Fourth Mansions

by R. A. Lafferty

  “I'd marry you, Biddy, on the spot,” Bauer said, “but that wouldn't expand the brain-weave, and I believe it should be expanded by one more now.”

  “You sure as hell would not marry me, you final pig!” Biddy swore.

  “Of course I would, Bedelia. We're not ourselves now, we all belong to each other. But I believe we should expand the weave by one. Letitia is still in the weave, you know. We can still feel her. We can still talk to her.”

  That was true. Letitia Bauer was still in the brain-weave. They could hear her ashen weeping in waste places somewhere, they could still feel the moon-color and slimness of her.

  “I believe it might be well to have several dead people in the weave,” Bauer mused, but even his musing had the sound of muted thunder. “It will give us better perspective to have several dead people in our communication. Which one would be best? Oh well, I'd better get to the marrying part first and then return to the murder. There's a girl going by on the sidewalk.”

  Jim Bauer went out and took the girl by the hand. He pulled her into the house, and she came along in dazed fashion. “We're married now,” he said. “Your name is Letitia Bauer now. See her dead body there. Look like her. Look like her! I tell you. You cannot set up a will against any of us. We are the will of the world now. Look like her. More. That's close, but more. I can compel you, you know. Yes, that's about right.”

  It wasn't about right. It was perfect. The new girl was Letitia Bauer now. She had had to age about twelve years. She had to become moon-colored of skin and ashen of hair. She had to slough twenty pounds and become slim. But when one of the new mutated masters compels a thing, it must be done.

  “Strip the old one, Wing,” Bauer ordered. “Strip them both. Then clothe the new one after she's been properly bloodied and inoculated and introduced into the weave. She'll mutate easily enough now, I believe, and the old Letitia will help her. Hondo, get rid of the body. Go bury it almost anywhere. Nobody will see you. If they do, it won't occur to them to prevent you. We are new people now and no one will interfere with us. Arouet!”

  “What of me, Bauer? You can't order me. I'm as mutated and masterful as you are. No one can stand first here.”

  “Of course not, Arouet. We've all become the same person. But that person is speaking through my mouth now. Arouet, don't you believe it would give our brain-weave more balance if one more of us would be rid of the body? In some ways, death brings even closer communion; notice how close the dead Letitia is now, closer than the living. One more, do you think?”

  “Yes. Here, give me the .45, James, I'll do it. You mean Hondo when he comes back from disposing of the body?”

  “No, I mean you, now, Arouet. And I'll use the .45. No man can shoot himself without being a little clumsy about it. I'll do it.”

  “No, Jim, no, no!” Arouet Manion ran out of the room, he leaped a hedge, he disappeared.

  “He'll come around in a little while,” said James Bauer, “or I'll go find him and kill him. We have to expect these spotty starts. We've been mutated only a few minutes, after all. I suggest that we all take our rest this night as did the first chthonic father-image on the seventh day. Our accomplishment, after all, is much higher. Now I have a new wife, or an old wife in new appearance, to bloody and then to bed. Begone, fellow Harvesters. We're in constant contact anyhow. We're all one person now.”

  “I'll give you a ride into town, Biddy,” Wing Manion said. “I'll let Arouet run a while before I look for him. Of course, he'll be easy enough for any of us to find any time, now that we're all the same person. He always was yellow. Now that he's mutated, he becomes ocher. Didn't he turn positively ocher when Jim Bauer was about to kill him, Biddy? Oh, it will be exciting, being mutated and all, don't you think so, Biddy?”

  “It may be exciting. It won't be as much fun as I thought it would.”

  “Oh it is goofy, Biddy,” Wing Manion said, “being new and powerful and all that. I'll bet that's what the first primitive glob said when he was hoaxed into coming to life with all that ammonia in the atmosphere and all those high-powered rays barking around. ‘Oh it is goofy,’ I bet he said.”

  Freddy Foley was with his boss Tankersley. He had been getting kind words for a change.

