“I wouldn’t know how to explain it.”
“No more than I can explain why you couldn’t be more courteous and kindly toward poor young Tarrah, when she offered herself to you out there.”
So he’d sure enough seen and heard all about that, had likely given Tarrah her orders about it. He waited for me to speak, and I spoke:
“You spied on us, and you weren’t jealous about Tarrah, not the least bit.”
“Not the least bit,” he repeated the words after me. “I’m not in love with these useful associates of mine, and I won’t let them be in love with me. If I want love, and sometimes I do, I go here and there in the world and find it.”
“So I’ve heard tell.”
“But getting back to Tarrah,” he said. “Don’t you think she’s attractive?”
“A right much so.”
“I understand you, John. There's another girl on your mind."
I just waited for him to go on.
“We’ll have to see what can be done about that," he allowed. “You can rely on me for an inducement to keep you happy here. Because by now, you’re convinced that you won’t be leaving the top of Cry Mountain."
“I still might could do that."
“Not if I don’t give you permission. John, you’re a reasonable man. I’ve posted sentinels all around this stockade. Some you’ve seen, some others you wouldn’t want to dream of, even. If you got out there among them, you’d last about as long as a pint of whiskey in a five-handed poker game. When it comes to that, you wouldn’t last any time inside here if I didn’t want you to. I know twenty or thirty ways to strike you dead. What do you say to that?"
“Why," I said right back, “I reckon you can kill me but you can’t scare me about it. Long ago, I more or less got over a-being scared of death. We’ll all die some time another, no matter what it is kills us."
He took another sip of his drink, and with his free hand he tweaked the end of his beard-spike.
“Eloquence," he said. “Downright eloquence. I hear you with the utmost admiration. John, I’m your friend. You’re going to be my friend. Also my valued ally."
“You mean, in that temple you’re a-fixing to set up here? That needs a lot of deciding. I don’t decide such things in a hurry."
“Very well," he nodded me, like as if he was a-doing me a big favor. “I won’t hurry you, John. I’ll give you a week, shall we say? According to the Book of Genesis, a week was time enough to create the world, including Adam and Eve, with a day at the end for rest."
“You sound to me like as if you’ve done some reading in the Bible.”
He nodded me again. “I’ve read all sixty-six books of it, and the Apocrypha as well. I can quote you long passages.”
“I can quote you from the Bible, too,” I said. “But there’s one book that’s not in there, one you keep a-talking about, that Judas Gospel.”
He furrowed up his forehead. “That book, yes. There are only reports of it, that help me get closer all the time to where it exists. Judas, it seems, was a deep thinker about the nature and employment of miracles. If we had his work—undoubtedly it would be in Greek—it might take us well beyond even the Abramelin. ”
“And you can’t get hold of it,” I said.
“I could if I knew exactly where it was. Just now, I wonder about a place in North Africa, a desert village of sorts, smaller even than Larrowby. What is it interests you on the table?”
“Your silvery bowl,” I said “The fire’s gone out in it. What was it for, if you don’t mind a-telling me?”
“Why should I mind?” he said back, a-smiling again. “Scylla and I work at various experiments, try to achieve various results. Just now, we tried to see into the future. As I may have said, that’s always difficult. A sight of future things is forever cloudy. The only clear way to see into the future is to make things happen in the future.”
All the time he probed at me with his eyes, like as if he tried to read my thoughts. I’ve had that tried on me in the past, and I’ve learned to think behind a sort of wall in my mind.
“Now then,” I said, “what you say is true, if a man can make the things happen.”
“Men can make things happen,” said Harpe. “Roger Bacon comprehended the future, and invented gunpowder. James Watt comprehended, even when he was only a boy, and developed the steam engine. Einstein comprehended, spent years comprehending, and split the atom.”
“They were a-thinking ahead” was all I had to say. “Thinking their way into the future,” he agreed me. “All of us with any sense can do that. You were doing it when you made up your mind to climb Cry Mountain. And I do it all the time, I think into what the future will be.”
