Fourth Mansions

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Letitia.”

  “Letitia — Happiness. I wonder if she really wanted it? She got on that danger kick instead. Maybe it is her sort of happiness, but she comes through mighty pale and drawn. Should we contact the Patriarchs of Greater Armenia and Greater Ireland?”

  “Oh, I've already done that, Auclaire. They say that they have escaping creatures of their own, much more momentous ones than we have here. And the Patriarch of Greater Armenia reminds me of another thing. God still regards all four sets of us things as exterior creatures, not to be allowed into the castle or the world, not good for the castle or the world. To Him, at the moment, we are not much better than the python-nest things, than the resurrection toads, than the gnashing falcons. Even our sometimes alliance with the falcons, as better than the other two, is not completely pleasing to Him.”

  “What must we do then, Bagley? Oh yes, I remember what the Manual says we must do. ‘Serve faithfully for aeon after aeon, that He may be convinced of our good will. Guard the hydra-pythons that they may not escape into the world. Unravel the mystery of the resurrection toads even if it takes us a million days. Mitigate the menace of the falcons, but use it against any greater menace that might arise. And after long and faithful service, He may admit us into the castle.’ Bagley, I keep hoping that every thousand years we serve may be the last.”

  “It would be pretty ironic, Auclaire, wouldn't it, if the other three sets also believed that they were serving faithfully? That they might also some day be admitted to the castle? You know, there's a story that we were in the castle once, that we set up our own primordial weave, and that we mutated; and that we got thrown out then and became exterior creatures; and that we have to labor like trolls to redeem ourselves. Say, my dog is one-quarter troll by blood. I'll ask him sometime how hard they really work. We may be overdoing it.”

  Odd talk, that, is it not? Not very. Not from patricks. They often talk like that when a couple of them get together. They are some sort of lodge or society. They pretend to take themselves seriously, like the Baker Street Irregulars. And they pick up a little esoterism such as you get from the Los Angeles quackeries. They have titles and such, and they pretend to divide the world into realms such as Greater Ireland and Greater Armenia.

  Jim Bauer, as a matter of fact, did not kill himself that day. Neither did he kill Arouet Manion. The sickly fear of death that was on Arouet added a curious and glittering element to the weave. Imagine a man being afraid of a little thing like dying, a mutated man at that. But cowardice might be as necessary an element as arrogance and dishonesty and hatred to make a weave really work.

  Bauer postponed his own death for a while, regretfully, as he believed there was still much work to be done in generating the weave and he believed he could do it better in the body. Later, later he would do it.

  But he did enlist an actual demon named Baubo to join the weave. This expanded the membership to nine. We will see how it works, we will see how it works.

  VII: OF ELEGANT DOGS AND RETURNED MEN

  … For I have written at great length of these Mansions (the fourth), as these are they where the greatest number of souls enter. As the natural is first united with the supernatural in these, it is here that the devil can do most harm.

  Interior Castle: Teresa of Avila

  IT IS A southern river town with some pretensions of being a city. It is intended to be beautiful, and often it is. It has more greenery than most, and it uses its water areas (both natural and contrived) well. There is grace in the general placement of its public buildings, and it has one quality which only the distinctive cities have: it is never seen for the first time. It is always recognized as something once known and forgotten for a while.

  And like every southern river town it has its canker. Every one of them has it somehow, like a beautiful belle with a loathsome disease. There is no point in stirring needless enmity (though it is fun) by naming the names and recounting the venoms. But it's a fact that they are a mean bunch of towns: many of them are likable, but all of them are mean.

  Every plain mean town in the land, Kansas City, Natchez, Wilmington N.C., Cape Giradeau, Cincinnati (certainly it's a southern town; it doesn't matter which side of that river it's on), Morgan City, Memphis, Laredo, Baton Rouge, St. Louis, Louisville, Richmond, New Orleans, every really mean town in the country is a southern river town.

