Kazak looked poisoned.
Kazak shivered, and stared fixedly at a point to one side of Salo. There was nothing there.
Kazak stopped, and seemed to be preparing himself for a terrible pain that another step would cost him.
And then Kazak blazed and crackled with Saint Elmo’s fire.
Saint Elmo’s fire is a luminous electrical discharge, and any creature afflicted by it is subject to discomfort no worse than the discomfort of being tickled by a feather. All the same, the creature appears to be on fire, and can be forgiven for being dismayed.
The luminous discharge from Kazak was horrifying to watch. And it renewed the stench of ozone.
Kazak did not move. His capacity for surprise at the amazing display had long since been exhausted. He tolerated the blaze with tired rue.
The blaze died.
Rumfoord appeared in the archway. He, too, looked frowzy and palsied. A band of dematerialization, a band of nothingness about a foot wide, passed over Rumfoord from foot to head. This was followed by two narrow bands an inch apart.
Rumfoord held his hands high, and his fingers were spread. Streaks of pink, violet, and pale green Saint Elmo’s fire streamed from his fingertips. Short streaks of pale gold fizzed in his hair, conspiring to give him a tinsel halo.
“Peace,” said Rumfoord wanly.
Rumfoord’s Saint Elmo’s fire died.
Salo was aghast. “Skip—” he said. “What’s—what’s the matter, Skip?”
“Sunspots,” said Rumfoord. He shuffled to his lavender contour chair, lay his great frame on it, covered his eyes with a hand as limp and white as a damp handkerchief.
Kazak lay down beside him. Kazak was shivering.
“I—I’ve never seen you like this before,” said Salo.
“There’s never been a storm on the Sun like this before,” said Rumfoord.
Salo was not surprised to learn that sunspots affected his chrono-synclastic infundibulated friends. He had seen Rumfoord and Kazak sick with sunspots many times before—but the most severe symptom had been fleeting nausea. The sparks and the bands of dematerialization were new.
As Salo watched Rumfoord and Kazak now, they became momentarily two-dimensional, like figures painted on rippling banners.
They steadied, became rounded again.
“Is there anything I can do, Skip?” said Salo.
Rumfoord groaned. “Will people never stop asking that dreadful question?” he said.
“Sorry,” said Salo. His feet were so completely deflated now that they were concave, were suction cups. His feet made sucking sounds on the polished pavement.
“Do you have to make those noises?” said Rumfoord peevishly.
Old Salo wanted to die. It was the first time his friend Winston Niles Rumfoord had spoken a harsh word to him. Salo couldn’t stand it.
Old Salo closed two of his three eyes. The third scanned the sky. The eye was caught by two streaking blue dots in the sky. The dots were soaring Titanic bluebirds.
The pair had found an updraft.
Neither great bird flapped a wing.
No movement of so much as a pinfeather was inharmonious. Life was but a soaring dream.
“Graw,” said one Titanic bluebird sociably.
“Graw,” the other agreed.
The birds closed their wings simultaneously, fell from the heights like stones.
They seemed to plummet to certain death outside Rumfoord’s walls. But up they soared again, to begin another long and easy climb.
This time they climbed a sky that was streaked by the vapor trail of the space ship carrying Malachi Constant, Beatrice Rumfoord, and their son Chrono. The ship was about to land.
“Skip—?” said Salo.
“Do you have to call me that?” said Rumfoord.
“No,” said Salo.
“Then don’t,” said Rumfoord. “I’m not fond of the name—unless somebody I’ve grown up with happens to use it.”
“I thought—as a friend of yours—” said Salo, “I might be entitled—”
“Shall we just drop this guise of friendship?” said Rumfoord curtly.
Salo closed his third eye. The skin of his torso tightened. “Guise?” he said.
“Your feet are making that noise again!” said Rumfoord.
“Skip!” cried Salo. He corrected this insufferable familiarity. “Winston—it’s like a nightmare, your talking to me this way. I thought we were friends.”
“Let’s say we’ve managed to be of some use to each other, and let it go at that,” said Rumfoord.
