. Every action film ever
produced contains the phrase, “Let’s get out of
here!”
An urge to turn both water knobs at the same
time, just to see if there was any water, came over
me. “No water here either,” I shouted.
“Well come on, “Let’s get out of here… again.”
Anna quipped.
I leaned my weight on the builtin soap dish as I
turned to leave, but a strong impulse to tell someone
about the trap door and the bottomless pit now
flapping beneath me forced me to reconsider.
“Yeowww!”
Anna jerked the shower door open. “What the
hell are you screaming about…?”
Her voice changed to horror when she finally
saw my predicament, “…Oh Canyon.”
It must have been odd to see me straddling a
black hole, my bluish fingers gripping the soap dish,
my toes almost bleeding through my canvas shoes.
A gust of stale air blew up between my legs
indicating that a large cavity loomed below.
I groped for the door ledge with my right foot,
then gingerly stepped out of the stall.
“Whew.”
“Are you alright baby.”
“Yeah so far.” I guess we found it.”
“This looks like the big one.”
“It’s either Gus’ private pad, or the tomb of the
unknown rock star.”
I felt my eyes bulging. Anna mentioned that my
eyes were bulging, “Gus must have liked his
privacy eh?”
“You bet.”
“I think the feds missed this one.”
Anna flashed the trusty 5 cell down the hole.
A ladder rung appeared in the halo of the light.
“Let’s get down there.”
A dim light and a slight beeper sound went on
when my foot touched the first rung. We could have
been blown to bits by the same switch.
“Looks like Gus had a wild sense of humor.” I
said as I took the second step.
“Yeah, sure,” Anna replied. “How come I’m not
laughing?”
In the Secret Room
Our small light could not illuminate every nook
and cranny, but the room seemed to be about 10
square meters. Gus obviously spent a great deal of
time excavating the walls because some areas
extended beneath the kitchen floor. Gus must have
learned something in school because the entire
weight of the garage and kitchen sat over a series of
support columns and pilings, almost like an old
mine shaft from the gold rush days, but tidy and
reinforced with wellcured Ferrocement and thick
coats of white hospital enamel.
One look around Gus’ secret room convinced us
he was a flea market collector and an avid barter
economist. A full set of SnapOff tools lined one
wall. A big mahogany breakfront full of kitsch
tshirts and carnival glass stood in the west corner.
Old computer equipment, modems and even archaic
tubetype components propped up hundreds of books
and journals.
A dozen or so lockers lined the starboard
bulkhead, all were filled with specialized tools and
diving equipment. The chromium cryptolock on the
wooden door at the end of the room told me I might
need those tools. “Hey Anna look at this,” I
beckoned her to come nearer. “I think we found the
real secret room!”
The smiling skull and cross bones on the bolted
door covered a sign:
“Maybe this is where Gus conducted his
electronic battlefield games!” Anna exclaimed.
“What do ya want ta do?”
“I say we smash the crap out of it.”
“Have at it man, but keep the noise down.”
“Whi’ sure Maam, I’ll be as quiet as a sleeping
puppy.” I fetched heavy gloves, a crow bar and a
mill bastard file from the tool locker under the stair
well. A small stack of surplus battery piles hummed
quietly as I dragged the tools back to the Radio
Shack door. The acronym USN appeared on each
emergency lighting stanchion.
The wooden door gave way easily only to reveal
a steel barricade. This second obstacle took more
time and two trips to the tool bin.
Anna paged through everything in the outer
room while I did the dirty work. An antique, but not
antiquated, gas torch did the trick eventually. An
expert welder might have done the job in two
minutes, but it took me hours. I might have worked
faster, but neither of us knew how to ignite the thing
when our pocket lighters ran offcharge. I found out
later that’s what the little flint striker was for.
“Hey Anna,” I called, “sorry to disturb your
intellectual pursuits, but do you think you could
stoop to handing me a few tools?”
“You rang saaar?” Anna appeared holding a
huge book in both hands.
“What have you got there?”
“This tome briefly describes every satellite
launched, overtly or covertly, since 1957.”
“Do we need it?”
“Yes, but we ‘re going to have to get a cart to
haul all of this crap out of here.” She pointed to a
stack of books she accumulated while I waged war
with the torch.
“Very funny.” I wiped streams of sweat off my
face with one of Gus’s tie-dye T-shirts. “Listen do
you think we’re just doodling around here?”
“No,” she answered. “But, Gus’ library is
strange.”
“Yeah, well so is this damned vault.”
“What do you mean?“
“Look at this?“I flashed the beam into the inner
room.
Anna stepped over the trail of debris left by my
inept torch job. “Oh dear me, Gus was a cautious
fellow wasn’t he?”
“Cut the comedy, darlin’ this is serious.” I tried
to remain casual. “What if the place had been
boobytrapped?”
“I guess we’d be dead now, wouldn’t we?”
I focused on the task at hand. “Look at this, the
wooden door gives way to a steel door, the steel
door gives way to a copper room and everything is
strapped down and grounded.”
“What do you make of that?” Anna asked, this
time in a serious tone.
“I think Gus was in touch with some major
equipment, maybe even a microwave link to a
satellite.”
We stood in awe as our eyes adjusted to the dim
light. I felt like I was entering King Tut’s
sarcophagus chamber. Gus’s Radio Shack, a room
about ten foot square, turned out to be a high tech
gymnasium stuffed with every conceivable
electronic toy known in his era. The rack housed a
full fiber snappanel with at least one hundred lines.
Two portable “old tech” Geiger counters with laser
correction sat in boxes stenciled GLOWMORE.
“Don’t touch anything,” I warned. “Who knows
what this crap does, and make sure you don’t take
your gloves off, it could be radioactive.”
Anna looked surprised, “How can I turn the
pages of these old books if I’m wearing gloves?”
“Humor me,” I insisted, “Wear the gloves, we
can read the books when we get home.”
“OK boss, but what’s in here?”
“Well,” I began an inventory of the small room,
“…that’s a super fast Quadrisca Tower, with a
deep/fast/wide store array and that’s a MacAlister
Ham set with heterodyne filters…”
Anna moved my arm to point the beam along
the north wall, “Those old metal file cabinets look
interesting.”
“Yeah, let me put the tools back then we can
explore, what time do you have?”
“No time, like the present.”
“Where did you develop that wit, on a desert
island?”
“OK its about 16:00, August 21st.”
“I know what day it is, I’m just trying to figure
what the situation might be like outside.” I put the
tools back exactly like I found them. I don’t know
why. The door was completely destroyed, but it
seemed like the right thing to do. While I was gone
Anna located a functional nineteenth century
hurricane lamp. “Sally was afraid of this place. I’m
sure this is the room she was talking about. It was
offlimits to her, not because Gus was an autocrat,
which he was, but because he was trying to protect
her from no small worry.”
“It didn’t work, did it?”
“Whatever Gus was worried about came from,
or through, this room.”
I answered with a question, “What do Sally’s
tapes say about this?”
After a long head scratching pause Anna
answered, “I guess, you could say the tapes confirm
her fears. Apparently Gus grew weary after the
Glowmore project. The deep sea ordeal was not
something magical, like a space shot or an assault
landing, it was a black bag operation. Gus was
getting sick and he wasn’t up to the long seavee
duty. Fundamentally he was a devoted family man.
The spy stuff kept him psyched up, but he wasn’t a
spook or a trained killer.
“He must have been a genius,” I added.
“What gives you that idea?”
“Well you might think this computer stuff made
him a genius, but hell anybody can work a computer
nowadays. No, I think his real genius lies in that
trap door. I nearly broke my neck. I pointed back
through the room to the ladder and the hole in the
ceiling, which was actually the floor. “In Gus’
parlance that would be the overhead, the door was a
hatch.”
“What do you mean?” Anna asked.
“It’s a nautical term, look you can see the fake
hatch wheel hanging there. Gus was a joker for
sure.”
“Yes, but what makes him a genius?”
“Oh, don’t you see, the door was setup as the
floor of the shower stall. Anybody searching the
house would open the shower door, take note that it
was a shower, then quit looking. A really curious
searcher may go so far as to reach in to see if the
water was piped in, which it was when the Feds
searched the place. Some wise guy might check the
soap dish to see if it was a trigger mechanism, but
nobody, was stupid enough to step into the shower
fully clothed, shut the door and then turn on both
taps, no, Gus was a clever cat, no doubt.”
I knew this wouldn’t satisfy her, “Why would it
be necessary to go in and shut the door?”
“I realize it isn’t obvious, but the door is hooked
to an electronic latch. The hatch cover is spring
loaded and wired to an analog strain gauge. A load
of a specific range must exert a specific downward
pressure on the mercury toggle in order to send the
release signal to that big solenoid bolt.”
“What about the water?”
“When the bolt snapped in it turned off a
solenoid valve in the copper pipes. I doubt he ever
took a shower in there. “
“OK smarty pants, how did Gus keep from
falling after he tripped the switch?’
“That’s speculative, but I noticed a small eyelet
on the ceiling of the shower stall. He probably
attached it to the drain head, which, as you can see
is on a plastic flex pipe, and, standing outside,
pullied it down to the open position.”
“Very clever.”
“He probably kept the hatch open most of the
time and ran the lights from the main house power.”
“Well that explains the hatch, but what about
the taps?”
“Maybe he wore a rain coat?” We both chuckled
at the vision of Gus turning the knobs in the shower
dressed in a slicker and fisherman’s hat.
Anna panned the light around the room again. I
sat, cross legged, on the rough cement floor, the
torch tip image burned into my retinas.
Anna capitulated, “OK Gus qualifies as a
genius, but these books make him seem stupid.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well if he had been real smart he would have
hid ‘em better.”
“No, I don’t think so, he probably figured
anybody smart enough to trip the shower door and
nasty enough to take a crowbar and torch to these
locks would eventually find them.”
Anna placed the light in my hand and directed it
to the file cabinets. “What kind of books are they?”
I asked.
“Log books, detailed log books.”
We each took half of the books from the
cabinets and returned to the main room. I sat in a
very rickety glider chair. Anna looked at home in
the wingback. The room was never musty or dusty
because Gus had carefully designed passive air
filters disguised as risers to the roof. The place was
creepy, but not so frightening that we would run out
when we heard a little noise. We listened—no
noise, maybe a little wind, but no people sounds.
“What’s in yours?” I asked.
“Oh not much, a lot of swearing and profanity,
stuff about how they stole ice cream and steaks
from the officers mess.”
“Yeah same here. One guy complains that the
porno disks they sent out were the same as two
years ago.”
“Tough titty.”
Anna absorbed the dated entries, trying to get a
time track to Gus’ work. I scanned the text for key
words. Then the crash came, right there in book #7,
dated about twenty years earlier, Gus mentions
Excalibur. I almost shouted, “Hey Anna look here it
is, Excalibur, Excalibur…”
She was worried about my reaction, scolding
with her eyes like a traditional schoolteacher, “No
need to jump out of your shorts.”
“I’m not wearing shorts.”
“Oh yeah, tha’s right Duds for Dudes.”
“No, those wore out, I mean de nadda.”
“Oh me neither, what a coincidence, now what
is all the screaming about?”
“Gus, right here, he mentions Excalibur by
name. It was a project. He says Donnelly called it
‘The ultimate crime stopper,” but he ridicules it and
calls it a “Buck Rogers weapon.”
Anna doubted my interpretation, “That sounds
like a typical hard line military reaction.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean most military men are patriotic, but not
stupid. This scheme would sound preposterous to a
military man.”
“Why?”
“Because it isn’t patriotic, it robs the individual
of freedom.”
“Maybe Gus had second thoughts or maybe he
had an old fashioned idea of patriotism.”
That single page in log book # 7 solved all my
doubts and tripled my fears. Excalibur did exist, as
an idea at least, deep within the space and missile
complex and quite a long time ago. Now we had
evidence that at least two people knew about it and
thought it was sinister, or at least bizarre. Dolphin
worked at Rockhead for about five years. Gus
worked there about the same time, although it is
doubtful the two men ever met.
Anna prodded me, “Are you saying Excalibur
was built at Rockhead?”
“I answered easily, “Well it wasn’t built in a
barn. According to Gus, one of his crewmen saw it
being built right there in the pink cube, alongside
highway 437x. Dumb Dolphin said the same thing.
So here we have two separate, unrelated, crazy
bastards, both babbling about the same paranoid
delusion, at least ten years before Excalibur zapped
the guy with the hot dogs during the seventh inning
stretch.”
“We’re beginning to shed light on the Excalibur
mystery, but I feel like our bulbs are about as dim as
Gus’s emergency lights,” Anna coughed and looked
around the room again, as if she were searching for
a fresco with the entire story in hieroglyphics.
“Hey take it easy, We’re OK.” I gripped her
gloved hand like I did in the desert on our first big
date. The trembles ceased, her brain power came
back, the threat of tragedy left the room. I pulled her
Hermes scarf, the Scythian pattern, from my overall
bib and placed it around her neck. The silk had a
soothing effect.
“Do you think they botched the job on
purpose?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“If the thing was built at Rockhead it probably
wouldn’t have malfunctioned. Rockhead prided
itself on quality assurance.”
“Makes ya’ wonder if the same agencies
weren’t behind many botched jobs,” Anna mused.
“Nah, even they couldn’t be that incompetent,
un un unless…” I stammered.
“Unless what?”
“Unless the botched job was part of the
scenario, like the Boston Tea Party, a botched job
that was, according to one author, nothing more
than an adjourned meeting of the Boston Odd
Fellows Lodge.” We both lapsed into silence after
that one.
Anna found another connection in Gus’ log
books. He was pissed off at Sumana Corporation
and Rockhead for merging when they said they had
no money to pay off his crew. He thought it odd, for
example, that Sumana would quietly buy up all
outstanding shares of Muzix Corporation of
Minneapolis and at least most of the stock in
Bixbee-Seers Corporation, an engineering firm in
Saint Paul and still not be able to pay his boys.
“Now there’s a connection.” I chimed in.
“I don’t think he saw the connection, but the
conspiracy was right there in front of him all the
time.”
“Yeah, like at Newgrange the secret is hidden in
plain view.”
“Here we go again you pismire, please don’t
free associate aloud, it’s really embarrassing.”
I was contrite, “OK, OK but, I’ll bet he got real
tickedoff when he discovered the hazardous duty
pay he was supposed to collect wasn’t coming.
Patriotism is one thing, but wampum is important
too.”
Anna made the next logical deduction, “Of
course, the money he didn’t get probably went into
building this Excalibur thingee.”
“Yeah, Sumana owned Muzix, so Dolphin
wasn’t completely wrong. His raid on Musix did
find an abandoned computer setup within a Masonic
temple.”
“Is this coincidence or is it Memorex?”
The mood was giddy, we felt like two kids in
tree fort. I remained giddy, but Anna was growing
serious, moody, but serious. I said, “Granted he was
tilting at windmills, but at least he was aiming at the
right target.”
Anna had her analytical cap on now, “Well
maybe the Glowmore crew was hired to rescue the
Excalibur project. Maybe the thing they picked up
in the ocean was a failed Excalibur or a prototype.”
I was with her now, “OK so what you’re saying
is that Sumana Corporation was both the customer
and the supplier, maybe for both projects and that
nobody on the Glowmore knew much about the
Excalibur and viceversa, except it was some
mission they had to go on and they would get paid
hazardous duty pay for it.”
“Right they were getting rich having one
division sell government approved widgets to its
own sister companies, but they ran out of money
and Gus got pissedoff.”
I saw humor in this. “Why not? That’s exactly
what the Japanese do, except they always pay their
workers.” We read in silence.
“Yeah, kind of difficult to disarm when you
don’t know where all the arms are.” I agreed.
“Well Gus’ log says Glowmore also tracked
shipping.”
“You mean like a bottom up satellite?” I asked.
“Yeah, says here they called it operation Frogs
Eye.”
The lights flickered slightly, daylight must have
dropped off outside. I read aloud from Log #29.
“According to this an extraterrestrial craft
crashed, burned and sunk somewhere near a deep
Pacific trench. This was the most important treasure
to ever sink in any ocean according to Gus.”
Her eyes gleamed as if she was about to attack
somebody. I quickly added, “Yep, and it was all
financed with public money—laundered through
Maynard’s magic casinos in Vegas.”
“I’m not sure where they got the money but it
proves that a complex thing like a deathray could be
built, and deployed and recovered, covertly,” I
added.
“Yes, very odd.” Anna giggled as she spoke.
Can’t you just picture this tow truck made of pure
bullion setting off to sea, all polished and scrubbed,
its crew convinced they were Ulysses and the
Argonauts sailing out for another Homeric
adventure, when actually the whole thing was one
of Donnelly’s neurotic fugue states as fantastic as
The Owl and the Pussy Cat.” We both laughed at
the simile.
The lights dimmed again. I took this opportunity
to remind her that we had better be going before our
own ‘peagreen boat’ sunk. The same dry wind that
ushered us into the valley whistled against the house
upstairs. A roof tile flapped in harmony with each
gust. Anna stuffed a dozen or so log books into four
ditty bags found under one of the chairs, “This’ll
have to do.” She mimicked a pirate as she hefted
one of the bags, “So, they set to sea in comical
fashion did they?”
“Indeed they did.” I said. Don’t you remember?
It was on every optivision news broadcast. Twenty
years ago.
“Oh yeah. I see the connection now. The first
time they eased out of the harbor in San Francisco
they got stuck in a tide flux under the Golden Gate
Bridge.”
“That right. The croissant and coffee dweebs on
Snob Hill and the Canasta players at the St. Frances
Yacht Club laughed their asses off, but they had no
idea this Gyro Gearloose thingee—clearly the
oddest vessel to pass through the Golden Gate since
The Golden Hinde—was on its way to snag a killer
satellite. The reporters said it was on its way to pick
up a pod of Martians which, if successful might put
us in touch with the mother ship, or start world war
nine.”
Once we closed the hatch we couldn’t be heard
or detected, but why be careless? Somebody may
get suspicious of the Mercedes parked, as it was,
out in the orchard. After all, this trip started out as a
picnic.
We hugged each other tight as we contemplated
climbing out of the basement. “What strange vortex
have I sucked you into baby?”
Anna smiled and said, “What are we into
Canyon?’
“Don’t ask me, you’re the scientist?”
In truth neither of us could answer. An open
ocean of possibilities stretched out before us. If you
keep a cool head you navigate a straight course. If
you blink twice you’ve missed the pole star. We
decided to rollup the pictures and take them with us.
Everything could help. The log books described
Excalibur in vague terms, the pictures proved that
the satellite could have been launched and retrieved
from a floating platform.
We were now staring into the flaming eyes of
two of the world’s most guarded secrets and we
both knew we were alone. I held up the last log
book as a trophy before I put it into the sack.
“Obviously this is what the doofus who dropped the
coffee cup in the garage was looking for,” I said in a
trembling voice.
“Yeah.” Anna gave me the high sign, “Let’s get
outta here.”
We had one final surprise as we left the place.
Anna went up the ladder first. I tried to catch a
rounded glimpse of her butter ball butt, but she
moved too fast for me. We were giddy as two kids
in a tree house. I tried to locate a button or a
ropepull to close the heavy hatch, but nothing came
to hand. I soon found out why. Once my weight
lifted off the bottom rung of the ladder the damned
trap door hissed and began to shut itself
automatically.
“Wowa.” I exclaimed.
I caught it with the flashlight and gently eased it
open again, but my heart was pounding so fast I
could hear it. This solved the final mystery. “The
damned thing resets itself! Gus really was a
genius.” I mumbled to myself.
“What?” Anna’s voice echoed from the garage.
I answered her laughing. “Gus, joker to the end,
rigged up a hydraulic system. Hmmmm man that
was close.”
“What happened?” Anna called again, this time
standing in the open shower door looking down into
the gangway.
“Gus was a trickster to the last.” I shouted.
“When the same weight that went down the ladder
came back up everything would be okay— the
hatch would shut itself. But if the weight tally
varied more than say fifty pounds...” I took a look at
the 50 psi pressure valve controlling the latch. “Yup
fifty pounds and the hatch would close up and lock,
the shower door would jam...”
“That’s just peachy.” Anna was now urging me
to rise from my squatting position and ascend the
ladder.
“Hell I don’t know... by the looks of this gas
cylinder something really ugly might be filling our
lungs right now.”
“Anna laughed nervously and again beckoned
me up the ladder. “Come on sloblo you’ll be late for
your own funeral.”
The hiss of the hydraulics under the hatch cover
fell silent as the closing mechanism depressed the
oring seals around the edge. “Pretty damned clever
for an old sea dog.” I exclaimed as I shut the
bathroom door and flashed the 5 cell around. “We
were lucky the net weight of the stuff we took out
of the basement came in under fifty odd pounds.”
“Yes.” Anna agreed, “But its pure political
dynamite.”
Our anxious hour in Gus’ den seemed closer to
eight. The last erg from the rechargeable torch
threw just enough candle power to help us find our
way out the side door, through a patch of poisonous
Oleander blooms and into a crown of Bougainvillea
thorns. Once the light fizzled we were on our own.
We tripped and stumbled in the dark, ditty bags full
of precious tapes and log books under both arms.
The sidewalk offered us some direction. Easy going
now. No passing cars and no signs of life. A crisp
Autumn wind creaked the oak boughs as we broke
sod across the field. The moon was thin. A sliver of
a thing, like a golden thumbnail just floating up
there, and yet it shed enough light to silhouette the
Mercedes. As soon as we caught sight of the big
silver sled I whispered, “Ooops looks like we
missed the sunset at Big Basin.”
“Hey daddy this stuff is more important than
watching mauve fade to chartreuse.” Anna snapped
back, “This evidence could be very explosive.”
“Well yeah, it’s probably radioactive.”
“Brrrr” Anna shivered.
I passed one of the old Geiger counters over the
tools and stash bags. “Nope, but some of this stuff
may be poison to the Navy. Let’s hope it don’t blow
up before we get it home.”
On The Fleaway
Anna’s face looked a bit ghostly in the dash
light glow. “Yup, we humans are not as evolved as
some people think. Anything could upset the
balance. We know Excalibur is not extra terrestrial,
but if we said it was from Venus people might
believe us.”
We set the book bags into the back seat and took
a breather in the front. A momentary vacuum
formed as the gull wings closed tight around us.
“OK, but I have another question.”
“What?”
“Did Donnelly ever get the Shroud of Turin?’
“Hell, who knows, he may have had a substitute
made then had them switched. The guy was capable
of anything.”
As I fumbled with the combination lock on the
ignition Anna said, “Let’s just cruise around. I want
to finish telling you about Sally. Besides you ain’t
heard nothin’ yet!”
“I’d like to hear some music if you don’t mind.”
I mumbled.
Anna punched me hard on the shoulder, “Get on
with it man, get on with it.”
I pulled out of the dust and slowly wormed the
Mercedes over toward Alameda de las Pulgas, the
Road of the Fleas. The map guide plotted the course
to eventually intersect with the old 280 freeway
bypass. She talked I listened. The Pines of Rome
played faintly over the media module.
Anna was familiar with the Glowmore project
from her security clearance at DRI, but her
information was sketchy. Gus’ logs filled in the
sketch. The LEDs from the instrument panel
beamed against the walnut dash, the clock ticked
silently as it always did, still analog after all these
digital years. From the western horizon beyond the
Santa Cruz mountains we could see a tip of the last
eerie quarter moon. Anna had my undivided
attention as she began her tale anew, “OK, here
goes. Now hang on to your shirt Collins ‘cause this
is gonna be a doozy.”
I grabbed my shirt in compliance. “The cover
stories were just stories, complex archipelagoes
made up of fibs and lies and old sea tales. The
papers reported the Glowmore, a modified cruisair
class Falcon hydrofoil, was on its way to pick up
magnesium globules, but it only ever obtained
magnesium globules as a secondary result. The
Glowmore was unbelievable and grandiose—just
for show really.
“What do you mean grandiose”?
“According to Sally, the first level cover story
painted Glowmore in a benign frame. It was
supposed to be looking for globules on the sea
bottom, but it was really planting microwave
sensors in stationary locations all over the globe to
track all surface and submarine activities.
Ostensibly this information would be available to
any member of the United Nations, but in reality it
was vigorously guarded, and sold to the highest
bidder.”
The second level story, is that the multipurpose
vessel could be rigged and outfitted in a variety of
configurations allowing maximum use of the really
sophisticated electronics. We can cut through this
gibberish by calling the thing a floating test bed,
because everybody and his left handed brother
wanted in on the action—cash in hand.
The Glowmore was also capable of planting
stationary and cruise torpedo tubes. These could be
used to inhibit, intimidate or even kill shipping and
were, to say the least, stamped Top Secret. This
plan stayed in force long after the famed
disarmament movement at the turn of the
millennium, you know the one which forced eastern
European fascists to give up their nuclear
weapons?”
I nodded in amazement. “Yeah, looks like they
have even more awesome weapons now. So that’s
where you think this thing ties into Excalibur?”
“Not only in Iraq and Beloruss, but in a kind of
global fascist network,” Anna replied. “Excalibur
has all the earmarks of one of these holy crusades.
The liberal congress voted down the antiballistic
missile project, the starwars initiative, you know the
ABM trip, way back in the 1970s, the coldwar
ended. At that point a lot of people got real upset,
because their cold war power balloon slowly
imploded around their ears.
“No, I don’t recall, my father might have
mentioned it when I was a kid.”
“Right well about that time a super secret group
was formed within and without the various
governments to go ahead with planes and boats and
weapons systems in spite of what Congress put in
the budget, or what the United Nations decided.
This included stealth technology, left over Star
Wars systems, Shinning Pebbles, Project
Timberwind (the nuclear power plant in space)
Dark Star; rail guns—and hundreds of other
military expenditures. They called it the “Continuity
Plan.”
“You mean in spite of the United Nations’ suit
for total disarmament?” I asked.
“Oh yeah, these guys saw a threat coming from
everybody, disarmament was the biggest fear of
all.”
“You mean there was an army within an army?”
“Exactly. We might even say that internal army
still exists.” She spoke clearly. “This plan,
according to Sally, and believe me, I’ve seen parts
of it in my own work, was designed to assure world
dominance by a small group of whackos from the
Pentagram and the Kremlin and the hallowed halls
of torture chambers underneath soccer stadiums all
over South America. These guys (and I’m ashamed
to say not a few women) weren’t afraid of each
other anymore, they were afraid of the public, the
people, the voice of democracy, but not each other.”
“So this meant they had to control everything
under the sea, in the air and, eventually, in space. Is
that what we’re looking at here?”
The old Spanish road straightened as we turned
away from Saragatos.
Anna nodded, catching her breath, “Of course,
but most of all they had to control public opinion
and public reactions to any potential leaks. Werner
von Braun warned about elitist control of
technology as far back as 1938 for Gods sake.
People forget this, but this particular internal army
is full of paranoiacs.”
“Hey I know what you mean, I’m a shrink
remember,”
“I know, but these paranoiacs were organizing.”
“Is that odd?”
“Sure it’s odd, paranoiacs are almost always
lone wolves.”
“You mean Dire Wolves, don’t you?”
“Suit yourself… smile and shoot, that’s their
motto. They planted sensors on the dark side of the
moon so they could spy on anybody who might set
up a station over there. Nothing is too big for them.
Obviously they launched a lot of this technology
way before it was ready and it fizzled, but some of
it must have worked.”
“You mean a kind of technical shotgun
approach to world dominance—unless we can
assume Excalibur is a dud gone mad.”
Anna looked me right in the eyes and said, “I
hope it is, but I doubt it. You and I both have a gut
feeling that old man doomsday is tracing a pattern.
There are way too many strategic hits to call this
thing random.”
“Hey that’s right. Dolphin said something about
that in one of his letters to Charlotte Russ. He
singled out one week in 1993, he researched it
pretty heavily, and apparently two major space craft
went missing in a weeks time, one was a big time
Mars probe that just didn’t answer back. I mean it
just died and, as they say, went black.”
“It could have just been beyond the pale. Maybe
NASA didn’t want us to know or maybe the first
version of Excalibur was already up there tossing
darts.”
We both sat back and tried to remember the
number of rockets that went AWOL between 1992
and 2030. In about two heartbeats we murmured in
unison, “Do you think NASA was in on it?”
Rendezvous at Rockhead
Anna gnawed on the last crescént like a starving
soldier as I pointed the argent Mercedes north, back
toward the Jerry Brown Memorial Freeway. This
weed obstructed cement slab was once the most
beautiful eight lane roadbeds in the world, but as we
left Saragatos it wasn’t any of those things. I spoke
above the scruffy sounds of Tumble and Fall by
John Bett’s and the Blues Wizards. “Let me recap a
bit… you’re saying this guy Gus, Sally’s husband,
was on the Glowmore project from the beginning…
let’s say 2029 or so?”
“Not exactly, he wasn’t in on the planning
stages, mainly because the project has been on the
drawing boards since the 1970s, but as soon as they
needed a patriotic crew, Gus came into play.”
I saw an image of the three monkeys, “Oh you
mean, See Evil— Hear Evil, and Do Evil?”
“Anna laughed, “Yes, but loyal. Gus’ crews
were known for their ferocious loyalty, to him and
the mission.”
I felt comfortable for the first time since I
parked the car in the orchard. The landscape shifted
from flat to rolling hills and we were leaving the
weird zone. “So Gus was the ramrod.”
“He was the only NCO with a need to know,
let’s put it that way.” Anna squished into the shiatsu
contour seat and just gazed over at me as I drove.
“Who knows how much planning went into it, the
idea gained momentum when it became obvious
that a satellite could be launched by private parties,
probably around 1997.”
I thought of Jefferson’s Federalist Papers.
“Perfect for corporate expansion into normally
Federalized activities.” I exclaimed.
“And NASA wanted to shift the responsibilty.”
“Gus kept the secret at first, but later events
forced him to tell Sally.”
“What events, may I ask?” I could feel her
watching me as she spoke, creepy what a woman
can do with her eyes.
“I’m getting to that,” Anna squirmed as the seat
temperature adjusted itself. “You see the Glowmore
budget, like many other covert projects, was a
classic double think arrangement.”
A huge derrick truck almost pushed us off the
road as it passed, but the car did all the work.
“Congress apportioned money for Glowmore,
but razzledazzle bookkeeping and cost overruns
financed the deep black part—the overruns got
diverted to the covert side... do you follow this so
far?”
“Oh yeah, babe, I follow, “It’s way rad.” I
quoted a faded graffiti painted by punk
skateboarders in the last century as we drove under
a bridge. “Rockhead called it the overcost.”
Anna’s explanation was taking on the
proportions of a Paul Bunyon yarn, “Uhunh, but this
setup was based on cost overruns on a papier mache
product, you know, a bogus weapon that looked
expensive on the surface, but didn’t even exist.”
“Ah yes, some of the seminar people called it
high flimflam.”
“Oh flimflam to be sure,” Anna agreed, “but
proportioned along the line of the old 8020 rule.”
“What’s that? I asked.
“You know 8020. It’s a standard proportioning
measure used by engineers, 20% went to producing
the bogus toy and 80% got funneled off to
Glowmore.”
One Bad Stud, by the Blasters blasted through
the sound system immediately following an
obnoxious blurb for a male depilatory cream. I
could hardly hear Anna when she said, “I always
figured most military inefficiency served some
higher purpose.”
“Oh, sure, controlled stupidity, the money is
always used for something else at Rockhead.” I
stated my point with as much enthusiasm as
possible.
“Exactly,” Anna’s energized fingers flailed the
air as she spoke, “…and that ultra secret 80% went
almost directly to the financing of Excalibur and
other black bag jobs.”
I realized she was right, “They needed a front, a
public entity big enough, and plausible enough, to
cover their tracks and of course what better place to
park credit notes than in a corporation, a
corporation with a bevy of casinos at their
disposal.”
Anna touched my hand, “Take those gloves off
pal, your hands need some air.” I complied. The car
could do well over 180 kilometers per hour, but the
road wouldn’t allow anything like that speed. We’d
be lucky if we hit fifty along the sainted road of the
fleas.
“People like Donnelly and a dozen other
billionaire patriots acted as ideal money laundries.”
She seemed to be figuring things out as she spoke.
I agreed. “Why hell, we might even assume
some of those billionaires were allowed to stay rich,
for just such a purpose, what if one of ‘em ran for
ppppresident?” I stuttered.
Anna softly touched the back of my hand, “Hey
Canyon, don’t get panicky we haven’t got all the
pieces yet, I need you on this, OK?” Anna leaned
over to my side and whispered as if somebody was
listening, “Besides what makes you think they
haven’t put somebody up for President?”
“You mean it went that far?”
“President DeSoto made George Shrubbery
head of the Central Bureau didn’t he?”
“Very funny, Uncle Dean called him Rubbery
Shrubbery.”
“Hey, you can laugh all you want, but he went
on to become president.” Anna warned.
“He was in power just long enough to sweep all
the really bad crap under the carpet,” I added. “His
presidency was a dismal failure and he ruined the
careers of almost everyone on his staff… maybe
they realized the presidency thing wouldn’t work so
they figured out this Excalibur scenario.”
“Maybe,” Anna frowned, “but Excalibur was in
place a long time before President Shrubbery, the
technology wasn’t advanced enough until about
2030, I think we can be fairly certain of that date.”
I could feel my blood pressure going up. “Look,
you know these jerks,” I had to let out some steam,
“We’ve both worked in their factory. The last time I
felt beads of sweat that big I was cooking up chili
verde at Pepe’s Nouveau Aztec Imperiale and Dim
Sum Palace. “Admittedly, fragments of the Central
Bureau still exist, but a project like Glowmore
didn’t have to turn very far to look for patriotic
sailors—for Gus it had romance, adventure and
machopatriotism stamped all over it.”
“Yeah, well Sally said they used him as a grunt
as much as the rest of the crew when they set to sea,
I think that pissed him off.” Anna was careful not to
romanticize the project.
“So who built it?” I asked, bluntly.
“Sally said Gus didn’t know for sure; she thinks
they hired experts at high salaries and promised
them major bonus money, but the actual work was a
nobrainer. Moneywell built the hydraulics,
RacOVik built the cruise radar and the satellite
uplink, hell, the whole military supply world was
into it at some level.”
“How could a small group do this?” I could feel
the sweat running down my face as I asked that
question.
“When I say these projects were controlled by a
small group of people, I mean relatively small. I’m
sure the roster numbered in the thousands, but it
was all done on a need to know basis—Peter didn’t
know what Paul was doing.”
“Yeah, at Rockhead, even the guy who hands
out the need to know badges doesn’t need to know.”
We both chuckled nervously, “Are you saying that a
small group of overzealous Generals in Kiev and
Washington held the power to control the destiny of
the human race?”
“Not ‘control,’ just the ability to mess it up
completely and we don’t know exactly who they
were…”
“Or are,” I added.
“Yes well, we don’t know exactly what
infrastructure they’re using, we don’t know the
name of their organization.” Anna pleaded.
A bright light went off in my head, “How about,
“The Cold Warriors?”
“Who are they?” Anna asked. Now it was her
turn to shiver a little.
“That’s a group Dolphin mentioned.”
“Hmmm could be.” Anna held up one of the
ditty bags, “These log books are going to confirm
Sally’s paranoia, until now I took her on faith, but
these are tangible artifacts.”
“Obviously she wasn’t paranoid,” I corrected.
“She was just plain scared out of her wits.” I
energized the slow speed electric engine and
switched off the petrol as Anna shuffled Gus’ log
books into chronological order, “Hmmm that’s
odd.”
The library light in the TBar adjusted itself to
the engine changeover as we slowed to a horse trot
pace. “What’s odd?”
“The log books are out of sequence, #21 comes
before #7 in chronological order for some strange
reason, and there are other discrepancies.” She read
a few excerpts.
Log books are rarely narrative and yet a
grammatical picture began to emerge. As Anna read
aloud we could see the Glowmore crew setting out
on an almost paranormal quest. “Hmmm, Gus say’s
Donnelly himself had final veto on the crew roster.”
“That fits the bastard perfectly, he micro
managed everything.”
“Gus says that he managed to find seasoned
sailors who were also intelligent enough to work the
hitek stuff.” Anna rotated Log Book #12.”
“What are you looking at?” I asked.
“Gus’ handwriting was real weird… rugged and
bright, Sally said he was like a leather purse filled
with jewels and rocks.”
I headed the stately dreadnought slowly onto the
old 280 road bed. “The fire hazard is always high in
August. You can’t chance using a petroleum based
engine through this stretch.” I pointed to the patches
of dry rye grass and gorse mixed with bamboo that
clogged the fast lane as we crawled northward.
Anna continued reading from the logs, “No
women on board either, sounds like a pack of wild
mercenaries to me.” Anna made a soft hurumph
sound as she spoke.
I nodded in agreement as I switched from wheel
to joy stick mode.
The old freeway rolled on straight and lightly
trafficked. A rare set of yellowish rotorcycle lights
came south this time of day. “Seeing that rotorcycle
reminds me…”
“Of what?” Anna focused most of her attention
on the logs.
“We haven’t been out on the Hardly Jefferson
lately.”
“No,” Anna replied, “we’ll have to mount up
soon eh?”
“But next time let’s go out to Big Basin, what
do you say?”
“OK, you’re the boss.” I detected a facetious
tone in her voice.
The slow dry patch gradually ended around the
Magdellena ramp into old Lost Altos. I switched
over to the turbo diesel Wankel as we dove back
into civilization. “Why haven’t you told me about
Gus until now?” I asked.
“Well, would you have believed me?” She
asked in return.
“Heck no, Gus and Excalibur, Dolphin and
Excalibur… it would have been an oceanic
coincidence.”
Anna laughed gleefully, “Yes, Canyon, but I
think Carl Jung explained it when he coined the
term ‘Synchronicity.’ If you think about it you’ll
see a whole bunch of weird synchronous events
beginning from the moment we met.”
I paused before I added, “Hey why stop now? I
suspect there’ll be a whole lot more of this here
synchronicity stuff as time ticks on.”
I felt it was necessary to recap as I was losing
track of the thread, “So you’re saying this elite
group of nut cases, which Dolphin called The Cold
Warriors, decided to take the destiny of the world
into their own hands and develop an entire covert
technology, with nuclear weapons sealed in tubes
and planted into undersea ridges and satellites
shooting at individuals or whole villages?”
“Right, but that’s not all. This was the seagoing
version. Another group had a fleet of elephantine
passenger jets rigged for deployment and lightening
troop transport. Can you see a sky full of GrYfonn,
French Kiss, UALA and Transglobal 777’s on a
bombing run?”
“Yes, actually I can. It’s not that far out.”
“They also had, or have, since there is no
evidence they were ever stopped, volunteer officers,
pilots, frogmen, deck gunners, oilers, cooks, pilots,
medics and corpsmen all poised to man and convert
civilian ships and planes.”
“Wait, are you saying these people were
preparing a civilian militia?” I asked.
“Not spontaneous minutemen like in 1776,” she
lowered her voice. “No these folks made up an elite
force linked to the Navy and Air Force.”
“Wow, turncoats!” Anna watched my face flush
red as I contemplated the treasonous acts these
people were capable of. “Holy Millennia!”
“Yeah wow…”
“… nah it can’t be true.”
“After three expeditions on the Glowmore, Gus
told Sally he thought Donnelly and his cohorts were
guilty of treason, not just espionage, but treason.”
“You mean they just gradually stepped over the
line?”
“Probably, Anna’s words came painfully. “Gus
felt Donnelly was as unstable as a helium balloon
on a windy day.”
“So you think he was being manipulated too?” I
asked.
“Oh, probably, one day Gus asked her, “How
many wars do you think we could run from the hold
of a single super tanker?”
“You mean he asked that question right out of
the blue, right there in the kitchen during tea and
biscuits?”
“Sure, she had no idea what he was talking
about at the time. Gus thought these guys were out
to tailor a parallel universe with the power to
selfdestruct and take civilization with it!”`
“You mean a scorched earth policy?”
“Yes, but it’s more like a scorched planet
policy. I gulped as I listened. These guys are like
spoiled boys on the playground who, when
confronted with losing, decide to stick a knife in the
ball.”
“Hey, I had a girl friend like that once, a
librarian. We used to play 3D Scrabble and
everything was fine as long as she was winning, but
when she knew she was losing she would stand up
and knock the board over.”
Anna smiled again saying, “Ahha, reminds me
of The Seventh Seal, the classic Ingmar Bergman
film recently rereleased on optidisc and colorized.”
“Saw it, boring, very tedious, the knight plays
chess with death, but when he senses he’s going to
lose he clears the board…”
“It doesn’t matter, death wins anyway.” Anna
scolded.
“Hey, I wasn’t always a dweeb ya know, I think
they should have left it in black and white.” I felt I
had to defend myself on occasion. “Gus saw
through the Excalibur plan didn’t he?”
“No, but he sensed something really screwy in
the wind.”
Anna’s eyes glistened as she spoke.Kids rode by
on electropeds on their way home for mock
macaroni and cheese followed by a big portion of
mock apple pie and cream substitute. Menalto
sighed a breathy groan as she continued to weave
the log books into Sally’s story. “Rockhead has
launched motorized hang gliders with machine guns
mounted under the passenger pods.”
“Sounds a bit exposed.” I said.
“Risky you mean?” Anna paused, “but I think it
was all part of the stealth battlefield plan… they
called these paragliders, Aquilla, (Latin for Eagle)
because they could land anywhere and could be
configured for drone or manned operation
depending upon the battle scenario.”
“Flying surfers, eh?”
“Stop kidding around,” Anna admonished.
