“Could we have done any better if he’d left us in charge of our own lives?” said Bee. “Would we have become any more — or any less? I guess I’m glad he used me. I guess he had a lot better ideas about what to do with me than Florence White or Darlene Simpkins or whoever I was.
“But I hate him all the same,” said Bee.
“That’s your privilege,” said Brackman. “He said that was the privilege of every Martian.”
“There’s one consolation,” said Bee. “We’re all used up. We’ll never be of any use to him again.”
“Welcome, Space Wanderer,” blatted Rumfoord’s oleomargarine tenor from the Gabriel horns on the wall. “How meet it is that you should come to us on the bright red pumper of a volunteer fire department. I can think of no more stirring symbol of man’s humanity to man than a fire engine. Tell me, Space Wanderer, do you see anything here — anything that makes you think you may have been here before?”
The Space Wanderer murmured something unintelligible.
“Louder, please,” said Rumfoord.
“The fountain — I remember that fountain,” said the Space Wanderer gropingly. “Only — only — ”
“Only?” said Rumfoord.
“It was dry then — whenever that was. It’s so wet now,” said the Space Wanderer.
A microphone near the fountain was now tuned into the public address system, so that the actual babble, spatter and potch of the fountain could underline the Space Wanderer’s words.
“Anything else familiar, oh, Space Wanderer?” said Rumfoord.
“Yes,” said the Space Wanderer shyly. “You.”
“I am familiar?” said Rumfoord archly. “You mean there’s a possibility that I played some small part in your life before?”
“I remember you on Mars,” said the Space Wanderer. “You were the man with the dog — just before we took off.”
“What happened after you took off?” said Rumfoord.
“Something went wrong,” said the Space Wanderer. He sounded apologetic, as though the series of misfortunes were somehow his own fault. “A lot of things went wrong.”
“Have you ever considered the possibility,” said Rumfoord, “that everything went absolutely right?”
“No,” said the Space Wanderer simply. The idea did not startle him, could not startle him — since the idea proposed was so far beyond the range of his jerry-built philosophy.
“Would you recognize your mate and child?” said Rumfoord.
“I — I don’t know,” said the Space Wanderer.
“Bring me the woman and the boy who sell Malachis outside the little iron door,” said Rumfoord. “Bring Bee and Chrono.”
The Space Wanderer and Winston Niles Rumfoord and Kazak were on a scaffold before the mansion. The scaffold was at eye-level for the standing crowd. The scaffold before the mansion was a portion of a continuous system of catwalks, ramps, ladders, pulpits, steps, and stages that reached into every corner of the estate.
The system made possible the free and showy circulation of Rumfoord around the grounds, unimpeded by crowds. It meant, too, that Rumfoord could offer a glimpse of himself to every person on the grounds.
The system was not suspended magnetically, though it looked like a miracle of levitation. The seeming miracle was achieved by means of a cunning use of paint. The underpinnings were painted a flat black, while the superstructures were painted flashing gold.
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.