More Than Melchisedech

by R. A. Lafferty

  “This Casey has never impressed me a lot,” said that mendacious midget Charlotte Garfield. “Yes, I know who he is. He really is the Antichrist. But that's only a high-sounding title. It carries very little prestige with the real inner circle people.

  “As a confidence man, he breaks the basic code. He does prey on widows and orphans, on the helpless, and on the inept. His whole fellowship is among such. He seldom pitches to persons of intelligence and canniness, unless they have an extreme tilt that makes them vulnerable. He is not an honest hunter. He has no conception of conmanship as high hunting of tough and resourceful game.

  “Oh, he has learned a big hatful of tricks, patiently and thoroughly. But he uses them mostly on gravid females and on children of all ages. Yes, he does have a foot in each world, or in each of several worlds. So have I, so have you Duffey, so have you X; that isn't a great thing. He is a cheap shotter to his heart.

  “As to the eschatological aspects of his activities, those are the last things I want to think about.”

  “Hilary Hilton is giving a small and intimate party for myself and a hundred or so of my old friends tonight, Charlotte,” Duffey said.

  “Yes, he's called me. I'll be there,” the damnable midget agreed.

  But in the early evening, an hour or so before the small gathering of the hundred or so ultimate friends, Duffey called Casey. He did not call on phone or on Intimo. He knew that he wouldn't get through to him if Casey was on the high hobby. But he called him in a direct and undeviced way.

  And Casey talked to Duffey in saying that he would not talk to him. This was one of the direct conversations that did not come over any of the approved channels.

  “I will not see you,” Casey said, “and I will not permit you to see me. On no account will we meet again. Be gone, clown.”

  “You will see me, if I have to have your head brought here and set before me, with your eyes sewn open, you will see me,” Duffey swore. “And you will see me in the seeing of many millions of people. On early prime time television we will have you, Casey.”

  “I know power, Duffey, and I know that you have not the power to compel me to any such silliness,” Casey said. “Oh, I swore that I would not talk to you, and I will not. Nor see you. Nor hear you.”

  Casey scrambled the very air and æther, and Duffey could not reach to him again. But Duffey believed that he could project him.

  This trick of projecting persons and situations and pitches on television was one of Casey's own strong tricks, though he always denied any complicity or intent in it. But Casey had projected his idealized face and his eerie-toned voice in superposition on hundreds of programs. That is really how he became so well known as the Anti-Christus. This projection is not too difficult for one who is a genius at electronics and a giant in psyche.

  The intimate party was at Randal's. Duffey told them there that an interesting over-picture would appear that evening on the channels, one worth minute study. So a three-meter set was brought into the Cenacle or supper room.

  And the over-picture came while that suppertime family comedy, Goldfarb's Alley, was on the tube.

  Violence was only used for clownish effect on Goldfarb's Alley; so when the horrible screaming began, many of the watchers thought that it was supposed to be funny. Others knew at once that something was very very wrong, that the screaming didn't belong there at all. Some thousands recognized that beloved voice, and knew that the person was in agony. They begin to pour out into the streets within seconds. They would kill for their cult hero. They would tear the town apart to extricate him from danger. All they needed was direction.

  For others, the surface fun was quickly milked out of the comedy, and the sound became grizzly. And yet there might be a deeper and darker fun in it. The over-picture appeared to reinforce the sound. There were four black giants of demiurgic appearance. They were carrying a livid object by its hair.

  The horrifying object was the head only of Kasimir Szymansky, Casey of the Zodiac, the fantastic cult figure. It was not shown as severed. It was shown as a head-only person, grimacing horribly, and cursing. It would shiver anybody just to watch it.

  “Not bad, Duffey,” Hilary Hilton said. “How do you do it?”

  “I take it from a picture that Adam Scanlon once painted of Casey, unbeknownst to Casey himself. Scanlon had no use at all for Casey, though Scanlon was a close friend of Finnegan and Finnegan was of the inner world with Casey. The animation and presentation of it? Oh, that's a little harder. It's taking a lot out of me,” Melchisedech Duffey said. “These things don't come as easy for me as they used to. The power is just not what it once was.”

