Fourth Mansions

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Not in immediate danger, I don't believe. I've passed several darker corners than this where it could have happened if it was meant to happen tonight.”

  “Say, I'm Crabtree, Carlyle S.,” the man said. “You should know my name, but most inventors are uninformed and unacquainted outside of their own narrow field. I except myself. Most don't know their own next door neighbor in the speculative neighborhood. Yet I'm an important man, and possibly you are, since you also seem to be a focus of interest. You may regard me, sir, as a little sawed-off joker with a lot of talk who'd be no good in a showdown. But I boxed at Tech, school middleweight champion. I'm still handy. Shall we go jump him and see what he's made of? We could cut him off both ways from here.”

  “It might be fun, Carlyle S., but we wouldn't find out anything, and I'd lose a possible lead. A man following you can sometimes lead you to a place you wouldn't otherwise be able to find. Now, Carlyle, I'm going to phone a man from the corner drug store there. He's given me things in the past. Do me a favor and watch my shadow for a little while. I'll be right back. We'll talk some more, then, and you may want to go with me and talk to this man also.”

  “His name, sir, in case something happens to you, and I may be stubborn enough to follow it out myself?”

  “Harry Hardcrow,” said Fred Foley. “I don't know his number till I look it up. I don't know his address any more either. He's known in the newspaper business, if you would want to find him.”

  “And your name, sir? I don't even know that.”

  “Fred Foley. I'm also in the newspaper business, but not as well known. Watch my shadow for a while. But nothing will happen.”

  “I believe that something will happen, Foley. I have an instinct for these things and I've never been wrong yet. Something very direct will happen suddenly, but I will try to be ready for it.”

  Foley went into the corner drug store, looked up the number and phoned Harry Hardcrow. He got him at once. Hardcrow seemed half glad to hear from him. At least he placed him. And suddenly Hardcrow seemed much more interested. Fred Foley had new fame as a tipster going for him.

  “Foley, honest, I want to see you and talk to you. I want to ask you about —  But honestly, I have something big I have to cover right now. I do want to see you later. You may be able to do something for me, and I'll do almost anything for you. Could you come by my place about midnight?”

  “Oh sure, Hardcrow. You still live at the same place? Yes, I can find it.”

  Foley left the drug store and walked back to meet Carlyle S. Crabtree, the inventor. He thought he might go to the hotel and talk till time for the meeting with Hardcrow. An inventor might have a mind that would hit on overlooked corners of a problem. Besides, Crabtree seemed like a man who would stay with a friend, once he had become a friend. In a way, they had pact between them.

  But Crabtree wasn't standing where he should have been. Foley approached the dark spot very slowly. If Crabtree weren't there —  But he was there, as Foley saw with the absolute opposite of relief. Foley was always cool. He should have been doubly cool with his new maturity. Cool! What he saw froze him solid for a minute.

  Carlyle Crabtree wasn't standing there, but he was lying there. And the way he was lying, Freddy knew that he was dead. He was lying on his face, dragged back into the doorway of an unlighted shop. He had been knifed deeply and his life still ran out in black blood, but the main bleeding was over with. He had no pulse. He had already begun to go rigid.

  Freddy was surprised that he remained calm. But he had been calm in tricky situations for several days now. After all, according to Mary Ann Evans and to his own new feeling, he had achieved maturity. But what now?

  The shadow was nowhere to be seen, but he might still be near. He had killed once, he might intend to do it again. But Freddy began to get mad.

  “I'll have you for this!” he called loudly. Then he was silent. He had no wish to be associated with the death itself so he worked rapidly. He turned Crabtree over. The man hadn't even been gone through. He still bulged in the same places. Whatever interest they had in Crab tree, it hadn't been in what he was carrying.

  Foley took out a very large, very full manila envelope that Crabtree carried inside his shirt. He had known that Crabtree carried his most precious possession there. The chubby little man wasn't that chubby. Freddy also took the money-belt and the wallet, as such things can be handy.

  He finished with it. But he had his new instincts and insights, and also his old reporter instincts. They shrilled at him “Plant! Plant!” Freddy had been wrong at first. Crabtree had been gone through. Someone had a very great interest in what he had been carrying, to frisk so quickly and completely, and to substitute authentically.

  Freddy had begun to like the little inventor, but he left him there and walked rapidly toward his hotel. Two people were signaling his mind. This business of distant people talking to him was something new these last two or three days and he didn't attempt to account for it. They had to be people who had also been brushed by the brain-weave, for that acted somehow as communication satellite to bounce the messages. But this was Bencher, Bedelia's father. Had the weave attacked him too? Or had he had some earlier encounter? After all, he did have a great scar on his forehead from some youthful encounter, and it was very like the mark the Harvesters had inflicted on themselves lately.

  “Stay there and wait, Freddy,” Bencher was saying. “I'll get you out of there.”

  “Stay here and wait nothing!” Freddy snorted. He had picked up his shadow again after two blocks and he didn't intend to make a mistake. Freddy was very alert now and very angry. Turning a corner, he paused and listened. There was nothing to be heard, though he fancied he could hear another man listening. Foley reversed. He was fast. He thought he could collar that shadow quickly and have him, knife or no knife.

