It was the piece of talking oak in the ship's wheel that would give the history of the ship when it was questioned. The ship, after it had been the Argo or variants of the name those first few times, had been the Navicula Petri or Peter Ship, and it served both as a fishing skiff and as a salvation ship. It had been the Anthony Ship at Actium and had been shamed there. It had been the flagship of the great Abd-Aliah of the Sea, and the famous daughter of Abd-Aliah had ridden on her. (Who does not love the description of Abd-Aliah's beautiful daughter. “She had a face round like the moon, and long hair and heavy hips, and black-edged eyes and a slender waist, but she had a tail” ?). Abd-Aliah of the Sea sold the Ship to Sindbad of El-Basrah.
There was still a stunning Sindbad Lounge or drinking bar on the Argo, to be in which was like being down underneath sun-drenched water with the air filled with fishes, and with sands like gold. And yet these decorations and appointments were much later than Sindbad's own ownership. The magnificent and oceanic paintings in the lounge were, in fact, painted by Count Finnegan in his youth. That was at a time when the Ship was named the Brunhilde and was owned by evil men. The Holy Argo had the strumpet habit of coming into the ownership of infidels.
The Argo, at different times in its sun-drenched and sea-drenched history, had carried such diverse notables as St. Paul, and the Crusader Godfrey of the Gate, and Mark Twain.
The ship had been named ‘Land of Behest’. When St. Brandon sailed her from Ireland to America that first time, when he had encountered the great fish Jascoyne in her, when he had carried the traitor Judas in her (and Judas was not the most hellish passenger ever to travel on the ship).
The Argo had once been a Saracen Ship, but she had been recaptured from the Saracens by King Richard of England. She was named Salle du Roi when Robert of Namur sailed her for another King of England. She was named the Flying Serpent when Willy Jones sailed her in the Moluccas, and the Catherine when Dana Coscuin took her around the Horn. This is only part of the history of the ship that was given by the piece of talking oak to anyone who asked. And there were also whole rooms full of old log books of old voyages, some of which lasted for centuries.
Melchisedech had the opportunity all that morning of reviewing the history of his great ship, there being no one with him on this gusty trip a third of the way around the world except the effigy seamen of his own shaping and the beautiful woman whom he had taken out of the pillar of ice that morning. And this woman was of an unfallen nature and was naïve besides, and beside she was too young for him, even in his new green and youthful cycle. And yet there were many people on the Argo unbeknownst to Melchisedech, and some of these made themselves manifest during the morning.
The unaccountable people seemed to be attracted to Eva and her luxury bear skin wrapper and her fair ways. She was very popular, even though she had been out of things for quite a few years. And so had some of the mysterious passengers been out of things for a long time. Everyone who had ever traveled on the Argo had left enough of his essence on her to be able to make a wraithy return to her at any time. Some of these passengers were curiously dated, but others were as current as the day.
Melchisedech was one of the very special persons who sometimes served as pilot of the Argo. There are certain persons, and Melchisedech was one of them, who live extraordinarily long lives. And they must pay for their length of days with extraordinary service. The purpose of the Argo was to sail anywhere in the world and to haul passengers and cargo that would be too dangerous for other ships to handle; to open up dark lands and ports; and to break up secret plots and conspiracies. It was also intended to bring joy and grace to dark places, and to provide entertainment. It was, in the primary sense, a show boat. And she was also the ‘Hope Ship’ for unfortunates. “The Argo will come” was a promise among the promises.
There had never been another ship that knew all the seas and islands and mains and promontories (each one with its own goat) of the world, and all the salty sea port towns and raffish ports of call. The Argo also knew all the migrating islands, and all the (still more rare) migrating seas that travel yearly from north to south with all their birds and fish.