“These weren’t ultralights or delta wings, but small
planes made of carbon graphite—pure stealth
technology, with a 500 mile range.”
“Oh, yeah I heard about that project when I
wrote the battlefield book.”
“Yes, but your book is theoretical, strategic.”
Anna looked out the window to see if the drug store
was still open. “This stuff is the nuts and bolts.”
“They thought they could use them on civilian
populations, right.”
“Right, they could be deployed in urban
environments, even domestic urban environments,
they called this a soft system or more covertly a
‘Fourth Theater’ weapon.”
“Now there’s a term I’ve never heard.”
“It means weapons for the fourth war world
war.”
I had to interrupt her again. “You know this is
more than fascinating, but how does it relate to us?
Does it link to this Excalibur thing or what? And
how does the Dolphin caper fit in?”
“I think there is a direct link, Anna grew calm
again. “I can sense how Dolphin and his crowd
must have felt. I think the covert militia launched
the first Excalibur before it was ready. I think they
did that a lot. Like they all had premature
ejaculation problems… you know ‘wham bam
thank you maaamm.”
“I haven’t heard you complaining lately.”
Anna combed deeper into the log books as we
pulled into a doggie driveby window to pick up a
favorite fish snack for Sluggo and Byte Mama.
Anna rambled on like a magpie in a nightingale
choir. To this melodious drone I ordered five tuna
burgers and two pieces of sushi plus a big bottle of
filtered rain water—dogs love rain water.
“Yes, and our dogs eat better than most people,
don’t forget thta.” Ann continued to speculate as I
paid cash for the order, “Gus says they
commandeered interchangeable modules from
defensive satellites and then linked them together to
get an offensive configuration.”
I hated to interrupt, but we were two miles from
the house and Anna was still working her brain.
“Why did these people continue with the arms build
up after disarmament?”
Anna’s answer came sharp, “Hey! It’s only an
opinion, I don’t know for sure. I guess when the big
economic collapse arrived, after disarmament, I
guess it was about forty years ago, a whole bunch of
these plans aborted all at once. I think they launched
the Excalibur project in the guise of a
mildmannered weather satellite and then deployed it
so we would think it’s the wrong orbit.”
“The only thing that saved us was their
bumbling.”
Anna seemed alarmed. “You talk as if it’s in the
past tense. Need I remind you the thing is still up
there.”
“I know, I know, but I’m not sure what its
ultimate mission is. Are you?”
“OK wise guy what’s it supposed to do?”
“Scare the shit out of everybody I guess?”
“Well it’s sure working.”
“The way I see it there’s two possible scenarios,
either it’s a mistake or it’s a bunch of madmen gone
madder… Gus felt it was the later.” She pointed to a
passage in Log #16. A slight rain began to fall. I
threw a black watch plaid blanket from the back
seat across Anna. She smiled at my sleight of
hand.”
“Maybe the original Glowmore expedition
coveredup one of those bad launches,” I said.
“One wonders how they hoped to get away with
it, the whole strategy seems suicidal no matter
which scenario you select.”
“Maybe they know how innocent democracy
can be.” Anna lapsed into a sullen mood, but we felt
the silence together and there was no need to speak.
We were almost home anyway. As we wound our
way into Menalto she mentioned the box of tapes. “I
guess I didn’t tell you about the tapes.”
“What tapes?”
“The tapes Gus left for Sally in case he didn’t
come back.”
“No, I guess you forgot that little detail.” I was
too tired to be furious.
“Well there are tapes.”
“You mean Sally’s tapes?” I asked.
“No these are specifically from Gus in Gus’
voice.”
“How many?”
“Six warped C110s, you know DATs of the
kind popular before optis came in. I think we still
have a DAT Paceman around the house don’t we,
the one the dogs chewed up; does it still work?”
“Yes, I think so, but we’ll have to plug it into a
wall socket… rechargeable piles are hard to find
these days.”
Sluggo in Solarite sunglasses met us at the door
at about 21:00. Byte Mama doesn’t bother to
rumple herself for the likes of us, she knows the
noise of the car about a mile away. Both dogs
inspected the ditty bags with their noses. Sluggo
wanted to pee on them, but I shooed him off. This
was not unusual; they treated everything we
dragged in the same way. Byte Mama passed the
bags with a snort and a final sniff. She could not
have known we were dragging Maynard
Donnelley’s dream world in with us, it was as if a
benign fantasy (ours) was meeting a malevolent
fantasy (his) in midair.
The warm shower only served to remind me of
the trap door at Gus’ house. We spoke softly as we
readied for a six hour shift in Posturpedia. This
would be a night for pillow talk, Sluggo removed
himself to his most comfortable woolly rug the
main reception hall.
“Lights out,” sez the skipper.
The Egyptian Jasmine bottle stood open—some
of Anna’s dirty work. “So when did you get the
tapes from Sally?” I didn’t want to touch her off.
Anna spoke cautiously in the moonlit room.
“About a year before I left for Vegas.”
“Why did she bring them to you?”
“I don’t know. I’ve often wondered myself. I
guess she trusted me. She thought I was the only
brainy woman she knew, that’s the why of it.”
The moon darkened in the window frame as a
few rain clouds drifted over, “She probably picked
you because she couldn’t make head nor tails out of
Gus’ secret life.”
“Maybe,” Anna rolled the pillows around and
turned on the laminar flow scrubbers.
“This junk is getting heavy,” I said. “I have the
box of Dolphin’s stuff, we have the tapes and now
we have Gus’ log books.”
“Things are reaching critical mass.”
“Have you reviewed the tapes?” I asked.
“Not in any detail. I’ve been so busy, but now
that we’re on the subject, I guess we should listen to
them together, compare notes and all.”
Another moonglow filled the room as the clouds
cleared above the house. “According to Sally the
tapes relate to a period around the time Excalibur
went up, that’s when the Glowmore crew reached
its most depressed state.” She disentangled her long
hair with an antique horse hair brush. “I haven’t
mentioned the tapes before because I didn’t want to
get you all worked up.”
“Maybe that’s why we get along so well.”
Anna reached into her bedside drawer and
pulled out a long piece of stiff paper, “Here’s a new
bumper sticker for you.”
The bumper sticker read:
Fear Not the Improbable.
I reached across to turn out the light emitting
halo, copping a well placed feel as I rolled back
across.
In return she reached over and gave me one of
those estrogen hugs. “I’m glad we met, Smooooch.”
“Hey me too.”
“Smooch ‘yr face back.”
Anna wasn’t normally bold, but as we
approached three in the morning she spit it right out,
“Ya wanna fuck?”
We both knew we were married that night. It
was like the feeling elderly people must get after
being married fifty years. I wanted to play Sally’s
tapes right then and there, but our sex life couldn’t
wait. I mean what’s the destiny of the entire planet
compared to a good old “snot swap” or what Anna
called a “coequal biological function.” We laughed
so hard we could hardly get it on, but the laughter
soon melted into sweat and muffled animal noises.
Probity required that we keep the animal sounds to
a minimum as it confuses the dogs who normally
took up their nocturnal positions on the enclosed
Victorian porch which we euphemistically dubbed
“Carmen’s Verandah.”
We slept solid that night.
Gus on Tape
Anna rearranged her day so that we could spend
Monday morning listening to the tapes. According
to Sally’s whisky parched voice, Gus joined the
Glowmore crew because he was the best Navy
guidance computer man available and because his
patriotism was beyond reproach. As a young ensign
he distinguished himself running the radar for
Operation Rainbow, the project that loaded troops
in Guatemala for the aborted Bay of Pigs invasion.
Gus was born in 1945 and lived until 2035,
almost a century.
He died of overexposure to some radioactive
source, but he never told Sally exactly what. To the
day he died he hung old glory (with all 56 stars) on
Flag Day, Arbor Day, Veterans Day and Memorial
Day, War Day, Labor Day and especially on the
Fourth of July. He was never gonna snitch on
Maynard and the boys no matter what, but he had
his reservations and Sally blabbed it all over
creation. The story was way over the heads of the
ladies auxiliary and nobody, until Anna came along,
believed her. Gus’ tapes were technical and detailed
Sally’s were gossipy, but between the two we got
the picture.
For all of those years Sally kept Gus’ terrifying
secret bottled up. She taught school, raised her kids
and tried to live a typical Saragatos existence.
Except one day something snapped there in the
Apricot orchard. Maybe it was Gus’ prostate
operation or Sally’s affairs on the side, but one fine
day Sally turned nudist and Gus shipped out for one
last cruise, even though his heart was about as
stable as a cherry bomb in a match factory.
Anna and I listened to the old tapes together
because the magnetic signature on some of them
probably wouldn’t survive two sessions. We tried to
record from the small speaker, but the opti couldn’t
clean up the scratchiness. On two occasions we had
to recharge the Cgel batteries after freezing them for
an hour. We took turns shuttling the frozen batteries
back and forth to the kitchen as we took notes and
nodded through each half hour selection.
We needed a break after tape three. Anna said,
“Congress was looking for piracy on the high seas,
but the whole thing had to do with launching or
retrieving an unauthorized satellite.”
I agreed, “Public attention was focused on ocean
exploration, but the real project was an attempt at
world conquest.”
“That’s what the newspapers were calling The
Star Wars Initiative about sixtyfive years ago.”
Anna added.
She stood by the wood frame window and ran
her fingers over the smooth paint, “Hmmm, real
wood and real paint in this age of molded
plastic—what a marvel.” Anna began to tremble as
she peered through the old leaded glass. A gaggle of
school girls sauntered past the Germanium bush as
she spoke. “The cold war was over sixty years ago,
but the cold warriors weren’t done yet.” She turned
to face me with a smile as her eyes lit up,
“Americans were eating caviar like czars and
drinking vodka as if we invented it. For their part,
the Russians were getting heart attacks and colitis
from our franchised cholesterol burgers.”
“There’s that Hamburger Zen again.” I
mumbled.
“What, what did you just mumble?”
“Oh nothing, please go on.” I said. “Whoever
launched Excalibur didn’t like the idea that
American citizens were hanging out with Russian
citizens; afraid we might compare notes and get our
cows over the same bucket.”
As I listened to Anna’s interpretation of Gus and
Sally’s tapes I thought maybe Dolphin’s
hallucinatory world wasn’t quite so mad after all.
He stumbled onto something big, nobody believed
him, (not that he could tell anybody about it
anyway) so his mind imploded or cracked or
whatever minds do in situations of extreme social
deprivation.
Anna continued with her speculations as she bit
into a huge snow peach quick preserved from our
neighbors tree last September. “The American
military machine must have grown renegade. So
undemocratic, so remote from public scrutiny, that
nobody could stop them. I paused to think this
through again. “I guess they weren’t Nazi’s or even
neoNazi, as my dad and Uncle Dean and the old
bohemians thought.”
Anna nodded her head and turned back toward
the window, adjusting the silk tapestry as she
turned. “I think that’s a good description.”
I added, I guess they were benevolent tyrants,
like the medieval earls of Normandy, controlled by
a handful of unelected gray beards who came to
power because their fathers and grandfathers owned
big munitions and computer companies.”
“Precisely.” Anna agreed with my description,
“They represent a secret army, a Pax Romana
without the Pax.”
Her image sent my neck into spasms. I finally
saw the picture she was trying to construct, “Of
course, these crazy fuckers didn’t want us
integrating with the Russians because the old
Soviets were staunch antifascists, at least by
Marxist standards, while us Yanks are still naive
about authoritarians in our midst.” We were on the
same scary track now, “The men, and presumably
women, who put Excalibur into orbit must have
thought highly of Psionics and Eberhardt Seminars,
and those other nonscheduled theologies.” I added
this last comment as a reference to my old essay
Hitler’s Last Request that was, of course,
unpublishable, but which Anna, supportive as
always, found very Swiftian.
She shook her head in disbelief saying,
“Somewhere along the way, maybe back in the
1970s, we must have fallen prey to a cabal of
screwedup brown shirts.”
I agreed, “The entire military sphere felt they
knew better than the rest of us and set themselves
up to run our lives.”
We cooked lunch together in relative silence,
but I could feel Anna’s sense of outrage, “They
managed to get themselves separated from the
people by social and legal barriers,” she said.
“Sally’s tapes proved that even honest technocrats
like Gus were growing weary of the bullshit.”
I remember taking the dogs for a very long walk
that day. The first scent of Spring floated in the air.
Sluggo knew something was up. The only real
handle we had on the situation was the stainless
belief that Excalibur was controlled by humans—no
spacemen need apply—so there had to be a human
glitch in it somewhere.
A cold chill came over me as I walked my brace
of bulldogs through Bill Clinton park. Apparently,
while I was running around Europe the first time,
Maynard Donnelly, stoned in his cell in the
penthouse of his casino in Vegas, was busy
reinventing the space wheel. He was under the
control of his Arabic Percodane (U4iA) suppliers,
but one librarian, whom he called out in the middle
of the night to read kids stories to him, said he
thought he was Leonardo Da Vinci. Fragments of
this story appeared in the ‘zines and on every
bulletin board.
Anna must have been reading my mind. When I
got home she poured me one of her Kiwi Silk
Kimono rum things with real Dyers 151 and sat me
down in the front room. “Have you heard the latest
rumor about Donnelly?”
“No.” I said incredulously, the guy’s been dead
for 35 years.”
“Well, maybe not. Some people think he’s still
alive.”
“Don’t count on it.” I said with a skeptical look
on my face.
Anna continued, “Here, let me play you this
tape, It seems to be in good shape.” She started tape
six on Sally’s list.
“I thought we agreed we’d play them together,
just in case they were brittle.”
“Well, I just thought this one looked real heavy,
and it is.”
“OK.” I condescended as I sipped on the ice
shavings in the kiwi fruit and rum snow cone.
“Donnelly believed that Leonardo painted the
shroud of Turin?” Anna seemed incandescent.
“You mean the famous linen cloth that was
supposedly a photographic likeness of Jesus of
Nazareth?”
“Yes, that’s the one.”
“What about it?”
“The shroud was proven to be a fourteenth
century hoax, but Donnelly wanted it because if
Leonardo painted it, he would have the only
Leonardo still in private hands.”
What’s that got to do with the Glowmore?”
“Not very much, but it goes to Donnelly’s state
of mind at the time. Anna was in a bouncy mood.
“According to Sally he was constantly interfering
with Gus and the crew; sending them bizarre orders,
changing schedules at the last minute.”
I oozed back in my chair as the Kiwi stuff
warmed my navel. “How do you know he was
interfering with Glowmore operations?” Anna
reached over and stroked my hand, which was still
smarting from the trapdoorintheshower ordeal.
“He always played silly buggers with his
operations staff,” she said.
“Yeah, the guys we did the motivational
seminars with at Rockhead called Donnelly a
micromanager, she paused to look at her
chronograph, “The Excalibur thing set him up
perfectly.”
“You mean if he helped to launch and retrieve
Excalibur, or whatever his role was, he could be a
big man again?” I asked.
“Yes, and he could be a big hero too.”
Anna produced a laminate taken from one of the
log books, “Here’s a picture of it, I’ll bet.”
“Yeah, that looks about right… a big barge with
a domed roof and a bulge in the middle. Anyway,
this bloody great yoke of a contraption was lowered
on cables until it could grip the target object like a
pair of forceps.”
“Thus the name,” I added.
“Right.” Anna giggled as she said the words, the
“Forceps.”
“I can visualize the whole scene now.” I agreed.
“There he is in his desert stronghold, drifting
through his traditional eight o’ clock opium dream,
so delusional he thought he would out Wilbur the
Wright Brothers and make Edison look like a
pimple on a gnat’s ass—Maynard the Magnificent
would now grace the planet with his FORCEPS.” I
guessed at the rest of the scenario. “It was supposed
to bring the satellite, or whatever, up with laser
cannon, and tracking codes intact, right?”
Anna nodded in agreement as she flipped on the
DAT tape. We listened in amazement.
On most of the tapes Sally nervously narrated
what she remembered from her conversations with
Gus. On a few Gus did the narrative, but his voice
did not prove he was in on the caper with Sally
because Sally might have simply dubbed some of
Gus’ notation tapes into her own, for authenticity.
Gus’ narratives were sober and boring, very
technical, Like listening to an engineer dictate
change orders on a project. Still, the combination of
the two voices gave us a clear picture of what was
going on twenty years earlier. There could be no
doubt somebody was trying to build a death ray or
retrieve one after a failure. They may also have
been attempting to retrieve a Russian version to
reverse engineer. In any case the Glowmore was not
originally designated by Congress for use as a death
ray support system. Obviously they needed a cover
task. In one version they were mining for
magnesium globules, in another they were looking
for a coldwar Russian sub. Yet an other story,
spread through a disinformation campaign, implied
they were looking for a downed flying saucer in the
Mindano Trench.
Gus’ more technical tapes revealed that the
barge containing the Forceps could be towed to and
from the main ship. As a contingency the barge
itself could be scuttled with no trace. Gus described
the Forceps as a crablike lighted device lowered
down on cables from a gigantic open sea pool,
which they named the Saturn Hole. This opening
was almost the size of a football field and could be
closed or opened by manipulating an iris door,
almost like a camera shutter.
Upon hearing that tape Anna shook her head in
dismay. “The whole operation seems really bizarre
to me, but the press fell for it.”
“Sure they did.” I said. “The press is more
gullible than the average citizen because they need
the work.” We both smirked as we planned our
revenge.
“I wonder where the barge is now?” Anna
asked.
I took a stab in the dark, “Well I’m not sure, but
it may still be floating on the salt flats over in
Sequoia City, just like that picture shows, and if
that’s it, if that’s the barge with the forceps inside,
then the thing is radioactive and a lot of the salt
manufactured out there is also radioactive.”
“Hmmm.” Anna mused and stretched her long
tresses over her fingers. “What do you mean?”
I mean…” I answered her with a sense of
exasperation, “…I mean that about twenty years ago
the barge was declared offlimits. I read a top secret
report when I was researching The Electronic
Battlefield. Nobody knew how the thing got hot, but
it is radioactive.”
“Yeah you know what else?” She tugged on her
longest strand of hair as she spoke.
“No. What?”
“Gus sold the tools he stole from the Glowmore
at Flea Markets in Saragatos, so anybody who
bought one of those tools may be suffering from
radiation poisoning.
“Now I know why they called it GlowMore, but
I doubt he knew they were radioactive.” I couldn’t
believe Gus would knowingly sell radioactive tools
to the public. “Maybe he didn’t know how hot they
were.” I quipped.
“You mean he didn’t know they were stolen?”
“No I’m sure he knew they were stolen.”
“So we shouldn’t do salt, is that what you’re
saying?” Anna challenged me with her typical
teasing grin.
“Hey man, you take your chances trusting
anybody with your food and if you buy tools at a
flea market you deserves what you get... We
shouldn’t do salt anyway.”
“Oh, Caveat Preemptory, she joked.” Anna
didn’t find any of this funny, Even so, she cracked a
slight smile as she recapped in pure Socratic style,
“OK, so here we have a sophisticated spy ship
outfitted with an incredible assortment of hitek
stuff, accompanied by a screwdriven remote
controlled forcepstool, hangared in a barge the size
of a factory, which may be responsible for half the
cancers in North America. Is that about it?”
“That’s about it.”
Both of us wondered what we had fallen into. I
swept the house with the old radiation counter just
to be sure—no major flareups, but the ulcer ratio
seemed higher than normal. Time to get back into
meditation and maybe drink some of Sally’s apricot
tonic, carrot syrup and bee pollen juice.
We listened to the remainder of the tapes over
the next week. Most of them were boring, but Gus’
hinted that a major fraud against several world
governments was under way.
I swept the house and phones lines—including
Anna’s workathome optic line—for signs of
electronic eavesdropping. I found nothing, but we
still worried. We only listened to the tapes through
earphones and we only discussed the tapes outdoors
when we took our strolls through the convent park
across the street.
Sadly Gus was dead and Sally didn’t know
much about the black bag ops except what Gus told
her. We spoke to her on the phone about it, but she
wasn’t happy to hear how we broke into her house.
We told her we would keep her posted and she
wished us luck. She gave us a drop address, so I
assumed she wanted to hide out. Obviously she was
sick of the Gus game.
Still we had an itch to scratch and the money to
pursue it, a deeply personal mystery that freaked us
out and gave us a demented purpose in life,
something above and beyond ourselves. Dolphin
was alive. Dolphin became our trophy boy. He was
probably on our side and we knew we were close
because everytime we turned around we ran into
Rockhead or Dolphin. Clearly something was
pointing the way to this guy. We decided to look for
him via the World Wide Web and several missing
persons bulletin boards.
Road Zen
In a space of three months, three different
sources emailed us that they had seen Dolphin in
France. Guy Truffaut, a friend of Mansoo’s from
Quebec City, saw him at Chartres, Charlotte Rousse
snail mailed from Minneapolis to tell us Dolphin
lived in the Dordogne, but most convincingly Jack
Robert’s called us from Cork and said that Axle
Tervik went to France to locate a guy named
Dolphin. Now normally simple coincidence would
explain most of this, but when you see the pieces of
the puzzle working themselves together with an
uncanny intelligence, you know you are on the right
track. It was almost as if Dolphin was showing
himself to people who knew us—like he had a list
of everybody we knew.
Truffaut described him as wearing black robes
with red and white piping as he traversed the maze
at Chartres. Truffaut even spoke to him, asking him
what the maze was called. Dolphin spoke softly,
“Le labyr ‘sappel tete de morte.” I translate this to
mean “Deadhead,” but in German it’s Totenkopf,
the Skull or Deathshead. All of this was very odd
indeed, but certainly worthy of contemplation.
We both agreed we would launch an expedition
to find Dolphin. The trip would not be as exciting as
a scamper up George Washington’s face, but it
promised to be slightly more romantic. I felt shivery
as we planned our expedition. We had no idea what
we would find in France, but by Halloween I was
sure the Hamburger Zen notebook, which I finally
showed to Anna, Gus’ logs, Sally’s tapes, the big
box from Helena Merkell, and other accumulations,
would eventually lead us to Dolphin, the assholes
who were harassing me, and the secret of Excalibur.
We counted our money one hot night in mid
June. About a halfmillion Euroclams sat in stacks
on the kitchen table—in cash. The money came
from Anna’s patents on the BJ software and Hal’s
race book. Hal managed to parlay my original Black
Jack winnings into some mighty big numbers. We
added it up, including the stock certificates, the
bonds, and the remaining bank cash credits and we
were pretty damned rich, even by post modern
standards.
Anna suggested we take a trip. I suggested we
go on an expedition to find Dolphin. I explained
everything I knew about Dolphin to her and she
agreed. Something strange and wonderful was about
to happen.
In late October, just before we bought our
tickets for France, Excalibur reportedly shot down a
plane full of Federalist doctors on their way to
Switzerland to discuss extensions to free medicine
in America. Strange as it may seem, almost every
major Federalized doctor who had a vote in
anything medical, was aboard that plane with their
spouses and families. Everybody died. Now here
was the first real case of Excalibur doing something
awful and not at random. I mean it was too political,
too pat. Excalibur was being used for hire, like an
assassin.
At breakfast on November 2, Anna dropped a
bombshell, “I dug deep and found, lo and behold,
the idea that Excalibur was a random device came
from a series of bulletins sent by guess who?”
“I don’t know? Who?”
“Sumana corporation! The story was planted,
maybe ten years back, but it seemed believable and
a few journalists, especially John Qwirty, the
Excomputer junkie, sold it hard—I always
suspected Qwirty of extreme right wing proclivities
because he had old pictures of Roland Regain on
the dashboard of his gyrocar. Qwirty was a hail and
hardy fellow with a secret agenda, but he had a slow
brain. One wag, from a rival magazine, compared
him to a Cadillac with a Volkswagen engine. But
the masters of Excalibur were not simple spin
doctors. They were a faceless and vicious enemy
who used people like Qwirty for their press
connections.”
I got more warrior flashes as the days wore on.
Here’s where the diplomats drop out. At last Anna
and I could walk on stage without pseudonyms. The
ancient Celts fought naked on the battlefield, men
and women, side by side—why not us? We could
catch the simple Roman soldier off guard because
he was trained to suck tit ala Romulus and Remus,
not cut it off. It would shock him to see a naked
woman flying at him with a sword and, in that
moment’s hesitation, we could stick him. Like the
highlanders at Culloden, we didn’t stand a chance.
Things were smokey and angular in a drought
year when the lemons grow pulpy on the trees. I
happened to be sitting on the porch glider watching
the kids trot home from school, waiting for Anna to
come back from the fish market. JellOut Dixon, my
mailperson, walks by and hands me an envelope
with a French stamp on it—no return address, but
the handwriting looked familiar. Sluggo and his
forlorn friend Pig Dog swarmed around my legs
chasing an imaginary monster in the form of a fly. I
opened the letter immediately.
PARIS Samhain
Heard what happened to you at AMEX in
London a few years ago. Look to Axel Tervik &
cohorts. Tried to contact you then, but missed. Read
Electronic Battlefield, very good. Tracked you
through Charlotte Russe in Minneapolis ( and
mutual friends ). Hope this finds you in good health.
See you Winter Solstice. Maze at Chartres. You’ll
know me. I’ll be wearing an antique “Apple: the
Next Step” computer pin.
Dolphin
To say that Dolphin’s direct note was a surprise
would be an understatement. It could have been one
of those classic Internet Hoaxes, but the reference to
the Next Computer made it seem authentic. The fact
that it took at least two weeks to get from France to
California made it all the more authentic.
We were planning an expedition anyway, so
why not Chartres? Anna agreed.
In less than two weeks I was packing the
compact video equipment into a wooden storage
case, ready to ship the whole safari to France. I
didn’t have a clue why he wanted to meet us at
Chartres. I new there was some connection between
Chartres and the Summer Solstice lightbeam at
Stonehenge, but why the maze?
Anna and I spent days reading up on Chartres,
and the Gothic era in general. We didn’t talk much.
Things were getting very serious. She had her
science hat screwed on tight. I was pumping iron in
earnest and walking two miles twice a day. We took
the DHEA and the other muscle toners and we slept
well. She read at home, I read in the park and at the
library. Our friend Debbie Earl, the librarians’
librarian, one who actually reads, went out of her
way to dig up every reference to Chartres and the
other cathedrals in the Menalto Library.
As I watched the cyberducks swim across the
virtual pond I thought to myself, “Too weird, this
guy, who may or may not be real… this guy, who
we can’t tell anybody about because maybe they’ll
throw us in the pokey, appears in a letter like a
genie out of a magic lamp and tells us to just come
on over and meet him at the most important
spiritual place on earth.”
I walked home in a daze... Maybe Chartres isn’t
the most important spiritual place on earth, but I
read a book about how it was built up on layers and
so every culture was represented in, or under, the
building. I guess that’s when I hit high gear. No
more foot dragging, full steam ahead, Chartres it is.
We took steps to rent the house to a hospice for
battered house husbands and put everything
valuable in deep storage. Maybe we wouldn’t come
back. Maybe we wouldn’t want to come back. Anna
was gunning for the expedition weeks before
Dolphin’s letter arrived, we both wanted to see the
Winter Solstice sunrise from Kercado near Carnac
in the Gulf of Morbihan. Dolphin’s letter simply
gave us a boost.
We laid out the details over blackened Roughie,
greenhouse salad with yogurt dressing, followed by
nine grain bread and gee butter tea. The stacks of
money teetered a few times, as we counted out two
million units, but none of it fell on the floor. Sluggo
found a torn fiver from the old regime and chewed
it up, but I just used it as a spit ball in one of my
collages. Anna called it a “spite” ball.
We laughed and sipped cocoa laced with Triple
Sec as we wrapped the stacks up tight and jammed
the money belts full. Anna sewed us two money
vests. Hers had pockets for bullion, Euros, Rand
and Amerbucks all coded to the country flags. Mine
was festooned with baggy pockets, each with a
small Jolly Roger embroidered over the snapflap.
Who knew how long this expedition might take?
Hell, we had all the money and a full month to get
ready. We would travel light anyway and go by the
big jet. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that
transatlantic ocean travel was precarious at best and
getting shakier by the day. Jet fuel was in short
supply and only the richest people could fly within
a semblance of a schedule. We were rich enough.
We paid cash for the tickets and booked the
flight for 18 December. First class, prepaid and
standby, it’s the best we could do. As my uncle
Dean used to say, “Might as well wait for the return
of Led Zeppelin.”
The note from Dolphin was brief and to the
point. He found us and knew we were looking for
him. The answer to the Dolphin mystery was
congealing rapidly, too rapidly—like epoxy when
you add an extra catalyst.
We talked about bringing Dolphin back with us,
or perhaps settling him into a utopian community in
Europe, but all of this was nervous speculation. The
letter was all we had to go on. It was well written
and rational. For the past three or four years I was
of the opinion that Dolphin was a looney balooney.
With this small note, and the sobering data culled
from his notebooks (there could be no question they
were his now that we had the handwritten letter) I
was starting to see the error of my ways. Maybe he
was wacky at one point, but now I sensed
omniscience in his writing. The notebooks,
especially the Hamburger Zen journal, were not the
ravings of a sunburned Hassid lost in the Golan
desert with his BVDs pulled too tight.
After dinner Anna wrinkled the aerogramme
paper, smelling it, trying to get a vibe from it, then
she says, “This note has some amazing stuff in it.”
I still can’t figure out how she gets so many
clues from such a small clump of data, maybe it’s
because she read Sherlock Holmes in first editions
while I got stuck with my dads old Classics
Illustrated comic books. I challenged her, “OK wise
woman of the stones, why is he in Paris?”
Her answer came in two parts. She smiled as she
spoke like she had an inside pipeline to the Oracle
at Delphi, “I think he wants to be immortal.”
I felt incredulous again, “What do you mean
immortal?”
“Just that, Paris has always been les cite du
immortal’—the capital of modern alchemy.” Anna
spun around like a dervish in anticipation of our
new adventure.
“Hey, why spin now?” I asked, “You’ll waste
your orbits.” I tried to lighten the mood. “Looks like
we’re just a couple of fourth generation beatniks
wandering aimlessly in search of Captain Trips.“
“Yes, you might call it a two person Diaspora.”
Anna extended the joke as she lit some frangipani
incense. “I get the feeling Dolphin is hanging out
with someone with a technique to prolong
life—indefinitely or at least for a very long time.”
“That may be true,” I added. “I vaguely recall
reading a book years ago at the Warburg Institute
by a Parisian writing under a pseudonym… Vulcan,
Vulcallino something like that. The book is a road
map to the various cathedrals of Europe wherein he
claims the secrets of alchemy, including this
immortality stuff, are written in stone.”
“Is that why he wants to meet us at Chartres?”
Anna asked.
“Not exactly, this author claims the
architecture—the measurements and sculptures—of
the Gothic cathedrals hide the secrets to
immortality.”
“What?” Anna glared at me as if I wanted her to
sell bibles doortodoor in a Muslim neighborhood.
“No one understands the book on the first
reading, but after you get into it several times,
sublimations I suppose you could call them, you
start to understand the theory. Vulcan’s basal
assumption is that anybody with the guts and the
time can go and study the cathedrals and discover
the immortality of the ancients.”
Anna gave this last idea some deep attention,
“So we can assume Dolphin has read this Vulcalino
book, or whatever it’s called, and is trying to tell us
something about immortality or alchemy or both
and that’s why he wants us to meet him at
Chartres?”
We looked at each other in disbelief, “… or
maybe he’s already immortal!”
That answer didn’t satisfy me, “Hey, ya never
know. I’d hate to rule anything out at this stage.
Maybe he just ‘thinks’ he’s immortal.”
I nodded my agreement, “Hey incidentally, have
you been reading up on the cathedrals?” I asked in a
motivating tone.
She answered slowly, “Yes and on things
Gothic and on labyrinths and mazes and the myth of
Ariadne, and especially medieval socialist
movements, like the Albigensians, but I can’t quite
see the whole picture yet.”
“Good suggestion.” I agreed.
We went off to do our evening chores. I usually
walk the dogs and put the enzyme powder into the
trash evaporator. Anna likes to put the dishes and
stuff in the sonic scrubber. The chores gave us time
to think things over.
While I was out I passed a news kiosk:
Excalibur
Strikes Again!
ZPI Newsfiche
London zine edition
Barry Ross
The British Press reports a near riot yesterday
evening. Fifty armed meat packers clashed with
fifty armed vegetarians in the main car park at
Stonehenge, the famed monument near Salisbury,
braving one of the worst blizzards in recorded
history to stomp each other throughout the night
while bonfires blazed. Authorities anticipate more
rioting as the nights grow colder and longer. Names
of the deceased have been withheld until the bodies
can be defrosted.
The air grew nippy on the walk home. I
gathered sticks and twigs downed by the wind. I
thought maybe I’d build a fire. The imp say, “Ya
know it sounds like Axel is up to his old tricks.”
“Hmmm.” I’m thinking, “Yeah Axel. I wonder
who’s running him?”
Anna was watching the same news on the
optiscreen When I got back. Rioters, with sore red
eyes and black towels around their heads, pushed
through billowing clouds of bluewhite smoke to do
battle with mounted police in full riot gear, “Wow
babe, I read about that at the kiosk… anything new
to report?’
“No, nothing other than the fact that Stonehenge
is still a riot zone.”
“So what’s new about that?”.
Anna seemed engrossed in the story, but when
the advertisements came on, she had five or ten
minutes to kill so she asked, “Wasn’t Axel Tervick
from Pittsburgh, and wasn’t he suspected of killing
his secretary with a coke bottle then stuffing her in a
trunk on his back porch?”
“Hmmm… sounds about right, but that was
more than seventy years ago. Do you think Tervik is
that old?”
“Hey, I don’t know, maybe he’s immortal too.”
She stood up with her hands on her hips, “How do
you know it’s not the same guy?”
“I’m pretty sure it is, I concurred. “He even said
he was from Pennsylvania when I met him in Bath.”
“OK.” Anna prodded me, “so maybe he’s
connected to a high witch cult in London.”
“Hmmm, could be.” I tried to recall, “The day I
met him, you know with Sean and Jack, he bragged
that he was into Satanism and had gone to the level
of Operating Gamma in the Avon and Somerset
Psionics club.”
“Yeah, they’re about the same thing aren’t
they?” Anna spoke with a calm resolve as we
continued to pack our gear for storage.
“No actually the wiccan witches are pretty cool.
I doubt they do much more than nature worship
stuff, but Satanism, now that’s a Christian
invention.
“Hmmm... black witchcraft and Psionics must
be linked at some higher level?” she asked, not
expecting an answer.
“Look Tervik never acts alone, he’s been
controlled, but I’m not sure who calls the shots.
Nobody will take him seriously outside of a few
neopagans in central Somerset, but he could do big
damage if he got a mind to, like Moriarity in the
Sherlock Holmes stories.” I continued.
Anna took the conversation into the realm of
speculation, “If Tervik is involved in some kind of
cult manipulation trip he can’t be working alone...
Can he?”
“Of course not, he has Timeon and that
mysterious house keeper.” I said.
“No I mean he must be working for somebody
higher up.”
“Oh sure, but who?”
“Maybe Small Don Rooney, Maynard Donnely,
or somebody in the highest club or corporate
structure.”
The thought of Small Don or Donnelly being the
king of the world sent shudders down our collective
spine. Byte Mama snuggled and licked herself as
she took her throne on the sofa.
Anna looked at me with those baleful dark eyes
as if to say, “Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out.”
Sluggo slipped one white fang over his lip as he
snorkeled and snorted himself to sleep. He was now
passing from his hyperactive terrier phase into his
bulldog personality—the one that never sleeps.
Gyro Shows Up
Night came fast, but we didn’t bother to turn the
lights on. Droplets of rain hit the roof softly. The
drought seemed to be ending. I lit a twig fire in the
pot bellied stove. “Ya know I’ll bet Dolphin worked
at Rockhead about the same time I was there doing
a consulting gig.”
“Forget it will ya?” Anna was always good for
sage advice in a crisis. She lit a big beeswax candle
in the center of the living room as Morpheus
clouded our minds again.
I began marking a small box of rare books that
included an Obelisk Press, first Paris edition of
Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller. The gruff old
author, who some thought of as the king of the
Beatniks, signed the book: “To Dean Moriarity the
greatest head to ever hit Partington Ridge.” This
odd little tome was my sixteenth birthday present
from my uncle Dean. When he handed it to me he
said, “Here kid, you’re old enough for this now,
take care of it.”
I stared at the book in the candle light. The
bindings had come unglued. The pages were fragile
and ready to crumble. The special library box I used
to protect it was even getting old. I hoped to pass
this treasure on to whatever kid I might breed, find
or inherit, but so far no kids.
I can’t remember where I slept that night.
∞∞∞
Anna and I began the next day cleaning camera
gear in the solarium, an extension to Carmen’s
Verandah. The short rain scrubbed the air overnight
and we felt great, full of life and raring to go.
The doorbell rang about 10:00 AM. Sluggo
didn’t bark, so I figured whoever it was must have
friendly intentions. I was right. It was Gyro
Wheelbeck, glasses on tight, long blueblack hair
messed up, holding a huge sport bag full of what he
called in former times, ‘essentials.’
“Well I’ll be damned.”
Gyro stood there grinning from ear to ear,
“Anybody home?”
“Yeah, I think we’re here, let me check... Nope
we’re not home. Sorry come back tomorrow.”
We laughed in unison.
“Well come in,”
“Welcommen,”
“Well come on,”
“Oh shit just come in will ya?”
Byte Mama wagged her tail rapidly as I opened
the screen door. Good vibes. Sluggo stood off,
appraising the situation.
Big triumphant mannish hugs. Sluggo liked
Gyro, waged his tail and moved in for a head
scratch.
“What ‘er you doing har?”
Gyro then intoned the weirdest answer to any
question I ever asked. “Oh, I don’t know, I had a
dream about three nights ago. I saw you and Anna
flying off to Europe and then I saw you praying in a
cathedral. It must have been an omen of some kind.
Looks like yer packin’ for a safari.” He scanned the
valises and storage boxes. “Yuse guys don’t pray
very often do ya?”
Although I was blown away by the his
comment, I answered quickly. “Yes, we’re putting
everything in storage, even your paintings.” I
pointed to the prominent place above the mantel in
the reception room where we hung the painting I
commissioned more than three years earlier. It
depicted two Katchina dolls holding hands in a
rainbow with a serpent dividing them, very Taos.
He called it Sidewinder.
Anna came through from the sun porch, “Who
was at the doooooo... oh Gyro, what the heck?” She
saw him standing in the reception room as she
rounded the corner.
Gyro simply smiled again and said, “Surprise,
surprise!” We hugged for about an hour. Obviously
we stopped packing and started cooking. “Hey man
you look like you need a good home cooked meal.”
We dredged up a Mexican vegetarian meal,
something frozen from Pepe’s (Gyro was a vegi
kind a guy) and popped open a bottle of 2031
Cuppolla Cabernet Sauvignon. The real stuff,
bought on the San Francisco computerized black
market for about the price of a house.
During dinner we learned that Gyro was up here
to stay, if possible. His scene in Omega Vegas was
growing stagnate, maybe he could do some
painting. He was famous for these nomadic fits and
would occasionally flee to parts unknown. He called
it “wandering foot,” a state of mind he translated
from a Mayan codex. Clearly his visitation was a
godsend for us. Now we could leave the dogs at
home instead of in a kennel and Gyro could
housesit. He loved the dogs and he was a stable guy,
especially when his rent is paid for months in
advance by somebody else. Besides we knew he
would get some painting done. We told him we’d
love him to stay because now we wouldn’t have to
give the Philodendron and the Ficus Benjamina
away. We made up a place on the sofa for him
saying that he could take over any room he wanted
after we left. This was great too because we could
be gone for months instead of weeks with no sweat
and we could call home—if we could get
through—to check on things. Gyro was one of those
people who hated computers and answering
machines and he probably wouldn’t check
messages, which I personally find a bit silly now
that we’re half way through the twentyfirst century,
but Gyro was a solid housesitter, for sure, for sure,
tidy as a tick on a copper hog, and wise about
electricity and plumbing. He hated computers, but
he liked hardware and music, loud and soft, so he
was at home with our NTX rig and we knew he
wouldn’t manhandle the merchandise. To make
certain he wouldn’t go on one of his bizarre
rampages through the sound warps I set the gain
governor for a password above 80db audible and
locked the digital channel to acoustic only. He
loved it. One less button to toggle.
All we had to do was unpack the boxes and put
the stuff back on the shelves. We didn’t think to ask
Gyro if he would come up from Vegas to housesit,
but now that he was here, the arrangement was all
very cozy—it was a miracle. He had no pets, so
what’s a body to do? Spilt or Die, that’s the
motto… wandering foot, that’s the cure.
Before we turnedin we got all the nasty gossip
about Sharon and Hal. They were fine, although
they told Gyro to tell us they still wanted us to
consider having kids so they could be the
godparents, like the Celts. I’ve no idea why they
couldn’t write or call on the telephone, but that’s the
way things were these days. The economy was so
strained people were stooping to sending emissaries
with verbal messages.
In jest we told Gyro we thought this was old
fashioned and we warned him that we would kill the
messenger if the news was bad the next time. We
called Hal and Sharon the following morning. They
sensed we were into something major and pledged
there full support. This made me feel twice as bold.
We hung out with Gyro for the rest of
November and the first two weeks of December.
We went over the solar heating system at least ten
times, and briefed him on the garden and canine
protocols and the hot tub in the sauna closet and the
dry laundry and the sonic dish scrubber. Gyro had
no use for gadgetry, except the sound system, He
even hated to observe the daily news, but he
listened attentively knowing it would make us feel
better.
