R. A. Lafferty - Melchisedek 04

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Well, did you ever watch the way the future comes out of its jug?

The jug is of smokey glass or rock crystal. Shapes and forms and movements

can be seen in there, and some of the details of it call be guessed. But it

is all distorted and deformed. It is the curvature of the smokey glass that

deforms the images. No future is ever seen undeformed.

But the globs of the future trying to get out will push each other

back, and there will be clotting at the mouth of the jug. Only thin juice

will roll out for a while. Then it will break loose and big hunk will come

out. But they are never quite as you imagined them to be when you peered

through the smokey glass.

Can one cheat to catch an earlier look at what is coming out? One

can try. There is a thin leading edge between the devouring present and the

waiting future. What happens if one is too eager and crosses this leading

edge? The world ends, for that person, for that while.

If this thin line is crossed, then one is out in the narrow interval

of unreality. It's a chancey though flexible place there.

Melchisedech Duffey and his history had come up to the absolute

present time, and then had gone a thumb's width beyond that, Duffey and his

nimbus had gone into the future then? No, they had gone into the shattering

state of contingency. It was a fracturing of reality. And it was a

fracturing of Melchisedech Duffey.

There has always been a quantity of unreality leaking out of the

future into the present. Then the unreality has to be negated, and the

reality revived. The reconstructing of reality is what is being talked about

when we talk about reconstructing the world.

Duffey had been into the future before, spottily, off and on, for

seven years once. And he had returned several times to those same seven

years. And yet it was not strictly speaking into the future. It was a

mixture of future and past and present. It was an interval or series of

intervals removed out of time and held apart. The intervals of Seven Years

did not necessarily count in regular time, which is why they could sometimes

be revisited. They did not fracture reality. They stood on the far side of

reality.

Melchisedech had been on the fourteenth voyage of the Ship Argo, and

this fourteenth voyage was technically in the future. And his own ashes had

been brought back to him from that future land. Anything brought back from

the future has unreality as a major component. Anyone who ever looked at or

handled Duffey's ashes with seeing eyes and sensing fingers knows something

about their index of unreality. Teresa the Showboat knew about their

unreality, but she believed that she was blowing them into real fire.

In a misbehaven case like this, when a complex over-runs itself, it

is shattered into a number of apocalypses or possible manifesting futures. A

number seven is often mentioned of these futures. Really, there is no limit

to the number of contingencies: but seven of them, like eager olives of

different sizes, seemed to be disputing the mouth of the jug. And the seven

most jostling ones were these:

"One". This is called, from a remnaiit of it that has been found

'The Great Day Contingency'. It is characterized by a bewildering

unstructuring or unstructuring of all things. It is further characterized by

the obliterating of boundaries, which results in the obliteration of persons

also. The irony is that Duffey was the one who had first thought of this,

and that as a joke. It would take a lot of misplaced faith on the part of a

faithless world to bring it off, but misplaced faith is the easiest sort to

come by. If on go imagining a trap like that one, you had better imagine

yourself Ieaping out of its jaws pretty nimbly. Duffey hidn't done this, and

he had been caught.

(This sounds a little bit fimiliar. Yes, the pretty girls who were

putting on the play, and one of them was a prophesing pythoness who hit some

of this imagery pretty close.)

'This is the clock that stopped at twelf.

This is the snake that swallowed itself.'

That was the theme of the Great Day Contingency. Wouldn't it be an absurd

ending? Or even an absurd future segment? But one does not say 'Absurd' to a

thing that swallows one up.