  The capital has its own orneriness, as pervading as the others, but it isn't the same sort. It never was a fun town. It is not a robust sin town. Its fleshpots have no real juice in them. Its vices are effete and heterodox, and its moral rot is a dry one. Though its people have come there from all parts, yet they are not all sorts of people. They are very much of one sort. The ethic climate here nurtures an ancient, evil, shriveled thing. It is of the inhabitants of this city that the prophet spoke:

  Of those who do not have the faith

  And will not have the fun.

  There's an odor about all these southern river towns that isn't entirely due to their dank rivers. Here there is a sense of being in a tightly closed room even when outdoors. Still, it's a pretty and pleasant town to come to in the evening.

  Oriel Overlark shouldn't be a hard person to locate. Fred Foley would find her, ask her one question, and then go back home if, of course, he got the answer. There are several thousand persons in Washington whose whereabouts will always be known to everyone. Anyone in the trade will know.

  Freddy looked up Mary Ann Evans. She'd know where Oriel Overlark was at the moment. Mary Ann was a casual acquaintance of Foley, but now he must originate the fiction that they were very old friends, and Mary Ann must go along with it. She was a lady reporter, and her stories were entirely of the ladies.

  But she looked at Fred Foley with amazement, almost with awe. Nobody had ever done that before.

  “Foley! How did you do it? How did you know? You had some of them almost before they happened, all of them before or right at the moment when they were discovered. I think there are pickup orders out for you. Your paper denies knowing where you are. You're going to have to answer some real inquiries. How did you know about them?”

  “About what, Mary Ann? That's the strangest greeting I ever got from anyone. I just blew into town.”

  “About the thirteen suicides, if that's what they were. Were they? You must be the one who knows all about them.”

  “Was my name on that story? That was way back early this morning.”

  “Your name wasn't on it — you'd be torn limb from limb for it by now if it had been. Your boss-image Tankersley is being. But we were able to track it back to you easily enough. What are you following up on now? Six of those suicides were here in Washington, but of course you know that.”

  “Oh, I'm not doing anything of a followup, Mary Ann. My part of that one is finished with. All I came to Washington for is to see Oriel Overlark and ask her one question.”

  “What a cover, but who'd believe that? When did you start doing ladies’ features? Fred, you're so much older and more mature! I can't believe it. I never saw a kid get over being a kid like that. It's only a year since I saw you.”

  “It's only a week since Tankersley told me he wished I didn't look so much like a kid. He didn't think I'd ever get over it.”

  “In one week you've matured and deepened like that? What's happened to you?”

  “Nothing at all, Mary Ann. And I sure haven't matured. Now, can you tell me where I can find Oriel Overlark, now, at this moment? I want to ask her one question, and then I want to go back home.”

  “There are very many people who want to ask you very many questions, Fred. Why the Oriel fake? Is she connected with the suicides?”

  “Oh no. This has nothing to do with that I want to ask her one question, that's all.”

  “For what she's worth, Fred, let me tell you that she isn't worth anything to you. I've done three pieces on Oriel myself, trying to see her in three dimensions. It didn't work, though. She looks brilliant, but she's a f
lat person. Not even low relief. She doesn't have three dimensions.

  “Carmody was an art collector, you know, before he became adviser to the advisers. Oriel is a piece of art. Not profound art, but striking new art for all that. She's a novelty piece. She's been imitated and parodied, but only in a small circle. She'll never be a widespread fad. Why do you want to talk to Oriel? What kind of question do you want to ask her?”

  “I want to ask her a question about Carmody.”

  “Why don't you ask Carmody the question about Carmody?”

  “I will, if Oriel doesn't give me the answer. I guess I really want answers from both of them. I may have to add them together. Oriel might not know all about Carmody. I'm sure that Carmody hasn't researched Carmody to any depth, doesn't really know much about Carmody, but — ”

  “ — added to what you know about Carmody, you should have it complete. Is that it, Fred? There she is now. And if you have to ask me which she is, then you don't deserve any answers at all.”

  “No. I don't have to ask which she is, Mary Ann.”

