The illuminatus! trilogy by Robert Shea, Robert Anton Wilson Page A

undeniable.
    Incidentally, Barbara called my attention to this: the letter in
Playboy
asking about the Illuminati was signed “R.S., Kansas City, Missouri.” According to the Kansas City newspapers, a Robert Stanton of that city was found dead on March 17, 1969 (about a week after the April
Playboy
appeared on the newsstands) with his throat torn as if by the talons of some enormous beast. No animal was reported missing from any of the local zoos.
    Pat
    Saul looked up at the pictures of Washington on the wall. For the first time, he noticed the strange half-smileon the most famous of them all, the one by Gilbert Stuart that appears on one-dollar bills.
“As if by the talons of some enormous beast,” he quoted to himself, thinking again of Malik’s disappearing dogs
.
    “What the hell are you grinning about?” he asked sourly.
    Congressman Koch, he remembered suddenly, in a speech years and years ago when marijuana was illegal everywhere, said something about Washington’s hemp crop. What was it? Yes: it was about the entries in the General’s diary—they showed that he separated the female hemp plants from the males before fertilization. That was botanically unnecessary if he was growing the crop for rope, but it was standard practise in cultivating hemp for marijuana, Koch pointed out.
    And “illumination” was one of the words hippies were always using to describe the experience one obtains from the highest grade of grass. Even the more common term, “turning on,” had the same meaning as “illumination,” when you stopped to think about. Wasn’t that what the crown of light around Jesus’ head in Catholic art was supposed to mean? And Goethe—if he was really part of this—might have been referring to the experience in his last words, as he lay dying: “More light!”
    I should have become a rabbi, like my father wanted, Saul thought bemusedly. Police work is getting to be too much for me.
    In a few minutes I’ll be suspecting Thomas Edison.
    ROCK ROCK ROCK TILL BROAD DAYLIGHT
    Slowly, Mary Lou Servix swam back to consciousness, like a shipwreck victim reaching a raft
.
    “Good Lord,” she breathed softly
.
    Simon kissed her neck. “Now you know,” he whispered
.
    “Good
Lord,”
she repeated. “How many times did I come?”
    Simon smiled. “I’m not an anal-compulsive type—I wasn’t counting. Ten or twelve, something like that, I guess.”
    “Good
Lord
. And the hallucinations. Was that what you were doing to my nervous system, or was it the grass?”
    “Just tell me about what you saw.”
    “Well, you got a halo around you, sort of. A big blue halo. And then I saw that it was around me, too, and thatit had all sorts of little blue dots dancing in sort of whorls inside it. And then there wasn’t even that anymore. Just light. Pure white light.”
    “Suppose I told you I have a friend who’s a dolphin and he exists in that kind of limitless light all the time.”
    “Oh, don’t start jiving me. You’ve been so nice, until now.”
    “I’m not jiving you. His name is Howard. I might arrange for you to meet him.”
    “A fish?”
    “No, baby. A dolphin is a mammal. Just like you and me.”
    “You are either the world’s greatest brain or the world’s craziest motherfucker, Mr. Simon Moon. I mean it. But that light … My God, I will never forget that light.”
    “And what happened to your body?” Simon asked casually.
    “You know, I didn’t know where it was. Even in the middle of my orgasms I didn’t know where my body was. Everything was just … the light….”
    ROCK ROCK ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK TONIGHT
    And leaving Dallas that much-discussed November 22 afternoon in 1963, the man using the name “Frank Sullivan” brushes past McCord and Barker at the airport, but no foreshadowing of Watergate darkens his mind. (Back at the Grassy Knoll, Howard Hunt’s picture is being snapped and will later turn up in the files of New Orleans D.A. Jim “The Jolly Green Giant”