"Two." This is the Goat Contingence. (Whence do I have this partial

understanding of the alternatives,' Duffey asked himself, 'my understanding

of these alternatives offered to me and to the world? Oh, I simply have them

in my prophetic function. Even the little verse-writing prophetess at the

academy had pieces of this understanding.) This contingency was that of the

Promontory Goats or the Scapegoats as passionate motivators of the world and

as receivers of the world and as receivers of the world's bankruptcy. This

contingency involved one of the Prodigious Persons or Splendid Animations,

Casey Szymanski, as cosmos scapegoat and bad-trader of worlds. Nobody could

ever make a bad trade like Cascv. Compassionate goats keep picking up the

tab for the deficiting world. Casey had tried to trade souls with the Devil

to spare that person punishment. Whether that trade was ever consummates, or

whether it was still in the process of being consummated, is not know. Casey

did trade souls (or perhaps it was just one of his old souls that he had

lying around, as Absalom said) with Absalom Stein. Casey and his sort will

trade off everything till there is nothing left to trade. And, when the

debts of all the world fall due and must be collected, they must be

collected from them the scapegoats. They will pay forever in a lower and

more painful hell than the one commonly known, the fearful hell that is

under the name-board "The End of Compassion'. This is a very doubtful

contingency, but it does answer the question 'Who is going to pay for it

all?' Like all the contingencies, it involved the entire world.

"Three". This is the eschatological resolution presented in the form

of the Petrine Spy Story. In plainer words -- no, there are no plainer words

to lend it. This is about a very special selection and fingering of a man

for a great station. Spy stories are in, especially those on whose outcome

the fate of the world hinges. Count Finnegan is the main person in this

alternate. Finnega's death on the Marianao Coast of Cuba near Havana was a

trick (Oh, certainly he died there), a cover drama to spring him loose for a

great masquerade. His appearance, whether in effigy or in body, was exactly

the same as that of Peter the Second, banana nose and all. When forces move

to kill peter, there will be some very intricate movement and

counter-movement. Dotty Yekouris (dead-undead on the Marianao Coast also)

has an incredible role in this. God knows what!

Someone will be dead on the Petrine throne, and yet someone will

still reign over that diminished and tottering and holy kingdom. The only

thing preventing this chase-farce-tragic-drama from moving out of

contingency and into certainty is that Finnegan cannot be found, dead or

alive, to play his role. Or he is already playing that role, And this

version of the world is already happening. Once more, the whole world is

involved in this alternative. But it's a pretty chancey thing to try to save

the world on such a shoestringy thing as this is.

"Four". This is the Fourteenth Voyage of the Ship Argo, and the

Reduction of Melchisedech Duffey. It must happen (this is the only one of

the contingencies that is sure to happen) but it will not preclide other

alternatives from happening. This is in the preter-natural circumstances of

the Seven Lost Years (they are called the Seven Golden Years in their own

context). This is concerned with ongoing beatitudes, and the strong promise

of Final Beatitude. It is concerned with Shipboard Romance in a wider sense

than it is usually understood. It is the 'Quest Accomplished' motif (and

what will you do for an encore now?) The fleece has been found, and the big

moment of that finding abides forever.

All of the Splendid Animations have sailed on The Argo, are sailing

on it now even though they believe that they are doing other things in the

flatland that is taken for the ordinary world, and they will still sail on

it on the high seas after every shore has stink.

The splintering contingencies are not, in all cases, exclusive

things.

The last death of Melchisedech Duffey has to occur on this

Fourteenth Voyage of The Argo, or his ashes could not be brought back from

it. We will return to this case again with more massive information.

"Five". This is called the Thunder Colt Complex, or the Decatur

Street Opera House Presentation of the World. Duffey had once been

frightened to learn that the Decatur Street Opera House had moved into the

realm of the possible to the extent of advertising in the Bark. The

Presentation is an Ending and a Beginning, except that it is some other

species and not ourselves that begins when we end. Were we members of this

gloriotis new species, we would applaud. Being of the old and unregenerate

species, it will stick in our throats.

To this case also we will return with much more massive information.

"Six". This is the confrontation of Melchisedech with the Loosed

Devil in a closed place. There are instructions given before the

confrontation. 'You stand for Mankind in this meeting,' someone tells

Melchisedech as he goes to the doom place. 'I will just be damned if I stand

for Mankind, here or anywhere," Melchisedech swore. He never knew whether

these unbodeed voices were those of friend or enemy.

This was a duel that shook the whole spider web in which the suns

are caught, the web that is called the cosmos. Or else it was not that at

all. It was a fancy that Melchisedech might or might not accept in its

possibilities.

A covenant is offered there, but there are holes in that covenant.

But what if Melchisedech accepts the covenant, and then lies and tells

Mankind that he did not do it?

