Then she cascaded handsful of flame over her head and face and arms, and she seemed unburnt by them. They were garish, tumbling, orange flames.
“Oh, that is the right color!” the Deutero-Finnegan said as he watched from the animal entrance of the opera house. “Perfect, perfect.”
“You can withdraw from this childish prank,” the Marshal of the Opera told Margaret. “You are not human. You have not been charged with any offense. We know that you are splendid, that you are noetic, that you are intuitive. This is false fire you have made here for a joke. Why do so many of the genuine people insist on flamboyant gestures? Withdraw from this insane thing! Be splendid!”
“I will not withdraw from it,” Margaret said. “I will be human in death at least. It is not false flame. It is true flame. Sure I'm splendid. I will be splendid in flame.”
They put a rope around her neck to lead her away. But she turned it into a rope of fire and drove all her oppressors back. Then she moved of herself, with that quick dancing step that she used, into the animal entrance of the building.
Instead of going up, the Opera House curtain was sundered to nothing. It was struck by lightning. It was burst and rent by a simultaneous thunder stroke. It was in flames, and then it was gone. The Decatur Street Opera House was the only place in town that employed this effect.
The scene was a blood-and-sand arena. The act was a bullfight. It wasn't a Spanish thing. It was the earlier Cretan Bull Drama. The music was the heavy Bull Waltz. The Countess, the Child Hero, and nine other young persons leapt over the bulls, vaulted on their horns, curvetted clear over them, escaping the horns, escaping the hooves. This was all a beautiful action. The young people had their waists drawn very small by bronze cinctures.
Each of the young persons would defy a bull and do a flying handstand on its horns. Then there would be an interval when the bull was given a human person to mangle and maul to death. The humans were sliced and gored by the curving, whetted horns, and they were trampled and torn open by the thunder hooves. They were broken to pieces by the violent bull impact. In their being broken open, the humans spewed out some blood, much entrail, and still more trash.
“It is because we who order their deaths are so intuitive that we force them to reveal their inner essence,” said Cyrus Roundhead who was in the loge with the Duffey party, “and the inner essence of humans is always trash. Ourselves, who have no inner essence and who are entirely and splendidly on the surface, contain no trash at all.”
Zabotski was one of the humans to be killed by the bulls. He made a good show. He gave the bull back bellow for bellow. He pawed the sand in mimicry of the bull. He put down his own head to meet the impact. He was dislocated and smashed and broken open, and he died in his own blood and serum and trash. He did, however, give one more defiant bellow after he was dead, a thing that startled the spectators. He got what is called ‘The Ugly Ovation’, that given to things that the splendid people hate but also admire.
“What we must do is create a cycle of heroic memories of ourselves as a species,” Cyrus Roundhead was saying. “Likely we must borrow or adapt such material. But wherever will we discover any heroic material to adapt? If only we could acquire it by legacy from some other species. Do any of you know of a heroic species?”
After some minutes, the arena scene was that of bears and retiarii or net wielders. The little young people in this act tangled the rushing and maddened bears in their flung nets, took them off their feet with the force of their own rushes, rolled them like huge and angry balls, scorched and burned them with white-hot prods. Then they had mad bears indeed.
“Is not the music exquisite?” Roundhead asked proudly, for he was himself one of the marshals of the opera. “It's the Bear Ballet by Brhzhlozh.”
“Brhzhlozh is only a machine,” Mary Virginia said sourly.
“Certainly,” Roundhead answered. “He is an intuitive, music-writing machine. There was once some slight talk of keeping a few unmutated humans to compose our music for us, but the best opinion was to extirpate every human vestige and to make no exceptions. We ourselves are not humans by chromosomic count or by blood type or brainwave pattern. We are not humans by passion or estrogen or adrenaline (for we have none of these things in us at all). We are not humans by mental process or by esthesia. We are forever rid of the human connection. And so are you our recruits, though you may once have believed yourselves to be human. We are the splendid persons, the final persons.”
