More Than Melchisedech

by R. A. Lafferty

  Eleven little fuzzy cubs

  Hiding in a den.

  The head of one goes bouncing off,

  And then there are ten.

  This was dedicated to Ignatius Cardinal Ti, the next in line for destruction, to indicate what death he should die. The second Prince in Hiding who had been killed was Kirol Cardinal Gabrailovitch of Zagreb. John Mogul, as a man of vestigial religion, had put up a monument stone to this Prince with the carven words: “One of these must be made a witness with us of His resurrection.” John Mogul was, very slightly, worried about the ‘doubles’ of the Princes. He had them all identified now, but he did not have them dead. These were the doubles:

  Of Joseph Cardinal Hedayat of Antioch, Count Finnegan (full name and birthplace not known).

  Of Paul Cardinal Brokenbolt of Freemantle, Australia, Cecil Octavian of England.

  Of Ignatius Cardinal Ti of Manila, Bolo Manolo (place of residence not known).

  Of Terrence Cardinal Merry of Cork, Emmet Collins of Boston, Massachusetts.

  Of Edward Cardinal Leviathan of Edinburgh, Douglas McAfee of London.

  Of Carlos Cardinal Artemis of Santa Cruz, Gilberto Levine y O'Brien of Rio.

  Of David Cardinal Lloyd Spencer of Cardiff, Llyod CardiganPembroke of Tywyn.

  Of Henri Cardinal Salvatore of New Orleans, Daniel Jean Boulle of Dax in France.

  Of Nicholas Cardinal Gregorio of Messina, Arnoldo Rugutini of New York City.

  Of Joseph Cardinal Doki of Douala, John Giwa of Anecho.

  Of Kirol Cardinal Gabrailovitch of Zagreb, Mihail Majic of Trieste.

  Of Martino Cardinal Erculo of Milan, Herman Hercules of uncertain domicile.

  Of Xavier Cardinal Runosake of Kobe (the first dead of the contracted men), Niku Kazuko, probably of Honolulu.

  These doubles were at least as hard to kill as were their primaries. The abdicated Cardinals, still about five hundred of them alive, weren't very hard to kill, but they just didn't give the same satisfaction as did the genuine Cardinals in Flight or Hiding.

  There were funds provided to stir up public interest, and John Mogul skimmed twenty percent off of all such funds. So he launched a contest. This contest, with all the resources of ‘Track and Total’ behind it, offered one thousand very costly premiums to contestants for the best one thousand suggestions for ‘interesting and colorful murders’. Now there would be some popular action and interest.

  Popular murder! Had there ever been anything like it! This was one of the primordial and archetypical fascinations. Who could resist it? There were more than thirty million entries in the contest. They came from the keen observers everywhere. They came from the depraved and the saintly: from the hunters and from the hunted. They even came from all eleven of the still living Princes in Flight. Ignatius Cardinal Ti sent in a murder right in line with his own approaching death. It wasn't used, in that exact form, but it wasn't too far off. All the abdicated Cardinals sent in murders, and all the doubles of the Cardinals in Flight sent in very ingenious murder-devices.

  Most of these many millions of proposed methods of murder were not practical, for one reason or a thousand, and there was heavy repetition and duplication. But there were so many really good ones that it almost made one weep not to have a few million murders under contract at certain payment.

  Instant mad dogs were good. The shot (it could be by air-gun or arrow or blow-gun, or directly by needle) might be made on the victim's own dog which would then go instantly mad and bite the nearest person, the victim, who would then die immediately. Then the dog would recover, without a trace, from his madness almost as immediately. But this depended on the dog's owner, the victim, being the closest person, so the plan could be disrupted by accident.

  Directional shots were better, and these fitted in many of the submitted murders. And contagious directional shots were absolutely the best in this category. Some substance of the victim had to be mixed with the infusion, but it had to be no more than the faint scent of his passing. Any animal would be shot with this infusion in any way. The animal would then go into a murderous fury against the victim that he had been inoculated with. It would find the victim anywhere, over dozens or hundreds or thousands of miles, and it would attack him in total fury. As to the contagious refinement, the inoculated animal, while on his murder pursuit, would bite all other animals of his sort that were anywhere near its path. And each bitten animal would immediately be similarly mad to murder that one victim. It would grow in an exponentially exploding chain reaction. It could be done with dogs, it could be done with cats, it could be done with wolves or squirrels or even rabbits.

