“I'm Janeway,” said Janeway. “These are my cousins, Candy Sue Pirogue and Etta Mae Mansion.”
“Would you young ladies want anything,” Leonard Archive asked, “outside of the pleasure of our company?”
“Puff Fish,” said Candy Sue. “We hate them, but we love them even more, and we never know how to catch them. OOooo, they are so dreamy and vile! Can you bring them in here with your frequency modulation?”
“Nothing easier,” said Honeybucket. “If you can conquer your disgust...”
“Oh, we can, we can!” Etta Mae cried. “All the people are conquering their disgust now and eating all the Puff Fish they can get. Puff Fish are in. If only there were a way to get enough of them...”
“There is a way,” said Honeybucket, and he began to adjust the dials. But Melchisedech Duffey went head-first into the Main Frequency Modulator (as the first one in the world, it was tied in with all the other frequency modulators and would affect them all); and Biloxi Brannagan was preventing anyone else from interfering with Duffey, by use of a hasty swivel gun. He came by the swivel gun by rubbing his hands together. He didn't know much about frequency modulation, but he knew about other things.
Then there was a bit of high frequency lightning in that Main Frequency Modulator, and there was a slight stench. Melchisedech Duffey came out of that modulator with all of his clothes burned off, and all the hair of his head and body burned off also. But he was smiling happily. “Got it,” he said. “Got it. That is one frequency that will never frequence again. There will be no more Puff F — ah, there will be no more of what they want, not ever again. The bait bucket for them is destroyed, and there'll be no baiting them in again.”
“Oh, we could repair the frequency modulators,” Honeybucket said.
“It isn't broken,” Melchisedech said. “Can you repair something that is working perfectly?”
“If it is working perfectly, then what is to prevent me imposing on it the frequency of... I forget just what frequency I am thinking about at the moment, but what is to prevent my imposing it again?”
“There is no longer any such frequency,” Melchisedech said. “And there wasn't any such frequency before this either. When we do away with a thing, we do away with it in past, present and future.”
“There is a frequency to attract everything whatsoever,” Honeybucket insisted, “and the different frequencies are easily found. I have only to activate the searcher device to locate the abominable... I forget just what the name of the abominable thing is it the moment... to obtain the corresponding frequency and to impose that frequency.”
“The abominable thing doesn't exist any longer,” Duffey said, “and it never existed before either. And there isn't any frequency to correspond to something that doesn't exist.”
“You mean that we can no longer eat those vile — I forget their names?” Candy Sue demanded. “They sure were terrible, but if everybody wanted th — ”
“Those terrible things do not exist,” Melchisedech said, “and everybody is not eating those foul non-name things, nor will they ever. Come along, Biloxi. What's the next work order we have?”
So Duffey and Brannagan traveled into the future and rooted out many abominable things to the point where they did not and had not ever existed. And thus the people were thwarted in perversion after perversion. It was no hardship really. They already had plenty of perversions.
No more would there ever be swamp stories about — whatever its name hadn't been. Such beneficent extirpations every day count up. Ten thousand such adventures they had, and mostly it is only those that failed or partly failed that are remembered. For when a future evil is rooted out and completely removed, then there is nothing of it that can be remembered in any tense. But if any motlet of it is left, then it grows (though weakened) in both directions and sometimes it will be remembered a little bit as a grotesqueness. The great triumphs of the Argonauts, by their very nature, must be unknown. Bless all such work and adventure of the Holy Argo and her crew!
5
The Argo was, beyond everything else, a Quest Ship. There was much emphasis in the Ship's Logs on the quest and finding of the Golden Fleece of Colchis, and indeed this was one of the brightest of the early triumphs 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 rode away into the desert dragging it at his horse's tail. There was the recovery of the Lord's Table which had been in the Cenaculum in Jerusalem, and was now in the Bread and Wine Room on the Argo. There was the recovery of the Sancgreal, the Holy Grail that had been stolen from Glastonbury. There were the findings of the Holy Shroud of Turin, the Ring of the Nebelungs, the Philosopher's Stone. Ah, the discoveries, the discoveries! There was the finding of the tomb of St. Jude, the Northwest Passage (it is still serviceable with a good nineteen foot deep channel), of Roland's Horn, of Alaric's Sword, of Aaron's Rod, of the Seamless Garment of Christ, of the Baptist's Head (it is still in good flesh, and the growing hair and beard have not been cut; they are each now more than one hundred feet long), the Sword and Scabbard of Saint Sécaire, the Magic Flute, the Great Mogul Diamond, the Iron Crown of Charlemagne, the Lost Dutchman Mine. And many others, some of them too holy to mention.
The latest and most contrary of the findings was that of the Sword and Scabbard of Saint Sécaire. And this is the exceptional one of the prizes, for it was not found by the Argo Masters, and they didn't want it to be found. They wanted it to be lost and to remain lost. It was the anti-prize, a peril to the world.
In times past, the Argo Masters had lost the Sword and Scabbard three times. At its last losing, they had filled the space between the sword and the scabbard with iron, lead, brimstone, and babbet metal, all boiling hot, and this had welded the sword to the scabbard as the filler solidified and made it impossible for anyone to draw the sword out easily or accidentally.
