Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - The Sirens of Titan

"In my head," said Noel Constant.

"There is one more advantage I have yet to point out," said Fern. "Some day your luck is going to run out. And then you're going to need the shrewdest, most thorough manager you can hire - or you'll crash all the way back to pots and pans."

"You're hired," said Noel Constant, father of Malachi.

"Now, where should we erect the building?" said Fern.

"I own this hotel, and this hotel owns the lot across the street," said Noel Constant. "Build it on the lot across the Street." He held up an index finger as crooked as a crankshaft. "There's just one thing - "

"Yes, sir?" said Fern.

"I'm not moving into it," said Noel Constant. "I'm staying right here."

Those who want more detailed histories of Magnum Opus, Inc., can go to their public libraries and ask for either Lavina Waters' romantic Too Wild a Dream? or Crowther Gomburg's harsh Primordial Scales.

Miss Waters' volume, while fuddled as to business details, contains the better account of the chambermaid Florence Whitehill's discovery that she was pregnant by Noel Constant, and her discovery that Noel Constant was a multi-multi-millionaire.

Noel Constant married the chambermaid,, gave her a mansion and a checking account with a million dollars in it. He told her to name the child Malachi if it was a boy, and Prudence if it was a girl. He asked her to please keep coming to see him once every ten days in Room 223 of the Wilburhampton Hotel, but not to bring the baby.

Gomburg's book, while first-rate on business details, suffers from Gomburg's central thesis, to the effect that Magnum Opus was a product of a complex of inabilities to love. Reading between the lines of Gomburg's book, it is increasingly clear that Gomburg is himself unloved and unable to love.

Neither Miss Waters nor Gomburg, incidentally, discovered Noel Constant's investment method. Ransom K. Fern never discovered it either, though he tried hard enough.

The only person Noel Constant ever told was his son, Malachi, on Malachi's twenty-first birthday. That birthday party of two took place in Room 223 of the Wilburhampton. It was the first time father and son had ever met.

Malachi had come to see Noel by invitation.

Human emotions being what they are, young Malachi Constant paid more attention to a detail in the room's furnishings than he did to the secret of how to make millions or even billions of dollars.

The money-making secret was so simple-minded to begin with, that it didn't require much attention. The most complicated part of it had to do with the manner in which young Malachi was to pick up the torch of Magnum Opus when Noel had, at long last, laid it down. Young Malachi was to ask Ransom K. Fern for a chronological list of the investments of Magnum Opus, and, reading down the margin, young Malachi would learn just how far otd Noel had gone in the Bible, and where young Malachi should begin.

The detail in the furnishings of Room 223 that interested young Malachi so was a photograph of himself. It was a photograph of himself at the age of three - a photograph of a sweet, pleasant, game little boy on an ocean beach.

It was thumbtacked to the wall.

It was the only picture in the room.

Old Noel saw young Malachi looking at the picture, and was confused and embarrassed by the whole thing about fathers and sons. He ransacked his mind for something good to. say, and found almost nothing.

"My father gave me only two pieces of advice," he said, "and only one of them has stood the test of time. They were: 'Don't touch your principal,' and 'Keep the liquor bottle out of the bedroom.'" His embarrassment and confusion were now too great to be borne. "Good-by," he said abruptly.

"Good-by?" said young Malachi, startled. He moved toward the door.

"Keep the liquor bottle out of the bedroom," said the old man, and he turned his back.

"Yes, sir, I will," said young Malachi. "Good-by, sir," he said, and he left.

That was the first and last time that Malachi Constant ever saw his father.

His father lived for five more years, and the Bible never played him false.

Noel Constant died just as he reached the end of this sentence: "And God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also."

His last investment was in Sonnyboy Oil at 17 1/4.

The son took over where the father had left off, though Malachi Constant did not move into Room 223 in the Wilburhampton.

And, for five years, the luck of the son was as sensational as the luck of the father had been.

And now, suddenly, Magnum Opus lay in ruins.

There in his office, with the floating furniture and the grass carpet, Malachi Constant still could not believe that his luck had run out.

"Nothing left?" he said faintly. He managed to smile at Ransom K. Fern. "Come on, guy - I mean there's got to be something left."

"I thought so, too, at ten o'clock this morning," said Fern. "I was congratulating myself on having buttressed Magnum Opus against any conceivable blow. We were weathering the depression quite nicely - yes, and your mistakes, too.

"And then, at ten-fifteen, I was visited by a lawyer who was apparently at your party last night. You, apparently, were giving away oil wells last night, and the lawyer was thoughtful enough to draw up documents which, if signed by you, would be binding. They were signed by you. You gave away five hundred and thirty-one producing oil wells last night, which wiped out Fandango Petroleum.

"At eleven," said Fern, "the President of the United States announced that Galactic Spacecraft, which we had sold, was receiving a three-billion contract for the New Age of Space.

"At eleven-thirty," said Fern, "I was given a copy of The Journal of the American Medical Association, which was marked by our public relations director, 'FYI.' These three letters, as you would know if you had ever spent any time in your office, mean 'for your information.' I turned to the page referred to, and learned, for my information, that MoonMist Cigarettes were not a cause but the principal cause of sterility in both sexes wherever MoonMist cigarettes were sold. This fact was discovered not by human beings but by a computing machine. Whenever data about cigarette smoking was fed into it, the machine grew tremendously excited, and no one could figure out why. The machine was obviously trying to tell its operators something. It did everything it could to express itself, and finally managed to get its operators to ask it the right questions.

"The right questions had to do with the relationship of MoonMist Cigarettes to human reproduction. The relationship was this:

"People who smoked MoonMist Cigarettes couldn't have children, even if they wanted them," said Fern.

"Doubtless," said Fern, "there are gigolos and party girls and New Yorkers who are grateful for this relief from biology. In the opinion of the Legal Department of Magnum Opus, before that department was liquidated, however, there are several million persons who can sue successfully - on the grounds that Moon-Mist Cigarettes did them out of something rather valuable. Pleasure in depth, indeed.

"There are approximately ten million ex-smokers of MoonMist in this country," said Fern, "all sterile. If one in ten sues you for damages beyond price, sues you for the modest sum of five thousand dollars - the bill will be five billion dollars, excluding legal fees. And you haven't got five billion dollars. Since the stock-market crash and your acquisition of such properties as American Levitation, you aren't worth even five hundred million.

"MoonMist Tobacco," said Fern, "that's you. Magnum Opus," said Fern, "that's you, too. All the things you are are going to be sued and sued successfully. And, while the litigants may not be able to get blood from turnips, they can certainly ruin the turnips in the process of trying."