Fourth Mansions

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Leave us, Hamtree,” said Biddy. “Our private conversation is not meant for outside or outsized ears. There's a man at the front bar who wants a drink and is too shy to ask for it. Your new cashier is being talked into cashing the hottest check in town, and your check-in boy is robbing you blind at this very minute. Be off, or I'll push you into your own ice-maker machine and freeze you solid quick.

  “Freddy, little corn-ball, I'm with you to the end, which may not be very long. It's possible that you're using someone's old kidney for a brain, but you're still my boy. I remember several times you've been right when you hadn't any business to be. I was always for the underdog, and, doggy, you're way way under. How can I help you?”

  “Find out everything you can about Carmody Overlark, Biddy. Your father and your friends know people who know details about government people. Find out any odd stories that attach to Carmody Overlark, particularly any new ones that have attached to him in the last year or two.”

  “All right, Freddy, little oyster, I'll find out what I can. Now I have to leave you and go to find another man in his chambers. Don't be jealous. He's only one of those fascinating older men.”

  “I have to go see a man too, Biddy. He may already be in bed. He may be provoked with me for waking him up. He gets provoked with me quite a bit. Can I call you a taxi?”

  “No, my man is within close walking distance. Will you walk out with me? My man gets provoked with me a lot too. Which one of us are those fellows whistling at, my own woolly-worm? Oh, do you turn this way too? We'll walk together a while, then. I'm very worried about this man. It's been several hours and I haven't heard any news or sirens about him.”

  “Why would there be? What is it? Should there be news? Shall I call my paper?”

  “No, I'll call by his place first. By the amount of powder we poured into him, there should be an explosion by now, Freddy. I turn in here. Oh, is your man in this apartment building too? I tell you, little green cantaloupe, we should have made a tiger out of that man by now. He should have started to pull the world down around our ears already. You take a man as smart and great-minded as he is and build a fire inside him. Oh, how did you know to punch seven? That's my floor. Hey, that's got to be yours too, that's the top floor in the building. Here. Thank you, Freddy; you go on to your own man now.”

  “You go on to your own, Biddy. Oh, were you coming to see Michael Fountain too? He doesn't know I'm coming. Does he know you're coming?”

  “No, I don't think he does. He'll be doubly surprised. Knock and step back, Freddy. He may really have turned into a tiger. He might blast us.”

  “He's left the door ajar, Biddy. I think he's expecting us, or someone.”

  “Probably world personages already flocking to — ” They went in.

  Michael Fountain had only a night-light on. He was wrapped in an old bathrobe and sitting deep in an easy chair. He was sixty years old, lean and lined, only a fringe of pinkish hair around his pate, craggy featured, with a hook to his nose like that of a Plains Indian or an Armenian, but he was perhaps too pale to be either.

  “I want to talk to Bedelia, and Freddy wants to talk to me,” Fountain said kindly. “Where shall we begin?”

  “Oh, begin with Freddy, old earmuff. It will be bloody enough when you start on me,” Biddy said, “and you may soften a little in the meantime.”

  “You think you may have a great silent laugh at Freddy and his caper, Bedelia, and that I will be laughing too. I believe, though, that the several capers of your group have gone past the laughing stage. Just what is it that you want to know about Overlark, Freddy?”

  “First I want to know how you knew I wanted to know about Overlark, Mr. Fountain.”

  “I monitor a few of the antics when I suspect that they are becoming dangerous. The scavengers, who call themselves the Harvesters, instructed you to goof gloriously about Carmody Overlark. What is it, Freddy?”

  “I think there's something odd about him. I want to know if you have anything odd. In particular I want to know if there's been any significant change in him in the last year or so, since the beginning of his meteoric rise.”

  “If he's risen like a meteor then it's quite a dim one, for he isn't generally known at all. Oh, reporters and dilettantes will have heard of him, of course, but he isn't a big name. There has been one change in him in the last several years, though. He changed his name.”

  “Oh. From what and to what? And when?”

  “From Charles to Carmody, and just about two years ago.”

  “So the Carmody from the beginning has been Carmody only about two years. Why did he change it?”

