"R. A. Lafferty - Melchisedek 01 - Tales of Chicago" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lafferty R A)

MORE THAN MELCHISEDECH
VOLUME ONE:
TALES OF CHICAGO

Book One:
Early Boyhood of a Magus

We know the sign athwart the wreck
The sign that hangs about your neck,
Where One more than Melchisedech
Is Dead and never dies.

G. K. Chesterton
Ballad of the White Horse

CHAPTER I

Well, what do you think is maintaining the world on even its wobbly
ways if it is not the extraordinary work of a few prodigious and special
people in it? These people are known as magicians or sorcerers or magi: and
this is the daily life of one of them.
He was Melchisedech Duffey. Like every magus, he arrived with many
mantles of magic. Like every magus, he would lose most of them during his
life. And such payments as he would receive for his losses would seem
trivial or incomprehensible.
"d do not understand the value of these trifles d receive for the
splendid things that d give up," another magus had complained once.
"df you are a true magus, you will understand it," one in higher
authority said.
"And d go all my life in fear of assassination or even more mortal
things," the magus complained.
"df you a true magus, you will not let these small things bother
you," the Higher Authority said.
The True Magus Melchisedech Duffey had the golden touch. He could
bang his hands together and produce graven gold or bar gold or coin gold. He
was an invader of minds, moving in and out of the people with whom he was in
accord as well as some with whom he was in clashing discord. To a limited
extent, he was a Lord of Time, moving back and forth in the streams of it
almost at will. And he commanded invisible giants.
By talismanic device, he was able to manufacture persons, or at
least to put his own fabricator's mark on unfinished human clay. This was
his most powerful gift.
"Without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither
beginning of days nor end of life --" -- these specifications seemed
improbale for a mortal person like Duffey; and there was confusion about
each of the items as applied to himself.
Duffey remembered three different childhoods in the present or
twentieth century. dt was hard to reconcile them because they occupied the
same years. Duffey also remembered a much older and continuing life that was
always with his like a backdrop. This older backdrop contained camel's hair