There is nothing so homey as an ark. There was music and conversation, and all of it was homemade. There were flutes there (the first ones made by Zabotski, the others by the various children) for every child and ape and seal in the establishment, and there was no prohibition against playing at table. This made for a musical meal. All houseboats are homey, but none so homey as this ark. You do not get such numbers of animals on most houseboats, nor such numbers of children.
“There are fifty-two kids,” Zabotski said, “all of them unrelated, and all of them of superior quality. This gives a strong genetic base. We will get our first crop from the kids this year. Wife Waldo says that we have been here for nine years (it doesn't seem like that long to me) so the oldest of the children will be fruiting this year.
“Melchisedech, these are smart kids. They know all the sciences and all the technologies. They even top me in a few fields. They are pious and imaginative and good-natured and loaded with understanding and scope. They take smart pills which they have invented themselves. They are splendid, but I told them this morning not to use the word ‘splendid’ any more. It's picked up distasteful connotations for me since last night. These kids do new things, with music (especially on the alligator skin drums). They do new things with mathematics. They do new things with metamorphics. They build the finest instruments in the world, and they build them for fun. They extract all one hundred and twenty elements out of the water of this open-mouthed salt lake, and then they change them from one to another. With such improvising kids, we need never run short of anything. They're the best kids that I ever saw.”
There were many practical little tricks used there on the ark. Every person had a little hatchet with the other table implements beside his plate. Some of those rhinoceros and behemoth steaks are tough, but a good hacker can hack them into pieces, And the plates were of unbreakable Zabotski metal.
And each person had a small bow with arrows beside his place. This was to combine the sports of hunting and fishing with the sport of eating. Some of these those bowls of slumgullion were pretty lively, you see. A variety of small creatures had mutated there, under the guidance of some of the biologically minded kids, and now they were able to live and thrive in boiling water and boiling sludge. There were small, fierce, fanged sea creatures among them who disputed the contents of the bowls with the people. Oh, they struck like lightning when they struck, up out of the depths of the bowls of slum. But they could be shot with arrows just before they leapt.
“But it was loaded in our favor to begin with,” one of the kids said. “It wasn't really fair. We could kill them with arrows. But all they could do to us was snap off a lip or a nose sometimes. So I have been redressing the balance.”
“How have you been doing that?” Duffey asked warily. Zabotski was a joker, and even Wife Wildo was something of a joker. How would children raised by them not be jokers?
“I've taught two dozen of the midget octopuses to shoot little bows and arrows,” the child said. (This was a female kid, and tricky.) “And I've made midget bows and arrows for them. I've also installed the shoot-to-kill instinct in them. The poison sepia concoctions for tipping the arrows was their own intention. A person shot by one of those poison tipped arrows will turn black and die within thirty seconds.”
“Ah, and where are they now?” Duffey asked. “What did you do with the little blighters after you'd educated them and armed them?”
“I put them in the big pot,” the child said. “And they had already settled on the go-for-the-open-spigot, go-for-the-bowls strategy’. I imagine that they are in the bowls now, the very bowls we are starting in on. I think it's better sport when things are more evenly matched, don't you? How are your own reactions, Mr. Duffey? Are your arrows handy enough for quick notching and your bow handy enough for quick drawing? Will you be able to spot an overt move in your slumgullion quickly enough? Remember, you have to shoot first, or you will die.”
“I will shoot first,” Duffey said.
“But if you should miss with your shot — ”
“I won't miss,” Duffey said.
That was one of the best and most homey and most wholesome dinners and visits that Duffey had ever experienced. If the world were destroyed and only this bright establishment saved, that would be better than if this bright establishment were destroyed and only the world saved. This group surviving would have to be entered on the gain side.
Duffey taught the children to make banjos that afternoon. They were good workers in all the materials, as their foster father was. And this would give a new note to the lively orchestration of the place. There would be some blessed plunking added to all the other blessings of the place.
If Duffey hadn't had an important appointment in town that evening, he might not have been able to tear himself away from the ark and its animals and people at all.
And the next evening, or maybe it was the evening after that, there was presented the play ‘Seven Roads’ in the Ursuline Academy's auditorium. Melchisedech Duffey acted his own role excellently. And in the intermission he performed magic. Not magic acts, but real magic. And he also played on his banjo and on his recorder flute. The presentation was an overwhelming success.
3
In his finite wisdom, Melchisedech knew that whatever time he would take for visiting and private communications would be time he would have to steal. The night of the little play, and it was late that night after the play had been given, seemed to be the last normal night of his life. The recent, last time that this night had been lived through, it had been followed by a weird morning when the whole town was turned awry and a new people had come in and taken control. This same morning would hardly follow again, but there might be a morning equally spooky. In any case, Duffey might not have full freedom of action on the morrow.
And Duffey had decided on a series of visits that he wished to make. And as soon as he had decided on them, the fulfilling of them seemed imperative.
Duffey, retreating and retracing and using the same days and weeks and months several times over, made visits to most of his ‘animations’. He feared this would be the last time he would ever see them in the normal flesh.
