“Graw,” said one Titanic bluebird sociably.
“Graw,” the other agreed.
The birds closed their wings simultaneously, fell from the heights like stones.
They seemed to plummet to certain death outside Rumfoord’s walls. But up they soared again, to begin another long and easy climb.
This time they climbed a sky that was streaked by the vapor trail of the space ship carrying Malachi Constant, Beatrice Rumfoord, and their son Chrono. The ship was about to land.
“Skip – ?” said Salo.
“Do you have to call me that?” said Rumfoord.
“No,” said Salo.
“Then don’t,” said Rumfoord. “I’m not fond of the name – unless somebody I’ve grown up with happens to use it.”
“I thought – as a friend of yours – ” said Salo, “I might be entitled – “
“Shall we just drop this guise of friendship?” said Rumfoord curtly.
Salo dosed his third eye. The skin of his torso tightened. “Guise?” he said.
“Your feet are making that noise again!” said Rumfoord.
“Skip!” cried Salo. He corrected this insufferable familiarity. “Winston – it’s like a nightmare, your talking to me this way. I thought we were friends.”
“Let’s say we’ve managed to be of some use to each other, and let it go at that,” said Rumfoord.
Salo’s head rocked gently in its gimbals. “I thought there’d been a little more to it than that,” he said at last.
“Let’s say,” said Rumfoord acidly, “that we discovered in each other a means to our separate ends.”
“I – I was glad to help you – and I hope I really was a help to you,” said Salo. He opened his eyes. He had to see Rumfoord’s reaction. Surely Rumfoord would become friendly again, for Salo really had helped him unselfishly.
“Didn’t I give you half my UWTB?” said Salo. “Didn’t I let you copy my ship for Mars? Didn’t I fly the first few recruiting missions? Didn’t I help you figure out how to control the Martians, so they wouldn’t make trouble? Didn’t I spend day after day helping you to design the new religion?”
“Yes,” said Rumfoord. “But what have you done for me lately?”
“What?” said Salo.
“Never mind,” said Rumfoord curtly. “It’s the tag. line on an old Earthling joke, and not a very funny one, under the circumstances.”
“Oh,” said Salo. He knew a lot of Earthling jokes, but he didn’t know that one.
“Your feet!” cried Rumfoord.
“I’m sorry!” cried Salo. “If I could weep like an Earthling, I would!” His grieving feet were out of his control. They went on making the sounds Rumfoord suddenly hated so. “I’m sorry for everything! All I know is, I’ve tried every way I know how to be a true friend, and I never asked for anything in return.”
“You didn’t have to!” said Rumfoord. “You didn’t have to ask for a thing. All you had to do was sit back and wait for it to be dropped in your lap.”
“What was it I wanted dropped in my lap?” said Salo incredulously.
“The replacement part for your space ship,” said Rumfoord. “It’s almost here. It’s arriving, sire. Constant’s boy has it – calls it his goodluck piece – as though you didn’t know.”
Rumfoord sat up, turned green, motioned for silence. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’m going to be sick again.”
Winston Niles Rumfoord and his dog Kazak were sick again – more violently sick than before. It seemed to poor old Salo that this time they would surely sizzle to nothing or explode.
Kazak howled in a ball of Saint Elmo’s fire.
Rumfoord stood bolt upright, his eyes popping, a fiery column.
This attack passed, too.
“Excuse me,” said Rumfoord with scathing decency. “You were saying – ?”
“What?” said Salo bleakly.
“You were saying something – or about to say something,” said Rumfoord. Only the sweat at his temples betrayed the fact that he had just been through something harrowing. He put a cigarette in a long, bone cigarette holder, lighted it. He thrust out his jaw. The cigarette holder pointed straight up. “We won’t be interrupted again for three minutes,” he said. “You were saying?”
Salo recalled the subject of conversation only with effort. When he did recall it, it upset him more than ever. The worst possible thing had happened. Not only had Rmnfoord found out, seemingly, about the influence of Tralfamadore on Earthling affairs, which would have offended him quite enough – but Rumfoord also regarded himself, seemingly, as one of the principal victims of that influence.
Salo had had an uneasy suspicion from time to time that Rumfoord was under the influence of Tralfamadore, but he’d pushed the thought out of his mind, since there was nothing he could do about it. He hadn’t even discussed it, because to discuss it with Rumfoord would surely have ruined their beautiful friendship at once. Very lamely, Salo explored the possibility that Rumfoord did not know as much as he seemed to know. “Skip – ” he said.
“Please!” said Rumfoord.
“Mr. Rumfoord – ” said Salo, “you think I somehow used you?”
“Not you,” said Rumfoord. “Your fellow machines back on your precious Tralfamadore.”
“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.