chapter twelve

THE GENTLEMAN FROM

TRALFAMADORE

"In a punctual way of speaking, good-by."

— WINSTON NILES RUMFOORD

Saturn has nine moons, the greatest of which is Titan. Titan is only slightly smaller than Mars. Titan is the only moon in the Solar System that has an atmosphere. There is plenty of oxygen to breathe. The atmosphere of Titan is like the atmosphere outside the back door of an Earthling bakery on a spring morning.

    Titan has a natural chemical furnace at its core that maintains a uniform air temperature of sixty-seven degrees Fahrenheit.

    There are three seas on Titan: each the size of Earthling Lake Michigan. The waters of all three are fresh and emerald clear. The names of the three are the Winston Sea, the Niles Sea, and the Rumfoord Sea.

    There is a cluster of ninety-three ponds and lakes, incipiently a fourth sea. The cluster is known as the Kazak Pools.

    Connecting the Winston Sea, the Niles Sea, the Rumfoord Sea and the Kazak Pools are three great rivers. These rivers, with their tributaries, are moody — variously roaring, listless, and torn. Their moods are determined by the wildly fluctuating tugs of eight fellow moons, and by the prodigious influence of Saturn, which has ninety-five times the mass of Earth. The three rivers are known as the Winston River, the Niles River, and the Rumfoord River.

    There are woods and meadows and mountains.

    The tallest mountain is Mount Rumfoord, which is nine thousand, five hundred and seventy-one feet high.

    Titan affords an incomparable view of the most appallingly beautiful things in the Solar System, the rings of Saturn. These dazzling bands are forty thousand miles across and scarcely thicker than a razor blade.

    On Titan the rings are called Rumfoord's Rainbow.

    Saturn describes a circle around the Sun.

    It does it once every twenty-nine and a half Earthling years.

    Titan describes a circle around Saturn.

    Titan describes, as a consequence, a spiral around the Sun.

    Winston Niles Rumfoord and his dog Kazak were wave phenomena — pulsing in distorted spirals, with their origins in the Sun and their terminals in Betelgeuse. Whenever a heavenly body intercepted their spirals, Rumfoord and his dog materialized on that body.

    For reasons as yet mysterious, the spirals of Rumfoord, Kazak, and Titan coincided exactly.

    So Rumfoord and his dog were permanently materialized on Titan.

    Rumfoord and Kazak lived there on an island one mile from shore in the Winston Sea. Their home was a flawless reproduction of the Taj Mahal in Earthling India.

    It was built by Martian labor.

    It was Rumfood's wry fancy to call his Titan home Dun Roamin.

    Before the arrival of Malachi Constant, Beatrice, Rumfoord, and Chrono, there was only one other person on Titan. That other person was named Salo. He was old. Salo was eleven million Earthling years old.

    Salo was from another galaxy, from the Small Magellanic Cloud. He was four and a half feet tall.

    Salo had a skin with the texture and color of the skin of an Earthling tangerine.

    Salo had three light deer-like legs. His feet were of an extraordinarily interesting design, each being an inflatable sphere. By inflating these spheres to the size of German batballs, Salo could walk on water. By reducing them to the size of golf balls, Salo could bound over hard surfaces at high speeds. When he deflated the spheres entirely, his feet became suction cups. Salo could walk up walls.

    Salo had no arms. Salo had three eyes, and his eyes could perceive not only the so-called visible spectrum, but infrared and ultraviolet and X-rays as well. Salo was punctual — that is, he lived one moment at a time — and he liked to tell Rumfoord that he would rather see the wonderful colors at the far ends of the spectrum than either the past or the future.

    This was something of a weasel, since Salo had seen, living a moment at a time, far more of the past and far more of the Universe than Rumfoord had. He remembered more of what he had seen, too.

    Salo's head was round and hung on gimbals.

    His voice was an electric noise-maker that sounded like a bicycle horn. He spoke five thousand languages, fifty of them Earthling languages, thirty-one of them dead Earthling languages.

    Salo didn't live in a palace, though Rumfoord had offered to have one built for him. Salo lived in the open, near the space ship that had brought him to Titan two hundred thousand years before. His space ship was a flying saucer, the prototype for the Martian invasion fleet.

    Salo had an interesting history.