Three days before we were scheduled to take off
we were all sitting around the breakfast nook
consuming large bowls of au lait Harrar Fancy with
sticky buns in honey, when the dogs got busy
digging in Anna’s garden. This was a very rare act.
They knew the garden was taboo, but they smelled
the travel perfume and the lotion in the bags instead
of in the bathroom and they knew we were going
away for a long time. To express their angst they
both went out into the garden, which happened to be
bathed in the rare December sunshine, and
proceeded to dig the living shit out of the last of the
blue corn. This is the stuff you leave on the stalks to
ripen and dry then grind up to make the most
delicious Christmas tortillas imaginable.
Now when a pit bull digs in a corn row stuff
makes noise and stalks crash down and usually
Anna gets hysterical about he garden—I saw her sit
with a BB gun to shoot Bluejays because they were
raiding a Dove’s nest in her Camomile bush. But
this morning she just nonchalantly pointed out the
window and said, “The biggest problem is keeping
the dogs out of the garden, they love to dig in the
onions.” Gyro pulled out his Zen flute and began to
play a double reed thing, humming and blowing at
the same time. When the fidos heard that flute they
knew they’re days where numbered. They just
stopped digging, came in like two little kittens and
sat don at Gyros feet. “Wow!” Both of us just said,
“Wow” and that was it for the dog briefing. Our
unruly tots were now part of Gyros canine drill
team. He interceded just in time too, the prize
shallots were next.
We started a charge account for Gyro at the
local Mr. Natural market. He seemed happy
enough—two young women hit on him in the
produce section, but he didn’t seem overly
impressed. His mind was always about two miles
away, always focused on his next ten paintings, and,
at that, he was a hard worker.
By the time the final packing got under way
Gyro finished two Hyplars of the house and one
watercolor of each of the dogs. He was also
dabbling at a group portrait, but he wouldn’t show it
to us. He explained his reticence by saying, “When
you get back, that’ll be time enough.”
I gave my guns away, except the Gluko 22
Mag/45 Hornet over and under—a survival gun
designed for only two purposes, pot meat or murder.
Interesting little weapon. I rarely fired it, but I
couldn’t part with it either. It felt good to my hand
and it didn’t kick in silencer mode. Gyro was down
on guns, so I snuck around when I handled them.
France
Gyro drove us to the airport at dawn five days
before Winter Solstice. A rain cloud dumped
everything it had as we drove down the airport road.
Gyro hated driving, but he could muster a yeomanly
work when necessary. This was good because we
would need the Mercedes when we came back. It
was the ideal car for him. We knew he wouldn’t
drive it much—bicycle was his thing. Byte Mama
loved him, Sluggo accepted him. All was well in
Mentalville.
We would be taking a conventional jet to
Omega Vegas and then an Air France Star from
there to New Orly. This was not the big suborbital
job like the one I took from Heathrow after
grabbing Mansoo in Beirut, but it was fast enough
and we got drunk enough on organic mead to forget
most of the flight. With Gyro holding down the fort
we wouldn’t have to feel like rootless vagabonds,
we could extend our expedition and we could send
home for reinforcements if need be. Gyro was the
miracle we needed.
It took us six hours to get from Vegas to
NORLY and two full days to clear customs after we
landed. For reasons, only known to French
bureaucrats, we were forced to sit around in New
Orly overnight then be bused to Old Orly before we
could get the entrance documents and pickup our
three bag limit (six bags in all) and the car.
Christmas was coming to the City of Lights, maybe
that’s what slowed everything up.
We got bored waiting for the guy with the
rubber stamp so we took a sauna in one of those
cabine privee things imported from Japan. Very
Zen.
The pistol also posed a small problem. I
whipped out my permits and credentials, all fake,
and they fell for it, but I sweated jelly beans the
final two hours as I sat in the hard plastic chair
waiting for the clerical looking gent in the blue
tuxedo to wipe his ass and finish his Nooner. This is
classically French. You take a supersonic transport
that gets you to Paris faster than Wonder Woman
then you’re forced to spend fortytwo hours clearing
customs. Uncle Dean said it was faster in the old
days. We read later that steerage passengers might
have to wait a week. I guess rank does have its
privileges.
The only Newsfiche available indexed hundreds
of acts of terrorism. Seems the N.I.C. (the New Irish
Cadre) had teamed up with the NeoVichy regime,
now rich with all that money from their worldwide
bottled water sales, to terrorize the World Bank
because it was going to put rubies, rupees and
rubles on the same fiscal footing. Anna remained
dubious because rubles had been traded on the open
market since 1999, but India had recently moved
away from a gold standard to gain a controlling
corner on the world ruby market. Naturally they
wanted the Russians to pay in Rubys, not rubles. I
couldn’t bother with the semantics. We would both
be happy to go back to wampum any time.
Finally the man with the stamp arrived and we
got our walking papers and our car. Naturally we
charged the 2044 Range Rover, platinum edition, to
our newly acquired platinum corporate AMEX disk.
The Rover wasn’t new, by any means, but it had
been well maintained over the last decade.
I could feel the champagne cork pop in my solar
plexus as we made our way past the lines of military
guards and on to the main road. Chartres stood a
few hours drive south. This time we vowed to avoid
Paris altogether. We could easily get stuck eating
our way through the Christmas menu at La Cupole
and miss our appointment with Dolphin at Chartres.
We soon sped past the grounds of Versailles, a
once stately palace now converted for use as a
mental hospital. It looked brim full, and in our
mental condition the place looked positively
inviting.
France, on the other hand, is always
breathtaking. The deeper you sink into it, the more
intoxicated you become.
Chartres
Morning December 20th
Audio Transcript
Approaching from the North at dawn the
massive cathedral at Chartres looms as if on a
hydraulic lift. The light changes from shadowy to
bright in patches as we motor through the harsh
December fields. A frost bites the earth making us
aware of our mortality. Anna notes a glint of
emerald and diamond on the horizon. At first the
cathedral looks like a scale model, then spires spike
upward. The statuesque outline saturates through
the distant mists. The lead roof covered with copper
finally appears. It is oxidized green against the
citrine of the mustard fields along the road. At a
right angle we can see entirely through the
structure. Only then do we get an idea of the size of
the stained glass windows. Anna says, “That’s
funny we know light can not be coming out of those
windows and yet I distinctly see rays of light jutting
up from the cathedral… how do they do that?”
“Maybe the windows are camera apertures that
work only when the sun and moon are perfectly
aligned.”
“Yes maybe Venus too, hun?”
“No doubt.”
We stop among the stacks of oat hay and smoke
an old fashioned spliff. Something legal in Europe,
but rare everywhere else. These are the fields
captured by the painter Millet more than three
centuries ago—fields used for grazing or crops for
the past five thousand years. This morning the
agrabot plows the rows and plants next years hybrid
seed. The earth is still black and sooty were the
straw burned on All Souls Eve, the sky must have
turned purple then, as it does in Ireland.
Anna turns her head away from the magnetic
view long enough to remind me that a cold rain
would soon arrive. I ask, “Can you smell the storm
coming in?”
“No.” She answers, “But I can feel it.” Her eyes
bath in the vision of Chartres, “It is the greatest of
statues, the Goddess of structures, a treasure house.”
“Yes.” I agree, “Chartres means treasure map, in
old French.”
“Oh really, I thought it meant treasure cart.” She
seems confused by my comment.
“We must have read different books.” She says.
“Yeah, all of mine were in the library, where
was yours?” I try to work out a compromise.
“Maybe it means three treasures or the map and cart
of the three treasures.” We ponder this idea together
as we move blissfully on.
I drive without fatigue, fired up by the awesome
task before us, savoring every kilometer. The road
turns die straight now, a carriage road, black
tarmac, no white line, no shoulder. The fields are
unfenced, nothing to break the illusion. Each second
of each day the sun or moon plays a trick on this
celebrated edifice. It is a temple to a religion we
may never understand. It is not Christian, except in
administration and artifice and yet it is not entirely
pagan.
The Range Rover, runs badly on kerosene or
perfume or whatever combination they had at the
airport. But because it is taller than most cars we
catch glimpses of the tabernacle above the hedge
rows. The twin Gothic spires appear to rise directly
from the black and ochre fields. Perhaps if we were
in a carriage or approaching on horseback, at a
different strobe speed, we would see a different set
of illusions, but no matter what your speed you are
in a dream when approaching Chartres.
There is no destruction here. Excalibur cannot
touch you here. Chartres is the final expression of
the megalithic temple. It is the grandest house of
God, the dream of Scipio. Chartres is also the home
of the master architects: Vetruvius; Imhotep;
William de Honnencourt; Courbusier; Frank Lloyd
Wright and the famed contemporaries Jimmy
Gallium the Vitruvian and Davidoff
Liebermansky—Toronto’s king of bathrooms.
Chartres is the celestial city, the New Jerusalem,
realized in stone.
We are less than two kilometers away and we
can just make out the round windows and the
Romanesque turrets of the east ambulatory, yet we
see no village, no signs of life. The town of Chartres
is clearly marked on the map, but it is
overshadowed by the scale of the stone queen in its
midst. We are approaching from a plateau. A
donkey powered farm cart passes us going North,
the driver is covered in burlap. We are in a time
warp.
I know I am approaching my spiritual home.
Anna is more scientific. She loves me, I have led
her here, she remains aloof, and yet I can see her
drinking in the beauty of the place, the spirit of the
ancient ones. Perhaps she too will find a home here
some day. Like Buddhists seeing Lhasa for the first
time, the mere sight of Chartres forces us to forget
ourselves, we are both awe struck. In Ireland the
beam of light would be entering Newgrange from
the Southeast about now and so it also enters
Chartres. The entire east side is illuminated with a
rusty red light that makes the building shimmer.
We edge the Rover, supposedly new, but
already rusting in the wheel wells, closer to the
home of the dark virgin. The illusion ends only after
we drive down the plateau into the town. Their is a
scent of death here, the beauty of the cathedral is
forgotten in the town. The townspeople live
subservient to this queen of buildings, every
skyscraper and tower, casts a shadow on their lives.
The guide book tells us the place is inhabited by
thousands, and yet the entire town is asleep. A
normal morning would find the sidewalks full of
energy. Cheese and mushroom vendors would be
setting up their tables in the square. Gendarmes
would be directing traffic, but now the cobbled
streets are silent and a bitter Winter approaches.
We are now inside the penumbra of the
cathedral—Hansel and Gretel, zonked in the heart
of France. A disorientation comes over us. Thin
dogs rustle through the village streets where
children used to bounce to school. The spliff high
has worn off.
We seek the tithe barn only to discover that it is
a small hotel called The Tithe Barn, a medieval
structure built within the authentic barn once used
by the priests at Chartres to receive offerings from
the peasants and pilgrims. This must be the place
Guy Truffaut referred to in his letter. Unfortunately,
for this once prosperous town, tourists are rare.
Some money comes in as it always did, but
Chartres, the township, is now on a strict diet. This
guardian of the cathedral has been spared the
indignities of some of the neighboring towns, but
the economic impact of Excalibur and the turndown
in the world economy is noticeable here. We park
the Rover in a designated spot and limp against the
cold wind toward our lodgings.
I feel an eerie presence as I place my hand on
the cast iron gate handle—a snake eating its tail. It
moves almost before I apply pressure. As we push
through, the proprietor, a Breton who identifies
himself as M. Kiley stands nervously in the glass
enclosed foyer. Anna calls him O’Kiley, but he
doesn’t appreciate the joke.
We jostle the minimum amount of gear up the
spiral staircase to locate the room. Predictably
O’Kiley disappears the minute he sees work
coming.
My first comment is “Austere to be sure…”
Anna says, “…but clean.” The room is shaped
like an irregular pentagon, the walls are made of
daub and sticks covered with many layers of plaster
and bright white stucco. She props herself in a
window seat next to the antique table in order to get
a view of the town. We can see one spire of the
cathedral from our room. “
She begins rumpling through my cases, “What
chu’ lookin for?” I ask.
“I need a drink.”
“No fear, I’ve got the medicine, it’s in the
Haliburton.” I point to the slim aluminum case I
inherited from my dad.
You know most people think of Chartres as a
big church,” she says.
“Yes.” I reply, “That’s because Chartres is
administered by the vestiges of the papacy…” Anna
isn’t interested in politics at the moment.
“But they were never Christian structures, were
they?” She asks.
“No.” I answer. “Hermetic and Neoplatonic is
closer to the true nature of the architects.”
With that note of profundity I pour us both a
dram of triple malt scotch whisky—necessary to
warm the frost on Winters face. Anna drifts off
again, not strictly due to the drink, but because she
is lured by the alternating moments of bright and
dark scintillating in our singular mirror. We are in a
camera obscura, the room itself is designed to
project images from the streets below. She points to
the mirror, “See those flickerings?”
“Yes, unbelievable.” I stare at the people
walking upsidedown across the bone white walls.
“Sorta reminds me of a kaleidoscope my mom and
dad used to play with when they went on their
occasional acid trips.”
“Ha, very funny.” Anna chortles, “No time to
take acid anymore baby this ‘is’ acid.”
“OK.” I say, but all that study we did, ever since
Dolphin’s letter arrived.”
“What about it?”
“Is it going to help?” I asked. “I’m convinced
that the cathedrals are far more esoteric than the
New Age pseudo hippies understand, none of those
books prepared us for the scale of the place.” A
strobe like flash came through a small slit in the
window.
Anna says, “Give me an example.”
“Well for one thing that flash wasn’t random. It
was an interval of natural time, marked off by the
cathedral itself—the cathedral itself is a massive
computer.”
“What kind of computer?” She asked.
“It’s like Newgrange.” I answered, “The
cathedral, sited less than two hundred meters from
here, is the shadow caster and we’re standing on the
edge of a huge sundial.”
“You’re probably right,” Anna says,
condescendingly. “Sundials are delightful because
they cast shadow into sunlit areas and flash light
into dark areas.”
Another flash comes though, this one brighter
than the last. We both just stare at each other and
say “Wow!” “Maybe that’s why we’re so sick as a
society, we no longer recognize natural time,” she
said.
“You mean we see black or white, but we miss
the colors in between?” I asked..
“Yes, sort of.” Anna unpacks a cryovac scent
atomizer and the sterile pack. “We miss the shades
and hues and saturations and the shadows and bright
spots. She paused to sniff the Green Apple essence.
“I’ve never equated the cathedrals with the ancient
stones, but you could be right… Hmmm.”
Anna seems a bit peeved as she drains the last
tear of malt from the silver cup. “I’ll bet that’s one
of the three treasures, you ninny.” She moves
toward the bed caressing my arm as she passes.
“The Gothic cathedrals are time capsules in more
ways than one.”
I agree. “Look down there, you can see how
close to the cathedral we are.” I point to the street
below, “The streets narrow considerably the closer
one walks toward the cathedral.”
“I’ll bet the whole town is a big maze, maybe
even part of a larger clock, which in turn is part of
the known universe?” She asked rhetorically.
“Well, why not?” I answered, also rhetorically,
“In the Middle Ages, students of all stripes came
here to study Astronomy, Music, Geometry, and
Mathematics—the Quadrivium.”
“What about Rhetoric?”
“Oh he’s in there somewhere too.”
“You mean it was the medieval equivalent of
graduate school?”
“Precisely.”
We laugh ourselves into an uncomfortable nap
in the duvee covered bed, a squeaky arrangement
repaired with hemp rope and old slats. “This thing
must have been slept in by the Crusaders.” I
exclaim. There was no room for complaint, at least
we had a roof and a bed.
We snooze for about an hour, wakeup, splash as
best we can with the water shortage on, and get
ready to wander out.
I stuck my thumbs under my belt and bent my
legs in my worst urban cowboy pose, “Well, maam,
I suggest we saunter on down thaar and see whatz
sup.”
“Right.” Anna smiles at me, knowing I’m a
fool, as she brushes her long ebony hair. “Say didn’t
Dolphin call cathedrals computers disguised as
pagan temples?”
“Yes.” I answer, “I think that was in his
Hamburger Zen phase.”
Anna removes the small digicam from its case
and hands it to me saying, “Here make yourself
useful.”
I begin filming the Winter light as it bounces off
the room walls. “Most people think these computers
only run around June 21st because about thirty
years ago a scientist named Stephen Rilko, from
Harvard, found the Midsummer sunrise takes place
at Chartres as it does at Stonehenge, but the truth is
the older temples like Newgrange and Knowth, the
oldest large scale computers in the world, after
which this building was patterned, are reckoned
with the cycles of the moon, sun and stars at Winter
Solstice.” The silent disk advances one click in the
camera as I move in for a macro.
“I’ll bet they run all year round, not only on
Saint John’s day or Christmas.” She added.
“Oh yeah.” I agreed. “I’m sure of it; everyday
there’s a new face to the clock, it’s a matter of
finding the right sequence for the days you are in
observance.”
Anna opens the door to the narrow hall and
beckons me out as a I click the digital shutter
framing her in the doorway. “Once you have two or
three start points, such as Equinox or Solstice, you
can trace the whole year, day by day.” She said,
proving to me that she knew about the clock
concept all along.
I gulp down my scotch as I place the digicam
back in its holster. She notices me looking at her
with an unusual intensity as we lock the door and
scurry out for our first Chartrian walkabout. “What
did you whisper under your breath back there?”
“Oh nothing, just talking to my imp.”
“Oh, him?” “Canyon when are you ever going
to grow up?”
End of audio transcript.
∞∞∞
O’Kiley set a modest, if not symbolic, fire in the
iron clad brazier of the small lobby. He was
nowhere to be seen, but his fire felt real enough as
we donned our cold marching gear.
The mantel featured a carving depicting two
phoenix birds drinking from the same chalice with
necks entwined. To the left and right were scenes
depicting a mother Pelican tending her young. In
the quatrefoil sinister the Pelican mother picks at
her own breast to feed her blood to three chicks. In
the panel nearest the desk the Pelican mother broods
on her eggs.
The sounds and smells of the afternoon bustle
on a market day finally began to sparkle a bit. The
black shawls of the local women on their way to
noon mass bobbed in and out of the gray stonework.
It was as if there were two classes in the town, no
longer simply rich and poor, but stable and unstable,
fixed and in flux, domestic and homeless. We took
pictures, bought a small wheel of Three Angels
Camembert, (a cheese that hasn’t changed for five
hundred years), fresh baguettes and a good sauterne,
then started toward the cathedral itself slowly, by a
route that took us past the few boutiques still
vending merchandise. In front of a religious
reliquary shop Anna asked, “Hey doesn’t this
remind you of the picnic we had at Gus and Sally’s
place in Saragatos?”
I answered in a jocular mood, “Yes, but this is
real and that was… unreal, if ya know what I
mean?” She knew what I meant. Back in the states
we tried to be European, but here we had the real
thing.
Our noonesque stroll turned into a full scale
promenade. The roof and towers of the cathedral
changed to our view with each step. Each new street
provided us with a fresh perspective on the flying
buttresses. We caught a glimpse of the West portico
which quickly disappeared as we turned the next
corner. I sensed we were spiraling around the
village, following the path trod by millions of
pilgrims over the past eleven centuries. We were
nearly exhausted, but I clearly remember the
unbelievable feeling of antiquity we experienced
each time we drew closer to the cathedral. It was as
if we were on an initiates path—an outer spiral. We
could come almost within hailing distance of the
walls only to be turned away by our forward
progress. “Did I tell you about the time Sean
O’Bannion, Jack Roberts and I sat in Newgrange
and watched the lightbeam come in?”
“Yes, several times.” Anna learned to tolerate
my bragging long ago. “I viewed the optidisk at the
house in Ireland, remember?”
“Hunh?” I apologized for the lapse, “Oh yeah,
sorry. That’s when I learned about the lunar year.”
Anna noted the paucity of Americans visiting
Chartres in the Winter months. “ The Winter
Solstice occurs at a time when American tourists are
almost never hanging around so how could they
guess that on Winter Solstice temples like Chartres,
Stonehenge, Burgos, Newgrange and Amiens,
become a place of rebirth for the entire planet?”
“Funny you should mention the tourists. When I
was a wee lad my uncle Dean told me about a
scandal concerning Stonehenge, something to do
with the British Tourist Board planting articles in
Archaeology journals in the 1960s falsifying
evidence to trick tourists into spending more money
during the summer months. If they had emphasized
the Winter Solstice nobody would spend money.”
“Why is that.” Anna asked.
“Have you ever visited Stonehenge on the
Winter Solstice?”
“No, but it looks like we may be going there one
of these days.”
“Well I’ll tell you its a freeze ass cold place,
you pray for snow, because the dry wind eats the
marrow from your bones.” I guess I sounded a bit
pessimistic because Anna was working on me, I
could always tell when she was trying to reverse the
mood. “OK but we’re here and we can see this one,
so maybe that’s the plan. What d ya think?”
“Don’t worry sweetie, it’ll shine for us, just you
wait.”
At high noon, the sun stood off an at an oblique
angle. We were cautious not to approach the
cathedral too suddenly, perhaps we were in awe of
it, but we knew we had to get a perspective, so we
decided to continue our coil. Was Dolphin watching
us? The Tithe Barn auberge was one potential
rendezvous point, but there was no word from him
yet, no note, no mysterious card slipped under our
door… we would probably have to mill about until
we met him on Winter Solstice morning—in the
maze.
Anna spoke quietly as we strolled arminarm,
“Canyon, you’re the archaeologist... ”
I interrupted her, “No, I’m an amateur
archaeologist.” I made it clear I wasn’t going to be
held responsible for the accuracy of my answers.
“Mind if we take a breather.”
“No, I need to munch on this Camembert
anyway.” Anna confided.
We sat on a stone bench adjacent to the
cathedral parking lot. I pulled the Barsac from my
shoulder bag. Anna spread the creamy, almost foul
smelling, camembert on the long bread. “What did
you want to know about archaeology?” I asked.
“Chartres isn’t simply a medieval town is it?”
I smiled, “No, in fact its probably one of the
oldest continuously inhabited places on earth.”
“You mean people have been living here for
thousands of years?” Anna seemed genuinely
interested.
“More like hundreds of thousands.” I answered.
I poured the Barsac into two little collapsible
cups as she urged me to elaborate. “Tell me more,
I’m really interested, I think the archaeology of the
place has been passed over by the church.”
“You’re right about that.” I explained. “If we
could sink a four meter exploratory shaft ten meters
down right here…
“You mean right here, beneath the car park?”
She seemed amazed.
“Sure it’s as good a place as any.”
Anna’s brow furrowed a bit, maybe she didn’t
believe me, “If we did sink a shaft right here, what
would we find?”
“Oh lot’s of stuff.” I assured her. The last time
anybody did any real scientific work here they
found evidence for Paleolithic habitation.”
“That’s a lot of layers.” She remained
incredulous.
“Only about ten layers, but that’s a lot of history
and prehistory.”
“Really, what would we find?”
“I’m not kidding, we’d find something from
every major layer of European history, and all of the
preChristian era’s—Roman, Greek, Bronze and
Stone, this place has been a crossroads since true
homo sapiens began.”
“Now wait a minute, that’s a long time.” Anna
was skeptical again.
“Hey, I told you I’m not kidding, we’d see both
world wars, the French revolution, the Middle Ages,
the Dark Ages and the Roman period all in the first
five meters.”
“Holy grid line.” Anna blurted out, “What
else?”
“As we dug deeper we’d see artifacts and
crockery from the Indoeuropeans and the Megalith
builders and finally CroMagnon.”
“What do you think attracted them to this spot?”
Anna asked.
“Nobody knows for certain, but I have a
theory.” We finished our petit munch, corked the
wine bottle and collapsed the wine cups.
As we began to walk toward the cathedral again
Anna asked, “What’s your theory?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” I said this to keep
the mood easy, “I think the original true settlers
here, the Megalith builders, constructed a stone
circle on this spot, like the Witch Stones in Oxford
or the original form of Stonehenge.” We babbled on
as rain clouds threatened.
“When was that?” Anna asked.
“6000 years ago, give or take a century.”
“That can’t be the whole explanation.” Anna
exclaimed.
“No, there’s more.” I elaborated on my theory.
“Sean and Jack filled me in on this, it seems
Chartres is the exact geodesic center of old Europe
as known to the stone builders.”
Anna looked at me with amazement, “You mean
the Megalith builders knew Earth’s circumference?”
“Oh sure, they knew it within a few kilometers,
they probably knew the earth was part of a
heliocentric system.”
“You mean they had no preconceived ideas
about God?”
“Right, their concept of God was whatever
nature really was, probably a mother Goddess,
mated with a Zeus like figure. If their observations
led them to realize that the sun was at the center of
the solar system, then so be it. They accepted
everything as is, they weren’t trying to change it,
they were just trying to synchronize with it.”
“Do you think Chartres reflects that belief?”
Anna asked.
“Yes, I’m dying to get in there and see for
myself.”
The path wound away from the cathedral again,
this time we were head back toward the Tithe Barn.
We walked together arminarm without much further
chat, just two exhausted lovers on a quest. I began
to sweat as we neared our small inn. “The
information must have been handed down because
ten years ago a team of archaeologists dug out two
huge stones which were part of the original ring.”
“Is that significant?”
“Sure, anytime you find a carved stone it’s
significant, but these particular stones were used as
part of the original foundation. In other words the
stones were still in use on this plateau, as a pagan
ring, in the Dark Ages, when the first small
Christian church was built.”
“You mean circa 500 AD?”
“Yes, just a century after the fall of Rome.”
“Maybe they just used any stones they could
find?” Anna was always up for a good academic
argument.
“Right, but these stones weren’t cut up, they
were used intact, with the carvings facing the
altar—one of the stones ‘was” the altar—and they
were deployed with the carvings visible to the
worshippers.”
“Unbelievable!”
“Sort of, but we must ask why the early
Christians built a chapel on this exact spot, why not
down the road or over by the river?”
We opened the snake handled gate and again
entered the courtyard to the Tithe Barn.
“I guess they wanted to compete with the
pagan’s.” Anna smiled as she whispered.
“Yes, or they were pagan’s.”
“This puts a new twist to the biblical phrase,
“On this rock I build my church.” Doesn’t it?” As
usual Anna had the last word.
We found ourselves stripping down to our
money vests in Monsieur Kiley’s foyer. We didn’t
expect to see Kiley himself as he had been oddly
absent since we checked in, but, as we walked
through the inner oak doors he presented us with a
message in a sealed envelope conveyed, as was
often the case in French country inns, on a green
and red cushion with worn gold tassels. I’m sure he
wondered why I was wearing a rough sewn nylon
vest with pirates flags all over the pockets, but I
couldn’t worry at this point. We set the bag and the
wine bottle down on the entry way table and
hurriedly opened the envelope.
The note was from Dolphin. He would meet us
at the labyrinth in Chartres at precisely 09:30 the
next morning, December 21st. He also suggested
we visit the cathedral today at Angelus to observe
the interplay of light on the main entrance from
both outside and inside. It was past three when we
received the message, only enough time to hop
upstairs take another short nap, washup and get
dressed to meet the greatest mystery of all time, the
cathedral itself.
Unfortunately it was now pouring rain, I
doubted there would be any interplay of light of any
kind, but as suddenly as it began the rain stopped
and by six o’ clock, as we awoke from our sauterne
induced nap, the last rays of the sun shone through
the clouds as if opening the gates to heaven. The
bells of the Angelus sounded in the distance, we
were late for our meeting.
Meeting Dolphin
We dashed down the narrow stairs, whisked
through the reception area and almost fell out the
gate into the street. After gathering ourselves for the
game, we walked briskly to the front portico at
Chartres.
Dolphin was right—the main facade is bathed in
an eerie pink glow at twilight, a light which
accentuates the restored sculptures. The two main
spires are also illuminated by the glow. Mars and
Venus were visible on the horizon. A gentle silver
radiance came from the friezes on the lunar tower.
The large spire is known as the solar tower and
takes on a rich golden light. Each is topped with an
archangel. St. Michael (the God of the Witches) for
the small tower, St. Gabriel (Hermes: the God of the
Philosophers) for the larger. Both towers contain
spiral steps and both were designed for the
observation of celestial events.
On the facade itself the tree of life is laid out in
multifarious forms while three huge stained glass
windows rise above the frieze work.
We joined a gaggle of tourist from Japan, a rare
sight these days. Once inside, colors created in the
rose windows glanced from columns and shining
brass. The Japanese party bought optiDAT packs
and went on their merry way, but we did an about
face and observed the front wall from the inside.
We would now see the second chapter in the book
begun on the outside wall. We were piercing the
veil of Isis… the interior of the main facade. From
the inside the three huge windows tell an ancient
story of creation, not just the simple genesis myth,
but an entire cosmology.
Anna said, “Look’s heliocentric to me.”
I agreed, “Yeah, especially when the sun
appears in the center of the window.”
Obviously Dolphin wanted us to observe these
things before our rendezvous. Anna said she could
feel him watching us. So what? He’s a cautious guy.
I like caution in a mysticatlarge. We were having a
great time soaking in the shadows and flickers of
light. The maze was duplicated in Saint Giles
cathedral in San Francisco, but this is the original
maze and the windows are the original windows. If
Dolphin didn’t show up we could stand here for ten
more years filling up on the tellurium energies.
The Tithe Barn forced a silence on us. The
mysts of nightfall carried the smell of antique hay
into our nostrils. The smells of mutton boiling in
basil and garlic went well with the occasional
gleeful yelp we could hear as children came in for
supper. The noisy shuffle of homeless travelers,
tinkers and wandering souls had subsided for the
time being, but tourists were flooding in. New
groups landed as our particular pod of Japanese
tourists drove away. A few sojourners were the last
in for supper in the whole town, and of these we
were the last.
We dragged into the lobby with an avid desire
to be warm again. I volunteered to solve the
problem as Anna signed on for tea and toddled up to
our room. I brought the dying embers in the small
lobby fire grate back to life with the bellows, like an
alchemist at a forge—a cold night lay ahead. The
second longest night of the year grew closer.
Anna scurried upstairs to read Camus by candle
light as I continued my chores. “Clever me.” I
jested. I removed the bed warmer above the
mantel—one of those copper pan affairs with a long
pole and filled it with coals.
The few guests still around must have thought it
odd that I would be warming the bed at six o’ clock
in the evening since they were not planning to hit
the hay until they got good and drunk or until the
bar closed. The booze du jour was cherry schnapps,
mulled with cloves—the famed stirrup cup of the
now antiquated fox and hound set.
The wind demons were well under
way—sufficient to alert me to the medical fact that
the nerves in an uncovered nape can be permanently
frozen.
I must have looked a sight—a Yank footing
stairs almost as old as the nearby cathedral, juggling
a long pole with hot coals in a pan, a dire invention
that, if spilled, could ignite the whole damned
building.
The warm carafe of Cherry Herring under my
armpit didn’t help by balance. Luckily the
unreinforced door didn’t leave its hinges as I blasted
through. Anna slipped into a nightgown and a heavy
sweater as she waited dutifully for the return of her
nocturnal heat hunter. I decided to make a theater
out of it, “At last Salamander returns with the
sacred fire… swoooosh!”
She applauded, but quickly jumped to her feet to
fetch two glasses from the tiny marble side board.
We drank those two down without a word. I felt
goofy standing there in highway boots and a coat
holding this hot copper pan.
Anna gave me orders, “Get to work you laggard,
get that pole into this bed!” She pointed laughingly
at the pillows and made animated gestures with her
manicured index finger. I obliged, inserting the pan
under the edge of the lace coverlet. I noticed it was
real lace, marked Produit du Brugge, nice but not
really something one pays much attention to in the
dead of Winter. I continued probing for an ideal
layer between the cotton bottom sheet and the
duvee. At last the royal couch was ready. I placed
the slightly warm skillet back on its perch and
proceeded toward the bed, but Anna beat me to it. I
stripped down to the long thermals and timidly
joined her. We did not venture out again that bleak
night
In the morning tea and honey and Croissants
were the first orders of business, but how to get hot
water? No problem Anna made sure the thermos
was filled from the kettle downstairs. I didn’t see
her do it, but the evidence seemed clear. Additional
butter and a jellied brioche appeared courtesy of the
mysterious KileyO’Kiley.
We dressed hurriedly and scurried out, first to
get our bearings by rotating two or three times, and
then, with conviction and the sun at our backs we
made a beeline to the cathedral, sniffing the baked
goods as we ran, as if the smells would be sufficient
for breakfast this day. Dolphin would meet us soon
and then we would probably have a big breakfast.
We crossed the main plaza and gawked at the
south portico. The winter sun had painted the facade
golden, just at it had done every year since 1150.
We noted that the pillar beneath the feet of
Melchizedek portrayed a scene of the Knights
Templars bringing the Ark of the Covenant to
Chartres. The carving revealed Aaron’s Rod, the
Cup of Passover filled with manna (the Grail I
guess) and certain unidentified scrolls wrapped in a
strange looking linen drape, perhaps the shroud of
Turin. “Hmmm.” Anna mused, I wonder if these are
the three treasures of Chartres?”
“Sure, pick any three.” I answered sarcastically.
“I wonder if the Ark of the Covenant is buried
here?” Anna took three digital shots of the pillar.
We arrived 09:00, just as the golden light turned
pale blue, just as the true direct light of day began to
move through the reflected light of the cloud
reflected sunrise, just as the morning light began to
define the shadows on the masonry along the east
side. The elation one feels while witnessing the
changing of light from dark to bright in this
particular spot, is unsurpassed in all of the worlds
great thrills.
A clutch of cleaning ladies and a few of the
Christian faithful drifted in, heads and eyes cocked
downward, ready for duty. The light began to
penetrate the inner darkness through dozens of
perfectly placed windows—the prismatic winter
light, the light of rejuvenation. We both felt alive
again, ready to run. We were warming to the chill of
winter Hope songs rang out as we danced.
The floor we walked on yesterday was now
devoid of chairs and other encumbrances. It was as
if the temple was being made ready for a special
ritual, not the mass, but a secondary stage in our
hermetic initiation. We noted the stones changed
colors beneath our feet as we walked. I turned to
Anna and said, “Yes, of course, the labyrinth. It’s
usually covered with carpets and chairs.”
She smiled, looked down and grabbed me by the
shoulder. “Come on, let’s walk it, like a hopscotch
game.”
“Nah, it’d be irreverent.”
“No it won’t silly, that’s why they put it here a
thousand years ago, Come on!”
There was no sign of Dolphin so, handinhand,
and filled with childlike abandon, we began
traversing the spiral labyrinth, a structure about the
size of the great rose window in the main wall.
Bands of pastel color projected on our faces as
we danced. The effect was hypnotic. We forgot why
we were there in the first place. Obviously the
similarity in the diameter of the great window,
which depicted a roughly heliocentric model of the
creation of the universe, and the diameter of the
labyrinth, was no coincidence. The small rose
window of the south portico acted as a refractory
lens on this particular day. The filtered light struck
the labyrinth and our faces as the sunlight grew
more intense. We were traversing a spiral path
through the color spectrum, slicing through every
known hue, but we were also traversing a model of
the universe projected on the floor. We were acting
out the motions of the earth in relation to the spin of
the solar system and the sun was in the center.
Obviously we were learning the same lesson taught
to thousands of pilgrims before us, the earth spins
and revolves at the same time. The moon and the
sun follow the same path in the sky and the sun
resides in the center. We tried to hold steady as our
squeaky shoes felt for the smoothed edge of the
next pavement stone, but it was no use, we were
adrift now, making our way into a new form of
enlightenment—entering the past and the future at
the same time. Anna giggled, I let out a roar.
Twenty lower worldly minutes later we arrived
at the middle—the half way point. We came close
once, but the path brought us almost back to our
start point and led us on to a second path. That’s
when we discovered there are two spirals in
Chartres maze.
As we danced away from the center circle the
light tricks grew more fascinating. We could see
ancient faces in the stone. Now we moved away
from the light, precisely as the earth moved outside.
Every Each step linked with a corresponding
celestial activity, we were figuratively and literally,
hopscotching our way through the cosmos.
At last we came toetotoe with the center stone.
A circle about four foot in diameter cut from a
single block, stands at the center of the labyrinth. If
a golden disc were placed on that spot the face of
Mithras might be seen projected in it, because it
exactly lined up with the center circle in the great
window, but alas all that remained at the center of
the labyrinth was the stone and a curious brass peg.
Our guide book said only that the peg is all that
remains of a jeweled plaque inscribed in Latin. We
both wondered what the inscription could have
been.
“Jerusalemae Liberati!”
The voice came to us direct and clear. It was
aimed at us. The accent was unmistakably
American. Our quick pivot was the last step in our
spiral dance.
A tall man with slicked back dark hair
approached us waving in a generous manner.
“It means you have reached Jerusalem, you have
seen the entire secret of this temple and you are
initiated.”
The man was dressed in an expensive silk suit,
which seemed almost like a uniform, his eyes
focused on us as if to beam more light at us. I noted
the antique NeXt computer pin and knew
immediately it was. “Dolphin?”
“Yes, I am David Dolphin. Pleased to make
your acquaintance… finally.”
“We forgot about you for the moment.”
“I know, I watched you traverse the maze. I love
to see people discover the connection between the
window and the maze.”
Dolphin extended his right hand with two
fingers held slightly apart. I instinctively offered
mine, Anna did the same. Both of us were studying
him intensely, our bull shit scanners switched on the
minute we saw him. No BS reading as yet. We both
felt his fingers touch the back of our wrists as we
took his hand—a secret sign, perhaps the bite of a
snake. In any case it was a good feeling. All of the
vibes were solid healthy and moral. There was
nothing wrong with Dolphin. The man who was
standing in front of us was not the mean biker who
killed ten officers on servobikes out on Highway
One. This Dolphin was not the raging
manicdepressive the press painted for us. I guess the
bad press is the same for Dolphin as it is for my dog
Sluggo. No this was a major dude, clean and
compassionate.
Journal Entry
Chartres
Winter Solstice
I quote now from the audio and written record I
made of our historical meeting:
Dolphin is from no particular race. He stands six
foot tall, wears his hair in a regal side sweep pulled
back to a pony tail. No beard. His clothes are silk,
judging from the sheen. His tunic and pants are
black as coal, save for the white and red piping
sewn to the edges of the cuffs and collar tips. A
small medallion, inscribed with a single comlex
icon, pendulates from a Florentine gold chain.
Black Chinese slippers, with rubber soles, adorn his
feet. A small, but brilliant, whitecape diamond
sparkles out from the slate blue slice of Lapis Lazuli
on the medallion. As he spoke we could see the
oceanic glint of an emerald embedded in a plain
gold ring on the second finger of his right hand,
again no bigger or smaller than one carat, but
perfect.He seemed to be wealthy, yet his apperanace
gave no trace of imposing wealth.All of the jewels I
describe were cleverly hidden by the folds in his
tunic and modestly displayed.
He carries himself well, like a man whoi went to
a chiropractor every day, and his deamenor puts us
immediately at ease. The quarrelsome questions we
stored up simply couldn’t be generated in the center
of Chartres maze on the Winter Solstice. TheApple
pin was something he put on just for us. Just for a
joke to remind us all of the old Silicon Valley.
“I see in your eyes a sense of trust and duty. I
shall answer all of your questions as we go along,
We have an eternity.”
His optimism was infectious. He smiled at Anna
and bid us both be seated on the slender stick chairs
that straddle the stones along the sides of the maze.
I was embarrassed at first, but then realized there
was hardly anybody around anyway. Why should
there be? It was a Thursday, not a Sunday. For the
most part people only came to Chartres to worship
on Sunday.
A long silence followed. The stones were cold
and yet alive. We could feel the pulse of the
cathedral through our feet, obviously it is a living
thing. Dolphin held out his hand again. This time he
was offering us something, a small glass vial.
“Here take this, use it sparingly. The small
nugget you see in the vial is the size of a chickpea
or mustard seed—you can cure a million souls with
it. Place it under your tongue when you wish to find
wisdom and it will kill your pain. Don’t worry it is
not a drug.”
We looked at each other in disbelief, the gaunt
mystic continued,
“Have no fear it was given to me by my master
for just such occasions. I give to you half of my half
which is half of my masters half, yet it is always an
entire portion.”
The pea sized orb looked exactly like a large
gold plated marijuana seed, irregular and seemingly
ready to sprout. Anna wasted no time. She placed
the pea beneath her tongue and closed her eyes to
meditate. Ten minutes went by before she moved
and when she did she spit the pea into her hand and
offered it to me, nodding her head as an affirmation
that it was good. I took the reddish golden seed
from her hand and placed it under my tongue.
Nothing happened at first, but I could feel Dolphin
watching us intently—bathing us in a protective
force field of some kind. This man was very
charismatic, very calming. I removed the medicine
seed and placed it back in the bottle, offering it back
to Dolphin, but he gestured thatit was ours to keep.
He took the vial from my fingers and placed it in
my left shirt pocket, over my heart and my money
vest. He laughed when he saw the Pirate symbol
peering through the sheer linen chemise. The vial
radiated warmth.
Anna and I went into a meditative trance for a
few minutes while Dolphin watched over us. When
we opened our eyes it was as if we were inside a
magnificent kaleidoscope and as we rose to walk
the maze again we noted our bodies crossing
through a collimated beam—the spirit of Christmas
eve. Traversing the external facade and observing
the sculptures outside the cathedral was the first
stage of our initiation, the maze was the second
stage, but we had no idea what or where the third
stage might be. The hermetic theory of the creation
of the cosmos, translated into light, was projected
onto us through the aperture of the greatest rose
window in the world, but that wasn’t enough, there
is another stage and judging from Dolphin’s
demeanor we were about to go through it. The
stones beneath our feet acted as a screen for the
camera and the light was intense enough to cast our
bodies as shadows across the floor of the cathedral.
