Kurt Vonnegut: Cat's Cradle

“We all missed a lot,” Dr. Breed agreed. “We’d all do well to start over again, preferably with kindergarten.”

We watched the Laboratory’s receptionist turn on the many educational exhibits that lined the foyer’s walls. The receptionist was a tall, thin girl — icy, pale. At her crisp touch, lights twinkled, wheels turned, flasks bubbled, bells rang.

“Magic,” declared Miss Pefko.

“I’m sorry to hear a member of the Laboratory family using that brackish, medieval word,” said Dr. Breed. “Every one of those exhibits explains itself. They’re designed so as not to be mystifying. They’re the very antithesis of magic.”

“The very what of magic?”

“The exact opposite of magic.”

“You couldn’t prove it by me.”

Dr. Breed looked just a little peeved. “Well,” he said, “we don’t want to mystify. At least give us credit for that.”

Dr. Breed’s secretary was standing on her desk in his outer office tying an accordion-pleated Christmas bell to the ceiling fixture.

“Look here, Naomi,” cried Dr. Breed, “we’ve gone six months without a fatal accident! Don’t you spoil it by falling off the desk!”

Miss Naomi Faust was a merry, desiccated old lady. I suppose she had served Dr. Breed for almost all his life, and her life, too. She laughed. “I’m indestructible. And, even if I did fall, Christmas angels would catch me.”

“They’ve been known to miss.”

Two paper tendrils, also accordion-pleated, hung down from the clapper of the bell. Miss Faust pulled one. It unfolded stickily and became a long banner with a message written on it. “Here,” said Miss Faust, handing the free end to Dr. Breed, “pull it the rest of the way and tack the end to the bulletin board.”

Dr. Breed obeyed, stepping back to read the banner’s message. “Peace on Earth!” he read out loud heartily.

Miss Faust stepped down from her desk with the other tendril, unfolding it. “Good Will Toward Men!” the other tendril said.

“By golly,” chuckled Dr. Breed, “they’ve dehydrated Christmas! The place looks festive, very festive.”

“And I remembered the chocolate bars for the Girl Pool, too,” she said. “Aren’t you proud of me?”

Dr. Breed touched his forehead, dismayed by his forgetfulness. “Thank God for that! It slipped my mind.”

“We mustn’t ever forget that,” said Miss Faust. “It’s tradition now — Dr. Breed and his chocolate bars for the Girl Pool at Christmas.” She explained to me that the Girl Pool was the typing bureau in the Laboratory’s basement. “The girls belong to anybody with access to a dictaphone.”

All year long, she said, the girls of the Girl Pool listened to the faceless voices of scientists on dictaphone records— records brought in by mail girls. Once a year the girls left their cloister of cement block to go a-caroling — to get their chocolate bars from Dr. Asa Breed.

“They serve science, too,” Dr. Breed testified, “even though they may not understand a word of it. God bless them, every one!”

When we got into Dr. Breed’s inner office, I attempted to put my thoughts in order for a sensible interview. I found that my mental health had not improved. And, when I started to ask Dr. Breed questions about the day of the bomb, I found that the public-relations centers of my brain had been suffocated by booze and burning cat fur. Every question I asked implied that the creators of the atomic bomb had been criminal accessories to murder most foul.

Dr. Breed was astonished, and then he got very sore. He drew back from me and he grumbled, “I gather you don’t like scientists very much.”

“I wouldn’t say that, sir.”

“All your questions seem aimed at getting me to admit that scientists are heartless, conscienceless, narrow boobies, indifferent to the fate of the rest of the human race, or maybe not really members of the human race at all.”

“That’s putting it pretty strong.”

“No stronger that what you’re going to put in your book, apparently. I thought that what you were after was a fair, objective biography of Felix Hoenikker — certainly as significant a task as a young writer could assign himself in this day and age. But no, you come here with preconceived notions, about mad scientists. Where did you ever get such ideas? From the funny papers?”

“From Dr. Hoenikker’s son, to name one source.”

“Which son?”

“Newton,” I said. I had little Newt’s letter with me, and I showed it to him. “How small is Newt, by the way?”

“No bigger than an umbrella stand,” said Dr. Breed, reading Newt’s letter and frowning.

“The other two children are normal?”

“Of course! I hate to disappoint you, but scientists have children just like anybody else’s children.”

I did my best to calm down Dr. Breed, to convince him that I was really interested in an accurate portrait of Dr. Hoenikker. “I’ve come here with no other purpose than to set down exactly what you tell me about Dr. Hoenikker. Newt’s letter was just a beginning, and I’ll balance off against it whatever you can tell me.”

“I’m sick of people misunderstanding what a scientist is, what a scientist does.”

“I’ll do my best to clear up the misunderstanding.”

“In this country most people don’t even understand what pure research is.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me what it is.”

“It isn’t looking for a better cigarette filter or a softer face tissue or a longer-lasting house paint, God help us. Everybody talks about research and practically nobody in this country’s doing it. We’re one of the few companies that actually hires men to do pure research. When most other companies brag about their research, they’re talking about industrial hack technicians who wear white coats, work out of cookbooks, and dream up an improved windshield wiper for next year’s Oldsmobile.”

“But here… ?”

“Here, and shockingly few other places in this country, men are paid to increase knowledge, to work toward no end but that.”

“That’s very generous of General Forge and Foundry Company.”

“Nothing generous about it. New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.”

Had I been a Bokononist then, that statement would have made me howl.

“Do you mean,” I said to Dr. Breed, “that nobody in this Laboratory is ever told what to work on? Nobody even suggests what they work on?”

“People suggest things all the time, but it isn’t in the nature of a pure-research man to pay any attention to suggestions. His head is full of projects of his own, and that’s the way we want it.”

“Did anybody ever try to suggest projects to Dr. Hoenikker?”

“Certainly. Admirals and generals in particular. They looked upon him as a sort of magician who could make America invincible with a wave of his wand. They brought all kinds of crackpot schemes up here — still do. The only thing wrong with the schemes is that, given our present state of knowledge, the schemes won’t work. Scientists on the order of Dr. Hoenikker are supposed to fill the little gaps. I remember, shortly before Felix died, there was a Marine general who was hounding him to do something about mud.”

“Mud?”

“The Marines, after almost two-hundred years of wallowing in mud, were sick of it,” said Dr. Breed. “The general, as their spokesman, felt that one of the aspects of progress should be that Marines no longer had to fight in mud.”