  “I want the original of that Scanlon painting,” Hilary said. “I lust for it.”

  “I'll send it to you,” Duffey said.

  “I will not see! I will not see!” the lolling mouth of the atrocious head was rattling out in jerky anger. “I will not see you at all, mangy magus.”

  But the eyes of the head were sewn open and there was no way that the livid head could close them. The head groaned and sweat profusely.

  All of the people on the Goldfarb's Alley Comedy Show had abandoned the screen to the grotesque head and the black giants that still held it. The alley people had fled away in terror. But they were just pictures, and were not present on the individual screens in person. Maybe not, but still they fled away in terror. They did not want any part of that livid head. The apparition was building up to a point of vivid horror.

  But then a tensely cool voice broke over the screen, broke over millions of screens on all channels, attempting to override the visibility and the strident sound.

  “This presentation is a fraud!” the cool but tense voice announced. “It is projected by a fraud. I am Casey of the Zodiac, the Anti-Christus, and I say that this livid head is not mine. It is only a sick dream. I am not captured. I am not compelled to look at trash. I beg you, people who believe in me, do not riot in the streets. I am not captured. I am not harmed. I am not threatened. This picture is sheer fraud.”

  But the mouth and the voice of the living head cried out, “This is no fraud.”

  The head rolled its eyes inward till only the bloodshot whites of them could be seen, and they could not be compelled to see anything except the head's own interior darkness. “I will not meet this magus, I will not look upon him,” the head said.

  But one of the black giants made cuts at the corners of the head's eyes with a surgical instrument. Then he went deeper with another instrument, and snipped. He did this to the region behind each eye. He cut the optic nerves and muscles so that the eyes came to the front again and could not be rolled back into the head.

  “I will not see this monster!” the head roared. And yet its eyes were sewn open and it had to see him. The eyes did see Melchisedech. In malevolence they saw him.

  “There is rioting in the streets,” an official of Randal's said as he came to them in the Cenacle Room. “It's broken out everywhere just in seconds. This Zodiac person has millions of intense followers and defenders.”

  “Street riots in Chicago have always had an amateurish quality,” Duffey said. “They don't do much real damage.”

  “These are doing real damage,” the official said. “I believe the picture that has set them off is originating right here. I ask you to terminate it.”

  “Wait a minute,” Duffey said. “He's caving in. I can feel him cave.”

  And Casey, watching the bloated caricature of his own head, hearing the croaking burlesque of his own voice in its agony-humor, did cave in. Casey was a bit fastidious. Stark things offended him.

  “You win, Melchisedech,” the Casey voice came, cool and with a touch of venom, both on the big TV set and independent of it. “Turn it off. I'll be down to the party immediately. Such things as these pass for humor with the Duffeyites.”

  Casey arrived there in about seven minutes. He had climbed down from his Curile Chair in the Zodiac, and he showed quite a bit of the old Casey in him, only ab
out half covered up by the cult figure. The old Casey had always been a fair sort of party man, sometimes setting aside his pride for hours on end for enjoyment in the company of old acquaintances. For everyone here was an acquaintance of Casey as well as of Melchisedech Duffey.

  It was a good party. It was five hours of the most urbane festivities ever. There have not been so many bright people in one room, actually four rooms of the suite that they overflowed, since Olympus was torn down to build a ‘Look-Out Lodge and Leisure Hostel’ up there.