  “He gave numerology as the reason. And you're about to say that an intelligent man does not believe in numerology? But a man doesn't have to give a reason to change his name legally.”

  “Did he have anything to hide, Mr. Fountain?”

  “As Charles Overlark? No, I don't think so, Freddy. He was obscure, but not much more so than he still is. He was and is wealthy. He's always been a heavy contributor to the party. He's a man of natural status. Beyond that he's known simply as a brilliant amateur.”

  “At what?”

  “Ah, an intellectual, a legend, an amateur of all the arts, and a patron.”

  “Was he actually an artist in any field?”

  “I don't think so. I believe he only collected.”

  “And as an intellectual, has he actually produced anything?”

  “Not that I know of. I believe that here he also collected: intellectuals. It was always assumed, however, that he was incredibly brilliant.”

  “Always, Mr. Fountain? Or only as an afterthought? Would it be possible that his reputation was inserted back in time a little, and that actually he had no reputation at all before his rise?”

  “Yes, that would be possible, Freddy. This sort of thing has happened before. The facts that one has always known were sometimes not really known as late as yesterday. Actually, if I should examine my conscience, I'd have to admit that I had scarcely heard of him at all till he was suddenly prominent in his small niche. But there is a retrospect given to him in some manner so that it seems he was always known.

  “He isn't a new appearance, though. There have been several well-documented pieces done on him. We can take him back, always in the best circles, to his birth; and we can take his family back as far as we want to go.”

  “But until his modified meteoric rise he really had nothing but his money to recommend him? He could have been a dolt for all we know?”

  “He could have been, Freddy, but he isn't a dolt now. My experience is that dolts are always or ever…. I believe that's all you can think of to ask me at this time. But you also wish to ask me questions about another man?”

  “No. About the same man, Mr. Fountain. What do you know about Khar-ibn-Mod?”

  “Hardly anything, Freddy, but I know all that is known about him. I'm surprised that you should even know the name. I didn't know you were a student of the Mohammedan Middle Ages.”

  “Do you know how he died?”

  “No. I don't recall any mention of his death anyplace. How did he die, Freddy?”

  “I don't think he did. Have you ever seen the old woodcut of his face that's in the Cambridge History of the Middle Ages?”

  “Yes. Let me flash it into my mind a moment. I see what you mean, Freddy. He does look a little like Carmody Overlark, doesn't he? It's always handy to have good recall as I have. Does the glorious goof consist of this similarity, Freddy?”

  “Partly. Recall it again. Does Khar-ibn-Mod have what you would call an Arabian or Egyptian face?”

  “Not what you would call one, Freddy. But particular faces don't really follow racial rules. Besides, the Mamelukes were mostly of Christian European slave origin, taken very young and raised with great selection for their particular duties. I'd say that that face is probably Moravian. So is Overlark's. And the names do chime a common tone, don't they, Freddy? No. I don't laugh at you; I've
met such coincidental ghosts before. Anything else about your man or men?”

  “Do you know whether Khar-ibn-Mod suffered from asthma?”

  “Not that I know of. He didn't live in an asthma climate. But he could well have suffered, and we would still be ignorant of it.”

  “Carmody Overlark suffers from asthma — these last two years. I found out that much about him myself. Thank you, Mr. Fountain. It's your turn, Biddy.”

  “Oh. Yes, Freddy, leave us now. Mr. Fountain has some harsh things to say to me and they are not for callow ears. Out, little crackerjack-prize, out.”

  “I will not. You've witnessed my own bleeding of words, my own great goofing. I'll hear what comes to you. Besides, I'm still a reporter, and you two become momentous people in a very peculiar business that's going on.”

  “Your little group has killed my favorite nephew and namesake, Bedelia,” Michael Fountain said.

  “Mikey? Has he died? But he wasn't expected to live. We didn't kill him, he was dying anyhow. Not that I'm callous. Did they call you that he was dead?”

  “No. I called them first, to be sure. I had the feeling. He had just died, and I'm not quite sure that he would have otherwise. You and your group are playing a dangerous game, Bedelia, a dangerous and ignorant game.”