  “Those were two very good stories you got today,” Tankersley said. “I wonder sometimes why I keep you on, but I guess it's because you often get good stories. You show real empathy with this Miguel. You get right inside him. And you really believe that his movement may pick up momentum, that it will be dangerous, that he'll be unable or unwilling to stop it, and that he'll still be a nice kid when he topples the world? I don't believe he'll really endanger the world, but some of the movements may. Every crooked-neck plum tree in the world may be bearing bloody fruit by next season. And the other story, you did a fine job on that, even if you violated the first item of the reporter's canon.”

  “How, Mr. Tankersley? I got all my information from O'Claire directly, and I discounted it just as I thought it should be done. What canon did I violate?”

  “Spelled his name wrong.”

  “I couldn't have. There isn't any wrong way to spell it.”

  “It is A-u-c-l-a-i-r-e. French, not Irish. Sorry, Foley, in a more perfect world everybody would be Irish, but in our own imperfect world they are not. Auclaire.”

  “Really muffed that one. Mr. Tankersley, do you know anything about the patricks?”

  “Hardly anything. Some sort of lodge or society. Pretend to take themselves seriously, like the Baker Street Irregulars. I believe they also use a little esoterism such as may be picked up from the Los Angeles quackeries. They have titles and things. Pretend to divide the world into realms ruled by themselves. Do a piece on them if you want to, anything to keep you off the Overlark lark.”

  “I'm not off the Overlark bit for good.”

  “Get off it for good then, Freddy, or your head will roll.”

  Freddy went and borrowed some pictures from the morgue. He had collected others here and there. Some he had been forced to steal. He went with them to the lodgings of Michael Fountain. And Michael was distraught.

  “I thought there was ritual murder a while ago, Foley. I was sure of it. It came from our mutual acquaintances who have become vile. I read them back, as they tried to read me. They murdered Letitia Bauer. I know that they did. But then a little later the happening was expunged.”

  “I got a little of that too, Mr. Fountain. And then a little later I got it that she was all right after all. I put it out of my mind then. I have some things on Carmody Overlark I want to show to you and talk to you about.”

  “I just talked to Letitia Bauer on the telephone,” Michael Fountain said. “No, she certainly was not all right, she said. She had a blinding headache. Yes, she said, there had been insane experiments going on at their place and she had had about enough of them. So nice of me to imagine that she had been murdered, she said, but she hadn't been really. Everything is all right now, Mr. Fountain, she said, and you come to visit us again when we are once more sane which I hope will be soon. Well, there's something there that I don't understand, Foley. Probably it was a very strong mental projection of ritual murder. They do play black games, your friends. Yes, I'll gladly look at anything you have on Carmody Overlark. Anything to get the Harvesters out of my mind.”

  “Pictures, pictures,” said Freddy, and he laid them out on the table. “I have two piles of pictures here, all of them of Carmody Overlark. This stack here has pictures of Carmody that are more than two years old. This second stack has pictures of him that were taken within the last two years. Look at them closely and tell me if they're all of the same man.”

  Michael Fountain studied the pictures closely for some time.

  “Yes. I'm familiar with all of them except two,” Fountain said, “and they're among the less clear. Yes, Freddy, all those are pictures of Carmody Overlark.”

  “I know they are. But are they all of the same man?”

  “Is there a differ
ence? I'd say immediately that they were all of the same man, except that you're the second person who's asked me such a question. How can they all be of Carmody Overlark and not all be of the same man?”

  “I can't explain.”

  “Neither could my other questioner. I can be cryptic myself but usually I avoid it. You stretch it a little far, Foley.”

  At the side of Foley's face, just out of vision, drifted a strand finer than silk. He resisted the temptation to brush it off, but he felt that a spider had cast on him a second time.

  “Who was the other man who asked about Carmody, Mr. Fountain?”

  “I won't tell you. You don't know him, I'm sure.”

  “But I want to know him.”

  “I won't tell you who he is. He questioned me in confidence.”

  “So do I. I ask his name in confidence.”

  “No. You don't have enough of my confidence for that.”

  “Is it true, Mr. Fountain, that the patricks have invisible servitors, plappergeists, who protect them?”

