As Bee and Chrono reached Rumfoord and the Space Wanderer, Rumfoord walked away. Had he separated himself from Bee, Chrono, and the Space Wanderer by a mere arm’s length, his separateness might have been understood. But the gilded system enabled him to put a really respectable distance between himself and the three, and not only a distance, but a distance made tortuous by rococo and variously symbolic hazards.
It was undeniably great theater, notwithstanding Dr. Maurice Rosenau’s carping comment (op. cit.): “The people who watch reverently as Winston Niles Rumfoord goes dancing over his golden jungle gym in Newport are the same idiots one finds in toy stores, gaping reverently at toy trains as the trains go chuffa-chuffa-chuffa in and out of papier-mâché tunnels, over toothpick trestles, through cardboard cities, and into papier-mâché tunnels again. Will the little trains or will Winston Niles Rumfoord chuffa-chuffa-chuffa into view again? Oh, mirabile dictu! . . . they will!”
From the scaffold in front of the mansion Rumfoord went to a stile that arched over the crest of a boxwood hedge. On the other side of the stile was a catwalk that ran for ten feet to the trunk of a copper beech. The trunk was four feet through. Gilded rungs were fixed to the trunk by lag screws.
Rumfoord tied Kazak to the bottom rung, then climbed out of sight like Jack on the beanstalk.
From somewhere up in the tree he spoke.
His voice came not from the tree but from the Gabriel horns on the walls.
The crowd weaned its eyes from the leafy treetop, turned its eyes to the nearest loudspeakers.
Only Bee, Chrono, and the Space Wanderer continued to look up, to look up at where Rumfoord really was. This wasn’t so much a result of realism as it was a result of embarrassment. By looking up, the members of the little family avoided looking at each other.
None of the three had any reason to be pleased with the reunion.
Bee was not drawn to the scrawny, bearded, happy boob in lemon-yellow long underwear. She had dreamed of a big, angry, arrogant free-thinker.
Young Chrono hated the bearded intruder on his sublime relationship with his mother. Chrono kissed his good-luck piece and wished that his father, if this really was his father, would drop dead.
And the Space Wanderer himself, sincerely as he tried, could see nothing he would have chosen of his own free will in the dark, malevolent mother and son.
By accident, the Space Wanderer’s eyes met the one good eye of Bee. Something had to be said.
“How do you do?” said the Space Wanderer.
“How do you do?” said Bee.
They both looked up into the tree again.
“Oh, my happy, handicapped brethren,” said Rumfoord’s voice, “let us thank God — God, who appreciates our thanks as much as the mighty Mississippi appreciates a raindrop — that we are not like Malachi Constant.”
The back of the Space Wanderer’s neck ached some. He lowered his gaze. His eyes were caught by a long, straight golden runway in the middle distance. His eyes followed it.
The runway ended at Earth’s longest free-standing ladder. The ladder was painted gold, too.
The Space Wanderer’s gaze climbed the ladder to the tiny door of the space ship on top of the column. He wondered who would have nerve enough or reason enough to climb such a frightening ladder to such a tiny door.
The Space Wanderer looked at the crowd again. Maybe Stony Stevenson was in the crowd somewhere. Maybe he would wait for the whole show to end before he presented himself to his best and only friend from Mars.
chapter eleven
WE HATE MALACHI CONSTANT BECAUSE . . .
“Tell me one good thing you ever did in your life.”
— WINSTON NILES RUMFOORD
And this is how the sermon went:
“We are disgusted by Malachi Constant,” said Winston Niles Rumfoord up in his treetop, “because he used the fantastic fruits of his fantastic good luck to finance an unending demonstration that man is a pig. He wallowed in sycophants. He wallowed in worthless women. He wallowed in lascivious entertainments and alcohol and drugs. He wallowed in every known form of voluptuous turpitude.