More Than Melchisedech

by R. A. Lafferty

  Duffey took the script for the play with him and left the girls and went over to Zabotski's old place. This was the first look he had had of his city since his return from his ‘Fifth Road’ excursion. When he had returned to awareness he had already been in conversation with the girls. The city looked pretty much as it always had, and yet Duffey looked at it with a jaundiced eye. The jaundiced eye was one of the things he had brought back from his mingling with the splendid people.

  At least the Bayougoula Park was no longer there, as it had been there in the Fifth Contingency. And some of Zabotski's buildings were back there again, as they had not been there in the Contingency.

  “Is Zabotski around the place?” Duffey asked a fellow who rented from Zab in one of the apartment buildings. “I'm almost afraid to ask.”

  “He just left,” said the renter (his name was Alexi Ravel). “He just came by to collect the rents. That's all he comes by for now. He spends all his time on the lake in that big, freakish boat with Wife Waldo and all the kids and animals. He says that when catastrophe strikes, they'll have a better chance than most of riding it out.”

  “Ah, does Zab seem to be all right?”

  “All right? No, of course not, Duffey. When was he ever all right? He's as nutty as Pecan Prairie. By the way, I'm more than a bit angry with you, Duff. I had a dream that I was dying and that you passed me by and let me die. I wouldn't have done that to you. I'd have tried to save you.”

  “But Alexi, if it was only a dream — ” Duffey tried to defend himself with hand-flopping gestures. But he did remember the incident. That bit of trash that had seemed to call to him, it had been Alexi Revel in mortal agony. Duffey hadn't stopped because it would be an unsplendid thing to notice a pile of trash. But now he was ashamed.

  “No, it was only only a dream, Duffey,” Ravel said bitingly. “I don't know what it was, but you knew it was me in it. You left me there to die, and I wouldn't have done that to a dog.”

  Alexi Ravel turned away from Duffey, spat on the sidewalk in disgust, and went into the Zabotski-owned apartment building where he lived.

  Well anyhow, Zabotski was back in the well-a-day world, in as much as he had ever been in it. And his watertight contraption, the large boat or barge, was apparently back also. In the world of the splendid Devildom, Zabotski hadn't seemed to remember anything about building the boat.

  Duffey went into his own place that was quite near (Bayougoula Park was no longer between his place and Zabotski's buildings). He saw by his automatic clock that it was Monday, a Monday that he had lived once before. The Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday of that week he had already lived once, before he found himself in the situation of the Fifth Case.

  It being Monday, there was a letter from his quasi-brother Bagby. It was not, however, the same Bagby letter that had been there the previous time that Duffey had lived this Monday.

  “My dear brother and most egregious ass,” the letter began. “It is with disgust verging on loathing that I view some of your recent conduct. An ordinary person, not very smart, might have been taken in by some of the pretensions of the Royal Pop People, for a very little while. But you, who are supposed to be an extraordinary person, were taken in by them all one day and far into the hellish night. You are supposed to be better than that. You have proved yourself, in this, to be a cad and a coward and a crawler, a total goof, and not at all manly. But you could just as well have been a good man in the episode. You have the equipment to be so.

  “For a little pride, you denied your people, and you went with the Royal Freaks. And now you have withdrawn from it, though not till the twenty-third hour. That much is good. But you have not withdrawn from it in all ways clean.

  “Now you must go into the wilderness and gather your strength. If you cannot gather it now, under disadvantaged conditions and beset with obstacles, then you will never be able to gather it at all. Wherever you go, whatever you do, for a while, it will be a wilderness where you are. You will make your own wilderness. And you will be an old bear in the woods of it.

  “Ah well, we bet on you here. We bet clay coins that we make ourselves, for we use no other money here. Because of your peculiar attributes and circumstances, many persons are watching how it will go with you, and I am watching also. ‘He cannot die,’ some people say ‘or at least he cannot have an end.’ So, what will happen to you? There are several theories about this, and we bet on them.”

  “But I have died,” Duffey told himself and Bagby if he could hear him, “and I have my ashes somewhere to prove it. Do not say that I can't die. I will have no end, it says? It seems, at the moment, that I will have no end in the sense that I will have no purpose. I hope that is not the true case of it.”