  “Oh, I suppose so. Bagley's invisible dog can be seen, though. I've seen it. It only takes sharp looking. But it's more like an ape than a dog.”

  “And do the returning men also have servitors who protect them, and are they furtive but not invisible?”

  “Yes, that's true. You'll be confined or killed if you keep asking questions about Carmody Overlark. I don't know why. He doesn't seem that important to me.”

  “Mr. Fountain, who would be most likely to know whether the earlier and the later Carmody Overlark are the same man?”

  “You might ask his wife.”

  “I hadn't thought of that. Thank you. I will.”

  Freddy Foley went to the Scatterbrain Lounge to see if Biddy would show up that evening. The problem remained. There is a truism that things equal to the same thing are equal to each other, but this truism may not be true. The pictures of the later Overlark were also the pictures of Khar-ibn-Mod and of Kir-ha-Mod. And the pictures of the later Overlark were also pictures of the earlier Overlark. Why then were not the pictures of the earlier Overlark also the pictures of Khar-ibn-Mod and of Kir-ha-Mod? They should have been, but they weren't.

  When logic breaks down something else should take over. But it wouldn't come to Freddy, it just wouldn't come. Whatever it is that makes a man what he is and not another man, it seemed to break down here.

  Then there exploded into the Scatterbrain Lounge the man that Freddy least expected to see of all the men in the world. It was O'Claire, no, no, Auclaire.

  “Foley!” the tawny man cried and gripped Freddy and was frantic. “It escaped! It escaped from the fountain! Now it is loose in the world! It is loose in this very city! Where is it? Do you know? It has some affinity to you. Answer me, Foley! Come alive! It's important! The thing is a world-eater!”

  “Man, I don't know what you're talking about,” Foley sputtered in amazement. “What are you doing here, Auclaire? A mountaintop lie doesn't come to roost here. You're off your head. What are you looking for?”

  “The creature from my fountain, the seven-armed creature that has snakes for tentacles. It's loose in the world, I tell you! It's loose in your own city!”

  “You're insane, man. You were only pleasantly crazy this afternoon. Now you're clear gone.”

  “Foley! Listen to me. There it is! It's coming to us now! There is a walking tentacle of the damnable world-eater itself, and nobody rises to kill it or confine it! She's one creature of it, one snake of it! Get back in your place, creature, or I'll beat you back!”

  “I will not get back in my place!” Biddy Bencher sparked, for she was the walking tentacle of the world-eater. “The whole world is my place now. Why yes, I am one snake of it. What of that? I'm a mutated person now. I'm part of the being that grows and inherits the world.”

  “Aaagh, then I'm too late,” Auclaire moaned, and all the fire went out of him.

  “I'm wounded, Freddy,” Bedelia grimaced, “and the turban on my head isn't the style; but in a day or so I'll unveil the Harvester mark on my forehead in all its brilliance. And your friend here, Freddy? You do have the most interesting friends.”

  “So do you, Biddy. Biddy, this is Mr. Auclaire, the Patrick of Pecos.”

  “Oh, I've met patricks before. I love them all, don't I, Freddy? Why don't you go see Mr. Bagley? He's Patrick of Tulsa.”

  “You refuse to go back to your prison, creature?” Auclaire asked, trembling.

  “I refuse to go back to my prison,” Biddy said. “I don't even have a prison to go back to. And don't call me creature, little snake-hunter. I am now the essence of uncreated ecstasy.”

  “I was hoping I'd be able to drive you back to your place,” Auclaire moaned, “but I see that I'm too late and you've already fragmented. Yes, I'll go see the local patrick and we will attempt tactics. Oh, God help us all! Why didn't you stay in your fountain as God intended you to do, creature?”

  “No, no, I didn't leave the fountain,” Bedelia protested. “The fountain left me. Oh, I'd forgotten all about when I lived in a fountain. It's like in another life. But now we build new fountains, new upwellings.”

  Auclaire left them there. He was defeated. All the fire had gone out of him.

  “Did you kill Letitia at your gangeroo tonight, Biddy?” Fred Foley asked.

