Damon Knight - Orbit 17

“No, I don’t seem to relate to this,” Duffy said. Funnier and funnier. Melchisedech Duffy had almost always related to things, even before they happened.

“People who don’t relate are simply not allowed to cross the streets,” the young lady laid down the law.

“What do they do if they’re not allowed to cross the streets?” “Oh, I suppose they walk around them,” the young lady said.

This is the world that bans the heels;

These are the cars that don’t have wheels.

The buses, Melchisedech Duffy now saw, no longer had wheels. Many of the trucks had none, and some of the cars had not.

“What happened to all the wheels?” Melchisedech asked a workman.

“You really have to ask that on the Day of total change?” the workman challenged. “If there’s one thing worse than a square it’s a round. Get out of here, you roundskin, you roundheel.” But what did they have in place of wheels?

There was a fog before the eyes as to this, and yet it was a quite clear morning and the sun was nearly up. The vehicles had something else instead of wheels, and they moved along almost as well on this something else. The change seemed to have been a simple one. Even now, workmen as well as owners were taking the wheels off cars and putting on something else, something that came out of a kit.

“Are you sure that that, whatever it is that comes out of the kits, is better than wheels?“ Duffy asked a young car owner who was making the changeover himself.

“No, of course not,” the man said. “How would it be better? The thought for today is that nothing is any better than anything else. Don’t you even know the thought for the day?”

“I am having some second thoughts for this day,” Duffy said. He was amazed. People were dismantling and taking off the walls of all the buildings. The buildings, without the support of the walls, didn’t seem to collapse one floor upon another, though some of them sagged a little.

“Faith maintains better than walls,” a pious and bearded teenager said. “Walls were the enemy of freedom.” Then he began to pull out his beard in big hunks.

People were dismantling and taking off their clothes. The people, without the support, didn’t seem to collapse one section upon another, though some of them sagged a little.

“I know a green oasis,” Melchisedech Duffy said. “I know a green oasis in this world of dusty insanity. I will go there.”

In turbulent world, one thing to bless:

Salvation as found at the Pelican Press.

Melchisedech Duffy went over to the Pelican Press. It was only three blocks. In the Quarter, everything is only three blocks. It was still in the same old ratty building where he had started it so many years ago, with Finnegan and Dotty Yekouris.

And the publishing schedule had never changed. On Monday the seamen’s paper came out, on Tuesday the union sheet, on Wednesday the Sporting News, on Friday the jazz paper. The Bark was special; it was printed on Thursday or whenever. Sometimes it didn’t even come out every week.

Today they should be printing The Bark, for it was Thursday. But was it? Was it indeed Thursday? Or was it the Great Day that breaks the sequence? This is the Hero void of fame: this is the Day without a Name, as the Great Day Rime had it: and the Great Day Rime was everywhere, tongueless, soundless, but hanging in the air.

Well, if it wasn’t Thursday, then it was (Great Day or not) whenever; and The Bark still should be printing. Melchisedech went into the Pelican Press Building.

Mary Virginia Schaeffer was there, and Salvation Sally, and Margaret Stone. There was something quite revealing about them all.

“Oh, Duff,” Mary Virginia cried. “Oh, I’m sorry. I haven’t learned to get along without using, names yet. You were right. You were right in every detail. I believe that you are the smartest man I know.”

“Very likely, girl, very likely,” Melchisedech said. “Perhaps you should broaden your acquaintance with us more intelligent types.”

“Have some coffee, Duff. Isn’t it, ah, interesting the way this day is turning out, and it hardly started yet?”

“Interesting, yes. Are you using cups?”

“I’m afraid so. We’re old-fashioned. I imagine we’ll get used to it by sunup. Margaret made an act of faith and we all had it going a while ago, drank it without cups. Then we got to laughing and we broke it. You can’t laugh at the things of the Great Day. I burned myself when my coffee collapsed. I see that you did too. But Salvation Sally is drinking tea without a cup. That filthy Aussie says that it’s all right to laugh at coffee, but we must never laugh at tea.”

Yes, Salvation Sally was drinking tea without a cup. She winked at Duffy, and when she winked she winked all the way down to her navel. How come he could see her navel anyhow? Had these fine ladies at the Pelican joined the commoners in this newness?

Little Margaret Stone, with a big mallet, was breaking out all the walls of the building. It just didn’t seem right to Melchisedech.

“You have to have walls,” he protested. “You have to have walls to hang things on, if for nothing else.”

“No, you don’t,” Margaret said, swinging energetically (she had always been strong as a little burro). “You are the one who explained how it would be in the first place. Don’t you remember?”

“I was kidding when I wrote that.”

“I’m not. If one has faith, then one doesn’t need walls or any of such things. Oops! Lack of faith myself.”

A large picture had fallen to the floor only a short while after the wall to which it had been fastened was demolished. It was one of those old, little-known masterpieces of Finnegan, his orange period. Margaret picked the picture up again, nailed it up on the empty air, and it stayed there. The nail going into the empty air sounded like a nail going into white pine.

But, yes, Margaret also had joined the commoners in one new fashion. However, she was at the moment pretty well clothed in dust, plaster, and sweat, from her hammering down the walls. She took out the studs violently with an axe. And now there was nothing at all supporting the room above them. It rocked like a boat, but it didn’t fall down on them yet.

“Look, Duff,” Mary Virginia said. “Oh, damn, there I go using names again. It’s as though I didn’t realize yet that there’s no point where one person ends and another begins. But look at this old copy.” She handed Melchisedech an old copy of that wonderful magazine-journal named The Bark that was printed on these same premises. “It’s amazing the way you predicted it all,” she said, “how we would become uncontained, how we would live by faith and not by substance, how we would be completely emancipated, how we would merge with each other, how all walls and clothes and skins would be dismantled, how our minds would disappear (with faith, who needs minds?); you set it down in every detail, just a year ago. I feel that the people of the world are fulfilling the remainder of your details now.”

She had handed him The Bark opened at the article “Great Day in the Morning” by Melchisedech Duffy. And Duffy’s hands shook as he held it.

“But, Mary Virginia,” he said, “this was a comic article, a bitterly comic article.”

“Oh yes, that’s the tragedy of it, from the old viewpoint. You put it so well in the final lines, ‘If ever the world forgets to laugh, these things and others will come to pass.’ How could you have known that it would forget? It’s wonderful, isn’t it? But when you’re just coming into the thing, it sure is hard not to laugh at the way it’s coming out. But to laugh is disastrous.”