More Than Melchisedech

by R. A. Lafferty

  Melchisedech could have made these things himself, but Casey wanted to make them for him as a sign of their friendship, which was indeed in need of repair. Melchisedech could no longer speak properly, because of his fleshless throat condition. But he could communicate, and one did not always notice that his communication was not speech of the ordinary sort.

  And so it was that, with the bones of a merry dead man at the helm, the Argo sailed on some of her highest adventures. She became the talk of the seas.

  But it wasn't as easy as you might suppose. The golden mask didn't have the eye slits quite in the right place. Melchisedech no longer had eyes, but he still had something there, and the mask often impaired his sensing. And those golden gauntlets on his hands and wrists, sometimes it seemed as though they coarsened the steersman's fine touch on the wheel. Even the gold scarf around the throat may have choked down a few noble impulses. But, if it were all made out of the Fleece Itself, and shaped by an Argo Master, where could the fault lie?

  7

  After this very real death, Melchisedech Duffey could still come and go in time and in space, but he could go on living only a very few years into the futures: and some of the incursions of the Argo were beyond those few years. As a stubbornly dead and resolutely bony man, he accomplished things that another man could hardly do. There was an ambivalence about him (he said that he had a tibia in each of the worlds), but there was an awkwardness and unaccountability also. The future is wraithy in any case, and one may excuse a certain wraithiness there. But as to present time, however constrained that present scene might be, what was the case of Melchisedech in it?

  If an Argo adventure was more nearly in the present time, if it impinged less far into the future than did the Adventure of the Laughing Prince, then Melchisedech became as a normal man again, with flesh on his bones, and a voice back in his voice box. In that case, he used the same bones that he had been using, and he used the same flesh that he used to use. But were not the ashes in the canister a residue of that old flesh? The ashes did not disappear at such times, though they smoked uncommonly and seemed a bit more hot. But Melchisedech walked in his flesh, and his flesh was at the same time ashes in the can. This was the Ambiguity of the Flesh of Melchisedech Duffey, the ‘Ambiguity of the Flesh’ that would be with him for many many years, all through his married life, all through the New Orleans days and nights, all through his less spectral adventures. But his flesh would be no less valid from suffering this ambiguity.

  Henceforth (and preforth) Melchisedech always had the feeling that the ‘Present Time’ was really a sort of living in the ‘Past’. Melchisedech had been quite a young man when he first (and last, and always) set his person onto that circumstance named ‘The Sea of the Seven Lost Years’, the sea and years in which all of the Argo adventures were enacted. And that not always contingent sea could be re-entered at any of its shores. It could be entered from a shore where Melchisedech was nineteen or sixty-nine years old, from a shore where he was twenty-four or eighty-four years old, but he would always be a young man again when he had stepped from the shore.

  “And I must remind you that you can leave the Argo again at any of the shores, at that of age twenty-four or at that of eighty-four,” X told Duffey. “And if you leave it at the shore of an early age, then you leave it before your death and confusion, and you will have your long life ahead of you yet.”

  “What are you saying, X?” Melchisedech asked him. “Your mouth moves but I cannot understand your words. “Leave the Argo? Why should I want to leave the Argo?” Melchisedech asked.

  Duffey, however, seemed (to himself, and even to those who knew him best) a not quite-real person on his every return to ‘present’ It seemed to Duffey himself that whole hunks of his life, living them for the first and only time as he was, were being lived in the past.

  The Chicago years, from this unmoored viewpoint, would have a strong tone of living in the past to them. By that, Melchisedech never knew his wife Letitia except by incursions into the past, since the earliest shore of the Seven Lost Years went back before he had known her. The New Orleans years were always a sort of living in the past too. There was nothing wrong with this. It gave depth to those time and experiences. But Duffey really would be a bundle of anomalies in the decades when he would run the Walk-In Art Bijou in New Orleans, when he would keep his own ashes in a cigar canister on the table there, when he would parade such incredible knowledge, and sometimes such incredible ignorance and simplicity. The unreality of Duffey would be to everybody the most striking thing about him. It wasn't that he was destined to die in the near future. Everybody does that. It was that he had already died in the near future. And it wasn't so much that he made untimely forays into the future beyond the point of his own death. “For all the lives he has lived. he hasn't died nearly enough deaths,” Absalom Stein would say of Melchisedech. And that would tell a lot about him.

  Duffey's relationship to Stein, and to others of the ‘Animated Marvels’ was a mixed up business. Duffey really did ‘create’, to some extent and in some aspects, that bunch of animated marvels. And yet most of the Marvels were themselves Masters of the Argo, and were probably as old as Melchisedech, within a few centuries. They all belonged to one living corporation. The Argo Masters were an interdependent society, and each member played some very special role in every other one of them. But what role, for instance, did Kasmir-Casimir-Casey play to all the others? What role did Count Finnegan play? Or Stein? Or Teresa Stranahan (probably hers was an animating role just as Melchisedech's was a creative role; they are not quite the same). What role did Biloxi Brannagan play? Or Henry Salvatore? There aren't a large number of absolutely vital roles, or there would have been a large number of Argonauts to play them to the others. And there weren't.

