The Masters of Atlantis (26 page)

Popper was the last witness. He swore to tell the truth, then kissed the Bible, not strictly required, and took his seat with Esteban at the long table. He wore his blue western suit, with a yellow neckerchief this time, tied cowboy style, the knot to one side and the two pointed ends laid out just so.

Senator Churton said, “Thank you for coming, Mr.—is it Popper or Wilson?”

“Popper.”

“Mr. Popper then. Thank you for coming and bearing with us. We're running very late. Your boss, I understand, has taken to his bed with the sniffles, or should I say, Mr. Moaler's bed. Is he feeling any better?”

“He was able to eat a little solid food last night.”

“Always a good sign. Senator Moaler tells it a little differently. He tells me that this crafty old man, Mr. Jimmerson, is down there in his daddy's trailer lounging around in his shorty pajamas and eating like a hog, with a broad sheen of grease around his mouth, just smacking his big lips and looking around for more.”

“I'm not surprised he called in sick,” said Senator Gammage. “Eating like that at his age.”

“Not true,” said Popper. “And I was not aware that Senator Junior Moaler was a member of this committee.”

“Big Boy is here at my request. He is acting as an advisor. All perfectly proper. His father's homestead is overrun by a swarm of mystical squatters and you wonder that he takes a personal interest? Perhaps your attorney would like to introduce himself.”

“I am not represented by counsel, Mr. Chairman. This man beside me is Esteban, my security chief and director for press hospitality.”

“Well and good. But let Esteban keep silent and let him keep absolutely still. All week long we've had these strange people sitting down there, a parade of stargazers, soothsayers and cranks, whispering and grimacing and blinking and suddenly shifting their feet about to some new position. These leg seizures are particularly distracting. One more thing. It's late, we're all tired and we need to wind this session up, so, above all, keep your answers brief. Now you're the representative of this—group. What's it all about, Mr. Popper? What are you Gnolons up to? We don't have to know your passwords or your secret winks and nods but we would like to get some general idea of your mission.”

“It's the Gnomon Society, not the Gnolon Society, and I believe I have anticipated all your questions, sir, in my opening statement, if I may be permitted to read it. I have prepared a timely and interesting—”

“No, you may not read it. No statements and no charts. You may present any written materials you have to the bill clerk. Just short answers to our questions, please. That's all we want here.”

“Then allow me to say, before we get into those questions, Mr. Chairman, how much I admire the way you have handled this inquiry—the patience you showed with that last witness, Dr. John, and the fairness with which you—”

“Thank you, Mr. Popper. We need to move along. It was your mission I was asking about. Your movement.”

“Well, our mission, sir, as you put it, is simply this—to preserve the ancient wisdom of Atlantis and to pass it on, uncorrupted, to those few men of each new generation worthy of receiving it.”

“Fair enough. More power to you. You have chapters elsewhere?”

“Yes, sir. We call them Pillars. We have Pillars in all the fifty states and Guam.”

“What about your leader? This mysterious Mr. Jimmerson? Who is he and just what is he doing here in Texas?”

“Mr. Jimmerson is the Master of Gnomons. He is in La Coma, Texas, as the invited guest of Mr. Morehead Moaler, himself a Gnomon of very high degree.”

“How long will he be here?”

“It's hard to say. At least until we can get our hospital project off the ground.”

“What hospital is that?”

“A hospital for poor children we are planning to build in La Coma. These things take time.”

“They sure do. What it really comes down to is this, isn't it, Mr. Popper? This sly old man, Mr. Jimmerson, wearing a very peculiar electromagnetic cap, has moved in, bag and baggage, with poor old Mr. Moaler for an indefinite stay, bringing with him his family, a butler, a hairdresser, four or five musicians and various sacred birds and monkeys. Is that not a fair summary of the situation?”

“No, sir, most unfair. The Master, I repeat, is an invited guest. That can be confirmed easily enough. His cap has no magnetic properties. His family did not accompany him on this trip. He does, very naturally, travel with his executive staff.”