  “Of course we're ignorant. We're pioneers as well as Harvesters and we go into unknown regions. But we're going to set fires in very select persons; we're going to mutate them with a great psychic wave sweeping over them in the evening time when certain rays are most likely for it. And we've done it to you, Michael, we've done it to you. We've made change in you, and now you'll use your great talents in ways you refused to use them before.”

  “No, you have not done it to me, Bedelia.”

  “But we have! I was in your mind, we all were. You slipped us, and then we took you from under. We got you, we exploded in you.”

  “No, you did not. I slipped you, and then I slipped you again, clumsy kids that you are. But you killed Mikey, invoking the same name, and you may have entered another somehow.”

  “No. You. We were in your under-mind. We reveled there. You don't know it now, but you will know it. We've planted you and it grows in you.”

  “No, Biddy, I slipped you almost completely. I'll have to find out who you did revel in. I will have to see about undoing the harm you've done to somebody. It was not myself, it was not Mikey except glancingly, but it was somebody somehow attached to me, for I felt it strongly. I cannot at the moment imagine who it was. I have no other namesakes that I recall. But it was somebody whose mind has touched mine, who was in a certain accord with me, a young man's mind, and I do not know whose. You're sure you don't know who you bit into, Bedelia?”

  “Yes, it was you, you!”

  “Not at all. You assault strangers, and at a distance, and perhaps to their deaths. It has to stop.”

  “It will not stop, Michael, old moss-rock. We break new roads. We induce the new human evolution. And you can't even guess what we will do next.”

  “Of course I have guessed it. You will attempt mutation on yourselves, or perhaps it will be mutilation. It will not work.”

  “It will work! We've seen the castle on top of the hill. We'll climb that hill, we'll be the first people ever to climb it. We'll be the first super-people, the first people able to grasp the vision. And we'll lead the rest of humanity up to it. We wanted you to be our first leader, but you've failed us.”

  “Don't do it, Bedelia. It is likely to kill one or all of you.”

  “What of it? Surely the chance is worth taking. Despise us, loathe us! We'll show you. We'll redeem you all. We'll make the breakthrough to intellectualized, celestialized, chthonized, socialized, paranaturalized, cosmosized, one-other-word-that-I-forgot.”

  “Oh shut up, Biddy!” Fountain snapped angrily. “Freddy, drag her and her drivel out of here.”

  And Freddy Foley dragged Bedelia Bencher out of Michael Fountain's apartment.

  “ 'twas thus they stoned the prophets!” Biddy sang defiantly as the door slammed intolerantly behind them.

  “You're all of you stoned, Biddy,” Freddy told her, “and not on honest hooch either. Get off it, Biddy; that's a crazy bunch you're running with.”

  “You will notice, Freddy, that my feet do not touch the sidewalk,” Biddy said a little later. “I am walking on air two inches above the sidewalk. I would walk higher but then I'd be too high to walk with you.”

  “You're too high to be walking with anyone anyhow. But why'd you just stumble if you're walking on air?”

  “Air-pocket. Oh, I am etherealized, Freddy, I'm a new person entirely. I'll go to my own place now and become cosmic. I don't blink anymore, I haven't blinked for hours; I believe that blinking is a trait of mankind in the transitional stage. I will never blink again. I will not close my eyes again ever, not in life nor in death. I am mistress of all worlds and visions. I will go and paint weird pictures on my eyeballs now. Why not? I don't need them for seeing. I can see with every part of me. Why are you turning into the alley, Freddy? That's the back door of City Museum down there.”

  “I know it. The night watchman is a friend of mine. I go talk to him sometimes when I can't sleep at night; and, Biddy, I sure can't sleep at night lately. Not since you snakes spit snake juice in my eye. And now my own girl has turned into one of the snakes. I wish I hadn't seen it happen, Biddy.”

  “But I am glorious now, Freddy, glorious and glorified. I've already learned a lot of the patter that we Harvesters use. Now if I can figure out what it means I'll be two steps up. I haven't really turned into a snake, Freddy. Good night.”

  “And find out what you can about Carmody Overlark, Biddy.”

  “All right, little back-end of a glowworm, I will.”