    In the Earthling year 483,441 B.C., he was chosen by popular telepathic enthusiasm as the most handsome, healthy, clean-minded specimen of his people. The occasion was the hundred-millionth anniversary of the government of his home planet in the Small Magellanic Cloud. The name of his home planet was Tralfamadore, which old Salo once translated for Rumfoord as meaning both all of us and the number 541.

    The length of a year on his home planet, according to his own calculations, was 3.6162 times the length of an Earthling year — so the celebration in which he participated was actually in honor of a government 361, 620,000 Earthling years old. Salo once described this durable form of government to Rumfoord as hypnotic anarchy, but declined to explain its workings. "Either you understand at once what it is," he told Rumfoord, "or there is no sense in trying to explain it to you, Skip."

    His duty, when he was 'elected to represent Tralfamadore, was to carry a sealed message from "One Rim of the Universe to the Other." The planners of the ceremonies were not so deluded as to believe that Salo's projected route spanned the Universe. The image was poetic, as was Salo's expedition. Salo would simply take the message and go as fast and as far as the technology of Tralfamadore could send him.

    The message itself was unknown to Salo. It had been prepared by what Salo described to Rumfoord as, "A kind of university — only nobody goes to it. There aren't any buildings, isn't any faculty. Everybody's in it and nobody's in it. It's like a cloud that everybody has given a little puff of mist to, and then the cloud does all the heavy thinking for everybody. I don't mean there's really a cloud. I just mean it's something like that. If you don't understand what I'm talking about, Skip, there's no sense in trying to explain it to you. All I can say is, there aren't any meetings."

    The message was contained in a sealed lead wafer that was two inches square and three-eighths of an inch thick. The wafer itself was contained in a gold mesh reticule which was hung on a stainless steel band clamped to the shaft that might be called Salo's neck.

    Salo had orders, not to open the reticule and wafer until he arrived at his destination. His destination was not Titan. His destination was in a galaxy that began eighteen million light-years beyond Titan. The planners of the ceremonies in which Salo had participated did not know what Salo was going to find in the galaxy. His instructions were to find creatures in it somewhere, to master their language, to open the message, and to translate it for them.

    Salo did not question the good sense of his errand, since he was, like all Tralfamadorians, a machine. As a machine, he had to do what he was supposed to do.

    Of all the orders Salo received before taking off from Tralfamadore, the one that was given the most importance was that he was not, under any circumstances, to open the message along the way.

    This order was so emphasized that it became the very core of the little Tralfamadorian messenger's being.

    In the Earthling year 208,117 B.C., Salo was forced down in the Solar System by mechanical difficulties. He was forced down by a complete disintegration of a small part in his ship's power plant, a part about the size of an Earthling beer-can opener. Salo was not mechanically inclined, and so had only a hazy idea as to what the missing part looked like or was supposed to do. Since Salo's ship was powered by UWTB, the Universal Will to Become, its power plant was nothing for a mechanical dilettante to tinker with.

    Salo's ship wasn't entirely out of commission. It would still run — but limpingly, at only about sixty. eight thousand miles an hour. It was adequate for short hops around the Solar System, even in its crippled condition, and copies of the crippled ship did yeoman service for the Martian war effort. But the crippled ship was impossibly slow for the purposes of Salo's intergalactic errand.

    So old Salo holed up on Titan and he sent home to Tralfamadore word of his plight. He sent the message home with the speed of light, which meant that it would take one hundred and fifty thousand Earthling years to get to Tralfamadore.

    He developed several hobbies that helped him to pass the time. Chief among these were sculpture, the breeding of Titanic daisies, and watching the various activities on Earth. He could watch the activities on Earth by means of a viewer on the dash panel of his ship. The viewer was sufficiently powerful to let Salo follow the activities of Earthling ants, if he so wished.

    It was through this viewer that he got his first reply from Tralfamadore. The reply was written on Earth in huge stones on a plain in what is now England. The ruins of the reply still stand, and are known as Stonehenge. The meaning of Stonehenge in Tralfamadorian, when viewed from above, is: "Replacement part being rushed with all possible speed."

    Stonehenge wasn't the only message old Salo had received.

    There had been four others, all of them written on Earth.

    The Great Wall of China means in Tralfamadorian, when viewed from above: "Be patient. We haven't forgotten about you."

    The Golden House of the Roman Emperor Nero meant: "We are doing the best we can."

    The meaning of the Moscow Kremlin when it was first walled was: "You will be on your way before you know it."