“We sit at Opera, and Opera was a human thing,” Stein said.
“Not such blood opera, no,” Roundhead contradicted. “It is all our own, both in its new form and in its ancient antecedents.”
The maddened bears were slashed out of their entangling nets by the young and splendid net people. They escaped the on-rushes of the released beasts. Then human persons were thrown into the arena in the way of the bears. And these humans were broken up and killed in a series of noisy crunchings.
Then there was the Fire-Drake Frolic in which a few more stubborn humans were slain. Fritz's Fandango in Three Flames was the accompanying music.
The Interlude came then. There was interlude music by Mrzorca, and Shining Mountain Bubbly was served to all the loge patrons.
“Opera used to be better,” Mary Virginia said. “Operas were more fun a few years ago, when we were still human.”
“None of us was ever a human,” Cyrus Roundhead corrected. “Some of us may have thought that we were. Some of us may have been raised by humans, just as humans had the tradition of human children sometimes raised by animals.”
Time flowed by on its smooth and easy surface. Time stood still in its depth. But the new simultaneity had no depth. Then the gracious and rather stylized interlude scenery was cleared away. The presentation of the climax piece of the night would now begin. It was the Thunder Colt Game. It was orchestrated to the Thunder Torus music. The live and pantomimic game unfolded.
“When we persons of the thunder dimension attained consciousness, it was a sudden event that instantly overtook every person of us,” Roundhead of the splendid mouth was saying. “The world was already in the middle of its baroque phase when we woke to consciousness. The humans have claimed a sort of consciousness, but they cannot mean the same thing by it. I believe that our own wakening to full consciousness is quite recent. Watch now! The awakening of life of our own totem animal, the Thunder Colt, is the symbol of our awakening. Notice that it devours compulsively on awakening. So do we.”
There was a large thunder colt egg in the arena. The Hoyden and other young people broke a window into the egg. They took a human person, alive and blaring, and thrust him through the window hole into the egg. Then there was a mindless gnashing and crunching as the still-unconscious thunder colt inside the egg began to devour the human. With the nourishment, there came a fulgence from within the egg. It was not yet consciousness. It was only inquiry.
Lightning answered the inquiry, struck the egg, and shattered it open. The thunder colt stood up on uncertain and stilted legs. That was the awakening to consciousness.
Simultaneous thunder struck and suffused the colt. That was the awakening to the thunder dimensions. Then the splendid thunder colt, some pieces of the eaten human still protruding from its mouth, leapt clear of its birthing debris and ran riot. The stark music of the Thunder Torus picked up the tempo as the game evolved.
There were only two human persons remaining in the arena. These two were known to be noetic and splendid. They were humans only in their coming deaths and in their depths as persons.
The thunder colt knocked the Deutero-Finnegan down with its first assault. It tore off his lower jaw, split his chest, and seemed to lay open layer after layer of person in turbulent and confused depth.
“We have the thunder dimensions,” the talkative Cyrus Roundhead was saying, in the loge, “but I am jealous that there may be other dimensions that we lack. Do we really miss anything by living so entirely on the surface? What we need to find f
or ourselves is a dimension of depth. It would be fine if some older and kinder race would give such a dimension to us, but we look in vain for a source of such an inheritance.”
The joyous, newly-awakened, totem thunder colt killed the Finnegan effigy on the second pass, splitting him open in an incredibly rich and mingled juiciness. There was spilled out shouting scarlet blood, crimson blood, high saturation sulphur-colored blood, saffron-colored blood, flame blood, ichor and serum mezcolanza. The color was more orange than red and thick now. That color… it was the life garish orange color of all strange artists in their orange period.
“Why, he had the right color in him after all,” Margaret Stone laughed. It was almost her last joke.
“As a species, we should try to create a signature color for ourselves,” Roundhead was saying in the loge, “as well as a depth and an intensity. Can we remain splendid forever if we do not add to our repertoire? We'll pick garbage out of the wake of any great people who'd gone before us, but where shall we find traces of a great people? We search vainly for a legacy of glory.”