  It could be done with rats or mice. Imagine a victim becoming in an instant a living tower totally incased in thousands of mad mice! Imagine him screaming, and hundreds of mad mice pouring down his screaming throat through the mouth that he would never close again. Slashing and slicing as they went in in wave after wave, into the inmost depths of a person! Imagine the victim, with fifty pounds of meat already sheared off him in the second before he falls to the ground. Imagine him gushing open, and the thousand-fold hairy waves gushing into him faster than his own viscera can gush out. Really, this is one of the most charming concepts in all the annals of creative murder.

  Mad birds could do it, pouring onto him from every sky and air. Or mad insects. Or mad tree toads. Or mad ants, a billion of them at least, covering a man a foot thick in a blanket of fiery death. Mad catfish could do it, pouring howling out of every water in relentless frenzy to take the victim wherever he might be found.

  Mad microbes might do it also, high-speed-operating colonial microbes spreading and catching like fire. But here there are difficulties in viewing the mechanics of the death struggle. Persons inventing or proposing highly imaginative murders might also manage highly imaginative observation points. The mad microbe bit could be made workable, but it isn't for everyone.

  And there is one special form. Mad three-year-old human children are excellent, and the implications open unheard of vistas. Imagine a three-year-old child, patted and needle-pierced at the same time by an ‘Oh what a handsome child you have there, madame’ murderer. The child, quickly turned into a mad phenomenal creature, will break every barrier somehow and seek out its victim with uncanny directioning; and it will seek out many other three year olds on its mad career and bite them and envenom them, and these in turn will seek out the same prey in racing fury while they also bite and infect other three-year-olds. Imagine thirty thousand such three-year-olds converging on a victim within thirty minutes, getting to him no matter where he hides himself, eating the very doors of his house off their hinges to get to him, then eating his flesh and his bones and his marrow. (Little children everywhere love bone-marrow, but they do not always know that they love it.) Oh, wonderful, wonderful concepts!

  Directional infra-red cookers were good, though perhaps a little bit overdone in several ways. One could put a directional nozzle on any such restaurant or home cooker and make it zero in on any organ of any man. It would cook the liver or heart of the victim where he stood, and leave no outer mark. It would cook his brains or his kidneys. There were many variations of this.

  And there were the biodegradable murders. Biodegradables can be bought in any store, to turn noisome trash and accumulation back to basic earth. Lave it on a thing or spray it on, dust it as a powder or pour it as a liquid, the biodegradable stuff will disintegrate anything, and certainly it will rot a victim into good moist earth in hardly no time at all. Oh, only a little bit of it in a man's coffee or his wine, and he will begin to degrade from the inside out. He will provide good entertainment during the ten minutes it is going on, and then he will be stenchless and friable, slightly moist but not sopping, easily disposed of, and utilitarian.

  Wonderful new inventions were made in the almost forgotten fields of floggings and crucifixions. These had already experienced a renaissance, and the second phase of a renaissance is the flowering of new art out of the new-turned soil. There
were flaying machines such as our father never knew, and St. Andrew's and St. Peter's Crosses that spun like pinwheels and threw off messages in letters of fire. These were the ‘Strange Fruit Trees’ foretold again and again, and now made real.

  Timed shrinking fabrics were good. They could be set for an hour or a day or a season. And inducing a person to wear them was no trick at all. A little flattery, a little salesmanship, and a person would be into a wonderful new outfit. Now these new fabrics were tough. The timing element had really been left optional by the makers, so that the dealer could cause the garment to disappear at whatever interval the market would stand. The shrinking element had been put in so that any of the clothes could be made to fit anybody. But both of these adjustments could be tampered with. It was fun to see a man being throttled by his own shirt collar, and there no way he could get out of it. It was fun to see a man cut in two by his own belt, or to see the hands of a lady severed off by the timed shrinking of her own cuffs, or to see a head crushed like a melon by its own hat.