    The meaning of the Palace of the League of Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, is: "Pack up your things and be ready to leave on short notice."

    Simple arithmetic will reveal that these messages all arrived with speeds considerably in excess of the speed of light. Salo had sent his message of distress home with the speed of light, and it had taken one hundred and fifty thousand years to reach Tralfamadore. He had received a reply from Tralfamadore in less than fifty thousand years.

    It is grotesque for anyone as primitive as an Earthling to explain how these swift communications were effected. Suffice it to say, in such primitive company, that the Tralfamadorians were able to make certain impulses from the Universal Will to Become echo through the vaulted architecture of the Universe with about three times the speed of light. And they were able to focus and modulate these impulses so as to influence creatures far, far away, and inspire them to serve Tralfamadorian ends.

    It was a marvelous way to get things done in places far, far away from Tralfamadore. it was easily the fastest way.

    But it wasn't cheap.

    Old Salo was not equipped himself to communicate and get things done in this way, even over short distances. The apparatus and the quantities of Universal Will to Become used in the process were colossal, and they demanded the services of thousands of technicians.

    And even the heavily-powered, heavily-manned, heavily-built apparatus of Tralfamadore was not particularly accurate. Old Salo had watched many communications failures on Earth. Civilizations would start to bloom on Earth, and the participants would start to build tremendous structures that were obviously to be messages in Tralfamadorian — and then the civilizations would poop out without having finished the messages.

    Old Salo had seen this happen hundreds of times. Old Salo had told his friend Rumfoord a lot of interesting things about the civilization of Tralfamadore, but he had never told Rumfoord about the messages and the techniques of their delivery.

    All that he had told Rumfoord was that he had sent home a distress message, and that he expected a replacement part to come any day now. Old Salo's mind was so different from Rumfoord's that Rumfoord couldn't read Salo's mind.

    Salo was grateful for that barrier between their thoughts, because he was mortally afraid of what Rumfoord might say if he found out that Salo's people had so much to do with gumming up the history of Earth. Even though Rumfoord was chrono-synclastic infundibulated, and might be expected to take a larger view of things, Salo had found Rumfoord to be, still, a' surprisingly parochial Earthling at heart.

    Old Salo didn't want Rumfoord to find out what the Tralfamadorians were doing to Earth, because he was sure that Rumfoord would be offended — that Rumfoord would turn against Salo and all Tralfamadorians. Salo didn't think he could stand that, because he loved Winston Niles Rumfoord.

    There was nothing offensive in this love. That is to say, it wasn't homosexual. It couldn't be, since Salo had no sex.

    He was a machine, like all Tralfamadorians.

    He was held together by cotter pins, hose clamps, nuts, bolts, and magnets. Salo's tangerine-colored skin, which was so expressive when he was emotionally disturbed, could be put on or taken off like an Earthling wind-breaker. A magnetic zipper held it shut.

    The Tralfamadorians, according to Salo, manufactured each other. No one knew for certain how the first machine had come into being.

    The legend was this:

    Once upon a time on Tralfamadore there were creatures who weren't anything like machines. They weren't dependable. They weren't efficient. They weren't predictable. They weren't durable. And these poor creatures were obsessed by the idea that everything that existed had to have a purpose, and that some purposes were higher than others.

    These creatures spent most of their time trying to find out what their purpose was. And every time they found out what seemed to be a purpose of themselves, the purpose seemed so low that the creatures were filled with disgust and shame.

    And, rather than serve such a low purpose, the creatures would make a machine to serve it. This left the creatures free to serve higher purposes. But whenever they found a higher purpose, the purpose still wasn't high enough.

    So machines were made to serve higher purposes, too.

    And the machines did everything so expertly that they were finally given the job of finding out what the highest purpose of the creatures could be.

    The machines reported in all honesty that the creatures couldn't really be said to have any purpose at all.

    The creatures thereupon began slaying each other, because they hated purposeless things above all else. And they discovered that they weren't even very good at slaying. So they turned that job over to the machines, too. And the machines finished up the job in less time than it takes to say, "Tralfamadore."

    Using the viewer on the dash panel of his space ship, Old Salo now watched the approach to Titan of the space ship carrying Malachi Constant, Beatrice Rumfoord, and their son Chrono. Their ship was set to land automatically on the shore of the Winston Sea.