The thunder colt wheeled back and killed Margaret Stone at a single pass. It tore off half of her head with its totemic teeth. It tore out her throat. But it couldn't go deeply enough to get the laugh in her throat. That's all she had to leave.
The Thunder Torus music crashed to an end. Outside the Opera House, the new and unlegacied breeze was blowing under the gimcrack, jeweled sky.
Book Twelve
“You, Melchisedech pathetic,
Not descending, not beget-ic,
Duff, you'd better be noetic.
[ — Crissie Cristofero.]
“How chorasmian of us!” Becky Stein cried, and she grinned at Duffey.
“What, Countess?” Duffey asked her.
“How noetic of us!” Cleo Mahoney cried, and she smiled proudly.
“What, Hoyden?” Duffey asked. “What are you children going on about?”
“We have strengthened the ‘Fifth Road’ part in the play,” Cleo Mahoney said. “You know, that's the one where Crissie had the introductory verse:
‘A shattered world, and an end to fuss.
A new folk comes. And it isn't us.’
We have made the ‘Fifth Alternative’ rather more important and more powerful, and we will give you your new lines that you say in it. But you have already called us ‘Countess’ and ‘Hoyden’, and those are the roles that the two of us play in the ‘Fifth Road’ part of the play. You're amazing. How do you do it? Here is the script with your new lines. Here, read them. I hope you learn them as wonderfully fast as you learned the others.”
“All right,” Duffey said, “I'll read them. But didn't we already put the play on the night before last?”
“No, no, of course not,” Becky said. “You are exasperating. Sometimes you catch onto things so quickly that it amazes me. And sometimes you are so slow and confused. That was the rehearsal, but you didn't even come to it, and I had to read your lines. The play is tomorrow night. There's been no change in the date of it.”
“Oh, that's… well, that's reassuring, I guess,” Duffey said. He looked at the script with the revised more important and more powerful ‘Fifth Alternative’ part. And he tried to orient himself at the same time.
Duffey had been in a place and with people who were too fast for him. Things had been happening there that were beyond all reason, and he had been accepting them as though he were hypnotized. With the ‘too fast’ people, Duffey had sinned in pride and superbity, and he had leagued himself with those people who were, for all he knew, no more than splendid devils.
Then he had attempted to withdraw from the situation to clarify his mind. He had called on all his magic and trickery. He had reminded himself that he had a qualified lordship over time and place. When younger, he had had the power of moving back and forth through time easily, the power of backing out of a time that had gone wrong and taking another alternative forward then. As he got older it became a little harder for him to do this, but it should still be possible in an extremity. He attempted it; he challenged it. And it began to move. But now he had to tear across acres and acres of fabric to back out of the situation, and there were living people imbedded in that fabric.
Duffey, having just come out of a shocking and splendid Opera House, trembling yet at the magnitude and splendor and outrage of what he has seen and heard, had been standing under a gimcrack, jeweled, night-time sky in a splendid devildom. But the devildom was wearing the false face of his own city New Orleans. He had marshaled all his power to break out of it. Then he lost his bearings and his consciousness.
Then, after a while, or before a while, he had come to himself in a pleasant place, and there were several teenage girls with him, girls whose names he would remember after a bit.
“A totem animal plays a bit part in that ‘Fifth Road Alternative’,” Cleo Mahoney was saying. “We have given it the tentative name of the ‘Clattering Pony’.”
“The Thunder Colt,” Duffey said.
“Oh, that's better,” Becky Stein cried. “You've hit it right, Duff. The Thunder Colt it will be.”
This pleasant place, in fact, was a teenage milk bar and ice cream restaurant, and Duffey was attacking a Golden Gate Sundae. He suspected that Becky Stein, who was chubby, had suggested it to him.