To a person who was not Duffey, it seemed as if there were lively doings in Duffey's diggings that night. Duffey went and returned close to a dozen times that night. He left in a hurry every time, and he returned in a hurry only minutes or hours later. And yet he might have spent a week or a month on several of his journeys of that night. He was playing fast and loose with time and space, before his powers in those directions should be taken away from him.
Duffey had decided to go to Havana Cuba on his first journey. Then he would go to the Marianao Coast a few miles from Havana to search for the place where Finnegan was said to have been killed. The death of Finnegan was supposed to have been many years before this. But Duffey was not at all sure that Finnegan was dead. He intended to find out about it.
“I mean to talk to Finnegan,” Duffey said. “Be he alive or be he dead, I intend to talk to him and to have answers to my questions. I don't believe that Finnegan ever meant to be mysterious or to leave a mystery behind him. It was quite by accident that it fell out so. His body was not found there. But no further traces of him were ever found either. He will be glad to see me. Dead or alive, he will always be glad to see me. We were close, though our actual time together did not number very many days. I have a great affection for him, and I have never gotten over the shock of his possible death. He was the most masterly of my ‘Animations’.”
Duffey had a few clues. He had one always startling clue, the picture of Finnegan's grave. And this most mysterious picture had most likely been painted by Finnegan himself.
That Painting hung in Duffey's Walk-in Art Bijou in New Orleans. It had been hanging there for more than thirty years. The name of it was ‘The Resurrection of Count Finnegan’.
“Of what was Count Finnegan a Count?” asked Carmelo Mendoza, the private detective who would accom
pany Duffey on the Cuban investigation.
“Possibly he was Count of nothing,” Duffey said. “But he has titled this picture in his own hand, and he would not claim a title for himself that he didn't possess. One not-to-be-depended on source says that Finnegan was a Papal Count, that he was an In Petto Papal Count, so named by a Pope now dead.”
“If he were named In Petto, In Secret, then we could hardly know about it,” Carmelo said. “Who is this not-to-be-depended on source?”
“He calls himself Mr. X”
“Oh him. I know him. And are not some of your other clues from this Mr. X also?”
“They are, yes,” Duffey said. “Oh, X, be there something in your information this time!”
Duffey and the detective Carmelo Mendoza studied the picture again. Their luggage had already gone to the dock, and they would go there in a moment. And the detective had already taken photographs of the picture and extracted much information from it. But, ah, the picture itself!
“The painting was twelve feet by eight feet, and Count Finnegan… (was) shown as life-sized. The painting was really two paintings separated by a schizo-gash. In the larger portion, the burial crypt seemed to be an ocean cave under a rock shelf; but now there was a fissure in the rock roof of the cave, and air and sunshine were pouring in. The half-risen Count Finnegan was partly in the dark-green water and partly in the bright-green air. There was a stark and horrible risenness about him. There were places on him where the flesh had fallen away from his bones as will sometimes happen when a person in either death or time-stasis is subject to an abrasion; and the under-the-rock-shelf water had apparently been abrasive. Count Finnegan was setting back in its place one long strip of flesh that had fallen away from its bone, and he showed sure intent of repairing other flesh damage and decay. He was identified by a Latin scroll there, as the Papal Count Finnegan. Finnegan Solli had always been good at reproducing Latin scrolls.
“The Count Finnegan in the picture seemed about thirty years older than the John Solli Finnegan would have been at the time of his reported death, which had been between two and three years before the time of the arrival of the painting at Melchisedech Duffey's New Orleans place. So it was a self-painting of Finnegan as it would appear twenty-five to thirty-five years in the future…
“Solli-Finnegan's big banana nose had acquired nobility and distinction on the Count in the picture. The flesh-mending hands of the pictured Count were even more intricate and talented than Finnegan's recent artist's hands which would be remembered by all who had ever known him. There was still the outrageous humor mixed with the warping pain and torture in the eyes. There was still the loose strength and speed of a yearling bullock… on the Count in the picture. There was still the mouth in motion, and one had the feeling of soon being able to hear the multi-dialected words and spating phrases from the painted Count. But there was an added texturing of the whole person that appears mostly in those who have risen from the dead. The flesh had suffered simultaneous transfiguration and corruption and was now in a state of violent incompleteness. There was a locality about the flesh change; partly it was the sea change of un-coffined dead… Count Finnegan was in the rags and tatters of what may have been a winding sheet. But beside him , there were solid but old clothes for him to put on, traveler's clothes.”
How Many Miles To Babylon.
‘How Many Miles To Babylon’ was a fictional piece written by a member of the old Finnegan outer circle. But it described the painting well, and so it is given here. It is one of the clues that Duffey turned over to the detective Carmelo Mendoza. But Mendoza had now absorbed the painting itself, and he would never forget it.
Mendoza stowed the other clues, in his mind or in his cases and folders, and they went down to the docks to take the Cuban boat.
