The Sirens of Titan

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

  "I - I forget," said Unk.

  "Try and remember now," said Boaz. "You had it once." He frowned and squinted, as though trying to help Unk remember. "I think it's so interesting what a man can remember after he's been to the hospital. Try and remember everything you can."

  There was a certain effeminacy about Boaz - in the nature of a cunning bully's chucking a sissy under the chin, talking baby-talk to him.

  But Boaz liked Unk - that was in his manner, too.

  Unk had the eerie feeling that he and Boaz were the only real people in the stone building - that the rest were glass-eyed robots, and not very well-made robots at that. Sergeant Brackman, supposedly in command, seemed no more alert, no more responsible, no more in command than a bag of wet feathers.

  "Let's hear all you can remember, Unk," wheedled Boaz. "Old buddy - " he said, "just remember all you can."

  Before Unk could remember anything, the head pain that had made him get on with the execution hurt him again. The pain did not stop, however, with the warning nip. While Boaz watched expressionlessly, the pain in Unk's head became a whanging, flashing thing.

  Unk stood, dropped his rifle, clawed at his head, reeled, screamed, fainted.

  When Unk came to on the barrack floor, his buddy Boaz was daubing Unk's temples with a cold washrag.

  Unk's squadmates stood in a circle around Unk and Boaz. The faces of the squadmates were unsurprised, unsympathetic. Their attitude was that Unk had done something stupid and unsoldierly, and so deserved what he got.

  They looked as though Unk had done something as militarily stupid as silhouetting himself against the sky or cleaning a loaded weapon, as sneezing on patrol or contracting and not reporting a venereal disease, as refusing a direct order or sleeping through reveille, as being drunk on guard or drawing to an inside straight, as keeping a book or a live hand grenade in his footlocker, as asking who had started the Army anyway and why . . .

  Boaz was the only one who looked sorry about what had happened to Unk. "It was all my fault, Unk," he said.

  Sergeant Brackman now pushed through the circle, stood over Unk and Boaz. "Wha'd he do, Boaz?" said Brackman.

  "I was kidding him, Sergeant," said Boaz earnestly. "I told him to try an' remember back as far as he could. I never dreamed he'd go and do it."

  "Oughta have more sense than to kid a man just back from the hospital," said Brackman gruffly.

  "Oh, I know it - I know it," said Boaz, full of remorse. "My buddy - " he said. "God damn me!"

  "Unk," said Brackman, "didn't they tell you about remembering at the hospital?"

  Unk shook his head vaguely. "Maybe," he said. "They told me a lot."

  "That's the worst thing you can do, Unk - remembering back," said Brackman. "That's what they put you in the hospital for in the first place - on account of you remembered too much." He made cups of his stubby hands, held in them the heart-breaking problem Unk had been. "Holy smokes," he said, "you were remembering so much, Unk, you weren't worth a nickel as a soldier."

  Unk sat up, laid his hand on his breast, found that the front of his blouse was wet with tears. He thought of explaining to Brackman that he hadn't really tried to remember back, that he'd known instinctively that that was a bad thing to do - but that the pain had hit him anyway. He didn't tell Brackman that for fear that the pain would come again.

  Unk groaned and blinked away the last of the tears. He wasn't going to do anything he wasn't ordered to do.

  "As for you, Boaz - " said Brackman. "I don't know but what a week's latrine duty would maybe teach you something about horseplay with people just out of the hospital."

  Something formless in Unk's memory told Unk to watch the by-play between Brackman and Boaz closely. It was somehow important.

  "A week, Sergeant?" said Boaz.

  "Yes, by God - " said Brackman, and then he shuddered and closed his eyes. Plainly, his antenna had just given him a little stab of pain.

  "A whole week, Sarge?" asked Boaz innocently.

  "A day," said Brackman, and it was less a threat than a question. Again Brackman reacted to pain in his head.

  "Starting when, Sarge?" asked Boaz.

  Brackman fluttered his stubby hands. "Never mind," he said. He looked rattled, betrayed - haunted. He lowered his head, as though better to fight the pain if it came again. "No more horseplay, damn it," he said, his voice deep in his throat. And he hurried away, hurried into his room at the end of the barrack, slammed the door.