So Duffey was back out of the bright devildom (otherwise known as the ‘Fifth Contingency’ or the ‘Fifth Road’), but had he brought anything back with him? He hadn't liked that sound and feel of tearing fabric as he had returned. He had done violence to time and to the people living in it. How badly had he torn the fabric of the two worlds? Had he injured people, or even killed them?
“They say that you can do magic tricks, Mr. Duffey,” Crissie Cristofero said. “Would you do some of them during the intermission? That would be better than your playing your banjo, I believe, or even playing your recorder flute. A touch of magic is what our play needs, at the intermission, right before the sequence where there has got to be a belief in magic.”
“I don't do magic tricks,” Duffey said. “But I do magic. It's nearly as effective.”
“If it weren't for working on the play now, I think I'd go crazy,” Becky Stein was saying. “Aunt Margaret's sudden death tore me up so much! She's the only one of you Romans I ever loved, except you now, Duff. And to be killed by a rabid horse! Whoever heard of a rabid horse before?”
Duffey was sick. Margaret Stone (for Margaret was a sort of aunt of Rebeka Stein) had been killed by a horse. Duffey had brought at least part of the Fifth Alternative back with him.
“And the funeral mass, Duffey, what have they done to it?” Becky moaned. “They've ruined it. I made a Crissie verse about it:
‘Ain't we glad that she is dead!
All be happy! Don't be sad!’
All I can say is that the new funeral mass sure is in bad taste at a funeral. It cloys, it cloys! What's the matter with you Romans anyhow? I wish Aunt Margaret were back so she could make a Gadarene Swine verse about her own funeral. You people don't believe that mass is inspired, do you?”
“The Holy Ghost has bad days, even as I and thou, Becky,” Duffey said miserably, “I tell you now though that there are dangerous things in that ‘Road Five’ of the play.”
“Are there ever!” Cleo Mahoney cried in shocked delight. “It is all so horrible and so murderous and so splendid. I pray that it may never happen in the real world. And, as a codicil to my prayer, I pray that if it does happen, I want to have a front place where I can see and take part in everything. I wouldn't miss it for the world! But it is the world, and which way it will roll, that's the subject matter of that ‘Fifth Contingency’.”
“What are you going to do with the Jacob Soule pictures now that he is dead, Mr. Duffey?” Crissie Cristofero asked him. “There's one of his that you have over at your Walk-In Art Bijou that I just love. I'd give anything I have in the world for it, but everything I have in the world is just a little over nineteen d
ollars.”
“I don't know what I'll do with them, Crissie,” Duffey said. “There will probably be an administrator appointed for his estate. I never knew many details about him, whether he has any kindred or not. He comes and goes, just like Finnegan did, ah — just like another painter did.”
Duffey was trembling. Margaret Stone killed by a rapid horse and already buried! Jacob Soule, the Deutero-Finnegan also dead! The ripped fabric of Duffey's coming back from the splendid Devildom had displaced events and people, in time and in space. And Duffey had brought at least two deaths back with him.
How about Zabotski! Zab had also been killed in the Devildom.
“Have any of you — I'm almost afraid to ask this — seen Zabotski lately?” Duff asked the young girls. “I — ah — wonder if he is all right.”
“I haven't seen him,” Becky said, “and the others wouldn't know him. Duffey, I'm worried about my father. He's grown grand and splendid lately, and he's using it for all it's worth. He's signed to do a series of reviews for ‘Gentleman Rounder’, and that's the magazine with the built-in sneer for the common people. “Abba Absalom really believes that he's become superior to the common crowd. ‘Really, those of us who are truly aware, we form a species quite apart from the commoners,’ he said. ‘It's no use pretending that we don't.’ Really, he's impossible.”
“It is a phase that a middle-aged man sometimes pass through,” Duffey said. “I hope that it will pass.” So Stein was back from the Devildom, but he had brought some of its baggage with him. What, Absalom grand and splendid! Well perhaps he had always been, but he should not be aware of it in himself.
More Than Melchisedech Page 46