Dolphin stood radiant in the center of the maze.
Rows of myrrh candles flickered in the distant
corridors.
Finally he spoke at length:
Thanks for seeking me out in this high place.
Surrounding us you see the secrets of alchemy. I
know you seek the answers in computers as do I and
it is up to our generation to translate the old into the
new, to transform the dull into the shinning.
Like the alchemists turning lead into gold the
modern computer generates power and wealth from
thin air, or at least that is the illusion. In truth the
wealth and power come, as always from hard work.
Big computers generate wealth for big shots while
small computers generate wealth for the restofus.
Everything is in scale. When the big shots get too
powerful, too centralized, the small fry network
together to cut them down to size. Unfortunately the
noncomputer folks sit around and shrink in fear or
run away to the desert or the forest to become
hermits, leaving the majority of the work to us, but
that is to be expected. Technology is with us, it will
always be with us and it has always been with us.
Some people are uncomfortable with it because they
hold a false image of the past as being paradisiacal
and free of technology, but tool use has always been
a human trait. We were raised to feel superior to
animals but we’re not. I’ve seen a horse pick up a
stick in its mouth to scratch its back. Chimpanzees
use straws to pick up ants and sea otters, the few
that remain, use stones to crack crab and sea urchin.
Admittedly there is scant variation in the way
chimps use the tools, obviously they are limited, but
they do use tools and so technology extends to
them. Why then should any human being want to
avoid tool use? And why do some humans place
themselves above the animals? Obviously we are all
tool users and we are all animals. Computers are
tools. The computer doesn’t make mistakes, the
programmer does. A Paleolithic hunter, bashing a
piece of flint, makes the mistake. The flint does not
make the mistake.
We were enjoying being bathed in the light. I
asked a question hoping to create a bond between
the three of us, “How do you interpret the Jesse
Window, is it based on the Tree of Life?”
It is based on the Secrets of Melchizedek, the
scrolls handed over to Abraham in antiquity, but
that also reflects the meaning of the Sepiroth.
Anna looked closely at the window, “One of the
sequences shows a man in a green tunic being
harassed by the ignorant town folks. I wonder if this
really happened, we know the church militant
condemned the Hermetic philosophy and we know
the cathedral was built by Hermetic architects, so is
this cathedral the revenge of Hermes?”
The man standing before us could not have been
the same man described by his enemies as a “fat old
hippie” and a “burned out druggie.” No, here was a
young supple and gentle man with a calm and
experienced soul. If he was a bad guy it didn’t show
and we were both looking hard into his eyes as he
spoke:
In the midst of the main edifice, in a tympanum
above the central portico, a figure, said to be
Hermes disguised as Christ, can be seen emerging
from a Vesica Pisces, the oval shape formed by two
overlapping rings, but in the winter light at Angelus
the crossed circles clearly outline the birth canal of
the Great Mother.”
Suddenly the cathedral made perfect sense to
me. I asked, “Are you saying this is a pagan
temple?”
“No. It represents a form of Christianity that
was transitional when the cathedral was built. The
entrance shows Christ in rebirth, which is what this
temple honestly represents. We can make out the
faded images of the angelic hosts and the four
cardinal beasts from the traditional zo_diac. But this
sacred place does represent rebirth and it is directly
related to the spiritual quests known in antiquity.
I saw a similarity between Chartres and
Newgrange... the light beam represents the essence
of the god and goddess, a merger of icons from the
Ice Age with those of Christianity.
The books of the New Testament are here
represented—the Lion of Saint Mark is Leo, the
Eagle or Aquilla is Scorpio, the angel is Matthew,
and the winged Goat is Saint Luke. Clearly the
builders were placing Christ in the center of the
entire external struc_ture, but the structure itself
was the Great mother and the inner chambers made
up the womb of the Great Mother, like at
Newgrange and at Altamira. Furthermore the form
of Christianity depicted here was a Neoplatonic
heresy—this was not a crucified savior, but one
being reborn.”
We walked in a daze as he pointed to the
various elements in the window and to the positions
of the lightbeams as they entered at various times of
the year.
“It is likely the architects were heliocentric
since this Christos, emerging from the geometric
womb, is the axis for the entire floor plan. Here
Christ is Apollo around which revolves the entire
cathedral. Obviously the builders in_tended us to
see the structure as a temple to Hermes and
heliocentrism, not to Christ per se, but to the
understanding of the way the universe works. That
heliocentrism wasn’t announced until Copernicus
and Bruno makes little differ_ence. Whoever built
this temple had an idea that the sun stood at the
center of the entire system.”
You’d think we would be holding a solemn
ritual, but we were laughing. Who says laughing
can’t be serious? I wanted to hear more and get to
know him better, he wasn’t giving us the
information we needed, not at this point at least so I
suggested we go to a cafe for some espresso, like
the Trieste in North Beach. Dolphin smiled
knowingly.
“Good Idea. The beam has finished for the time
being. It will be back tomorrow evening.”
The center of the maze was strangely warm
even though the winter winds whistled in the
rafters. Dolphin stood holding his arms apart to
encircle us. I could tell he was pleased with us. I
was sure I was going to hear about my tormentors,
but not here. Anna asked an important question,
“…but Amiens is a long way. Shall we go
together?”
“Certainly… we can leave in the morning…”
Blamm!
Dolphin’s reply was interrupted by two loud
reports which continued to ricochet in the rafters. I
looked up turning just in time to see Anna’s face
splattered with blood, Dolphin’s blood. Our small
circle shattered as we fell to the floor. Dolphin fell
face down, his arms out as if he was a neophyte
priest taking his final vows at the altar. His hands
moved inward to grasp his chest. He was not dead,
silent, but not dead. The lightbeam was fading now,
the apparent position of the sun was shifting to the
south portico, but enough could be seen of his eyes
to realize he was in mortal pain. Anna knelt as if in
prayer. We both felt fear for our own lives and yet
our feet remained glued to the pavement stones.
Blamm!!
Another shot rang out. Someone with an
oldfashioned scoped rifle seemed to be perched on
the mezzanine behind the fifteenth century organ.
The few onlookers fled to safety. I pulled the
Kruger from its holster and began aiming it at the
darkness. Another shot rang out, it too missed, but I
noted the flash. My first shot was aimed at the flash.
I heard the bullet thud in the distance. I could have
sprayed ten rounds in rapid fire, but I wasn’t taking
any chances.
The snipers fourth round ricocheted from a
different vantage point the noise was high and
whiney like a mosquito flying by, but zingier.
Obviously the sniper was looking for a finishing
shot. I screamed out… “He’s dead you asshole, he’s
dead!” I noticed a hulking shadow moving away
from us, at high speed. The footsteps faded into the
echoing apse, toward the darkest crypts. I took off
running toward them as fast as my nerves would let
me. Another shot rang out, chipping bits of marble
off the pillar next to Anna. Whoever fired knew
how to stop me. The last shot was a simple
reminder to stay put. Dolphin needed first aid
immediately.
I squeezed off two more quick shots with no
hope of hitting anything.The scurry of footsteps and
the sharp snap of a slamming door told me my shots
had done some good.
With our combined strength Anna and I
managed to drag Dolphin to relative safety behind a
column. A trail of blood oozing from his wound
traced our steps. Somebody wanted Dolphin dead
and he didn’t mind killing us or ten tourists to get
the job done.
Dolphin moaned once, but clenched his teeth,
his breath rough and panting.
“I’m the target not you, He wants Excalibur to
go on and on. My old journals, where are they?”
“In a file cabinet and a big box in our
basement.” I answered.
“Well, it’s all in there, everything jumbled, but
you can figure it out.”
He paused to hyperventilate, coaxing a few
more minutes from his wound. We couldn’t stop the
bleeding. I applied pressure to the arterial points,
but the exit wound was too jagged. Anna
compressed her sweater against his chest as he
spoke again.
“We were created to discover tools that will
help us discover God. Find the Star Nursery. Stop
Excalibur if you can.”
Dolphin gestured to me to come
closer—obviously to weak to shout, when I
complied I thought I heard him mutter two words,
“Stop Sage...get Tervik.”
but it wasn’t clear.
I stood on the edge of panic. Anna trembled
next to me. Spectators and the devout were running
out of the cathedral in droves. This bastard could
have killed ten people with ricochets. Sorrow
replaced danger as the life ebbed away from
Dolphin. Later inspection of one of the shell casings
proved that the rifle was a rechambered Bruno
Mauser, probably the model with the Schnable grip
and the set triggers. This was originally chambered
for 22. Swift, but, judging from the wind noise, it
came at us at 5000 feet per second. It must have
been a .223 necked down to .17 calibre. This
explains the huge exit wound. The bullet is very
tiny. It goes so fast the rib cage just explodes
through the back.
David Dolphin lay gasping at the edge of the
labyrinth. Anna continued next to Dolphin holding
his wrist as if to feel for a pulse however faint. I
could hear her sobs as I looked around the
cathedral. We had to get him to an aid station stat.
Pink and teal rays faded from the Tree of Jesse
window lightening the pathway of the parish priest
as he crawled across the floor from the
confessionals toward the center of the maze.
Hundreds of votive candles shimmered in the niche
of the Black Virgin. Dolphin jerked as he spoke his
penultimate words:
The secrets are carved in the ancient stones.
He clasped his gold medallion and fingered the
emerald in its diamond and sapphire setting. His
countenance seemed serene, but both of us knew he
was dying. He looked at me directly and said:
“Iachos.”
He next turned his head to gaze into Anna’s
hazel eyes as he handed her the medallion. I
distinctly heard him say,
“Soma.”
as he released his grip on her arm.
The crisis team, called by the priest, consisted of
two custodians with a blanket stretched over a
length of ladder. This would be Dolphins raft across
the Styx. He was not Roman Catholic, but he was
ferried away by a group of men who dressed like
priests in black hassocks with red and white piping.
I watched Anna’s eyes following the macabre
scene. We had no idea what would happen to
Dolphin and we sadly presumed he was dead or
about to die. The priest, displaying a ring similar to
Dolphin’s, assured us he would be well cared for.
The attendant priest spoke in a whisper as we
gathered our cameras and belongings, “You had
better be off to Ameins, if you linger here you will
be drawn into a tribunal and you may even be
detained for questioning. Best leave now with the
tourists.” It may not hold any significance, but the
silk scarf he used to wipe Dolphin’s blood from the
center stone was emerald green. I sensed Dolphin
was with friends.
We wondered how he knew we were going to
Ameins, we weren’t even sure ourselves, “Dolphin
told us to go to Ameins, but how did the priest
know that?” I asked.
Anna shook her head and drew back her tears as
we watched the makeshift liter moving across the
courtyard, “I don’t know, but it’s damned good
advice... here comes the local police.”
A black Citroen Impala with dark windows
lurched toward the priest and the acolytes bearing
Dolphin to the hospice, almost running them down
as it sped away. I felt like taking a shot right there
in the courtyard, but restrained myself. “There will
be another day you bastards.” I shouted.
“Tervik’s handiwork I suspect.” Anna
convulsed with rage as we scurried back to the
Tithe Barn. We were on our way to the
Northeastern road and Amiens within the hour.
Amiens
Amiens cathedral is arguably the strangest of all
Gothic buildings. We went there blindly following
Dolphin’s final instructions, but also because it was
on the way to the Bay of Biscay and the ancient
monuments near Morbihan on Brittany’s Qibberon
Peninsula. The all night twitch ride took its’ toll on
bones and flesh even in the Range Rover—bad gas
clogged every piston stroke.
We planned to arrive at Amiens at dawn, but the
chill from the winds sweeping down from the
Pyrenees could freeze the butt off a fire ant. We
would be lucky to arrive at all. Our radio worked
surprising well, but we were hard pressed for
stations with any power—only the main news in
French from Paris and no sign of a newspaper.
We listened to digitized Piaff broadcasts on
Mondial Une. Anna hated Piaff’s voice. I loved it
and attempted to describe the Piaff phenomenon.
“No matter what happens, no matter how bad the
economy gets, the French will serve up Piaff until
the end of time.”
The shock of Dolphin’s death was allprevailing.
The only thing that lit up our lives was the glow
from the digital instrument panel. Piaff’s vibrato set
the tone for our rough forward motion, comfortable
as we were in our plush leather seats. I was wrapped
up in a sheepskin coat—my trademark on
expeditions. Anna wore oilskins over a sweater.
Tonight she was wrapping her hair in one of her
many Hermes scarves, this one, the horse and coach
pattern in turquoise.
Time to appraise the situation. Dolphin was
dead, a sniper was on the prowl probably not after
us, but then maybe he or she didn’t care about us, or
maybe we were targeted for a different hit at a
different site, five years down the road. We were
headed for Amiens only because Dolphin told us
another secret was on display there. He didn’t say
buried there, he specifically said “on display” like
you could see it easily as if it were hidden in plain
view.
Like most cathedral towns the cathedral was the
only landmark we could make out without a map, it
looms at you from a distance, but unlike Chartres,
which is located in the center of a vast fertile
plateau, Amiens is built on a cliff over looking a
complex series of ancient waterways and canals.
Amiens was the beacon which brought the farm
goods to town and the fish and scallops from the
bay of Biscay. Canal boats still ply these slow
moving waterways, built thousands of years ago by
forgotten geniuses.
Amiens can be seen jutting from the skyline
when approached from the south. Like Chartres it
towers over the environment, reminding each
peasant for the past one thousand years, including
us, that God’s work is more important than ours.
At night the candle lit cathedral can be seen
flickering, an eerie building, more impressive in its
singularity that any modern skyscraper. Nothing can
describe the glow that is given off by a Gothic
cathedral against a moonless sky. And no one can
describe the mix of joy and pain one feels when
tracing out the mysteries for the first time.
The night we arrived the clouds obscured the
stars, but they were high enough to reveal the
twisted spires and buttresses of Amiens, a temple to
Christ and to paganism, but not to Christianity, not
to the politics of the church, only to the spirit of
place and the soul of the human race. We knew we
were supposed to be here. It was our chosen
mission. We were warriors on the march, making
tribute to the old gods and Goddess. Maybe, in
some odd way, trying to avenge Dolphin’s death. I
thought he was one of the good guys all along.
Anna held me as tight and as often as possible
as we unloaded our baggage from the ‘boot’ and
rack. I was trembling, worried Anna would find out
what a coward I am. The shadows of the cathedral
beat on our backs.
The pension Etoile was clean and close to the
cathedral. Parking was easy as almost no one used a
car. As in Chartres hulks of humans drifted by in
the dark, lit only by a crescent moon, one wrinkled
and shawlwrapped woman took the initiative and
begged us to buy three huge pears, symbols of the
Anjou dynasty.
The room was much like the loft we took at
Chartres, less comfortable, smaller, but fatigue was
setting in, no time to be picky. One bit of good
news made itself apparent as soon as we opened the
door—the room was possessed of a huge four poster
double bed. Anna flopped on it, letting out
oooohhhs and AAAhhs like a dog rolling on a
Persian rug. Unfortunately the thing was as creaky
as it was antique and as cold as a witch’s tit on
Good Friday.
We made fitful, obligatory, love that night,
making sure each was twanged enough to reverse,
at least some of the polarized paranoia that swept
over us. It’s not everyday you come seven thousand
miles, to witness an assassination.
Buttered rolls sufficed for breakfast. Nothing
intimate was said as I recall. Both of us were on our
way downstairs at the crack of dawn. A short walk
took us to the great porch of Amiens. We found, as
predicted, a series of zodiac signs and alchemical
markings carved in limestone. Each sign was
housed within a quatrefoil pattern about waist high.
Anna said, “Look you have to kneel to really see the
secret markings.”
I nodded in agreement, “Yes, most people will
simply walk by and ignore the signs or look upon
them as decorations, but if you kneel before each
quatrefoil you will be…”
Anna cut me off… “Stompeeeeded.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant. She was always a
full step ahead of me, “What does that mean?”
Her answer was instructive, “Oh, simply that
you wouldn’t want to be kneeling around on this
porch during normal mass. You would be trampled
by the herds passing though.”
“Not anymore, the place is deserted most of the
time.”
“Yes, but when this porch was built you can bet
there were mobs here everyday.”
“Hmmm, I’ll bet you’re right.”
“Sure, how long could you gaze at any one of
these icons without arousing attention. After all the
icons are pagan zodiac symbols. The only time one
could really meditate on the stained glass was when
the church was closed, at sunrise on Winter
Solstice—only an esoteric group would be allowed
in, but out here on the porch one could view the
symbols by candlelight or in the wee hours of the
day.”
“Right, not very Christian.”
“Look at Pisces.”
I traipsed around until I found Pisces. “OK here
it is, two salmon swimming upstream intertwined
with a string tangled in a dead tree.”
“Exactly. Do you see anything strange about
that?”
I had to confess I was stumped. “Nope, nothing
apart from a kind of morbidity.”
Anna responded quickly, “That’s my point.
There is nothing strange about it except the
message, which is one of futility and struggle, but
shouldn’t there be something special about it?”
I was a bit anxious, the air was cold, people
were milling about looking at the well dressed
Americans arguing on their turf. Although we didn’t
mention it we both had a sense that the shooter
might be stalking us. “OK, OK what’s the point?”
Anna smiled beatifically, Look Mr. dingdong
here’s the real deal.” She pressed my hand against
the stone as she spoke, “The early Christians had a
big problem. They wanted to create a new religious
order out of the old, but they had to walk a thin line.
In order to superimpose Christ on the old religion
they had sell it as an upgrade. Christ had to be
Tamuuz or Adonis and the Virgin had to be
Persephone.”
Two emaciated hunting dogs ran up on the
porch playfully smelled our tunics then, ran on
about their business. I made the comment, “There
go Castor and Pollux now.”
Anna paused briefly then went on with her
story, “He was from Nazareth, which we now know
was a weird town dominated by a massive
Dionysian sect—recent digs at Ephisis have proven
this without a doubt. People there spoke Hebrew
and Greek, and probably Aramaic, but they soon
became part of a sweeping Neoplatonic reform
movement especially during the childhood of Jesus.
Clearly he was touched by the spectacle of the corn
and wheat festivals and the mystery parades that
went on in the town streets.
I had heard of this theory, “I read somewhere
that he was an actual initiate of the mysteries of
Eleusis when he was a young man.”
Anna frowned, “Yes I’ve heard that one too, It’s
speculative, but we do know that in the second and
third century after Christ a vast neopagan
movement swept across Western Europe.”
“The old Celtic territories?”
“Yes, Celts and the remnant Roman soldiers
retired as farmers.”
This was unthinkable to the church fathers
mainly because the Neoplatonic and pagan
movement liberated women and championed equal
participation for all races and creeds.”
“Oh you mean a precursor of modern
democracy.”
“Almost, it faded out just before the Crusades
because the patriarchs began shifting dates around
in an attempt to wipe out the old feminist cults,
which were dubbed heresies of course.”
I was dumfounded, “You mean all of these
years we’ve been worshipping the wrong date?”
“That’s right, and most of the time we’re out of
natural harmony.”
“Which leads to disease, headaches and
confusion?”
“True, but it also lead to a kind of spiritual
sickness. The grand myth of redemption through
atonement, which is pagan and probably in keeping
with a universal harmony, was replaced by a belief
in a physical resurrection.”
“And physical TIME.” I added.
“Yes, and no. The Christian cults that survived
seem to be the branches that worshipped time as a
an ephemera; as the Holy Ghost or time giest, viz a
vi (Ger.) Zietgiest. The Celts were big on the
Dagda, their own peculiar time ghost, the historical
keeper of records in the sky and the Vedic
scriptures are full of references to the “akashic
records,” so in some cases the various secret
societies merged into the larger church.”
“True, but the druids were late arrivals. They
landed in Ireland and Wales with the Phoencian tin
miners about 1800 bc bringing with them the laws
of the Brahmana, the Rig Veda and the Bardos.
Thus the Druids became Bards and Vedes, poets
and seers, but there was an earlier religion,
something from the Neolithic age.”
A mild rain began to moisten the ancient stones
beneath our feet. “I just have one question.”
Anna looked at me directly, hoping I would
continue to follow her rap. “And what would that
be?” She asked.
“I want to know what the connection is to
Dolphin?”
“Okay, fair cop... here’s the deal. The Celts,
prior to the arrival of the Druids in the Copper Age,
practiced an Ice Age religion. They were essentially
animists and totemists, very similar to or Native
Americans. Their relationship to the sea and tides
and the bountiful nature of the land, allowed their
ancestors to develop astronomy, musical notation
and a form of writing, as well as animal husbandry
and agriculture, in complete isolation from the
protoabylonian Fertile Crescent.”
“Okay, but what makes them so special?”
“Unfortunately this all happened about 2000
years before the so called, “Dawn of Western
Civilization.”
“So you mean nobody wants to believe that the
Neolithic Celts developed agriculture and
astronomy and had a form of writing in isolation
2000 years before the pyramids were built?”
“Anna threw her head back and laughed
heartily, “Would you have believed such a thing
two years ago?” She asked.
“No, no probably not, but my entire frame of
reference is shaky now. I guess I’ll believe
anything.”
“Aye, so now you know how the early
Christians made their converts... they got them to a
state of disbelief and then dazzled them with a
promise of paradise.”
“So you’re saying history, as we know it, is
completely bogus?”
Anna shot back at me pretty fast, “No, not all of
it, just certain important underpinnings. If you start
at around 2000 bc you probably won’t get any
arguments, but if you calibrate and carbon date the
inventions and stack them on a straight historical
line you’ll see that the people who built Newgrange
in Ireland where at least 2000 years ahead, and
possibly even heliocentric.
“Oh, Oh, that means a lot of people are living in
a kind of wasted dream.”
“Your the shrink.” Anna smirked, what do you
think?”
“I think a lot of head cases could be reversed if
we could get them back into synchronization with
nature.”
That’s my point entirely, and Dolphins.”
“Now wait a minute how do you know Dolphin
was into rewriting history?”
“Because alchemy is an alternative form of
history; because Dolphin’s black and red robes are
linked to the alternative Catharist martyrs; because
everything Dolphin ever did—including degrade
himself, including organizing an assault on Mt.
Shasta—was an alternative thing.”
I traced the rough sooty textures of the carvings
surrounding the front facade at Amiens. “So
Dolphin died as a martyr to the old religion.”
“He wasn’t alone. Tens of thousands of wise
women from every village in France and England,
even the Salem witches in America, died for their
belief that the old religion was healthy and natural.”
“Oh I see, the idea that a deified invisible force
watches over you in an unjudgemental manner, a
derivative of the gynocratic cults of the Ice Ages, is
diametrically opposed to the Mosaic monotheme
who judges you utterly.”
“Very close.” Anna moved away from a group
of tourists who were snapping pictures of
everything we touched while trying to eavesdrop on
our conversation. “The Celtic idea of living life in a
careful manner implies that you will suffer the
consequences at the hands of mother nature and
Bolg the thunderer (coequal heterosexual deity
forces) prevailed for twentythousand years, but,
after Christianity took over, it gave way to
misogynistic thinking”
“You mean women were hated?”
“Yes and demoted in cultural status worldwide.”
“In other words they had the vote and then it
was taken away.”
“You could say that.”
“So, when pagans were converted to
Christianity Bolg the thunderer, also known as Dis
Pater, Thor, or Zeus, staid on the heavenly throne,
but Diana and the Great Mother of the Ice Ages got
left behind?”
‘Right again Gridley.” Anna slowed her pace.
“Like the Saffardic Jews of Seville who were forced
to convert 5000 years later, the wealthier families
often took on a dual religion. A great many families
were forced to convert, but they often kept two
altars.”
“Okay, so Dolphin and his gang were aware of
this schism and were going about what... rebuilding
the old church?”
“Hardly.” Anna replied shaking her head in
sorrow, “No poor Dolphin didn’t have a clue at
first, that’s probably why he went through so much
suffering and degradation.”
I felt a spasm coming on, not enough calcium, I
had to sit down to rub my legs, “Now, wait a
minute, a lot of people know that for five hundred
years the growing populations of Western Europe
were dominated by the Imperial Roman Empire.
The emperors were simply replaced by a long
succession of popes.”
“Yes, but Dolphin saw something else,
something deeper in that revelation.”
“You mean, when SPQR faded it was replaced
by INRI—the Holy Roman Empire.” The crowds
brushed by as we continued our walk around the
main porch.
“Yes, but once the old religions came back,
once the retired Roman soldiers merged with the
Celts to the west, (between 450 and 580 ad) the
damage was done. The Roman Catholic catechism
was no longer fit for soul searching. Especially in
poor rural communities. In most places the newly
settled farmers continued their old religious
festivities including the exact harmonious
observation of natural planting cycles. The old god
of the Roman army, Mithras, became King Arthur
and the quest for the cup and cauldron of the Dagda
and the other old gods became the quest for the
Holy Grail.
“But there were converts in Northern France?”
“Oh sure, by 700 ad the Franks began to convert
in droves, but the old pagans still hung on in large
pockets, especially in Brittany and in the Dordogne.
Christianity, was only attractive to eager small
minded fanatics seeking rewards for false
testimony. Over the centuries this party line was
pushed by a long succession of shifty salesmen bent
on thrusting the new hodgepodge religion onto the
peasant populace.”
“Wow sounds familiar. Isn’t that what’s
happening now.” I asked.
“Yes, more or less.” Came her reply. “By the
seventh century Christianity had swept Western
Europe and Christ supplanted the old agrarian gods.
But the church fathers took this a step further, and
here lies the corruption—the cryptofascim if you
will—not only did the church tell people ‘when’ to
plant, they also told them ‘what’ to plant, who to
live with, and what crops to export. They introduced
the idea of surplus, a surplus which they exported to
Rome or to other Christian colonies. The local
farmers did not gain direct benefit because the
money was not spent locally.”
“Sort of like KMart eh?”
“Yes and on the same scale.” This process
tended to upset the local balance and offend the
local chieftains and the more prominent families.”
I needed clarification, “So your saying these
cults kept the old religion alive and eventually
incorporated it into the design of the cathedrals.”
“Exactly.” She paused for a bite of Camembert.
“The old families and the subverted chieftain
system never died in the extreme west. Everytime
Christianity faltered the local chieftain or Queen
was always ready to bolster the economy.”
“Wait a minute, this doesn’t make sense. Wasn’t
the Celtic world of the Dark Ages a melting pot of
whacky religions and different pagan gods.”
“That’s what the history books tell us, but the
history books were written by Christians. In fact,
the local practice of paganism, although seemingly
different from place to place, was always based on
natural harmony. Everybody had a sacred well.
Everybody had a scared tree and usually a sacred
cave or mound.”
I stood astounded at the depth of her enquiry.
“So you are saying that the original Christian
religion was a pagan influenced worship of
rebirth?”
“Right again Dox old boy.” Anna nodded,
placing her hand on mine. “That’s what the
Pelagian heresy was all about. Irish monks, people
like Duns Scotus, knew what they were up against,
so they came to the continent to spread wisdom, but
the rest of the church was messed up.”
“Yeah.” I muttered. “I guess rebirth and
resurrection two different things.
“Exactly, Christ does not have a death day and a
birthday he is constantly being reborn like Tamuz of
the Phoencians and Setanta of the ancient Irish.”
“So, in Celtic terms he would be the Green
Knight, the Green Man. Is that why there are so
many dual signs in the zodiac?” I asked.
“Not exactly.” Anna answered. “The original
Christians, the sincere followers of the path of light,
hoped for a transition from pure nature worship to a
new mystery religion, sort of like the Tarot, but
combining Christian elements with Dionysian
constructs, such as the worship of light and dark and
the rebirth of the sun through the agency of the
moon.”
“Oh I see, Alchemy.”
“You got it man, you got it.” Anna laughed.
Now I understood. For the first time in fifty years
somebody was making sense to me. Luckily it was
my wife.
“But something happened on the way to heaven
didn’t it?” I asked.
“Well nobody is sure what happened.” Anna
replied, “But I think the culprit can be traced to the
rise of patriarchy in relatively modern times.”
“What do you mean?”
We moved the quatrefoil depicting Aries on the
same porch.
“It seems like everytime women come into
power all hell breaks loose. I mean Christ became
the Lamb of God because a lamb was always
slaughtered to mark the beginning of the new
agricultural year for both Jews and Bacchites in
Rome, but it is unclear what role women played in
those celebrations. In the mystery religions the lamb
was represented by a ewes uterus, not the lamb
itself.’
“So I see, you’re saying the bleeding of the
lamb could easily be a veiled reference to the
menstrual cycle, rebirth, the painful trial of life
itself... not a crucifixion, but everyday pain and the
struggle for existence.”
“Oh, yeah” She pointed to the stone lamb
holding seven seals in the quatrefoil on the wall.
“Here she’s Aries, associated with Mars, the God of
war, whereas in olden times she was probably
Persephone who was abducted by Pluto.
“But why a lamb?” I asked, sheepishly.
“Because ewes lamb in the spring, it’s birth and
fertility time for everything that sticks to the natural
cycles. The more conservative Christians found it
essential that the lamb be crucified and resurrected
in the spring so that the old Goddess mysteries,
Circe and Demeter for example, which were overtly
sexual in nature, would eventually be displaced and
forgotten.”
Anna took my finger and helped me trace out
the tree of life and the golden fleece in the tree
behind the Ram’s head. “A Patriarchy instead of a
gynocracy.” I said.
“Not when it comes to building cathedrals.
These temples were not designed by Christians,
they may have been built by Christians, but they
were designed by brilliant free thinkers, natural
deists... Odd Fellows .”
I took a long look at the zodiac built in relief
around the porch, each sign carved and placed
carefully at waist level for the eyes of children to
see. “Oh, I get it.” I realized how slow I am in the
winter. “It’s sorta like children’s fairy tales. They
lead us along through various clues and initiations.
It’s like the kids get to see the truth, but the adults
walk right by.”
Anna posed as a reverse Professor Higgins from
Shaw’s Pygmalion. “By George I think he’s got it!”
That is the third stage of the initiation. At this stage
you learn to think for yourself, you are essentially
liberated. Until that time you are swimming
upstream tethered like the salmon in the Pisces
symbol.”
The door opened behind us, reminding us that
we would eventually have to go inside. The keeper
of the fabric wore a waistcoat and beret. He could
have been Basque, from the mountains originally,
but he kept his eye on this Templar church like it
was his own house.
Both of us knew there were clues to alchemy
here. Dolphin mentioned the mysteries in the
cathedrals in that last important notebook, the one
sent from Paris to London. I guess this is what he
meant.
Seeing the cathedrals with a new vision, we
walked down the tiled pavements together. At
Chartres the maze was circular and bumpy, here the
maze was smooth, octagonal marble. Walking the
maze gave me the impression of traversing an
octagonal chessboard. Here was the first lead to the
esoteric Christ—888, the mathematical Christ,
resurrected.
My mystic reverie didn’t last long. Anna was
gone, wandered off to find her next vision, still a
step ahead of me. I noticed that the sunlight was
growing more intense inside this cold temple,
actually the gold and pinkish glow was coming
from the sun’s angle high up on the buttresses. I
found Anna on her knees in the North apse, looking
upward at the huge roseate window. She
acknowledged my presence by tugging on my pant
leg saying, “look up there.” I knelt to see her angle
on things. She was whispering even though no one
was anywhere around. I looked again to be sure
there would be no more snipers. Not a soul. We
were truly alone. Her eyes beckoned me to get with
the program and again she whispered, “Look up
there.”
The light coming through that window was
unbelievably clear, as if the window was a filter.
Officially dawn popped at 8:00 AM—more than a
hour earlier, but the dawn within the cathedral was
far brighter, and far more important to our search.
This was not than the greenish dawn we saw as we
ran out of the pension Etoile, this was a kind of
paradisiacal light show.
I stood from my kneeling position, my legs were
still killing me, but remained transfixed as Anna
continued her vigil. We walked quietly around the
temple noting the unique Mycenaen beehive niche
in cross section above the ambulatory door. What
decoration did it once display? Who was ushered
through it? Was it once a throne for a likeness of
Mithras or Isis?
We ate the remaining two pears and drank the
Pear brandy, said to be the favorite of Marie d’
France. All day we wondered through the shrines
and porticos. We climbed the towers, walked the
octagonal maze, went underground to see the grotto
of the black virgin and generally inhaled the
cathedral in all of its glory. I rested on a bench and
finally fell asleep as two Sisters of Mercy swirled in
and out to service the few parishioners who still
came in for confession. One of the sisters was kind
enough to wake me to ask if I would like a blanket,
“Will you be resting long monsieur?”
“Ah no, I’ll be going. Thank You.”
I looked around the cathedral furtively. The late
afternoon darkness was setting in. Rain began
outside and the ancient lead roof was leaking to
form small puddles at the base of the column
dedicated to Saint Sulpice. The orangish light from
the votive candles lit my way. There was no sniper
here. But there was no Anna either.
Was she abducted? No that’s paranoid.
I raced back to the Etoile to meet her, but when
I got to the room, all I could find was a note written
on Danforth stationery. The words of that note will
always ring in my soul, “Don’t forget we’re
married, buddy!”
I cried for an hour before I found the other note
in the Haliburton case. I was looking for some hash
or some booze or a downer or an upper or a razor
blade, anything to stop the pain. Instead I get this
note scribbled in Anna’s progammeresque hand:
Canyon:
Here’s some money!
Love Aaaaannnnahh
The money stack consisted of Gulden, Gold
Rands, uncountable Euros, a few thousand
Amerbucks and about 20,000 Punt. What a shitty
Christmas... all that bread and nobody to spend it
on.
Anna Returns
Irish Journal Entry
Samhain
I found the Lavarda GT and made my
motorcycle run back over to Ireland about a year
ago, hell it could be two. I’m still here and I’m still
waiting for her. I’ve received a few postcards from
places like Tucumcarie, New Mexico and Brasos,
Tejas. The last one came from Evanston, Illinois,
but that was six months ago. The cards said nothing
except love Aaaaannnnahh. She was just telling me
she was OK and where she was. But they stopped.
Does that mean she’s nowhere, or she’s stuck or
worse? My ulcer wants to bleed, but I’m begging it
to hangon a little longer.
So now we have come full circle. This about
ends the writing I can do from notes. What’s next?
Who the hell knows. Excalibur has done a great
deal of damage. It still lurks, blasting not so random
shots at our great emerald and sapphire planet.
My hair is white and stained and getting longer.
I look like George Bernard Shaw on a bad beard
day, but I don’t care much about my appearance.
Mrs. Dunfrey still brings me tidbits and baked
goods and the pony, who I have named Pegasus,
still wanders through my garden, but I’ve lost track
of stateside time. That’s why I was astonished to see
the mailman coming down my drive that fateful
November morning. The last time he showed his
fairyfaith face around Staleen Cottage was six
months ago when he delivered an invitation to the
poker game at the local parish. Cheerful and chatty
as he was, a real drinker of an Irishman, I couldn’t
help be rude. He wanted to stay for tea and a natter,
but unfortunately for him the letter was from Anna.
Her handwriting was clear and unchanged.
Although it was postmarked from New York three
months earlier, adding a new definition to the term
‘slowboat,’ my spirits soared. Even if it was a kiss
off letter, at least she was alive. It wasn’t
∞∞∞
Jackdaws look like a cross between a magpie
and a ravens. They have the size of a huge crow,
about like the ravens that haunt the Tower of
London, but they have yellow orange beaks and
variegated white markings on their wings. Each
male has a harem. On Wednesday June 15 my
particular Jackdaw family made my day very
special by starting their new summer nest in my
west chimney. The sisters and youngsters and wives
of the family pitterpatter about on the slates
dropping twigs and shiny bits of foil down the sooty
funnel, while the big hen hangs out down the spout
organizing all of this debris into a higliddypigliddy
nest. The drake, a large bird, which I count among
my friends, donated the big agate marble he stole
from a child’s game two or three days earlier. The
‘aggie’ caromed down the double flu missing the
hens and the twig nest to wind up in the brick hob in
my bottom kitchen, the kitchen right next to the
bedroom, the bedroom in the basement with the
ground level windows all around. As it landed Mr.
Jackdaw’s prized Venetian glass sphere rang out
against the cast iron grating—claaannng. And that’s
why I thank him. I cursed him at first for waking me
up, but now I thank him because if old squire
Jackdaw hadn’t pitched his agate down my chimney
I wouldn’t have been awake in time to see Anna’s
legs walking past the windows and up the front
steps.
I’d know that walk anywhere. It was something
about the way her ankle floated in the heel of her
Gecko boots that told me the hips were happy about
something—which meant my celibacy phase was
almost over. Funny what you remember when
you’re writing a book like this. I couldn’t see much
flesh through my basement window, her designer
overalls covered everything, but I wondered if she
might still be wearing those ten denier silk hose
with the gold ankle chain I gave her in Vegas,
Visions of travel ran through my head as I hurried
to find my robe. I sensed we would be going
someplace soon. I sure as hell wasn’t gonna let her
get out of here without me.
She would bang the knocker any second now,
time to slip on my funky poor excuse for slippers.
God what torment trying to get to the upstairs
rooms as fast as possible and yet not seem anxious.
My heart felt as if it were driven by a windmill. The
damned cat was sleeping on the top step, I almost
broke a leg, should I gimpy over it or kick it? No
time, take it in stride. As I crossed through the
watermelon red Victorian room with the big
wornout Sarouk in the middle I thought, “She’ll
want tea.”
The rain was stopped by the dry wind which
only occasionally sails up from North Africa. Imp
says, “OK, look cool. Look out the window. Open
the Georgian shutter and pull back the big drape, be
casual.” I could see the Jeepster taxi belonging to
Joe Rock pulling away down the gravel boreen.
Well hell at least she’s gonna stay a day or two.
Imp says: “Open the door you dumb fucker!”
I comply. Imp is never wrong.
I sez, “Hello babe, where ya been?”
She sez, “Still callin’ me babe eh?”
We almost hugged each other to death. She
swooned. I fell on her. Both of us had weak knees.
We laughed so hard we thought we were going to
pee, but I could feel her exhaustion. It would be my
turn to take care of her. This much I realized in the
first five seconds. Maybe the end to my celibacy
would have to wait a week or two. She seemed
drained.
I played some almost forgotten tunes on the old
boombox. I managed to wire it to a solar battery, an
idea I got from Glowmore Gus. It was the only
electrical thing I had besides a flashlight. The
Eagles at Eighty commemorated the eightieth
birthday of the two surviving members of the once
famous rock group known as The Eagles. I also
played Waitin’ For A Girl Like You, a Foreigner
classic, which I managed to cull from some very
brittle tapes. None of this aroused Anna, at least not
in an obvious way, but it made me feel good.
She didn’t want tea at all, only cocoa and a
warm bed. The rain stopped allowing sunbeams to
shine out like stairways to the clouds. The moss
growing in the cracks between granite blue stone
and lead caulking scented musky when I opened the
Georgian shutters all the way, but Anna slept
soundly waking only to moan a few notes which
sounded like a German matron with a head cold,
“Vaaasser und assburn pleeeaas.”
“Hey no problem.”
Fresh spring water and two really crumbly
willow sap tablets bonked her off to dreamland
again. I made a small dinner salad and some fresh
salmon sandwiches, which she did not eat, but hey,
if I hadn’t made them she would have jumped up
and demanded some. Better safe than sorry. I
watched her tossing and turning then smiling as she
relaxed into the strong arms of Morphos. The
evenings are long around All Souls Day. At ten
o’clock it was still bright enough to read outside.
Anna slept though Mrs. Green Boots who, with
her husband’s blessings, brought us over a leg of
lamb. This baabaa could never produce the
muttonoid stench one smells as it whiffs through the
streets of Dublin or Paris. No, this joint was kissed
with the lips of tenderness. Mrs. Dunfrey also
dropped in for a natter. I guess the people of the
Valley of the Squinting windows have 2015
vision—or else Joe Rock just plain blabbed. Maybe
Anna told Joe she was my wife, but whatever
happened everybody knew about Anna ten minutes
after she arrived on my doorstep, if not before. This
eccentric yank with the grayish beard was suddenly
a celebrity. The two old biddies wouldn’t leave until
I let them peek in on Anna. Once they heard her
snoring and sweating off the jet lag, they were
satisfied. As I showed them out I teared up. Mrs.
Dunfrey saw this and took my hand saying, in her
plain Cork manner, “Why is yuse cryin’ lad?”
“Well, I said, “I’m happy, but I’m sad at the
same time. You see we will probably be leaving
soon, now that she’s finally come home to roost.”
“Mrs. Green Boots, whose Christian name was
Carmel, was quick to assure me, “Don’t chu worry
your fine self, squire Collins, Yanks always come
back.”
That was the first time anyone ever called me
“squire.” Ill never forget their strong bustles
sloshing down the rain soaked boreen, But Carmel
was right Yanks always come back.
Anna travelled light. I hung up her things in the
vintage hickory wardrobe and waited in the
Chippendale chair, stiff backed to be sure, but real
cherry wood. In the process I noticed her airline
tickets and her day book. She arrived on Aer
Ligneous and spent a two day lay over in London.
Her calendar revealed that she went home and hung
out with Gyro for a month or so then struck out for
a bunch of small towns along route 666. I was
curious as hell about her trip. No wonder I hadn’t
heard from her, some of those towns don’t even
have phone lines anymore.
Anna got up once during the night and put on
one of my tattered Egyptian linen shirts left over
from my San Francisco shabby shique shrink days.