“I reckon you do,” I said. “Like your temple of magic things up here.”
He furrowed his face, and it made him look wise. “That could be only a beginning. Something on which to build.” “Build what?”
“It will take time to explain that, get you ready for it. But I’ve mentioned a place in the African desert, where Judas's Gospel might be traced and found. Would you care to see that little village? Care to see me go there?”
“That would be a sight to see,” I said.
“Then you shall see it. Look over to the window.”
I looked at the dark oblong of it. He had his T-shaped amulet in his hand and I heard him as he mumbled, “Fetegan . . . Gaghagan . . . Beigan , . . Deigan . . . Usagan ...”
The window lighted up, foamed like fog, then it cleared. I could see something.
It was an outside place, and it was night there, with a fire a-blazing up in the open, next to a bluff or steep hill full of rocks, with sand in betwixt them. Up above, dark sky with stars in it. Folks were there, dressed in long gowns of brown and blue and gray-white, all of them a-wearing cloths slung over their heads and ears and tied there with a black rope round the temples.
“How come it to be nighttime?” I asked.
“Because it's about five hours away to eastward,” said Harpe.
“Greenwich time, or thereabouts. I told you it’s in the African desert, the Sahara.”
Those folks chattered to one another, in some language I didn't know a word of. I studied things. In the face of that rocky bluff showed dark open places, not too far different from the tunnel that led into that room where we sat.
“They're cave dwellers,” I said.
“Yes. We still have cave dwellers in the twentieth century.”
I saw a woman a-coming into the picture. She walked straight. Up on her shoulder she carried a great big jar or pitcher, maybe with water in it from some well or spring out of our sight. Another woman came along with an armful of sticks. She put them on the fire, and it blazed brighter.
“Just who are those people?” I asked Harpe.
“Berbers, they're called. Moors, Maghrebi. Of course, the Berber blood is mixed with Saracen blood, but originally it meant a race that had lived in North Africa since Stone Age times. The same, perhaps, as Cro-Magnon man in Europe.”
I watched another woman fetch more wood to the fire. “Cave dwellers,” I said again.
“Living simply, according to their lights,” said Harpe. “I don’t see any reason to change that way of life when a certain change comes on the world. They're industrious, they're kindly, they're religious.”
“What kind of religion?” I wanted to know.
“Perhaps a fuzzy one,” Harpe replied me. “What they do in the way of worship seems to have something of the Jewish, something of the Mohammedan—maybe even a touch or two of very archaic Christianity. But they aren't really literate enough to be orthodox in any of those. Only two or three can read at all well in any holy book.”
“Is that where the Judas book is?” I asked next.
“I hope to find out exactly,” he said. “Watch, and you'll see me go there.”
Again he grabbed onto the charm round his neck, and put the other hand onto his head. He mumbled words, so soft I couldn’t catch them. Next in
stant, just his empty chair. He was gone like a popped bubble.
I looked back to the picture in the window, and there Harpe was in it, a-wearing his fringed buckskin. The beadwork twinkled in the light of the fire. He spoke to a couple of men, and they spoke back and bowed, each with a hand to his forehead. He spoke again, and one of the two trotted into one of the doorways. I watched. The man came out again, and with him another man.
This one’s blue gown shimmered, and so did the blue cloth on his head. They must have been silk. His dark face was thin, with a great big white beard all the way down to his waist. He walked up to Harpe, bowed just a little small bow, and lifted a hand to his forehead. This time Harpe bowed and put up his own hand, right polite about it.
The two of them talked in that language I didn’t know. It was quiet talk, but it was what you all might call earnest. Harpe seemed to be a-pleading to that old man. He spread out his big hands to do it. But the old man wasn’t about to have aught of it. He shook his head one more time and headed back to his cave.
