There were women who had received by dint of dumb luck the terrific advantage of beauty. They had annihilated that unfair advantage with frumpish clothes, bad posture, chewing gum, and a ghoulish use of cosmetics.
One old man, whose only advantage was excellent eyesight, had spoiled that eyesight by wearing his wife’s spectacles.
A dark young man, whose lithe, predaceous sex appeal could not be spoiled by bad clothes and bad man. ners, had handicapped himself with a wife who was nauseated by sex.
The dark young man’s wife, who had reason to be vain about her Phi Beta Kappa key, had handicapped herself with a husband who read nothing but comic books.
Redwine’s congregation was not unique. It wasn’t especially fanatical. There were literally billions of happily self-handicapped people on Earth.
And what made them all so happy was that nobody took advantage of anybody any more.
Now the firemen thought of another way to express joy. There was a nozzle mounted amidships on the fire engine. It could be swiveled around like a machine gun. They aimed it straight up and turned it on. A shivering, unsure fountain climbed into the sky, was torn to shreds by the winds when it could climb no more. The shreds fell all around, now falling on the space ship with splattering thumps; now soaking the firemen themselves; now soaking women and children, startling them, then making them more full of joy than ever.
That water should have played such an important part in the welcoming of Unk was an enchanting accident. No one had planned it. But it was perfect that everyone should forget himself in a festival of universal wetness.
The Reverend C. Horner Redwine, feeling as naked as a pagan wood sprite in the dinging wetness of his clothes, swished a spray of lilacs over the glass of a porthole, then pressed his adoring face against the glass.
The expression of the face that looked back at Redwine was strikingly like the expression on the face of an intelligent ape in a zoo. Unk’s forehead was deeply wrinkled, and his eyes were liquid with a hopeless wish to understand.
Unk had decided not to be afraid.
Neither was he in any hurry to let Redwine in.
At last he went to the airlock, unlatched both the inner and outer doors. He stepped back, waiting for someone else to push the doors open.
“First let me go in and have him put on the suit!” said Redwine to his congregation. “Then you can have him!”
There in the space ship, the lemon-yellow suit fit Unk like a coat of paint. The orange question marks on his chest and back clung without a wrinkle.
Unk did not yet know that no one else in the world was dressed like him. He assumed that many people bad suits like his – question marks and all.
“This – this is Earth?” said Unk to Redwine.
“Yes,” said Redwine. “Cape Cod, Massachusetts, United States of America, Brotherhood of Man.”
“Thank God!” said Unk.
Redwine raised his eyebrows quizzically. “Why?” he said.
“Pardon me?” said Unk.
“Why thank God?” said Redwine. “He doesn’t care what happens to you. He didn’t go to any trouble to get you here safe and sound, any more than He would go to the trouble to kill you.” He raised his arms, demonstrating the muscularity of his faith. The balls of shot in the handicap bags on his wrists shifted swishingly, drawing Unk’s attention. From the handicap bags, Unk’s attention made an easy jump to the heavy slab of iron on Redwine’s chest. Redwine followed the trend of Unk’s gaze, hefted the iron slab on his chest. “Heavy,” he said.
“Um,” said Unk.
“You should carry about fifty pounds, I would guess – after we build you up,” said Redwine.
“Fifty pounds?” said Unk.
“You should be glad, not sorry, to carry such a handicap,” said Redwine. “No one could then reproach you for taking advantage of the random ways of luck.” There crept into his voice a beatifically threatening tone that he had not used much since the earliest days of the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent, since the thrilling mass conversions that had followed the war with Mars. In those days, Redwine and all the other young proselytizers had threatened unbelievers with the righteous displeasure of crowds – righteously dis. pleased crowds that did not then exist.
The righteously displeased crowds existed now in every part of the world. The total membership of Churches of God the Utterly Indifferent was a good, round three billion. The young lions who had first taught the creed could now-afford to be lambs, to contemplate such oriental mysteries as water trickling down a bell rope. The disciplinary arm of the Church was in crowds everywhere.
“I must warn you,” Redwine said to Unk, “that when you go out among all those people you mustn’t say anything that would indicate that God took a special interest in you, or that you could somehow be of help to God. The worst thing you could say, for instance, would be something like, ‘Thank God for delivering me from all my troubles. For some reason He singled me out, and now my only wish is to serve Him.’
“The friendly crowd out there,” continued Redwine, “could turn quite ugly quite fast, despite the high auspices under which you come.”
Unk had been planning to say almost exactly what Redwine had warned him against saying. It had seemed the only proper speech to make. “What – what should I say?” said Unk.
“It has been prophesied what you will say,” said Redwine, “word for word. I have thought long and hard about the words you are going to say, and I am convinced they cannot be improved upon.”
“But I can’t think of any words – except hello – thank you – ” said Unk. “What do you want me to say?”
“What you do say,” said Redwine. “Those good people out there have been rehearsing this moment for a long time. They will ask you two questions, and you will answer them to the best of your ability.”
He led Unk through the airlock to the outside. The fire engine’s fountain had been turned off. The shouting and dancing had stopped.
Redwine’s congregation now formed a semicircle around Unk and Redwine. The members of the congregation had their lips pressed tightly together and their lungs filled.
Redwine gave a saintly signal.
The congregation spoke as one. “Who are you?” they said.
“I – I don’t know my real name,” said Unk. “They called me Unk.”
“What happened to you?” said the congregation. Unk shook his head vaguely. He could think of no apt condensation of his adventures for the obviously ritual mood. Something great was plainly expected of him. He was not up to greatness. He exhaled noisily, letting the congregation know that he was sorry to fail them with his colorlessness. “I was a victim of a series of accidents,” he said. He shrugged. “As are we all,” he said.
The cheering and dancing began again.
Unk was hustled aboard the fire engine, and driven on it to the door of the church.
Redwine pointed amiably to an unfurled wooden scroll over the door. Incised in the scroll and gilded were these words:
I WAS A VICTIM OF A SERIES OF ACCIDENTS,
AS ARE WE ALL.
Unk was driven on the fire engine straight from the church to Newport, Rhode Island, where a materialization was due to take place.
According to a plan that had been set up years before, other fire apparatus on Cape Cod was shifted so as to protect West Barnstable, which would be without its pumper for a little while.
Word of the Space Wanderer’s coming spread over the Earth like wildfire. In every village, town, and city through which the fire engine passed, Unk was pelted with flowers.
Unk sat high on the fire engine, on a two-by-six fir timber laid across the cockpit amidships. In the cockpit itself was the Reverend C. Homer Redwine.
Redwine had control of the fire engine’s bell, which he rang assiduously. Attached to the clapper of the bell was a Malachi made of high-impact plastic. The doll was of a special sort that could be bought only in Newport. To display such a Malachi was to proclaim that one had made a pilgrimage to Newport.
The entire Volunteer Fire Department of West Barnstable, with the exception of two non-conformists, had made such a pilgrimage to Newport. The fire engine’s Malachi had been bought with Fire Department funds.
In the parlance of the souvenir hawkers in Newport, the Fire Department’s high-impact plastic Malachi was a “genuwine, authorized, official Malachi.”
Unk was happy, because it was so good to be among people again, and to be breathing air again. And everybody seemed to adore him so.
There was so much good noise. There was so much good everything. Unk hoped the good everything would go on forever.