It fit her a damn sight better than me. I told her I
was happy to be of assistance. With this she winked
and said “Oh you’ll come in handy in a few days
don’t worry.” She looked outside, saw that it was
finally dark then crashed again. I could see her
energy coming back. The gray pallor around her
gills was being gradually transformed into rosy
pink. Watching over her made me feel great.
In the morning she drank a cup of milk and
barley flavored with nutmeg and honey, a well
known folk remedy for just about everything. She
turned down a shot of rye whisky, the last I had in
the house, but she liked the Waterford crystal I
offered it in. I sipped on it as she snored. The next
day I managed to wake her up gradually by playing
Baby Come Back real soft and low:
Baby come back… any kind of fool can see, I
was wrong and I just can’t live without you.
Luckily it rained hard enough to require a big
fire, which scared out the Jackdaws who had
accelerated their nest building activity on the
assumption that they would inherit the whole place
soon. We toured the farm and took a walk into the
dilapidated village. Two monks from Melifont
[which translates to Honey Fountain] nodded
approval and understood. The word was out now, to
be sure.
We bought tea and scones, porter for the pony
and a small vile of strong poteen for liniment. The
dairy lady sold us butter and we bought berries at
the tin roofed store. The rarely open butchers mart
gave us a bit of lamb. Naturally we waved to the
window squinters as we carted everything home.
Mrs. Dunfrey ran out waving, dying to meet Anna.
We both nodded through the small talk, proud as
punch. The last thing my nursemaid said as we
walked up the stone path to the house was, “Would
ya be leavin’ us soon Mr. Collins? Wee’d ‘ate to see
yuse go.” As if she was speaking for the whole
parish... which she probably was. My saddened look
was all the reply she needed.
Once home we built a fire and cried—lots of
hugs and a few deep kisses. I warmed the oven and
stuck the rack of lamb in with some spuds and
onions and sprigs of fresh mint.
The sun obligingly came out for three hours. We
ate at sunset on the outside porch, on that little
round table left over from a prior tenant. That night
our brother and sister reunion superimposed any
pelvic follies that might flash by.
Anna fell back into sleep mode for another day
and night. We really did love each other and after
that long separation nothing could tear us apart.
On the fourth morning we finally got around to
talking about friends and news. I was not privileged
to receive much in the way of newspapers at my
distant outpost, so most of our talk was Anna filling
me in on politics and disasters, humorous affairs of
state, Hall and Sharon, Gyro and of course Byte
Mama and Sluggo. I didn’t press her on anything,
but I was always ready to listen.
The roads were sufficiently dry to take in the
Neolithic temple across the river, so we spent one
entire day crawling back in time, way back. I told
her all about the trip with Jack and O’ Bannion, I
even played the optidisks for her. The 6000 year old
calendar stone told us that a new moon was under
way—dark night. The stars were magnificent. So
were Saturn and Jupiter as they traced the ridge on
the south bank of the Boyne. Thankfully Anna got
her energy back. The sleep did her good, but now
she was getting itchy to get on with her
trip—whatever it was. She still hadn’t told me what
she was working on.
After our star walk we managed to find
ourselves in the bedroom. I paced around the slate
floor as she took a bath, drawn with the water
heated by the oven. I kept a huge flokoti goat hair
rug on the bed for decoration more than warmth, but
sometimes you don’t wanna’ wake up and stoke the
fire so you bundle up in the decorations. Anna was
attracted to it immediately, she made it her own
early winter security blanket, I guess she was
unwinding gradually. She came out wrapped in a
hot wet towel and, well I don’t wanna say we made
steamy love, but actually that’s exactly what we did.
Now it was my turn to sleep, the shepherd hands off
the orb to the shepherdess.
I was happy to jump up early and make the fires
to stave off the foggy chills at least until the heat of
the day could take over. Unfortunately it never
materialized. A northern storm came in and the
temperature outside dropped to 2° C, almost to the
point of snow. I stoked both fires and fired the coal
side of the Aga. The house gradually grew warm
and by three o’ clock the sky cleared briefly. In
spite of the bleakness of the landscape I had nothing
but positive thoughts and sure enough a rainbow
formed. When she finally did wakeup, the first thing
she said was, “Wow, Ireland is great, so fresh and,
oh look, you had a rainbow ready for me.”
“Do you want tea and oatmeal?” I asked.
Anna nodded, “Yes, I’m famished.”
As we ate I noted subtle changes in her
personality. Motivation was replaced by zeal. The
twinkle in her eyes was replaced by an almost
glassy fixation. I attempted a shrink type ploy, “Hey
I noticed you slept almost three whole days and
nights, felt like the flu did it?” She just kept
munching. What began as a light snack turned into a
full meal. Gluttony was never Anna’s sin, but she
seemed to be making up for it today. The rainbow
faded as we watched the swelling river out the
kitchen window.
I tried a new tack, “Now, this is something you
taught me. I was a nerd scientist before we met, but
you taught me the real lesson.”
She stopped munching on her oatcakes and
lemon curd long enough to ask,” What was that?”
“You taught me that the balance of nature is the
hardest science of all.”
The teapot emptied before we could get the cozy
on it. Anna stood up, still wrapped in her flokati and
a long flannel gown—her Eddy Boring socks still
thick enough to keep her toes warm—and moved
like a kinderwhore toward the bedroom. I could see
her butt, for the first time in at least a year,
billowing beneath the flannel. But alas, there would
be no fulfillment. No long dreamt of, second
honeymoon. I could feel every pulse in her body as
we embraced, but I think I held her too long.
She was getting angry again. “No more
smoochie right now, please. We have to get out of
here fast, to a small town in Holland first.”
“Why?”
“It’s all done with mirrors.”
“What is all done with mirrors?”
“Listen man we are into shit up to our gill slits. I
don’t have time to unravel this thing for you right
now, you’ll have to be patient, I need your help. If
you wanna’ come along let’s go, but if your gonna
sit around and be a hermit and ask a lot of
questions, well just fuck it man... go join the
monastery.” She wagged her finger in the general
direction of the abbey as she climbed back into bed.
“OK, just fill me in on a few details won’t ya
please?”
Anna bundled up as I stoked the fire in the
bedroom grate. A kettle filled with water hung on a
cast iron hook over the small hob to keep the room
humid.
Her voice was calmer now. She looked almost
through me as she spoke, “All I can tell you right
now is that Dolphin was right.”
Maynard’s Magic Clock
We gave the nanny goat and the cob pony to
Mr. Green Boots, packed up what we
needed—which wasn’t much—folded our notes and
walked down to the Travelers Rest pub so as hitch a
ride with Joe Rock to the train which in turn took us
to Amiens Street station in Dublin. I knew the
Botswana dudes would get the furniture and the
garden patch and maybe they would turn the whole
house into a brewery. If Mrs. Green Boots
prediction was right I’d be back someday.
The train took us slowly down the sea coast,
past dolman and mounds, and the few remaining
medieval abbeys, through Raheny and Clontarf.
The walk to bus aras in Dublin is short. Cold
night that night, granite ramps and massive walls
stood still frozen in Dublin, Gaelic winos with
garlic breath piss on the drain pipes to make steam.
Neither of us wanted another tour of Dublin, we just
wanted to get on with our business. Joyce wrote the
best tour one could ever take of Dublin, Bloom’s
tour through the maze of architectural
Daedalidiotness. Six months from today it would be
Bloomsday again.
A short leaning wait at bus aras allowed us to
board a green Canadian hydrogen fuel cell
conversion bus. Unfortunately the clean air bus was
soon full of belching Irish folk asleep after a day of
hard work or shopping at Moore Street. Eventually
we made our way across the Liffy at Chapelizod
Bridge. Now we were headed south on our way
down the Lucan road. The heavily guarded black
and blue beer factory, where they make the real
Guiness, looms in the rearward shadows. The
famous jail still stands on past Killmainum up on
the hill.
Brakish dark met us in Strawberry Beds. A stout
woman, with a shopping bag full of carrots, listens
to a scratchy radio which plays George Harrison’s
Strawberry Fields Forever as we move out toward
Kildare—south to the Kentuckishness of the
Curragh and along the Liffy all the way, like dead
Salmon, unwisely bucking the direction of the flow
of life.
We might as well have taken a horse for the
slowness of the bus, stopping green against red as it
did, full of puffers on pipes and Paddy swiggers in
white shirts. Purple dark out the window. We hardly
spoke the whole way—too melancholy for both of
us. Anna found it all very charming. She wanted to
stay. I felt it might be a real home for us.
Finally the horse slow bus arrived us at
Rosslare, the Hover port in Wexford. The huge
flubber craft was growing rickety. Even so it tugged
out on time as ferries have done in that location for
centuries. We were not sad for leaving. We both
knew we would someday return to Ireland.
A moonless sky set in as we pulled past the
creaking slips and pilings. Normally the trip across
the Irish Sea would be tedious, full of conflicts and
worries, but this one would be gleeful, full of ear
nips and nipple pinching. A real bodice beater.
Our, so called, “state room” looked like a
converted Navy brig—little more than three steel
bulkheads held up by huge painted rivets. The smell
of red oxide emanating from under the paint let us
know the age of the ship. The stainless steel basin
was stained and we couldn’t turn the light off. None
of this really mattered though. We weren’t planning
to sleep much.
We threw our satchels down, washed up with
filtered sea water and dashed up to the bar for
whatever they had. Most of the time we sat and
quietly held hands. If she ever threatened to run off
again, I would be very assertive and chauvinistic
and tackle her ass and do anything else required to
stop her. I told her that almost verbatim as we found
our way through some interesting pink gin, which
tasted suspiciously of peat moss and illegal raw still
whiskey. I finally screwed up my courage to tell her
she wasn’t getting away again, “Ya know I love ya
so much I would jeopardize our relationship and put
you in bondage before I let you run off like that
again.”
A nervous smile appeared on her face. “I
thought you’d say that. When I left you at Amiens I
was panicked, afraid of the gigantic mess men have
made of the world, but about two minutes after I got
on the boat for England the Land Rover broke down
on deck. I couldn’t fix it and we had to push the
damn thing overboard.”
“Oh what a great waste, it had a racing engine.”
“Yeah, running on five cylinders, it was
supposed to be new, but it was actually a rebuilt job.
I really needed you then, I felt vacant the whole
time I was gone, I denied it to myself, but the empty
feeling came over me on more than one occasion
during that submarine trip across the Atlantic.”
I was curious, “Couldn’t you catch a plane?
“Yes, but I wanted to spend some meditation
time alone and the sub was the best thing available.
It took three weeks to get thought the Panama Canal
and up the West Coast and it was docking in
Oakland so what the hell. I got off the ship and
called a cab and I was back in Menalto in two
hours. The city bridge looked as drab as this ferry,
you didn’t miss much.”
“Where was Gyro and how were the Pit Bulls.”
“Gyro was painting desertscapes from memory
on the front porch when the cab pulled up. The dogs
were happy to see me, but my old friends at DRI
were not in a good mood, so I quit. I was concerned
by this because DRI gave us access to the
mainframe.”
This move surprised me, I thought she’d never
quit that joint. “I hope you did some computer stuff
before you left.”
“Yes, namely I let DRI off the hook and took
the worm out of the machine.”
“What worm?”
“You know, the program I wrote to destroy the
system if my name isn’t on the payroll.”
“Oh that one, yeah but what about access?
Didn’t you need it to track down the culprits?”
“No. Not really. Hal and Sharon had everything
I needed so I gave Gyro some more money and
drove the Mercedes down to Vegas. I left Byte
Mama with Gyro for warmth and protection.”
“Oh that was great. Gyro loves Byte Mama?”
“Well, yes and no, she’s a handful and Gyro
needs his quiet time, but he manages. Hell the rent’s
free and he was painting away when I left. He
actually sold his paintings right off the front
verandah.
“What about Sluggo?”
Anna turned to me with a sad stare, “Canyon, he
died.”
“Ohhh ... I figured he might kick off soon, that
old fucker sired thirtysix puppies. Half the Pits on
the Peninsula came from him.”
Anna smiled, “You’re not upset?”
“No, not really. It’s always sad when a top dog
goes, but this guy was like a king, he did his job.” I
paused for a few seconds to wipe back a tear. “How
did he go.”
“Well that part was weird.”
“Why?”
“I can’t figure it out. We should have called him
Pluto or Plato.”
“Anna, it’s good to have you in my arms again,
but you’re not making sense.”
“I don’t know much about dogs, but this dog
was definitely strange. He died like a philosopher or
an old Zen Master. He took one of your old tshirts
out into my garden and laid on it then went to sleep
in the sun. He just never woke up.”
“Hmmm, yeah I wished I had something to
remember him by. Besides pictures.”
“Oh don’t worry we had his sperm frozen at
DRI two months before he died.”
“Wow, really, that was insightful of you. At
least DRI is good for something.” I contemplated
the irony. “I feel better already.” I could feel Anna’s
pulse through her kid gloves as we spoke. “How
was Omega Vegas, going back I mean?”
“Vegas was great. I sold the Mercedes to my
friend Margo and bought a 2034, but perfectly
restored, Cadillac convertible. It’s a much cheaper
ride and not such a target. When I left town I drove
out to the desert to that spot where we saw the
Sidewinder on our first date, remember?”
“Christ don’t remind me. I’ve been celibate
lately.” She seemed flirtatious for the second time
since she arrived.
“Well I should hope so.”
“Hey you seem exhausted. What was your trip
like?”
“Order me another pink gin tea thing and I’ll tell
ya.”
“Hunh, oh sure, Bewley’s be OK?”
“Yeup.” The barman was closing shop, but he
left the bottle and I gave him a big tip. I suppose it
was about ten o’clock. “So tell me, tell me what
happened when you went back to work?”
“Predictably, everybody at DRI seemed
threatened by my presence. I guess they got wind of
the DEE 21 project. They knew I was living with a
man and they knew you were the author of the
Electronic Battlefield—which many of those war
gurus despise. You’re still a wanted man, in case
you’ve forgotten.”
“I guess there is no statue of limitations on
paranoia. I figure whoever did that job on me was
still out there, and then there’s the Axel Tervik
thing, I doubt he was working alone.”
Anna nodded in agreement. “You’re right he
wasn’t working alone. He didn’t have the brains. In
fact, he was a puppet of a secret society the whole
time, as far back as when he was a jewel thief and a
fake publisher. That whole thing was a front. He
was in Bath only to monitor events at Stonehenge
because the underground slipstream went right
through Stonehenge and Bath and it was an ideal
place to keep track of radical actions.”
I was amazed at this. “Tervik was spying on the
hippies?”
“Yes, in a way he still is. You see the retro
hippies, as skanky as they are, remain a threat to
fascists because they’re still the only people on
earth who haven’t sold out to the twentyfirst century
system. Democracy, Communism or Fascism,
whatever you call your system, it is still a system,
but the latest batch of clone flower children hate
any system… they’re free spirits and unpredictable.
You should know, your mom and dad were
anarchists weren’t they?”
“Er ah, no, not exactly. They lived on Mount
Shasta for a few years and took part in the world
vibration thing, ya know everybody meditates on
the same day so as to evoke power to the earth
Goddess and all that, but I don’t think they were
anarchists.”
Anna paused, thinking she had somehow hurt
my feelings. “Oh I’m sorry if I offended you or
your mom and dad.”
I gripped her hand warmly as I replied, “Hey
don’t worry about Ankh and Mumsy, they were
happy. They saw the turn of the century and the turn
of the millennium from the delivery clinic. Don’t
forget I was the first kid of the new era. Hell, my
dad broke out four bottles of 1973 LynchBagges for
the big event. Too bad it turned to vinegar. He died
in his sleep a week later at the age of seventy two.
Mummy’s still alive and fit as a fiddle. I wrote her
at her old address when I first got her, just sorta
touching basis with the gene link ya know, and lo
and behold she sent a card about four months later.”
“Where, prey tell, did mom get to this time?”
Anna asked.
“Well that’s interesting the card was from
Bowen Island, on Howe Sound near Vancouver, she
was living with a guy who raised ‘shrooms. I used
to worry about her, but every card brings more good
news. The only real message on the card was that
she was headed to Maine on an expedition looking
for the lost treasure of Captain Kidd. But don’t
worry about mom, let’s worry about us. We are
going back to the States aren’t we?”
Her reply was shaky at best, “Well yes and no.
I’d like to move to Brittany or Portugal eventually,
it’s so exciting there, the real new world is starting
there. I want to have a couple of kids, like Hal and
Sharon suggested.”
I could hardly believe my ears, “Hey I love kids,
we can bring the Byte Mama over and raise Bull
Terriers too, but aren’t we a little old for kids?”
“No, heck we’ll live to be a hundred so. We’re
only half dead. Besides I guess you’re a family man
way down deep, but I wasn’t raised in a family. I
was raised by an old aunt who hated men, actually
she hated everybody, so it’s been difficult for me to
settle down. I’ve always been an independent lass.
It’s hard for me to accept the fact that I’m locked in.
I’m glad you let me go, but I went through a phase
where I was blaming you for not running after me.”
“I know, I thought of that. I found an old
Lavarda motorcycle and rode it over to Ireland. I
missed you but hell the ride was like going back to
my early college days when I rode bikes restored
from the 1960s. That experience paid off. My mom
and dad bought me a bike when I was sixteen, only
if I promised to wear a helmet, so riding without a
helmet across France on bald tires in the rain was a
real hair raiser. I’ll guarantee you one thing
though—” I looked at her with an almost murderous
stare—“I’ll never let you go again.” This time she
cringed, ever so slightly, but it was a real and
necessary cringe.
Figuring why I went into exile in the first place
was the big question. I asked Anna, “Why couldn’t
I come home and wait it out over there?”
“Oh because you’d only be in the way, and I
didn’t want whoever was jamming your radar to
jam mine.”
Cold air rushed past the brittle rubber seals that
once held the doors flush to the metalwork—more
signs of decay—a once noble ship gone to ruin. We
wore bulky black sweaters that only barely held
back the drafts and the paraffin heaters didn’t heat
much, but the pink gin did. The drone of the engines
set up a harmony, I was staring at her green eyes
almost constantly, she liked it, for a change. Usually
she resented the intrusion, but I was a soul searcher
and she would have to get used to it. I asked another
question, something that was on my mind lately,
like for the past fifteen years, “So what makes
Excalibur tick, if you’re so damned smart?”
“I don’ know but it has an agenda, it isn’t
random..”
“I thought it was random.”
“No, not really, it looks random, but it has a
program.” She cleared her throat before telling me
another Maynard Donnelly story. “I discovered
something important about Donnelly during my
travels,” Anna continued. “Did you know that
Maynard Donnelly built a planetary clock in the air
dome out in Las Vegas, and that it’s currently
housed in BixbeeMyers foyer in St. Paul? Its a
clock that runs on the rotation of the planets in real
time. Tube type. Very advanced for its age. This
thing supplied the basic model for the timing
mechanism in Excalibur.“
I thought of Dolphin immediately, “Yeah
Dolphin thought it was programmed too, like it had
a pattern to it.”
“Right, and I suspect he stumbled into the same
secret society I found, a small group hidden within
the aerospace community.”
“OK we’ll talk about the cult later, but how does
the thing work?”
“To paraphrase a big general in a late twentieth
century war, ‘First we’re gonna find ‘em, then
we’re gonna kill ‘em.’”
“What about Psionics?” I asked expecting to
stump her. “Did they inherit power from the earlier
groups?”
“Yes, Psionics began as a brain washing cult
right after World War II and wound up in charge of
recruiting for the whole right wing, not just the
black bag jobs.”
I stared at her with amazement, “You mean they
were even in control of the plumb jobs and the
noncritical positions, just for the sake of security?”
The waves were smaller now. I twitched as she
went on with her explanation. “I don’t know about
you, but everybody in my crowd knew the Wright
Brothers were protofacists, hell my mother told me
that, where were you?”
“Don’t ask me,” I answered, “I was flower
powered.”
She laughed, “Very cute. O.K., I’ll regress
slightly to bring you up to date.” She patted my
hand in an almost patronizing gesture then began to
pace the deck in a lecture style reminiscent of Dame
Frances. “As technology progressed Henry Ford,
Edison and their ilk were forced to take a rumble
seat to a new generation of players. After World
War II the liberals, fueled by the Einsteinium
nuclear power structure, styled themselves Nazi
fighters, but they weren’t really aware of the
nascent nastiness in their own backyards.”
“What nascent nastiness?” I asked.
“Oh, let’s see… Clan na Guella, the Irish Nazi
brotherhood out of Pittsburgh and Brooklyn, or the
various German speaking brudderbunds out of
Milwaukee, or the Klu Klux Klan in Indiana and
Skokie and the deep south, and don’t forget the
Mafia, the Sicilians were completely antisemitic
and supported Mussolini to the hilt… you name it,
we inherited it.”
I confessed my ignorance of these groups. “So
your saying we may have defeated the Nazi party in
Germany, but we didn’t do much to stop the
onslaught of fascism in our own homeland?”
That is correct, mine shantz, thousands of war
criminals filtered in from Canada and England,
aided by any number of so called ‘benevolent
organizations,” all of which were founded by the
Nazi party before the war.”
“I thought the C.I.A. smuggled them in...”
“What’s the difference?”
“So what about the civil liberties league and the
liberals?”
“Well, they defended civil rights, but the cults
were coercing people into giving up their freedoms
faster than civil libertarians could liberate anybody.
”
I asked a rhetorical question, “How could rights,
if they were unalienable and constitutionally
empowered, be given up?”
She shrugged, and said, “Well look at our own
experience. You’ve seen it in the actions of Axel
Tervik, and I’ve seen it in Psionics cells.”
“They call them clubs don’t they?”
She was upset, “I don’t care. They’re still
conspiratorial and that makes them cells in my
book!”
The sky and sea outside looked like ink. No
moon, no stars. “OK, OK, go on, please do go on.” I
winced and covered my ears because she was
almost shouting.
Anna calmed down slightly when she saw me
cowing in my seat. “Look Collins, every one of
these cults was founded by a psychopath wearing a
mask of sanity, a powermad bloodwitch—male or
female, gender doesn’t matter much—who sought
chaos over peace, pain and suffering over healing
and joy. My travels through the hinterlands
convinced me that since the end of the Civil War
most political upheavals were orchestrated to
benefit the whims of a faceless elite with a racist
agenda.”
“Right, like all of these rich guys going down to
Atlanta so they could touch the consecrated skull of
old man Quartile the founder of Quartile’s Raiders.”
Anna asked, “Who was he?”
“Oh just the original Ku Klux Klan guy, that’s
all.”
The hover craft lurched in a wave and we were
forced together again. The sexual electricity was
there, for sure, I didn’t want to let go, but I knew
the subject at hand was far more important than any
petty twitchings emanating from my lower chakras.
“So that’s why the Kennedy’s and Dr. King were
assassinated.”
“Sure, it’s also why Ping Tao the Chinese
liberator was assassinated twenty years ago and
why Ayatollah Free John, the Hashberry Hippy cult
leader was kidnapped in Amsterdam and staked out
to an ant hill on the Iraqi border with ten Kurdish
goats licking his toes.”
“I still don’t get the picture, history wasn’t my
best subject in school.”
“O.K., I’ll fill in the details for you. We have
some time to kill before we get to Antwerp.” Anna
continued, “Roosevelt’s New Deal was seen as a
systematic anticult policy, socialist and communist
to the core, actually it was just Jeffersonian, but the
cults, weren’t going to take it sitting down, they
grew in power and began to dilute the
Constitution.”
“Didn’t they make an attempt to suspend the
Bill of Rights?”
“Oh yeah, more than one, they tried to install a
military elite, again, to guard against an anarchist
takeover and in the 1990s they even tried to suspend
the vote. They weren’t afraid of the Commies
anymore, that terminology went away in the late
1980s—besides they knew the Commies were based
on fascist orgs like their own.”
“I guess there was never any real threat of
Marxism taking over anything on a major scale…”
“Right, but they built it up to look that way so
they would have somebody to blame, somebody to
hassle.”
“You mean they created a perceived enemy and
then set about to fight it.”
“Of course. Marxism and capitalism are two
peas in a pod. Both sides benefit from war.”
“You mean they cancel each other out?”
“No, I mean they feed on each other. To both
the National Security Agency and the KGB the real
enemy was the free thinker, the humanist liberal or
the revisionist radical.
“How did the capitalize on this absurd
paradox?” I sighed.
“Oh, easy enough. To realize their plan they
engaged in conspiracies large and small and have
continued to do so for generations, almost as if the
main orders were passed down from father to son.
Some conspiracies were obvious, as gross as the
dropping of the ABomb on Nagasaki, others went to
the simple suppression of certain books. We could
not, for example, find a listing for John David
Garcia’s “Ethical Society” after the year 1975. The
book was simply absorbed by censorship.” Anna
looked scholarly again.
“You mean like the conspiracy to get Tarzan,
Lord of the Apes off the library shelves because
Tarzan and Jane weren’t married?”
Right again. Anna was very supportive as she
led me through her political science course. “I
couldn’t find Joseph Rheingold’s The Fear of Being
a Woman either. I think the women’s groups
suppressed that.”
“You’re not suggesting that the feminist
liberation movement is behind Excalibur are you?”
“No, but why exclude anybody?” Anna and I
held hands as we laughed at the underlying
cynicism in her argument. “According to the
members of the Bear Lodge in Waggery,
Wisconsin, the Bill of Rights was a communist
document precisely because it granted too many
freedoms to too many people.”
“Well, hell that’s basically everybody. So how
does this relate to Excalibur?” I asked.
Anna began her answer with a fine hurumph, as
if I should have figured it out by now. “Oh simple, I
began to smell the same drippy VFW beer hall cult
logic in the Excalibur thing.”
“But Excalibur has grown into a historical
pacing mechanism. People remember their lives BE
(before Excalibur) and AE (after Excalibur). In fact
we are raising a generation of children who cannot
remember a time when Excalibur wasn’t a topic of
dinner conversation.”
Anna was saddened by this reminder, “Yes, it
was also that way from 1940 to 1995 or so. Two
whole generations were raised not knowing peace,
living under the threat of nuclear holocaust.”
“Yeah our parents, for example. But how does
this thing connect to secret societies? You make it
sound like witchcraft.”
Anna brightened a bit as she sipped the last of
her Ginseng gin, “Hey you’re not far off. It’s a
paradox. Alasdair Crumly, the black magician
behind Psionics, said it plain and simple: “Do what
thou wilt!”
I grew animated, “I’ve heard of Crumly. I
managed to skim his entire collection at the
Warburg. Eberhardt Seminars, proudly traced their
roots to Psionics. It all links up.
Anna nodded in agreement. “Yeah and to get
clear on this plane you must donate your life
savings, your life.”
“At the Warburg I was able to trace a direct line
of secret society crap from Crumly all the way back
to the Inquisition. It was nerve wracking to think
that cults like this could be so pernicious that they
could grip whole families and turn them into slavish
dingleberries for more than one thousand years.”
Blueprint for Disaster
After a long rolling silence Anna said, “I have a
plan.”
“What?”
“I said, I have a plan?”
“Oh, I suppose you want to write your
congresswoman, who, I hurry to remind you, is a
diehard Eberhardt Seminars freak.”
“Hmmm, now I know why I didn’t vote for
her,” Anna muffled her words as she rolled her eyes
in disbelief. “No, that wasn’t my plan.”
I offered my opinion about Dolphin’s state of
mind after his disappearance, “Hey, he may have
been weird, but he wasn’t a cultist. I think he was
just plain revolutionary.”
Anna ran with this idea. “I think your right.
Dolphin was a nonscheduled guru, a pure
independent. He may have organized a raid on
Mount Shasta, but you could hardly call that an
organized cult action.”
“Yeah.” I added. “The only thing they had in
common was group therapy. He must have seen the
connection between the mind cults and the militaire
noire that emerged from the old cold war.”
“I think you’re right” Anna agreed. “His
reasoning was simplistic, but functional. If Psionics
was founded on the ravings of a madman then could
not its spawn and children, contaminated by a
psychopathic mindseed, be planted strategically in
the military industrial complex to create a kind of
fourth generation madness?”
“You mean a whole army of brainwashed
hysterics, willing to do anything for the cult?”
Anna asked a question in return, “Isn’t
Eberhardt’s “Getting It!” Logically equivalent to
“Do What Thou Will as there is no God?”
“Why ask me?” I shrugged. “I figure the early
Satanists said that because their followers couldn’t
believe in the true white magic (ars naturae) and
they couldn’t make up their minds on their
own—when it comes to God people need nudging.”
“Yes, but Rooney and Eberhardt and their
satanic originators benefit both ways, ‘Follow me
because there is no God.’ Or ‘Follow me because
there is a God’ Or ‘Follow me because God is the
Devil.’ It doesn’t matter as long as they meet two
criteria.”
“Which two... there are so many?” I asked
sarcastically.
“They have to be lost souls and they have to
have money—and they have to donate both soul and
money to the cult.”
“What’s wrong with that?” I asked.
“It robs people of first hand experiences.”
“You mean the freedom to find out for
themselves?”
“Yes, that’s about it, “The freedom to make
mistakes, the freedom to reinvent the wheel, even
the freedom to knowingly suffer.”
“You mean the freedom to ignore warnings?”
“Yes, I think the terms are logically
equivalent—the freedom to experience the slings
and arrows of outrageous fortune, as it were.”
I brushed my scraggly hair aside. “But when
you waltzed into that Psionics Club in Skoie, didn’t
you get the idea that passivity is taboo, that sitting
and waiting for stuff to happen was about the worst
thing you can do?”
“Oh sure being ‘at cause’ is, according to Small
Don Rooney, the worst thing you can do because
they want you out in the world recruiting and
bringing in money. Just flowing with the tides of
change is too damned pagan.”
“I GET IT.” I answered with a sense of humor.
“Here again we see the uptight puritan mentality
fighting to obliterate the forces of nature.”
Anna added, “The Puritans are at war with
nature.”
I felt it necessary to nod in agreement “We’re
on to something here, all we have to do is find out
who’s benefiting from Excalibur and we’ve got
‘em.”
“How right you are.” Anna paused to hum
Black Velvet an old rock tune, from the early
1990s.
“So what’s your plan, or did I already ask you
that?”
She smiled like a tabby in a pile of catnip. I
couldn’t hold out any longer. “OK what’s it all
about?”
“We already have our man.”
I couldn’t believe she had the name of the actual
guy behind Excalibur, “Alright, so tell me, who is
this Mr. Big?”
Anna turned coy, “Promise you won’t laugh?”
“Of course I won’t laugh, who the hell is it?”
“Maynard Donnelly.”
“What!” I couldn’t believe my ears. “Hey I
promised not to laugh, but I’m tempted. What do ya
mean Maynard Donnelly?”
“Maynard had a magic clock.”
“What? The guy’s been dead for twenty years or
more.”
The boat was calm again. Only the roar of the
water under the hull clouded the silence. The other
passengers were fast asleep in their rusty brigs as
Anna presented her theory about Donnelly. “I told
you you’d think I was mad, but just before he died
Donnelly became a member of at least a dozen
intermingled, and predominantly rightwing secret
societies. He’s the only one rich and powerful
enough to motivate them and link them together. He
was thinking long term, but his heirs are short term
thinkers.”
“Donnelly didn’t have kids did he?”
“No. but he had partners.”
“You mean Robert Sage?”
That’s right Robert T. Sage, Donnelly’s long
time understudy and fellow eccentric.”
Judging from the size of their donations we can
assume Sage and Donnelly were especially fond of
SAP, the Society of Americans for Purity. This
group was comprised, almost exclusively of
frustrated engineers and white supremacist types
who also happened to be venture capital bankers,
members of Psionics and Odd Fellows .”
“OK, OK get on with the theory, I assume
there’s a plan in it somewhere.”
I sat down and covered up in a big blanket as
she explained her plan in detail. “The problem is
those who like harmony remain in harmony, but if
you let the chaos worshippers take over, they will
call their state of mind harmony, pretty soon people
see the black as white and the white as invisible, it
may happen eventually anyway, but I think we have
an ethical responsibility to let it happen naturally.”
I added, “Yeah about five billion years to go,
right?”
Anna agreed with a simple nod. We sat almost
freezing, watching distant ship lights move across
the horizon. “The Templars used the pentagram to
signify the five stages of human consciousness, but
these latter day dimwits adopted the theme and
started thinking in terms of the five pronged attack.”
I whispered “Another, very destructive, GO
move.” Her analysis fit well with my worst fears.
“But it spreads the butter too thin.” I exclaimed.
“These guys don’t have the backup they need... or
do they?”
Anna wagged her head up and down, “Oh they
have the backups, to be sure. Most really stupid
people want the quick fix and are willing to join any
cult to get it. You see, when the original Templars
took an oath to maintain order they meant the order
of nature, not some hairbrained race supremacist
order. I’m convinced that if mother nature didn’t
want gays, blacks, Jews or the Irish they would
have been dusted eons ago.”
“You mean they have validity simply because
they won’t go away.”
“Yup, that’s about the size of it. Us childless
married too. We’re all misfits anymore. We won’t
fit the mold. I believe there’s a real necessity for
everything that happens, no matter what happens.”
“Survival against wild odds, is one way of
proving virtue, eh?”
“Yes. In a nutshell. Some people call that Social
Darwinism, but it can be tricky.... you could extinct
yourself.” Anna and I laughed loudly at the irony.
“I’m not so sure any of this is transcendental or
mystical, or even fatalistic, it could be merely that
some humans are born with an ever lowering sense
of selfesteem and that they join these cults out of a
kind of genetic downward tropism.”
“Canyon, my god you did do some thinking in
your little cottage didn’t you. That sounds like a real
shrink talking.”
“Zaw shucks maam.” I spoke with feigned
authority because I had seen the inferiority complex
take over and kill people in my private practice.
“Yes, the Catholics call it original sin, but I call it a
cultural inferiority complex.”
“Like an epidemic?” Anna asked.
“Spot on sweetheart, everyone thinks they’re no
fucking good and wastes their life trying to prove
it.” I felt uplifted, almost like when my third grade
teacher put my art work on the wall and gave me a
gold star. “I’m not superior, its just that I was lucky
enough to get a birdseye view, only a glimpse
really.”
“Me too.” Anna agreed. “We may not see the
big picture, but we know it’s here, we’ve seen
glimpses of it, in our highest moments.” She looked
away for a few moments to listen to noises in the
gangway.
“What is it?”
“Oh nothing, nothing. Just nervous I guess.”
I reassured her. “Don’t worry about anything,
please go on…”
Anna continued to unravel her theory about the
Templars. “OK, so when the Templars, who as we
have discussed were benevolent, were killed off in
the early fourteenth century, the secrets they held
fell to more than one group. Some of these groups
were evolving and others were devolving. The best
of them held to the oldline, which was that certain
architecture’s could actually get people to behave in
balance with nature, but the worst of them were just
power freaks.”
I needed her to be more specific, “To which
groups do your refer?”
“Oh the Rosicrucians for example. Not the
crackpots in Tarzana, you know the ones with the
fake mummies, but the original 16th century
Rosicrucians, the Christian Rozencruz guys. They
believed that over the long haul democracy would
train people to behave ethically and regulate
themselves for the common good. They, like the
Templars before them, believed the grand maker of
the universe was an architect... that the entire
universe is a cathedral, a city of god, a New
Jerusalem.
“That’s Masonic. It’s in the American
constitution. When ethical conduct breaks down in a
real democracy the whole culture implodes and
begins to rebuild itself. Some values will come back
stronger, others will be absorbed.”
Anna scowled a bit. I think I missed the point.
“That’s the dynamic of it, but the values come and
go. Deeper cultural roots potentially never die
because the gene pool never dies.
I understood now, “You mean like in Carl
Jung’s idea of a Collective Unconscious, the
potential is always there as long as the DNA
remains intact?”
“Well sort of.” Anna tended to patronize
sometimes. “I mean the so called ‘high’ Mayan
culture died because its leadership got way too wild
on war games, inbreeding , mushrooms, cocaine and
coffee. There are many Mayans still living less than
ten kilometers from Palenque, but they don’t
practice human sacrifice.”
I felt I should ask, “How did they survive?”
“I guess they just faded back into the jungle. A
certain priest class, similar to the guys who
launched Excalibur, insisted on war and spent much
of their time cutting the hearts out of the peasants or
captured enemies. Ironically, the peasants survived,
but the cats at the top of the pyramids died out.”
“Right, now you see the seed of my plan. All we
have to do is take Excalibur away from these idiots
and they will selfdestruct.
“Now that sounds familiar. When I was at
Stonehenge with Jack and Sean I heard a story
about a scientist who did a DNA study of the folks
around Wokey Hole.”
Anna blinked as I spoke, as if to ask what this
has to do with her theory, “...he discovered that the
DNA from Paleolithic bones found in Cheddar
Gorge was identical to the DNA of the modern
inhabitants.”
“So what?” Anna asked with a kind hurumph.
“Oh, I dunno, expect it proves nothing really
changes.”
“Yes, well let me press on here.” Anna spoke
again in her professorial tone. We need to know the
difference between anarchy and fascism to make the
plan work. Anarchy, operating inside of an
established Democracy, can be healthy—a
temporary cleansing device.
“You mean sorta’ like a sewer system in a big
city?”
“Yes.” Anna answered. “But not quite as
concrete.”
[Laughter]
“... but a true Democracy can never tolerate
fascism for long. Fascism has no alternative.
Anarchy is a temporary form of chaos which will,
when left to its own devices, settle into some form
of order. Fascism is the imposition of a false linear
order on the largest possible population. It’s an
arrogant system which advocates abandonment of
all that is innocent and natural, a cynical view of the
human condition with no suggestions for repair.”
“You mean a leave ‘em in the gutter attitude.”
“Yes. Rape. In the 1990s people associated
fascism with the old fashioned leftwing movement,
when in fact it was part and parcel of the skinheads.
It even infiltrated the skateboard craze.”
Images of my childhood popped up, “When I
was a kid my dad wouldn’t let me have a skate
board.”
“Oh poor thing, I’ll have to let you ride mine
someday.”
“Don’t tempt me. OK, so go on, I’m
fascinated.” I spiked the last of our pink gin tea with
Ginseng from a small glass ampoule, spilling some
on my white shirt as the flubber craft flew over yet
another big wave.
Anna graciously failed to notice my
schlubishness as she spoke. “Every generation
spawns a new variation of the right wing scam. It
could be Teddies, Pachukos, Mafiosi, or a junta in
Central America, but it always cuts down on free
speech and attempts to tint and control the flow of
information.”
“So you’re saying that these elite cults fear the
anarchy intrinsic in democracy so much they’re
willing to give up their own rights, in order to curb
organic, natural social growth, which they see as the
worst possible thing.”
“Right on daddy. They hate ambiguity and
they’ll do anything for a temporary clarification,
anything to be released from another horrible
anxiety attack.”
“In other words they don’t realize cultures need
to evolve though a fuzzy zone before clarity can
take place.”
“Right. To fascists anxiety is a sissy thing. But
we know it’s just part of life, part of natural
evolution. There’s not much a pack of Skinheads
can do… they know that, but they keep trying.”
“Except maybe launch a death star.”
She twinkled as if to ease my skepticism. “Yes,
but that isn’t working either is it? We’re on to them
and we’ll catch ‘em too.”
“Well what about global warming and acid rain?
“Those things have been around since steam.
They’re two of the functions that formed the planet.
Global warming took about one third of the planets
total allotment of solar power. You can’t do
anything about it except clean up your own act and
hope everybody else does too.”
I laughed and started to relax. “You mean us
radical guerrillas will win out in the long run?”
“Sure we will, maybe we are Adam and Eve all
over again, the last two radicals on the planet
earth.”
We both snickered like cartoon characters. “You
see fascism thrives on indecision, indecision they
extract from their enemies.”
I nodded, “You mean they make the liberal
enemy weak then feed on their lack of bravado?”
Anna nodded in return, “Unhunhh, but the
natural order, the systematic pulse of nature, would
exist with or without the human race.
“You mean it’s cyclic like the orbits of the
planets around the sun?”
“Sort of, political cycles can be natural, but the
skin heads only believe in two states of political
consciousness, chaos and order.”
“Naturally the order they’re speaking of is
‘their’ order.” I added. The ginseng wasn’t doing
much for my blood pressure and I could feel the end
of my nose heating up. “I guess their can never be a
real boss.”
Anna nudged me with her elbow, “Except
Mother Nature.” She paused to clear her throat,
“Actually, the term Mother Nature is an inept
metaphor. People who go around thinking the
Goddess will take care of them, like their real
mothers failed to do, soon get a real mean slap in
the butt. They’ve translated the puritanical image of
God to the Goddess. They have changed the gender
but not the genuflection. They are convinced the
Earth Goddess is ever vigilant and supportive—they
never grow up.”
“She didn’t do much for the Native Americans
and she didn’t do much for the women’s movement
did she?” I asked.
Anna thought about my rhetorical question
before she replied, “Are you suggesting we should
get rid of the skinheads and the fascists in all
forms?”
She had me with that one, obviously if I
advocated genocide here I would be as bad as the
enemy. I felt caught, like a freshman in a school
debate. “Well no I don’t think we should stoop to
their level.”
We both laughed loudly, “Naw the answer lies
in early childhood education, we need to get the
hate mongering out of it, then we’ll have a class of
noble warriors, like the Celts and the Native
Americans, not a whole class of dullards whose idea
of a big thrill is to puton dog fights in their back
yard.
“I was still laughing at the absurdity of the
concept, “That’s right we need benevolent cops and
teachers, highly paid experts.”
“You mean like the Knights Templars?” She
asked.
“Yes precisely, that was their function over four
hundred years. If they remained true to their code
they were simply benevolent Road Warriors.” I
answered.