  Freddy and Mary Ann were dining at Proviant's, and the Oriel party had just entered. Certainly nobody would have to ask which was Oriel, even though several of those in her party were prominent. She didn't take the center. She took a position where it was even a little hard for them to see her. But she was the center.

  Proviant's was a Germanish sort of restaurant. Mary Ann hadn't known that Oriel would come here. It is more likely that Freddy had made her come here through some power he had from being brushed by the weave. They could watch but not hear the Oriel party from here, and Freddy's first impression was that Oriel was not so flat as all that: that she might have dimensions that Mary Ann didn't suspect.

  “She's isn't really pretty,” said Mary Ann, “yet men look at her as if she were. Her eyes are too close together; her hair grows too far down on her forehead; her ears aren't a bit good, but she seldom shows them. She hasn't enough jaw, and her neck lacks only a little of being scrawny. Her shoulders are her best asset above-board, but they're not in it with those of her two friends, and you don't even notice them. She doesn't know how to sit. She doesn't know how to walk.”

  “But you'd recognize her in a crowd, or at a great distance, Mary Ann.”

  “Yes. She's too light in the body and too heavy in the legs. Her ankles are good, though, and her feet, particularly the insteps. But honestly I can't give her much else.”

  “Her hair?”

  “Oh, her hair's by Schwob. I thought you'd know that.”

  “Not the color.”

  “The color is about ten percent Schwob. He has a way of putting the highlights in. It wasn't exactly that color before, but it was close.”

  “It's blue-blonde. There can't be a color like that, can there? Or it's like ashen-blonde seen under a blue light, and the light here isn't. Gahh, I've had one too many, no, two too many, ashen-blondes lately.”

  “Really, Fred? Is that what's matured you? If only she hadn't those washed-out blue eyes.”

  “At least they aren't green, Mary Ann.” (But possibly Oriel's eyes were a bit green.)

  “Fooled you, Fred. I felt that one coming. I didn't listen. She isn't at all intelligent. And she isn't a good talker or a good listener. It's just that she's always had it. She's even richer than Carmody. Oh, there's Carmody joining them now! I didn't suspect he'd join them.”

  “I did. That stuff is hard work, though,” Freddy said.

  “Shall we barge over and I make the introductions, Fred? There's really no painless way to do it. They'll make us feel like commoners in any case. It's their only talent that I really envy. Whatever it is that sets them apart and makes them that sort of people and not our sort I don't know.”

  “Oh, I've been puzzling lately what makes a person what he is, and not another. My puzzle's really the same as yours. I remember now where I met Carmody before. I had a slight notion that I'd known him. He wasn't at all the sort of man one would remember or notice, for all that he was rich and open. But this Carmody has carried over some details from the old.”

  “Not notice that man? Fred, how can you say that? Everyone would always have noticed him and remembered him. Why, the smoothness is just dripping off him.”

  “I know it. But he isn't the same man. I've got that part of the answer now, I'm sure. I really had my trip for nothing. But I don't believe that either of them will tell me how he does the trick.”

  “Is this something that I'm not supposed to understand, Fred?”

  “I don't think they want anyone to understand it. They're nervous and unsure.”

  “Nervous and unsure? Them? Never, Fred.”

  “Why do they have people everywhere to kill people who ask questions, then? I wouldn't do that unless I was a little bit nervous about something.”

  So Freddy went over to where the august party was settling down again after the arrival of Carmody Overlark.

  “Mr. Overlark, I doubt if you remember me,” he said. “Fred Foley. I knew you a little at Hot Springs three years ago. You were a cheerful loser at the races and you sometimes stayed up after dark.”

  “Yes, Foley, I got out among them a little more then,” Carmody Overlark said. He had a twinkle on him, but not what you would call a merry twinkle. Something other, of a different humor. And, yes, he did have archaic ears. “I've less time for diversions now, but I still enjoy them. I remember you. A newspaper man, aren't you? And there may be something you want to talk to me about in my and your official capacity?”

  “What would be the easiest way to go about it, Mr. Overlark?”

