~ Chapel Perilous ~

[Malaclypse 666]

(Aboard the KNF Science Vessel Hakobune..)

The captain looked at Hiia, smiling. Suddenly, though, the captain changed. It was a subtle thing, entirely impossible to tell the difference, but Hiia knew that there was something amiss. The captain opened his mouth, and in his voice, began to speak to Hiia. But it was not the captain who spoke.

"Fool! Infidel! You force me to come here, to this system once barren of life, after I was in Omicron Theta? You! How dare you! You brought life here, HERE, of all places? Why? I demand to know!" Hiia could not answer; he was to stunned to form words or even open his mouth. The captain continued on. "Idiot, idiot, idiot. I have lived well over ten thousand eons, have seen more information than even the most powerful of computers could hope to begin to store, have jumped from body to body learning that which each knows. I have driven men mad with my whisperings, entering their minds and telling them of the most horrible secrets, forever dooming them to suicidal thoughts.

"I have just recently encountered something of such import that I must divert my attention to it, the C'Tan people of this galaxy, and you have the audacity to draw me away? I will not kill you, Hiia. No, that would be to easy. I shall let you live, and you will never tell anyone of this. Sadly, the Captain here won't return to his body - I devoured his conscience. He'll appear to be in comatose, but it is a vegetative state. I advise jettisoning him. But remember, Hiia, I will always be watching you. And you will one day know what I have in store for you. Until then, have fun with the experiment. Oh, a word of advice. Check to make sure the conduit is aligned with the magnetic conductor correctly, or the reactor could go critical and fracture the planet in twain." And with that, the captain fell over, his eyes lulling into the back of his head. Hiia slumped to the ground, his mind racing with thoughts.

(In another part of the Sirius Sector, four of the five Illuminati Primi met in an old graveyard in the Munich System; the fifth could not be present. His animus was currently on assignment elsewhere

They agreed that all was going as scheduled, but one danger remained: nobody in the Order, however developed his or her ESP, had been able to trace the Episkopos of the ELF.

The eldest of the four said, "We can still succeed, if one of our mediums finds the mehum Malaclypse before he can intervene." (Mehum was an abbreviation for all descendants of those not part of the original Unbroken Circle; it meant mere humans.)

"Why can none of our ultra-sensitives find him?" a second asked. "Does he have no ego or soul at all?"

"He has a vibration but it's not distinctly human. Whenever we seem to have a fix on it, we're usually ' picking up a bank vault or the safe of some Zoner billionaire," the eldest replied.

"We have that problem with an increasing number of Zoners," the third commented morosely. "In that Faction, we have done our work too well. The conditioning to those pieces of paper is so strong that no other psychic impulse remains to be read."

The fourth spoke. "Now is no time for trepidation, my brothers. The plan is virtually realized, and this Malaclypse's lack of ordinary mehum qualities will prove an advantage when we do fix on him. No ego, no resistance. We will be able to move him at our whim. The stars are right, He Who Is Not To Be Named is impatient, and now we must be intrepid!" She spoke with fervor.

The others nodded. "Heute die Sektor, Morgens das Universe!" the eldest cried out fiercely.

"Heute die Sektor" all repeated, "Morgens das Universe!")

Meanwhile, at the Uli Rouge, Fiona welcomed her friends to the Villa. She had been sad that not everyone could attend, but saw many familiar faces. Ringing a crystal bell, she summoned her guests to the dining room. She recognized Jay, Rick, Reggie, and Julius Kane.
<snip>
Tell me, does everyone like their food? Oh my! I forgot. Mr. Walters, could you be a darling and get the food I had imported for Fnordie? It took a lot out of him to get past those defenses of deSicev's!"

"Of course, madam, if you wish. Shall I get the bovine or the marine fillet?"

"Both! Spoil the little pup, if just for this night. Well! Now, we're all settled in. Everyone's good now? Good! Let's eat!"

And so, the dinner party began.

But four days earlier, as the [~V~]Malaclypse left Kusari space and entered the uncharted system where the Deius Prime was to be tested, Beau Coup was listening to a different kind of chorus. (He and the Fnordette Merci had not disappeared through the Rift atall, atall; but had been recruited as crew aboard the vessel while Beau completed his recovery from his horrific experience aboard the Ska Ralla.)

It was, Mama Dis had explained to him in advance, the ELF ritual of Agape Ludens, or Love Feast, and the dining hall was newly bedecked with pornographic and psychedelic posters, Christian and Buddhist and Amerindian mystic designs, balloons and lollypops dangling from the ceiling on Day-Glo-dabbed strings, numinous paintings of Discordian saints (including Norton I, Malaclypse the Elder, Guillaume of Aquitaine, Chuang Chou, Judge Roy Bean, John Dillinger, and the Prophet Wilson), bouquets of roses and forsythia and gladiolas and orchids, clusters of acorns and gourds, and the inevitable proliferation of golden apples and pentagons.