“OK, now you see the full spectrum of the
dilemma. Certain societies believe in a gross model
of creation in which the human being is godlike and
superior.”
“Ubermann Spode comes to mind.”
“Sure, Juan Spode, the first Black president of
Cuba. But we can also name John Knox, Cromwell,
Savonarolla, Pope Sixtus and hundreds of others.”
Anna was prepared to construct a longer list if
necessary.
“Cromwell, which Cromwell?” I hoped to add a
layer of levity to the very scary conversation.
“Oliver, although both of ‘em were pretty
mean.” She quipped.
We lapsed into a brief lassitude as we wiped the
cookie crumbs from our cheeks. Anna broke the
silence, “These cretins believe we would never need
anarchy, even for a few weeks. They believe a strict
order should be imposed at all times, you know, the
strong should rule the weak.”
“ Yeah like zoo keepers.” I wrinkled my face
and made sure Anna got the nonverbal message.
“Where do they dig up these ideas ?” I asked.
“I think it comes from the rise of patriarchy
about 3500 years ago, at the peak of the Bronze
Age, when the Celtic way of life sort of faded and
the Indoeuropean forms took precedence. It’s a
mistake to think that the cave painters were
patriarchal. There are far too many Goddess statues
laying around.” Anna was an expert on the Goddess
religion. She studied with Marija Gimbutas, in fact
she was one of the twenty women selected to be
with the great anthropologist when she died.
I put another idea forward hoping to keep our
mood up. “I think fascism finds its worst expression
in Aristotelian, JudeoChristian thought especially
after Christ.”
Anna’s eyes sparkled. She knew we were again
on the same wavelength. “I agree. Both cults
assume that man is superior to woman and that the
human male is superior to all other life forms. This
is ridiculous.Order is constantly changing, not just
by the century, but by the millisecond. Most human
beings are children and children are always
entranced by illusions. In Aristotle’s way of
thinking women are not evil, but they have an
animal nature. This makes men superior because,
supposedly, men do not succumb to natures
menstural cycles. They can overcome instinct.”
“Well that’s ridiculous too.” I chuckled.
“ Yep, In a patriarchy women are often just
plain evil. Lilith, for example, was a originally a
lunar shadow Goddess, a symbol of a primordial
religion, but later she became a temptress who
drove men mad by causing them to spill their seed
as nocturnal emissions. As papal power took hold
Lilith became Mary Amygdalin.” I caught the pun
and made a finger gesture by pointing to the sky,
but said nothing as Anna continued. “She found her
place in heaven only because she washed a man’s
feet. Now in the Dionysian cults and the Celtic
world women are likened unto spiritual beings and
are equal to, or even superior to men. I’m sure this
thinking can be traced to the Paleolithic era.”
She was right. I felt an anger attack coming on. I
stood up and began pacing around the cabin looking
for an audience. I bleated out my feelings anyway,
feelings I hadn’t been in touch with for at least five
years. “I hate ‘em.”
“What?” She pretended she couldn’t hear me.
“You can’t argue with these shit heads.”
She beckoned for me to return to my seat,
patting the blanket next to her. “They don’t see
nature as a ruling power.”
We both looked out the windows, straining to
see the lights of a freighter crossing in the opposite
direction.
Anna continued, “Wow man, what are we up
against? Maybe reality isn’t hierarchical at all.
Maybe nature is fair handed, circular, with power
rotating through chairs like a university. We link
into it because we have no totemic fear of
worshipping animals or other pagan icons, but the
fascist can’t make the connection. They are terrified
to put wild animals and domestic pets on an equal
political footing with humans.”
I chuckled, “Hell you know our pets are on an
equal political footing with us. Everybody with half
a brain knows we would not have survived this far
without dogs; cats and horses.”
“Yes, but that’s a pagan view and the Puritans
were raised to avoid all things pagan. In their view
animals have no souls” She added.
“Except on Halloween of course.”
“Yeah, crazy huh? That’s why the Puritans are
so afraid of Samhain. Don’t forget Santa Claus was
a pagan winter figure, probably something like
Woden or Dis Pater and the Yule log is an artifact
from the AngloSaxon Wiccan religion. In Germany
the Wiccan (wicker) straw people representing fire
and rebirth, actually accompany Saint Nicholas
from house house to announce his arrival.”
I felt closer to her now than ever before, “What
about Pfingst and Mardi Gras?” I asked
She turned her face into the pale flickering light
to reveal a deep human smile as she spoke, “That’s
why I love ya, you catch on so quick.” We hugged
each other hard and long, almost dancing as our
bodies moved with the slapping motion of the
vessel.
“OK, I said, so let’s get back to these specific
lunatics behind project Excalibur. What do they call
themselves? What did Donnelly have to do with
them?”
“You won’t believe it. They call themselves the
International Order Of Deliverance, IOOD. This
particular group has only been around since
Donnelly died, about twenty years, but they’re
rooted in cults many generations old. They sprang
from some kinky offshoot of Freemasonry, but
laterally they boast a number of Psionics members.
Anna took out her note book and a large envelope.
“Actually they are a gang of drunken, illiterate, and
antisemitic wankers who wear the Fez while
parading around on Hardly Jefferson’s in gold lame
pajamas with fake turned up shoes. They’ve been
avoiding animism so long they’re consumed by it.”
“Oh, I know what you mean. My mother’s
brother (the bad uncle) was like that. I met him once
and that was it. At home they lead a prim and
proper life, but get ‘em drunk and they start to call
themselves Grand Lizards or, Lions of Iberia and
Bull Meese of Michigan etc. The list is almost
infinite.”
“You mean like the Boy Scouts?” She asked.
“Yeah, right down to the scout motto, the Cub’s
sign. I mean isn’t it an occult initiation to say, in
front of your parents and the gathered masses: “A
Scout Follows Aquilla.”
Anna looked directly at me, almost through me.
I could tell her true mind was working elsewhere.
“Aquilla is the eagle, right?” I could feel a new life
force building inside. “It’s also a sign of the zodiac
in some areas. Related to Scorpio I think.”
By asking rhetorical questions Anna encouraged
me to think about the animal component in depth as
it was key to her theory about secret societies. “So
they go by totemic names like Ravens and, Lions
and Grizzlys?” She fumbled for a writing
implement in her leather carryall. “Can you see a
kind of perverted link to the Ice Ages here? She
asked.”
“Oh krits don’t get me started.” We both began
to laugh. I’ve seen Golden Bears in Berserkly and
on the golf course. I’ve seen Sharks playing
hockey.”
“Right and I’ve seen Falcons playing football in
Atlanta and Panthers in Pittsburgh—every animal,
especially predatory animals.” Anna began to take
notes and make small drawings as we spoke. “What
about cars?”
“You’re doing this on purpose aren’t you?” I
asked. It was as if she was teasing me. Anna
grinned, her eyes sparkled as she laughed.
“Mustang, Cobra, Road Runner. My dad said he
could get me a 1968 Mustang with a Cobra engine
in it. Whatever that was?”
“Must have been a doozie.”
“No that was a Duesenberg.” Different era
altogether.”
Anna stopped laughing suddenly and fell into a
serious mood, “OK, Okay. My point is none of this
is pagan to the people who use these labels. They
don’t see themselves as atavistic. You could never
convince them that what they are doing is
shamanism.”
“That’s because they’re Puritans.”
“You big dummy we just went over that didn’t
we?” Anna grew impatient with me. She cupped her
hands over her mouth and pretended to be using a
megaphone “Earth calling Canyon, try to get the big
picture will you…”
I nodded in compliance as she continued to
speak “… these nuts couldn’t build a fire without
kerosene and a big wooden cross to burn.”
“I’ll bet the closest thing they ever got to an
altered state of consciousness was a night in the
drunk tank.”
Anna warned me again, “Don’t be too sure. I
hear they take U4iA at some of their meetings.”
This took me back a foot or two, “Wow, I can’t
imagine the Grand Kleegle of Dixie waxed on
U4iA, it boggles the mind.”
“Yes, they get started as early as the Cub Scouts
and Brownies, but they don’t think they’re living in
a Laurel and Hardy comedy, it’s all very serious to
them.”
“So, how does that tie in with your rude and
abrupt behavior at Amiens. You broke my heart the
day you pulled out. I cried and kicked the fucking
curb six times.”
“Calm down now.” She placed her hand on my
shoulder and patted me like a mother pats a baby.
“How did you get to Dublin?”
“Ah ha! You think I went to Dublin to chase
pussy don’t ya?”
“Well I wouldn’t put it past you.”
“Nope, it never crossed my mind because, after
I got over my headache I rebuilt a discarded
Lavarda TT bike … only room for one my dear … I
told ya earlier. Don’t you remember?”
“Oh yes, without the helmet. I remember now.”
Anna simply smiled at me through the dim light.
Her smile put me at peace. “I wasn’t suffering as
much as the wandering folk all around me, but it
was as cold as a witch’s teet on Good Friday and it
did seem like I was slicing through the next
children’s crusade.”
“I saw the video,” she commented. “WorldView
showed masses of people moving through Central
France, a scene worse than any classic Bergman
optidisc, the Seventh Seal, unsealed.”
“I felt I was passing through clouds of plague
survivors, didn’t you see them as you pulled away,
or was your Land Rover too high off the ground?”
“Bitter, Bitter old boy, hmmmm. Anna hugged
me closer, “Of course I saw them, I gave them
rides, tended to their sick, walked their dogs and
held their babies, but the crowds die down once
you’re on the Nordic Cross.”
“What! You bitch, you went back home on the
Nordic Cross, that’s the greatest, most luxurious
nuclear subsurface liner in the world? Didn’t you
say you went over on a steamer?”
“Don’t be envious Canyon, it was nuclear
powered, but it runs on steam and it turned out to be
very slow. It had some nice amenities. The food
was real and the bars were open all night, but it did
take a long time to get up the West Coast after we
crossed through the Panama Canal.”
“Oh wow, big deal, now I’m really pissedoff.”
“Hey lover don’t be too upset. I saved your
onions pal. If you had come back with me we’d
probably both be dead. Gyro says two guys cruised
the house at least once a week in a Black GMV
Python truck that can only be described as a
recording studio on wheels. Besides envy doesn’t
become a man who is teetering on the brink of
immortality. If it’s any consolation to you I slept
ALONE the whole time I was gone—ALONE!”
I ignored her confession, “You mean the Nordic
Star was slow?. I thought the thing was laser
guided, sorta swim by wire and loaded with orgies.”
“Swim, fly, what’s the difference, you’re
cookin’ in this big torpedo, that’s all you do. But if
the laser is interrupted for any reason, which it was
on at least six occasions, you drift along aimlessly,
almost stranded, waiting for the solar batteries to
recharge. The Nordic Cross is like this scow we’re
on, it was hitek at one time, but it wasn’t designed
to function under adverse economic conditions.”
All I could do was wince and say, “Wow!”
Anna continued her thought without much
notice of my changing moods, “…and as far as
orgies are concerned—you’ve got to be
kidding–nobody even danced. When the power
stops you drift along on the surface. I like it when
they come up to the surface and let you catch a
breath of salt air, but that’s only if the weather’s
good. When its running right the Nordic Cross
moves along fifty feet beneath the surface at about
forty knots. You can’t feel or hear anything. You
watch optis, gamble a little, eat and
sleep—PERIOD!”
I gave her the skeptical eye and made the
sawing gesture which means “little violins” in about
sixty languages. I said, “I still think taking the
Nordic was bitchy, how much did your passage set
us back?”
“In round terms, about eight thousand clams.”
“Oh what the heck that ain’t so bad. I betcha
when we get back Hal will have some good news on
the cash flow situation. I understand the Biloxi
Scorpions went to the Stupor Bowl this year.”
Anna sucked in her stomach and feigned macho
gestures, “Hey man you know I leave the betting up
to Hal, I hate basher sports. I is a lovva’ baby. Nary
a fightin’ bone in me body.”
“You couldn’t prove it by me. When am I gonna
see this body?”
She smiled the sexiest smile I’ve ever seen,
then, gradually, her eyes turned serious again.
Inside IOOD
O
K lover… check this out, when I fell to my
knees at
Amiens I saw what they worshipped.”
“Who?”
“The Knights Templars.”
“I thought they worshipped Christ.”
“No not really. The Templars were accused by
the inquisition of worshipping the head of a lion
illuminated by the light of the full moon at
Equinox.”
“So did they?”
“They said they didn’t and many were tortured,
but it’s obvious they did use an icon as a worship
object.”
“One of many I assume.”
“In a way that’s correct, Mithras is a
multifaceted god and one of the faces is a lion, but
Mithras grew from, the goat god of the shaman at
Lascaux, the cave dancer.”
He seems to be ubiquitous. Pan to the Greeks,
St. Luke to the Christians, Beelzebub to the
Witches, the companion of the father of Gaul…”
“Actually it’s Bacchus as Pan, but I don’t have
time to go into that now… so the Templars,
meditating on the lion Mandala in the center of the
Pentagram, could also see the entire chain of
command from the cave shaman down to them and
from Christ to them and from the Neoplatonists
down to them.”
“… and therefor they could see into the future?”
“Pretty much. If you know the past with great
accuracy, and if you were honestly heliocentric,
then you could easily see into the future, besides
they were in control of their own destiny at that
stage. After all they put a big one over on the
Catholic church.”
“What da ya mean?”
“The church paid for the construction of the
Gothic cathedrals.”
“Hey it must have been more than that.”
“Oh it was, the architects of Chartres were the
holders of the three treasures of the Western World,
the three streams of consciousness, Christianity,
Judaism and the secret hermetic doctrine.”
“So we see yet another mystery behind the
Christian Trinity.”
“Well yes and no, the mythology of Chartres is
based on the ancient Bardic triad, but the central
roof is erected from a seven pointed star, one point
for each of the naked eye planets.”
“Where did you hear all of this stuff?”
“I read a lot, this came from Charpentier and
Rilko and…”
“Oh, but Ameins is different, the maze is an
octagon.”
“Yes, its based on five and eight.
“You mean 13?”
“Yes a perfect coven. Each ray of the circle is
filled by one knight As I mentioned earlier I think
the pentagram has something to do with the orbit of
Venus as seen from a fixed point on earth, but in
both cases the papacy was completely hoodwinked
by the building strategy.
“My, my you have been burning up the books.”
“I know almost nothing at this point. Anna
spoke with humility as she traced out the basis for
her research. “The real movers and shakers set up a
new world order derived from Gematria,
Geomancy, Geometry, natural Government, and
Geography. The Templars made it possible for
Leonardo and Pico Della Mirandola and Kepler and
Copernicus and Bruno to make their breakthroughs.
I quietly absorbed everything she said as she added
more and more material to her theory. “The science
we now call astronomy was developed in those
cathedrals, without them we would probably still be
living in the Dark Ages. In the five points of
esoteric education each of the Gs represent a vast
field of study. Incidentally we are still in that
Renaissance.”
“There are seven “Gs” aren’t there?” I asked.
“William Penn wrote about seven Gs”
“Yes, but I can’t talk about the others right now,
they are far too esoteric.” Anna batted her eyes as
she spoke.”
I smiled and said, “My lips are sealed.” I sat
dumbfounded at Anna’s understanding of esoteric
history. “It’s amazing what they got away with, I
saw the Yin and Yang symbol on the facade of the
towers at Amiens, what was that all about?”
“Oh there’s much more, she added. “We have
Barceluna and Strasbourg, Rouen and St. Denis and
about a hundred others to consider, to say nothing
of the abbeys. Many of these have been destroyed
on purpose, all we can do is reconstruct them from
drawings, early photographs, archaeological digs
and ancient descriptions. Now, as it happens the
window at Amiens was framed in a huge inverted
Pentagram.”
“You mean the sign of Venus and wealth in the
Tarot?” I asked.
“That’s right. This window was installed in the
early thirteenth century. I doubt the Order of
Deliverance ever heard of it.”
“Funny how human consciousness makes
connections like that.” I could just see the head of
some new sect bringing in some fragmented symbol
to misuse in a dumb lodge ritual conducted for the
benefit of plumbers and real estate agents. The very
thought made me angry. “I’ll bet if the original
cathedral architects were around today they would
burn these assholes and grind ‘em up for mortar.
These oddballs take a snip here and a dab there
from every known occult philosophy, put it into a
biblical context, ritualize it and then use it to justify
genocide, they’re just megalomaniacs gone wild.”
“Oh Canyon I love it when you talk dirty.”
“You mean like a Skinhead?”
“Don’t worry they’re not creative like us. They
couldn’t think their way out of a brothel on a
Saturday night. That’s why they needed Maynard
Donnelly and his apprenctices. They thought he was
like them, but he was a super genius, a deep mind
gone off the deep end. I doubt he was like them at
all, it’s just that he couldn’t countenance liberals.”
“So that’s how Donnelly fits into the picture.” I
could see a bigger picture now. “He probably
provided these inbred cretins with a battle plan of
some kind, a clock device which would make the
shots seem like they were random, or, if anybody
probed deeper, they might seem like they were
timed with the cycles of the planets.”
“Wow and double wow... this thing is soooo
deep.”
“Don’t fret.” Anna reassured me. “ Knowing
about Donnelly’s involvement gives us a leg up.
I’m convinced they’re sticking to a strict timetable.”
“You mean they set the whole thing up so they
could feed their own hatreds?”
“That’s about it. Look at this poster I found in
the library at MIT in Boston, it’s dated 1912.” Anna
gestured me closer, looking both ways over her
shoulder as we huddled. “Here take look at this.”
She pulled out a folded paper.
A digital tone could be heard amidships as the
green and amber lights of a packet ship crossing
from Antwerp grew from specks on the horizon to
smeared globs. Anna went on with her explanation.
“This chart uses an hodgepodge of biblical
interpretations superimposed over Masonic symbols
and other secret society lore. We shifted our
position to take advantage of the deck light. I pulled
out a small pencell as Anna pointed out the details.
It seems old hat now, but the idea has been carried
through for a long time. The Templars original
belief’s are here in name only. The symbols are
meaningless unless you are standing in the
cathedral.”
I could see how diluted the whole process could
become. “You can’t carry that hermetic symbolism
out to the prairie and expect to keep its magical
power.”
“Exactly.” Anna nodded in agreement, “Without
the cathedrals all you do is regress, more and more
each generation. If, on the other hand, you transport
the icons back to the cathedral, the tuning fork
begins to vibrate at the right frequency and all is in
harmony. That’s when the magic happens.
I felt sad for a moment, “That’s assuming the
cathedral still exists.”
Anna sighed with me, “Well we’re doing what
we can.”
I sat down as she folded the poster up and
placed it back in its envelope. “So that’s how
Excalibur got underway, they got desperate.”
Anna seemed more relaxed now. She was sure I
was up to date on her ideas. “Imagine their surprise
when the Glowmore went sailing out to fetch their
satellite. They had to invent the flying saucer story.
The had to launch the final version in a prototype,
and that too may have crashed.”
“Yeah, but close is OK for government work.”
Anna smiled as she processed the humor. “The
International Order Of Deliverance continues to
thrive at all levels of government and commerce,
with no idea they’re idolizing animal behavior.”
“You mean the IOOD were behind this thing all
the time?”
“No, not exactly. The IOOD recruited engineers
from the military who were sympathetic to their
frustrations. The engineers hired technicians to
build it. Still we shouldn’t underestimate this bunch.
They have contacts deep within the space agency,
the Pentagon office too. Hell, they’ve had decades
to infiltrate the whole international peacetime
infrastructure in every country.”
“So you’re saying Excalibur was built by a
bunch of technonerds who owed fealty to a
clandestine secret society?”
“It gets worse and you’re not going to like the
rest of it.”
She looked at me knowing that what she was
about to tell me might touch off another temper
tantrum. I said, “Hey, don’t worry, I’m cool. What
is it?”
“Well OK.” Anna got over her anticipation,
“Most of the IOOD members were all recruited
from Psionics.”
“Oh sure. I figured as much anyway. I had a lot
of time to think in Ireland. War is money and the
operating Delta’s or ODs would naturally be close
to anything that smelled of money.”
Anna felt better, “I trust you not to get to upset,
we have a long way to go with this.” She grasped
my arm, “You are, after all the only person I can
really talk to.”
I patted her hand and held her tight saying, “Hey
do you think Operating Deltas or ODs could have
anything to do with the acronym IOOD?”
Both of us just stood there in the dim light of the
deck bar and looked at each other. We both said
simultaneously, “I’ll bet it does hunh?”
Anna went on. “If you’re right, then Psionics
was an ideal recruitment agency for the IOOD
because to get to the level of Operating Delta you
have to just about be brainwashed.”
“Perfect for security screening, eh?”
“Exactly. But why did they do it?”
“I have no idea. I assume they were bored.”
“No. Something happened in the transition
between Psionics and the IOOD.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, knowing she was
going to tell me anyway.
“Here’s the problem. Psionics cultists are
willing to do anything for the cult, including putting
off immediate gratification for future gain. This,
sounds mature and it fits the definition of mental
health, but the IOOD can’t wait centuries or
generations, implying they are immature, and
dysfunctional. Remember we drew an analogy to
the Irish or the Chinese revolutionaries who waited
many generations for their idealized outcome?”
“I remember. That was about twenty minutes
ago when we were still awake.”
“Am I boring you?”
“No, but could you just give me a little hint
about your plan.”
“I told you we’re going to kick it’s ass.”
“How, might I ask?”
“Yes, well, the IOOD has only been in existence
for about twenty years.”
“OK you know something I don’t right?”
“Right.” It means that, although Project
Excalibur may have been around a long time, its
current usage has only been around as long as the
IOOD. “You mean this connection was no
accident?”
“I mean the IOOD came from Psionics and SAP
and the KKK, even the old Nazi party. The inverted
pentagram at Amiens gave me the first clue. I
thought maybe we should be looking for more than
one group, as it turned out at least five groups were
linked in the Excalibur conspiracy.”
“You mean the Templars were fascists?” I asked
in disbelief.
“No, no. Quite the contrary. The men and
women who built the cathedrals we not evil. They
were militarists to be sure, but the Knights
Templars were more like benevolent Boy Scouts
directing traffic at a school picnic. The Pentagram,
to them, was a sign of wealth and of the orbit of
Venus, it was not diabolical or evil.”
“So, you’re saying there’s been a chartered
military secret society in Europe since the crusades
and that, after the fall of the Templars and
Hospitaliers, it grew egocentric and corrupt.”
That’s exactly what I’m saying. You should
know you’re the medievalist in the family.”
“Yes, but I don’t often make direct links lasting
more than 1000 years. Are you saying that when the
Templars fell a secret society formed in their place,
a secret society dedicated to usurping human
rights?”
“No I’m saying a bunch of assholes broke off
and became bored with themselves, and a bunch of
really enlightened people broke off to fight them...
these white magicians are probably better known as
alchemists.
“According to my research two groups spun off
after the execution of Jaques DeMolay. The amoral
group formed a number of faceless root groups,
which historians call Dark Families because so little
is known about them. The more benevolent and
compassionate branch formed into the Order of the
Rose Cross. This group was linked to royalty, but
fell from royal power as the church gained control
over the monarchies. However, the Renaissance saw
the rise of a strong mercantile class which began to
challenge the absolute power of the church and the
monarchies and you can bet our pals were right in
the thick of the fight, especially in the deployment
of the printing press.”
“My jaw slackened as she spoke. “What are
their names?” I asked.
“There are too many to list. They go out of
existence only to be replaced by secondary and
tertiary groups. They’re very mercurial. They are
predominately linked to Royal blood lines from the
Teutonic knights, but not all of these families turned
nasty. Many families trace their origins to a time
long before DeMolay, probably to the Roman
conflict between Empire and Republic, but the
Romans weren’t interested in killing off human
rights, they only wanted to control them for the
Patrician class. That’s how the church rose to power
in the fifth century.”
“So what are we up against here?” I asked.
Anna had a deep understanding of things Nazi,
so I listened intently. “It seems as if every time a
democratic process takes hold, every time a nation
or group approaches a harmonious world order the
dark families do what they can to send it back into
chaos.”
“You mean they thrive on chaos, while we
thrive on harmony?”
“Exactly. It’s like aerobic and anaerobic
evolution. Simultaneous evolution and devolution.
Darwin only talked about evolution. He missed the
other half of the equation.”
I shot straight up from my deck chair letting out
a yell as I rose, “Wow, what a thought. Antimatter
and Protomatter are both required to make Peanut
Butter.”
“That’s right. Anna smiled at the Zen nature of
my comment. “Every society has to devolve in
order to evolve. It’s like the good guys and the bad
guys except there really aren’t any good or bad
equations here—just reality grinding away.”
“Wow, are you eloquent or what?” I asked.
She grumbled a bit to show displeasure. “The
white hats drift together and good stuff starts to
happen, but then the black hats ooze out like low
grade crude oil and try to destroy all the good being
done.”
“It’s like the Japanese game of Go.” I shouted. I
started pacing the deck in an agitated state.
Anna tried to calm me down, “Hey Canyon
you’re box walking.”
“What’s that?”
That’s what the horse people call it when a pony
gets manic in his stall.”
“I thought they called that cribbing.”
“No silly that’s something else. I don’t se e you
biting the rails yet.”
She asked another rhetorical question. “They
were bored with the benefits of Democracy that
wanted to build a “polis,” a city state from which
they could rule the world, unfortunately they
couldn’t agree on which city or what they should do
with the power or who should rule, it’s never stable
when every board member is a petty tyrant. In
Aristotle’s terms Democracy is distributing the
wealth to the rich. This enables them to piss on the
peasants and empower only those who kiss ass. He
was wrong of course, it means distributing the
power evenly, but the IOOD, whoever they are,
didn’t see it that way. If you don’t believe me read
Aristotle on ethics.”
“I have.” I answered. I knew she was egging me
on. “Old Aristotle was the first real fascist
technocrat wasn’t he?”
“That’s right.” Anna smiled as she spoke. She
seemed amused that I would call Aristotle a fascist.
He advocated slavery because he felt certain people
can’t reason for themselves and can’t be taught to
reason, so they should be slaves. When in fact all
they have is an inferiority complex or come from a
dysfunctional family. I could feel anger welling up
deep within me, the same anger I felt when I
realized I had been dosed back in London three
years ago. “I always thought Aristotle was a pig.
Now I’m sure. Nowadays the only people who can’t
reason for themselves are retarded or schizophrenic
or brain dead and they certainly wouldn’t make
good slaves now would they?”
“I don’t know.” Anna looked up as if she was
tracking Excalibur. “Seems like this Excalibur thing
has a lot of people fooled.”
“Fooled maybe, but not because they can’t
reason, maybe they don’t have all the facts at their
disposal.”
Anna seemed confused, “So you think
computers are a backward step in evolution, is that
what I’m hearing?”
“No, that’s not what I meant.” I had to defend
my firm belief that computers are bad only in bad
hands, “No not at all, the computer power is a
liberating force—it tends to level the playing field,
but the abandonment of decision making to those
who control the big iron, that’s definitely a step
backward. That’s why I think robots and computers
are the new generation of slaves. It’s not that they
exist it’s the way they are used that counts.”
Anna nodded in agreement, the confusion gone
from her face, “It’s like what you said in
Intellemimisis, “Robots is de new niggers.”
“Yes, very controversial. I’m sorry I used the
“N” word in any context. People just didn’t
understand the alliteration. The phrase wasn’t
politically correct, but it was logically valid. I
guess, that’s about it.”
Anna now seemed to understand, “So you’re
saying that we haven’t transcended the need for
slavery, instead we have invented the computer to
act as a slave surrogate.”
“That’s it.” I responded in the affirmative. “As
long as we need slavery, of any kind, we won’t
evolve. Our reliance on computational machines
will feed an elite class and eat the underclass. This
means we will remain bigoted, close minded and
vulnerable to fascism.”
Anna nodded with me as she listened. “We’ve
been trying to get beyond that stage for at least two
centuries. I suspect the underclass will eventually
grow too big to control, don’t you think?” Anna’s
face took on a serious mask.
“No because if the IOOD has its way, the
population will be controlled by culling and
strategic dieoffs.” I answered in an angry tone.
“Look Canyon, don’t get angry with me, I’m
just the messenger.” Anna pouted and we embraced.
She then went on to assure me she was on the same
track. “Don’t forget Canyon, I put a lot of artificial
intelligence in my Black Jack machine DEE 21.”
“Yes, baby, but you know as well as anyone,
that A.I. turned out to be bogus when taken beyond
the expert systems model.”
Anna agreed. “I had to face the fact DEE 21
couldn’t think for itself and it would be schizoid to
think of it as bioscientific.”
Right. Exactly, because it does not have
freedom of will. The freedom to act on one’s ideas,
senses or thoughts, is a basic tenet of modern life.
The IOOD wants to take it all away. Anyone who
needs a slave is too lazy and way over extended.
Anybody who even thinks slavery is OK is a fool.”
I could see that Anna was drifting off into a
reverie, “I’ll bet that’s how the Excalibur project
got a foothold. Everybody was so busy whipping
the slaves they couldn’t see these hitek Nazis
coming down the pike.” She almost moaned as she
spoke.
I touched her hand gently, feeling her pulse
through her long fingers. “We agree on that too. It’s
easy to make machines appear to think for
themselves, but it’s an illusion.
Anna grew complimentary, “I think you
underestimate yourself.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I got a lot of this from your book. In
Intellemimisis you break new ground. You inferred
that no matter how sophisticated technology
becomes the human species will not evolve until it
grows beyond the need for slavery. There will be no
evolution until each citizen can observe every other
citizen without judgment of any kind, unless one is
called on to act as a judge, as in the case of a jury
under strict legal guidelines.”
“Wow, you got that from my book?”
“Not entirely, but the seed was there.”
“Well, since I wrote that I have new definition
of freedom.”
“Really what’s that?”
It came to me one day when I was feeding the
swans along the Boyne, “True freedom is to live
without judgments.”
Anna applauded lightly. Her eyes sparkling as
she look through me. “My meditations tell me that
as long as we engage in judgemental thinking we’ll
encourage these louts out of their creepy little holes.
We can’t do away with them, we can only keep
them in a social prison. The only way to kill ‘em off
is to think for ourselves—each and every one of us
for many generations—then, eventually, they will
shrivel up. It’s a lonely gambit but it will work.”
I put another question out. “Hey smoochie face,
do you mind if we get back to the briefing. Unless
of course you wanna go below decks.”
Anna blushed, “What would you like to focus
on now?”
“I think I need a clarification here. You mean
these IOODPsionics people were so spoiled they
got sick of having to make decisions. They wanted
others to do that for them, like rock stars or
transglobal pilots?”
“Yes. They grew beyond challenge, beyond
judgment, the people who never take NO for an
answer.”
“Oh I see. They got so used to snapping their
fingers for a blow job or food or a bath that they
eventually couldn’t do it for themselves?
“That’s about it.” Anna beamed, “They never
grew up. After a while they grew sick of having to
beckon for things. The mere act of snapping ones
fingers and pointing grew to be too strenuous. It
didn’t take long for them to grow swish. In a matter
of months they expected their vassals to anticipate
their every need, by ESP I guess.”
“Right and from there you decay into the belief
that you’re a God and then they come and take you
away in the little white emergency van.”
“Unless, of course you own the emergency
van.” We both shuddered and laughed nervously at
that one.
“That would be OK with one or two people, but
how does a whole society get that disease?”
“Have you ever heard of the Comet People?”
“Yes, I read somewhere that they were founded
by a guy who came straight from black witchcraft
and satanic ritual.
“Oh! You mean Small Don Rooney?” She asked
this in a rhetorical tone.
“No. The Comet People were not from Psionics,
they came from the Blavatsky cult or Rudolph
Stiener or something.”
“Yes, but what’s the connection to Excalibur?”
“Oh, nothing direct, just that they were the first
to suggest that space would be a good place to
enslave people... like if a comet came through we
could all just send the slaves into space or
something equally silly.”
I was beginning to suspect that the Psionics club
system was a haven for paranoiacs because
everybody who says anything against them is
labeled a repressive.”
“I’ve known that for years.” I added softly. “But
where do they get their connection to the IOOD
group?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” Anna answered. “About two
years ago Rooney located his main base in a huge
chalet in Switzerland. He also stashed about 20
million platinum flakes from the Canadian Bronco
SPX strike of 2019 and about three hundred million
in old silver dollars and gold bars. So they have
money and they couldn’t have been in on that strike
without some high government contacts.”
I nodded and asked another question. Wasn’t
Rooney supposed to have died and resurrected or
something?”
“Oh yeah, you heard that one too. Same thing
with Maynard. Rooney claims he is more than one
hundred and fifty years old, which may be partially
true, I mean some of him was probably one hundred
and fifty, like maybe his legs. This we suspect
because rumors persist, and from reliable quarters,
that Rooney managed to con his parishioners out of
various of their organs: a new liver, a few umbilical
cells from aborted fetuses and voila! He gets to stay
alive longer than anybody should.”
“Yes, but that isn’t true immortality is it?”
“No, but it fools a lot of people who die before
you do.”
I remembered something I read in an email
newsgroup. “When he was finally extradited from
Helvetia for tax evasion he was so fat he couldn’t
move around much, but the trial was hushed up.”
“Yes, I read that too. Anna replied. “I presume
Roonie paid somebody off.”
“He was always paying somebody off. That’s
how he pulled off his magic act. Rooney was,
according to the books at the Warburg, the
unnatural inheritor of the North American mantel of
the Order of the Golden Rainbow also known as
Ordoro Tempelis Aura, but had back slid into a
power mad scorched earth policy—win at any
price.”
Anna was quick to reply. “Well here’s one I’ll
bet you haven’t heard. Arthur Crumly, Rooney’s
admitted guru—murdered by an outraged bisexual
lover in 2022 at the age of one hundred—was
himself unofficially linked with murder cases on
more than one occasion, but he never did a day in
ISO. For example there is some evidence that
Crumly was the monster who hypnotized and
bioprogrammed “Fenwick the Ripper.”
“Who?”
“You know the anorexic male nanny who
hacked five women to death in the Adagio sex club
on the Bowery in 2018.”
“No, I never heard of him, but I’ll bet Crumly
has... He was probably too cowardly to do the knife
work himself.”
Anna nodded yes, saying, “Naturally, he had
one of his minions do it for him, maybe an
ambitious Psionics clubber with those little orange
juice cans hooked up to a gizmo but, and this is
what’s revelatory about Crumly, when asked why
he bioprogrammed Fenwick he said, ‘Oh Hell I’m
bored.’
“You mean he admitted his involvement
publicly and yet nobody did anything about it?”
“Anna answered with a nasty tone. “I guess
there’s a lot of bored people out there. It’s a nasty
world Canyon.”
I agreed of course. Between the two of us we
were beginning to fit the rebus together.
She went on, “I read a pamphlet by Rooney,
who, aping Crumly, was of the opinion that
compassion and charity are signs of weakness.”
“Ha, that’s a gas! I said “When I was in London,
the librarian at the Warburg told me Rooney
frequently visited the Crumly archives. One of his
companions, a Psionics woman in a green tunic,
told her Rooney was developing a wild pack of
assassins with specific targets. She didn’t believe
the woman, but she added that Roonie was going to
name this posse Operation Theta. If anybody got
too curious they were treated to an audit called D45,
guaranteed to get them clear. It’s had something to
do with an old fashioned .45 caliber slug and a
postballistic swim.”
“Yes,” Anna replied. “While I was back home I
read about Small Don’s last trial. The tax cops
interviewed two exEberhardt seminar leaders and
three high ranking exPsionics bioprogrammers who
claimed the two groups met often and had numerous
overlapping officers, almost like ambassadors. The
witnesses claimed that these liaisons proved fertile
and that since about 2037 certain seminars, called
‘Alta’ groups, were held to indoctrinate
brainwashed shooters and to discuss other strategies
including the infiltration of defense electronics
companies.”
“I’ll bet you’re going to say that some of these
people were also members of the IOOD.?”
“No, I’m going to say ALL of them were
members of the IOOD.”
“What?” “How could that be?”
“Well it ain’t coincidence, they all had IOOD
parking permits on their cars. My witness sat their
and watched them arrive in the parking lot.”
“In other words they couldn’t have been in the
Alta group unless they had already joined IOOD.”
“That’s about it. It’s like the groups were set up
in stages or degrees, so that membership in a certain
group signaled your degree of attainment. These
reasonably reliable sources, disillusioned with what
they had heard and seen at the higher levels, stated
under oath, that Eberhardt seminars and Psionics
sessions were a front for a new form of political
authority and that the entire idea was to ‘train’ the
middle class so that they would be guarded against
hippies, liberals, beatniks, radicals, pot smoking
scum, intellectuals and alternative culture types.”
“HMMM, I feel like Alice in Blunderland.
Things is getting curiouser and curiouser.”
Anna was not a hippy in the halcyon days of the
LoveMulberry, but she was close to the movement
since her mother went radical feminist in the
depression. As a child she had many contacts with
Paula Pinsky, the well known radical feminist
organizer. Pinsky had a great fear of the suppressive
cults and predicted they would come to power
through misinformation and internal destabilization.
It was Pinsky, as far back as 1998, who warned of
this Neofascist undercurrent in North America,
never mind Europe. Pinsky, a lesbian who loved
men as companions, was convinced that the next
big dictator would be a slick and cool dude who
everybody loved and listened to—like Rust Limbo,
the fat and furious media personality who killed
himself on the air.
“Say Anna have you ever heard of Rust
Limbo?” I asked.
“Oh sure. Wasn’t he backed by big Christian oil
money?”
I winked at her across the steel deck balastrude.
“...the guy who stuck the bazooka in his mouth
and blew his head off because his ratings fell
off?—Man what a way to go… whew!”
“Yeah that’s the one.”
“I think he was an IOOD guy, seems I saw
somebody on his show congratulating him for
joining the IOOD and Psionics in the same day.”
“Old Rust Limbo, man he sure hated the radical
feminists didn’t he?”
Anna perked up. “Funny you should mention
them, wasn’t your mom tight with Paula Pinsky in
days gone by?”
“Anna’s eyes sparkled. “Yes, I just told you
that. Weren’t you listening?”
“I knew she was a poet, but I wasn’t sure she
hung out with Pinsky.”
“Well she did.” Anna huffed indignantly. “One
month before Ms. Pinsky died of a heart attack in
Old Carmel she told my mom that she saw a new
face on the beast—a woman’s face. According to
Pinsky the biblical beast of Revelations was not a
fire breathing mailman monster but a nice
bisexualfemale rock star draped in Florentine silk.”
“You mean like Courtney Love?”
“Yes, exactly, only cooler.”
“Courtney’s still going isn’t she?”
“Yes, shes about 85 now.”
“That’s odd, very strange indeed, what a
vision.”
“Or hallucination, take your pick.” Anna
focused on my eyes, just to see if I was tracking her.
“Pinsky said the possibility of a NeoNazi take over
is real because American women have gone so far
to the right there’s no coming back. Most of the
feminists are gay, so it became a gay support
network, not really a liberation cause. It really
didn’t help a lot of straight women.
I agreed. “Yeah my mom spotted that one. After
2021 she said she couldn’t tell NOW from the
Daughters of the American Republic.”
“Why do you think that is?” Anna asked, almost
like she knew the answer already.
“Well, Its probably because nascent fascism is
present in the puritanical mind, a mind that found its
major growth, not in Europe, where it was
condemned as inhumane by the Dutch, The Swiss,
and the English, but in America the land of the
WASP and the home of the not so brave.”
I was amazed that Anna would come down so
hard on the feminist movement, but she was right. I
felt like we were both writing the same book.
“Yeah, the first thing the Puritans did after they
landed at Plymouth was burn a witch. The genocide
against the Native Americans took a little longer
because they needed the Indians for survival until
they got established.”
Anna was in no mood to quibble over terms. We
both knew we were working on the same problem
and we both felt sea sick as the rubbery scow we
were riding pitched and gyred like a cork. The chills
went through us about every three minutes so we
hugged a lot that night. The gin was gone, but the
Ginseng tonic had some life in it, enough to keep
our conversation linked and rational.
It seemed apparent to me that Dumb Dolphins
early escapades had something to do with fighting
these cults, but I still couldn’t figure it out
completely. “I’m betting that the cults were
connected to a super secret paragovernmental
organization, which had, as its ultimate goal, the
take over of the worlds governments and the minds
of the populations of earth.” Does that make
sense?” I asked.
“Yes but that’s an old scam, every scifi thriller
ever written featured some mad scientist trying to
take over.”
“I agree, but this is real and that was fiction, so
let’s get on with the plan.” I sounded more forceful
than usual. “How did we connect the window at
Amiens with the IOOD?”
“Anna seemed drowsy as she spoke, a full year
of tire wear and driving took its toll. “That
pentagram at Amiens reminded me of something I
saw in the Pentagon in Washington, many years
ago.”
“What was that?” I asked.
“I saw a big display of medieval war
implements and heraldry. The IOOD was using the
exact same stained glass window, not a facsimile,
but the exact window, as a background for their
logo.”
“No kidding?”
“Honest injun.”
“How does that tie into the women’s groups?”
“Oh that’s simple too.” Anna seemed to be
tiring. “After a few generations the members of the
underclass begin to think they deserve to be slaves,
and that’s what Aristotle was banking on. His
theory is correct only because he bases his ethics on
the decaying ruins of Athens. It’s a selffulfilling
prophecy. What we see here is simply the decaying
ruins of another Democracy sucked dry by fascism.
The need to own a slave, the impulse to lord your
ego trip over another human being corrupts the
women’s liberation organizations, the Boy Scouts
and the Senate equally. It’s much more sinister than
people realize.”
