“Um,” said Salo. “You — you think you — you’ve been used, Skip?”
“Tralfamadore,” said Rumfoord bitterly, “reached into the Solar System, picked me up, and used me like a handy-dandy potato peeler!”
“If you could see this in the future,” said Salo miserably, “why didn’t you mention it before?”
“Nobody likes to think he’s being used,” said Rumfoord. “He’ll put off admitting it to himself until the last possible instant.”, He smiled crookedly. “It may surprise you to- learn that I take a certain pride, no matter how foolishly mistaken that pride may be, in making my own decisions for my own reasons.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Salo.
“Oh?” said Rumfoord unpleasantly. “I should have thought it was too subtle an attitude for a machine to grasp.”
This, surely, was the low point in their relationship. Salo was a machine, since he had been designed and manufactured. He didn’t conceal the fact. But Rumfoord had never used the fact as an insult before. He had definitely used the fact as an insult now. Through a thin veil of noblesse oblige, Rumfoord let Salo know that to be a machine was to be insensitive, was to be unimaginative, was to be vulgar, was to be purposeful without a shred of conscience.
Salo was pathetically vulnerable to this accusation. It was a tribute to the spiritual intimacy he and Rumfoord had once shared that Rumfoord knew so well bow to hurt him.
Salo closed two of his three eyes again, watched the soaring Titanic bluebirds again. The birds were as big as Earthling eagles.
Salo wished he were a Titanic bluebird.
The space ship carrying Malachi Constant, Beatrice Rumfoord, and their son Chrono sailed low over the palace, landed on the shore of the Winston Sea.
“I give you my word of honor,” said Salo, “I didn’t know you were being used, and I haven’t the slightest idea what you — ”
“Machine,” said Rumfoord nastily.
“Tell me what you’ve been used for — please?” said Salo. “My word of honor — I don’t have the foggiest — ”
“Machine!” said Rumfoord.
“If you think so badly of me, Skip — Winston — Mr. Rumfoord — ” said Salo, “after all I’ve done and tried to do in the name of friendship alone, there’s certainly nothing I can say or do now to change your mind.”
“Precisely what a machine would say,” said Rumfoord.
“It’s what a machine did say,” said Salo humbly. He inflated his feet to the size of German batballs, preparing to walk out of Rumfoord’s palace and onto the waters of the Winston Sea — never to return. Only when his feet were fully inflated did he catch the challenge in what Rumfoord had said. There was a clear implication that there was something Old Salo could still do to make things right again.
Even if he was a machine, Salo was sensitive enough to know that to ask what that something was would be to grovel. He steeled himself. In the name of friendship, he was going to grovel.
“Skip — ” he said, “tell me what to do. Anything — anything at all.”
“In a very short time,” said Rumfoord, “an explosion is going to blow the terminal of my spiral clear off the Sun, clear out of the Solar System.”
“No!” cried Salo. “Skip! Skip!”
“No, no — no pity, please,” said Rumfoord, stepping back, afraid of being touched. “It’s a very good thing, really. I’ll be seeing a lot of new things, a lot of new creatures.” He tried to smile. “One gets tired, you know, being caught up in the monotonous clockwork of the Solar System.” He laughed harshly. “After all,” he said, “it isn’t as though I were dying or something. Everything that ever was always will be, and everything that ever will be always was.” He shook his head quickly, and cast away a tear he hadn’t known was on his eyelid.
“Comforting as that chrono-synclastic infundibulated thought is,” he said, “I should still like to know just what the main point of this Solar System episode has been.”
“You — you’ve summed it up far better than anyone else could — in your Pocket History of Mars,” said Salo.