“He comes off to me as a very sinister figure. Can you tell us a little more about him?”

“I'll be glad to. Lamar Jimmerson is a decorated veteran of the Argonne campaign. He is a man of military bearing and twinkling good humor. He is clean and strong. He suffers from an occasional head cold but is otherwise a fine specimen. He runs six miles a day and maintains the physique of a thirty-year-old man. He is a gentleman. Children and animals take to him instinctively and rub up against him. He is a philosopher. He is a teacher in the great tradition of Hermes Trismegistus and Pletho Pappus. Mr. Jimmerson is the American Pythagoras.”

“Quite a man. How come I never heard of him until two weeks ago?”

“Like all the truly wise men in this world, Senator, Mr. Jimmerson is unknown to the world.”

“He's not some naked and scrawny sage from India, is he?”

“No, sir.”

“What can you tell us about his economic theories?”

“He has none that I know of.”

Senator Gammage put in a question. “Is he the one who claims that the Chinese discovered America?”

Senator Churton rapped his gavel. “Later, Senator. Your turn will come. Now tell me this, Mr. Popper. How much does this old man charge for these fraudulent academic degrees that he sells through the mail?”

“Mr. Jimmerson sells no degrees. He sells nothing.”

“Are his financial records intact?”

“I believe so.”

“You're not going to tell me that they were all blown away in a tornado like those records of Dr. John's, are you?”

“Our records are intact as far as I know.”

Senator Moaler leaned forward for a whispered consultation with the chairman. Papers were passed. Senator Churton looked them over and then resumed his examination.

“What can you tell us, Mr. Popper, about Mr. Jimmerson's police record?”

“He has no police record.”

“So you say. According to my information he was released from a maximum security prison in Arizona in June of 19 and 58 after serving seven years of a ten-year sentence for armed robbery and aggravated assault. He was going by the name of James Lee ‘Jimbo' Jimmerson at the time. It says here that he played various percussion instruments in the prison band.”

“That would be another Jimmerson.”

“Perhaps. We do know this. You cult people are great ones for altering your names or taking new names.”

“Altogether a different person.”

“Perhaps. Even so, you can't deny that your man springs from that same Jimmerson family of thugs in Stitt, Arizona, can you?”

“I can and do deny it.”

“I understand he practices herbal medicine. A lot of sprouts and berries in his program.”

“He doesn't practice any kind of medicine.”

“Hypnotism?”

“No, sir.”

“Does he conduct pottery classes?”

“No, sir.”

Senator Churton took a closer look at his paper and placed his finger on a word. “Or is it poetry classes?”

“He teaches neither of those arts.”

“Does he claim to be in contact with spaceships that are circling the earth, communicating on a daily basis with humanoid pilots one meter tall wearing golden coveralls?”

“He makes no such claim,”

“I have been told that he is a man with several rather unpleasant personal habits. I won't specify further.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

Senator Gammage broke in. “These unpleasant habits. Around the house? Out in the streets? Where?”

“Around the house,” said Senator Churton. “But I would rather not specify further. You will be recognized in due course, Senator Gammage. You can put your questions then, on your own time. We'll leave that and go on to this. Now, Mr. Popper, how do you answer the charge that this cunning old man, Mr. Jimmerson, has come to Texas to work out his imperial destiny?”

“I don't understand the question.”

“No? You can tell us nothing about his plans to conquer the earth and divide it up into triangular districts?”

“Mr. Jimmerson has no such plans.”

“So you say. But he does maintain a chemical laboratory?”

“We have our little experiments in metallurgy.”

“And in magnetism as well?”

“I believe so, yes,”

“Experiments that are carried on behind locked doors, I am told, with vicious dogs patrolling the corridors. What safeguards do you have in place, Mr. Popper? What precautions have you taken to ensure that these experiments do not get out of hand and set the air afire and perhaps melt the polar ice caps?”

“None.”

