More Than Melchisedech
Page 76
“Should we set it to ringing again in the great underwater?” he asked.
“Do so,” said the shadow-man Lloyd Cardigan-Pembroke the pig butcher from Wales, the double of the dead Cardinal Ti. “We can't have too many bells.”
“Are any of you double-men familiar with the grass of the very long roots and the red tinge in its green that used to grow on Vatican Hill and nowhere else in the world?” the Dolphin asked conversationally. “It was named ‘Blood-of-Martyrs Grass’. ”
“We are all familiar with it,” Bolo Manolo said. “It grew in only that one place in the world and now it grows there no more. It is finished.”
“Not so,” said the Dolphin. “It is growing here now, up from these waters, and it has covered the mooring-stone with its thin carpet of red-flecked green. And the temperature of the water is rising, and the land itself is rising. Rejoice, for the martyr grass has come back.”
The Dolphin left them then to see about setting the big Dolphin Bell. In about an hour the men felt the underwater clanging from the biggest bell in the world, and it raised up their spirits like ocean waves.
The yacht went into the mooring-stone, as had the Argo, as had the tramp steamer from along the Mexican coast. Then the bounty-men who had the place encircled said that the bag was full enough, and they decided to pull the draw-string on it. But, somehow, they couldn't quite do it.
The bounty-men had nine priced men and three craft inside their bag, at Mooring-Stone, and now they would kill them and collect their price. The bounty-men knew those shoal-waters, and they knew how to close in on prey. But things had gone wrong for them. The shoal-waters were changing by the minute, by the second, and the bounty-men were being dashed to their deaths. Strange killer-shoals were appearing everywhere.
But four other double-men or shadow-men came through anyhow, after the bounty-men had thought they had slammed the shoaly gates. Arnoldo Rugutini of New York City, the double of Cardinal Gregorio of Messina, came in on an army copter. It landed him, and it whirled off again. Arnoldo had connections for things like that.
Mihail Majic, the double of Cardinal Gabrailovitch of Zagreb, swam in, a fifty mile swim in the open ocean. He was a World Class Swimmer.
Emmet Collins of Boston, Massachusetts, the double of Cardinal Merry of Cork, talked his way in. He came in a little boat that you wouldn't believe. He stopped at a nest of bounty-men and talked to them. He told them that he was a follow-up man for ‘Track and Total’ and that he was checking up on the job to see that nothing went wrong. He would signal to them from Mooring-Stone, he said, when it was time for them to go in for the kill. And they let him go in. And only when he was out of their immediate reach did they howl at themselves and wonder who had stolen their wits. It was the silliest story anybody had ever made up, and how had they been taken in by it? Oh, if you hadn't heard that Emmet Collins talk, do not ask how anybody could have been taken in by him. Since the world began, no man had ever talked as he talked.
The thirteenth of the double-men was John Giwa from Anecho in Africa. He was the double of dead Cardinal Doki of Douala. John Giwa had flown from Anecho to Marseille in France by commercial flight. He broke in on John Mogul there. He cut the twelve digits from Mogul's hands and wrapped them in butcher's paper to take with him. He put a skewer through Mogul's tongue when that man became too loud. He took a waiting charter flight to Miami. He took a barn-stormer down over Mooring-Rock, and he came down on the rock with a scarlet parachute. Then he went down into the underground cave or room that had been named ‘The Room of the Conclave’ when it was hewn out of the rock four hundred years before. (This popular name for the room had always been a mystery.) He found the other twelve double-men or shadow-men already there.
John Giwa banged his hands together loudly. “Holy men, let us get started!” he cried.
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One other man then came into this strange room in the middle of the rock. This was Monsignor X of the ill-famed Roman-Babylonian Conclave which was supposed to end all conclaves. “The Conclave must have a Servitor,” X said. How did he get there anyhow? He brought the Triple Crown with him, or at least a double of it. Where did he get it? How did he get it there?
“Is that volcanic activity I feel or is it an effusion of special grace?” John Giwa asked himself and all of them. “We know from our inner revelation,” he went on, “that all thirteen of us are not double-men or shadow-men. One or more of us is a primary man, a true Cardinal. Only one is required. One lone Cardinal left in the world could hold his own private conclave and nominate himself Pope. And the Holy Ghost would confirm that nomination.”
The violent-and-holy-man John Giwa then dumped out twelve curled and blood-caked things. They were the twelve severed fingers and thumbs of John Mogul the contract murderer. John Giwa dumped them as if they were snakes. They did move themselves and writhe. Then, coming into a pattern, they reared themselves furiously and extended themselves upward in trembling anger as if swearing vengeance.
