Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - The Sirens of Titan

This last incoming wave, or wavelet, was detected by Earth. But thermo-nuclear devices were not fired at it. There were no more thermo-nuclear devices to fire.

They had all been used up.

And the wavelet came in unscathed. It was scattered over the face of the Earth.

The few people who were lucky enough to have Martians to shoot at in this last wave fired away happily - fired away happily until they discovered that their targets were unarmed women and children.

The glorious war was over.

Shame, as Rumfoord had planned it, began to set in.

The ship carrying Bee and Chrono and twenty-two other women was not fired upon when it landed. It did not land in a civilized area.

It crashed into the Amazon Rain Forest in Brazil.

Only Bee and Chrono survived.

Chrono emerged, kissed his good-luck piece.

Unk and Boaz weren't fired upon either.

A very peculiar thing happened to them after they pressed the on button and took off from Mars. They expected to overtake their company, but they never did.

They never even saw another space ship.

The explanation was simple, though there was no one around to make it: Unk and Boaz weren't supposed to go to Earth - not right away.

Rumfoord had had their automatic pilot-navigator set so that the ship would carry Unk and Boaz to the planet Mercury first - and then from Mercury to Earth.

Rumfoord didn't want Unk killed in the war. Rumfoord wanted Unk to stay in some safe place for about two years.

And then Rumfoord wanted Unk to appear on Earth, as though by a miracle.

Rumfoord was preserving Unk for a major part in a pageant Rumfoord wanted to stage for his new religion.

Unk and Boaz were very lonely and mystified out there in space. There wasn't much to see or do.

"God damn, Unk - " said Boaz. "I wonder where the gang got to."

Most of the gang was hanging, at that moment, from' lamp posts in the business district of Boca Raton.

Unk's and Boaz's automatic pilot-navigator, controlling the cabin lights, among other things, created an artificial cycle of Earthling nights and days, nights and days, nights and days.

The only things to read on board were two comic books left behind by the shipfitters. They were Tweety and Sylvester, which was about a canary that drove a cat crazy, and The Miserable Ones, which was about a man who stole some gold candlesticks from a priest who had been nice to him.

"What he take those candlesticks for, Unk?" said Boaz.

"Damn if I know," said Unk. "Damn if I care." The pilot-navigator had just turned out the cabin lights, had just decreed that it be night inside.

"You don't give a damn for nothing, do you?" said Boaz in the dark.

"That's right," said Unk. "I don't even give a damn for that thing you've got in your pocket."

"What I got in my pocket?" said Boaz.

"A thing to hurt people with," said Unk. "A thing to make people do whatever you want 'em to do."

Unk heard Boaz grunt, then groan softly, there in the dark. And he knew that Boaz had just pressed a button on the thing in his pocket, a button that was supposed to knock Unk cold.

Unk didn't make a sound.

"Unk - ?" said Boaz.

"Yeah?" said Unk.

"You there, buddy?" said Boaz, amazed.

"Where would I go?" said Unk. "You think you vaporized me?"

"You O.K., buddy?" said Boaz.

"Why wouldn't I be, buddy?" said Unk. "Last night, while you were asleep, old buddy, I took that fool thing out of your pocket, old buddy, and I opened it up, old buddy, and I tore the insides out of it, old buddy, and I stuffed it with toilet paper. And now I'm sitting on my bunk, old buddy, and I've got my rifle loaded, old buddy, and it's aimed in your direction, old buddy, and just what the hell do you think you're going to do about anything?"

Rumfoord materialized on Earth, in Newport, twice during the war between Mars and Earth - once just after the war started, and again on the day it ended. He and his dog had, at that time, no particular religious significance. They were merely tourist attractions.

The Rumfoord estate had been leased by the mortgage holders to a showman named Marlin T. Lapp. Lapp sold tickets to materializations for a dollar apiece.

Save for the appearance and then the disappearance of Rumfoord and his dog, it wasn't much of a show. Rumfoord wouldn't say a word to anyone but Moncrief, the butler, and he whispered to him. He would slouch broodingly in a wing chair in the room under the staircase, in Skip's Museum. And he would cover his eyes with one hand and twine the fingers of his other hand around Kazak's choke chain.

Rumfoord and Kazak were billed as ghosts.

There was a scaffolding outside the window of the little room, and the door to the corridor had been removed. Two lines of sightseers could file past for a peek at the chrono-synclastic infundibulated man and dog.

"I guess he don't feel much like talking today, folks," Marlin T. Lapp would say. "You got to realize he's got a lot to think about. He isn't just here, folks. Him and his dog are spread all the way from the Sun to Betelgeuse."

Until the last day of the war, all the action and all the noise was provided by Marlin T. Lapp. "I think it's wonderful of all you people, on this great day in the history of the world, to come and see this great cultural and educational and scientific exhibit," Lapp said on the last day of the war.

"If this ghost ever speaks," said Lapp, "he is going to tell us of wonders in the past and the future, and of things in the Universe as yet undreamed of. I just hope some of you are lucky enough to be here when he decides the time is ripe to tell us all he can."

"The time is ripe," said Rumfoord hollowly.

"The time is rotten-ripe," said Winston Niles Rumfoord.

"The war that ends so gloriously today was glorious only for the saints who lost it. Those saints were Earthlings like yourselves. They went to Mars, mounted their hopeless attacks, and died gladly, in order that Earthlings might at last become one people - joyful, fraternal, and proud.

"Their wish, when they died," said Rumfoord, "was not for paradise for themselves, but that the brotherhood of mankind on Earth might be enduring.

"To that end, devoutly to be wished," said Rumfoord, "I bring you word of a new religion that can be received enthusiastically in every corner of every Earthling heart.

"National borders," said Rumfoord, "will disappear.

"The lust for war," said Rumfoord, "will die.

"All envy, all fear, all hate will die," said Rumfoord.

"The name of the new religion," said Rumfoord, "is The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent.

"The flag of that church will be blue and gold," said Rumfoord. "These words will be written on that flag in gold letters on a blue field: Take Care of the People, and God Almighty Will Take Care of Himself.

"The two chief teachings of this religion are these," said Rumfoord: "Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God.

"Why should you believe in this religion, rather than any other?" said Rumfoord. "You should believe in it because I, as head of this religion, can work miracles, and the head of no other religion can. What miracles can I work? I can work the miracle of predicting, with absolute accuracy, the things that the future will bring."

Rumfoord thereupon predicted fifty future events in great detail.

These predictions were carefully recorded by those present.

Needless to say, they all came true eventually - came true in great detail.

"The teachings of this religion will seem subtle and confusing at first," said Rumfoord. "But they will become beautiful and crystal clear as time goes by.

"As a presently confusing beginning," said Rumfoord, "I shall tell you a parable: