“When I'm running the Argo (that's the name of my ship frozen in the ice down there) I have quite a few of these work orders to fill. But I like to understand my missions. Who are you?” the man said.
“Ewaglouwshkoul,” said the fair woman. “Who else could I be? I suppose you'd call me the Neanderthal Eve, using your own words. But I'm not the first woman of my tribe. I may be the last. Finally there was only myself, and I under-aged, and thirteen of our fellows left, and it was going badly with us. Every day we went out to fight and every day we got whipped. Then our ghostly mentor suggested that some of us should go into cold storage for a while. I decided to go into freeze, and the thirteen fellows all took their own course, two of them going into freeze like myself, I believe. And some other of them may have survived somewhere. If not, it's a real loss. We have so much to give. But I'm sure there's a lot of my half-blood kindred around. Since I am returned and refreshed and awake, I'll immediately set about the business of having children. They're needed.”
“Don't look at me,” the man said. “I'm a Holy Magus.”
“No, it'll have to be one of the real ones if possible. But how will I go about it? I'm of an unfallen nature, and besides I'm pretty naïve. Do you know where there are any more of my kind?”
“Not exactly,” the Magus said. “But I think I know where there are some half-bloods. And I know where there's some Groll's Trolls and they're pretty much the same thing.”
“Does your work order say what to do with me, Magus?”
“Just to release you from the ice and wake you up, and take you to any sea-port in the world you designate. I'm to pick up a man who's been waiting thirty years for this ship to come. He's patient though. Besides, he's one of our group. He's a Master of this ship himself. I'll just pick him up in his port a third of the way around the world, and then he'll travel with me on a tour of duty. He's an accomplished seaman, as I am.”
“Which sea-port is it, Magus?”
“Biloxi, Mississippi.”
“Those names sound a little bit like our kind of talk. Take me there too. If it's a cosmopolitan place, then seamen of every sort will come there. I'll pick me out one who's closest to my blood. I'll get me a saloon or hotel where everybody passes, and finally one near enough to me will come.”
They went down the great ice cliff. They blasted the ship out of the ice, and they blasted a passage for it. They killed some blonde cave-bears to get bear-grease to make supple their frozen lines, and to get a new bear cloak for Little Eva. The old one was shedding after forty thousand years in the ice. They weighed anchor. They sailed to Biloxi.
“I will no more believe that there is a do-good ship sailing under the flag of the Kingdom of Colchis, under Patent of Divine Intervention, crewed by ancient Argonauts, than I will believe in Divine Intervention itself. Both the Ship and the Divine Intervention are conceits of Melchisedech Duffey the mountebank. But belief in the ship Argo seems to have become the cult belief of the month.”
Edwin K. Elkheart, Secretary-General of WSMAASRITM
The Magus had by now attained such clarity that he remembered his own name. He was Melchisedech Duffey Himself, the King of Salem, ship-pilot extraordinary, art dealer and life expert, adventurer into futures, righter of wrongs. He considered the three monkey-like or wraith-like creatures who served him. He had never known what they were or where they came from. “I think that God sent them to me when He was in especially good humor one day,” Melchisedech said.
Melchisedech had never completely understood his ship either, though it was flesh of his flesh and ghost of his ghost. He had sailed on her dozens of times but he still got lost on her. Melchisedech would sometimes come into fascinating and memorable rooms and wardrooms and passages on the Argo, and he would not be able to find the same places again. The Bible gives this ship dimensions of one sort in the Vulgate and of another sort in the Septuagint, and perhaps a third sort in the Hebrew. There was the intimate ‘Bread and Wine Room’ on the Argo. Very meaningful gatherings were sometimes held there. But, as to the present Argo, she was surely much smaller than she once had been. And yet it carried all the relics and identifications of the Great Ship. There was a piece of the ‘Talking Oak’ set into the ship's wheel, and it would give the history of the ship when questioned. Mostly it was the Argo, but it had been the Navicula Petri or Peter Ship once. 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 as the moon, and long 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 Sinbad of El-Başrah.
There was still the stunning Sinbad 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 Sinbad's own ownership. The magnificent and oceanic paintings in the lounge were, in fact, painted by Count Finnegan in his youth. That was at the 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 passengers as the Traitor Judas (and he was not the most hellish passenger ever to travel on her), and Saint Brandon, and King Richard of England, and Dana Cosquin, and Mark Twain.
What other ship had sailed all the seas, the Timor, the Savu, the Arafura. She had even sailed the Mare Nectaris which is on the moon. And what other ship had visited all the shores of that most mysterious of seas, the Sea of the Seven Lost Years?
There had been one very early morning in Melchisedech's youth, in his fifth or sixth youth really, when he had walked out on to the river shore in St. Louis, just below the Eads Bridge, and walked right on to a low-lying boat. And it had been the tall Argo in disguise. Melchisedech still encountered many stray days from his Seven Lost Years, and today may have been one of them.