Yes, there was both volcanic activity going on and an effusion of very special grace. In ten minutes, a sea-soaked country of ten thousand square kilometers rose above the level of the sea. And the Mooring-Rock, three square kilometers of it, rose a hundred meters above its countryside.
“Mooring-Stone,” John Giwa spoke the blessing to the new land above his head which he could sense but could not see. “Your old name of Babylonia Oceania now becomes Babylonia Sancta.” It was now changed from Oceanic Babylon to Holy Babylon.
Each of the thirteen members of the conclave gave a short talk. Then X asked the golden-masked Melchisedech to give a talk also.
“But I am a dead man,” Melchisedech explained.
“Dead man, speak us live words,” John Giwa said. And he did so.
“Then X called their names for the vote. One of them, Count Finnegan, said “abstineo”, “I abstain.” The other twelve all voted for the same person. Then X placed the triple crown on the head of John Finnegan Solli. John Giwa said “Reign in grace, Pope Finnegan the First.”
Was that the sound of mule-laughter ringing around the world? Many, many people loved Finnegan, but everybody found it the wildest joke ever that he should also be crowned Pope. Mule laughter, yes, and bleaker laughter also, and naked fury rising to the skies. “My god, my god! (pardon the phrase, Ungodly Oaf), but it's the case of volcanic activity riding to the rescue like the old U.S. Cavalry,” the Angry League people shrieked. “The ultimate in lack of style, and corn, corn, forever corn!”
Pope Finnegan essayed a bit of humor to the conclave.
“This has been an Eschatological Comedy,” he said, “and stagewise — (what is that sound, giggling or the agony of a lost soul?) — and stagewise (with the world as stage) it has been a good comedy except for one thing. (Oh what is that tortured giggling?) There were no roles for women in the comedy; that was its lone defect.”
Then, like a silvery dam breaking, there was the sound of a most extraordinary laughing in high glee after many months of holding her laughter.
“Terence Cardinal Mercy of Cork, or else Emmet Collins of Boston, whichever it is, thou art a woman,” John Giwa spoke in a stern voice. “Explain this, X, it's an antic of thine. Finnegan himself was never capable of such.”
Well, if you were X and pressed to get an impersonator for Cardinal Merry, the hardest of all the cardinals to impersonate, why not get the best impersonator in the world? And on stage or on airways, a young lady named Emma Collins was the greatest impersonator in the world, of anything, of anybody. And she was a protégé of X, an old actor and impersonator himself.
But how in hickory-fired hades was Finnegan a true Cardinal? Oh, the last Pope before Finnegan, Paul the Eleventh, had named Finnegan a Cardinal in petto (secretly, in the breast) the afternoon that Finnegan had painted a quick but absolutely extraordinary portrait of that Pope. That was just one week before the murderous death of Paul the Eleventh.
“Finnegan, you are either here in ghost-flesh
or else you have the gift of bi-location, something that only the greatest Saints have,” the Pope said.
“You are wrong, Holy Father,” Finnegan told him. “The greatest devils have the gift of bi-location also, but I am neither.”
Finnegan being named a Cardinal secretly, only three persons knew of the fact: Finnegan himself, Paul the Eleventh who named him, and the Holy Ghost. It was the Holy Ghost (never very good at keeping a secret) who leaked the information to the voters (there were two other real Cardinals among them) at the Conclave at Mooring Rock.
So the reign of Pope Finnegan the First (a big-nosed clown, a world-wanderer, and a master artist) began on a joyful note. One half of the people in the world, plus one, approved of it all. This confounded and mystified all the pollsters who had predicted an approval of less than one tenth of one percent.
And Pope Finnegan fit in so perfectly with the prediction of the prophet Nostradamus, made just 430 years before:
When guiding light seemed ever quenched
Then Clio's very road he wrenched
Back to the true and happy way.
He is the Pope of Bells and Bay.
His coming is a joy to see.
Upon his shield a Green Bay Tree,
A staff, a paint-box, and a rose.
Outstanding is his holy nose.
But the people of the Angry League did not approve at all. They raised their furious voices to the skies.
“Corn, corn, shameful corn! The lack of true style in all of this is a planetary disgrace. A happy ending yet!! The ultimate of abominations!!!”
And there was heart-rending wailing and the colossal gnashing of teeth.