What other ship had sailed all the seas: the Timor Sea and the Savu Sea and the Arafura Sea? She had even, according to one old log on her, sailed the Mare Nectaris, and that is on the moon. What other ship had prowled the Molucca Sea and the Ceram Sea and the Banda Sea? What ship had sailed the Java and the Flores and the Bali, the South China and the Andaman and the Coral, the Solomon and the Tasman and the Philippine, the Mindanao and the Visayan and the Sibuyan, the Japan Sea and the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea, the Okhotsk and the Bering and the Kara, the Arabian and the Malabar and the Oman, the Ionian and the Aegean and the Marmora? What memories did these not bring back to Melchisedech, for he had sailed on every one of those. And those were only drops of water in the ocean of all the seas that had been sailed by the Argo.
What other ship had visited all the shores of that most mysterious of all seas, the Sea of the Seven Lost Years?
But do not ask too closely about that Sea of the Lost Years. There were a lot of things about that most strange of all seas that neither Melchisedech nor any of the other Pilots or Captains of the Argo understood. It was not always a contiguous sea. In many ways, it was like the migrating seas. Channels of it ran in the midst of other waters, and some of its shores seemed to be very far inland. They seemed to be river shores and even lake shores at times, rather than sea shores.
There had been one very early morning in Melchisedech's youth, in his fifth or sixth youth, really, when Melchisedech had walked out onto the river shore in St. Louis, just below the Eads Bridge, and had walked right on to a low-lying boat. And it had been the the Argo in disguise. Melchisedech had then traveled on that ship for seven years, but not all of it consecutively with much time out for land adventures (the land adventures do not count in the Seven Lost Years, and neither are they deducted from the years of life).
Melchisedech still encountered many stray days out of the Seven Lost Years, and today may have been one of them. Some of those days were separated from others by very wide spaces in between. And there is another body of water (or anyhow of fluid), the Sea of Amnesia, that is connected with the Seven Lost Years by a hidden strait.
No, no, there was nothing at all notable going on aboard the Argo this morning, except a lot of loud hornpipe music and some carousing and singing and laughing, with Eva and some other girls discovered somewhere on the ship having a lot of fun with fellows of uncertain origin. Back to the memories, Melchisedech. Nothing at all is going on here.
Sea Islands, Mains, Promontories or Capes, Waterfronts. There have been some great waterfront places. Remember the Fanged Fish at Ogopo and the Benevolent Shark at Maule? Or the Drowned Whale, or Costerman's Whalers’ Inn or Octopus Joe's, or Salty Dog's Shack-Up House, or the Rusty Harpoon, or O’Brien's Polynesian Palace, Ching Ling Charley's Doss House, the Barbary Ape, the Sulu Ritz, Harold's Blow Fish Ball Room, the Sand Flea, Biddy's Barracuda Bar, the Beacon Club, Kate's Neanderthal Bar, the...
“I wonder if Kate's Neanderthal Bar in Biloxi is for sale?” Eva asked Melchisedech about the time he came to that place in his catalog of memories. It was almost as if she had been reading his mind. She was flushed a bit, from the rapid dancing and carrying on, but always she had her mind open for business. “One of the seamen says that there's always a few of my kind of people around Kate's Neanderthal. That's the kind of place I will have to have. If any of my kind of people are around, then they will come in there sooner or later.”
Eva was speaking pretty well now and was using regular words. The Neanderthals (and the Neo-Neanderthals, of whom Eva was one), on account of their funny shaped heads, have an odd word emphasis in the brain, and considerable verbal dexterity. They speak all languages easily, or they seem to. And they read words out of minds as easily as anyone else would read any other thing off of a printed page.
“We will see whether
it is for sale,” Melchisedech said. “I believe that Kate's Neanderthal Bar is almost always for sale. But what would you do with it?”
“I'd name it Eva's Neanderthal Bar, and I'd run it. It would be a neat place. We ran the first waterfront places, you know.”
“I dispute you,” Melchisedech said, “but they are in the origins of all of us. When the first people came up out of the first ocean to try to live on land, they sat on the shore to rest and to think about the momentous thing they were doing. And, as they sat there, somebody (probably he was half-person and half-octopus) brought them a platter of stewed oysters and a bottle of ‘Sulu Sea Five Star Whisky’. Then the people, their tongues loosened and their gills flopping and themselves a little bit light in the head from breathing air, began to tell lies, or sea stories as they are sometimes called. These salt water lies formed an essential station in the peoples’ coming out of the sea and onto land, in their becoming separate persons instead of the person-in-pieces colony that drifts through all the seas. The story is essential to personhood. Everyone in the world has been told about in story before he comes to live in the non-oceanic flesh. And every story in the world was first told in one of those waterfront places. Except, that is, and of course, those stories that were first told on the Holy Argo Herself.”