No, no, there was nothing at all notable going on aboard the Argo that morning, except a lot of loud hornpipe music and some carousing and laughter; and Eva and some other girls discovered on the Argo were having lots of fun with fellows of uncertain origin. And there was the feeling of expectancy as they came to their designated port. Sea Islands, Mains, Promontories, Waterfronts. There were some great waterfront places there. Remember the Fanged Fish, and the Benevolent Shark? The Drowned Whale, Costerman's Whaler's Inn, Octopus Joe's, the Rusty Harpoon, O'Brien's Polynesian Palace, Ching Ling Charlie's Doss House, the Barbary Ape, the Sulu Ritz, the Sand Flea, Kate's Neanderthal Bar, the—
“I wonder whether Kate's Neanderthal Bar is for sale?” Little Eva asked suddenly.
“I believe that Kate's Neanderthal Bar is almost always for sale,” Melchisedech said. “But what would you do with it?”
“I'd name it Little Eva's Neanderthal Bar, and I'd run it. Come and see me there. Where can I get some business cards printed?”
“There's a little print shop on the Argo here somewhere.”
“I think I know where it is. I can find anything,” Eva said.
Ashore in Biloxi, 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 various plates heaped up to show that she cared. “Biloxi's been sitting in the 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 at all. The only time he ever gets up is to go to the bathroom which he does on the fifteenth and thirtieth of every month. I've told him that he may have missed the ship, that it may have come in and out of port while he was sleeping. But he says he never sleeps, and possibly he doesn't. Oh well, he's never what you'd call very wide awake either. I've told him that he had
not perhaps left a call for the ship, or that it was forgotten. But he insists that he did leave 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. I don't know a more pleasant man anywhere than Biloxi Brannagan. Wherever did you get that beautiful Neanderthal girl, Duffey? I never saw so fine a complexion. I wonder where she got it?”
“From the ice,” said Duffey. “She was frozen in a pillar of ice. We chipped her out of it this morning, but she didn't have to thaw. She is one of those naturally warm persons. She says she didn't feel the cold at all.”
And just at that moment, Eva, the beautiful and archaic neo-Neanderthal lady, came to them with a lop-sided proposition.
“Does either of you two gentlemen have fourteen thousand dollars that you don't need right now?” she asked. “I can make a solid down payment on the Neanderthal Bar for fourteen thousand dollars cash on the barrelhead. What does that mean anyhow? I can buy Kate's Neanderthal Bar just the way it is, and I'm sure I can make a go of it. And if I can get a mate out of it, we'll settle here and give Biloxi a more old fashioned flavor than it's ever had before. Consider it as a civic investment and as a broadening of the base of things.”
Melchisedech Duffey rubbed his two hands together, and two hundred and eighty of the old fifty dollar gold pieces cascaded on to the table with fine old music.
“There is something so boyish about all you sorcerers,” Gertrude commented.
“Isn't there though!” Eva agreed. “But it's going to look fishy me bringing in two hundred and eighty of these fifty dollar goldies. People already think there's something a little bit peculiar about me. Don't either of you have any green stuff?”
Biloxi Brannagan rubbed his hands together, and one hundred and forty of the good old one hundred dollar bills thumped on to the table in a bundle banded together with rubber bands. Eva undid the bundle and examined the bills with her flying fingers and sparkling blue eyes.
“These are good,” she said, “but people may challenge them as fakes if I push this many of them all at one time. They all have the same serial number. Can you make them with a hundred and forty non-consecutive serial numbers?”
“It's a hundred and forty times as hard that way, Eva,” Brannagan said, “and when we manufacture something by mind-power alone, well, there's a limit to mind power. It would take me about a week to do it that way, Eva. I'd have to rest in between times.”
“Well, what will I do?” Eva wailed. “What if Kate sells the Neanderthal to some simpleton while we're fooling around here? I need the Neanderthal. It's the best place ever for meeting some of my own kind and getting things going again.”
“Don't fret, Eva,” Gertrude said. “We'll just have to work around these damned sorcerers if we're going to get anything done. We'll take care of it ourselves. Just wait till I go into my room and get my checkbook.”
Melchisedech Duffey and Biloxi Brannagan slid out of Biloxi harbor very early next morning, before the stars had dimmed. Nevertheless Little Eva and her band of revelers were at dock-side to see them off. They had had a high old time of it all night at the Neanderthal-under-new-management Bar and Hotel, and little Eva pointed out to Duffey three unshaven saltwater characters who did have a touch of the Neanderthal about them. “But which will I marry?” Little Eva asked Melchisedech. “None of them is as close as I'd like, but any of them is close enough. I have to decide.”
“You don't have to decide today, do you?” Brannagan asked.
“Sure, I have to decide today if I'm going to have a kid in six-and-a-half months.”
“It takes nine months, Little Eva,” Melchisedech told her.
“Not for us it doesn't. We're faster about everything than you latter-day races are.” Little Eva was talking pretty well in latter-day English by now, though she had been able to communicate well from the first without the almost words that she threw together making much sense.
And then it was out on the briny seas again for Melchisedech and Biloxi and various other persons and quasi-persons who were on the Argo. Long before mid-morning they chanced upon a little café bobbling in the middle of the ocean, such a thing as the Argo is always chancing on. It was operated by three brackish water persons named Leonard Archive, Oliver Greenflag and Harry A. Kincaid. Harry A. was a handsome lady and the other two were ruddy gentlemen.
