Fourth Mansions Read online

  Contents

  Contents

  I: I Think I will Dismember the World with my Hands

  II: Either Awful Dead or Awful Old

  III: If They Can Kill You, I Can Kill You Worse

  IV: Liar on the Mountain

  V: Helical Passion and Saintly Sexpot

  VI: Revenge of Strength Unused

  VII: Of Elegant Dogs and Returned Men

  VIII: The Line of Your Throat, the Mercurial Movement

  IX: But I Eat Them Up, Federico, I Eat Them Up

  X: Are You Not of Flimsy Flesh To Be So Afraid?

  XI: “I Did Not Call You,” said the Lord

  XII: Fourth Mansions

  XIII: And All Tall Monsters Stand

  I: I THINK I WILL DISMEMBER THE WORLD WITH MY HANDS

  “For there are all these obstacles for us to meet and there is also the danger of serpents.”

  Interior Castle: Teresa of Avila

  THERE IS entwined seven-tentacled lightning. It is fire-masses, it is sheets, it is arms. It is seven-colored writhing in the darkness, electric and alive. It pulsates, it sends, it sparkles, it blinds!

  It explodes!

  It is seven murderous thunder-snakes striking in seven directions along the ground! Blindingly fast! Under your feet! Now! At you!

  And You! You who glanced in here for but a moment, you are already snake-bit!

  It is too late for you to withdraw. The damage is done to you. That faintly odd taste in your mouth, that smallest of tingles which you feel, they signal the snake-death.

  Die a little. There is reason for it.

  There was a young man who had very good eyes but simple brains. Nobody can have everything. His name was Freddy Foley and he was arguing with a man named Tankersley who was his superior.

  “Just how often do you have to make a total fool of yourself, Foley?” Tankersley asked him sharply. Tankersley was a kind man, but he had a voice like a whip.

  “An enterprising reporter should do it at least once a week, sir, or he isn't covering the ground,” Fred Foley said seriously.

  “You do it oftener,” said Tankersley. “Why is your nose bleeding, Foley?”

  “I do it oftener because I'm more enterprising than your other reporters. Oh, my nose bleeds every time I get caught a good one there.”

  As all cats (and especially tigers) are loose in their skins, this Freddy Foley was loose in his face. There was room there for far more things than his winking innocence and his easy grin. There was room for multiplex character that Freddy hadn't developed yet, for expressions he had never used. It was a face unplowed, though momentarily bloodied.

  “This should count for several times,” Tankersley went on. “This goes beyond being a total fool. Do you know what position Carmody Overlark holds?”

  “Special Assistant to Secretary of State.”

  “Right, Foley. And you come here with this cock and bull story — ”

  “Capon and steer story rather. Surely you know that much about the Mamelukes.”

  “And because his given name is Carmody, and because there lived more than five hundred years ago a man named Khar-ibn-Mod —  Say, your head is gashed badly too! Did someone do it to you on purpose?”

  “Yeah, they tried to kill me, I think. And this Khar-ibn-Mod had the exact appearance of Carmody Overlark. It's a face that could happen only once.”

  “Some similarity. An old woodcut is hard to compare with a face that neither of us has seen except on paper or screen. Who tried to kill you, Foley?”

  “I don't know exactly. I could figure it out, but this Carmody Overlark story is much more important, and I request permission to follow it out.”

  “Well, you are most certainly denied that permission, Foley. How would a man who died five or six hundred years ago — ?”

  “But we don't know that he died. History is strangely silent on that point.”

  “History is strangely silent on millions of small details. History would more likely note it if he didn't die. And that is all you have?”

  “Oh no, Mr. Tankersley. I've come on quite a few more details and they all confirm my theory. The difficulty is that they sound a little improbable. If you won't accept the possibility that Carmody Overlark and Khar-ibn-Mod are the same man, then you sure won't accept the less conventional details. They make the main statement sound like the time of day.”

  “And I'm about to bid you the time of day, Foley. I believe I'll put you on the seismic disturbance case.”

  “No sir. I already know all about that. It isn't interesting when you know it.”