“It’s also a form of rank laziness.” I added.
“Right, and intellectuals should be the most
fearful.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because most true intellectuals know that when
the hob nail boot comes down, it comes down on
them first. Maybe the Golden Age of Athens,
wasn’t so Golden after all.” Anna meditated on this
as she gazed across the water to the east. I followed
her eyes as they strained to see the lights of
Antwerp, but a coastal fog blocked the view.
Nostalgia
Neither of us were willing to admit how much
we missed
being together. Soon the flood would come, then the
tears, but for now it was talk. “Don’t you think
somebody would eventually throw a ‘Spaniard in
the works’ as one ancient rock poet once quipped.”
“Anna looked at me with a mock glare, “That’s
us silly. We are the Spaniards in the works.”
I agreed “Of course. You’d think some hero
would eventually come forward and kick these
bastards out, but that’s not realistic… I’m no hero
that’s for sure.”
Anna disagreed. “I’m no hero either, but don’t
forget we’re talking about a subtle world order,
setup over generations. It’s us or no one.”
“Yeah, an evil chain letter passed down from
whacko father to demented son. How can we stop
that.”
“Or daughter,” Anna reminded me.
“Of course,” I said, “Every woman is
somebody’s daughter, women play a significant role
in passing down the hate and the power. They
usually don’t need to be dictatoress’ like Elizabeth
Tudor or Eva Perone or the Spider Woman of
NikiNika, the one who buried five thousand
emerald workers alive in Brazil in 2025, but they
make their contribution.”
Anna looked amazed. “So you’re saying that the
fascist order wins out, not because the best people
are at the top, but because the meanest fuckers are
at the top and we are powerless to do anything
about it?”
“Right. They scare the hell out of me.” I sensed
a stalemate coming on, “OK back to the point, how
do you think the IOOD and their affiliates got so
much power?”
Anna remained self assured, “The answer lies in
the nature of their organization,” she said. “Here
take a look at this.” Anna pulled a fiche print from
the envelope on her lap.
Big Gains for Psionics Recruiters
TimesPicayune on-line
By
Edmund St. Just
It pays to sell memberships in Psionics.
According to earnings reports the church has filed
with the Global Revenue Service. One man earned
almost 2 Million in commissions in a single year.
That’s 2 million Old ECUs.
Recent GRS reports reveal a sophisticated
quasigovernmental organization with contacts
inside the GRS itself. Estimated earnings from all
Psionics clubs combined will exceed Euros
275Billion annually. The church has holdings in
real estate, stocks and gold bullion, but by far its
largest source of daily revenue appears to be cash
donations from its members and newcomers, called
“scribs.”
The church gives its zealous advocates 10 to 15
percent of what newcomers “donate” for church
services, such as the process called “Blowing.” This
process tests the scribs and tells the clubbers how
far from salvation the newcomer is. The top pitch
man, identified only as Harry Pinkerton, drummed
up more than Euros 13million for Psionics each
year.
Critics feel the organization is a vast money
laundry, with banking connections in Luxembourg,
Switzerland, Ireland and the Caribbean. Exact
figures remain elusive because money flows freely
among the more than 300 Psionics clubs whose
chain of command can only be described as
arabesque. The money is passed around in
whirlwind fashion, wherever it is needed. For
example, the church headquarters in Miami, known
as “Main Country,” posted revenues of
$774.3million. Of those revenues, $124.3million
was transferred to the ‘mother church’ in an
undisclosed city. The mother church, in turn, listed
assets of $69Billion, but it is not known how the
loan from Main Country was accounted for. Main
Country contributions were topped the next year by
the International Society of Psionics in Woking,
Surrey, England.
Meanwhile, Gladness Male #1, the church’s top
executive, who resides one step below god a
Rooney himself, is paid directly by Rooney and the
“Protector of the religion of Psionics,” whoever that
is. Why, one might ask, would any church need a
protector unless they knew there was something
radically wrong with its precepts?
The International World Court in the Hague has
brought eleven cases against them over the past two
decades and many countries have kicked them out.
Germany pioneered a strong antiPsionic stance as
early as 1996, calling it, “An American disease.”
Helga Van Amstel, the Dutch international
prosecutor, banished all Psionics activity from
Greater Holland and other governments are
threatening to do the same because the Clubbers
take in huge sums and smuggle the money out in
cash. According to Van Amstel about half of the
Dutch parishioners are dupes living slavishly to the
edicts of the local club master while the other half
are simpleminded con men and women looking for
a free ride. “They are parasites and intolerant of the
long established religions.” She said.
Psionics graduates have an entirely different
picture of their activities. To quote Rooney.
“Nobody works in Psionics, everybody blasts.
Blasting is necessary to find the ultimate spiritual
salvation. Blasting is fun”
Apparently Psionics feels that spiritual salvation
is tightly linked to cash flow. In one document, an
international panel of accountants traced
$205Billion in spending from cash reserves across
the last decade, much of this for frivolous outlays,
clothing cars and houses for the higher ups. The
total includes $30billion in legal bills, and
$3.4billion used to finance a traveling exhibition on
Rooney’s life featuring his fifty two books, one for
each week of the year.
Psionics spent relatively little on good works
and charity. There are no soup kitchens, hospitals or
outreach programs for the homeless associated with
Psionics. In fact most clubbers think of the
homeless as a waste of time. This cynical attitude is
not only pervasive throughout the organization, but
is part and parcel of the code of Rooney who looks
down on anyone who is addicted, psychotic or
disadvantaged in anyway. Its own statement of one
year’s cash flow to organizations devoted to “social
betterment,” such as Halfway Happy House in New
York City, totaled less than $1million per year, and
we are not even sure what Psionics means by
“social betterment” or “happy.”
Psionics displays a strange set of priorities.
Instead of helping nonmembers with bootstrap seed
money, the members of Psionics spent $7billion on
the bomb resistant doors for seven vaults where
Rooney’s papers are stored within titanium canoptic
jars. Each of these gold lined jars costs another
$7million.
Main Country, in Florida, was managed by
Rooney’s wife, Maria, until her death in 2044. She
ran her club as a secretive and separate operation
with 1,500 employees, all of whom just walked off
the job and disappeared two days after her death.
We may never know how these 1500 grew to a
higher plane than the other parishioners world wide,
or what happened to them. The money was missing,
so we can assume they divided it equally. A
forensic psychologist familiar with the case stated,
“I personally feel Marina’s body should be
exhumed and if cremated the whole thing should be
reinvestigated. I don’t think there is a body or else
she was murdered.”
When asked if clubbers believe in reincarnation
Rooney said, “No!” But in 2046 Rooney left
Psionics headquarters in Surrey, England to live
aboard a conventional submarine rigged out with
solar power to help him investigate his past lives in
such diverse ports as Dublin and Dry Tortuga.
Raised eyebrows were common, even in Psionics
circles, when Rooney announced he would be
staffing the sub with an all male crew. Although
they all denied any faith in reincarnation, each man
signed a pledge to devote the next billion years of
his existence to Rooney. When asked why all of his
crew were men, Rooney quipped, “Any port in a
storm, old bean.”
Currently no one knows exactly where Rooney
and his sub club are birthed, or is that rebirthed?
- 30 The hover craft erected its huge auxilliary sail,
we could hear the creaking mast erecting itself prior
to taking a windward reach, turning slightly to align
with a guidance beacon. The ride was smoother
now. “Wow this is terrific and terrifying at the same
time. Do you think Rooney himself had anything to
do with Excalibur ?”
Anna paused to think about my question. Finally
she said, “I don’t think so. But there may have been
some overlap. Who knows what his old lady was up
to? Why was he out in a shallow submarine? I think
he knew what was going on.”
“OK, but why?”
“That’s the big question. It’s the nature of the
human beast. There seems to be three classes in
every society. Now you can make more
subdivisions and call them classes, and you can
make fancy names for them, but there are only
three, the artisan class, the ruling class and the
sheep. Of these, only the artisan class gives a shit
about freedom. They need the freedom to create.
They cannot live without it. Freedom is in their
genes.”
“… and their jeans.”
“Very funny. Aristotle held artisans in contempt
since he was raised in a royal court, but the modern
technological artisan class, the bohemian
subculture, by this I mean the poets and the painters
who have achieved control over perspective…”
I chimed in, “And money.”
She nodded as she worked her magical loom,
weaving a majestic tapestry, “…the nonderivative
musicians, the stained glass window makers with a
knowledge of true alchemy and light, the
photographers with a third eye and builtin, the
dancers who are caught up in flight, or anybody
who makes a living from original ideas for textiles
or ceramics or a computer program. I call them
‘fuzzoids’ because they thrive on cognitive
dissonance, ambiguity and fuzzy logic.”
“That’s us, right?”
“More or less. It’s us in so far as we are in touch
with our dreams. True visionaries usually hold a
positive view of the human condition.”
“Yeah, that’s us, fuzzy, but positive.”
Again she nodded in the affirmative, “We’re
like Jews. The messiah is on his way, but he isn’t
here yet, in the mean time we move in a single
political unit, but because we often swim against the
mainstream our lives are in a constant state of flux.”
“You mean like Salmon we are in a constant
state of near extinction?”
“More like near exhaustion… [ sardonic
laughter ] the ruling class tries to disrupt people like
us, certain youth gangs and the African Americans
because we represent the only remaining
subcultures capable of real rebellion. We have
nothing to lose.”
“I’d hate to lose you baby.”
“Oh how sweet,” Anna purred.
I bowed my head. “Its been so long since I’ve
seen a muse I wouldn’t know her if she sat on my
face.”
Anna slapped my shoulder, “Hey, none of that
vulgarity.”
I pulled away, as if defending myself, but she
stood and escalated her aggressive stance. “Listen
brother we are knee deep in Yak dung here. The
South American cartels, backed by old Nazi money,
tried to kill off all signs of rebellion with Craque
cocaine sixty years ago and it didn’t work. I guess
we just have a rebellious nature.”
“Yeah the punk thing was a rebellion too, but
they got caught between pure anarchy and the skin
head passion for fashion.”
“And opiates.”
Anna agreed. “Sure opiates have an allure like
marijuana and cocaine because they have medicinal
value, but the actual amount of any opiate needed to
achieve a therapeutic effect is minuscule compared
to the massive doses most people shoot up.”
“I always thought the object was to kill the pain
without the addiction.”
We embraced against the cold night air, the
ships freezeon heaters worked intermittently at best.
I told her what I knew about grass. “That’s why I
like cannabis. I heard once that ten thousand good
Indica plants, let’s say a hybrid like G13, would
take care of all the legal users in North America for
a year.”
“How many acres would be required?”
“Well at one hundred big plants per acre, and I
mean that’s a lot of room between plants, you
would only need about one thousand little farms.”
“Yeah, I guess it depends on where the acres are
located. If the acres where up a road near
Laytonville, no problem.” [More laughter.] The
town of Laytonville, in Northern California,
officially changed its name to Lhasa after a bunch
of Tibetan monks took over the Big Chief diner and
began growing pot for fun and profit. Sober now, I
added, “Hey the ruling class would never go for
that. Too easy. How do you define the ruling class
anyway?”
“Well, generally the ruling class isn’t gifted,
unless you call making money gifted. The ruling
class always leans to the right because they are
unimaginative and fear anything ambiguous or
radical. They hate pot because it makes you fuzzy
and goofy sometimes. They’ll call you a witch or a
satanic cultist, simply because you explore new
ideas. In eighteenth century England “freethinkers”
could be hung for merely expressing an odd ball
opinion in public.”
“So you’re saying that as soon as they gain
power they do everything possible to keep
everybody else from seizing it. My dad had an old
VDAT of a group called Starkly Dan or Steeleye
Span or something like that. Their big hit was a tune
called The Royal Scam.”
“Oh, I know that song.” Anna replied.
“Something about seeing the glory of the royal
scam, yes, quite right. The benevolent members of
the ruling class tolerate the fuzzoids, or at least
aren’t horribly threatened by them, because gifted
artists create pretty and valuable things with which
to adorn ones castle walls and one’s children, but
the not so benevolent pricks in the ruling class, the
white trash types, the ones who wouldn’t know an
Etruscan vase from a pile of cow dung, are
threatened because they envy and fear anyone who
can live with ambiguity. The really rich, the old
wealth and gentry, patronize the fuzzoids, but the
new power freaks hate them.”
As she spoke I saw a parallel to the IOOD,
“Ironically the power freaks seem to emerge from
the lowest caste in society. They get money, but
don’t know what to do with it.”
“Of course, this gang aspires to be the ruling
class, but they have no aesthetic. They are turnedoff
to art, beauty and freedom of choice. Their walls are
blank. Their minds are blank. They wear uniforms,
sometimes very subtle uniforms, and their children
wear uniforms at school—I guess to get them ready
for the uniforms they will wear later in life. To
power freaks everything should just happen
naturally, but it has to be their way or it ain’t
natural.”
I added, “Only a free society would allow them
enough freedom to thinkup this bullshit in the first
place—kind of ironic eh?”
“I noted that paradox long ago.” Anna
continued. Freedom can be too damn free according
to these guys. Anyway, this particular bunch, the
ones who financed and launched Excalibur two or
three decades ago, hated freedom.”
“And you’re saying that to combat their conjoint
anxieties they organized themselves along
pseudooccult lines, like a bunch of wild eagle
scouts working on merit badges.” I was sure that’s
what she meant, but I just wanted to keep the
conversation going we had a way to go.
Anna jumped up and began to pace the deck at
flank speed, “That’s it exactly, why do you think
they built mystical trappings into their
organizational structure?”
I answered quickly, “Ahha, maybe they’re
passiveaggressive, sort of conforming and
nonconforming at the same time, it must be a big
conflict, maybe they thought they could infiltrate
the hippy movement which got started way back in
the late eighteenth century with the Bohemians in
Paris and Prague and with the Concord
transcendentalist poets after World War one in New
York.”
“Don’t forget Lord Byron in London.”
“Yes, and his daughter Ada.”
“Anna said, “Oh you know about her?”
I smiled, seeing the outcome of our conversation
creeping nearer, “Yeah, a little, I studied her at the
Warburg, just about a month before we met at the
Jockey Hall.”
She moved toward me and slid her hands around
my neck. “Man you’ve been through some big crap
haven’t you.”
I grew lachrymose, “I can handle it if you stick
with me.”
“Don’t worry, I ain’t goin’ anywhere.” She gave
me a huge kiss and at last it felt like the old days.
This is the little blast of nostalgia I was waiting for.
We hugged and rocked with the boat for about
twenty minutes. Time for lights out. The room grew
dim as the main generator adjusted for the daylight
coming in on the horizon. A greenish pale light
shone through the bar windows.
Ice on the quarterdeck, no sign of human
activity. Anna remained fired up as our arms
interlocked, “So here we have a situation where the
artisan class is ruled by a bunch of wankers and
their patrons are little more than a pack of Nazi’s.
They both hold idiotic views of the way the world
works. The artisans take way too much dope and the
patrons don’t take enough.”
“Why should they, they’re stoned on power.”
More than anything I wanted her to know I cared.
“The history books I’ve read say that when
Communism fell in the late twentieth century it was
little more than a form of fascism. In other words
they weren’t after territorial expansion or money,
they were after a new reality with themselves as the
arbiters?”
She seemed to agree with my assessment,
“That’s right, so now we are down to two forms of
government and only two, democracy—the natural
rhythms of nature interpreted by individuals
working together to form a more perfect
world—and fascism, wherein most citizens are
sheep and defer all decisions to an elite hierarchical
order. Unfortunately mother nature has a different
plan. When the earthquake hits it knocks down the
poorhouse and the castle equally. When Vesuvius
erupted everybody in Pompeii got buried—rich and
poor alike.”
I thought I saw what she was driving at and I
marveled at her brilliance, “Are you saying that the
people behind Excalibur believe that by
intimidating everybody they could establish a
permanent world order?”
“That’s what they thought.” Anna winked as she
folded her papers up and slid them into her
briefcase. “No, I don’t think the Excalibur scam
went down quite like that.”
“How then?” I asked? “I always thought I would
get kicked in the pants if I toyed with
macromethods like that” Anna listened intently. “In
the Tarot arrogance is always warned against by a
thunderbolt from the blue, or some other just
comeuppance.”
“No, I don’t think it’s a god fearing thunderbolt
kind of thing... I don’t think there’s any retribution
in the plan.” Anna smiled in the dim light. “Nope,
these guys are aiming at a new set of values beyond
retribution or Karma. They want to reprogram the
way the human race evolves. They want to shape
and sculpt and engineer every last detail—nothing
whatever would be left to chance—no ambiguities,
no chaos.”
“You mean old Mother Nature would no longer
have a role?” I paused to consider the impossibility
of the plan. “Is that what they’re working toward?”
Anna looked through me toward the dawn
horizon. “Yes, but Mother Nature is probably using
them.”
“Hmmm.” I had no clue what she meant. “Can
you be more specific?”
“I’ll try.” Anna shifted her position on the cold
bench. “You see whoever is behind Excalibur is too
small minded to see Mother Nature in her full glory.
In short she’s laughing at them. She’s using us, to
get at them, for example.”
“And Dolphin?”
“Yes, him too and anybody else who get’s on
the boat.”
“You mean totalitarianism is an earthbound
disease?”
“Pretty much.” Anna knew I understood.
“Authoritarianism probably can’t work in outer
space because space requires too much cooperation.
Look at the Mars expeditions for example, nobody
could get to Mars until everybody got to
Mars—spontaneous effort through multiple layers
of race and culture is the only way it could work.”
I questioned her logic, “ Are you saying that
they are trying to reprogram the DNA code and the
grand dame is obliging them.”
Anna nodded in agreement, “Yes, but their only
role is to continually remind us of the consequences
should we fail to evolve. In other words if we fail to
create new lifestyles we will wind up in a booby
hatch operated by these guys.”
“You mean if we fall asleep, the bad guys clean
up?”
“No, life will go on and somebody will grow
tired of one regime or another, but it will take
centuries. I mean, if they messup we will be
bailingout for a long time... we’ll have to do the
dage control.”
“Oh you mean Underground Railroads.” I tried
to cheer her up by reminding her of her own sense
of humor, something she said while we were
listening to Gus and Sally’s tapes, “You once said,
“More peopel less life”.”
Anna chuckled as she remembered the day we
sat around listening to Gus talking into his forty
year old tape recorder. “I remember, I remember,
but I meant that all political thought is a food
chain—the bad guys feed the evolutionary plan by
building Excalibur, but you and I are extending the
chain by stopping them, and, If we win, they
become food, or, if we loose we become food… it’s
that simple.”
“Mother Nature has a big appetite, I’d say.”
“You’d be right.” Anna chuckled as she spoke,
“It’s all part of the bloody great plan buddy.” She
fumbled through her big black carryall and pulled
out a pack of cards.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Tarot, my little schnook.” She turned away and
pulled out one card, holding it up to the glow point
for my inspection, “What’s does it mean to you?”
She asked.
I stared at the card for a minute before saying
anything, “Hmmm, Fallen Castle, looks like the end
of an era or a great house or a divorce or
something.”
“Anna twinkled at me, “Yes, very close, but its
even bigger than that. The Fallen Castle, is a
symbol of the entire human race. If we blow
ourselves away the animals and trees and other parts
of nature will be happy to do without us. Most
studies indicate that the animals will take over
human habitats and simply go on living on the
planet until the sun burns out. They will evolve and
devolve as was the plan all along. They will predate
and feed, eat, sleep, migrate and hibernate as if the
human race had never been here.”
“Except those who didn’t survive the human
race.” I added.
“Yes, including the human race itself.” That’s
why I say the human race is the only species
capable of total annihilation.”
I admired the transcendental nature of her
theory, “That’s probably right, most animals will
ride out a storm or an earthquake or a flood, then
look for adaptive niches. Sort of Noah’s Ark
without Noah. Lemmings seem to be selfdestructive
until we realize that a huge number decide not to
jump.” But I suspect you have a deeper flash on
this, what’s your real point?”
“Oh the point,” she replied. “Well, it’s just that
we are the most endangered species of all.”
“Wow! Sounds like a book title to me. It could
be your first book Anna.” Her name sounded
hollow in my throat. That’s when I realized I had
not called her by name since her return to Ireland. I
guess I loved her so much I forgot how her name
sounded—almost like a magical mantra. Sleep.
Head on her lap.
Her voice interrupted my reveries, “Canyon,
Canyon boy, where are you? You’re snoring!” Anna
tugged my woolly sleeve, I woke up groggy, The
cat nap lasted maybe twenty minutes.”
“We’ll be in Antwerp in a few hours and there’s
more to the story—much more.”
“What story?” I was so tired I forgot what we
were talking about.
“You see the IOOD couldn’t use a nuclear
device, it just wasn’t scary enough…”
“Oh no, are you still going on about the Dymb
Dorks?”
“Well somebody has to… we’re on a mission
here, not just cruisin’ for burgers.”
I sat bolt upright at that. “Alright, alright, so a
nuclear device is far too messy, it’ll screw them up
too.”
“Right, it might backfire and send everybody
back to the Pleistocene, but, with the excimer
gun—the fear of a rogue gun out of control—their
bizarre plan could grow exponentially.” I took a sip
of potassium replacement soda and made the
appropriate facial grimace.
Anna came back with more insight into Beane,
“Professor Beane feels the mean time for a
propaganda takeover would be within one
generation, backed by a functioning beam. That’s
why I think the same people behind Excalibur,
probably around the time of the great depression of
2010 or maybe as early as 1993, are still alive and
walking around, even extending life by biological
means.”
I realized she was pointing out a weakness in
the plan. “So you think its an ego trip. They have to
see it happen in their lifetime or there’s no point to
it?”
“Spot on Mr. Bobbin. These IOOD folks are not
like the Chinese or the Irish. They will not fight for
generations. They want immediate gratification... it
is hedonism for them.”
I offered her the canteen, but she politely
refused. “That’s why you think Maynard Donnelly
was involved. The Excalibur plan is far too brilliant
a plan to be devised by an engineer with a plastic
pocket protector.”
“Yes, but on a large scale, like erasing all
accrued data on the Internet, the equivalent of the
burning of the Alexandria library.”
I took this opportunity to remind her that
Maynard Donnelly was supposedly dead years ago.
“Donnelly was well out of it by the time Excalibur
started shooting at real targets. He may have been
one of the architects, but he died before he could
see the fruits of his efforts didn’t he?”
Anna nodded, “Yes, but he was an exception, he
was a gifted control freak, not necessarily on an ego
trip as we usually define it. With Donnelly every
anal detail had to be managed personally, but he
was not alone and I doubt he gave a shit about
himself as a dictator. If any thing he was an abstract
thinker, a pure psychotic. His partners were far
more practical, using cults like Psionics as breeding
grounds for the future. The whole thing can be seen
as a big mate selection process. Arranged marriages
are common in these cults.”
“So they did think about future generations.”
“Yeah but only as continuers. They want to see
the first big death blow themselves, they want to see
the bull dragged through the sand before they die.”
“How could they be sure to breed future
assholes in large numbers in such a short time?”
“I’m not sure.” Anna answered apologetically.
“I guess if you want to breed anarchist babies you
go to an art school and look for a lover, but if you
want to breed absolute conformists where do you
go? You have to make a conformist matrix first.”
I laughed, Are you saying the plan is
fundamentally flawed?”
“Yes.”
“OK, give me a forinstance.”
She cocked her head in an almost arrogant pose,
“I discovered plenty of flaws once I took a close
look. In one startling case they ran the daytoday
signals through Musix computers out of
Minneapolis, but there’s no mountain near
Minneapolis for sending or receiving so they had to
go to South Dakota to Mt. Shasta. This also
provided them with a security base. Except it wasn’t
secure. Dolphin believed that whoever sculpted Mt.
Shasta was a Freemason.”
“Burglum, I think was his name.”
“Right, sorta.” She flashed a raised eyebrow,
“It’s Borglum, but hey who’s editing?” Anna was
never happy with my lack of precision. “Anyway
this sculptor hollowed out a number of chambers
inside the head of George Washington…”
“… like the inner chambers of the Psionics
pyramid in Brazil.”
“Yes, except he was an idealist, a real Ben
Franklin kind of guy. He didn’t tell the parks
department, the Department of the Interior or
anybody else about the inner chambers because he
thought those buerarchracies were full of cultists.”
“They probably were, judging from the way
they mismanaged the Native American trust.”
“BINGO.” [Loud laughter] But the IOOD found
out about the compartments and found a way to
open them for whatever mischief they were into at
the time.”
Anna’s revelation clicked some connections in
my head. “So, the chambers were virtually forgotten
until Dumb Dolphin and his band of merry weirdos
exposed them, is that a rough estimate?” I asked.
“Very rough.” Anna rubbed her hands together.
“Hmmm, that explains the obscure Egyptian
symbols the reporter saw on the interior walls of
George Washington’s head. But, why did the IOOD
use Musix?”
“Can you think of a better cover for a satellite
control station? The signals were encoded. They
really loved a nearly forgotten Earl Bostic rendition
of Harlem Nocturne, to name only one example.
Beatle’s tunes played by Percy Faith and his
chamber orchestra were also high on the list.
Nobody could detect anything odd in this boring
music until a few of the tapes got mixedup with the
normal channels, you know the stuff they piped into
department stores. That’s why Dolphin thought it
was some kind of brainwashing scam.”
“He was almost right. Upholstered music is a
form of brainwashing. My uncle called it “elevator
music”.” I added.
Anna smiled at uncle Dean’s poetic description
as a stiff North wind pitched the hover craft against
the tide. Anna continued, her eyes fixed again on
the night horizon. “I’m hoping a dove of peace will
fly out of that sky and bring us an olive branch.”
“Doves don’t fly at night, darlin’. I think we
have to trek on until dawn—maybe we’ll see one
then. Tell me more about the Muzix caper.”
Her aura enveloped me as she spoke, “Now
normally the department stores experience a pick up
in sales because certain tunes have contained hidden
persuaders and subliminal suggestions.”
“Yeah. It would work if the product was
something reasonable.” I agreed, “But when
hundreds of unmarried fat men came home with a
pair of petit taupe, ten denier panty hose in
disposable, pointofsale, douche bags, people began
to wonder.”
Anna shook her head slowly in slight
disagreement, “It didn’t matter. Nothing could be
traced. The satellite signal was run on a microwave
subchannel which is invisible to standard radio
technology. Nobody suspected it. Ironically
somebody from that ethics committee actually went
to the trouble of filing a report on the possibility of
cryptic subcarrier signals sent as superdense
packets, but that report got about as much attention
as a snowflake in a hail storm. The article did
however find its way into a couple of technical
journals and that’s where Dolphin read about it. He
followed through, found out there was something
weird going on at Rockhead and promptly flipped
out.”
“Yeah, but he was on the right track, wasn’t
he?”
“Well he had the bad guys in his sights, and he
had the correct bad guys, but he had only a vague
idea what they were up to.”
“So I guess he was the only person on the
planet, at that early moment, who suspected
somebody was using the Musix system to send
signals and he suspected it had to be
hypergovernmental, sinister and probably lethal.”
“Yes and he was right. It was lethal. It killed
him.”
“Let’s just say he tried to be immortal.”
We managed to hobble down the central stairs
and into our ugly little room. We slept in our
clothes until a big fog whistle blew us awake. The
morning was pink and briny. Salt grains stuck to our
cloths. The shrill sound of gulls and the scent of
Antwerp’s ubiquitous green herring—the
lowlanders answer to sushi—wafted in through the
porthole.
Antwerp
Journal Entry
MidDecember
The Romanesque cathedral at Antwerp is a
beacon to us. The rounded square of the single spire
and the golden lights that illuminate it, could be
seen for miles as the night lifted into a chartreuse
dawn. When it was built, about twelve hundred
years ago, it must have stood out against the stars
and sky marked by the fires kept burning in its
upper portals. Now it stood out against the looming
city—the city of diamonds.
Antwerp, like Gent—the remnant jewels of the
Burgundian crown—is, what we have come to call
“an enlightened city,” which means you can do
anything you want as long as it don’t bother
anybody. The town fathers and mothers can wallow
in this philosophy because they are rich and their
great grandparents were rich, it’s the way it is in
Antwerp. Quiet wealth. The Dutch say “Let the
gleam come from the diamonds in the drawer.”
Our next problem is to locate ground
transportation—a car is out of the question, the train
would be more reliable.
∞∞∞
I went along with Anna’s plan on faith. We
hoofed our way from dock side into the slippery
dawn streets. A cab rank made itself obvious.
Anna said, “Cab first… catch a cab, then a train,
that’s the way to do it.”
“Do what?”
“Oh you’ll see. It’ll take too long to explain and
we’ll be there soon, so sit back and enjoy the ride.”
The town seemed dead this early in the
morning. Signs of a prolonged recession were
evident even in this richest of all Belgian cities. As
in France a year earlier, the people walked slowly as
if in a forced march or on their way to a funeral.
Bread vendors were not happily taunting their
wears, but merely distributing puffed loafs and
hazelnut cookies. Even the police seemed depressed
as the dutifully discharged their offices. We saw an
elegant old Kepelhoffer Deux sedan with a cab light
on the roof and hailed it. Much to our surprise the
driver pulled over and tipped his hat to us. Anna
gave the driver our destination in perfect Flemish.
Once situated in the cab I popped the only question
on my mind. “Even mad fools have a right to know
where they’re going, don’t they?”
“We’re going to Maastricht.”
“Why are we going to Maastricht?”
“Because an old Alchmardi lens is stored there.
“What?”
“You heard me…. they’re heliostats ground
with alchemical gold. I could use an Edmund’s
Science catalog lens, but they’d blowup in our
faces. Besides, Leonardo and Kepler used similar
lenses, they’re small, perfect and ideal for our
needs—very old, but very effective. Museum pieces
really.”
I remained awe struck, “And exactly what are
our needs?”
“We are going to do a variation on the white
witchcraft ceremony called ‘Bringing Down the
Moon.’ The powdered antimony and fulminate of
lead used to activate the lens can be very poisonous,
but there is no equal if you wish to bring down the
moon. Just don’t lick the lens—and be sure to wear
gloves.”
“Wait a minute what are you talking about?
When did you get into witchcraft?”
“Witchcraft Mr. Collins, plain old everyday
white witchcraft, I got into when Derek Beane told
me that the IOOD and Psionics were into it, I guess
we have to beat them at there own game, except
they really didn’t understand it. To the real witches
this ritual is essential for everyday life.”
“So what are we going to do with this crystal
lens when and if we acquire same?”
“We’re going to stop Excalibur. I can’t tell you
more right now because it’s a feely deal. You gotta
feel it in your gonads. I am asking you to trust me
one more time on this. I need you with me now.”
The respect in her voice came out clearly. She
wasn’t begging, but this time I felt I might really be
needed. Not so much to bash someone, although I
would be willing to do some wet work if necessary,
but because I would be a convenient sounding board
as her brain worked out the fine details. For the past
year she stood alone. Now she had me.
Anna carried on in a businesslike manner, a tone
she often took when I disturbed her strategic
thinking, “We will be staying in Maastricht no more
than two days and one night so don’t get the itchy
foot and don’t head out to the casinos.”
Now I was astonished. “You mean there are
casinos in Maastricht?”
“Hey man they have government run casinos
and everybody climbs up your back when you play
blackjack.”
“Why is that?... Are the clubs tiny?”
“No they’re pretty big, except that Maastricht
blackjack is a bit different than Vegas blackjack.”
I was in a challenging mood, “Nothing could be
that different, blackjack is blackjack all over the
world isn’t it?”
“Nope. They bet differently.”
“How differently?”
“Well you see anybody can come up and play
your spot.”
“You mean when you’re playing a given spot
you ain’t alone?”
“That’s right. If you make a bad move they get
real pissed off and most of ‘em never heard of card
counting.”
“Hmmm sounds weird to me.”
Anna took on the stern exterior of a high school
principle, “That’s why I told you not to get your
head set on going out in Maastricht. The place is
full of pirates and we don’t have time for another
caper.”
Now I understood. We listened quietly as the
street sounds of Antwerp merged into the flavorless
morning landscape. Horse drawn carts followed us
10 kilometers out past the cobbles to the farms and
dijkes. Ancient people moved in uncustomary
droves, not such an exodus as I witnessed on the
roads to and from Chartres, but you could tell these
normally stoic lowlanders were near to panic. We
sweated out the last five minutes in introspective
silence as our service cab slowly brushed against
bag people on the packed roads. Sobering is the
only word for it.
Anna was very matter of fact. She moved ahead
with her plan with a resolve I simply did not have.
All the while I was sitting on my ass in Ireland
watching Botswana dudes thatch the roof, she was
running around in North America tracking down the
bad guys. Now she was dragging me along to find a
magical crystal. It all sounds like a fantasy, like we
were in a caffinated soft drink commercial.
Maastricht
The suburban train station appeared in the
windshield. Not much to look at and only one train
on the track—a milk run, headed out across the
lowlands on a frosty morning. The station master
preferred bullion coins in exchange for the tickets
and the train itself was packed and not at all healthy
looking—a yellow subsistence oozed out between
the cracks in the steam boiler. Diesel was
unavailable as a general rule and the electric line
was cut too frequently to run an electric
engine—steam was the only viable alternative. The
conductor was quick to point out, in perfect English,
that we should perhaps settle in for a long ride as
frequent unscheduled stops were expected. This
trip—Antwerp to Maastricht—used to take about
two hours, but now we expected a full day on the
rack. A pack of skinheads smoked hand rolled
Cuban cigars in the cabin across from us. First class
ain’t what it used to be.
The pissing rain began as we lurched from the
train yard—an icy rain which made soothing sounds
on the roof, like pipedin music. Anna asked, “Now
why can’t you get elevator music when you want
it?” We laughed quietly at the irony of the situation
so as to not disturb the other passengers, except the
punks who were oblivious anyway. The gentleman
holding the pig in the seat in front of us nodded a
rosy cheeked grin, as if he knew our joke.
The long ride saw mile upon mile of frozen
polder—the lowlandish equivalent of the
Bonneville salt flats, but, in the Belgian
winterscape, ice replaces salt.
The unoiled train rolls in. Another taxi waits for
anybody with the fare. In Maastricht most people
walk. A car is a big luxury. Anna made the
decision,” Let’s walk, we need to stretch it a bit
don’t you think?”
“Well why not, we have so little to carry.”
She stared at me. “Canyon, you did remember
the Roscoe. That’s what I meant when I asked you
if you are prepared.”
She wasn’t kidding, “Oh yeah, I have it. Do you
think we’ll need it?” I didn’t have the heart to tell
her that the only gun I brought was the trusted
GlukoKruger.
“Hey lets go, what do I know?” It’s an
adventure right?” Anna paused, leaving the gun
stuff up to me.
“Adventure is one thing, but this is ridiculous.” I
said in a huffy mood.
“Yeah, but we may be saving the fucking planet.
Now that’s a real adventure!”
I had to agree with her. We walked for at least
three kilometers lugging the few bags we had. It
wasn’t a straight march, rather a stroll with some
windowshopping for Greek Orthodox icons and furs
to be worn in the coming snows. A bustle of world
citizens move jerkily along the surface of the
streets. No panic here, people are well fed. No
refugees here either. We grazed some smorgasbord
along the way, pomme fritjes from the broodje
wenkel and a solid slug of coffee and a sip of Blue
Curacao in the little green pub on the corner.
As it turned out Anna was right about
Maastricht. She had been in town ten years before,
on programming business, but the place hadn’t
changed much over the centuries. You could feel
the underworld vibes in the reflections of every
shop. Maastricht is, without question, one of the
finest cities on earth—if you like crooked cities.
Unlike other corrupt towns Maastricht makes no
denials. It is apolitical and offers an equal
opportunity to all. In Maastricht business is run
without interruption because all deals are under the
table, except for the one big deal the citizens of
Maastricht pulled back in 1992 when the final
European financial accord was struck there. It didn’t
take long to figure out why the Maastricht Accord
was named for this town. The place is opulent.
There were no brawling ques of bag boys and
women in search of work or food. I could see the
money bubbling up from the underworld. A natural
place to pen the contract that would set the
European monetary unit for centuries to come.
Maastricht is a brocade town, a fine contrast to
the stainless steel and light bulbs of
Eindhoven—the industrial giant and Holland’s only
real twentyfirst century city. When Anna first saw
Eindhoven she thought she was closing in on
Vegas, but at Eindhoven the night lights are sodium
orange and jaundiced. Maastricht might as well be a
carnival town.
The Queen Beatrix was a nice enough hotel,
built about forty five years ago to commemorate the
then Queen’s silver jubilee. Known as a Pullman
hotel in America, the beds were clean and the place
was secure, at least on the fourth floor. Room paid
in advance, in cash. We bought our privacy. I had a
feeling we would do some midnight body bathing in
that largish tub.
Curious how the imp quit talkin’ to me since
Anna came back.
We began the next very sunny day with a late
wake up call and a huge breakfast, something the
Hollanders call and out schmiter, meaning a huge
sandwich to kick you out of the house in the
morning. This consisted of the most complex petite
dejuner anyone could imagine. Five kinds of
cheese, sausages, two kinds of ham, jelly, chocolate
sprinkles, hazelnut paste, two or three boiled eggs,
toast, bagels, hazelnut cookies, pineapple chunks
applesap, custard and a huge pot of coffee. On top
of this some Hollanders eat a few green herring as
they leave for a days work. We needed every calorie
we could pump in. I mean just a few kilometers
away in France people were standing in frozen
bread lines to get a daily allotment of frozen bread,
but in Maastricht a lot of people were fat.
At around noon we managed to waddle out of
the lobby and into a restored DAF diesel, with a
driver from Rotterdam, whose name was, you
guessed it, Robby. We were now, and for the next
few hours, in the clutches of Rotterdam Robby.
What could we do but laugh our assess off, much to
the consternation of Robby, who had no idea why
we were crackingup.
Anna fingered a hand drawn map she had been
carrying in her passport case. The parchment
indicated a cargo quay in a hightech building
perched on the banks of the Maas river. We tipped
Robby a handful of EuroFlorin, and asked him to
wait. He complied passively. The area must have
been more or less abandoned because here it was a
bright frosty winter’s day and hardly any traffic,
certainly no commercial traffic. I puffed a little as
we climbed the stairs to the landing, “Hey I thought
we were looking for catacombs and grottos, what
gives?”
“Silly man, this map shows that the entrance to
the storage area is directly below this cargo
landing.” Anna replied quickly.
Pointing to the map I said, “Where did you get
that?”
Anna pushed me up the stairs, “Don’t dawdle. I
got it from a friend. It’s a long story.” Anna paused
to contemplate whether or not to tell me the long
story right then and there. “No, I’ll tell you later.”
“So what are we looking for?”
Anna answered, almost in a whisper,
“Something like a mirror, I knew it had something
to do with mirrors before I acquired the map.”
She paused and gave me a big hug, “I’m pretty
sure this is the right staircase and the correct door,
so lets go down and get the crap and get out of here,
what do you say?”
For once I agreed, maybe this was a bum steer, I
wasn’t confident when I said, “What the hell, it’s
worth a peek.”
We handled the gear carefully, a Gladstone
satchel with a pry bar and a flashlight was about the
extent of the tools. I felt like a burglar, especially
after the door at the bottom of the staircase required
extensive pounding. The corridor beyond was dark
and wet, I tried to break the tension with an
observation, “Kinda melodramatic ain’t it?”
Anna shooshed me for the umpteenth time, but
this time I stayed shooshed. The flash lights
revealed the first locker located at the end of a short
passage. The doors were about as high as the
ceiling, meaning about three feet above my head.
They took the shape of Romanesque arches, curved
at the top—very thick and made from yew, which
doesn’t rot. There were lights down here
somewhere, but we had no time to find the
switches. I kept thinking this was a bit like visiting
Gus’ house, and I wondered if we would find
another secret room.
The chart said that three lockers had to opened
to find everything we needed. It was like we were in
the Grimm’s tale of The Tinder Box. The soldier is
given a match box by an hag like woman (puis,
witch, sibyl, crone, etc.) and is told to go down
inside a tree trunk. Here he reenacts Plato’s cave
allegory and the tableaux based on the mysteries of
Eleusis–the abduction of Persephone. In this
variation the soldier (substitute the term knight at
any point) must open three doors to ascertain the
contents of three special rooms. At each point he
can accept the treasure he sees or go on to risk the
treasure he has for a potentially greater, or lesser
one. The first door opens into a room full of copper
guarded by a Pit Bull with eyes are as big as tea
cups. Next he enters a room of silver guarded by a
Great Dane whose eyes are as big as saucers and
finally he enters a room of gold guarded by a
Mastiff whose eyes are as big as dinner plates. I had
a major brain storm, “I was always turned on by the
Tinder Box legend. I said and this reminds me of
it.”
Anna hadn’t heard the tale so I sketched it in for
her. “Each dog guards a door and each door hides a
treasure, the first is copper, the second silver and
the third gold, Isn’t that the idea of initiation in
alchemy?”
Anna just stood there looking at me and
munching on her pear. I could tell she was
impressed. In my own dumb way I had caught up
with her, but we were in a hurry. No time for chat.
The knight in the Tinder Box is in a quandary
and so are we, we’re running about below
Maastricht in a Roman tunnel now used to store the
secrets to the salvation of the entire human race and
Anna has to pee. She squats in the dark. Two
thousand two hundred years ago a roman woman
did the same thing in the same place, but now the
lockers, which were once used to store hay and
horse fodder, are oak lined and sealed by huge
doors secured with major iron padlocks.