  “My brother, be a little more steadfast in your unique career. It is absolutely necessary that you should be. It only begins to get rough for you so far.”

  Oh, it was nice to have one faithful correspondent like this stepbrother Bagby.

  Duffey was walking through that part of his wilderness that is called Dumaine Street. That sign “The Future Begins Right Here” was still standing in the pedestrian way. It must have been some time since Crissie Cristofero had first painted it. Its paint must long since be dry. The message of it was really directed to Duffey personally, which may have been the reason that he seemed to be the only one who noticed it.

  The sign stood in the pedestrian way, but it wasn't an obstacle to the people. They didn't walk around it. They walked through it. Duffey also attempted to walk through it, but he stumbled into it violently, for it was solid and substantial to him. He tangled himself up, and he fell backwards with a resounding clatter. It was an obstacle to him, if not to others.

  “What's with you, man?” a young fellow asked sharply. “You were walking along in the clear when all at once you started to fall all over yourself. Then you stumbled backwards and fell flat.” The young fellow helped Duffey to his feet. “Are you all right?” he asked. “You are the clumsiest old bear I ever saw in my life.”

  Yes, there are pitfalls and obstacles in the wilderness, and a man falls several times a day.

  “I know it's rough a second or two beyond that sign, or a day or two beyond it,” Duffey said. “But maybe that is only the breakers breaking on the rocks. Will there not be clear water a little bit beyond them? How will it be a year beyond the barrier? I will see?

  “I and my giants will crash through! Power, power, lend me power! I have the modified lordship of time as a promise. I must make use of that now. I go through. Why is it so much harder than it used to be?”

  Melchisedech went through the barrier and through the breakers that are just beyond it. And he found clear and nearly smooth water.

  2

  There should not be any awkward confrontations. Melchisedech had jumped one year into the future, but so had the world. To be sure that there would be no clashing of irreconcilables, Melchisedech walked to the Pelican Press which was the least awkward place that he knew. The memories of the jumped year should accrue to him now and supply him with all the background he needed. After all, this was himself, and these would be his memories. He was jumping that year completely, and he should have arrived with every impression of that year complete within him.

  But they were a very clotted bunch of impressions, very many for some months, hardly any for others. They would take some sorting out, and his own memories should be in him naturally.

  He swung open the ornate door, bronzed by Finnegan, with the Holy Pelican so vivid on it, so alive that you wanted to throw it a fish. He entered, and he found Mary Virginia Schaeffer inside.

  Few people have ever realized how complex a person was the open and intelligent and always kind Mary Virginia. And Duffey had not really realized it until he saw the look on her face now. Complex! Oh complex! She kept a gently burning look on him for a long time. She ran her hand over his face. “Ugh, my dear, ugh,” she said. “That is my word on the subject. If I did not love you I could not stand you so
at all. How have you come to this?”

  That look of hers would have melted tin or brass. Well, Duffey was a tin horn sport loaded with brass, and it melted him completely.

  “Oh Melchisedech, whatever will I do with you?” she said then. “You are the most exasperating person that I have ever known.” But Duffey, for the life of him, couldn't think of anything exasperating he had done lately. His memories of the ‘lately’ were completely blank.

  “What have I done wrong, Mary V.?” he asked. “You almost sound as if you weren't glad to see me this day. Fake it, sis, fake it. Pretend that you're glad to see me.”

  “I love you, Duff, but you shouldn't be here. Have any of the others seen you? They'll be frightened if they do see you.”

  “Why should anyone ever be frightened of me? Have I given you my review column for this week's Bark yet? Somehow I don't remember whether I have or not. If I haven't, I'll sit right down and do it now.”

  “Go ahead,” Mary Virginia said. “No, you haven't done one for this week yet. Do it now if you wish, yes. It will certainly be a ‘First’.”

  Duffey sat down at the little desk there and began to type quite rapidly. He wrote a very long and absolutely excellent review column, about three thousand words in a little more than an hour. His fingers and his mind had wings on them. It was an outstanding piece, loaded with insights and breakthrough stuff. Good! It was thumping good. Nobody around there, not even Stein, had ever marshaled such an array of crashing and illuminating ideas before.