"Seven". This is a wordless repartee between Melchisedech Duffey and

the invisable God in a garden in the afternoon. Everythuing is promised, and

a solution to all problems. The only thing that could go wrong is so minor a

thing that it would have to be sought out in stubborness and confusion. And

even if found and effected, the thing that could go wrong would not mean

final disaster; not to everyone, maybe only to the one at whose hand it

should go wrong would it mean disaster. But that person was Melchisedech

Duffey. At the very least it would mean a reversion to a beginning for that

misbehaving person. This seventh contingency would nullify some, but maybe

not all of the others.

It wasn't clear whether Melchisedech had any power to choose between

these cases. Anyhow, there wasn't any hurry about making the choices.

Outside of Time, there can be anxiousness, and anxiety, and even hysteria,

but there cannot be hurry for that is tied to time. Melchisedech, hardly

noticing it, had moved out of time and into moment. He had done this when he

had come onto the sign that the girls had printed to advertise their play.

And who else of the Duffey circle was it who was living in moment?

Yes, Duffey still got a weekly letter from his brother Bascom Bagby.

He didn't, in his fractured state, receive clear communciations from anyone

else. But the Bagby correspondence was longstanding; it was outside of time;

it was allowed.

"My dear brother," Bagby wrote. "Do not be alarmed over your present

situation. You were in a somewhat similar situation during your 'Seven Lost

Years'. You aren't dead. The people around you do not even notice your

acting much different from your usual. You are skitting. You are in an

adolescence. For some reason, you skipped adolescence in all your previous

courses, going from long childhood to early manhood. Yes, there are often

awkward and spooky accompaniments to an adolescence. There is psychic

dislocation, and there is the familiarity of neutral creatures ('neutral

spirit' we call them here; that's a sort of purgatorial joke). As a

prodigious and special person, you atrract them massively.

"Seven maids willing to marry you? The most I ever had at one time

was five, but I was a slob. It shows that you are in a greening cycle, old

patriarch.

"You are a fetish mark, like a crack in the sidewalk or a post by

the road. This is a fetish that the fates and principalities step on or do

not step on, touch or do not touch; since they set great store in this, and

perhaps they determine a course by whether they have touched you or not.

There is nothing lowly about being such a fetish. Even the grand ones cannot

ignore you."

There was more. There was always more to Bagby's letters. And Dyffey

would have been lost without them.

Melchisedech met the Loosed Devil in a closed place. This, then, was

at least the ante-room of the Sixth Contingency of the World that

Melchisedech had entered. Would it prevent him from entering some of the

other contingencies. No it wouldn't, not unless Melchisedech Duffey entered

into covenant with this person.

"There are certain things that my client is always in need of," the

Devil said. "He must always have a Magus or so on hand. At the moment he is

very low on them. The last several of them were vaporized, soul and body.

There was overreaction somewhere. I have heard that you are not the nervous

type, and that you are a top Magus."

"I didn't know that we were rated, Clootie," Melchisedech said.

"Yes, I am Magus. I do magic. Having known several who worked for you, I can

say that I am better at the trade than they are. But no two of us plow the

same field, and no one can say who is top."

"Come work for my client, and you can wear diamonds," the Devil said

in the corniest of the very old lines.

"I already wear diamonds," Melchisedech said, "Finnegan diamonds.

Finnegan, wherever he is, is still in the diamond distributing business with

the Haussa boy named Joseph. All Finnegan's friends wear diamonds? Do all of

yours?"

"This Finnegan has reaped where he has not sown," the Devil said.

"He is in deep debt to my client, and he will not come out of that house

till all is paid. My client needs a Magus for certain creative work. It

isn't that my client cannot himself create, but --" "It is that you yourself

cannot create, Clootie," Melchisedech said. "You can poison the springs and

roil the land, but you cannot create."

"The creative fecundity is always at hand," this Devil said. "It

didn't originate with my client, and it didn't originate with any magus. But

sometimes, to awaken a thing to a desired shape or inclination, we must

bring to bear an influence or a secondary intervention."

"Nah, Clootie, nah, that's not the way I do it," Melchisedech said.

