More Than Melchisedech

by R. A. Lafferty

  A youngish man who had been popping around the coach for a long while now approached as if to join their party. Nine year old Charlotte turned him aside with an imperious gesture, but surely the Mullenses knew the man.

  “He also has the terminal illness,” Duffey told himself. “Strange, strange.”

  “But I found that my husband had borrowed double and even triple on what insurance he had,” Gloria Mullens was continuing. “And the insurance is attached where I can't touch it. He had borrowed double on the house and on everything. There are more debts of his turning up every day. I'll never clear them all. And I found that I had co-signed with him on a dozen notes, things that I had never paid any attention to at the time. They attached my salary where I worked, so Charlotte and I are skipping. Aren't you kissing Charlotte more than that last score called for? I still think that my good man left a stash of money somewhere and that he is trying to tell me where it is. His voice comes to me, but faintly. I am a psychic, but nobody is psychic as to his own closest affairs.”

  “Are you a professional psychic, Gloria?” Melchisedech asked.

  “Yes, sometimes. You also are a psychic, as I divine, Mr. Duffey, and you may be able to help us. We're running blind and we're about broke. I'll have to get a job in Chicago for a while, and I'm not even sure that that's where the stash is. My man used to take a lot of quick trips to Chicago. He would get stuff off the boats and bring it to Omaha and other places. Oh, we both love him so and we miss him so much, terribly! But how can you backtrack on a butterfly?”

  “I don't quite know,” Duffey said. “Me, I'm on the trail of a moth.”

  They played another hand of cards, and Duffey kissed Charlotte quite a bit. She was no little girl. She was something else.

  “What kind of moth?” Charlotte asked him.

  “Oh, I believe that it is the tinea evocata, the evoking moth,” Duffey said, “or it is the indagatio, the seeking moth. Or maybe it will happen to be the tinea letitia, the joyful moth.”

  “Sum etiam erudita ipse,” Charlotte said, and Duffey's suspicions were confirmed that this creature wasn't a little girl at all. “I'm educated myself” , she had said, and she hadn't got that way in nine years. And now and then she set her little girl's voice aside, especially when she whispered to Duffey, and used a woman's voice. “We'll find her for you, Duffey,” she said now. “Evoking moths are always female, and we'll find her for you.”

  “She misses her father so much,” Gloria said. “He had red whiskers too. I believe that she has fastened on you as a father image.”

  “Father image, my eye!” Charlotte scoffed. “Duffey is my sweetheart.”

  “How old are you really, Charlotte?” Duffey asked her. “Sometimes you don't talk quite like a nine year old girl.”

  “Sometimes I get damned tired of talking like a nine year old girl,” she said. “You told Gloria that you were Melchisedech and that you had never had any father or mother. Well, I have my mystery and paradox too. I am older than my father and I am older than my mother, and that is as much as I will tell you. Possibly I am old enough to have been your mother, Duffey. I'm precocious about things like that, having sons and such.”

  “How old are you, Charlotte?”

  “Oh, thirty-eight. That isn't really very old. And, as Gloria says, what can anybody do with a little girl who loves the men so much.”

  “What's Gloria?”

  “My sister. That's usually the part I give to the other woman, after it's found out that she isn't my mother.”

  “And the man who was about to join us when you gestured him off?”

  “He's my son. But by the time he came by accident to take a fourth hand at cards, I had come to like you and didn't want to fleece you.”

  “Do the bunch of you live by playing cards?”

  “Oh no, but it helps. We make a lot from it, but we make a lot from everything. There really is a stash in Chicago though. All the psychics we know are on the other side now. He's hired them against us. We need a good psychic, a mind-prober, to find the stash for us, We're too close to do it ourselves, though I'm a strong psychic. Duffey, find this butterfly nest for us, and we'll find your moth for you. I can find her for you, Duffey.”

