Unk moved his head to one side, looked through the porthole obliquely. The movement gave him a perspective down a hundred yards of harmonium-infested wall.
Unk was flabbergasted to see that the harmoniums were forming a message in dazzling letters.
The message was this, in pale yellow, outlined in aquamarine: IT’S AN INTELLIGENCE TEST!
chapter nine
A PUZZLE SOLVED
In the beginning, God became the Heaven and the Earth . . . And God said, ‘Let Me be light,’ and He was light.
— The Winston Niles Rumfoord
Authorized Revised Bible
For a delicious tea snack, try young harmoniums rolled into tubes and filled with Venusian cottage cheese.
— The Beatrice Rumfoord
Galactic Cookbook
In terms of their souls, the martyrs of Mars died not when they attacked Earth but when they were recruited for the Martian war machine.
— The Winston Niles Rumfoord
Pocket History of Mars
I found me a place where I can do good without doing any harm.
— BOAZ IN SARAH HORNE CANBY’S
Unk and Boaz in the Caves of Mercury
The best-selling book in recent times has been The Winston Niles Rumfoord Authorized Revised Bible. Next in popularity is that delightful forgery, The Beatrice Rumfoord Galactic Cookbook. The third most popular is The Winston Niles Rumfoord Pocket History of Mars. The fourth most popular is a children’s book, Unk and Boaz in the Caves of Mercury, by Sarah Home Canby.
The publisher’s bland analysis of Mrs. Canby’s book’s success appears on the dust jacket: “What child wouldn’t like to be shipwrecked on a space ship with a cargo of hamburgers, hot dogs, catsup, sporting goods, and soda pop?”
Dr. Frank Minot, in his Are Adults Harmoniums?, sees something more sinister in the love children have for the book. “Dare we consider,” he asks, “how close Unk and Boaz are to the everyday experience of children when Unk and Boaz deal solemnly and respectfully with creatures that are in fact obscenely unmotivated, insensitive, and dull?” Minot, in drawing a parallel between human parents and harmoniums, refers to the dealings of Unk and Boaz with harmoniums. The harmoniums spelled out for Unk and Boaz a new message of hope or veiled derision every fourteen Earthling days — for three years.
The messages were written, of course, by Winston Niles Rumfoord, who materialized briefly on Mercury at fourteen-day intervals. He peeled off harmoniums here, slapped others up there, making the block letters.
In Mrs. Canby’s tale, the first intimation given that Rumfoord is around the caves from time to time is given in a scene very close to the end — a scene wherein Unk finds the tracks of a big dog in the dust.
At this point in the story it is mandatory, if an adult is reading the story aloud to a child, for the adult to ask the child with delicious hoarseness, “Who wuzza dog?”
Dog wuzza Kazak. Dog wuzza Winston Niles Rumfoord’s great big mean chrono-synclastic infundibulated dog.
Unk and Boaz had been on Mercury for three Earthling years when Unk found Kazak’s footprints in the dust on the floor of a cave corridor. Mercury had carried Unk and Boaz twelve and a half times around the Sun.
Unk found the prints on a floor six miles above the chamber in which the dented, scarred, and rock-bound space ship lay. Unk didn’t live in the space ship any more, and neither did Boaz. The space ship served merely as a common supply base to which Unk and Boaz returned for provisions once every Earthling month or so.
Unk and Boaz rarely met. They moved in very different circles.
The circles in which Boaz moved were small. His abode was fixed and richly furnished. It was on the same level as the space ship, only a quarter of a mile away from it.
The circles in which Unk moved were vast and restless. He had no home. He traveled light and he traveled far, climbing ever higher until he was stopped by cold. Where the cold stopped Unk, the cold stopped the harmoniums, too. On the upper levels where Unk wandered, the harmoniums were stunted and few.
On the cozy lower level where Boaz lived, the harmoniums were plentiful and fast-growing.