"A cheap-stiot magus may work by secondary intervention, but I do not. I

actually create."

The Devil's eyes brightened when he heard this, and he rubbed his

hands together. "That is what we want," he said. "We've always been hampered

in the field of primary creation. Now you will work for me with your full

magus powers. I said that you will work for me. I tell you: I do not ask

you. You have no idea what mortgage I hold on you. I'm a canny fellow in all

this, and I hold iron-studded mortgages on you, soul and body. And I'll not

remit anything to you for coming over to me. I have it on your own word that

you are a primary creator, so you will create for me. I compel you to --"

"Nah, Clootie, nah," said Melchisedech. "You'll not compel me."

Melchisedech had scored a few shots. As to the question whether this was a

minor devil of the Devil himself His Majesty, the fellow was using a tactic

of speaking of his 'client' as if he himself were a mere agent or underling

working for another. But then he would (Duffey could see it coming, what

ham!) reveal that he himself was the client, the high Majesty. He would do

this by a great pyrotechnic display that would be overpowering even if not

convincing. But Duffey, by calling the fellow 'Clootie" (one might call a

minor devil that, but not Himself His Majesty) had kept him a little off

balance.

It wasn't settled. It's still going on. These out-of-time

confrontations still continue while other things are going on also.

"But the devil or Devil is way ahead on points," Melchisedech

deplored it in his own place while he was being outhandled by the devil on

the devil's home field. "Why am I responsible? Oh, I suppose that I'm

'charge of quarters' for the world this city, and the highest ranking

non-com about. It might be that we could reverse the trend oil the devils,

if only --

"-- if only I could shape up another dozen of -- and, with both the

world and myself in a fractured state, it might be possible -- well, since I

have over-run the cutting edge and stand out of context, maybe I could ---

the old bunch does all it can -- but there should be more for me to do than

to wait for plaudits.

"If I could locate a fecund working area, and not be distracted by

either threats or pleasures, I might be able to make --"

"To what extent are a potters' dozen of us the Marvelous Animations

of Melchisedech Duffey?

"To no extent at all. It is more likely that Dtiffey is an animation

of ours. His undistinguished clay hulk was first known to Caisey Szymanski

and Hugo Stone (who was possibly myself) in Chicago, and to Mary Catherine

Carruthers and to Margaret Stone in Chicago also. And before that, the clay

hulk was known to those magicians Sebastian Hilton and Lily Koch. We all

worked on Duffey, to see whether we could not shape him into something

worthwhile. It was a sort of a game. So also did Giulio Solli, the Monster

Forgotten, the Father of Finnegan, work on the Duffey. So did Finnegan

himself, and Henri and Vincent, when they joined our acquaintance during the

war. So did Mary Virginia Schaeffer and Dotty Yekouris and Showboat

Piccojie, though some of them had not yet seen Melchisedech Duffey. We made

him what he is today, a moth-eaten magus who believes that he made us, and

whom we love, for all his unlovely qualities.

"Such is my belief today, that he proceeds from us and not we from

him. But there are other days when I believe irrationally that this

Melchisedech was our maker, that he evoked our clay and awoke us to live, or

to new life."

[Absalom Stein. Notes in a Motley Notebook.]

"Where are you going, dear?" Mary Virginia Schaeffer asked Duffey in

a worried voice one day. "You are so nutty lately that I wonder if you

should be wandering around without a keeper."

"I'm just going for one of my afternoon walks," Melchisedech said.

"Bit for you, they are doomsday wilks, Duffey," she said. "From one

of them you won't come back."

"In that case, have a double care of things, Mary Virginia. Brood

the world like the wonderful hen you are."

"That man really is a magus," Mary Virginia said wonderingly when he

had left, as if she had just realized it for the first time.

"The Duff, he is a magus strange.

Hi! Ho!

The Duff he is a magus strange,

A holy magus with the mange!

Hi! Ho! The gollie wol!" That was Margaret Stone who sang that. They

should not teach the Gadarene Swine Song to irresponsible persons.

It was not on thit afternoon walk though that Duffey walked over the

edge. It was in a walk the next morning that Duffey stepped into a pothole

and nearly fell, and then found himself in a somewhat changed world.