This man Carmelo Mendoza, he was a happy-looking and wistful-looking clown. He was a small and lively man, but he seemed about as old as Duffey. He rolled his r's in the Austrian manner, and he had the palest eyes and hair that anyone ever saw. He seemed to know everything instantly, and he came well recommended by many people.
By whom? By what people? Well, by Teresa Showboat Piccone Stranahan of St. Louis. And by anyone else? Oh, by no one else. No one else was needed. Teresa herself was many people, and her recommendations were tops.
“Duff, this Carmelo is right all the way,” Teresa wrote. “Since you are now starting out on a series of very tricky trips that will scrape both sides of the tunnel, I believe you should have Carmelo with you. He understands high trickery. He is only a so-so private detective, but he is a superb companion and friend.
“My love to the diminishing ‘All of You’.”
Oh, Teresa was all-understanding, that's why she knew that Melchisedech was starting out on a series of trips that would scrape both sides of the tunnel. One side of the tunnel was ‘world’ and the other side of it was ‘time’. She knew that Melchisedech would have to leave and return to both of these on his journeys and do it again and again.
It would have been quicker to fly to Cuba, but perhaps they wouldn't have been allowed to disembark there. There was still a prevailing fussiness against Americans there.
Carmelo had provided seaman's pipers for both himself and Duffey, and they traveled is working seamen. Duffey's name was ‘Mike Duffey’ on the papers, and he was given as a citizen of the Irish Free State. (“You should able to remember ‘Mike’,” Carmelo said, ‘and you sure should be able to remember ‘Duffey’.) And Carmelo Mendoza himself was Karl Metz, and he was given as a West German. But who was he really? Duffey quickly understood that Carmelo was in love with disguises and with plots.
So they sailed for six sunny days and starry nights. Both of them were competent seamen and had clearly sailed as seamen many times before. Well then, they were nearly sure to meet someone that they had sailed with before.
“What is your real life history behind your surface life history?” Carmelo asked him one day. “If I am to serve and lead you through your puzzles, I think I should know this. It is clear that this lifetime is only an episode in your existence, but how did you come into it? How did your present phase of existence come to be?”
“Ah yes, I had been on the Holy Ship,” Melchisedech said in a dreamy voice. “I had been doing high gestes that I am not allowed to remember in normal circumstance. Then I left the ship and came ashore. Well, I was given a short shore leave on the shore of my choice. That is what my present lifetime is. I came ashore swimming and then wading through turbulent water. It was early morning. The shore was muddy, with engendering mud, and full of promise. It was the year 1923, and I was a young man of no more than a quarter of a century of physical years. I went up that muddy shore and entered into the green and burgeoning years of a life.
“I tell you, there is no pleasure like starting a new life at age of less than twenty-five years. And I seem to remember that I had a choice of shores, and of green and burgeoning years. And I remember that I will always have that choice, again and again and again. I will have it if I only remember that I have it. That's the trick to it, if I only remember that I have it.”
“Oh, I'll remind you,” Carmelo said. “I'll make it a point of being there in your extremity, and reminding you that you have choices left.”
But how odd it was that Duffey should tell such things to a comparative stranger like Carmelo.
As it happened, Duffey did meet a seaman he knew. This was about mid morning of their first day at sea. It was a gnarled and cheerful oldster named Horace Pie, a Scotchman. He had sailed with Duffey once in years gone by, on quite a long voyage, and he had met Duffey on several shores since then. And he had known Finnegan.
“You are going to find what you can of his death and entombment, Duffey? I will be ashore in Havana for three days. I'll go with you. I'm curious about the thing myself. I've heard stories about him. He's one of the legends now. I don't know where he's entombed, but there are people who do know. I say entombed, not buried. There's a difference
. And entombment isn't such a tight fit.
“They call Finnegan ‘The Sleeping Man’. Did you know that? So there are others who don't believe that he's dead for sure. You're traveling with Eggs, heh?”
“With eggs, Horace?”
“Ya, Mr. Eggs. And now he calls himself Metz. He is all right. Harmless. And he does tell some tall ones.”
“Oh,” said Duffey. “Oh, and again Oh. How unperceptive of me! But he always did love disguises. Yes, I've known him before also, so it's odd that I didn't know him this time.”
“Can you still rub your hands and make gold coins, Duffey?” Horace Pie asked him.
“Yes, yes, I suppose that I can still do it.”
“That talent will come in handy when you try to get information about Finnegan in Cuba. In Cuba, they don't say ‘What's that?’ when they see a bit of gold. They circulate a lot of it and it will buy a lot there.”
“Then I will circulate a lot of it, if it will buy information about Finnegan.”
“Did you know, Duffey,” Pie said, “that several men once plotted to chop off your hands. They believed that the coining power was in your hands and not in yourself. They believed that they could keep your severed hands and rub them together whenever they wanted, and set up a rain of gold coins. But you were too canny for us. We never had the chance to lop your hands. I was one of the men who plotted against your hands. I was younger then. They grew us pretty green in the green hills of Scotland.”
More Than Melchisedech Page 48