  “You know what's causing the low-grade seismic disturbances coming from the hills northwest of the city these last several evenings? Then you know more than quite a few smart people know. Tell me, Foley.”

  “No sir. You'd believe me even less than you believe the Carmody stuff. They aren't low-grade disturbances, though. There's a lot of twisted stuff in that bunch but it isn't low-grade. It isn't even physical. The little earthquake jolts are mental, but they fool the people who feel them.”

  “I don't believe you know what low-grade means in this sense, Foley. But they certainly are physical. Mental jolts will not fool or affect instruments.”

  “Yes, Mr. Tankersley, I believe they will. But I want to stay on the Carmody story. Mr. Tankersley, did you ever feel that someone is sucking out your blood or ichor, draining you of the fluid that might let you become a little more than a man? Or did you ever feel that there was a net cast over us and we were all held in this net by a hegemony of spiders as yet unidentified?”

  “Those spiders are my reporters, Foley, and they do spin some pretty thin stuff. Now I will tell you one thing: there are stories that reappear with the same faces when they should have been dead for more than five hundred years. And there's a special aspect to reappearing stories about reappearing men: follow one out and you will be killed for it every time. I don't know why this is so but I tell you that it is. They may have attempted you already and you too dumb to know it.”

  “No sir, I'm not too dumb to know it. I know they're trying to kill me or scare me to death.”

  “Ah, why don't you take off the rest of the day and get drunk, Foley?”

  “I did that Monday on your advice. I'd still rather have followed up that case.”

  “Well, it was better than having you go off quarter-cocked on the Knoll story. That would really have gotten us laughed out of town. And this thing now, drop it! No more Carmody stuff. No more stuff of men who live for centuries or who live more than once. Try one more bender for my sake now, and I hope to see you tomorrow morning, red-eyed and trembling, with your, ah, sanity restored, and ready for work. Get out of here now.”

  “Yes sir,” Freddy Foley said, and he got out.

  Good eyes but simple brains, that was Foley. He really could see at levels where many folks cannot, where Tankersley could not; where even Jim Bauer sometimes could not.

  The Harvesters had begun to meet in the evenings at the home of James Bauer. It was a nice place on a hillside above a lake and Bauer had named it Morada, the mansion.

  (“Morada,” an ashen voice conveyed, “besides meaning a dwelling place, means a sojourn; but morada also means mulberry-colored, or violet, or purple: the color of the sky at dusk in mid-winter, the color of snakes in shade.”)

  There were seven of the Harvesters. It takes at least seven to make up a set at brain-weaving, and this was their favorite game. They met in the evenings especially, and often in the daytimes, for they all had a sort of entanglement going about each other. Apart from each other they were powerful in their persons. Together they became critical mass.

  Morada was the home of Jim Bauer and his wife Letitia. The Manions and the
Silverios lived quite close by, and this made six — just short of the critical mass. Bedelia Bencher was free to be anywhere at any time. Now she came to Morada every evening. She completed the weave. Thereupon there were low-grade seismic disturbances, earthquake jolts which were mental but which fooled instruments and men.

  The weave was a most peculiar perfect circle — it had two discrete ends. One was the airy Bedelia Bencher. The other was the massive Jim Bauer.

  This Jim Bauer was in oils, in the splotchy sort of oil-painting that Eakins did do well, that should have been sketchy in result, and wasn't.

  (Wait — a bird just fell to earth not eighty feet from this Bauer; fell to earth with every bone in its body broken. It was a large dusk-flying bird of the kind that is called Night-Hawk, and it fell with resounding concussion. Only a bird that is already dead will fall heavily like that. Nothing to be done about a dead bird. Continue.)

  Even when in motion, James Bauer seemed always to be posed for such a portrait. He was a big, young-looking man, and it was all choice beef that hung on him. He had a rich voice and he had been a rich boy. This still made a difference to the two other men present (or coming into presence), though they all were passing rich now. These three had been to grade school together at St. Michaels, and they still adhered together for all the differences and years. It made a difference that Jim Bauer had been the rich kid, that he had been to Europe and to Rio while he was still a boy, that he had been off to rich-kid boarding schools some of the years. It made a difference that he had known the names of operas and things like that, that he had had French cigarettes in French packs when the other ten-year-old kids could hardly come by one cigarette a week.