  The shadow was faster. Foley couldn't run him down. He followed him around another corner, and the shadow had disappeared completely. But there wasn't any place he could have disappeared.

  “Stay there, Freddy, you have to stay there,” Bencher was saying again. “I'll get you out, I'll get you over the wall somehow.”

  “Over what wall?” Freddy asked. Finally when Freddy had neared his hotel, the shadow was there again, but further back.

  “Ah well, this is your game,” Freddy said. “I'll find a game that I can play better than you. There's no use getting cute now at this end of the trail. If you followed me before, you know where I'm staying.” Freddy went into his hotel.

  “It's simply diabolism,” Bencher was saying. “I don't know why my daughter became involved with it. It isn't that she's brainless, it's just that she's still a kid. I'll figure it out. I'll sort out the different powers involved. This simple diabolism I can whip. Stay there and don't worry. I'll get you over the wall.”

  “Leave it, Bencher,” Freddy said. “I'm not behind walls, and I can whip simple diabolism myself. This is more complex.”

  Freddy went to his room, bolted every bolt, checked windows and such, went into the bathroom to be safe from possible gunfire from outside, and dumped all the Crabtree loot onto the floor. He even sounded the wall between his and the bathroom of the next room. It sounded firm and untampered-with.

  But the second voice came now. It had waited politely for the first one, Bencher's, to finish.

  “You know who I am,” came the slightly-slurred, slightly-accented voice of Miguel Fuentes to Freddy's inner ears. “We have not met but we know each other. We are both brushed by the devil-weave, and we can fox back and talk by it. I want to make proclamation. You will proclaim this for me from the capital of your country. Let me talk now. You will not need to write it down till later, or you can phone it in to someone and not write it down at all. I know you are like me, you have a memory for words, and you will remember all of mine exactly.

  “I make proclamation of who I am and what I will do for the world. I was roused to my activity by devils for a devils’ game, but I will
not do devils’ work. This is a mistake that the devils make, that they believe they have the ordering of things. They cannot remember that very often these things turn against them: that they can start a wind but they cannot order which way the wind will blow. This is what I am: a poor man, but a good man at several trades; a man of brains who has never used his brains until now; a bad man very often, but one who was never so dishonest as to pretend that his bad was good; a slob, un chapucero, there is no word in English to say what sort of slob I was; a strong man, particularly in the arms and back and loins and legs; a humorous man even when the great gash of false justice and misery cuts across the whole world picture.

  “Why has this thing come to me? Why, because it did not come to another man, I suppose. The world is in need of ordering, and there is no other man who steps forward and says ‘I will order it.’

  “I will be called fascist. I and mine will be fascist in the old Roman sense, not in the sense of the modern sniveling things that are of the left and not of the right. We will be fascist in the real sense and sign of the fasces. This is the battle-ax bound in with sticks and rods, and the meaning of it is authority by steps. Ax cuts sticks as threat, sticks beat dogs, and dogs (when comes an unusual revolution) eat up ax. This is like the hand and fist game that children play when they put out their hands to challenge each other: rock breaks scissors, scissors cuts paper and paper covers rock.

  “As to the last part of my instance, the revolution where dogs eat up ax, I will proclaim it in a moment what elegant and bristling and false dogs those are, and how they are not of the people at all but are vicious prey on the people.

  “This is the fault of the world, this is the reason that it needs ordering now: it is bankrupt in the middle of its wealth, and it offers a life that is not worth living. It has stolen their old poverty from the people and given them meaner things under new names. It has brought back a slavery that is more abject than any in history, though its chains are not of iron but of peculiar compulsion. The world has befouled itself and it needs to be cleaned. Think of me as the cleaner of the world. If I use a little blood instead of useless detergent, it is to cleanse it the better.

  “I speak good words of Indians, the earth people of earth. I have traveled to countries and continents as sea-man and irregular soldier and I have seen that it is the same everywhere. There are always the earth-people (I will call them Indians, though they have other names in other places; there are even blond and redheaded Indians, and fair and black and the color morado); and there are the ravening dog- or wolf-people who prey on them. It is the dog- and wolf-people who use revolution and the liberalism-slavery trick and the devil catchwords to disorder the world. In every land of Latin America and in most lands of the world, there have been at least three revolutions by these dog-people (some of blood, some of idea only), and all have been in the name of the earth-people. Now there are the great families and groups who rule and enslave everywhere. They pass the dog-lie that it is the old stubborn rich families, that it is the old stubborn church, that it is the old stubborn ways that are obstacles. This is all lying. It is always the new rich dog-families and groups, the novel church of the itching ears, the ways of new hell that enslave. And it is these dogs who rule always who ask falsely for more revolution; it is they who bleed false blood for the new poor who are their own creation; it is they who preach love instead of law. For the law obliges them and restricts them. But it costs them nothing to use the word “love.”

  “I call them the elegant dogs, and I begin to kill them now. They rule the world but they do not believe that there is another world above and after.