Salo’s head rocked gently in its gimbals. “I thought there’d been a little more to it than that,” he said at last.
“Let’s say,” said Rumfoord acidly, “that we discovered in each other a means to our separate ends.”
“I—I was glad to help you—and I hope I really was a help to you,” said Salo. He opened his eyes. He had to see Rumfoord’s reaction. Surely Rumfoord would become friendly again, for Salo really had helped him unselfishly.
“Didn’t I give you half my UWTB?” said Salo. “Didn’t I let you copy my ship for Mars? Didn’t I fly the first few recruiting missions? Didn’t I help you figure out how to control the Martians, so they wouldn’t make trouble? Didn’t I spend day after day helping you to design the new religion?”
“Yes,” said Rumfoord. “But what have you done for me lately?”
“What?” said Salo.
“Never mind,” said Rumfoord curtly. “It’s the tag-line on an old Earthling joke, and not a very funny one, under the circumstances.”
“Oh,” said Salo. He knew a lot of Earthling jokes, but he didn’t know that one.
“Your feet!” cried Rumfoord.
“I’m sorry!” cried Salo. “If I could weep like an Earthling, I would!” His grieving feet were out of his control. They went on making the sounds Rumfoord suddenly hated so. “I’m sorry for everything! All I know is, I’ve tried every way I know how to be a true friend, and I never asked for anything in return.”
“You didn’t have to!” said Rumfoord. “You didn’t have to ask for a thing. All you had to do was sit back and wait for it to be dropped in your lap.”
“What was it I wanted dropped in my lap?” said Salo incredulously.
“The replacement part for your space ship,” said Rumfoord. “It’s almost here. It’s arriving, sire. Constant’s boy has it—calls it his good-luck piece—as though you didn’t know.”
Rumfoord sat up, turned green, motioned for silence. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’m going to be sick again.”
Winston Niles Rumfoord and his dog Kazak were sick again—more violently sick than before. It seemed to poor old Salo that this time they would surely sizzle to nothing or explode.
Kazak howled in a ball of Saint Elmo’s fire.
Rumfoord stood bolt upright, his eyes popping, a fiery column.
This attack passed, too.
“Excuse me,” said Rumfoord with scathing decency. “You were saying—?”
“What?” said Salo bleakly.
“You were saying something—or about to say something,” said Rumfoord. Only the sweat at his temples betrayed the fact that he had just been through something harrowing. He put a cigarette in a long, bone cigarette holder, lighted it. He thrust out his jaw. The cigarette holder pointed straight up. “We won’t be interrupted again for three minutes,” he said. “You were saying?”
Salo recalled the subject of conversation only with effort. When he did recall it, it upset him more than ever. The worst possible thing had happened. Not only had Rumfoord found out, seemingly, about the influence of Tralfamadore on Earthling affairs, which would have offended him quite enough—but Rumfoord also regarded himself, seemingly, as one of the principal victims of that influence.
Salo had had an uneasy suspicion from time to time that Rumfoord was under the influence of Tralfamadore, but he’d pushed the thought out of his mind, since there was nothing he could do about it. He
hadn’t even discussed it, because to discuss it with Rumfoord would surely have ruined their beautiful friendship at once. Very lamely, Salo explored the possibility that Rumfoord did not know as much as he seemed to know. “Skip—” he said.
“Please!” said Rumfoord.
“Mr. Rumfoord—” said Salo, “you think I somehow used you?”
“Not you,” said Rumfoord. “Your fellow machines back on your precious Tralfamadore.”
“Um,” said Salo. “You—you think you—you’ve been used, Skip?”
“Tralfamadore,” said Rumfoord bitterly, “reached into the Solar System, picked me up, and used me like a handy-dandy potato peeler!”
“If you could see this in the future,” said Salo miserably, “Why didn’t you mention it before?”
“Nobody likes to think he’s being used,” said Rumfoord. “He’ll put off admitting it to himself until the last possible instant.” He smiled crookedly. “It may surprise you to learn that I take a certain pride, no matter how foolishly mistaken that pride may be, in making my own decisions for my own reasons.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Salo.