The main course was the best Kyushu king crab Newburg that Beau had ever tasted, only lightly dusted with a mild hint of Kallisti Gold. Dozens of trays of dried fruits and cheeses were passed back and forth among the tables, together with canapes of an exquisite caviar Beau had never encountered before ("Only Mal knows where those sturgeon spawn," Mama Dis explained) and the beverage was a blend of the Kusari seventeen-herb Mu tea with Banasteria extract.

While everyone gorged, laughed and got gently but definitely zonked, Malaclypse, (who was evidently satisfied that he, Mama Dis, and FnordNet had located "the problem in Kusari"), merrily conducted the religious portion of the Agape Ludens.

"Pistle sie nie, wahrend sie Whiss!" he chanted, "O hail Eris!"

"Pistle sie nie, wahrend sie Whiss!" the crew merrily chorused, "O Hail Eris!"

"Sya-dasti," Mal chanted. "All that I tell you is true."

"Sya-dasti," the crew repeated, "O hail Eris!"

"Sya-davak-tavya," Mal chanted now. "All that I tell you is false."

"Sya-davak-tavya," Beau joined in, "O hail Eris!"

"Sya-dasti-sya-nasti," Mal intoned. "All that I tell you is meaningless."

"Sya-dasti-sya-nasti," all agreed, some jeeringly, "O hail Eris!"

"Sya-dasti-sya-nasti-sya-davak-tav-yaska," Malaclypse sang out. "All that I tell you is true and false and meaningless."

"Sya-dasti-sya-nasti-sya-davak-tav-yaska," the massed voices replied, "O hail Eris!"

"Pistle sie nie, wahrend sie Whiss," Mal repeated quietly. "Does anyone have a new incantation?"

"All hail crab Newburg," a thought came from Fnordie.

That was an immediate hit. "All hail crab New-burg," everyone howled.

"All hail these bloody beautiful roses," a gravelly yet cultured Zoner voice contributed.

"All hail these bloody beautiful roses," all agreed.

Merci rose up on her anti-grave unit. "The Pope is the chief cause of Protestantism," she recited softly.

That was another roaring success; everybody chorused, and one Texan/Junker voice added, "Right on!"

"Order is the chief cause of Chaos," Rick Deckard chanted.

That went over well, too, and he then tried, "The Houses are the chief cause of anarchism," which was another smashing success.

"Prisons are built with the stones of law, brothels with the bricks of religion," Merci went on.

"PRISONS ARE BUILT WITH THE STONES OF LAW, BROTHELS WITH THE BRICKS OF RELIGION," the hall boomed.

"I stole that last one from William Blake," Merci slowly floated back to her seat next to Beau.

"Any others?" Malaclypse asked. There was none, so he went on after a moment, "Very well, then, I will preach my weekly sermon."

"Balls!" cried the Texas/Junker voice.

"Bull****!" added a Bretonian female.

Mal frowned. "That wasn't much of a demonstration," he commented sadly. "Are the rest of you so passive that you're just going to sit here on your dead asses and let me bore the piss out of you?"

The Texan, the Bretonian lady and a few others got up. "We are going to have an orgy," the Bretonian said briefly, and they left.

"Well, sink me, I'm glad there's some life left on this old tub," Mal grinned. "As for the rest of you, who can tell me, without uttering a word, the fallacy of the Illuminati?"

A young girl (she was no more than fifteen, George guessed, and the youngest member of the crew; he had heard she was a daughter of an Ambassador, and a member of the Kusari Trader Corp.) slowly raised her hand and clenched her fist.

Malaclypse turned on her furiously. "How many times must I tell you people: no faking! You got that out of some cheap book on Zen that neither the author nor you understood a damned word of. I hate to be dictatorial, but phony mysticism is the one thing Discordianism can't survive. You're on ****work, in the galley, for a week, you wise-ass brat."

The girl remained immobile, in the same position, fist raised, and only slowly did Beau Coup read the slight smile that curled her mouth. Then he started to smile himself.

Malaclypse lowered his eyes for a second and gave a Zoner shrug. "O oi che siete in picoletta barca," he said softly, and bowed. "I'm still in charge of nautical and technical matters," he announced, "but Miss Sylvia deLuna now succeeds me as Episkopos of the Temporary Autonomous Zoner Cabal. Anyone with lingering spiritual or psychological problems, take them to her."

Mal lunged across the room, hugged the girl Sylvia, laughed with her happily for a moment and placed his Golden Apple ring on her finger. "Now I don't have to meditate every day," he shouted joyously, "and I'll have more time for some thinking."

Malaclypse later drew five of the motley group aside. Two of you will remain here with me on the V-Mal. I believe three of you have a dinner engagement to attend, he directed.

I promise you, if it is within our power, we will not let those Illuminati bastards Immanentize the Eschaton!

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