    It was set to land amid two million life-sized statues of human beings. Salo had made the statues at the rate of about ten an Earthling year.

    The statues were concentrated in the region of the Winston Sea because the statues were made of Titanic peat. Titanic peat abounds by the Winston Sea, only two feet under the surface soil.

    Titanic peat is a curious substance — and, for the facile and sincere sculptor, an attractive one.

    When first dug, Titanic peat has the consistency of Earthling putty.

    After one hour's exposure to Titan's light and air, the peat has the strength and hardness of plaster of Paris.

    After two hours' exposure, it is as durable as granite, and must be worked with a cold chisel.

    After three hours' exposure, nothing but a diamond will scratch Titanic peat.

    Salo was inspired to make so many statues by the showy ways in which Earthlings behaved. It wasn't so much what the Earthlings did as the way they did it that inspired Salo.

    The Earthlings behaved at all times as though there were a big eye in the sky — as though that big eye were ravenous for entertainment.

    The big eye was a glutton for great theater. The big eye was indifferent as to whether the Earthling shows were comedy, tragedy, farce, satire, athletics, or vaudeville. Its demand, which Earthings apparently found as irresistible as gravity, was that the shows be great.

    The demand was so powerful that Earthlings did almost nothing but perform for it, night and day — and even in their dreams.

    The big eye was the only audience that Earthlings really cared about. The fanciest performances that Salo had seen bad been put on by Earthlings who were terribly alone. The imagined big eye was their only audience.

    Salo, with his diamond-hard statues, had tried to preserve some of the mental states of those Earthlings who had put on the most interesting shows for the imagined big eye.

    Hardly less surprising than the statues were the Titanic daisies that abounded by the Winston Sea. When Salo arrived on Titan in 203,117 B.C, the blooms of Titanic daisies were tiny, star-like, yellow flowers barely a quarter of an inch across.

    Then Salo began to breed them selectively.

    When Malachi Constant, Beatrice Rumfoord, and their son Chrono arrived on Titan, the typical Titanic daisy had a stalk four feet in diameter, and a lavender bloom shot with pink and having a mass in excess of a ton.

    Salo, having watched the approaching space ship of Malachi Constant, Beatrice Rumfoord, and their son Chrono, inflated his feet to the size of German batballs. He stepped onto the emerald clear waters of the Winston Sea, crossed the waters to Winston Niles Rumfoord's Taj Mahal.

    He entered the walled yard of the palace, let the air out of his feet. The air hissed. The hiss echoed from the walls.

    Winston Niles Rumfoord's lavender contour chair by the pool was empty.

    "Skip?" called Salo. He used this most intimate of all possible names for Rumfoord, Rumfoord's childhood name, in spite of Rumfoord's resentment of his use of it. He didn't use the name in order to tease Rumfoord. He used it in order to assert the friendship he felt for Rumfoord — to test the friendship a little, and to watch it endure the test handsomely.

    There was a reason for Salo's putting friendship to such a sophomoric test. He had never seen, never even heard of friendship before he hit the Solar System. It was a fascinating novelty to him. He had to play with it.

    "Skip?" Salo called again.

    There was an unusual tang in the air. Salo identified it tentatively as ozone. He was unable to account for it.

    A cigarette still burned in the ash tray by Rumfoord's contour chair, so Rumfoord hadn't been out of his chair long.

    "Skip? Kazak?" called Salo. It was unusual for Rumfoord not to be snoozing in his chair, for Kazak not to be snoozing beside it. Man and dog spent most of their time by the pooi, monitoring signals from their other selves through space and time. Rumfoord was usually motionless in his chair, the fingers of one languid, dangling hand buried in Kazak's coat. Kazak was usually whimpering and twitching dreamingly.

    Salo looked down into the water of the rectangular pool. In the bottom of the pooi, in eight feet of water, were the three sirens of Titan, the three beautiful human females who had been offered to the lecherous Malachi Constant so long ago.

    They were statues made by Salo of Titanic peat. Of the millions of statues made by Salo, only these three were painted with lifelike colors. It had been necessary to paint them in order to give them importance in the sumptuous, oriental scheme of things in Rumfoord's palace.

    "Skip?" Salo called again.

    Kazak, the hound of space, answered the call. Kazak came from the domed and minareted building that was reflected in the pool. Kazak came stiffly from the lacy shadows of the great octagonal chamber within.