  Salvation Sally started into the room. She looked at Duffey rattling away at the typewriter. Then she gave an odd ‘squawk’ and bolted out of the room again. And Mary Virginia went out after her. Odd!

  But it was not nearly so odd as the super-odd things that were flooding through Duffey and being transformed into thoughty words by his magic fingers. How they did rattle out of that machine! “It's as though I had acquired bi-mentality and bi-local vision,” he told himself. “Never have I been able to see things from so many sides.” Mary Virginia came back into the room after a while. She was smiling in seven-level arrangement and compression. And Duffey continued with his excellent piece.

  Then the splendid and noetic Absalom Stein strode into the room. Yes, he was superb and splendid, and yes he knew it all. His daughter Becky was correct that he now suffered with overweening superbity. What, did he still have it? He had been suffering from it for more than a year then.

  Stein looked at Melchisedech in an obscure way, not startled really, but not absolutely unstartled either. He shook his head that seemed to be even bigger than it used to be. He grinned a grin that was even wider than his previous record.

  “I'll not believe it,” he cried. “Whoop, I'll not believe it!” he howled. His rising howl broke into a roaring laugh, a grandfather guffaw, and he reeled out of the room overcome by something that went beyond merriment. And he could be heard with his echoing laughter filling all the streets outside.

  “That man sure can laugh long,” Melchisedech said. “I wonder why? What was so funny? They should barrel up laughter like that in casks and seal it. That was extraordinary.”

  And Duffey rattled along and finished his astonishing review article.

  “Here it is, Mary Virginia,” he said, “and it's good.”

  “I'm sure it is, I'm sure it is,” she said. “We permit nothing that isn't good here. And now hadn't you better go?”

  “What for? I like it here. It's my favorite place, after my own, of course. And besides, I am one-third owner of this place and its publications. Why are you angry with me? Or disappointed? Why are you whatever it is?”

  “Have you done something bad, Melchisedech?” she asked. “Worse than usual, I mean.”

  “I don't think so. Not worse than usual, no.”

  “Then why are you wandering? Why haven't you found peace?”

  “I'm not wandering, Mary Virginia. I'm not even in the mood to wander.

  “And I am looking for peace, and for pattern and for purpose, and all such things. Why is there a misunderstanding between us today?”

  “Well, why are you so ambiguous then?”

  “Ambiguous? I? Never.”

  “Yes, ambiguous. Ghosts are always ambiguous. That's all that they are. They are the essence of ambiguity. What? Don't you really understand what it is, dear? You're dead all these months. You're a ghost. And properly disposed persons have no need to wander as ghosts. At least I don't believe that they do.

  “Ah, you fade out! Good, good. Then you're not really wandering lost. Then I only saw you because I was tired, and your specter was part of my tiredness. But how did Salvation Sally and Absalom Stein see you then?

  “Whatever it is, bless you, my friend.”

  Yes, Duffey faded out of there. But he didn't go away from there, only from them. So he would die within the year, the year less ‘all these months’. Was that the death breathing its cold breath down his neck even now? But his death was already ordained in another place and time. Was there not a canonical impediment against dying twice?

  Duffey withdrew from that crash year, and in doing so, he set it into the future once more. And then he was once again (it should be ‘and then he was once before’, but may grammar not perturb us) sitting in the all-things room at the Pelican press and trying to write a review column for the Bark.

  “You've been fiddling away a lot of your time with that play that the Ursuline Academy girls are putting on,” Mary Virginia was saying to him, “and then yesterday you were no good at all. It's as though you were in a daze all day long. Now you just finish that piece up! I need it this afternoon absolutely.”

  So Duffey worked away at the review column with sincere application. But it didn't come so easy, nor was it nearly so excellent, as the review that he had just done, a year ahead of now, as a ghost.

  Absalom Stein came in with his excellent and splendid stride. Superbity, Superbity, thy name is Stein.

  “What was so damned funny, Stein?” Duffey asked in a rasping voice. And Stein was a little taken aback.