  But whenever the Argo would come to land to refit or to take on water or provisions or sea stores, she was likely to come to one of those chancey places or times in a present day context. And her few hours or days in such a port could be years or decades according to the flowing and present time. And some of the sea stores and ship stores that the Argo took on were, though absolutely necessary, intangible.

  The Argo took on electric life from Teresa Stranahan and Margaret Stone and Henry Salvatore in their world militant or ‘present’ lives. She took on sea biscuit from Hans and Marie Schultz, and Jew bread from Absalom Stein, and Purgatorial Loaf from Bascom Bagby. She took on sea stores from Marie Monahan also, and from Finnegan. She took on ship's timbers and even masts from Zabotski.

  There was a ships' chandler in New Orleans who had nether millstones that were harder than any others. There was a boats' supplier in St. Louis who had boat hitches so that no barge or tow need ever be lost from a hitch. Those things are important.

  The Argo had always to come back to its sea wrack roots, or to its land roots in a ‘present time’. There was sound sustenance in the ‘present times’, but in the ‘futures’ the sustenance was often food too small, or too large, or too strange. It was of those weirdly verdant futures that Blessed Austin, an old Argo Master he, wrote, “And these were the dishes wherein to me, hunger starven for thee, they served the sun and moon” . Don't knock it who have never been served the sun and the moon in a dish, but both these are weak candles before the Source itself.

  It was of a future that had to be forced to disgorge a past and a present that Blessed Ezekiel spoke “Oh my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them, and I will bring you back to your land.” Ezekiel was a very early Argo Master.

  It was of a present, ever-cutting into the future, that Blessed Margaret Stone spoke, “I can procure it that no one I have ever known will be lost. I have this as a promise, and no one else in the world has been given this same promise. But what of those whom I have never known? What promise will save some of them?”

  “Margaret, Margaret,” Melchisedech would say when he would hear her expound this, “You went to see and to heckle the Devil himself when he once spoke in
this city. And later you drank coffee with him and talked with him privately. So you do know him. Is he then covered by the promise to you that he will not be lost?”

  “He is covered by the promise, and he will not be lost,” Margaret said. “Even now, he may already have broken with that thing. But he is a devil only. He is not the Great Devil Himself. Him I have not known.”

  “Yes, he was the Great Devil Himself,” Melchisedech would say at that time, “or that is the prevailing opinion.”

  “Listen, you masters of the several worlds, how do you know that your salt hasn't lost its savor,” Margaret would challenge them. “How are you sure?”

  “You and yours make me sure,” Melchisedech would say. “If our salt has lost its savor, well then we will get more savor from some of you here. See to the stowing of a few hundred weights of savory salt, favorite urchin. We sail again within the year, and we will fly a new pennant ‘This Ship is Salted by Blessed Margaret Herself.”

  Duffey had once said “Every attempt to get the people to change the present to improve the future has been a dismal failure.” But Duffey had been wrong. People like Henry Salvatore and Margaret Stone and Teresa Stranahan and Mary Virginia Schaeffer, and even Absalom Stein, and even quarted Zabotski, would be changing the present to improve the future. They would be doing it massively.

  Margaret would always be “The Fire that sayeth not ‘It is enough’.” The shape of the world would have been different, and more ungainly without her. They were a bunch.

  From the earliest sail ship days, there have been good islands, recuperative islands, where ships might be watered, provisioned, stored, every one careened and overhauled. Such an island would have to be a copious and accessible place with a fine flow of fresh water, good game for hunting, or good cattle or giant turtles for meat supply, fruit or coconut, pleasant climate for recovering from sickness, sea stores, turpentine, tar, jute fiber, cloth or vegetable matting that could be used for cloth, timbers. And native workmen and native friendships were advantages also.

  The Argo had quite a few such islands, whether they were completely surrounded by water or not. The Land of the Animated Marvels was such a recuperative island for the Ship. This was also called ‘The Archipelago’ or ‘The Greater Archipelago’. This was a scattered island with its population in various places, but mostly in Chicago and St. Louis and New Orleans. It had old liaison with the Argo. Many of its members were themselves Argo Masters though they might not always remember having followed that trade, until some of them were called back to it. They offered sweet water and provisions and healings and virtues. But the interrelationship of the Argo to this Island or Archipelago of Animation, in terms of time and place, is not at all well worked out. It is supposed that it is all down in the log books of the Argo, but these lack indexing and correlation.

  Melchisedech Duffey sometimes sailed a hundred different adventures on the Argo in the interval of no more than a single day that he was absent from his establishment in Chicago or his Walk-In Art Bijou in New Orleans. And Biloxi Brannagan lived ashore for thirty years with his wife Gertrude in Biloxi, Mississippi, not turning a lick, and this thirty years was all during a quite short leave of absence from the Argo.