    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-syndastic 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 dosed 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 Rmnfoord 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 bow 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 scheme of his," said Constant, "be 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, blam. ing him for everything and demanding miracles.

    There had been no love-making during the voyage. Neither Constant nor Beatrice had been interested. Martian veterans never were.

    Inevitably, the long voyage had drawn Constant closer to his mate and child — closer than they had been on the gilded system of catwalks, ramps, ladders, pulpits, steps and stages in Newport. But the only love in the family unit was still the love between young Chrono and Beatrice. Other than the love between mother and son there was only politeness, glum compassion, and suppressed indignation at having been forced to be a family at all.

    "Oh, my — " said Constant, "life is funny when you stop to think of it."

    Young Chrono did not smile when his father said life was funny.

    Young Chrono was the member of the family least in a position to think life was funny. Beatrice and Constant, after all, could laugh bitterly at the wild incidents they had survived. But young Chrono couldn't laugh with them, because he himself was a wild incident.

    Small wonder that young Chrono's chief treasures were a good-luck piece and a switchblade knife.

    Young Chrono now drew his switchblade knife, flicked open the blade nonchalantly. His eyes narrowed. He was preparing to kill, if killing should become necessary. He was looking in the direction of a gilded rowboat that had put out from the palace on the island.

    It was being rowed by a tangerine-colored creature. The oarsman was, of course, Salo. He was bringing the boat in order to transport the family back to the palace. Salo was a bad oarsman, never having rowed before. He grasped the oars with his suction-cup feet.

    He had one advantage over human oarsmen, in that be had an eye in the back of his head.

    Young Chrono flashed light into Old Salo's eye, flashed it with his bright knife blade.

    Salo's back eye blinked.

    Flashing the light into the eye was not a piece of skylarking on Chrono's part. It was a piece of jungle cunning, a piece of cunning calculated to make almost any sort of sighted creature uneasy. It was one of a thousand pieces of jungle cunning that young Chrono and his mother had learned in their year together in the Amazon Rain Forest.

    Beatrice's brown hand closed on a rock. "Worry him again," she said softly to Chrono.

    Young Chrono again flashed the light in Old Salo's eye.

    "His body looks like the only soft part," said Beatrice, without moving her lips. "If you can't get his body, try for an eye."

    Chrono nodded.

    Constant was chilled, seeing what an efficient unit of self-defense his mate and son made together. Constant was not included in their plans. They had no need of him.

    "What should I do?" whispered Constant.

    "Sh!" said Beatrice sharply.

    Salo beached his gilded craft. He made it fast with a clumsy landlubber's knot to the wrist of a statue by the water. The statue was of a nude woman playing a slide trombone. It was entitled, enigmatically, Evelyn and Her Magic Violin.

    Salo was too jangled by sorrow to care for his own safety — to understand, even, that he might be frightening to someone. He stood for a moment on a block of seasoned Titanic peat near his landing. His grieving feet sucked at the damp stone. He pried loose his feet with a tremendous effort.

    On he came, the flashes from Chrono's knife dazzling him.

    "Please — " he said.

    A rock flew out of the knife's dazzle.

    Salo ducked.

    A hand siezed his bony throat, threw him down.

    Young Chrono now stood astride Old Salo, his knife point pricking Salo's chest. Beatrice knelt by Salo's head, a rock poised to smash his head to bits.

    "Go on — kill me," said Salo raspingly. "You'd be doing me a favor. I wish I were dead. I wish to God I'd never been assembled and started up in the first place. Kill me, put me out of my misery, and then go see him. He's asking for you."

    "Who is?" said Beatrice.

    "Your poor husband — my former friend, Winston Niles Rumfoord," said Salo.

    "Where is he?" said Beatrice.

    "In that palace on the island," said Salo. "He's dying — all alone, except for his faithful dog. He's asking for you — " said Salo, "asking for all of you. And he says he never wants to lay his eyes on me again."

    Malachi Constant watched the lead-colored lips kiss thin air soundlessly. The tongue behind the lips clicked infinitesimally. The lips suddenly drew back, baring the perfect teeth of Winston Niles Rumfoord.

    Constant was himself showing his teeth, preparing to gnash them appropriately at the sight of this man who had done him so much harm. He did not gnash them. For one thing, no one was looking — no one would see him do it and understand. For another thing, Constant found himself destitute of hate.