“Very well, then. Let's move on to this dancing school that Mr. Jimmerson runs. How is that connected to your organization? Just what goes on in those classes?”

“Mr. Jimmerson has never run a dancing school.”

“It's all right here in this report, with an eyewitness account of the old man himself dancing. It says here that he appeared to be hopped up on some kind of dope.”

“That report is completely false.”

“Oh? And yet strong narcotic drugs do play an important part in your ceremonies, do they not? In your revels?”

“They do not.”

“And lewd dances led by this man Jimmerson? Although you tell us he has never run a dancing school. I have it all right here in black and white, Mr. Popper.”

“Not true. I'm afraid you have confused us with another organization calling itself the Gnomon Society. That pathetic little band is led by a man named Sydney Hen, and yes, I believe they do jig about some by the light of the moon. But we have nothing to do with them and they have nothing to do with true Gnomonism.”

“Hen, Hen, Hen. Don't we have something here on Hen?” He huddled again with Senator Moaler. There was another flutter of papers. “Oh yes, here we are. Hen the co-founder. Hen in Malta. Hen in Canada. Hen in Mexico. He pops up with frequency in this sleazy tale. A fine fellow too. Both he and your man Jimmerson, it appears, have been living off the earnings of women now for many years. A pretty pair.”

“A pretty unsavory pair,” said Senator Rey.

“Two rival gangs,” said Senator Gammage.

“More a matter for the vice squad, it seems to me, than a legislative body,” said Senator Rey.

Senator Churton rapped his gavel. “Order. And when may we expect Hen's arrival in Texas, Mr. Popper? On the next bus? Don't tell me he's already here, pawing our women in Lufkin or Amarillo.”

“Your guess is as good as mine, Senator. Personally, I have never clapped eyes on the man.”

“You have no knowledge of his whereabouts?”

“No direct knowledge, no, sir. There are several stories going around. I have heard that he was living on a barge in Mexico, wearing a yachting cap and selling fish bait and taking in a Saturday
corrida
now and then and quoting Virgil at the drop of a hat. Another story has him dead, with his remains, a half pint of gray ashes, in the custody of his former wife, the former Lady Hen, who is now Señora Goma y Goma of Veracruz. Another one has it that his acolytes in Cuernavaca have preserved his body in a crock of Maltese honey.”

“His entire body?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That must be some jug.”

“His entire body, intact, except for the lapis lazuli eyeballs in his eye sockets, forever staring but seeing nothing in that golden haze. I have also heard that he is in Cuernavaca in a deep trance of some two or three years' standing, and I have heard that he is not in a trance but is living alone in a small downtown hotel in Monterrey, wearing a beret, calling himself Principato and claiming to be five hundred years old. They say he looks six hundred, with his body all dried up from the desert air. They say he's all head now like a catfish and just tapers away to nothing. These are some of the rumors I have heard.”

“Somewhere in Mexico quoting Virgil, if alive. Not much to go on.”

“No, sir.”

“Still, as long as he stays there. Does he intend to remain there in his Mexican lair, Mr. Popper?”

“As far as I know. If we can speak of the lair of a Hen.”

“You mention rumors. Tell me this, if you can. What perverse joy does this man Jimmerson get from starting rumors? Rumors or hoaxes that raise hopes, so soon to be cruelly dashed. What are we to think of such a man?”

“I don't understand the question.”

“Let me be specific then. The fifty-dollar jeep. The army surplus jeep, brand-new, crated and packed in Cosmoline, to be bought for only fifty dollars if you could just find the right government agency. Didn't that story originate with Jimbo Jimmerson in late 19 and 45 in Oakland, California?”

“It didn't originate with Lamar Jimmerson.”

“And the kidney dialysis machine, to be given away to any community or church group that could collect some great number of old crumpled-up cigarette packs—wasn't that another of Jimbo's lies, first set on wing in a Seattle bar?”

“Mr. Lamar Jimmerson has never been to Seattle.”