  A little later in the night, Duffey taught Charlotte and her mother the Gadarene Swine Song. They sang it resoundingly, and Charlotte was particularly apt at inventing verses for it. She was smart. Some of the people in the day coach were trying to sleep and they protested the loud singing. But the Mullenses, and Duffey under the influence of Charlotte Mullens, were rude and just didn't care whether they kept those people awake or not.

  2

  In Chicago, Duffey said that he was going to a little north-side hotel that he knew. “That's as good a place as any,” Charlotte said. “If they look for us in our old haunts, maybe they won't be finding us in a north-side hideaway.” Charlotte and her sister Gloria and her son Manolo went with Duffey in a taxi to the little north-side hotel. It was bright morning.

  Duffey did several things that day while he listened to the sound of wings that were close. He was not a total stranger to Chicago. He had surely been there several times for a week or more. Once he had spent a Christmas vacation there in the rich home of Sebastian Hilton. Once he had lived there for a month or so with false kindred who shucked him off to other false kindred when they found out just how unsettling a boy he was. Several times he had been there looking into business deals, possibly in the hidden years, certainly in the subsequent years. He went to see Gabriel Szymansky who was a businessman who lacked the personality to get along with the public. Gabriel had two shops back to back, with a foot passage under the alley between them. The shops faced on two different streets. On the rich street, Gabriel was an antique dealer. On the poor street he was a pawnbroker. This man Gabriel had made big sums of money, but he always used associates to maintain the confidence of the public. There was never a more honest nor a more upright man than Gabriel, but the public can never accept an absolutely honest man as really honest. There is nothing in the absolutely honest man that the public can relate to. The public insists on an open man who is at least one-third rogue and one-third blow-mouth. Duffey could always force himself to be such a person.

  About six months previously, Duffey had talked to this man Szymansky about coming into business with him and adding a book store and an art store. Duffey had also talked to Szymansky about six years previously, apparently during the hidden years, and he had given him a talisman. Six months ago, Duffey had hesitated on the deal of going into business with the man. Now he wanted it.

  “I'll start today, Gabriel,” Duffey said. “I can throw in the first ten thousand today and the second half of it within six months.” Duffey could have thrown it all in that day, but he liked double-jointed deals. “I will take the full six rooms over the back shop, and I will be available day and night. I myself will move in tomorrow, and my wife will move in within a week.”

  “Duffey, I didn't know that you had a wife.”

  “I haven't. But within a week, I will have. She is a wonderful woman, I am sure of that. And ours will be a long and steady life together.”

  “Is she a Chicago girl?”

  “She presently resides in Chicago.”

  They closed the deal. Duffey didn't have any wife, and he had no idea whom he would marry. He hadn't seen her. He had no notion what she was like. He only felt an overriding compulsion to find her somewhere nearby. For that, he had been called to Chicago over the miles.

  “What is she like, Duffey?” Gabriel asked. “What are her outstanding qualities?”

  “Fire and finesse,” Duffey said. And he left Szymansky satisfied with what he had done so far.

  There was a girl living in Chicago, Lily Koch, who had used to be the girl merchant at the school near Duffey's own school. Duffey phoned for her, and he was told by a pleasantly haunting voice that she was not in, but that she would get in contact with him, or he could call again, or they would both c
all, or anyhow they would get together, God willing. Duffey loved that pleasantly haunting voice on the phone.

  He called for Sebastian Hilton who still maintained one of his several residences in Chicago. Sebastian was not in, but he would be at his club at one o'clock the following day. Yes, he would absolutely be there, though at present he was out of town. Yes, he would surely see Melchisedech Duffey there. Mr. Duffey was on the list of people who Mr. Hilton would always see. It was quite a short list, the voice said.

  Out and about, a little girl was skipping circles around him on the sidewalk with a skipping rope. No, he was wrong. It wasn't a little girl. It was Charlotte Mullens.

  “Are you finding the butterfly nest for me, Duffey?” she asked him, and they went over and sat on a bench where one waited for streetcars.

