"R. A. Lafferty - Melchisedek 03 - Argo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lafferty R A)

the ice, and they blasted a passage for it. They opened up a fresh water
stream with their explosives, and they filled their water casks from the
stream. They gathered dead fish from their blsting and filled their stores.
They killed blond cave bears to get bear grease to soften and make supple
their frozen lines, and to give a new bear cloak to Eva. The old one was
shedding after forty thousand years in the ice. They weighed anchor, and
they sailed.
"This ship sails against the wind, doesn't it?" Eva asked as they
were high-seaing it along. "Do you want it that way, or do you just not know
any better?"
"This is the best way, for The Argo," said the magus-man. "It's just
like a kite that will rise best against the wind. It goes against the wind
and against the waves, and did you ever see a ship move so smoothly and
rapidly?"
"Oh often, magus, often," Eva said. "We had such ships, surely, but
I was not expecting to see the more degenerate people having them. You've
come a long way while I was asleep. It must be a very interesting sort of
life, filling every different kind of work order."
"It's quite interesting, Eva. I foresee that I will die while
filling one over-interesting order soon, but that is to be expected. But
it's a pleasant life, and I do meet interesting people. And now I begin to
remember most of it about myself. But sometimes, is one becomes younger, it
takes longer to recollect oneself in the morning. But now it all comes to
me."
They sailed against the winds and currents to Biloxi.

2

"I will no more believe that there is a do-good ship sailing under
the flag of the Kingdom of Colchis, under patent of Divine Intervention,
crewed by ancient remnants of the Argonauts and by black giants, sailing
cavalierly through time and space and tampering with the future than I will

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believe in Divine Intervention Itself. Both the Ship and the Divine
Interventions are conceits of Melchisedech Duffey the mountebank. But belief
in the Ship Argo seems to have become cult belief of the month."
[Elwin K. Elkheart, Secretary-General of WSMA (affiliate of
WSMAASRTFM).]

The magus had now attained such clarity that he remembered his own
name. He was Melchisedech Himself, the King of Salem, the ship pilot
extraordinary, art dealer and life expert and sometime lover, adventurer
into futures, and righter of wrongs. In latter-day contexts, he was
sometimes named Melchisedech Duffey. He considered about the three
monkey-like or wraithlike seamen who served him; and they were persons that,
to some extent, he had made himself. And there were many more than three of
them. There were others in the galley, and off-duty here and there. They