  The Argo people cruised various presents and futures. But could one always tell when he was in a future?

  An Argo Master could almost always tell, by the wavy billowy glints and sharps of light and shadow, like sunlight under water.

  But others than Argo Masters cannot always tell, in as much as it might be present and not future time for those others when it is future for the Argo Masters.

  8

  There were events and rumors of events, but the end was not yet, not quite yet.

  The effigies had always been on the Argo, for this voyage and for every one of them. Each person who came onto the Argo as Master donned his effigy, which then became part of him, and he wore it. And this released another Master to go and leave his effigy behind. A Master and his effigy did not seem to be present separately at the same time. The effigies were of no real importance, except that they were good working seamen.

  But each Argonaut, coming onto the Argo for another tour as Master, would do creative things to all the effigies of absent Argonauts, for that is one of the ways that personalities are built up. But now, standing against this, there were destructive rather than creative things done to three of the effigies. These three effigies were violated and marred by none other than Casey Gorshok. This was after he had been on the Argo for some time, and it was done in a fit of pique. One of the effigies that he violated was that of an Argo Master, and the other two had been companions or companions to be of the Master. Yes, there were effigies of respected companions on board. There could be more effigies than there were Masters, just as there were more coffins on board the Argo than were needed to contain the remains of all Masters everywhere.

  The effigy of the Master was clearly that of Count Finnegan. Well, Count Finnegan was an accredited Astronaut, a High Master. His effigy could licitly be there, and it could have two companions if it wished. But who were the two companions?

  All three of them had been smeared by a marring hatred, by a creative urge gone awry. It was Casey Gorshok's hatred, which was hard to understand. Gorshok was always a gentle and compassionate man.

  One of the companion effigies looked like a Hercules Monkey, but it also looked like a man. The other one of them looked a little bit like a Mottled Skin Gilbert Hyena, an unkind appearance to give anyone.

  Now a brief world history for the last two millennia:

  There had been, since the time of Restored Salvation, one central institution in the world. This central institution of the world was now, in these latter years, being systematically destroyed. It was known that the world itself could not survive the destruction of its central institution.

  “We know that,” the systemic destroyers said. “We know how closely the world and the thing are linked together. Why do you think we're doing it? We want the world destroyed.”

  But the bells for the ‘Last Rally’ had been set to ringing by a few persons who opposed the destruction.

  Conclusion of the brief world history of two millennia.

  It was in the ‘Third Year of the Bells’ that Count Finnegan did come on board with two companions, all of them in such sort of disguises as any sharp-eyed mariner could see through. They slipped into and absorbed their marred effigies. The point about these three men, Count Finnegan Himself, and Gilberto Levine and O’Brien, and Herman Hercules, is that they were acting as doubles or stalking horses for three Princes of the Ekklesia (that central institution on earth than which none can be higher). Or else they themselves were the three Princes disguised as their own doubles.

  The assignment of Count Finnegan and his companions had been to get themselves killed in place of the three Princes, or at least draw the murder fire away from the Princes. And they had failed in their assignment. The three Princes had all been murdered. And these their three doubles still lived and traveled the lands and seas.

  There was one music sound that became noticeable shortly after the coming on board of these three doubles. It may have been going on ever since their coming on board, but it only gradually rose to full audibility. This music sound was produced by certain Coryphaena Fish rising with their heads above the waves and blowing horns (shell horns, but with bright brass stops and frets), blowing them now loudly and clearly.

  This always happened whenever a present or future Pope was riding on the Argo. It had happened a dozen times in the Argo's history, and it was a fact beyond question that this music of such unusual origin served as a continuing salute to the personage.

  One other person had come onto the Argo at the same moment as Finnegan and Gilberto and Herman Hercules. This other person did not come onto the Argo openly. He came over the poop, and he hid, except from Melchisedech that is. No one could hide from Melchisedech when he was in his state of fleshlessness. The person who was
acting so peculiar, not so peculiar for him though, was X.

  But was not X already on the Argo? No, he had left the Argo openly three ports back, for service of another sort, as he said, and now he returned secretly. Secretly, but brightly, for now he was in red robes and red-piped cape. And he was Monsignor X.

  He brought with him a sly-wrapped package. He always brought something such whenever he came. He showed it to Melchisedech in one of those unaccountable hours of the night. It was the oddly-marked, flayed skin of one Cardinal Artemis.

  “Yes, this is the holy, flayed skin itself,” Monsignor X told Melchisedech, “and it is marked in a very peculiar manner. And so is the skin of one of the men who now sleeping in a berth on the Argo here, one of the men who came on board with Count Finnegan. The Cardinal's flayed skin here, and the living skin of that sleeping man, have almost identical markings. This man was supposed to be double of the Cardinal, but how can we tell which is which for certain now?”

  “Ah, flay the sleeping man, I suppose, X,” Melchisedech said, “and run both the skins through our computer. That should tell us which is the false skin and which is the true, which is the double and which is the man. But only Count Finnegan and Gilberto the man know of the marks.”