Kurt Vonnegut Jr. - The Sirens of Titan

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.