  “Yes. How did you know, Freddy? But it was only for a little while. We fixed it up later. I forget just how, but she's all right now. And now I can communicate both with Letitia dead and Letitia alive, so we've added one to our number. But I shouldn't be talking of such things to a sample of non-mutated humanity. Change the subject, Freddy.”

  “All right. Have you picked up any stories on Carmody Overlark, Biddy?”

  “Oh, I'd forgotten about him. Why is he important? I myself am much more important than he is, now that I'm mutated and super. But it seems that I did hear a couple comical things on him. What do you really want?”

  “Is there any new oddity that has attached to him in the last year or two?”

  “Oh yes. He keeps rats. And he soaks his head in a bucket. He didn't used to do either.”

  “Soaks his head in a bucket? Biddy, this is me, Freddy. We're friends. Now what was it that you meant to say when you said that he soaks his head in a bucket?”

  “I meant to say that he soaks his head in a bucket. He keeps one in his office always, and there's one for him wherever he goes. I don't know why.”

  “Anything else?”

  “On Carmody, no. On you, yes. I have this information of myself, being now transcendent and super and traveling through so many minds at will. You have decided to leave town this evening. Well, there's a man waiting to kill you at the airport, and another at the bus station. There's a third one waiting to kill you if you stay in town.”

  “Oh well, dead if you do and dead if you don't. Where did they wound you tonight, Biddy, other than the forehead gash?”

  “The side, under the arm, close to the lymph.”

  “And where else?”

  “The left round.”

  “Yes, I thought you sat a little gingerly.”

  VI: REVENGE OF STRENGTH UNUSED

  There is what seems like a regular pattern of excavated cities. From the bottom, three cities, each more advanced in artifact and building, one atop another; then a city of total destruction: following above will be three more cities showing advance and again a fourth showing total destruction.

  It is possible, however, that this most common cycle is actually the failed or broken cycle. Much more rarely do we come on the cycle of the full seven cities: at Leros, at Lough Dorg, at Angkor Kong, at Chichen-Ticul. In these cases we find the first three cities of ascending worth, then the fourth or “confusion” plateau which reveals contradictory and exciting values, fragmentary but contained destruction, and grandiose foundations: above this in each case are the fifth and sixth cities, which can only be called marvelous both in their attainments and in their balance and their prophecy: ab
ove these are the truncated bases of the seventh cities, which are absolutely unique even in their low remnants.

  In each case, the local legend is that the final cities (having become perfect) were taken up to heaven in every stone and person.

  The Back Door of History: Arpad Arutinov

  “THERE AIN't no way, Charley, there ain't no way we can blow it,” one drinking young man was saying to another. This seemed to be a catch-phrase born that very day. “There ain't no way, Charley,” one woman was saying to another there.

  “Boy, I sure can blow it,” Freddy Foley said. “There's lots of ways I can blow it yet. Sit here like I'm coming right back, Biddy. I'll see you some other day, some other where.”

  “Be careful, Freddy, little acorn; you're going to take the airport limousine, and there's a man going to kill you if you show up at the airport.  — But why should I warn you? You both belong to unmutated humanity and I'm above such things now.”

  “You're walleyed and beautiful, Biddy, and you have a fever and you will die in a few weeks. Hey, I can prophesy too.”

  Fred Foley went around the corner and caught the airport limousine just as it was pulling out. The driver was a friend of Freddy's and Freddy sat in back in the baggage place. But if anyone had wondered, Fred Foley had been on the airport limousine.

  There is one dark crossway down under old viaducts, and Fred Foley rolled out of the limousine there. There was a small station of a prehistoric carter service there, and Fred Foley was in and out of it quickly.

  Who remembers when they still had passenger trains in this part of the country? Who was the last person ever to ride on one? Now there is a deep secret about this. This prehistoric monster is not dead. Though passenger trains no longer run, yet there is one coach-car hooked onto a Kansas City run at night. Foley got on it. No one, not a fossil, would look for him there. It was one in the morning. There were only five other persons in the coach and four of them were fossils. The fifth one was of that fearsome breed who might want to talk.