  But the real shrinking achievements were done by the infusions that would unsize both living and unliving stuff. This trick was at first ruled out as impractical by the Murder Contest judges, but a terrible howl went up at the exclusion. It was pointed out that the AAA International Material Handlers already had such shrink-powder and used it regularly. They used it for shipping bulk baled goods, reducing them to a very small size, and then enlarging them to original bulk at destination. And AAA had already shipped some people by this method, but it was very tricky and most of them had died. But, since the technology was already in existence, the judges had to allow it.

  The commoner form of the suggestions was to have the victim shrunk to small size where he could be done in by many different methods and could be subjected to indignities while he was being done in. But a more sophisticated way was to have the murderer shrink himself and so obtain strange entry and launch crunching internal attack.

  Embulking pellets are good. Intrude one into the victim's food and he will grow exponentially till he explodes. All the modern techniques are fruitful, and all the old procedures can be refined. Implements are updated, and there are more imaginative sorts of debowelings suggested every day.

  Killing with words was given a bloody literalness. This was a real triumph. Everyone was very pleased with the context. “It shows that the people are still thinking,” one magistrate said.

  John Mogul, the chief of ‘Track and Total’, held up his two hands with five digits extended on each of them to indicate that only ten of his primary targets were left alive and that three of them were dead. And round the world, song-singers and rope-jumpers gave his newest crowing and prediction, each in his own tongue:

  “Ten little starvelings pale and thin

  From empty pot to dine

  Flay the tenth and show his skin,

  Then there are nine.”

  This verse indicated that Cardinal Ti was dead and that the next in line was Cardinal Artemis of Santa Cruz, and that he would be flayed alive.

  And after this, the killings would go much more quickly.

  7

  Persons in the same trade should know each other. The more specialized the trade is, the more restricted it is, so much the more the members of it be acquainted. When a trade is of an absolutely specialized nature, and the members of that trade are very small in number, their acquaintance is well-advised. Count Finnegan and Herman Hercules both followed the trade of being doubles to Princes of the Ekklesia in Flight, a very specialized trade and one restricted to thirteen members. These two met by an arranged accident, and both of them were tracked and bugged wherever they went.

  “I am an ugly little bugger, Finnegan,” Herman said. “I do not mind this. There are many persons who like me and who even like my ugliness. My primary, Cardinal Erculo, is a beautiful little bugger, however. And yet we do look exactly alike. How can this be? It is not a question of a more beautiful soul shining out of him and making him beautiful. Finn, I don't know about my Cardinal but I do know about myself. I'm a good guy all the way through and I have a beautiful soul; I know this. And I do look beautiful when I'm playing the role of the Cardinal, and he does look ugly when he's playing the role of me. Roles will do a lot for one.”

  “Roles and settings,” Count Finnegan said. “It reminds me of a great arrangement that was once presented to a highly select council for judgment. A group of artists of pure instinct had put this arrangement together. The question had been asked whether there was such a thing as beauty in arrangement and proportion, or whether the whole idea was a mere accommodation. The group of artists said that there was such a thing, and that they would be able to make a convincing approach to it, even if they could not absolutely effect the thing itself. One anti-artist who was there said that there was no such thing as beauty in arrangement or proportion, or in anything else. So the artistic arrangement was made. It consisted mostly of objects, some of them brightly colored abstractions, some of them facsimiles, straight or offset, of real things. They were all well done. Lighting effects constituted other elements of the display, as did a faint dripping of music. Odors, nostalgic as well as symbolic, were other elements in the arrangement. It was excellent. The persons of the select council pronounced it to be something between a convincing approach to beauty in form and the absolute effecting of that beauty.

  “ ‘Wait just one color-corrected minute!’ said the anti-artist. He picked up one of the thousand or so objects in the display and let the persons of the council view the thing with one piece missing. Then he put the piece back exactly as it had been. It was no use. The near approach to beauty had been shattered by that removal, and it could not be reconstructed by the replacement of the piece. It would be like trying to reassemble a soap-bubble that had burst.”