Book Seven

"You, Melchisedech the brambled,

Deeply weathered, widely rambled,

Find the World Completely scrambled."

[Margaret Stone- Tablets of Stone.)

"In our own Philosophical language we may put the question thus: How

did the real become phenomenal, and how can the phenomenal become real

again... Or, to put it in more familiar language, how was this world

created, and how can it be uncreated again?!

[P.D. Ouspensky. Tertium Organus.]

So Clio scribes in manner blurred,

To sound of crackish gong:

She writes it down in every word,

And every word is wrong."

[Finnegan. Road Songs.]

What was different about the City all of the sudden?

The city had been, for some time now, different from any other place

in the world. It was different for its hanging onto a certain stubborn and

malodoruous remnant. And the most stubborn and most malodorous part of that

remnant was Zabotski.

Zabotski had once been a chemist, a smelly man in a smelly trade. He

had retired from being a regular chemist now, and he had retired from a

dozen trades, but he remained a smelly man. And there was something peculiar

about this. He wasn't smelly to the nose. He was smelly to the eye.

Zabotski was probably rich. He owned a lot of property around town.

He wasn't an unreasonable landlord. He carried more people that did those

who bad-mouthed him. But he had an abrasive tongue, and he could outshout

even Melchisedch Duffey in a shouting match. And he was in no way elegant.

Likely the only one who loved him, beyond the Christian requirement, was the

Widow Waldo. Or was she Wife Waldo by now?

On this particular morning he was mumbling to himself, but when

Zabotski mumbled he could be heard for half a block:

"There's a peculiar little episode hanging over our town. It's like

a misshapen cloud, and it's been raining improper stuff on us for the last

several hours of the night. It's hovering like a big buzzard, like a

fancy-Dan buzzard with three peacock tail feathers tied on it. I think this

dirty-bird episode will be a puzzler, and I may add to the puzzle. I'm going

to claim that have a main hand in it, just out of orneriness."

Zabotski sometimes waited around and offered his arm and his

protection to Margaret Stone when she had finished her nightly giving of

testimony in the Quarter. He liked to walk her back to the Pelican Press

Building with a flourish.

Protection for Margaret Stone! Aw, come down from that perch! It was

rather the town and the world that needed protection from Margaret.

"He's about the last of them," the people would sometimes say about

Zabotski, and they'd shake their heads. The last of what? Ah, to answer that

we must go on a spree of destruction that changed the face of the town and

the country and disturbed some of the underpinning of the world itself.

So, this morning, Margaret Stone came in from her night in the

Quarter wearing a gaudy button that read: 'Roya] Pop History. Come and Make

History With Us. Are You Splendid Enough?'

"Wherever did you get that, you splendid person, you?" Mary Virginia

Schaeffer asked her.

"I made it," Margaret said. "A man was wearing the big button part

of it for his convention name button. I took his name out and put the

message in. A bunch called 'The Society for Creative History', or else the

'Royal Pop Historians' is going to hold a meeting in town. It starts today.

They say that their job is to get rid of a lot of unhistorical remnants in

this town, just as they have gotten rid of them in the rest of the world. I

better go to their thing. They may try to get rid of something that I want

to keep. I suspect that they'll need me."

"I used to create quite a bit of history myself," Mary Virginia

bragged, "but I don't do nealy as much of it nowadays."

"I don't think that's quite what the 'Society for Creative History'

means," Margaret rattled in her dubious voice, "but maybe it is. They have

topics listed like 'Get rid of that Stuff', 'History made while you wait',

'It doesn't matter -- they're only human', 'Louts, Liars, and the Uses of

Historical Evidence', 'The Holy Barnacle and the Pearl Beyond Price',

'Wax-Work History and the Ironic Flame', 'The Evidential World',

'Mountain-Building for Fun and Profit', 'History, Hypnotis and Group

Amnesia', 'Whoever Were Those People Who Lived Next Door to You Yesterday?',

'We said to Get Rid of that Stuff!', others that I forget. They're

interesting topics. Oh, by the way, the Black Sea has disappeared and

millions of people have been destroyed. It's all utterly obliterated, now

and forever. The Royal Pop People say that it puts an end to the old

geography."