Then they 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 scabbard must stay lost. And so it did stay lost for four hundred years.
Then some Frenchmen, the brothers Cyril and Cyrus Dimbeau, went down into the ‘Nine Mile Depth’ in a bathysphere. They took core specimens for a hundred meters deep in that sea floor 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 the early morning when Duffey and Brannagan had taken to sea together on journey as Argo Masters. And of course the Argo Masters came to that mid-Pacific place immediately. They scotched their Argo immediately along side, and they boiled onto the platform of the attending boat.
“What two extinct sea creatures are these?” Cyril Dimbeau asked. “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 they have and pump them full of preservatives. They'll do to show for novelties when we get home with them.”
“Do not on any account draw that sword from that scabbard,” Melchisedech Duffey said.
“And what happens if we do?” Cyrus Dimbeau asked.
“If you draw it but an inch, two thirds of the people in the world will fall into a deep sleep. And they will die of it if they are not rescued quickly. The only means of saving them is to put the sword back full into the scabbard.”
“Fair enough,” said Cyril Dimbeau. “We'll make try of the affair.” There was one other scientist there with the two brothers, and there were ten strong workmen and laboratory assistants there. These ten strong assistants grabbed Duffey and Brannagan and put them under tight restraint. And the three scientists were melting the flux out fro
m between the sword and its sheath.
“It will move now” , Cyrus Dimbeau said. “I believe that it will move just about an inch.” And the man drew the sword one inch out of its scabbard. The ten assistants fell down in deep sleep and rolled around on the platform.
“You were right. It worked,” Cyril Dimbeau said. “The ten assistants have fallen into deep sleep. And the other five of us, we three scientists and you two sea spooks, are still awake. That is two thirds of us in this miniature world who are so stricken, and I assume that it applies to the maxi-world also. And if I pull the sword out the rest of the way?”
“The world will come to an end,” Melchisedech said.
“Fair enough,” said Cyril Dimbeau. “I always wanted to be there when the world ended, but I didn't know how to manage it. Pull the sword out, brother.”
But when the ten assistants had fallen down in deep sleep, they had released Duffey and Brannagan from their tight grip by necessity. And while Duffey had been parleying with the scientists, Brannagan had retrieved the still-melted flux that had been poured out from between the sword and scabbard. Now he poured it back in, and it sized the sword and scabbard together again so that they would not separate easily.
“How clumsy of me,” Brannagan said. “I stumbled with the bucket of flux, and I spilled it. Now you will have that little melting task to do all over again.”
“Damned oafs!” Cyrus Dimbeau hissed. “Get back into the ocean whence you came.”
“Let me have it,” Duffey said. “I know a way to melt the flux out of it again in an instant. Then you can go ahead and pull the sword all the way out and destroy the world if you're so minded.”
“Well, hurry it up,” Cyril Dimbeau barked.
Duffey took the sword and scabbard, now tightly welded together again. But with an incredible clumsiness, he dropped the thing off the platform, and it went down, down, down, nine miles deep into the ocean, and then it begin to bore its way one hundred meters deep into the mud and lime ooze to find its old place again.
“Oops, oops, oops, I dropped it! Fellows, I wouldn't have that happen for anything,” Duffey apologized.
“Oafs, oafs, oafs,” Cyrus Dimbeau cried. “Now we'll have to go all the way down again and get it.”
“Get what?” Brannagan asked them. Brannagan had cannily spread the Forgetfulness Mesh over them and they couldn't remember the episode at all. The ten assistants, now rescued from their deep sleep, stood waiting orders, but no orders came.
“Well, it's been a pleasant visit,” Cyril Dimbeau finally said. “Glad you couldn't stay longer.”
Duffey and Brannagan sailed away and left the bathysphere people there, taking samples of ocean fleas at the middle depths. But they would not remember at all about the sword and the scabbard.
“We are going to have to find a way to lose that thing a little more securely,” Duffey said. “In four hundred more years somebody is likely to stumble on it again.”
It is always good to have a suspense-and-fun adventure early in the morning.
A bit later in the morning, at Gdansk on the Baltic, near the mouth of the Vistula, a stranger came to the Argo, he having the air of being no stranger at all. Now it was a plain case that any Argo Man should always recognize any other Argo Man anywhere, at any time. The only slight exception is that a man fallen from grace may not be completely recognized at once.
Well, neither Brannagan nor Duffey recognized this man immediately. They should have seen through every disguise, but it may be that they saw through one disguise too many to that basic ‘Something a Little Bit Wrong’. The land they were in had been in the hands of the New Infidels for some years, and it may have been that caution was called for. It was really not caution that stood in the way here though. It was just fundamental failure to recognize.
“You bring the Brotherhood itself into danger if you fail to recognize me,” this stranger said. “It is by this one thing only that the Brotherhood may be broken. Do not do it! Know me now!”
