“While she was en route to Mars so many years ago, Malachi Constant forced his attention on her, and she bore him this son. Before then, she was my wife and the mistress of this estate. Her true name is Beatrice Rumfoord.”
A groan went up from the crowd. Was it any wonder that the dusty puppets of other religions had been put away for want of audiences, that all eyes were turned to Newport? Not only was the head of the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent capable of telling the future and fighting the cruelest inequalities of all, inequalities in luck — but his supply of dumfounding new sensations was inexhaustible.
He was so well supplied with great material that he could actually let his voice trail off as he announced that the one-eyed, gold-toothed woman was his wife, and that he had been cuckolded by Malachi Constant.
“I now invite you to despise the example of her life as you have so long despised the example of the life of Malachi Constant,” he said up in his treetop mildly. “Hang her alongside Malachi Constant from your window blinds and light fixtures, if you will.
“The excesses of Beatrice were excesses of reluctance,” said Rumfoord. “As a younger woman, she felt so exquisitely bred as to do nothing and to allow nothing to be done to her, for fear of contamination. Life, for Beatrice as a younger woman, was too full of germs and vulgarity to be anything but intolerable.
“We of the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent damn her as roundly for refusing to risk her imagined purity in living as we damn Malachi Constant for wallowing in filth.
“It was implicit in Beatrice’s every attitude that she was intellectually, morally, and physically what God intended human beings to be when perfected, and that the rest of humanity needed another ten thousand years in which to catch up. Again we have a case of an ordinary and uncreative person’s tickling God Almighty pink. The proposition that God Almighty admired Beatrice for her touch-me-not breeding is at least as questionable as the proposition that God Almighty wanted Malachi Constant to be rich.
“Mrs. Rumfoord,” said Winston Niles Rumfoord up in his treetop, “I now invite you and your son to follow Malachi Constant into the space ship bound for Titan. Is there something you would like to say before you leave?”
There was a long silence in which mother and son drew closer together and looked, shoulder to shoulder, at a world much changed by the news of the day.
“Are you planning to address us, Mrs. Rumfoord?” said Rumfoord up in his treetop.
“Yes,” said Beatrice. “But it won’t take me long. I believe everything you say about me is true, since you so seldom lie. But when my son and I walk together to that ladder and climb it, we will not be doing it for you, or for your silly crowd. We will be doing it for ourselves — and we will be proving to ourselves and to anybody who wants to watch that we aren’t afraid of anything. Our hearts won’t be breaking when we leave this planet. It disgusts us at least as much as we, under your guidance, disgust it.
“I do not recall the old days,” said Beatrice, “when I was mistress of this estate, when I could not stand to do anything or to have anything done to me. But I loved myself the instant you told me I’d been that way. The human race is a scummy thing, and so is Earth, and so are you.”
Beatrice and Chrono walked quickly over the catwalks and ramps to the ladder, climbed the ladder. They brushed past Malachi Constant in the doorway of the space ship without any sort of greeting. They disappeared inside.
Constant followed them into the space ship, and joined them as they considered the accommodations.
The condition of the accommodations was a surprise — and would have been a surprise to the custodians of the estate in particular. The space ship, seemingly inviolable at the top of a shaft in sacred precincts patrolled by watchmen, had plainly been the scene of one or perhaps several wild parties.