"How could a sea be obliterated?" Mary Virginia asked. "Where did

you read the announcement of such an historical meeting, Margaret? They

sound like things that you made up."

"Read them? Whenever did I ever read anything. I'm not even sure

that I know how to read. I don't remember ever doing it. No, this is just

something that I know. Or it's something that I heard."

"Please don't go through all that recital again, Margaret, but can't

you just tell me in two words what you're talking about," Mary Virginia

requested. "Absalom says that everything in the world can be described in

two words."

"I know his two words. But what I'm talking about is Pop History.

People of the Old Kind won't understand it very well, so the Royal Pop

Historians say. The meeting starts today. I don't know where it is, but

somebody said that Duffey might know."

"I didn't know that you were interested in history, Margaret. It

sure was noisy in town last night. What was happening."

"Sure I'm interested in history, Mary V. Papa used to have a book

'History of Cook County in the Early Days'. I'm from Chicago, you know."

"I know, Margaret. Did you read the book about the history of Cook

County?"

"No. I never read it, but we had it. Papa bought things like that

because he was trying to get used to being an American. Anyhow, I'm real

noetic so I'll be a natural at something like history. What was so noisy

last night was that funny wind blowing down the facades of the buildings and

breaking up the old people and the old animals. It left a lot of trash in

the streets. Not only that, but there's so many parks and courtyards and

places this morning that weren't there yesterday that it causes one to

wonder. They sure are gracious places."

"What old people and old animals are you talking about, Margaret?

What funny wind? What fronts of buildings being blown down? How did they

break up?"

"Well, I'll tell you, Mary V., I think that some of that stuff was

from old Mardi Gras floats, or they were planning to be floats next season.

The new people tnd the new winds were breaking up everything that wasn't

splendid enough. There's one dragon that's big enough to load three floats

pretty heavy. It's still alive a little bit."

"Are you talking about live people and live animals, Margaret? And

what are these new parks and courtyards and places that you're jabbering

about?"

"Oh, the broken people and animals are mostly papier mache or rubber

or styrofoam or plastic. After they break up and die that's all that's left

of them. But some of them were pretty lively before the end. There was one

fire-drake (or he was half man and half fire-drake) who bit a lady in the

leg and got blood all over the street. Some people took her to Doctor Doyle

with it. 'That's a terrible bite,' he said. 'I think it give you infections

draconitis. You have to show me what bit you.' He went out with the people

to look at it. When he found out that it was just a fire-drake made out of

rubber, and that it was fabulous besides, he didn't know what to think. But

a laboritory has checked what the lady has, and it's infectious draconitis

all right. They think she'll die."

"Margaret, what sort of convention was going on in town last night?"

"Oh, just three or four very ordinary ones. No, this is the straight

dope, Mary V. I wasn't cordial on the stuff last night. And the courtyards

and parks and nooks aren't new, except for not being there before. They're

quite old and weathered, and they're full of almost the biggest trees in

town. They're very ingrown and curious. New things aren't usually that

ingrown and pleasant. And the thing that chokes me is that nobody remembers

what was in those place yesterday. 'I live there,' one man said (you know

him, he's that Russian Sarkis Popotov), 'and now there's a place next door

to me named Artaguette Park. It looks unfamiliar to me, but some of those

horsey tourists who are in town say that it'll look familiar by tomorrow.

I've lived there for forty years, and I know that there were some kind of

buildings next to me, but I sure can't remember what they were.' That's what

old Sarkis said. And there are other places like that. The town's full of

them this morning."

"What were the people in the Quarter drinking last night, Margaret?"

"Green Ladies mostly," Margaret Stone said. "You know, like

Peppermint Schnapps, except with absinthe instead of the schnapps. That's

what everybody has been drinking all week. Why don't you go with the to the

Pop Histoy meetings today, Mary Virginia?"

