The authorities complained bitterly that the boy’s big trouble was his mother. His mother loved him just the way he was.
“Only eight more minutes to get your Malachi, folks,” said Bee. “Hurry, hurry, hurry.”
Bee’s upper front teeth were gold, and her skin, like the skin of her son, was the color of golden oak.
Bee had lost her upper front teeth when the space ship in which she and Chrono had ridden from Mars crash-landed in the Gumbo region of the Amazon Rain Forest. She and Chrono had been the only survivors of the crash, and had wandered through the jungles for a year.
The color of Bee’s and Chrono’s skins was permanent, since it stemmed from a modification of their livers, Their livers had been modified by a three-month diet consisting of water and the roots of the salpa-salpa or Amazonian blue poplar. The diet had been a part of Bee’s and Chrono’s initiation into the Gumbo tribe.
During the initiation, mother and son had been staked at the ends of tethers in the middle of the village, with Chrono representing the Sun and Bee representing the Moon, as the Sun and the Moon were understood by the Gumbo people.
As a result of their experiences, Bee and Chrono were closer than most mothers and sons.
They had been rescued at last by a helicopter. Winston Niles Rumfoord had sent the helicopter to just the right place at just the right time.
Winston Niles Rumfoord had given Bee and Chrono the lucrative Malachi concession outside the Alice-in-Wonderland door. He had also paid Bee’s dental bill, and had suggested that her false front teeth be gold.
The man who had the booth next to Bee’s was Harry Brackman. He had been Unk’s platoon sergeant back on Mars. Brackman was portly and balding now. He had a cork leg and a stainless steel right hand. He had lost the leg and hand in the Battle of Boca Raton, He was the only survivor of the battle — and, if he hadn’t been so horribly wounded, he would certainly have been lynched along with the other survivors of his platoon.
Brackman sold plastic models of the fountain inside the wall. The models were a foot high. The models had spring-driven pumps in their bases. The pumps pumped water from the big bowl at the bottom to the tiny bowls at the top. Then the tiny bowls spilled into the slightly larger bowls below and . . .
Brackman had three of them going at once on the counter before him. “Just like the one inside, folks,” he said. “And you can take one of these home with you. Put it in the picture window, so all your neighbors’ll know you’ve been to Newport. Put it in the middle of the kitchen table for the kids’ parties, and fill it with pink lemonade.”
“How much?” said a rube.
“Seventeen dollars,” said Brackman.
“Wow!” said the rube.
“It’s a sacred shrine, cousin,” said Brackman, looking at the rube levelly. “Isn’t a toy.” He reached under the counter, brought out a model of a Martian space ship. “You want a toy? Here’s a toy. Forty-nine cents. I only make two cents on it.”
The rube made a show of being a judicious shopper. He compared the toy with the real article it was supposed to represent. The real article was a Martian space ship on top of a column ninety-eight feet tall, The column and space ship were inside the walls of the Rumfoord estate — in the corner of the estate where the tennis courts had once been.
Rumfoord bad yet to explain the purpose of the space ship, whose supporting column had been built with the pennies of school children from all over the world. The ship was kept in constant readiness. What was reputedly the longest free-standing ladder in history leaned against the column, led giddily to the door of the ship.
In the fuel cartridge of the space ship was the very last trace of the Martian war effort’s supply of the Universal Will to Become.
“Uh huh,” said the rube. He put the model back on the counter. “If you don’t mind, I’ll shop around a little more.” So far, the only thing he had bought was a Robin Hood hat with a picture of Rumfoord on one side and a picture of a sailboat on the other, and with his own name stitched on the feather. His name, according to the feather, was Delbert. “Thanks just the same,” said Delbert. “I’ll probably be back.”