  The company commander, a Captain Arnold Burch, came into the barrack for a surprise inspection.

  Boaz was the first to see him. Boaz did what a soldier was supposed to do under such circumstances. Boaz shouted, "A-tennnn-hut!" Boaz did this, though he had no rank at all. It is a freak of military custom that the lowliest private can command his equals and noncommissioned superiors to attention, if he is the first to detect the presence of a commissioned officer in any roofed-over structure not in a combat area.

  The antennas of the enlisted men responded instantly, straightened the men's backs, locked their joints, hauled in their guts, tucked in their butts - made their minds go blank. Unk sprang up from the floor, stood stiff and shivering.

  Only one man was slow about coming to attention. That man was Boaz. And when he did come to attention, there was something insolent and loose and leering about the way he did it.

  Captain Burch, finding Boaz's attitude profoundly offensive, was about to speak to Boaz about it. But the Captain no sooner got his mouth open than pain hit him between the eyes.

  The captain closed his mouth without having made a sound.

  Under the baleful gaze of Boaz, he came smartly to attention, did an about-face, heard a snare drum in his head, and marched out of the barrack in step with the drum.

  When the captain was gone, Boaz did not put his squadmates at ease again, though it was in his power to do so. He had a small control box in his right front trouser pocket that could make his squadmates do just about anything. The box was the size of a one-pint hip flask. Like a hip flask, the box was curved to fit a body curve. Boaz chose to carry it on the hard, curved face of his thigh.

  The control box had six buttons and four knobs on it. By manipulating these, Boaz could control anybody who had an antenna in his skull. Boaz could administer pain in any amount to that anybody - could bring him to attention, could make him hear a snare drum, could make him march, halt, fall in, fall out, safute, attack, retreat, hop, skip, jump . . .

  Boaz had no antenna in his own skull.

  As free as it wanted to be - that's how free the free will of Boaz was.

  Boaz was one of the real commanders of the Army of Mars. He was in command of one-tenth of the force that was to attack the United States of America when the attack, on Earth was mounted. Down the line were units training to attack Russia, Switzerland, Japan, Australia, Mexico, China, Nepal, Uruguay. . .

  To the best of Boaz's knowledge, there were eight hundred real commanders of the Army of Mars - not one of them with an apparent rank above buck sergeant. The nominal commander of the entire Army, General of the Armies Borders M. Pulsifer, was in fact controlled at all times by his orderly, Corporal Bert Wright. Corporal Wright, the perfect orderly, carried aspirin for the General's almost chronic headaches.

  The advantages of a system of secret commanders are obvious. Any rebellion within the Army of Mars would be directed against the wrong people. And, in time of war, the enemy could exterminate the entire Martian officer class without disturbing the Army of Mars in the least.

  "Seven hundred and ninety-nine," said Boaz out loud, correcting his own understanding of the number of real commanders. One of the real commanders was dead, having been strangled at the stake by Unk. The strangled man had been Private Stony Stevenson, f ormer real commander of a British attack unit. Stony had become so fascinated by Unk's struggles to understand what was going on that he had begun, unconsciously, to help Unk think.

  Stevenson had suffered the ultimate humiliat
ion for this. An antenna had been installed in his skull, and he had been forced by it to march to the stake like a good soldier - there to await murder by his protégé.

  Boaz let his squadmates go on standing at attention - let them go on quivering, thinking nothing, seeing nothing. Boaz went to Unk's cot, lay down on it with his big, lustrous shoes on the brown blanket. He folded his hands behind his head - arched his body like a bow.

  "Awwwww - " said Boaz, somewhere between a yawn and a groan. "Awwwww - now, men, men, men," he said, letting his mind idle. "God damn, now, men," he said. It was lazy, nonsense talk. Boaz was a little bored with his toys. It occurred to him to have them fight each other - but the penalty for doing that, if he got caught, was the same penalty Stony Stevenson had paid.

  "Awwwww - now, men. Really now, men," said Boaz languidly.