'Margaret was small and intense, with a large voice that was saved

from stridence only by a certain music in it. But it broke at least once a

week, and it wasn't nearly as large. She was Italian and Jew, with possibly

a little bit of the Greek and the Pre-Adamite in her. She would have been

beautiful in repose, but no one had ever seen her so.' So, at least, an old

describer has described her. But he didn't mention the terrible tragedy and

passion that was sometimes in her face. It was because people so seldom

listened to what her musical voice said that there were such stark things in

her face. The passion and tragedy in her face had increased lately. So had a

certain threat that refused to give its name.

And Mary Virginia, her associate at the Pelican, had everything. Her

kindness was extreme, but lately it had acquired a vacant quality, as though

she could no longer remember just whom or what to be kind to. Her beauty

alone would knock you off your stool forever. That had happened to a number

of fellows. It wasn't true that her beauty had begun to fail in the last

several decades. It had become deeper and fuller.

"As you know, I seldom get out of this place, Margaret," Mary V.

said. "And the Pop Historians don't sound all as attractive as that. There

are very many things going on this week, if I should go out. Horny Henderson

is on the Trumpet at the Imperial John. They have a new singer at Red

Neck's. Justin says that the Jazz Museum has so much new stuff over there

that it'd take a week to see and hear it all. The Presentation at the

Decatur Street Opera House this week will transcend everything. We have to

go there tonight. There's a big bunch of new painters in the galleries and

around Pirates' Alley, and Duffey says that one of the new ones could almost

be the ghost of Finnegan, the way he uses his oranges. There's a couple of

Dominicans giving a mission at Ste. Katherines. It's full of hell-fire, just

like when we were kids. They say that our world will end, right here this

week. The 'Nostaigia Club' should get hold of them. 'As American as

hell-fire and apple-pie, is Mencken used to write. And you want me to go to

a Pop History Banger? And you don't even know where they're having it?"

The scene changes to just around the corner, over on Chartres Street

or whatever street it was that Duffey now had his establishment on. Yes,

there had been a new breeze blowing during the night. Well, it was a

retrospective breeze. You remembered it now, hearing it, but you didn't

notice it at the time when it had been happening. But now it was blowing for

real, blowing down the facades, and some of the whole buildings, with a

rattling and crashing. Duffey had been out very early, and had turned his

ankle in a pot hole. Then wild things began to happen, and they began to

have happened for quite a few hours befosre. You wouldn t think that

stepping into a pot hole would make that much difference.

The scenery, the facades, the false fronts (but they hadn't been

false till right at the time of their destruction) were toppling and

breaking up in the streets outside, and there was the sound of tearing

canvas and scorching rubber and stuttering styrofoam. It wasn't a joke. It

was all straight impression. There really was something noisy and airish

going on outside in the streets. It was like a strong experience of

anthropomorphic colts, a great clatter of them.

"A Strong Experience of Anthropomorphic Clots!" Duffey howled at his

own half-conscious word train that had been going through his head. "I've

roused up with a mouthful of pretty crocky phrases before, but these

anthropomorphic colts outrace them all."

Duffey never locked his doors, but sometimes (late at night) he did

close them. He had inventories worth many thousands of dollars. These solid

money items formed the heart of Melchiscdech Duffcy's Walk-In Art Bijou. And

the bijou, the pawn shop, the various other enterprises, his living

quarters, his very body were all members of this one establishment. He would

not lock up any of them.

Yes, the door was still wide open, as he had left it when he hobbled

in with his slightly twisted ankle. And he had heard a slight noise at that

door, that came to him over the thumping and clattering noises in the

streets. The door opened inward, as did Duffey himself. And there was a

notice nailed to it that hadn't been there when he had re-entered an hour

before. It was on some sort of old, yellowed poster cardboard, and it was

nailed to the door with a long and ancient nail.

Duffey read the notice or message. It was in the new style of

writing, so it was a non verbatim message. The words 'Pop History' lept out

at him. Then other and more fearsome words came and are up those first

words, and established themselves with an easy arrogance. Slogans like 'We

said to get rid of that stuff', and 'It doesn't matter -- they're only

human' took their places on the scroll, and then other phrases came forward

and these withdrew to less emphatic levels. The whole thing was a

proclamation, but it was a very tricky one.