    His preparations for gnashing his teeth decayed into a yokel gape — the gape of a yokel in the presence of a spectacularly mortal disease.

    Winston Niles Rumfoord was lying, fully materialized, on his back on his lavender contour chair by the pool. His eyes were directed at the sky, unblinkingly and seemingly sightless. One fine hand dangled over the side of the chair, its limp fingers laced in the choke chain of Kazak, the hound of space.

    The chain was empty.

    An explosion on the Sun had separated man and dog. A Universe schemed in mercy would have kept man and dog together.

    The Universe inhabited by Winston Niles Rumfoord and his dog was not schemed in mercy. Kazak had been sent ahead of his master on the great mission to nowhere and nothing.

    Kazak had left howling in a puff of ozone and sick light, in a hum like swarming bees.

    Rumfoord let the empty choke chain slip from his fingers. The chain expressed deadness, made a formless sound and a formless heap, was a soulless slave of gravity, born with a broken spine.

    Rumfoord's lead-colored lips moved. "Hello, Beatrice — wife," he said sepulchrally.

    "Hello, Space Wanderer," he said. He made his voice affectionate this time. "Gallant of you to come, Space Wanderer — to take one more chance with me.

    "Hello, illustrious young bearer of the illustrious name of Chrono," said Rumfoord. "Hail, oh German batball star — hail, him of the good-luck piece."

    The three to whom he spoke stood just inside the wall. The pool was between them and Rumfoord.

    Old Salo, who had not been granted his wish to die, grieved in the stern of the gilded rowboat that was beached outside the wail.

    "I am not dying," said Rumfoord. "I am merely taking my leave of the Solar System. And I am not even doing that. In the grand, in the timeless, in the chrono-synclastic infundibulated way of looking at things, I shall always be here. I shall always be wherever I've been.

    "I'm honeymooning with you still, Beatrice," he said. "I'm talking to you still in a little room under the stairway in Newport, Mr. Constant. Yes — and playing peek-a-boo in the caves of Mercury with you and Boaz. And Chrono — " he said, "I'm watching you still as you play German batball so well on the iron playground of Mars."

    He groaned. It was a tiny groan — and so sad.

    The sweet, mild air of Titan carried the tiny groan away.

    "Whatever we've said, friends, we're saying still — such as it was, such as it is, such as it will be," said Rumfoord.

    The tiny groan came again.

    Rumfoord watched it leave as though it were a smoke ring.

    "There is something you should know about life in the Solar System," he said. "Being chrono-synclastic infundibulated, I've known about it all along. It is, none the less, such a sickening thing that I've thought about it as little as possible.

    "The sickening thing is this:

    "Everything that every Earthling has ever done has been warped by creatures on a planet one-hundred-and-fifty thousand light years away. The name of the planet is Tralfamadore.

    "How the Tralfamadorians controlled us, I don't know. But I know to what end they controlled us. They controlled us in such a way as to make us deliver a replacement part to a Tralfamadorian messenger who was grounded right here on Titan."

    Rumfoord pointed a finger at young Chrono. "You, young man — " he said. "You have it in your pocket. In your pocket is the culmination of all Earthling history. In your pocket is the mysterious something that every Earthling was trying so desperately, so earnestly, so gropingly, so exhaustingly to produce and deliver."

    A fizzing twig of electricity grew from the tip of Rumfoord's accusing finger.

    "The thing you call your good-luck piece," said Rumfoord, "is the replacement part for which the Tralfamadorian messenger has been waiting so long!

    "The messenger," said Rumfoord, "is the tangerine-colored creature who now cowers outside the walls. His name is Salo. I had hoped that the messenger would' give mankind a glimpse of the message he was carrying, since mankind was giving him such a nice boost on his way. Unfortunately, he is under orders to show the message to no one. He is a machine, and, as a machine, he has no choice but to regard orders as orders.

    "I asked him politely to show me the message," said Rumfoord. "He desperately refused."

    The fizzing twig of electricity on Rumfoord's finger grew, forming a spiral around Rumfoord. Rumfoord considered the spiral with sad contempt. "I think perhaps this is it," he said of the spiral.

    It was indeed. The spiral telescoped slightly, making a curtsey. And then it began to revolve around Rumfoord, spinning a continuous cocoon of green light.

    It barely whispered as it spun.

    "All I can say," said Rumfoord from the cocoon, "is that I have tried my best to do good for my native Earth while serving the irresistible wishes of Tralfamadore.