  “And there will always be at least one anti-artist present,” said Herman Hercules. “That was good, Finnegan. That serves them right for bugging us. The bug will have recorded Count Finnegan the Artist talking like an artist, lest there be any doubt who you really are. But will any bug ever record Herman Hercules making a really convincing approach to beauty? I was a wrestler, Finnegan, in my youth and well into my middle age, and my ugliness was one of my attractions.”

  “I know it. I saw you wrestle in New Orleans at the old Decatur Street Arena. I saw you once in a ‘Nine Man Free-Style Midget Wrestler Melee’.”

  “Yes, that was before I was champion. For many years I was the ninety-nine pound champion of the world. As you know, one must be under five feet tall and under one hundred pounds to be a midget wrestler. I was just under in both respects. So is my primary, Cardinal Erculo. So was Saul whom I knew in old times.

  “I always followed such jobs as would keep me near the things I loved and in the ambients I required for life, just as a fish will always take jobs that will keep him in contact with water. Oh, the things that I have always loved, they are stadiums, they are hippodromes, they are coliseums, they are arenas, they are grandstands, they are opera houses, they are circuses, they are fairs, they are carnivals, they are amusement parks, they are racetracks, they are music halls, they are even museums; they are forums, they are red-light districts (and I am virtuous), they are all-night restaurants and newsrooms, and penny arcades. They are six-day bicycle races; I love them. Aye, and they are army camps on battle eves. And they are prisons. They are any of these things when they are inhabited. Oh, Finn I like even all-night movies. Almost all of us long-timers have to be among crowds. I know that you are acquainted with many long-timers, Melchisedech, Gregorio, others. There are far more of us than you would guess, perhaps as many as one out of a hundred. In a city of five million persons, there will be fifty thousand of us, and our combined ages will probably be fifty million years. All of us, for reasons you would have to delve deep to uncover, like to be with crowds. We have the fear of being along. We have the fear of places closing up some hours out of the twenty-four. We are lonely in crowds, but that is better than
being lonely alone. I remember Rome in the Empire Centuries, I remember Tarshish, I remember Babylon. Those were all raunchy towns, but they did have spectacles and crowds. To be with and before those crowds, I have been a tumbler and an acrobat and a tightrope walker. I've been a jockey of racing mules. I've been a candy butcher and concession boy, I've been a ‘get your hamburger, get your hot-dog, get your Coney Island sandwich’ peddler at every sort of ball game. And a side-show barker. I've been a dicer and a card-sharp, just so I could stay on top of the games and be with bunches of people when everyone else had gone home. There are private sorts of people who have no need of crowds. I'm not one of them. Our Lord Himself was only partly one of them. He made His own crowds, but he needed something else. It was for this reason that he spent so little time in Judaea which was loaded with private kinds of people. He liked the mixed-blood country to the north better, the Dekapolis region where there were always spectacles going on. He liked horse races especially. I am a town boy myself. I never liked the green country except when I toured it with carnivals or horse-fairs. But I was more myself as a monkey-faced midget wrestler than as anything else.

  “Now the Cardinal Erculo, of who I am the exact double, he is a lot like me in his love of spectacles. So was Saul. He was called a tent maker, but how many know that he was a maker of circus tents? But the Cardinal has a love for himself being too central to the spectacles. How he does love his Cardinal's box in his native Milano at La Scala, that holy mother of all opera houses! Ah, that old arena on Decatur Street in New Orleans where I used to wrestle, they tore it down, didn't they?”

  “I think so, Herman. I have been in abeyance for a few decades until just lately so I've lost track. I've heard that they've even revived the old canard that there isn't any Decatur Street in New Orleans. Herman, you muscular little mutt, you'd be a good man in the high rigging of a ship that I know about. We're going on a voyage on that soon, I believe. It's a ship that I remember in a disjointed way. It's piloted by a man in a golden mask. I feel very strongly that I should know him, but he'll not be tricked out from behind that mask.”