  Then Duffey howled. His rising howl broke into a roaring laugh, a primordial guffaw. This laughing filled the whole room. It was horse laugh, it was hoodoo hooting, it was gelasmus.

  “Ah, the bubbly water people ought to bottle that stuff and sell it,” Stein said. “It's good.” Nobody could laugh so outlandishly as Duffey, unless it was Stein himself.

  Duffey went out to the unsinkable boat-castle to have dinner with Zabotski and Wife Waldo. They had been asking him for years, it seemed, and he had been promising to come for years. Duffey went out there in a taxi, but the taxi cab stopped three hundred yards from Zabotski Flats where the big castle-boat rode at kedge anchor. Zabotski Flats was about two hundred acres on Lake Borgne that Zabotski had bought. About two-thirds of it was sweet, and one-third of it salt meadows. All of it was incomparably lush, though the flats on each side of it were sparse of growth and worthless. So had Zabotski Flats been worthless when Zabotski had bought the spread at a low price. But then God and his sun had shined down on it, and God and his water had watered it and blessed it (such was Zabotski's explanation of the rich verdure of the place), all because Zabotski was a just man and selected for a special role.

  You wouldn't believe the things that were grazing in the tall greenery of Zabotski Flats. You wouldn't believe that the lions and leopards had abjured flesh and were eating grass there, would you? Well, it wasn't grass they were eating, but it was vegetation. It was the Nimrod Flesh Plant, which is very rare in most parts of the earth but which was growing abundantly in the Flats.

  Hippopotami and leviathan were grazing in the salt water meadows, belly-deep in the reed grass and the water, and happy with rumbling stomach song. Whales came up to the deeper part of the meadows and visited and joined their wisdom. Water buffaloes grazed in both the salt and the sweet portions. Zebras with all asses and cattle and sheep and goats, grazed in the sweet water parts of the fruits, with all rabbits and coneys a
nd small game animals also.

  There was a little skiff there on the mixed water and grass shore. Duffey stood in it and pushed his way out to the big contraption boat castle barge by using its single steering car. And there on the big floating craft it was all domestic festivity and family revel. Wife Waldo had a pot as big as Duffey's own slumgullion pot (indeed the pots were twins) which she kept at an eternal simmer or low boil.

  “You come without wife or without hopes of offspring, Melchisedech,” Zabotski said. “What is there about you that is worth serving then? We take no sterile thing with us when we go on our grand float.” Zabotski talked funny today.

  “I come here to dinner by invitation,” Duffey said. “I do not come here to be saved. Nevertheless, it is always a welcome side benefit when salvation falls to one. And you will not be going on your grand float today.”

  “Aye, today it will be,” Zabotski swore in his sore-tongued voice.

  “Every day, for nine years now, Zab has sworn ‘Aye, today it will be,’ ” Wife Waldo put in her tupelo-wood car. “But we still drift here on the light anchor. Zab had his tongue butchered by the lynchers, and I tell that now he should talk a little bit less for a while and let me talk a little bit more. But there's no way that Zab could talk less.”

  They were seated at a very long table now, and several of the salt water oriented children were saying grace: “We thank thee for the hippopotamus steak and the rhinoceros steak and the behemoth steak and the leviathan steak and the alligator steak and the buffalo steak and the elephant steak and the green turtle steak. Amen.”

  “We eat a lot of steak here,” Wife Waldo said. “We pan fry it in those deep pans over there.” The deep pans were as big as airplane wheels.

  “Aye, it was down by the Opera House last night that the low lynchers took me and tried to dishonor me and to kill me,” Zabotski said. “Was that only last night? It seems longer. They put a halter over my head, a bit in my mouth, and a rope around my neck. They began to hang me. I roared for help, but the mouth bit had a tongue spike in it and I could not roar properly. Nevertheless, certain poor people of the neighborhood came to my aid, and I myself erupted like a volcano with horns and hoofs on it. The poor people saved me, and I saved myself. We scattered those lynchers like chaff. But my tongue is mangled and so is my disposition. I tell you, Duffey, it isn't safe to be around that Opera House after dark.”