  “Yes, yes, my little creature, we will find this thing for you right away,” Duffey said, and he popped his hands together.

  “About your creatures, my dear,” Charlotte said. “Oh yes, I know about your creatures. They are almost the most interesting things that I find in your mind. I make creatures also, or figures, but I use a different process. Your figures, your creatures, dear, you need lessons in stagecraft. Your people, while you are making them, are static. You have not put them into motion at all.”

  “They are quite young,” Duffey said.

  “It's getting time that you devised scenes and scenarios for them. I will help you with it in a few years if we are both still around. The world has too many static people now. Do not add to them. My own, while they are often short-lived, are always quite kinetic.”

  “What do you use, Charlotte?” Duffey asked her. “I already had the idea that your sister and your son were projections of you, that they were ventriloquist's figures that you had made, or that they were mere lumps of your aura. Are they?”

  “Oh, I use flesh and blood people, Duffey, but I select rather empty and pliable ones, usually actors. Then I do make them into compliant figures yes, and I do make them into lumps of my own aura. But there is nothing beyond nature in my creations. Is there in yours?”

  “I don't know,” Duffey said. “Well, I'm having more luck at finding the butterfly's nest than at finding the moth. The stash doesn't belong to you, Charlotte, but it did not belong to the man who put it there either. That man is away in durance, but he expected the stash to be inviolable in his absence.”

  “That man is coming out of durance today or tomorrow,” Charlotte said. “That is what makes it so edgy.”

  “I want to know his name, Charlotte. I can't psyche this unless I know his name.”

  “Aga Gonof is his name, and his son is Orestes Gonof. He has boats. He brings liquor from Canada to Chicago and Detroit and Cleveland. I had a husband who was involved with him, and part of the stash does belong to me, a small part of it, Duffey, but you don't need the details. I'll take the other ninety-five percent for interest on the five percent that's been withheld from me.”

  “Does Gonof know what you look like?”

  “No. Nobody knows what I look like. He called me the ‘Disembodied Brain’, so I have heard. I used to play the role of my own daughter. But even as my own daughter, I'd have to be quite a bit older and larger now than I was whenever he might possibly have seen me. And I'm still the same age and size. Work on it, darling. You won't have to tell me what you find. It will all be open to me. But I love to talk to you at every opportunity.”

  That little girl skipped away with her skipping rope.

  Well, there was a key to unlock the box where the stash was, and Duffey got (from what mind he did not know) a figure replica of the key. Duffey knew about keys. He had made keys and matched them. And keys can be number coded for their reproduction. Duffey was able to write down the base or stock number of that key just by looking at it with his inner eye. And he was able to write down the several cluster numbers that define the modification of that basic stock, the little notches and kerfs and dips. It was a typical safety deposit box key, if only he knew the number and location of the box. That was the crux, of course. Boxes can be strong-opened without keys, but they can't be found without data to go on.

  “And the location and number of the box will come to me,” Duffey said.

  “Of course it will,” Charlotte told him. She wasn't physically present just then, but that didn't prevent them from communicating. “And I'll be right there when it comes to you. But you missed your moth for today. We'll have to get her early in the morning, I believe.”

  “Where?”

  “Not more than two blocks from our hotel. She is at a place very early in the mornings, and then she goes somewhere else. We got to town too late for her this morning. We'll catch her tomorrow sure. There is no moth that can escape Charlotte and Melchisedech. I'll go get the key made now.”

  It was easy, since they were in accord and since they were both full of powers, to talk to each other out of presence. Except that Charlotte had such a fund of pleasure and carnality accompanying her presence.

  3

  Very late that night, after Duffey had gone to bed in his hotel room, Charlotte visited him there. Whether this visit was in the body or out of it is not certain, but most likely it was an out-of-the-body interlude. Duffey had been juggling the names and numbers while he slept and woke and slept again. He was in a wasteland. The sky and soil were much different from those of ordinary earth. They were more in the conditions that had prevailed in the seven-year land, during the dark years or the lost years.