“Oh?” said Rumfoord unpleasantly. “I should have thought it was too subtle an attitude for a machine to grasp.”
This, surely, was the low point in their relationship. Salo was a machine, since he had been designed and manufactured. He didn’t conceal the fact. But Rumfoord had never used the fact as an insult before. He had definitely used the fact as an insult now. Through a thin veil of noblesse oblige, Rumfoord let Salo know that to be a machine was to be insensitive, was to be unimaginative, was to be vulgar, was to be purposeful without a shred of conscience—
Salo was pathetically vulnerable to this accusation. It was a tribute to the spiritual intimacy he and Rumfoord had once shared that Rumfoord knew so well how to hurt him.
Salo closed two of his three eyes again, watched the soaring Titanic bluebirds again. The birds were as big as Earthling eagles.
Salo wished he were a Titanic bluebird.
The space ship carrying Malachi Constant, Beatrice Rumfoord, and their son Chrono sailed low over the palace, landed on the shore of the Winston Sea.
“I give you my word of honor,” said Salo, “I didn’t know you were being used, and I haven’t the slightest idea what you—”
“Machine,” said Rumfoord nastily.
“Tell me what you’ve been used for—please?” said Salo. “My word of honor—I don’t have the foggiest—”
“Machine!” said Rumfoord.
“If you think so badly of me, Skip—Winston—Mr. Rumfoord—” said Salo, “after all I’ve done and tried to do in the name of friendship alone, there’s certainly nothing I can say or do now to change your mind.”
“Precisely what a machine would say,” said Rumfoord.
“It’s what a machine did say,” said Salo humbly. He inflated his feet to the size of German batballs, preparing to walk out of Rumfoord’s palace and onto the waters of the Winston Sea—never to return. Only when his feet were fully inflated did he catch the challenge in what Rumfoord had said. There was a clear implication that there was something Old Salo could still do to make things right again.
Even if he was a machine, Salo was sensitive enough to know that to ask what that something was would be to grovel. He steeled himself. In the name of friendship, he was going to grovel.
“Skip—” he said, “tell me what to do. Anything—anything at all.”
“In a very short time,” said Rumfoord, “an explosion is going to blow the terminal of my spiral clear off the Sun, clear out of the Solar System.”
“No!” cried Salo. “Skip! Skip!”
“No, no—no pity, please,” said Rumfoord, stepping back, afraid of being touched. “It’s a very good thing, really. I’ll be seeing a lot of new things, a lot of new creatures.” He tried to smile. “One gets tired, you know, being caught up in the monotonous clockwork of the Solar System.” He laughed harshly. “After all,” he said, “it isn’t as though I were dying or something. Everything that ever was always will be, and everything that ever will be always was.” He shook his head quickly, and cast away a tear he hadn’t known was on his eyelid.
“Comforting as that chrono-synclastic infundibulated thought is,” he said, “I should still like to know just what the main point of this Solar System episode has been.”
“You—you’ve summed it up far better than anyone else could—in your Pocket History of Mars,” said Salo.
“The Pocket History of Mars,” said Rumfoord, “makes no mention of the fact that I have been powerfully influenced by forces emanating from the planet Tralfamadore.” He gritted his teeth.
“Before my dog and I go crackling off through space like buggywhips in the hands of a lunatic,” said Rumfoord, “I should very much like to know what the message you are carrying is.”
“I—I don’t know,” said Salo. “It’s sealed. I have orders—”
“Against all orders from Tralfamadore,” said Winston Niles Rumfoord, “against all your instincts as a machine, but in the name of our friendship, Salo, I want you to open the message and read it to me now.”
Malachi Constant, Beatrice Rumfoord, and young Chrono, their savage son, picnicked sulkily in the shade of a Titanic daisy by the Winston Sea. Each member of the family had a statue against which to lean.
Bearded Malachi Constant, playboy of the Solar System, still wore his bright yellow suit with the orange question marks. It was the only suit he had.