“Oh magus man, you are a talker,” Eva said, “but the first of the people places were run by my own people. All the better ones were, at least. On every waterfront, there was always an inferior place next door and it was run by a Groll's Troll, and then there was the superior place run by our folks. We always served better stuff and had better music and told better stories than the Groll's Trolls did. They are only a short cut above you folks. But we should all love each other since we are all cousins.
“I will have to get a consignment of tall talk ready for my taking over that place. Nothing interesting ever happens to me, me being in the frost chest for so long, and all that. But I will make up tall stories and say that they happened to me. I will do that if I run the Neanderthal. Come and see me there. Where can I get some business cards printed?”
“There is a little print shop on the Argo somewhere. I forget just where it is, but you might find it.”
“Oh, I think I know where it is. And I can find anything,” Eva said.
The Argo, still sailing resolutely against the waves and the winds, came to dock in Biloxi Mississippi about noon on that blessed day. The sandpipers of Horn Island and the Gulls of Ship Island had made a glad noise about it as the Argo went in to dock. And there was news about an event arriving on that ship.
Every sea-fooder in Biloxi put on another hundred dozen oysters. Every barbecue in town threw another hog in the pit. It would be a lively night that night, with rejoicing, and the reason for it would be more felt than known.
When the hundredth sheep which has been lost is found, there is gala. But when the hundred and first sheep that has been both lost and forgotten appears again, then there is a little special feel about the things. One of the older families was, possibly, going to be reestablished. That was cause enough for celebration.
Besides that, two Argo Masters who had not seen each other for a long time were going to be reunited.
3
Melchisedech Duffey sat and talked with Biloxi Brannagan in Brannagan's private beer garden that afternoon. Biloxi's wife Gertrude kept the pitchers filled and the various plates heaped up to show that she cared.
“Biloxi has been sitting in that same chair, waiting for the Ship to come, for thirty years,” Gertrude Brannagan said. “He says that after you are three thousand years old, thirty years is hardly any time it all. The only time he ever gets up is to go to the bathroom. He doesn't even come in the house when it rains. He says it won't rain on him, and it doesn't. He has the rain here under interdict. It's afraid of him. I've often told him that I thought he had missed the Ship, that it must have been in and out of the port while he was sleeping. But he says that he never sleeps, and I don't believe that he does. Oh well, he's never what you'd call very wide awake either. I told him that perhaps he had not left a call for the Ship, or that it had been forgotten. But he insisted that he had left a call, and that calls for that Ship are never forgotten.”
“Aye, he left a call,” Duffey said, “but it was marked ‘No Hurry’.”
“And thirty years is certainly no hurry,” Gertrude agreed. “Well, I've enjoyed having him all these years, sort of, though there have been a few things lacking. I don't know a more pleasant man anywhere than Biloxi Brannagan.”
Brannagan had sandy hair with only a token touch of patriarchal gray mixed in. He could have passed for thirty years old, so ‘waiting for the Argo’ is not a very aging experience. He had the powerful forearms and clear eyes of an old-style seaman. There was much that was lion-like about both his forearms and his eyes. He would look any man in the world straight in the eye. And he would wither any jackal with a look out of the corner of his eye. He was a cobber, a digger, a man from Australia. Duffey, in years gone by, had given a talisman to this Brannagan, and this talisman had had its part in the birth of Marie Monahan who was sister's child to Brannagan.
And, as to Gertrude Brannagan, there is an old document that describes her:
“Gertrude was herself a fortress. She was a gulf state lady of forty-five years old, give or take fifteen years either way. She was full-built and pretty, dark and a little bit Frenchy, curly of hair and smile, voluted and parapeted.” She was one of those friendly and smoochy ladies, and she kissed both Biloxi and Melchisedech every time she brought something else to the table.