  "God damn it now, men," he said. "I got it made. You men got to admit that. Old Boaz is doing how you might say real fine."

  He rolled off the bed, landed on all fours, sprang to his feet with pantherlike grace. He smiled dazzlingly. He was doing everything he could to enjoy the fortunate position in life that was his. "You boys ain't got it so bad," he said to his rigid squadmates. "You oughta see how we treat the generals, if you think you's bad off." He chuckled and cooed. "Two nights ago us real commanders got ourselves in a argument about which general could run the fastest. Next thing you know, we got all twenty-three generals out of bed; all bare-ass naked, and we lined 'em up like they was race horses, and then we put our money down and laid the odds, and then we sent them generals off like the devil was after 'em. General Stover, he done placed first, with General Harrison right behind him, and with General Mosher behind him. Next morning, ever' general in the Army was stiff as a board. Not one of 'em could remember a thing about the night before."

  Boaz chuckled and cooed again, and then he decided that his fortunate position in life would look a lot better if he treated it seriously - showed what a load it was, showed how honored he felt to have a load like that. He reared back judiciously, hooked his thumbs under his belt and scowled. "Oh," he said, "it ain't all play by any means." He sauntered over to Unk, stood inches away from him, looked him up and down. "Unk, boy - " he said, "I'd hate to tell you how much time I've spent thinking about you - worrying about you, Unk."

  Boaz rocked on his feet. "You will try an' puzzle things out, won't you! You know how many times they had you in the hospital, trying to clean out that memory of yours? Seven times, Unk! You know how many times they usually have to send a man to have his memory cleaned out? Once, Unk. One time!" Boaz snapped his finger under Unk's nose. "And that does it, Unk. One time, and the man never bothers hisself about anything ever after." He shook his head wonderingly. "Not you, though, Unk."

  Unk shuddered.

  "I keeping you at attention too long, Unk?" said Boaz. He gritted his teeth. He couldn't forbear torturing Unk from time to time.

  For one thing, Unk had had everything back on Earth, and Boaz had had nothing.

  For another thing, Boaz was wretchedly dependent on Unk - or would be when they hit Earth. Boaz was an orphan who had been recruited when he was only fourteen - and he didn't have the haziest notion as to how to have a good time on Earth.

  He was counting on Unk to show him how.

  "You want to know who you are - where you come from - what you were?" said Boaz to Unk. Unk was still at attention, thinking nothing, unable to profit from whatever Boaz might tell him. Boaz wasn't talking for

  Unk's benefit anyway. Boaz was reassuring himself about the buddy who was going to be by his side when they hit Earth.

  "Man - " said Boaz, scowling at Unk, "you are one of the luckiest men ever lived. Back there on Earth, man, you were King!"

  Like most pieces of information on Mars, Boaz's pieces of information about Unk were underdeveloped. He could not say from where, exactly, the pieces had come. He had picked them out of the general background noises of army life.

  And he was too good a soldier to go around asking questions, trying to round out his knowledge.

  A soldier's knowledge wasn't supposed to be round. So that Boaz didn't really know anything about Unk except that he had been very lucky once. He embroidered on this.

  "I mean - " said Boaz, "there wasn't anything you couldn't have, wasn't anything you couldn't do, wasn't no place you couldn't go!"

  And while Boaz stressed the marvel of Unk's good luck on Earth, he was expressing a deep concern for another marvel - his superstitious conviction that his own luck on Earth was sure to be rotten.

  Boaz now used three magical words that seemed to describe the maximum happiness a person could achieve on Earth: Hollywood night clubs. He had never seen Hollywood, had never seen a night club. "Man," he said, "you were in and out of Hollywood night clubs all day and all night long.

  "Man," said Boaz to uncomprehending Unk, "you had everything a man needs to really lead hisself a life on Earth, and you knowed how to do it, too.

  "Man," said Boaz to Unk, trying to conceal the pathetic formlessness of his aspirations. "We're going to go into some fine places and order us up some fine things, and circulate and carry on, with some fine people, and just generally have us a good whoop-dee-doo." He seized Unk's arm, rocked him. "Buddies - that's us, buddy. Boy - we're going to be a famous pair - going everywhere, doing everything.