  It was a shore, but the ocean at that place was empty. There were bales on a dock, but they could not be loaded until a ship could find water to come by. A stevedore and his two brothers were guarding the bales, but they were nervous and pacing as if they had something else on their minds. They made sudden decisions. They left the bales abruptly and strode rapidly to the place where the wheels of three gate valves came out of the ground. And that is where they made their mistake.

  Duffey was onto those bales as soon as the stevedores had gone a little distance. He broke several of the bales open and let them scatter. They were bales of numbers and letters, and Duffey fumbled feverishly into their bulk for the right numbers and letters.

  The stevedores turned the three gate valves that came out of the ground. This turned on the ocean and harbor and let the water flow in and fill things up. A ship on the other side of a hill or promontory blew its whistle as a signal that it was coming for the bales. Then the three slant-faced stevedores turned back toward their bales and saw that they had been broken open. The foremost of them came at Duffey murderously with a boat hook to kill him. “These will have to do,” Duffey cried as he backed off with a handful of numbers and letters that he had selected. “The right ones have to be among these, or all is lost.” The three Mullens people were there together then, though Charlotte had been there all the time.

  “Stop the one with the hook!” little Charlotte Mullens cried out. “Gloria, Manolo my son, divert him, throw him down, stop him even if he kills you! Here, give me those, Duffey!” Charlotte swept the numbers and letters into her hands and arranged them like a hand of cards. “Perfect,” she cried then, “absolutely perfect. This will tell me everything I need to know. Split, Duffey! Split, everybody! But divert him for a moment, Gloria and Manolo, and watch out for the other two. Maybe they won't really use the hooks on you. Oh, it spells it all out, and numbers it all out so perfectly: the bank building, the deposit box number, everything! Wonderful! Aw, ugh! It always sickens me to hear a boat hook crunch a skull like that.”

  “Will you be all right, Charlotte?” Duffey cried in a fleeting moment, knowing that they had to get away, knowing that Gloria and Manolo were already dead.

  “Oh sure. I know how to go to ground, Duff,” little girl Charlotte said. “In Chicago, I always take refuge in St. Angela Orba Orphanage. All but two of the sisters there think that I'm a little girl. And those two who know what I am, they will always provide me with commitment papers and love. You and you
r moth come out sometime and adopt me if you want to.”

  Duffey was running through Dead Man's Meadow then. It was a notorious stretch of seven-year land. But he felt the anguish of the three slanted-faced stevedores behind him. The ship was already at the dock for their bales. But some of the bales had been broken open, and some of them had blood on them.

  Duffey's phone rang then. He was in bed in his hotel room. It was Charlotte who was phoning. “Get up, Duffey,” she was singing. “We go moth hunting in just five minutes. Who'd have thought that moths got up so early, but I know where she is now. You have located the butterfly's nest for me and have given me the key to it, and you have given me its location and number just now. So I will find your moth for you.” “Ah, Charlotte, I was just dreaming about — ”

  “Dreaming my nine year old fanny! Don't you know the difference between a dream and a psychosomatic trance? We used to use the trances a lot when we did our mentalist acts. They almost always worked. And yours worked, Duffey! Why, all I needed was the name of the bank and the number of the safety deposit box. Box? It's a walk-in, isn't it? I'll make the pick-up today. I'm worried about those stevedores with the boat hooks though. They're killers.”

  “How did you enter my dream literally?”

  “I told you that it was a psychosomatic trance, not a dream. I opened the door and walked into it, of course. This isn't getting you up and dressed. I'll be at your door in two minutes.” She hung up.

  But she was at his door in half a minute and into his room.

  “Does it always take you that long to put your pants on?” she asked. “Your moth will be at that little stone church just two blocks from here north. I want to go to confession before mass. It's an even flip whether I'll get murdered on the swipe I'm on today, and I want to be prepared for death. On come on! You don't need to wash this morning. Lots of people don't wash anymore. It's kind of out.”