Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - The Sirens of Titan

Television cameras and microphones on booms could follow the system anywhere.

For night materializations, the superstructures of the system were outlined in flesh-colored electric lamps.

The Space Wanderer was only the thirty-first person to be invited to join Rumfoord on the elevated system.

An assistant had now been dispatched to the Malachi booth outside to bring in the thirty-second and thirty-third persons to share the eminence.

Rumfoord did not look well. His color was bad. And, although he smiled as always, his teeth seemed to be gnashing behind the smile. His complacent glee had become a caricature, betraying the fact that all was not well by any means.

But on and on the famous smile went. The magnificently snobbish crowd-pleaser held his big dog Kazak by a choke chain. The chain was twisted so as to nip warningly into the dog's throat. The warning was necessary, since the dog plainly did not like the Space Wanderer.

The smile faltered for an instant, reminding the crowd of what a load Rumfoord carried for them - warning the crowd that he might not be able to carry it forever.

Rumfoord carried in his palm a microphone and transmitter the size of a penny. When he did not want his voice carried to the crowd, he simply smothered the penny in his fist.

The penny was smothered in his fist now - and he was addressing bits of irony to the Space Wanderer that would have bewildered the crowd, had the crowd been able to hear them.

"This is certainly your day, isn't it?" said Rumfoord. "A perfect love feast from the instant you arrived. The crowd simply adores you. Do you adore crowds?"

The joyful shocks of the day had reduced the Space Wanderer to a childish condition - a condition wherein irony and even sarcasm were lost on him. He had been the captive of many things in his troubled times. He was now a captive of a crowd that thought he was a marvel. "They've certainly been wonderful," he said, in reply to Rumfoord's last question. "They've been grand."

"Oh - they're a grand bunch," said Rumfoord. "No mistake about that. I've been racking my brains for the right word to describe them, and you've brought it to me from outer space. Grand is what they are." Rumfoord's mind was plainly elsewhere. He wasn't much interested in the Space Wanderer as a person - hardly looked at him. Neither did he seem very excited about the approach of the Space Wanderer's wife and child.

"Where are they, where are they?" said Rumfoord to an assistant below. "Let's get on with it. Let's get it over with."

The Space Wanderer was finding his adventures so satisfying and stimulating, so splendidly staged, that he was shy about asking questions - was afraid that asking questions might make him seem ungrateful.

He realized that he had a terrific ceremonial responsibility and that the best thing to do was to keep his mouth shut, to speak only when spoken to, and to make his answers to all questions short and artless.

The Space Wanderer's mind did not teem with questions. The fundamental structure of his ceremonial situation was obvious - was as clean and functional as a three-legged milking stool. He had suffered mightily, and now he was being rewarded mightily.

The sudden change in fortunes made a bang-up show. He smiled, understanding the crowd's delight - pretending to be in the crowd himself, sharing the crowd's delight.

Rumfoord read the Space Wanderer's mind. "They'd like it just as much the other way around, you know," he said.

"The other way around?" said the Space Wanderer.

"If the big reward came first, and then the great suffering," said Rumford. "It's the contrast they like. The order of events doesn't make any difference to them. It's the thrill of the fast reverse - "

Rumfoord opened his fist, exposed the microphone. With his other hand he beckoned pontifically. He was beckoning to Bee and Chrono, who had been hoisted Onto a tributary of the gilded system of catwalks, ramps, ladders, pulpits, steps and stages. "This way, please. We haven't got all day, you know," said Rumfoord schoolmarmishly.

During the lull, the Space Wanderer felt the first real tickle of plans for a good future on Earth. With everyone so kind and enthusiastic and peaceful, not only a good life but a perfect life could be lived on Earth.

The Space Wanderer had already been given a fine new suit and a glamorous station in life, and his mate and son were to be restored to him in a matter of minutes.

All that was lacking was a good friend, and the Space Wanderer began to tremble. He trembled, for he knew in his heart that his best friend, Stony Stevenson, was hidden somewhere on the grounds, awaiting a cue to appear.

The Space Wanderer smiled, for he was imagining Stony's entrance. Stony would come running down a ramp, laughing and a little drunk. "Unk, you bloody bastard - " Stony would roar right into the public address system, "by God, I've looked in every flaming pub on bloody Earth for you - and here you've been hung up on Mercury the whole bloody time!"

As Bee and Chrono reached Rumfoord and the Space Wanderer, Rumfoord walked away. Had he separated himself from Bee, Chrono, and the Space Wanderer by a mere arm's length, his separateness might have been understood. But the gilded system enabled him to put a really respectable distance between himself and the three, and not only a distance, but a distance made tortuous by rococo and variously symbolic hazards.

It was undeniably great theater, notwithstanding Dr. Maurice Rosenau's carping comment (op. cit.): "The people who watch reverently as Winston Niles Rumfoord goes dancing over his golden jungle gym in Newport are the same idiots one finds in toy stores, gaping reverently at toy trains as the trains go chuffa-chuffa-chuffa in and out of papier-mâché tunnels, over toothpick trestles, through cardboard cities, and into papier-mâché tunnels again. Will the little trains or will Winston Niles Rumfoord chuffa-chuffa-chuffa into view again? Oh, mirabile dictu! . . . they will!"

From the scaffold in front of the mansion Rumfoord went to a stile that arched over the crest of a boxwood hedge. On the other side of the stile was a catwalk that ran for ten feet to the trunk of a copper beech. The trunk was four feet through. Gilded rungs were fixed to the trunk by lag screws.

Rumfoord tied Kazak to the bottom rung, then climbed out of sight like Jack on the beanstalk.

From somewhere up in the tree he spoke.

His voice came not from the tree but from the Gabriel horns on the walls.

The crowd weaned its eyes from the leafy treetop, turned its eyes to the nearest loudspeakers.

Only Bee, Chrono, and the Space Wanderer continued to look up, to look up at where Rumfoord really was. This wasn't so much a result of realism as it was a result of embarrassment. By looking up, the members of the little family avoided looking at each other.

None of the three had any reason to be pleased with the reunion.

Bee was not drawn to the scrawny, bearded, happy boob in lemon-yellow long underwear. She had dreamed of a big, angry, arrogant free-thinker.

Young Chrono hated the bearded intruder on his sublime relationship with his mother. Chrono kissed his good-luck piece and wished that his father, if this really was his father, would drop dead.

And the Space Wanderer himself, sincerely as he tried, could see nothing he would have chosen of his own free will in the dark, malevolent mother and son.

By accident, the Space Wanderer's eyes met the one good eye of Bee. Something had to be said.

"How do you do?" said the Space Wanderer.

"How do you do?" said Bee.

They both looked up into the tree again.

"Oh, my happy, handicapped brethren," said Rumfoord's voice, "let us thank God - God, who appreciates our thanks as much as the mighty Mississippi appreciates a raindrop - that we are not like Malachi Constant."