As he did that, there wasn’t air a Ruel Harpe in the picture, either. He was gone, the way he’d gone from across the table. The picture died out and went gloomy, and when I looked, Harpe was a-sitting in his chair again.
“You see what I can do?” he inquired me, like as if he wanted to be praised for it. “I go to that cave village from time to time. Somewhere there, or in reach of there, is the book I want.”
“That old man must be chief of that bunch,” I reckoned.
“He’s their chief and their religious head. A rabbi or an imam, more likely something of both. He’s spent a long life in becoming wise and learned. He and I have come to know each other well. I still hope to persuade him to show me the book I need. But, though he’s courteous, he seems to mistrust me. I don’t know why.”
I could have given him a heap of reasons for the old man to mistrust him, but all I said was “You reckon that book will help you a right much.”
“It very well could do everything for me here, John,” he said. “It surely would fill in certain empty places in the structure I’ve planned.”
He poured himself a sup. He seemed like a man who drank near about all the time, but it nair took hold on him, not to matter.
“Even if you did know where the Judas book was,” I said. “If you knew that, wouldn’t it be a right hard job to get hold of it?”
He shook his head above his drink. “No. If I knew its exact location, could establish that, I could get it by just a pull on my rope yonder. And I’d be in business.”
“With your big temple here?”
“That would be only a modest beginning, on just a tiny bit of earth’s surface. But back to Judas Iscariot and what he’s supposed to have written. I hope you’re interested.”
“I sure enough am,” I said, and I was.
“Judas—that’s the Greek for his name, Judah—was someone who understood very well the concept of world dominion, who hoped to see world dominion established by supernatural means. The world was full of faults and infamies back then, and it’s fuller of them today. One of the world’s many faults is that there are far too many people in it, most of them not fit to live. Agree?”
“There's lots of folks say that very thing,” I said.
“Billions of useless, idle, harmful people everywhere,” he went ahead. “Parasites. Just now, they seem to be working themselves up to a third world war, which certainly would be the war to end all wars and to end all mankind as well.”
“You're right about that,” I said.
“Suppose some useful and dramatic miracle cut down the human race to, say a million apiece for each continent,” said Harpe, and he talked faster, talked higher. “A million apiece, and those survivors to be taught their place in the work of reorganizing the world.”
“The world,” I repeated him. “It would be a world cluttered up with more billions of dead than those few millions could bury.”
“Perhaps those useless corpses could be spirited away,” he said, like as if it was already fixed up to do that. “Perhaps sent up to the moon, to make a new distant blotch there. Don’t look so bleak, John. Neither you nor I would have that happen to us.”
I studied over what he was a-saying. At last I spoke up: “With just those few millions left, all the big cities would be empty.”
“Empty,” he said after me, and grinned at the thought. “Abandoned. People would have to go back to first principles, live like their ancestors.”
“Like back in the Stone Age times?” I wondered him.
“No, John, nothing so primitive as that. Perhaps more in the way people lived on the frontier when Micajah Harpe and his brother roamed to and fro. People would make clearings and set up cabins. Work stones for gristmills. Weave wool and flax and cotton into cloth, sew their own garments. Pick up the old ways and ideals, and be better for it.”
I sat quiet and studied that over, too. There was something in what he said. Me, I’d lived the simple way myself. I’d helped build cabins and dig up ground for crops of com and cabbage and beans and all like that. I could swing an axe or a grubbing hoe with the best man on this earth. But then I spoke up with a problem for him.
“Here on top of Cry Mountain, you can just call for what you want,” I pointed out to him. “Whatair of heart's desire you want, you get it for only a tug of your rope yonder. But if the world turned back to what you say, wouldn’t you be left to suffer for stuff you like?”
“Delicate food,” he sort of crooned. “Splendid clothes, beautiful objects of art and so on. Oh, here and there the cleveregt men could produce those for me to take. Or I could get them from the ruins of abandoned cities like London, Tokyo, New York. Meanwhile, those surviving, deserving people would thrive on their own labors, and when they looked to someone to bless for their welfare, they could—”
He broke off for a second. Then: “They could bless,” he said, and stopped again.