  Freddy rapped on an old bronze panel of the back door of City Museum. “One hundred and nineteen long knocks and one short” was the code between the friends, but Freddy never had to knock that many times. The door whispered open. The friend was a young man named Selim Elia, a young Syrian man who loved the museum and faithfully watched over it by night.

  “Freddy cannot sleep at night.” Selim smiled as he closed the outer door again and led Fred Foley through the dim entry-room. “He sleeps well in the daytime but he sure can't sleep at night. Are the flaming ducks after you again, Freddy?”

  “Something like that. Dead ducks keep flopping up in live people, yes, dead snakes and toads. Did you ever look at your girl and suddenly discover that she had toad's eyes, Selim?”

  “Mine has basilisk's eyes, Freddy, much more sophisticated. Is it the live things or the dead things that are bothering you tonight, Freddy?”

  “It's those that won't make up their mind which they are. See, there are these brain folks that Biddy runs around with, three Shes out of Haggard and three Borgia types out of Baron Corvo. They mix up this brain stuff and put it out in psychic jolts. It knocked me to my knees the first time they used it on me. Tonight they tried it on Mike Fountain. He slipped them, but it killed his nephew and bit into someone else. Now they're raising up something that would be better dead, and they've put me onto a man who ought to be dead. I want to wander around the museum a while. I know the things here are dead.”

  “No, Freddy, they are not. There is not one dead thing here. You don't understand, Freddy. It is not natural for things to stay dead; it sure is not natural for people to stay dead. You can hear them still, all over this place at night, rocks, bones, skulls, whole people. They get tired waiting for time to get up.”

  “Selim, your mother was a wanton dromedary. Let's go through the dead rooms. Which is the Aztec room, this? Yes. But it's never too peaceful here. Even the stone faces don't seem dead enough.”

  “Oh, they are not, Freddy. Look at the mean eyes on that one, and his head no bigger than an apple. Don't put a finger near him, you might lose it. That one got crossways with a rock witch over a girl. The rock witch shrunk him first and then turned him into stone but he sure did
n't kill him. Do his eyes look dead?”

  “No. But they're only mica or rock-crystal set in obsidian stone. There's nothing alive in here except the imagination.”

  “All right, then put your finger near it, Freddy, try it.”

  “I will not. Let's find something deader than these rocks.”

  Freddy Foley looked at dolls, at stuffed wolverines and kit-foxes, at Indian artifacts, at suits of Spanish armor curiously boys’-sized. But he had a new lead growing in his mind. He avoided a room on three sides of it, going around and looking at other things. Then he went into the Egyptian room and Selim Elia followed him.

  “Now, this is dead,” Freddy said. “These are things you can have confidence in. The same dead things here forever. Pta bless Egypt!”

  “Ah, but we have one new piece, Freddy. It is a life-mask and that is unusual. We have many Egyptian death-masks, but this is specifically called a life-mask. It is a molded portrait made on a man then living, and it is the finest thing we have.”

  “Whose is it? I don't want to see it. Where is it?”

  “Behind you, Freddy. We've had it for only two days. It has been verified and authenticated before we got it. The life-mask is that of a civil servant who served under Akhnaton, the heretic king of Egypt. We don't know the man's exact station.”

  “Special Assistant to Secretary of State,” Fred Foley said.

  “Really? You have toad's eyes yourself when you try to be mysterious. It's behind you, Freddy. You can't see it the way you are standing.”

  “Oh, I can see a little without eyeballs myself. How old is the life-mask?”

  “Oh, King Akhnaton lived around 1350 B.C., or around 900 B.C., if you follow the timetable of Velikovsky.”

  “Well, what's the name of the mask?”

  “Kir-ha-Mod is the translation, but we are not sure of the vowels. I myself believe that it should be transliterated as Kar-Ha-Mod.”

  “I think so too,” Fred Foley said, and he turned sullenly to look at the mask. “Ah, it's yourself!” he jibed at the thing. “And it's my belief that you are only the mask of a mask, sir. Tell me, Car-whatever, do you know who is wearing the mask itself today? Selim, did you just slip a piece of paper into my pocket?”