  And this rich-kid air still clung to Jim. A large part of his aura, of his psychic power, was built out of the group remembrance of such things. Well, what is any person's influence built out of if not of trivial but clinging things?

  Bauer means farmer or peasant, which Jim certainly was not. It means a knave too. It also means a pawn at chess, but Jim Bauer believed that he was no one's pawn. He was a biologist at Bio-Lab of America. He was a New-Left Actionist; so had his father been, so had his grandfather been. He called himself a Centrist, but he belonged to the eccentric. He was intelligent, or at least of very tough brains, startling mental stamina and well-bottomed memory. He was a pan-math, a catchword artist. He was the Bishop's left-hand man. Jim said that he himself was a privileged mutation, that the whole world was mutating, that it could only be saved by such privileged mutations as were the Harvesters.

  Bauer had invented the seven-handed game of brain-weaving. Do not try it! It is a seven-bladed sword; it is no joke. It really can be done, and that is the fearful part of it. Bauer said that it was a patio game; he also said that the health and balance of the world depended on the seven of them playing it well. Bauer spoke with a colorful and intricate rumble. He had copied that rumble from someone; he had practiced it and developed it. It was a part of his psychic power now. It was a personage rumble.

  Bedelia Bencher came onto the patio at Morada, and certain flowers in a bowl lifted their heads and followed her.

  “I thought those were artificial flowers,” Bedelia piqued.

  “They are,” said Letitia Bauer, “but they've learned to raise their heads when you come just as natural flowers do.”

  “Has your little Freddy busted on this one yet, Bedelia?” Bauer gave out with his clattering rumble, he also lifting his head at Bedelia's coming. “Have you heard any echos that he's busted on Carmody Overlark? Oh, Freddy is our patsy and our proof! Let us no longer doubt that we can influence minds distantly when we put minds together here. We can sift Freddy Foley like wheat. Soon we'll be able to sift the whole world. It comes the harvest, Harvesters! We can brain-weave, we can influence. ‘Bust grandly over the man Carmody Overlark,’ we wove to Freddy, and he caught it across town. ‘Goof gloriously, Freddy!’ we wove, and I felt him take it up. How could anyone touch a man like Carmody Overlark? But your little Freddy has busted on him, I know it, I feel it! It was about mid-afternoon today. Have you heard echoes of it, Bedelia?”

  “Echoes? Earth-rumbles!” Biddy Bencher crinkled. “Tankersley called my father; my father called me. ‘You'll have to find another boyfriend to play with,’ my father said. ‘You find me one who's so much fun,’ I told my father. Tankersley called me. ‘If your father didn't own such a piece of this paper this kid would have to go,’ Tankersley told me. ‘Why do you fool with the fool anyhow, Biddy?’ he asked me. ‘He's out of his mind, that Foley kid. He's clear crazy, and he hardly seems to realize that he is. You can't hang a story like that on a dog.’ ‘But what was it, Mr. Tankersley, what was it?’ I asked in my innocent way. ‘Wild fillies couldn't tear that story out of me, Biddy,’ he said. ‘You couldn't hang a story like that on a dog; how could you hang it on a man as untouchable as Carmody Overlark?’ But I don't know what it is yet.”

  This Bedelia (Biddy) Bencher was a drawing in red chalk by Matisse. She was red-haired and lightly freckled and beautifully bony (the last her own description). She had a lustful mouth and innocent eyes, and was full of green passion. She was nineteen years old and had been nineteen for quite a while.

  “How can anyone as stupid as you are have a near-genius rating?” her father once ranted. “Those mind-raters must be out of their minds.”

  “But I've always been near genius, dear Father,” Biddy had answered. “We have always been close.”

  Biddy had no mother. She had been born, she said, near-grown and nubile from her father's forehead. “You can see the scar yet,” she'd say, and the father Richard Bencher did have a livid scar across his forehead, but he had a different explanation for it. Biddy did have a brain, however, and the seven-minded game of brain-weaving would have been impossible without her.