“Wherever did you get that pretty Neanderthal girl, Duffey?” she asked. “I never saw so fine a complexion. I wonder where she got it?”
“From the ice,” said Duffey. “The ice gives that ivory-like complexion with those ghostly touches of blue.”
“Does she use ice packs for her skin? I thought that ice packs were outish lately.”
“No. She used an ice pillar. She was frozen in a pillar of ice. She had been there quite a few ages. We chipped her out of the ice this morning, but she didn't have to thaw. She is one of those naturally warm persons. She says that she doesn't feel the cold at all.”
“What are the theological implications?” Gertrude asked, “with her being of an unfallen race and all? If they increase again, will that not make the rest of us look pretty sorry?”
“I'm sure that this been worked out,” Duffey said. “Several of them seem to have been put into cold storage, and every few centuries another one is cracked out to make a contribution to the gene pool. It will not be a disturbing thing till they reach a level of about one in ten thousand. But they bring a nice touch into the mixture, an aroma that we nearly forget sometimes. But it's only a popular legend (which they themselves believe) that they are an unfallen people.”
“Mr. Duffey, I think that that is interesting,” Gertrude said, “and you told me that nothing interesting had happened to you all day. Finding a girl who has been frozen in a pillar of ice for thousands of years is very interesting.”
“Which voyage is this that we go on now, Duffey?” Brannagan asked. “I lose count.”
“On, it's the fourteenth voyage of the Argo,” Melchisedech said. “Argo Fourteen.”
“That sounds like one of those cosmic clock dating methods,” Gertrude said, “like Carbon Fourteen and such.”
“And the Argo is a dating clock, among very many other things,” Duffey told her. “Anything within the last nine thousand years, or the next sixty-seven years, is all written down pretty clearly in the Argo's log. It's all there, but sometimes one must be sharp about reading it. Part of the interpretation depends on Interior Illumination.”
“You've got a lot of that, have you, Duffey?” Gertrude joshed him. “I have a lot of Interior Illumination myself. But why does the log go only sixty-seven years into the future.”
“Most logs do not go into the future at all, so this is in the Argo's favor, however far it
goes. But in this case, I think that — ah — I get the impression that that's all the farther the future goes. Or else the future moves into some other context about then. There is a note in the log that certain futures or parts of futures, after a jog or a dislocation, are to be found written in a different log book, though pretty much in the same hands. Now I have seen this different ledger or log book, and I have held it in my hands, but I cannot always find it just when I want to. There's an instruction in the chart room of the Argo telling how to find this other log book, but I cannot always find this instruction, and I cannot always, to be honest with you, even find the chart room.
“But there are several other ways in which the Argo acts as a dating clock. If one brings any artifact at all on board and touches it to the piece of talking oak that is built into the ship's wheel, that talking oak will call out the year of origin of the piece in whatever aeon or era it belongs, and in whatever annals of the era. But sometimes the talking wood becomes confused. It may call out bearings instead of times, degrees and minutes and seconds of latitude and longitude which do not always have anything to do with the artifact brought to it.
“But the future, or a future, does go beyond the sixty-seven years, Gertrude, and I have been beyond that point into the future. It becomes different beyond that point, though, quite different.”
“Then this is the thirteenth voyage of the Argo that you came in on today, Duffey, and you will take Brannagan on the fourteenth voyage tonight?”
“No, Gertrude, no. These individual trips aren't voyages, even if we may carelessly call them so. Each voyage is a cycle of trips or adventures, a dynasty of adventures. And a voyage is halted only by hiatus or mutation, or by one of the ‘deaths’ of the Ship. The Ship may be lost and found again several times on one of the voyages. The Argo was lost completely before my last several trips. I found her again by accident and intuition. I walked down to visit a sly hull dealer in New Orleans and he said that he had something to show me. I had put out the word that I wanted to see something in old hulls, hulks, or even complete ships. This hull was afloat and light in the water, and my heart leapt up to see it. But it didn't look anything like the Argo.
More Than Melchisedech Page 53