“We have everything that you salty travelers might need or name,” Leonard Archive said.
“Bring me a nine pound gar,” Biloxi ordered thoughtfully. “Then flense about three pounds off the tender flanks of it and grill it.”
“I'll have a fourteen pound blopper fish,” Melchisedech said.
Honeybucket Archive set certain dials for voltage and frequency and threw the power. He also made slight adjustments to the underwater electrodes, but that was just because he loved to fiddle with them.
The green channels of ocean were galvanized with life. Shadows of gar were sliding in at every level, but they were selective shadows. Allowing for perspective and distance all those gar were the same size. All the nine pound gar for a mile around had quickly arrived. Out of perhaps three thousand of them, Honeybucket selected three and lifted them out of the water. Of these, he selected, just one for its fine color and proportion, and threw the other two back. He put the one choice gar into the eviscerator, and the perhaps three thousand other gar in near ocean swam away.
Honeybucket let the roiling waters set for about ten seconds. One does not mix fish ways too closely. Then he set the dials anew. There was a new turmoil and arriving, of differently shaped shadows and differently foaming wakes. And there was a great assembly of fourteen pound blopper fish. Honeybucket selected the best one of them and dismissed the others. Both the gar and the blopper fish would soon be table ready.
“For salad I'll have globerina glace,” Duffey said. “For fruit you might make me a chlamydomonas with kelp syrup. I'll have pond scum bread, and sea lice soup. And a Hashed-Ectocarpus Collins for cocktail.”
“I'll have desmid salad with ulotyrix,” said Biloxi. “For fruit you might fix me a volvox colonial. Spirogyra bean, I suppose, and hydrodictyon soup. And a Foraminifera Julip for drink.”
It was a good second breakfast. Both Biloxi and Melchisedech believed in eating well and drinking well in accordance with their Magus-and-Magician station.
Then they resumed their voyaging, back and forth in Lime, here and there in space. The great triumphs of the Argonauts, by their very nature, must remain unknown. Bless all the work and adventure of Holy Argo and her crew.
The Argo was, beyond everything else, a Quest Ship. In earlier tomes of the Ship's log is the account of finding the Great Golden Fleece of Colchis, and indeed that was one of the brightest findings of the ship. But there were several more important findings than that of the Fleece, and dozens that were equally important. The Argo and the Argo Masters had recovered the Holy Cross exactly one hundred years after Saladin had galloped away into the desert dragging it as his horse's tail. There was the recovery of the Lord's Table which had been in the Cenaculum in Jerusalem, and now it was in the Bread and Wine room on the Argo. There was the recovery of the Sancgreal, which grail had been stolen from Glastonbury just a hundred years earlier. And there had been the findings of the Ring of the Nebelungs and of the Philosopher's Stone. Ah, the findings, the findings!
There'd been discoveries of the Northwest Passage, Roland's Horn, Alaric's Sword, Aaron's Rod, and the Baptist's Head (it is still in good flesh, and the growing hair and beard have not been cut; each is now more than one hundred feet long.) They'd found the Magic Flute, the Great Mogul Diamond, the Iron Crown of Charlemagne, the Lost Dutchman Mine. All of the findings had been incidental to the real aim of the Heroic Voyages.
The latest and most contrary of the findings was that of the Sword and Scabbard
of Saint Sécaire. And this was an exception of the prizes in that it wasn't found by the Argo Masters, and they didn't want it to be found; they wanted it to remain lost. It was an anti-prize, a peril to the world.
In times past, the Argo Masters had on purpose lost the Sword and Scabbard three times. At its last losing, they had filled the space between the sword and scabbard with iron, lead, brimstone, and babbet-metal, all boiling hot, and solidified and made it impossible for anyone to draw the sword out easily or accidentally.
Then they had lost it in a place in the ocean named Nine Mile Depth. In the floor of the depth they had lost it a hundred meters deep in mud and lime ooze. And they had memorialized the ocean and its creatures around and about that the Sword and the Scabbard must remain lost. And so it did remain lost for four hundred years.
Then two Frenchmen, the brothers Cyril and Cyrus Dimbeau, went down into the Nine Mile Depth in a bathysphere. They took core specimens for a hundred feet deep in the sea floor there then. And they struck something harder than mud and lime-ooze. So they brought it into their bathysphere with grapples. And then they brought it up to the surface of the Ocean and set it on the platform of their attending boat. It was the Sword and Scabbard of Saint Sécaire. This was on that first morning when Melchisedech and Biloxi Brannagan had taken to sea together on Journey as Argo Masters.
And of course these two Argo Masters came to that mid-Pacific place immediately. They brought the Argo alongside, and they boiled onto the platform of the attending ship.
“What two extinct sea-creatures are these?” Cyril Dimbeau asked with French irony. “Sure, I think they are already rotting as they stand there, they are so old and extinct. We'll just have all the blood out of them and pump them full of preservatives. They'll do to show for novelties when we get home with them.”
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 341