  “Find out, Biddy, what little Freddy has pulled!” Salzy (Ensalzamienta) Silverio cried as she materialized there on the patio. This Salzy was a bit by Degas, yet he would never have guessed the twisted passion of this dark, gay, unsmiling young woman. “Not twisted,” Salzy once said of her own passion, “it is helical. That sounds better.”

  (A mouse in mimosa roots nine feet from Salzy was blinded with blood and died quietly with its brains exploded. Odd, though: that mouse died with a smile. Salzy, in the aura of her, was a gentle and unknowing murderess of many small bits of the ambient.)

  “We will not do another thing that involves Carmody Overlark directly,” Arouet Manion said dimly. It did not seem that these persons arrived at Morada or entered the patio there. It seemed that they were already there in potential and now became realized, one by one. “We went for Carmody by name and face; we wanted him to play a hilarious joke on himself at a diplomatic function. And he exploded back at us, almost blew our brains out. Yet there is a vacuum there also. He isn't real, you know. We aren't the only ones who have stumbled onto brain-weaving. I can hear that Carmody laughing in my mind yet, and him more than a thousand miles away all the time. And when we linked him with the Foley caper I felt him flow through our minds again. ‘Goof gloriously, Freddy,’ we wove, but Overlark himself added something to that weaving. I'm almost afraid to find what idiocy Freddy has busted this time.”

  This Arouet Manion was a Reynolds piece. Having a Reynolds face, he appeared more profound than he was. But that maker touched many of his characters with his irony. (One hundred yards away a good man fell from grace in an instant, sinning silently to himself, and then reaching for the telephone to actualize that sin; it was the sin of calumny. It was not an ordinary sin to this man. It came to him in a wave of sticky evil, as an outside influence.) Manion had a size and strength of both mind and body. It might be of poor quality, but there was a lot of it, enlivened by boundless energy. Manion was a doctor, a psychiatrist. He was a semi-pro psychologist and an amateur philosopher. He was also a Teilhardian and a concordist. Being so, he was a man completely without humor, but also there was nothing serious in him. Turgid, yes, but no
t serious. But he was one of those who were beginning to move the world, literally.

  “We need a new target,” sparked Wing Manion, who crackled in the air every time she moved. (Was Wing Manion as sparky a woman as that?) “I say, let our new target be Michael Fountain. He's the most informed man we know. He is also, I believe, the best man we know. It's simply that he's a man of no energy at all. A low-pressure fountain is our Michael. Let's weave power for him, then, so he can move the world. He's the one we need to be Lord of the Harvest.”

  Wing Manion reminded one of a fish done by Paul Klee: not in her actual appearance, of course, but in her style. Yet she was good-looking, and Klee never painted a good-looking fish in his life. Those Klee fishes, though, they have passion.

  (Instruments at a seismograph lab in the city picked up low-grade seismic disturbance as Wing Manion solidified into the group, bringing it nearer to critical mass. These curious little jolting earthquakes had been recorded for several evenings and there were distracting elements to them. Really, they were not real. “Impulsion without content,” was the interpreted reading of the seismometers. Without content? Wing Manion? Those machines are feebleminded.)

  Wing Manion was devoted, she was kind. She loved kids, she even loved rocks. Biddy Bencher said that Wing Manion was a sexpot who happened to be a saint and so was complicated back on herself. Being married to an incompetent psychologist didn't help.

  “Don't you think we're being a little too godly in all this?” Hondo Silverio asked the bunch of them. Hondo startled them all anew every time he came into presence, struck them with shivers of fear or at least strangeness. Yet there was no better man anywhere. “Has God called us to be Harvesters? Jim Bauer says that God has called him. Arouet Manion says that God-in-process has called him. Well, nobody has called me except my own depths, and those caverns aren't to be trusted. We've stumbled onto a trick that frightens me. We really can move men and mountains. We really can determine, to an extent, what the world will be. Shouldn't we be giving rather than taking?”