    "Perhaps, now that the part has been delivered to the Tralfamadorian messenger, Tralfamadore will leave the Solar System alone. Perhaps Earthlings will now be free to develop and follow their own inclinations, as they have not been free to do for thousands of years." He sneezed. "The wonder is that Earthlings have been able to make as much sense as they have," he said.

    The green cocoon left the ground, hovered over the dome. "Remember me as a gentleman of Newport, Earth, and the Solar System," said Rumfoord. He sounded serene again, at peace with himself, and at least equal to any creature that he might encounter anywhere.

    "In a punctual way of speaking," came Rumfoord's glottal tenor from the cocoon, "good-by."

    The cocoon and Rumfoord disappeared with a pft.

    Rumfoord and his dog were never seen again.

Old Salo came bounding into the courtyard just as Rumfoord and his cocoon disappeared.

    The little Tralfamadorian was wild. He had torn the message from its band around his throat with a suction-cup foot. One foot was still a suction cup, and in it was the message.

    He looked up at the place where the cocoon had hovered. "Skip!" he cried into the sky. "Skip! The message! I'll tell you the message! The message! Skiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip!"

    His head did a somersault in its gimbals. "Gone," he said emptily. He whispered, "Gone.

    "Machine?" said Salo. He was speaking haltingly, as much to himself as to Constant, Beatrice and Chrono. "A machine I am, and so are my people," he said. "I was designed and manufactured, and no expense, no skill, was spared in making me dependable, efficient, predictable, and durable. I was the best machine my people could make.

    "How good a machine have I proved to be?" asked Salo.

    "Dependable?" he said. "I was depended upon to keep my message sealed until I reached my destination, and now I've torn it open.

    "Efficient?" he said. "Having lost my best friend in the Universe, it now costs me more energy to step over a dead leaf than it once cost me to bound over Mount Rumfoord.

    "Predictable?" he said. "After watching human beings for two hundred thousand Earthling years, I have become as skittish and sentimental as the silliest Earthling schoolgirl.

    "Durable?" he said darkly. "We shall see what we shall see."

    He laid the message he had been carrying so long on Rumfoord's empty, lavender contour chair.

    "There it is — friend," he said to his memory of Rumfoord, "and much consolation may it give you, Skip. Much pain it cost your old friend Salo. In order to give it to you — even too late — your old friend Salo had to make war against the core of his being, against the very nature of being a machine.

    "You asked the impossible of a machine," said Salo, "and the machine complied.

    "The machine is no longer a machine," said Salo. "The machine's contacts are corroded, his bearings fouled, his circuits shorted, and his gears stripped. His mind buzzes and pops like the mind of an Earthling — fizzes and overheats with thoughts of love, honor, dignity, rights, accomplishment, integrity, independence — "

    Old Salo picked up the message again from Rumfoord's contour chair. It was written on a thin square of aluminum. The message was a single dot.

    "Would you like to know how I have been used, how my life has been wasted?" he said. "Would you like to know what the message is that I have been carrying for almost half a million Earthling years — the message I am supposed to carry for eighteen million more years?"

    He held out the square of aluminum in a cupped foot.

    "A dot," he said.

    "A single dot," he said.

    "The meaning of a dot in Tralfamadorian," said Old Salo, "is —

    "Greetings."

    The little machine from Tralfamadore, having delivered this message to himself, to Constant, to Beatrice, and to Chrono over a distance of one hundred and fifty thousand light years, bounded abruptly out of the courtyard and onto the beach outside.

    He killed himself out there. He took himself apart and threw his parts in all directions.

    Chrono went out on the beach alone, wandered thoughtfully among Salo's parts. Chrono had always known that his good-luck piece had extraordinary powers and extraordinary meanings.

    And he had always suspected that some superior creature would eventually come to claim the good-luck piece as his own. It was in the nature of truly effective good-luck pieces that human beings never really owned them.

    They simply took care of them, had the benefit of them, until the real owners, the superior owners, came along.

    Chrono did not have a sense of futility and disorder.

    Everything seemed in apple-pie order to him.

    And the boy himself participated fitly in that perfect order.

    He took his good-luck piece from his pocket, dropped it without regret to the sand, dropped it among Salo's scattered parts.

    Sooner or later, Chrono believed, the magical forces of the Universe would put everything back together again.

    They always did.