  “I speak good words of church who is mother here and also hereafter. But it is for real love of church that I will kill certain judas priests and judas bishops and almost all of judas editors and journalists.

  “But for our great compassion, we will not kill so many people as many might wish. Of most of the elegant dogs we will only pull the teeth. ‘This is no good,’ says an adviser who joined me only today. “Those dogs will grow new teeth. Kill them all.’ We will see. If they persist in growing new teeth, then it is time to kill them.

  “We will kill only such persistent false voices as can not otherwise be silenced. In all the world we may have to kill no more than one million liberals, communists and doctrinaires. The rest will shrivel, for a time at least.

  “I understand, with my new insight, the four powers that are on the fringe of the world. I have now become actionist and captain of one of those powers. I understand the abiding men and the returning men. I understand which support us and which support the dog-faced octopus.

  “Am I so sure that I am right? No. I am not. A man who is sure he is right is always wrong. But I am sure that the elegant dogs are wrong. A patrick whose mind I encounter tells me that God still regards all four sets of us things as exterior creatures, not to be allowed into the castle or the world, not good for the castle or the world. I believe that God is mistaken in classing us with the other powers, and I will convince Him of His mistake. But I will do what I have to do, even though I was roused by devils and have not yet the full approval of God. That will come if I do my work well.

  “To all the governments and governors of the world: Wait and do not panic. I am coming to relieve you of your governing as soon as possible. Do not abuse anything while you wait. You are on time and sufferance. I come quickly, but there is a whole world to occupy. I will kill only the anti-life people who speak of unwanted people, as if there could ever be too many people, as if there could ever be too much of this highest created excellence. I will kill only unreformable liberals, and elegant dogs who oppress, and the evil returning men who are fine and yellow in toadflax.

  “To the world in disorder: Wait. Persevere. I come to order it now.

  “Proclaim that, Foley, proclaim it. It will really come about.”

  “All right, Miguel, all right. I'll proclaim it,” Freddy said. “Yes, I will remember it all. Leave me now. I have my affair with elegant dogs and returned men fine in toadflax.”

  VIII: THE LINE OF YOUR THROAT, THE MERCURIAL MOVEMENT

  What adders came to shed their coats?

  What coiled obscene

  Small serpents with soft stretching throats

  Caressed Faustine?

  Swinburne

  IN HIS HOTEL ROOM Fred Foley examined the money-belt and billfold he had taken from Crabtree. Finding nothing of interest in them except money and identification, he made a bundle of them to parcel post to the police. He examined casually the contents of the large manila envelope. This, he decided, he would keep for further study.

  It was the detailing of Crabtree's latest invention, the design of a cubicle. The cubicle would be the size to hold a man lying down. It would be airtight and nearly indestructible when sealed. The purpose of it was obscure, though the papers said it was an Enervator. “Who wants to be enervated anyhow?” Foley asked himself.

  There was considerable electromagnetic apparatus, minute controls to maintain conditions and large controls apparently to set up conditions. There were many pages of mathematics and schematics which could not be digested casually; by many persons they could not have been digested at all. But Foley, who had been a science feature writer, had a talent of going to the heart of a thing and he soon had the basic idea of it.

  “But it's all wrong,” he said.

  “Of course it is,” said Hondo Silverio. “It's a substitution, but an ingenious one.”

  “It isn't an Enervator, of course,” said Richard Bencher. “It's an Hypnotic Dredge. Even in its wrongness I can see that the original is meant to bring up the strengths and varieties unused, the vitality untapped, to awaken the interior nourishing weirdness and so demolish the exterior mock-root poisons. Stay there, Foley; I'll get you over the wall.”

  “No machine will do it — not this, not the original,” said Hondo Silverio. “But they're afraid of it and have intercepted it. They're terrified of our interior
strengths.”

  “I didn't know you two were tuned in,” Freddy said. There was a note by Crabtree to the effect that the thing had never actually been tried out. There was writing that Freddy called the “A” or Crabtree hand; there were some that he called the “B” substitution or other hand, but this was so near to the Crabtree hand that Foley did not know how he distinguished them.

  There was a feeling about all this that Foley had from the first, a feeling which he knew would persist no matter how deeply he delved into it: that was the feeling that the whole thing was a hoax.

  At the same time there was the even stronger feeling that Carlyle S. Crabtree had been in no respect a hoaxer. But can a straight man perpetuate a hoax unwittingly? No, not that man. He might perpetuate some nonsense, or a failure or an ineptitude, but never a hoax.

  But this smelled of hoax all through it. “Well, I'll leave it here a while,” Freddy told himself. He would go out. He knew that his room and his things would be gone through while he was out. No matter. Whoever they were, they already knew what it all was, and he didn't.

  Freddy went out for his meeting with Harry Hardcrow. He stopped in the street in front of his hotel and whistled loudly. “Coming?” he called then. “Coming after me?” But his shadow was not to be seen. Then a taxi rolled around the corner and stopped to his hail. Freddy got in. He had the feeling that he would be taken to his destination whether he gave it or not, but he was skittish of testing it. He gave the driver Harry Hardcrow's address.