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 goodluck 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.
“At the height of his good luck, Malachi Constant was worth more than the states of Utah and North Dakota combined. Yet, I daresay, his moral worth was not that of the most corrupt little fleidmouse in either state.
“We are angered by Malachi Constant,” said Rumfoord up in his treetop, “because he did nothing to deserve his billions, and because he did nothing unselfish or imaginative with his billions. He was as benevolent as Marie Antoinette, as creative as a professor of cosmetology in an embalming college.
“We hate Malachi Constant,” said Rumford up in his treetop, “because he accepted the fantastic fruits of his fantastic good luck, without a qualm, as though luck were the hand of God. To us of the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent, there is nothing more cruel, more dangerous, more blasphemous that a man can do than to believe that – that luck, good or bad, is the hand of God!
“Luck, good or bad,” said Rumfoord up in his treetop, “is not the hand of God.
“Luck,” said Rumfoord up in his treetop, “is the way the wind swirls and the dust settles eons after God has passed by.
“Space Wanderer!” called Rumfoord from up in his treetop.
The Space Wanderer was not paying strict attention. His powers of concentration were feeble – possibly because he had been in the caves too long, or on goofballs too long, or in the Army of Mars too long.
He was watching clouds. They were lovely things, and the sky they drifted in was, to the color-starved Space Wanderer, a thrilling blue.
“Space Wanderer!” called Rumfoord again.
“You in the yellow suit,” said Bee. She nudged him. “Wake up.”
“Pardon me?” said the Space Wanderer.
“Space Wanderer!” called Rumfoord.
The Space Wanderer snapped to attention. “Yes, sir?” he called up into the leafy bower. The greeting was ingenuous, cheerful, and winsome. A microphone on the end of a boom was swung to dangle before him.
“Space Wanderer!” called Rumfoord, and he was peeved now, for the ceremonial flow was being impeded.
“Right here, sir!” cried the Space Wanderer. His reply boomed earsplittingly from the loudspeaker.
“Who are you?” said Rumford. “What is your real name?”
“I don’t know my real name,” said the Space Wanderer. “They called me Unk.”
“What happened to you before you arrived back on Earth, Unk?” said Rumfoord.
The Space Wanderer beamed. He had been led to a repetition of the simple statement that had caused so much laughing and dancing and singing on Cape Cod. “I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all,” he said.
There was no laughing and dancing and singing this time, but the crowd was definitely in favor of what the Space Wanderer had said. Chins were raised, and eyes were widened, and nostrils were flared. There was no outcry, for the crowd wanted to hear absolutely everything that Rumfoord and the Space Wanderer might have to say.
“A victim of a series of accidents, were you?” said Rumfoord up in his treetop. “Of all the accidents,” he said, “which would you consider the most significant?”
The Space Wanderer cocked his head. “I’d have to think – ” he said.
“I’ll spare you the trouble,” said Rumfoord. “The most significant accident that happened to you was your being born. Would you like me to tell you what you were named when you were born?”
The Space Wanderer hesitated only a moment, and all that made him hesitate was a fear that he was going to spoil a very gratifying ceremonial career by saying the wrong thing. “Please do,” he said.
“They called you Malachi Constant,” said Rumfoord up in his treetop.
To the extent that crowds can be good things, the crowds that Winston Niles Rumfoord attracted to Newport were good crowds. They were not crowd-minded. The members remained in possession of their own consciences, and Rumfoord never invited them to participate as one in any action – least of all in applause or catcalls.
When the fact had sunk in that the Space Wanderer was the disgusting, irking, and hateful Malachi Constant, the members of the crowd reacted in quiet, sighing, personal ways – ways that were by and large compassionate. It was on their generally decent consciences, after all, that they had hanged Constant in effigy in their homes and places of work. And, while they had been cheerful enough about hanging the effigies, very few felt that Constant, in the flesh, actually deserved hanging. Hanging Malachi Constant in effigy was an act of violence on the order of trimming a Christmas tree or hiding Easter eggs.
And Rumfoord up in his treetop said nothing to discourage their compassion. “You have had the singular accident, Mr. Constant,” he said sympathetically, “of becoming a central symbol of wrong-headedness for a perfectly enormous religious sect.
“You would not be attractive to us as a symbol, Mr. Constant,” he said, “if our hearts did not go out to you to a certain extent. Our hearts have to go out to you, since all your flamboyant errors are errors that human beings have made since the beginning of time.
“In a few minutes, Mr. Constant,” said Rumfoord up in his treetop, “you are going to walk down the catwalks and ramps to that long golden ladder, and you are going to climb that ladder, and you are going to get into that space ship, and you are going to fly away to Titan, a warm and fecund moon of Saturn. You will live there in safety and comfort, but in exile from your native Earth.
“You are going to do this voluntarily, Mr. Constant, so that the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent can have a drama of dignified self-sacrifice to remember and ponder through all time.
“We will imagine, to our spiritual satisfaction,” said Rumfoord up in his treetop, “that you are taking all mistaken ideas about the meaning of luck, all misused wealth and power, and all disgusting pastimes with you.”