Constant leaned against a statue of St. Francis of Assisi. St. Francis was trying to befriend two hostile and terrifyingly huge birds, apparently bald eagles. Constant was unable to identify the birds properly as Titanic bluebirds, since he hadn’t seen a Titanic bluebird yet. He had arrived on Titan only an hour before.
Beatrice, looking like a gypsy queen, smoldered at the foot of a statue of a young physical student. At first glance, the laboratory-gowned scientist seemed to be a perfect servant of nothing but truth. At first glance, one was convinced that nothing but truth could please him as he beamed at his test tube. At first glance, one thought that he was as much above the beastly concerns of mankind as the harmoniums in the caves of Mercury. There, at first glance, was a young man without vanity, without lust—and one accepted at its face value the title Salo had engraved on the statue, Discovery of Atomic Power.
And then one perceived that the young truth-seeker had a shocking erection.
Beatrice hadn’t perceived this yet.
Young Chrono, dark and dangerous like his mother, was already committing his first act of vandalism—or was trying to. Chrono was trying to inscribe a dirty Earthling word on the base of the statue against which he had been leaning. He was attempting the job with a sharp corner of his good-luck piece.
The seasoned Titanic peat, almost as hard as diamonds, did the cutting instead, rounding off the corner’s point.
The statue on which Chrono was working was of a family group—a Neanderthal man, his mate, and their baby. It was a deeply-moving piece. The squat, shaggy, hopeful creatures were so ugly they were beautiful.
Their importance and universality was not spoiled by the satiric title Salo had given the piece. He gave frightful titles to all his statues, as though to proclaim desperately that he did not take himself seriously as an artist, not for an instant. The title he gave to the Neanderthal family derived from the fact that the baby was being shown a human foot roasting on a crude spit.
The title was This Little Piggy.
“No matter what happens, no matter what beautiful or sad or happy or frightening thing happens,” Malachi Constant told his family there on Titan, “I’m damned if I’ll respond. The minute it looks like something or somebody wants me to act in some special way, I will freeze.” He glanced up at the rings of Saturn, curled his lip. “Isn’t that just too beautiful for words?” He spat on the ground.
“If anybody ever expects to use me again in some tremendous sc
heme of his,” said Constant, “he is in for one big disappointment. He will be a lot better off trying to get a rise out of one of these statues.”
He spat again.
“As far as I’m concerned,” said Constant, “the Universe is a junk yard, with everything in it overpriced. I am through poking around in the junk heaps, looking for bargains. Every so-called bargain,” said Constant, “has been connected by fine wires to a dynamite bouquet.” He spat again.
“I resign,” said Constant.
“I withdraw,” said Constant.
“I quit,” said Constant.
Constant’s little family agreed without enthusiasm. Constant’s brave speech was stale stuff. He had delivered it many times during the seventeen-month voyage from Earth to Titan—and it was, after all, a routine philosophy for all Martian veterans.
Constant wasn’t really speaking to his family anyway. He was speaking loudly, so his voice would carry some distance into the forest of statuary and over the Winston Sea. He was making a policy statement for the benefit of Rumfoord or anybody else who might be lurking near by.
“We have taken part for the last time,” said Constant loudly, “in experiments and fights and festivals we don’t like or understand!”
“‘Understand—’” came an echo from the wall of a palace on an island two-hundred yards offshore. The palace was, of course, Dun Roamin, Rumfoord’s Taj Mahal. Constant wasn’t surprised to see the palace out there. He had seen it when he disembarked from his space ship, had seen it shining out there like St. Augustine’s City of God.
“What happens next?” Constant asked the echo. “All the statues come to life?”
“‘Life?’” said the echo.
“It’s an echo,” said Beatrice.
“I know it’s an echo,” said Constant.
“I didn’t know if you knew it was an echo or not,” said Beatrice. She was distant and polite. She had been extremely decent to Constant, blaming him for nothing, expecting nothing from him. A less aristocratic woman might have put him through hell, blaming him for everything and demanding miracles.
The Sirens of Titan Page 22