The stuff we saw in the first locker was innocent
enough. Somebody kept an entire 1965 Porsche
Speedster in separate parts disassembled down here
so that one day he or she could bring it up and drive
it around, if and when the life of the planet ever got
back to normal.
Finding the first locker was easy, but the second
and third proved more difficult as they were
separated by corridors and about a quarter mile of
walking and flashing the light around. Anna said it
would be easy to distinguish the correct doors from
dozens of others because each had a special
marking, the sign of the Golden Quill, embossed in
a circle and inlaid with lacquered gold leaf.
From the second locker we acquired some
microelectronics, a special Panasonic navguidance
computer which you could wear around your neck
on a long string. I assumed this was used by people
who got lost a lot. We also found a small box which
contained carefully wrapped mirrors, convex and
concave. I was enthralled with Anna’s skill at
assembling all of this gear in so short a time, but she
was on fire, her Manx jaw set for action. I wasn’t
worried about the mood swings, I saw them at
Chartres, but I nudged her, “Remember, I’m not
going to let you go this time.”
She opened the third locker door, with the pick
hook, and pointed the argon beam at a huge suitcase
full of ultramodern camera gear. She unset her jaw
only long enough to blurt out, “Good, then maybe
you can carry this.” Now I knew why she wanted
me to tag along.
“Yesum. “I huffed and shuffled, halfway
between Igor the hunchback and a Mississippi
slave. “Massa, Oh Massa. Where to now?” The
suitcase felt like a bale of cotton.
“Back to England, if you must know.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re going to hit Stonehenge next.”
Her voice echoed off the vaulted ceilings.
“You’re kidding. I thought Excalibur was firing
at random. Even if it is under control why would
anybody blast Stonehenge?”
“Well it isn’t hitting at random, they only made
it seem that way. They want to blast Stonehenge to
kill off the pagan radicals, but beyond that I can’t be
sure, I think they’re after Professor Beane. He’s
supposed to be speaking on Winter Solstice to the
world conference on ancient sites.”
“Pagan Radicals!” Hey I guess we fall into that
category.”
“Loosely, but they can’t kill all of us off
because we’re moving too fast for ‘em.”
Visions of Thomas Jefferson came immediately
to mind. There he was old T.J. standing up in his
domed memorial in Washington, as if it was
Newgrange in Ireland. I could see him spinning
around reciting his manifestos on freedom.
“As we made our way back to the surface we
spoke very little. I did get one question answered
though, “Hey I thought Stonehenge was setup for
Summer Solstice?”
Anna answered quickly, “It is, but that’s for
tourists and skinheads.” Her pace quickened. Winter
Solstice and the orbit of Venus, that’s the real deal.”
“Hmmm. I shutup and hauled the duffle. My
inner impish voice whispered, “Sperm donor; pack
mule, and nitwit, good gigs eh?” Oh well, I needed
the workout. The sweat felt cool in the damp
tunnels.
Once in the light we headed straight for Robby
and the cab, slowly lugging the gear, about a
hundred weight of stuff, up and down two staircases
and across a half kilometer of brick and tarmac.
Robby smiled and seemed genuinely happy to see
us, a gold capped tooth sparkled out at us as he held
the door open. We packed the rear compartment
carefully and took turns guarding the bag with the
lens in it.
Robby was to drive us back to the hotel and wait
for another interval so as to take us out to the airport
where we suspected we might catch a plane.
We checked out of the Beatrix, got into the cab
with everything and began moving through
Maastricht’s snail like traffic. I repeated my
question. “This may sound stupid, but what’s the
point of killing off all biological life on earth. They
have to live on the planet too don’t they?”
Anna’s reply was guarded and a bit nervous
“Like I told you on the ship two nights ago, they
don’t want to destroy the planet, they want to
control it.”
“Oh you mean like Space Ship Earth, the
original Buckminister Fuller concept?”
“No, not exactly. Space Ship Earth and Island
Earth were peaceful constructs designed to elevate
the human condition by anticipating the earth’s
needs. These guys think they can actually control it
by suppressing everyone. Their basic idea was to
use Excalibur to intimidate and destroy all forms of
democracy long enough to assure an extremist take
over.”
“Hey, you know, I seem to remember seeing an
opti copy of a film that came out way back in 1992,
titled the End of the World”
“Yes, I remember it. What about it?”
“Well didn’t that have a satellite that went crazy
in it, a nuclear satellite?”
“Yes, the Indian government put a nuclear
satellite up and it controlled the planet for a while,
everybody went primitive real quick.”
“Well, isn’t this Excalibur the same thing?”
“No, absolutely not.’ Anna scowled. “Excalibur
is designed to strike specific targets, coincidental
film plot though.”
“Wow, fascist Space Ship Earth! So we’re still
fighting the Nazis more than a century later.”
Anna disagreed. “Well not exactly the Nazi’s.
The German people have risen above that label, but
authoritarianism has been with us a might longer
than the last century, try since the first perception of
overpopulation.”
“And when might that have been?”
“About twenty five hundred B.C. I think—the
Phoenicians seem to fit the bill.
I nodded in the affirmative as I readied the gear
for the rough trip.
We were off to Stonehenge to do something so
strange it made Dolphin’s assault on Muzix seem
like a trip to Disney Globe. No questions asked.
Nothing spoken. It would be a mission for clenched
teeth and heavy hands. My kind of gig.
Robby, a descendant of the Surinam Diaspora of
1974, drove smooth as silk, but he wasn’t getting
rich on us, he was supporting a family—two kids
and a beautiful halfDutch wife with golden skin.
We know this because he whippedout a fifteen
minute Kodaxc disk, with full surround sound,
depicting his home life over the years. Guarded by a
huge ghost grey female Neapolitan Mastiff named
Basu Cami which means, “beautiful lump of violent
flesh,” in his native language. Naturally he went
headoverheels when I showed him a laminate of
Byte Mama and Sluggo pulling the guts out of a
football helmet.
He seemed happy to have two Yanks in tow, but
we soon realized his true motivation. Robby was a
car salesman on the side. He knew, instinctively,
that we would need a car. “Voor Snellweg eh?” He
showed us a few pictures of cars he knew to be
available on the grau marcht. We couldn’t delay
much longer, but we chippered up when he
mentioned old Volvos.
Robby took us straight to the storage yard where
he, and, I suspect, his Surinam syndicate, had
managed to amass Volvo’s galore. He also had
some pristine Saab’s and a bunch of Yankee
Neptunes which still ran perfectly. The Neptunes
would have been comfy for sure, but the Volvos
were faster and I knew how to fix ‘em. We couldn’t
resist the sedate grey sedan with a hydrogen fuel
cell reserve. A certain frost stiffened the air as we
handed Robby a huge stack of Euros.
So here we were chugging along in a propane
converted Volvo sedan with some kind of
eurogeneric GMC psychoceramic V6. It wasn’t my
old Volovotang, nothing could be that funky. And it
wasn’t the Mercedes, and I never did ask Anna what
she did with that Cadillac, but it was a runner. More
importantly it had a Decca minisonic player and a
solar heater, so what else could you want?
Stonehenge Redux
We took the rarely open Chunnel back to
England. It wasn’t a pretty trip. This massive
leaking cement tube, strung from Dover to Calais
before the turn of the millennium, turned out to be
not such a hip way to go. Few people use it
anymore. Not only do you get some stink from the
debris rotting in the air pockets, due to faulty
cement work, but you get an aesthetic barrage from
the rather vulgar graffiti as it flashes by, timed
perfectly with the speed of the train. No
AngloFrankish collaboration had produced anything
wonderful since the first Concorde, still we didn’t
want to wait days for another flubber boat ride.
Winter Solstice approached Stonehenge. The
riots and festivals were a feature of fair weather and
balmy days at Summer Solstice, but winter was
always a solemn time on Salisbury Plain. If Anna
was right Excalibur could only be stopped from
there. I was, however, curious how she found out
that the beam would fire at the exact moment of
Winter Solstice, “Hey babe!”
Anna was snoozing as the Chunnel slinked on
beside us, “Hmmm…”
I shook her arm, “Hey wake up, I have an idea
and we’re almost on the other side anyway.”
“Un hunnahhh. This better be good.”
“Why don’t we skip London, cut down the coast
and come up the back way overland through
Salisbury.”
She looked unimpressed, “I thought that’s what
we were gonna do. Don’t forget Collins, I drove
west to east on route 666, the road of the beast. I
learned to speak every known form of slang plus
Mexican and some German. I stayed in bad motels
and converted horse stalls—sometimes I couldn’t
tell the two apart. I was a strange sight in the
Cadillac and the people around me were almost
completely stupefied on kamikaze shooters and
poppers. I don’t wanna get into London, because we
may never get out. You remember what happened
to you the last time you were there, don’t ‘chu?”
“Oh yeah.” I took a big gulp of air. “I sure don’t
wanna renew my acquaintance with Ben Jonson.
I’ve pretty much cut out drugs and alcohol since
then. Every time I drank a hot whisky in Ireland I’d
have flashbacks about that trip.”
“Maybe you can write about it someday.”
My breath quickened with the prospect of
publishing my notes in a book. Imp says: “Oh, Oh
another damned book eh Mr, Gibbon?”
“So what do you propose?”
“Well,” Anna said, “The full moon and a partial
solar eclipse, occurring two days before true Winter
Solstice can’t be ignored, it must be part of the
timing sequence. I think we should start there.”
“I said, “That’s too much monkey business for
me, you handle it, I’ll just schlep this gear for you
and hang tough in case there’s any trouble. I beat
my chest as I added, “Me Macho Boy.”
Leaving the Eurotunnel in the dark was like
leaving an unwelcome relative behind. Unlike the
morguelike chunnel the slinky road to Salisbury
showed signs of life. Hedgerows made stroboscopic
flashes on the oxidized Volvo paint. For some
reason petrol was readily available.
Anna broke into my thoughts as I drove, “Look
Canyon our steeplechase is almost over.” In less
than three hours of slow moonlit driving we
glimpsed the huge spire of Salisbury jutting above
the hill line at dawn. At first I thought she was
pointing to a memorial column or obelisk, like
Cleopatra’s Needle in Paris. The hills of the
summer country are full of these follies, but it was
the biggest, tallest spire in Europe and, like
Chartres, you could see it for miles as you
approached. You can still feel the presence of
antiquity as your synthetic tires roll over a medieval
landscape, which is built on a Roman landscape,
which is built on a Bronze Age landscape, which,
even before that, existed only as a Mesolithic cattle
road.
I asked Anna to tell me more about the timing of
Excalibur.
“Fair enough. It’s a long story, I’ll try to shorten
it.”
“Okay I’m all ears.” I wiggled my ears and
made a foolish face, somewhat like the gargoyles at
Notre Dame.
“ You are such a goofball.”Anna seemed to be
warming to the task. “The thing that bothers me the
most about the IOOD and Psionics is that they try,
from the very first indoctrination session, to cleanse
the Clubber of any prior religious beliefes,
especially the more mystical stuff ything to do with
dope or psychiatry. If the applicant is Jewish they
attack the Kabbalah. If the applicant is Christian
they attack the mysteries of the Last Supper and the
symbolism of the Resurrection. If the person is a
pagan they attack the Goddess.”
“Yes, I noticed that too. It’s almost as if they
knew the real meaning behind the mysteries.”
“Of course.” Anna almost sobbed as she spoke,
“That’s what makes them so evil. They know the
truth and they’ve set out to subvert it with malice.”
“Oh I see, and as long as the Chritsians and the
Jews and the Pagans fight against each other
Psionics has a chance.”
Anna seemed releaved that I understood the
problem. “That’s exactly the problem, because, in
reality, the three most powerful western religions all
arise form the same Neolithic root, the worship of
light... once you see the light you’re enlightened.”
“Oh I see, so if you knock out the light god and
the earth Goddess, Jesus and Mary, Jehovah and
Lilith you knock out the entire basis for beliefe.” I
paused and scartched my head like Stan Laurel used
to do in the Laural and Hardy optis. “But what has
this got to do with the window at Amiens?”
“Light silly, it’s all about light. Light in the
window, light filtered through the Lions head, light
from heaven.” She adjusted her gaze to focus
directly onb me. At first I saw only the upside down
pentagram in the window at Amiens, but, when I
squinted at the window, I saw a lion’s head—the
head of Mithras, which the Templars coded into
literature as Baphomet.”
“Who?” I hadn’t heard of this Baphomet.
“Baphomet was an evolution of Isis in the form
of the smaller cat. The cat also came from Celtic
mythology as Pa the companion feline of the great
Celtic God Lugh. That’s when I discovered that the
Knights Templars must have been a surviving
branch of the Celtic warrior stream merged with
Sufi, Christian, and even Dyonisian folklore, a
religion based on the annual progression of the sun
and moon and their light.”
I was relieved. “An evolution I guess.” I had
seen the same thing, but its significance didn’t quite
blow me away. “When I studied in Amsterdam,
many years ago, I noticed that the Dutch word for
light or match or even torchlight, is ‘Lucifer’ and I
couldn’t help wondering if the Bronze Age Celtic
God ‘Lugh’ and the biblical Lucifer were just
derivative names for the Neolithic light beam god.
Anna seemed eager to explain, “Well they
worshipped evolution as the divine plan, but, in true
duelist tradition, they saw everything as having a
lesser and greater version. In hermetic tradition
everything is of the macrocosm or the microcosm,
everything is of earth or of heaven, and much that is
on earth is of heaven, but the crap that the Psionics
cults adopted is Victorian.”
“Takes sense. There were no Satanists until
Crumly came along and made up this bullshit
religion.”
“Yes, Alestair Crumly merged traditional rituals
with the preChristian seasonal overlays and Voila!
A new religion designed to fuck everybody up, but
the pentagram is used in white magic too. It’s the
orbit of Venus as seen from a fixed spot on earth, so
I flashed that the calendar used by the cathedral
architects, although not perfectly heliocentric, was
probably Venucentric.”
I was tracking her, “The Mayans had the same
system, didn’t they?”
“Uhuh. But the pentagram isn’t used in that way
in the Mayan calendar or in Islam. Scholars are
often too quick to judge. I suspect that a lot of the
so called ‘Arabic influences,’ point to a deeper
traditionhaving to do with the survival of Sufi and
shamanism into modern times.”
“This would imply that there were two
undisclosed groups lurking beneath the surface of
Christianity, right?”
“Oh who knows how many? The Gothic arch is
supposed to be Arabic, but we see it in Visigoth
structures and in small versions in Mycenean and
even Irish Neolithic temples. But I’m certain
astronomy was involved.”
So you’re saying these strikes attributed to
Excalibur are timed on the orbit of Venus?”
“No, it’s more complicated than that, actually
they are timed on the orbits of the known planets
with a certain piece of software which belonged to
only one human being. This assured that average
journalists, easily fooled as they are, would never
figure it out. But we have the key.”
I was on top of the situation at last, “Wait, don’t
tell me—Maynard Donnelly, right?”
“You’ve got it. Good old Maynard also read the
Rodney Colin book and decided to build a machine
to Colin’s specifications.”
“So you’re saying that the IOOD brotherhood,
maybe headed by Maynard at one time, was in
cahoots with the Psionics Clubs and various
software vendors and that only a handful of high
ranking officers in either group had proprietary
access to the timing codes?”
“That’s it, the timing codes, plain and simple.
The device itself is relatively lowtech, but the
timing codes were designed to create the impression
of invulnerability. Once the worlds population
began to believe they were doomed, they just fell
into a lock step.”
∞∞∞
We pulled into Salisbury after dark and took
residence at St. Michael’s Arms, an elegant inn
peled in Dark Oak and Walnut burls, reminiscent of
the quality once available in England before the
depression.
Outside, on the sign, a winged Saint Michael
stood upon an orb and a dragon with a balancing
scale in one hand and the sword of justice in the
other.
Inside, a vortex of jolly voices blended with the
glissando of fine silver and crystal set upon antique
linen. The despair, seen on the continent, was
nowhere to be found. We would head off to
Stonehenge in two days. We ate a late light meal
and made chitchat with the other guests. Any
questions I had were absorbed in the dreamscape.
We managed a steaming hot bath and curried off
the road sweat. This put us in a romantic mood and
on the eleventh hour we rested. I guess we rested
too hard because around 1:00 the next afternoon the
maid barged in demanding to clean up the room.
A long walk after brunch would clear the air.
We harmonized old rock tunes as we walked, as if
there were no crisis in the world. Anna stopped by
the Volvo to fetch one of the items we extracted
from the cavernous lockup beneath Maastricht,
saying, “Here you can carry this.” She handed me a
small black bag, with a Canadian Maple Leaf flag
affixed. “Some insurance for tomorrow.” She
whispered.
“Why?” I looked puzzled.
“So that people won’t spot us for Yanks.” She
added. “People just ignore Canadian media folks,
it’s as if they’re transparent.”
I was reduced again to the rank of standard
bearer, but I didn’t care. I understood. Manssoo
once told me Canadians could enter a war zone
faster than anybody because they were always
perceived as neutral.
As we left the car park she turned and gave me a
huge hug, but as she pulled away she felt under my
jacket and patted the holster. “I wear the damn gun
all the time now.” I said. I guess this is what she
wanted to know, because she said nothing else
about it. She gripped my hand tightly, digging her
manicured nails into my palms as we began our
afternoon trek.
The sod was moist and aromatic. Our
Wellingtons pressed the grass beneath our feet. We
walked handinhand in silence for at least ten
minutes before I asked another question, “So tell me
what happened after you visited Atanasoff’s shrine
in Iowa? Wasn’t he responsible for the first
computer circuit?”
“Yes, and he was awarded a shrine
posthumously when it was finally established that
Echert and Mulchey ripped him off.” She spoke
easily as we walked, “Well, I encountered a further
bit of irony because whilst I was traipsing cross
country the newscasts reported that Muzix
Corporation was being investigated by a secret
congressional panel for allegations that they were
sending satanic and smarmy messages along the
retail store pipelines.”
I couldn’t believe it, “Wow! Sounds like
Dolphin was right or else congress was really
paranoid, as if every grocery store was ruled by
Satan’s minions.”
Anna continued my thought, “The panel’s
conclusions were inconclusive. They did emphasize
however, that the subliminal messages were
military in nature and traceable to a network of laid
off Pippin evangelists working out of senior citizen
centers and retirement homes. That must have been
a nailbiter for the folks behind Excalibur. They
must have been worried that some retired old Pippin
executive would get out his or her nerd suit and go
to work on the code.”
I answered in an unusual burst of sarcasm, “Hey
wait a minute, I knew one of those guys... Ears
Schwenk. He was okay until he had a liver
transplant then his coding skills turned sour.”
“Anna sensed a joke coming on. “Why did his
programming turn sour?”
“Well, after the transplant he could only write in
Spanish. It turned out his organ donor was a young
Mexican truck driver from Sacramento.”
Anna giggled. “Oh you mean the spirit of the
hexcode took residence in his liver?”
“More than the code. Maybe the soul too. The
last time I saw Ears he was running a Volkswagen
Vibratto up and down the interstate trying to race
tomato trucks.”
“He was the exception.” Anna chuckled. The
senior Pippin evangelists were just one cell of a
much bigger organism. The IOOD and Psionics
were very good at infiltrating free thought in every
corporate structure, because the typical IBM based
management system is patriarchal and didactic. Free
thinkers may get a patent or a copyright, but the
conformity freaks get the bread and the big houses.
That’s the way the system works.”
“Yeah, it’s amazing how long it lasted.” I felt
sick about the failure of the old Pippin system, but
the paralysis caused by Excalibur was just a
symptom of the greater malaise. “So what happened
to the secret congressional committee?” I asked.
“Nobody knows for sure.” Anna’s brow
wrinkled, “…but the tapes leaked beyond the
congressional pale. That’s when a mad scientist
named Derek Beane discovered codes in the bit
stream.”
I stood amazed. Was I hallucinating or did my
wife just mention Derek Beane? “Did you just say
“Derek Beane?””
She looked puzzled, “Yes, why?”
An Artic vesper puffed at our necks as we
walked along the moor path. “My main interest in
Beane stems from his brilliant interpretation of the
coral encrusted artifact, known as the Antikytheria
device, dated to the Greeks of the Roman period.
This portable computer was a navigation instrument
based on the application of Pythagorean
theorems—the natural principles of Archimedes and
the geometry of Euclid. It reflected a massive
knowledge base.”
Anna still didn’t see the connection saying, “So
what? How is that relevant to us?”
“Oh nothing much except that I mentioned this
guy Beane to Axle Tervik when I visited Bath with
Sean and Jack three years ago. You remembr, I told
you about my first glimpse of Stonehenge.”
Anna nodded in agreement, “Yes, you
mentioned your brief visit to Tervik’s moldy flat.
So what?”
“It’s important that’s so what.” I was forced to
whisper as another couple went jogging by togged
in spun magnesium sweat suits and those obnoxious
Psooop glasses, the ones that show graphic images
to the onlooker or flash messages to passersby.
“You see I told Tervik about Derek Beane. I even
left some literature about him behind. Now, years
later, my wife stumbles across the guy in an obscure
village in the Adirondacks.”
Anna said, “That’s odd, you didn’t mention him
to me. I found out about him in one of Dolphin’s
journals, in that big box in the basement.” She put
that damned finger nail squeeze on my arm as she
spoke. “And incidentally, Bub, I didn’t exactly run
into him. I sought him out.
“Hmmm strange. The source is the same, but we
failed to discuss Beane before we ran off to
Chartres.”
Anna shook her head in disbelief. “One wonders
how much time we could have saved if we both
knew we both knew Beane.”
“Not much I reckon. Dolphin knew about Beane
too. I guess I forgot about it. But I wouldn’t have
gone and seen the guy. If the guy wants to be a
hermit I would never disturb him.”
“Anna smiled, “Yeah you really are a dweezle
aren’t you hunheee? But it might explain why
Tervik was so afraid of you.”
“What does that mean?”
“Don’t you get it? Tervik was freaked enough to
dose you on some alchymical potion.”
“Oh I always attributed that to just plain cat shit
meanness.”
“Mean yes, stupid no.” Anna pulled me along as
my pace slowed. “All the while you were flashing
your wisdom about the Antikytheria device Tervik
was quietly pissing his pants. You thought he was
trying to get rid of you that day you visited with
Jack Roberts and O’Bannion, and he was.”
“Oh so I was right, he was trying to get rid of
me. Man I told you that two years ago.
“No.” Anna scolded. “First of all, he wasn’t
acting alone. You came along out of nowhere. He
didn’t have time to call his superiors. He was trying
to get rid of you, but not because he felt superior to
you, on the contrary, he felt threatened.”
“What me? Little old me?” .
“Yes you. Tervik must have been terrified when
you started rapping about Beane’s discoveries.
Obviously he knew more about Excalibur than you
did at the time.”
“All I had was a picture of a barnacle encrusted
gizmo. I really didn’t go deeper into it.”
Anna chided me, “Yes, but Tervik didn’t know
that. He’s paranoid His brain works like that. He
must consider every bizarre variable.”
“Oh, I see what you mean.”
“Yeah duh. Imagine this arch criminal sitting in
his own parlor with two of his old dope smoking
buddies and somebody who might be from the
International Crime Bureau—and this stranger guy
starts waving around a picture of Derek Beane and
the coral encrusted gizmo.” Anna’s stern voice had
a reassuring effect.
I sat on a rock along the way side. “He’s going
to piss his pants right?” She concluded the
syllogism for me.
“Right!” I shook my head in amazement. How
stupid can one man be? “Why didn’t I see that
before?”
Anna smiled down at me almost like a mother
smiles at her child and says, “That’s because you’re
not a mathematician at heart.”
“What do you mean?” I asked in further
amazement.
“Only that the Antikytheria device, or rather the
tables built into it, were used in the programming of
the strikes attributed to Excalibur. That’s all.
“Wow!” I thought you said it was based on
Maynard Donnelly’s magic wheel or something?”
“Yeah that too, but Maynard’s magic mirror
computer was just an electronic development of the
Greek device.
“Wow again!”
“It’s another one of those coincidences, the
synchronisity thing.”
“So you’re saying Excalibur is linked to the
same astronomy cycles that the Greeks knew about,
the harmony of the planets or something?”
“Yes, except I’m not sure Excalibur is linked
directly to those cycles. I believe the program can
be overridden and used as an offensive weapon for
any theater specific target. Anna pulled my arm as
we headed back to the inn. I was not the leader in
this, and that was okay with me.
“I guess—so what happened when you visited
Professor Beane?”
Anna continued her story in a focused tones.
The winter drizzle of Salisbury Plain cut through us,
but we weren’t shivering. “I thought it was so
weird,” she said. “In his journal Dolphin mentions
that old man Beane may be 140 years of age. This
made me even more curious.”
“Okay so what happened?’
“I was surprised to learn that nobody gave a
damn except me, because when I called Dr. Beane,
who was listed in the voicebyte directory, he was
overjoyed. I guess originally he wanted to get on the
OptiNet and have his moment of fame, but alas he
had to settle for me. I sat around his cabin in the
Adirondacks for seven hours before he opened up,
but he wasn’t really shy, just afraid I might get up
and walk out on him. He wanted companionship
more than anything else. For me the mountains
were a welcome relief from traveling from
Oakieland to Hawktown in four days. After Beane I
skipped Bean Town and Mad Hatten all together.”
“Right, but you stopped at all those dinky
storefront Masonic temples and Odd Dorks halls
along the way, did you find anything?”
“Yep. Psionics clubs too. They all had bars and
most of them served home brew beer, Red Ribbon
maltcrock, not filtered, but when cold it was okay.
Nobody would ever say anything about drunk
driving because the cops were always tanked on the
home brew. In Waukegan I came across a Nazi flag
in the IOOD’s hall, this they told me, as a matter of
pride, was given to them by the men of the chapter
in Skokie for beating their butts in little league ice
ball. I wrote it all down while I was cruising along,
on the way to Pennsylvania, looking for the next
diesel fuel depot—well actually I dictated the notes
on the optiphone, this was uploaded to the
palmcorder in the RAM array of our home system,
via telephone. Gyro was still hangin’ steadfast and
true—monitoring the system so I was ready for any
eventuality.”
“What was you’re conclusion?
“Well hell, I didn’t come to any conclusions
except that Nazi’s are everywhere these days. Every
little town seems possessed of a right wing
recruiting program. If the IOOD couldn’t bring
volunteers into the black bag, then maybe Eberhardt
Seminars could do it, or the Boy Scouts or the Girl
Guides or Brownies. They would screen every
detail of the volunteers personality then move them
along to the next highest echelon until they were
actually online building a circuit board or stroking
the launch machinery, or standing around waiting to
be used as a human timebomb.”
“So I assume you told all of this to Beane…”
“Yes I did, it was like a water balloon hitting his
windshield.”
“You mean he couldn’t believe it?”
“Worse, he was impossible to turn off. He
believed me too readily. He was so paranoid I
could’ve told him anything and he would have
believed it. I wondered how much help he could be
if he was that distorted, but he was brilliant in the
areas of his specialties, which ran the gamut from
computer sciences to Excimer lasers.
“You mean the guy is senile?”
“Oh no. Not at all. He’s more like an idiot
savant, the only savant available with this particular
expertise and the only savant on our side… more or
less.”
“But you told him anyway right?”
“Of course, I came all that way and by gum I
wasn’t gonna screw it up. Besides I was starting to
miss you, you know?”
I felt a blush pulsing over my skin, “Aaw shucks
maam, you shouldn’t a, but I’m glad to hear it.”
“Anyway, the wizened Dr. Beane prattled on for
hours, wandering from topic to topic, but I was able
to record the whole diatribe and piece some of it
together.”
“Sounds like he would have been a great
companion for Glowmore Gus. What did he say?”
Anna slowed our brisk pace against the chilled
air. The sun was warming the plains now, “He did
more than analyze my notes. His wife put me up in
a guest room then retired for the night. Beane and I
stayed up pouring over everything. He was
fascinated by the DEE 21 machine and I began to
respect him more and more. He is a remarkable
guy.”
“I was curious as to how he supported himself,
“I assume he has money if he has a wife?”
Anna said, “I guess you want to know as one
hermit to another right?”
“No I’m just curious how he made it that long
without working. I mean he dropped out at least
fifty years ago and hasn’t been heard of since.”
Anna smiled knowingly, “Well, he’s not really a
hermit, I mean he didn’t look celibate to me and he
has lots of energy, although I’m sure Abigail, that’s
his wife’s first name, is long suffering, and I think
she has money.”
“Oh I see, a kept man eh?”
“I didn’t ask about his bank accounts, for all I
know he keeps bullion coins in an ammo box out in
his back yard. Maybe he grows sensimilla.” We
both laughed.
Anyway, I crashed about five AM. The sun
woke me up about eight, but I felt like the bottom
side of a manhole cover. I managed to totter down
stairs for coffee just in time to find Beane, bright as
a button, sipping on a plum flavored protein drink
between aerobic sets. I looked like a wreck and felt
like a clogged sewer, but old Derek went right from
his aerobics into a quiet phase which he called his
‘cool down.’ During that phase he toweled off and
began scribbling in a small book, which he gave me
on my departure. Anyway, his input proved very
valuable, look here.”
We sat down on a Neolithic marker stone
conveniently jutting out from a Bronze Age burial
mound covered with gorse. Anna handed me a
palmsized black note book with a leather cover.
Inside were dozens of pages of formulas and
instructions written in all direction across the small
blue engineering squares. This book included maps
and charts and instructions on how to use the
contents of the various storerooms.
“My, my, looks like he went so far as to trace
out and decipher Excalibur’s messages.” I
remember being genuinely impressed with his
handwriting.
“Beane realized there were high level messages
embedded in Excalibur’s machine code. The codes
that came in at microwave frequencies were meant
to be read by humans as text, but codes targeted for
machine instructions came in at infrared
frequencies. He also noted patterns in the xray
spectrum, but he could not decipher them with the
primitive equipment on hand.”
“How did he figure it out?”
“Intuition I guess, maybe he is one of those
alchemical immortals. I don’t know. He sure tired
me out that day.”
“So he figured out that the shot has to be aimed
at a fixed target at a specific time for maximum
effect. Everybody else thought it was random.”
I nodded in silent agreement as she slipped her
hands into the pouch front of her parka.
“Does this mean he gave us a clue for stopping
it?” I asked.
“Well, sort of a clue, or rather a bunch of clue
fragments.” Anna was a bit indecisive as she
answered.
“Oh boy, don’t tell me we don’t really have it
figured out. Cutting it a wee bit tight aren’t we?”
“Hey it’s the best I can do,” she snapped.
“According to Beane the only way to stop it is to
have it shoot itself in the foot. You have to be ahead
of it far enough to set up a reflector pulse. The only
time Excalibur is vulnerable is when it was actually
shooting, because the timing would be too tricky,
but by using it’s own pulse the timing problem gets
resolved, the deformed part of the pulse echoes
back up the beam at the speed of light and jams it.
Nobody thought to shoot back at it as it was
shooting, because nobody knew when it was going
to shoot.”
“So we are going to use its own beam to kill it?”
“Hopefully,” Anna adjusted her carrying case.”
Everybody assumed it was a doomsday device, but
it’s vulnerable”
“You mean the only time it’s vulnerable is when
it’s firing?”
“Theoretically yes. Excalibur has a three or four
millisecond window after each shot and slightly
before, it’s a blind spot—the lightbeam itself,
functions at the speed of light, but the lens is
electromechanical.
I scratched my head as we walked on, “You
mean it’s oldtechnology?
“She smiled at me with those eyes that melt
anything they see, “Yes, remember Excalibur is the
product of a black ops projects, it may have been up
there for sixty years.
“You man it’s worn out? I asked.
“No, but it may have been built before light
valves were developed, It probably uses an old
fashioned reticular aperture—very precise, but very
slow. The only frequency it’s defenseless against is
its own, but that frequency isn’t discovered easily.”
“Random or not we can’t be sure precisely when
it’s going to fire. So the only way to destroy it is to
have it blast itself, in reverse after it takes a shot, is
that what you’re saying?”
“Well sort of, we can’t know when it’s going to
fire, but we can at least figure out ‘where’ it’s going
to fire.”
“Yes the only sure signal on the correct
wavelength is the beam itself and this has a delay
which may be to slow or too fast. The frequency
changes when the lens closes, but the lens is an
analog device and it takes time to open and shut, not
much time, but let us just call it a thin slice of time.”
“That’s strange,” I wondered. It must be
primitive. Electronic lenses were all the rage back
forty years ago.”
“Yes, but it may have been built with spare parts
to assure longevity, and secrecy.”
“They didn’t need speed they needed reliability.
In space mechanical things can be very reliable so
let’s hope its slow.”
“Hmmm, all we have to do is catch the beam,
stick a small glitch on it as it passes through our
lens and cross our fingers.”
“Right, Hopefully our little crosssignal will set
up a long wobble on the Excimer which will
transmit instantaneously back to the lens rendering
it officially outofwhack in the recharge interval.”
“Uh duh, what’s da recharge interval?” I did my
best Goofy imitation.
“That’s the microsecond after it fires, but before
the trigger lens closes.”
“Uhnh, Unhunh, How we gonna’ do dat?”
“With specialized crystals, sort of like mirrors,
like this one.” Anna produced a small black velvet
bag from the folds of her parka. “The lens can’t
close until the beam turtles back in right?”
“Right.”
The crystal emerged from the bag with a subtle
motion of her hand. I could only see the top of it,
but it was very brilliant and clear. “Hey wait a
minute that’s a diamond isn’t it?” The rock twinkled
brilliantly with each photon it captured. “Uh, uh it
la la looookss like itssss on fffire.” I stammered.
Now I understood why I was being used as a
sherpa. I couldn’t believe I was going along with
this scheme, but hey, who am I to doubt the efficacy
of a hair brained scheme? I’m the guy who went off
to Lebanon to fetch a Ukrainian Buddha with a hat
full of hash. A small matter of a diamond the size of
Gibraltar shouldn’t phase me. I echoed her words,
“Mirrors?”
“The famed Alchmardis are the finest quartz
crystals ever mined and they are cut to the finest
dimensions by the finest gem cutters in Holland.
They are not diamonds, but they might as well be.
They come in a set of five—five of the most
precious objects on earth, and you’re in charge of
them.”
What?” I was again astonished. “This is too
much. Not diamonds after all eh?”
“Oh don’t worry. “This lens has been hidden,
with its companions, in Maastricht for centuries.
Professor Beane told me about them. Each of the
five oscillates at a different frequency. Together
they cover the entire light spectrum.”
“How do you expect these baubles to help?”
The scientist in Anna replied, “Well, if we use
the lenses and put that derelict laptop to good use,
we can probably figure it out. You see I know what
day it’s going to fire, but not which millisecond.”
“Yes, but why are these crystal thingamajigs so
valuable?”
“Oh didn’t I tell you? They were removed from
various Neolithic temples.”
Again I was amazed. I didn’t want her to
explain how she arrived at that conclusion. She
might tell me, and I wouldn’t get it, then she’d have
to go over it again, then I would finally get it, but I
would be embarrassed that I didn’t get it the first
time, so I asked another dumb question as we sat
and froze on the little outcropping. “That explains
how, but not why.”
Anna replied sharply, “Hey come on let’s go,
I’m getting frigid.”
“Oh sure now, that’ll light a fire under my ass.”
We began to head back to the inn. The
magnesium joggers swished past us again. Anna
said, “The masters of Excalibur whoever they are,
don’t want to destroy the planet. That ended when
the nuclear age ended, these jerks just want to reap
the harvest of the chaos they have created.”
We took a different fork past a number of gray
weathered standing stones, typical of the thousands
of remnants of the mysterious civilization that once
inhabited Salisbury Plain. Anna continued, “Now
here’s the interesting part. Beane figured out that if
these were coded messages they may still be
transmitting, so rather than try to get more tape
from his pals in congress he simply went down to
the nearest big city and taped the Muzix stuff in a
Pick and Pay. He took it home, analyzed it and
discovered that in addition to white and pink noise,
designed to get the shoppers to buy more stuff, there
were evernewer patterns in the microwave
frequencies.”
I tried to keep up mentally and physically as we
walked the cold moor, obviously Anna was in better
shape than me. The afternoon sun set low on the
ridge casting an ominous dragon like shadow over
the hills, I think the Chinese call this Feng Shui.
“So you’re saying that the system used to
control Excalibur was linear?”
“Yes, it seemed linear, but it was really a
notched linear string.”
“Oh pardon me, what’s that?”
“Anna waxed professorial as she gave me the
code scheme, “You see the code is linear except that
after twohundred and fifty alphanumeric characters
at 20000 MHz the bundle told the transceiver to
shift to the next prearranged frequency and continue
on. Its really just an electronic ratchet. The key was
built into the MRoM probably used by the
Excalibur people. It would know which frequencies
to tune to and would contain the code flow if the
human operator was gone.”
“And this would make it seem random?”
“But here’s where the system took a most
unpredictable twist. The code always wound up as
binary no matter what system it came in on. Beane
recognized the pattern.”
“From what?” I asked with even greater
skepticism.
“Well, I hate to mention Shakespeare, but since
you asked…”
“Oh no. I feel a flashback coming on.”
“Don’t worry. Its just that Shakespeare’s first
folio was coded in the same way. An obscure
cryptographer broke the code way back in 2017, but
nobody gave a damn. Anna pulled another diagram
from the little black book given to her by Beane.
The code key was called the 57th Inquisition... it’s
based on the angel of the air shafts in the Great
Pyramid. They are really starlight apertures.
We were frightening ourselves at this point.
What we had discovered was far too bizarre to take
to anybody. Besides who the hell could we take it
to. The government? They’re in with the bad guys.
We turned along the unfamiliar footpath, walked
through a five hundredyearold copse of elms and
yews before turning toward the inn. It was
darkening now. Tomorrow was the true Winter
Solstice, the shortest day of the year.
On the way back, on the edge of Marlboro
Downs, on the moor which once echoed the roar of
hundreds of chariots… the ExcaliburGlowmore
connection became a whatif discussion. What If a
corporation, using cost overrun moneys and slush
funds to finance blackops, goes into cost overruns
itself? The answer, find another dummy project
quick. So again Glowmore had to be expanded. Its
cover role needed to be redefined. Glowmore was a
project within a project and the really big project
enveloping Glowmore was something called
Operation Rainbow II.
Anna added one more insight, “Operation
Rainbow II was the original code name for
Excalibur. The DRI reported hinted that the idea of
launching an unauthorized satellite may have
originated with Project Seabed, a conference
designed to promote Navy supremacy over the sea
lanes world wide.”
I remembered this name from one of Gus’ log
books. “Oh sure, that’s the project Gus mentioned.
According to Gus Project Seabed was a conference
in Del Monte California, also known as the
Monetary spy school, but beyond Seabed we have
an even more covert project, funneling down
funds,”
Anna looked over her glasses at me, “Gus was
as worried as we are. Operation Seabed was,
ostensibly, a resource meeting, attended by people
from Donnelly’s group, the Rank Institute,
VeryHard Software Corporation, The Institute for
Contemporaneous Studies, Blackings Institute and
DRI, but for some reason there were a lot of Navy
and Marine brass on board…”
I added, “… and lots of engineers and designers
with top security clearances. Gus said the meeting
was instrumental in developing the postcoldwar
submarine strategy after the pacification of the old
Soviet states.”
“Probably true, but I wonder what VeryHard
had to do with it?” Anna asked.
I couldn’t answer her. I harbored a deep seated
dislike for VeryHard ever since Bob T. Sage Jr.
bought two Michelangelo marbles and installed
them on his boat dock as mooring posts.
Anna interrupted my thoughts, “My god Canyon
your hand is bleeding.”
I hated Sage so much I unwittingly dug a buckle
edge from the carrying bag into the flesh of my
fingers. Naturally the lowly likes of me would never
meet such a big character in my lifetime, but I hated
what he stood for. Let’s just say, Bob Sage never
read the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of
Rights.
“Hun… oh, it’s okay, just pressure.” I answered
faintly.
“I’ll bet you’re thinking about Bob Sage right?”
“Yes, how did you know... It’s those damned
Michelangelo’s?”
“I find the man odius, but not because he
moored his boat to a minature Piata. Did you know
his father purposefully drove at least fifty software
companies under just so he could kill off the
competition—he’s the richest man in the world
now, they say.
“Yes, but how old is the guy?”
“I don’t know, he must be about 110.”
God, “Anna looked up at the clouds forming
over the downs. “Not only is he a prick he’s and old
prick.”
“Yeah and somebody let him breed.”
“How did that happen?” She asked.
The image of Jefferson scraping new quills
popped into my mind, “See that’s the trouble with
Democracy, you can’t prevent the nerds from taking
over.”
Anna chuckled lightly, “Yes, but you can lock
them up once they go over the line.”
I couldn’t figure out what she found so funny
about it. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound
of cure.” I said.
“So the men and women with the little plastic
pocket protectors full of pencils and pens, should be
sterilized?” She asked, half seriously.
“No, culled from the pack is a better description,
preferably before they start a family.” Another
couple brushed by in old tweed jackets, chattering
like squirrels as they walked.
“Hey wait a minute.” I grabbed her shoulder.
“Didn’t Sage senior want to ring the earth with
surveillance satellites?” The image of Excalibur
being one of these dream machines entered my
mind for the first time.
Anna stopped dead in her tracks, Okay, no you
have it figured out, so what are we going to do
about it?
“What do you mean I have it figured out?”
“Your so stooopid sometimes, honestly
Canyon.”
I looked at her with a blank stare as she scolded
me further.
“Okay, who was Ma