Well, this stranger was a mixture of disguises. He had a black hat on his head, and ear locks, like an old Jew. But he had a wide and treeless face like a Polish landscape, for the faces of Poles are always like the constantly changing and always lopsided map of Poland. But this man also had the blue eyes of Scandinavia, and the square hands of Holland.
“The Ship will know me,” the man said. “The piece of talking oak in the ship's wheel will know me and speak.” And the piece of talking oak in the Ship's wheel did speak, and it said “I know him” . But Duffey and Brannagan still looked at each other and at the man.
“We will all lay identifications out here,” Duffey said. “We will see who are the men of the Argo.” Duffey rubbed his hands together and produced a large gold coin with the King's Crown of Salem on one side and with the Bread and Wine on the other. It bore as superscript the magic name ‘Melchisedech’ and as subscript the words ‘Thou Art Forever’. Melchisedech set the big coin on the steersman's sideboard there in the cabin. He had identified himself, though he had not been questioned. Biloxi Brannagan rubbed his hands together and produced an even larger coin made of the red-gold of Ireland. It had the Celtic Cross of Christ on one side of it, and a Coracle Boat on the other. It bore the holy name ‘Naomh Brandon’ on it. Brannagan set it there on the steersman's sideboard beside the Melchisedech coin. Brannagan had also identified himself, though this swift lion of the sea had not been questioned either.
The stranger then rubbed his own two hands together. This set off a shower of sparks from which was formed a large and living two-headed eagle, but no coin or medallion. The stranger had a lot of style in these things, however, and Duffey and Brannagan began to recognize him by this florid style. The man grinned and grimaced in a stagey manner. Yes, he was a real magician. All the real ones have this showiness about them. From his own mouth he took one thin half of a coin, and from one mouth of the two-headed eagle, he took another thin half of a coin. He put the two halves together, and there was a small clap of thunder. That was good show. On one side of the thus produced coin was the same two-headed eagle of Poland. On the other side of the coin was an ornate Crock or Pot or Night Charley. But there was no name on the coin yet.
The man then pulled the name ‘Kasmir Gorshok’ from the other mouth of the two-headed eagle, and he fastened it onto the coin. He set the coin beside the other two on the steersman's sideboard, and the other two did not reject it. This man was Kasmir Gorshok, the Casey of the Crock of the low middle ages, Casey Szymanski of Chicago, and Casey of the Zodiac. And he was a true Argo Master.
Kasmir waved the two-headed eagle to fly, and it flew away into the interior of the country. “That will bring their numbers up to nine,” he said. The two-headed eagles of Poland had been an endangered species for a long while, and whenever their numbers fell below nine, it was feared that their extermination was near.
So Melchisedech Duffey and Biloxi Brannagan sailed with this stranger-no-more, an old companion in magic and grace, on further adventures of the Fourteenth Voyage of the Argo. But it was very mysterious that they had not recognized him at once. How had he changed?
“But there is something gone wrong about things,” Melchisedech said that same day as they wrangled around in shallow seas and treacherous estuaries. “There is a treason smell about Our Holy Ship. It's as if Judas himself were aboard.”
“As you know, we transport Judas only one night every year,” Casey explained to Melchisedech as to a child. “And then we carry him across one narrow strait only, and we are done with him in an hour. Then we use the herb Rosemary to remove the treason smell. So there can be none now. And this is not even that day or night of the year.”
“There's a saying that one of the Masters of the Holy Argo Herself will turn traitor,” Melchisedech said darkly.
“And the second part of that saying declares that it will be an affair between that Argo Master and God Himself,” Kasmir said. “What is it to thee?”
At Karl Mar
x Stadt, near the upper waters of the Mulde, the Argo Masters destroyed a new incursion into logic that carried the tentative title ‘I wake up forgetting’. Possible effects of this queer logic had been spilling out of the future into the various presents, and they were not good.
There was hardly enough water to float the Argo at Karl Marx Stadt, and there was scarce enough draught-way for that incursion into logic either. But the logic piece was baneful even as it attempted to launch itself off the sandbars and to float free.
Duffey and Brannagan and Gorshok burst in on a young man shivering in his underwear and sobbing with excitement as he scribbled furiously on little pieces of paper. The young man was named Ralph Rolfe and he was English on his father's side.
“Oh bother me not, ghosts, burglars, police spies, followers of static philosophy,” Ralph sobbed as they came into his room this morning. “I must get it all down on paper before I forget it. Paper, paper, are there no more little pieces of you here? For the love of Logica Perversa herself, give me paper to write upon.”
Casey Gorshok gave little pieces of paper to the young man, and he gathered them in from the young man again when they were full written with the wakening residue. And pretty soon, the young man ceased his frantic writing and half collapsed upon himself. Then Casey gathered in the last thing that the youngling had written.
“That isn't all. That isn't nearly all of it,” the young man jittered, “but it is the vital keys to it. It is all gone out of my mind completely now, but there should be enough mind jogs and memory hooks down on the little pieces of paper for me to recreate the great and crooked system by. And this I will do when I am more clear in my mind. Have I pants somewhere? Do I not ordinarily wear pants? Have I coffee here? Do I not ordinarily drink coffee?”
More Than Melchisedech Page 55