  Hilary Hilton and Mary Jean (she was the only one in the world who had ever really set Casey's heart to howling and baying), Demetrio Glauch, Clarence Schrade, Silas and Maude Whiterice, the Countess Margaret Hochfelsen (only next week you will be a Royal Pop Person, Countess, and much younger than you are now: do you know that?), Lily Koch (Oh Lily, Lily, Lily!), Mary Frances Rattigan (Gompers), Mary Catherine Carruthers, Ethyl Ellenberger and her husband John Ryan, Nathan and Shirley Stone (Duffey was pretty sure that Nathan was a brother, and less abrasive person, than Absalom Stein), Elena O’Higgins, d’Alesandro, Charlotte Garfield and her son Michael, Enos Dorn, Angelo Cato, Ira and Rebecca Spain, Homer and Evangeline Durbin, Mike and Peggy Conner, Isaac and Mary Lightfoot, Judley and Pauline Peacock, Mary Carmel Hooligan, Mother Mary Aurora, Enniscorthy and Mary Margaret Sweeny, Tony and Evelyn Apostolo, Cletus Kenealy, Cassius and Mary Greatheart, Leo Ring, Martin and Katherine Redwine, Nemo Cobb, Fred and Helen Batavia, X, Melchisedech Duffey, many, many others were there. So many of the old friends were still there, and so many others were sleeping in the Lord. And Casey of the Zodiac, what could you make of him?

  On this night, Melchisedech saw these good friends of his for the last time in the normal flesh. He reveled in the company of almost all of them, and in particular in that of one of his Splendid Animations, Mary Catherine Carruthers.

  But he did not solve the riddle of the other one of his Splendid Animations here: Kasimir Szymansky, Casey of the Zodiac, the self-proclaimed Anti-Christus. Casey was wrapped in several thicknesses of riddles, and he would not be penetrated in a day or a week now. But it was a good party, and one that would be remembered in this world and in the next.

  5

  ‘It's NOLA for all Quirks and Quips,

  Havana for rum graves and rum,

  Chicago for Companionships,

  St. Louis for Symposium.

  [Count Finnegan, Road Songs]

  Duffey and X went to St. Louis. There was a concentration of his Animated Marvels there, Hans Schultz and wife Marie Monahan, Vincent Stranahan and his wife Teresa Piccone. Four of them was almost critical mass. And a fifth one was there that Duffey didn't know was there. This was critical mass, considering that X was also an Animated Marvel.

  The one of them that Duffey did not expect to find in St. Louis was Henri Cardinal Salvatore of New Orleans.

  “Whatever are you doing here in St. Louis, friend and elevated person,” Duffey asked. “I was saving you for the last. I intended to see you in New Orleans before my skein quite runs out.”

  “I came to St. Louis to see you,” Cardinal Salvatore said. “You will not return to New Orleans. Your skein runs out here.”

  “You are sure of that, your tallness?”

  “Was I ever sure of anything? I was just talking to Dame Bagby about the situation. She believes that you should be buried here. There is a lot for you in their plot. You can be beside your quasi-brother Bagby, and perhaps you will be with him in person also. He's presently residing on the north slope of Purgatory, if you need guidance to find him. And after a bit the Dame will join you there.”

  The Cardinal was referring to Duffey's sister as Dame Bagby, and indeed she had become something of a dame, weighty and ponderous, but merry yet.

  “You have it all figured out,” Duffey said. “Could you tell me what day my obsequies would be?”

  “No point in telling you,” the Cardinal said. “Figure you have it almost through this weekend. Then we can bury you Monday or Tuesday. Yes, neat, Melchisedech. The world will be a bit lonesome without you.”

  They were in the old Stranahan residence, the Cat Castle. Patrick Stranahan was dead. Charley Murray was dead. Papa Piccone was dead. Father McGuigan was dead. “I should have come two years ago,” Melchisedech said, “and seen them a last time in their worn-out mortal coils. Marry me, Monica. You should have come into a good inheritance.”

  “Oh, you would only give it away,” Monica said. Duffey had given away his half-ownership in the Rounders' Club just that day. Well, Charley Murray, in his will, had left his half interest in the club to his nephew Vincent Stranahan. So Duffey now deeded his half interest to Teresa Showboat Piccone Stranahan. Now those two were running it. It would continue to be a fine club in the old tradition.

  “You haven't delayed your own death one moment by your scurrying around through time,” the Cardinal Salvatore said. “This is the day it is supposed to be. You will die when you are supposed to die. And another good man will be gone to the greater thing.”

  “Yes, the calendar did jump ten days when I wasn't paying attention,” Duffey said. “But I can always make it jump back again.”

  “No, you cannot,” the Cardinal said. “Never again. The gears and the activating rods of that device have rusted fast now, and they'll never work for you again. It was only boyishness, and it's taken away from you now.”

