“What happened to you?” the people all yelled to him, and they laughed.
For the purposes of mass communications, Unk shortened the answer that had pleased the little crowd so much at the Church of the Space Wanderer. “Accidents!” he yelled.
He laughed. Oh boy.
What the hell. He laughed.
In Newport, the Rumfoord estate had been packed to the walls for eight hours. Guards turned thousands away from the little door in the wall. The guards were hardly necessary, since the crowd inside was monolithic.
A greased eel couldn’t have squeezed in.
The thousands of pilgrims outside the walls now jostled one another piously for positions close to the loudspeakers mounted at the corners of the walls.
From the speakers would come Rumfoord’s voice.
The crowd was the largest yet and the most excited yet, for the day was the long-promised Great Day of the Space Wanderer.
Handicaps of the most imaginative and effective sort were displayed everywhere. The crowd was wonderfully drab and hampered.
Bee, who had been Unk’s mate on Mars, was in Newport, too. So was Bee’s and Unk’s son, Chrono.
“Hey! — getcher genuwine, authorized, official Malachis here,” said Bee hoarsely. “Hey! — getcher Malachis here. Gotta have a Malachi to wave at the Space Wanderer,” said Bee. “Get a Malachi, so the Space Wanderer can bless it when he comes by.”
She was in a booth facing the little iron door in the wall of the Rumfoord estate in Newport. Bee’s booth was the first in the line of twenty booths that faced the door. The twenty booths were under one continuous shed roof, and were separated from one another by waist-high partitions.
The Malachis she was hawking were plastic dolls with movable joints and rhinestone eyes. Bee bought them from a religious supply house for twenty-seven cents apiece and sold them for three dollars. She was an excellent businesswoman.
And while Bee showed the world an efficient and flashy exterior, it was the grandeur within her that sold more merchandise than anything. The carnival flash of Bee caught the pilgrims’ eyes. But what brought the pilgrims to her booth and made them buy was her aura. The aura said unmistakably that Bee was meant for a far nobler station in life, that she was being an awfully good sport about being stuck where she was.
“Hey! — getcher Malachi while there’s still time,” said Bee. “Can’t get a Malachi while a materialization’s going on!”
That was true. The rule was that the concessionaires had to close their shutters five minutes before Winston Niles Rumfoord and his dog materialized. And they had to keep their shutters closed until ten minutes after the last trace of Rumfoord and Kazak had disappeared.
Bee turned to her son, Chrono, who was opening a fresh case of Malachis. “How long before the whistle?” she said. The whistle was a great steam whistle inside the estate. It was blown five minutes in advance of materializations.
Materializations themselves were announced by the firing of a three-inch cannon.
Dematerializations were announced by the release of a thousand toy balloons.
“Eight minutes,” said Chrono, looking at his watch. He was eleven Earthling years old now. He was dark and smoldering. He was an expert short-changer, and was clever with cards. He was foul-mouthed, and carried a switch-knife with a six-inch blade. Chrono would not socialize well with other children, and his reputation for dealing with life courageously and directly was so bad that only a few very foolish and very pretty little girls were attracted to him.
Chrono was classified by the Newport Police Department and by the Rhode Island State Police as a juvenile delinquent. He knew at least fifty law-enforcement officers by their first names, and was a veteran of fourteen lie-detector tests.
All that prevented Chrono’s being placed in an institution was the finest legal staff on Earth, the legal staff of the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. Under the direction of Rumfoord, the staff defended Chrono against all charges.
The commonest charges brought against Chrono were larceny by sleight of hand, carrying concealed weapons, possessing unregistered pistols, discharging firearms within the city limits, selling obscene prints and articles, and being a wayward child.