“I get it,” I said. “You want them to bless you.”
“You said it, John, I didn’t. But since you’ve said it, they could bless Ruel Harpe. Bless his name, and be thankful.”
So he thought of himself as a sort of God Almighty. I read him as plain as print.
“You aim to get all that,” I said.
“I aim to get all that, once I have the book I want, I need.”
“The Judas book.”
“The Judas book, as you call it,” he nodded. “And I think I see my way to having it.” He sat back in his chair. “But just now, it's suppertime, or nearly. Let's have the ladies in and see what we'll eat."
“One thing first," I said. “Just where in the name of all that's holy do I fit in?"
“John, don't you know?" he almost howled out. “Don’t you know, when I’ve credited you with all that wisdom? Those surviving peoples would need instruction on how to lead the simple life, and who could teach them better than John?"
“Me?" I said, and well I knew that I sounded stupid. “Me teach them?"
“You," he said me back, a-smiling all the time. “Teach them to build their own homes, plow their own fields, earn their own bread in the sweat of their brows. Yes, maybe to make their own songs. And all the while, to be glad for what they had, to be thankful."
When I said naught, he chuckled at me and swung his big hands together to make three loud claps.
9
They came in past the green curtain: Scylla first, then, when Harpe told her to call for them, Alka and Tarrah. They talked some about what would be good to eat. Scylla scraped out that she'd like broiled lobster, and Alka seconded the nomination. So Scylla went to the rope in the comer, ran her hand down along it, and came back with a steel platter with a big lobster on it, red as a tomato and a-putting out steam. She put it on the table, went back to the rope, and fetched us more plates and more lobsters. Finally, a dish of shoestring potatoes and another of salad of green leaves, and a littler dish of something sort of buttery yellow.
“Sauce a
ioli," said Harpe. “Splendid."
“Those lobsters are out of the kitchen of a fancy place in Boston," Scylla squawked to us. “The chefs will be wondering how they vanished away."
We drew up our chairs and ate. That was the first time in all my bom days I'd had lobsters. Scylla asked me, the politest she'd spoken to me so far, how I liked it.
“It's prime," I vowed, and she laughed, a crow caw of a laugh. Tarrah laughed too, a-sitting next to me, but she didn't nudge me with her sandal or her knee. She just only looked on me sideways, a sort of a sad tease of a look, like as if she hoped I liked her as much as I liked the lobster.
For our dessert we had some sort of a creamy fruit pudding, fetched to us by more pulls on that rope. It was right good, too.
I said so, and the others acted pleased to hear me. Finally we were done, and the three women hustled the dishes off somewhere and came back again.
“And now,” said Harpe, “this has been more or less a busy day, busy with business and its transaction. What do you say to some relaxation this evening? Music, perhaps?”
They all allowed they wanted that. Alka spoke up first, she'd enjoy to hear what must just be a-starting in some place up north, something she called the Boston Pops. Scylla sneered at that; what she’d most like was bound to be a-going on in Salem, a witch thing where they’d sing and dance their witch ways. She and Alka sort of glittered at one another when she said that.
“I’ll tell you,” spoke up Tarrah. “We’ve had two different voices, one by Alka, one by Scylla. I’m going to make a choice that John will endorse. Some sort of country music, the traditional music of these parts.”
With that, her sandal did nudge me, just a bit, you might could say a little timid bit.
“An interesting choice,” said Harpe. “John, what do you say?”
“Miss Tarrah here has already said it for me,” I replied him. “She must have read my mind.”
Tarrah’s sandal nudged me again.
“If she read your mind, she displays a great talent,” said Harpe, and I knew he’d tried to read it. “My vote goes with you two, just to make an agreeable majority. Let’s see what we can get.”
Manly Wade Wellman - John the Balladeer 05 Page 9