  “It's a vicious circle with only one possible solution. I'll have to make an appointment for you with my secretary, and he'll make an appointment for you with me. Here, I'll write a brief note. He'll be able to decipher it, but you may not be. It's the only way you can get to see him, and seeing him is the only way you can get to see me. It may be a day or two; I'm quite busy. Good evening. And good evening, Miss Evans.”

  They were dismissed, but Freddy had the scribbled note. Freddy and Mary Ann went back to their table.

  “Don't be resentful, Fred,” she said. “Besides, he really is important. He wasn't being rude, just direct. And you do have an appointment for an appointment.”

  “That's not my resentful look, Mary Ann. Pray that you never see that. But he doesn't remember me. He never saw me before.”

  “Naturally not. Why did you make up that silly story about knowing him at Hot Springs? Anybody could have found out where such a prominent man as he was three years ago and made it fit in.”

  “Oh, I did know Carmody Overlark there, Mary Ann. I spent part of a large night with him, but I'd forgotten it. He was such an easy man to forget.”

  “Fred, you're off your noggin. Nobody could ever forget that man.”

  “He was easy to forget, and I had forgotten him, till it came back to me a moment ago. But that man there never saw me before and I never saw him.”

  “Why did he say that he had, then? How did he know that you were a newspaper man?”

  “He said he knew me because he knows as much about Carmody Overlark as one man will bother to learn about another for a special reason, and he realized that I probably had met Carmody. And he knew I was a newspaper man because I look and act like one, and because I'm with a newspaper woman, you.”

  “Tell me about it, Fred. If I were onto anything queer I'd tell you about it.”

  “My mother used to tell me that lying would make my tongue black. What really made my tongue black was chewing walnut hulls for tobacco, but she always thought it was my lying. You'd no more tell me if you had something live — ”

  “Oh I know it. My tongue's black.”

  They ate. It was good. They talked. And once Freddy left the table briefly. It was not coincidence that another person left another table at nearly the same time. It was planned that way, but the way the planning was implemented is harder to explain. Foley had his own way of
getting an idea across, especially with his newfound maturity, and he was more capable than most gave him credit for.

  And now he had made another appointment, which did not involve a secretary. He had hopes, for the first time, that perhaps the trick would be explained to him after all.

  Anyhow, he had a date with Oriel Overlark now.

  Freddy and Mary Ann left Proviant's. They ditched each other. Mary Ann went to make inquiries on whether there was really anything new on Carmody Overlark, on the fifteen suicides, on tip-man Freddy Foley who had now won inner-circle fame for a story he'd already put out of his mind.

  Freddy walked not quite at random. He walked rapidly in the bright streets and slowly in the dark ones. “That damned spider,” he said and brushed his hand across his eyes, but there wasn't any spider, only a silk streamer out of some web attached to him. He doubled and redoubled. He knew the tricks. He came up behind the man who had been following him and collared him firmly.

  It was the inventor from the train.

  “Not that you worry me,” Foley said, letting him go again when he saw what fish he was, “and not that I care about being followed, but I am curious. Why have you been following me?”

  “I wasn't,” said the man. “It only seemed like it. Actually I was following the man who was following you — ah, this is a little hard to put into words — the man who was following you so he wouldn't seem to be following me. You were just a little pawn we maneuvered around. Then you maneuvered to get behind both of us. You didn't notice him at all, but he's waiting quite near. He's a better shadow than I am. Why was it that you noticed me and didn't notice him, since he was between us most of the time?”

  “I don't know. Well then, why were you following the man who was following me?”

  “To keep him in sight. And because I didn't quite understand the situation. I still don't. It's almost as if there was something important about you. I told you back on the train that there was a man in our car who slept with his eyes and ears open and missed nothing. He was following me to destroy the secret of the remarkable invention I carry, and perhaps to destroy the inventor too. That is the same man who is still waiting a little ways off. You had the idea that it might be you he was following, as though your own invention (whatever it is) could be of such import. Now I'm a little in doubt myself. It's a blow to my pride, but it just may be you he is following. Are you in danger?”