  "'Here comes lucky old Unk and his buddy Boaz!'" said Boaz, saying what he hoped Earthlings would be saying after the conquest. "'And there they go, happy as two birds!'" He chuckled and cooed about the happy, birdlike pair.

  His smile withered.

  His smiles never lasted very long. Somewhere deep inside Boaz was worried sick. He was worried sick about losing his job. It had never been clear to him how he had landed the job - the great privilege. He didn't even know who had given him the swell job.

  Boaz didn't even know who was in command of the real commanders.

  He had never received an order - not from anyone who was superior to the real commanders. Boaz based his actions, as did all the real commanders, on what could be best described as conversational tidbits - tidbits circulated on the real-commander level.

  Whenever the real commanders got together late at night, the tidbits were passed around with the beer and the crackers and cheese.

  There would be a tidbit, for instance, about waste in the supply rooms, and another about the desirability of soldiers' actually getting hurt and mad during jujitsu training, another about soldiers' shabby tendency to skip loops in lacing up their puttees. Boaz himself would pass these on, without any idea as to their point of origin - and he would base his actions on them.

  The execution of Stony Stevenson by Unk had also been announced in this way. Suddenly, it had been the topic of conversation.

  Suddenly, the real commanders had placed Stony under arrest.

  Boaz now fingered the control box in his pocket, without actually touching a control. He took his place among the men he controlled, came to attention voluntarily, pressed a button, and relaxed as his squadmates relaxed.

  He wanted a drink of hard liquor very much. And be was entitled to liquor, too, whenever he wanted it. Unlimited supplies of all kinds of liquor were flown in from Earth regularly for the real commanders. And the officers could have all the liquor they wanted, too, though they couldn't get the good stuff. What the officers drank was a lethal green liquor made locally out of fermented lichens.

  But Boaz never drank. One reason he didn't drink was that he was afraid that alcohol would impair his efficiency as a soldier. Another reason he didn't drink was that he was afraid that he would forget himself and offer an enlisted man a drink.

  The penalty for a real commander who offered an enlisted man an alcoholic beverage was death.

  "Yes, Lord," said Boaz, adding his voice to the hubbub of the relaxing men.

  Ten minutes later, Sergeant Brackman declared a recreation period, during which everyone was supposed to go out and play German batball, the chief sp
ort of the Army of Mars.

  Unk stole away.

  Unk stole away to barrack 12 to look for the letter under the blue rock - the letter that his red-headed victim had told him about.

  The barracks in the area were empty.

  The banner at the head of the mast before them was thin air.

  The empty barracks had been the home of a battalion of Martian Imperial Commandos. The Commandos had disappeared quietly in the dead of night a month before. They had taken off in their space ships, their faces blackened, their dog tags taped so as not to clink - their destination secret.

  The Martian Imperial Commandos were experts at killing sentries with loops of piano wire.

  Their secret destination was the Earthling moon. They were going to start the war there.

  Unk found a big blue stone outside the furnace room of barrack twelve. The stone was a turquoise. Turquoises are very common on Mars. The turquoise Unk found was a flagstone a foot across.

  Unk looked under it. He found an aluminum cylinder with a screw cap. Inside the cylinder was a very long letter written in pencil.

  Unk did not know who had written it. He was in poor shape for guessing, since he knew the names of only three people - Sergeant Brackman, Boaz, and Unk.

  Unk went into the furnace room and closed the door. He was excited, though he didn't know why. He began to read by the light from the dusty window. Dear Unk: - the letter began.

  Dear Unk: - the letter began: They aren't much, God knows - but here are the things I know for sure, and at. the end you will find a list of questions you should do your best to find answers to. The questions are important. I have thought harder about them than I have about the answers I already have. That is the first thing I know for sure: (1.) If the questions don't make sense, neither will the answers.

  All the things that the writer knew for sure were numbered, as though to emphasize the painful, stepby-step nature of the game of finding things out for sure. There were one hundred and fifty-eight things the writer knew for sure. There had once been one hundred and eighty-five, but seventeen had been crossed off.