Then Duffey again read what he could of it, with unbelief and near

alarm. There was a difficulty about the words. Duffey still had some trouble

with the new style of writing, even though words were one of his trades. But

there didn't seem to be much doubt about the first meaning. Duffey was

sociable: he was hospitable: but the message mentioned numbers that were

overwhelming. It stated that he was favored and selected to lodge two

hundred or more royal persons at his establishment. It stated that these

were serious persons of a scientific sort, persons of blazing beauty and

towcring mentility and perftimed perversion and breath-catching art: all

this in the intensity and scope of the thunder dimension. That sounded like

pretty vaunting stuff. It stated that such splendid persons were used to the

best in accomodations. And it said that Duffey was selected for this honor

because of his great age and erudition. It gave the name of the convening

society. But something was missing from the name and message, something that

can only be called verbatimness. There were very tricky things about the

words of the message refusing to stand fast and be accounted for.

This Duffey has been called 'a patriarch without seed, a prophet

without lionor, and a high-sounding brawler'. He was a man of uncertain age

(this fact about him had assumed importance lately): and he was a willful

man who was held on peculiar checkrein by forces unknown. But he was a

spacious man and he could be forgiven many inconsistencies.

Duffey rocked on his feet and lowered at the writing and thought

about it in an effort to make up his mind. It was a ritual sort of thing

that was nailed to his door, and it deserved a ritual answer. Duffey got a

pen and bowl, and he wrote an answer in his hieratic hand at the bottom of

the scroll. It was not old poster cardboard that the scroll was made out of.

It was now seen to be old parchment. Duffey wrote:

"Royal Pop People, I am honored. And you are welcome. But my

facilities are quite limited, as is my credit. I will be host to as many of

you as I can be. No man can do more. Somehow you will all be taken care of.

Signed, Melchisedech Duffey."

He paused for a while, and he stirred the ink in the bowl. Then he

wrote a bit more: "if this is a hoax, then it's a howling hoax."

Out of affectation, Duffey wrote all official things with this squid

ink that he kept in a bowl. This was the finest ink ever. It will not

coagulate. Write anything at all in squid ink. Then write something else

beside it in ordinary ink. Come back in three thousand years, or even in ten

years, and notice the difference. The squid ink will have remained true and

unfaded; the other will have paled. But squid ink had gone out of fashion.

The prime message on the parchment, however, was also written in squid ink,

and there weren't many people who used it these last few centuries.

Duffey examined the parchment, and later he would examine it again and

again. "We will come back to you, skin of a horny goat," he said. "Oh, how

we will come back to you!" He turned his attention then to the nail that

held it. It was large, ind it appeared very sharp. It was not, as Duffey had

at first thought, either brass or bronze. It was a copper-iron nail, and it

was of old Macedonian workmanship. Old, but not very.

For there were in that city many members of the "Society of Creative

Anachronisms", a social and historical and dramatic society. These people

were all friendly to Duffey, and Duffey suspected them of a hoax. They put

great effort in some of their hoaxes.

Duffey, a widow-man of loose and informal establishment, now made

himself ready for the day and its apparent adventure. He caught again the

whiff of the new breeze blowing, and part of that whiff was made up of

putridity, that emanation of changes working. He dressed, daubed whiting on

his beard and hair (they had both been turning disquietingly black lately),

and went out into the streets to find comradeship and adventure and

breakfast. Yes, there was indeed a new breeze blowing. It wasn't a great

air-mover of a breeze; but it brought a rumbling freshness, a bracing and

reminiscent aroma, a rakish sense of rot, and an altogether vivid accord

with things as they are and as they were becoming.

And it brought a sudden and happy discord with things as they had

not been before. Certainly there had always been several buildings right

next to Duffey's place, on the left when one comes out. And just as

certainly those structures of whatever kind were not standing there now.

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3Well,didyoueverwatchthewaythefuturecomesoutofitsjug?Thejugisofsmokeyglassorrockcrystal.Shapesandformsandmovementscanbeseeninthere,andsomeofthedetailsofitcallbeguessed.Butitisalldistortedanddeformed.Itisthecurvatureofthesmokeyglassthatdeformstheimages.Nofutureiseverseenundeformed.Buttheglobsofthefut...

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R. A. Lafferty - Melchisedek 04

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