  “There is always the Argo,” X said.

  “What is the Argo?” Melchisedech Duffey asked him. Probably they were talking in the Bread and Wine Room at Rounders' Club now, or at Cabramatta Castle which was the home of Hans and Marie, or in the Burlesque Buffet Room in the house of Vincent and Teresa, or at Dame Bagby's Place. Probably those present were Dame Bagby, Hans and Marie and Cecilia Schultz (Cecilia was one of the daughters-in-law), Vincent and Teresa and their three younger children Chiara and Rafaello and Theresa Anna who were born so many years after their older children, Monica Murray Stranahan, Philip Stranahan the oldest brother of Vincent, Duffey, X, Henri Cardinal Salvatore. It was a pleasant continuing conversation or symposium that went on for several days, the last several days of Duffey's normal life.

  “Do you not remember the Argo, Melchisedech?” Teresa asked. “We are not supposed to remember that grand ship when we are not actually sailing on her. There is an amnestic mechanism that insures that we do not remember, but I myself cheat a little bit on it, and I believe that you others do also.”

  “The only Argo I have heard of is in Bulfinch's Mythology. What is this grand ship and what flag does she sail under?”

  “That of the Kingdom of Colchis,” Henri Cardinal Salvatore said. “No, we do not ordinarily remember the Argo except when we are sailing on her. And if, during our land tenure, we do remember a little bit about it, we feel that it is more symbolic than real. And yet it's a grand thing to ship as an Angel before the Mast, as an Ancient Salt-Water Shepherd who smells strongly of sheep, as a person who may sail over the edge of the world again and again and again. I believe that I myself have been sailing on her quite recently. I feel the sustaining salt-wind of an Argo voyage sustaining me in all that I do. But the days and years spent on the Argo are not deducted from the days and years of life. They are outside of that. And of the mariners on the Argo, some are in the flesh and some are out of it, and some are of a fishy flesh. But one cannot play tricks with the Argo.”

  “I can,” X said. “I do it constantly.”

  “Should Duffey, in the last minute of his life, decide to sail on the Argo, then very likely he would be able to do so. He might sail on her and perform gestes from her for what seems like three or five or seven years, which is those years according to the chronometer of the Argo. But they will not shorten the last minute of his life. They are not contained in that minutes though they may accompany that minute. The minute will still be gone in sixty seconds, and the earthly life will be gone with it. There is no way to play tricks with the Voyages.”

  “There is a way, righ
t at the end of the voyage,” X said. “One has, if he remembers to have, a selection of shores on which to land from the voyage. And one has, if he remembers to have, a selection of years in which to land.”

  “But he will not remember,” the Cardinal said.

  “If I remember to remind him, then he will,” X maintained.

  “No, you will not remember to remind him, and he will not remember to remember,” the Cardinal insisted. “It will end when it is supposed to end.”

  “I remember it now,” Duffey said, “how I began the present phase of my life. Ah yes, I had been on the Holy Ship and doing high gestes there. Then my tour of duty was ended there, and I remembered what I might do. I left the ship and came ashore. Well, I was given a short leave (sixty years it was, as it happened) on the shore of my choice. That is what my present lifetime is. It seems as if I have told this same thing in these same words to somebody very recently.”

  “Not to me,” said the Cardinal Salvatore.

  “I came ashore, swimming and wading through turbulent water. It was early morning. The shore was muddy with engendering mud, and full of promise. It was the year 1923, and I was a young man of no more than a quarter of a century of physical years. I went up that muddy shore and entered into the green and burgeoning years of my life. If I remember to do it, I can come back to that same shore, and to that same year, and have another sixty green and burgeoning years to my life. If I remember, I can land on that shore again and once more be a young man of only a quarter of a century of physical years.”

  “Melchisedech, Melchisedech, if you keep coming back to the same shore, how will you ever reach the other shore where all blessing is?” Cardinal Henri asked. “But if you do relive the sixty green and burgeoning years again, it will still all be in that final minute of your life, and it will not shorten that minute by a second.”