“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.
“The Pocket History of Mars,” said Rumfoord, “makes no mention of the fact that I have been powerfully influenced by forces emanating from the planet Tralfamadore.” He gritted his teeth.
“Before my dog and I go crackling off through space like buggywhips in the hands of a lunatic,” said Rumfoord, “I should very much like to know what the message you are carrying is.”
“I – I don’t know,” said Salo. “It’s sealed. I have orders – “
“Against all orders from Tralfamadore,” said Winston Niles Rumfoord, “against all your instincts as a machine, but in the name of our friendship, Salo, I want you to open the message and read it to me now.”
Malachi Constant, Beatrice Rumfoord, and young Chrono, their savage son, picnicked sulkily in the shade of a Titanic daisy by the Winston Sea. Each member of the family had a statue against which to lean.
Bearded Malachi Constant, playboy of the Solar System, still wore his bright yellow suit with the orange question marks. It was the only suit he had.
Constant leaned against a statue of St. Francis of Assisi. St. Francis was trying to befriend two hostile and terrifyingly huge birds, apparently bald eagles. Constant was unable to identify the birds properly as Titanic bluebirds, since he hadn’t seen a Titanic bluebird yet. He had arrived on Titan only an hour before.
Beatrice, looking like a gypsy queen, smoldered at the foot of a statue of a young physical student. At first glance, the laboratory-gowned scientist seemed to be a perfect servant of nothing but truth. At first glance, one was convinced that nothing but truth could please him as he beamed at his test tube. At first glance, one thought that he was as much above the beastly concerns of mankind as the harmoniums in the caves of Mercury. There, at first glance, was a young man without vanity, without lust – and one accepted at its face value the title Salo had engraved on the statue, Discovery of Atomic Power.
And then one perceived that the young truth-seeker had a shocking erection.
Beatrice hadn’t perceived this yet.
Young Chrono, dark and dangerous like his mother, was already committing his first act of vandalism – or was trying to. Chrono was trying to inscribe a dirty Earthling word on the base of the statue against which he had been leaning. He was attempting the job with a sharp corner of his good luck piece.
The seasoned Titanic peat, almost as hard as diamonds, did the cutting instead, rounding off the corner’s point.
The statue on which Chrono was working was of a family group – a Neanderthal man, his mate, and their baby. It was a deeply-moving piece. The squat, shaggy, hopeful creatures were so ugly they were beautiful.
Their importance and universality was not spoiled by the satiric title Salo had given the piece. He gave frightful titles to all his statues, as though to proclaim desperately that he did not take himself seriously as an artist, not for an instant. The title he gave to the Neanderthal family derived from the fact that the baby was being shown a human foot roasting on a crude spit.
The title was This Little Piggy.
“No matter what happens, no matter what beautiful or sad or happy or frightening thing happens,” Malachi Constant told his family there on Titan, “I’m damned if I’ll respond. The minute it looks like something or somebody wants me to act in some special way, I will freeze.” He glanced up at the rings of Saturn, curled his lip. “Isn’t that just too beautiful for words?” He spat on the ground.
“If anybody ever expects to use me again in some tremendous scheme of his,” said Constant, “be is in for one big disappointment. He will be a lot better off trying to get a rise out of one of these statues.”
He spat again.
“As far as I’m concerned,” said Constant, “the Universe is a junk yard, with everything in it overpriced. I am through poking around in the junk heaps, looking for bargains. Every so-called bargain,” said Constant, “has been connected by fine wires to a dynamite bouquet.” He spat again.
“I resign,” said Constant.
“I withdraw,” said Constant.
“I quit,” said Constant.
Constant’s little family agreed without enthusiasm. Constant’s brave speech was stale stuff. He had delivered it many times during the seventeen-month voyage from Earth to Titan – and it was, after all, a routine philosophy for all Martian veterans.
Constant wasn’t really speaking to his family anyway. He was speaking loudly, so his voice would carry some distance into the forest of statuary and over the Winston Sea. He was making a policy statement for the benefit of Rumfoord or anybody else who might be lurking near by.
“We have taken part for the last time,” said Constant loudly, “in experiments and fights and festivals we don’t like or understand!”
“‘Understand – ’” came an echo from the wall of a palace on an island two-hundred yards offshore. The palace was, of course, Dun Roamin, Rumfoord’s Taj Mahal. Constant wasn’t surprised to see the palace out there. He had seen it when he disembarked from his space ship, had seen it shining out there like St. Augustine’s City of God.
“What happens next?” Constant asked the echo. “All the statues come to life?”
“‘Life!” said the echo.
“It’s an echo,” said Beatrice.
“I know it’s an echo,” said Constant.
“I didn’t know if you knew it was an echo or not,” said Beatrice She was distant and polite. She had been extremely decent to Constant, blaming him for nothing, expecting nothing from him. A less aristocratic woman might have put him through hell, blam. ing him for everything and demanding miracles.
There had been no love-making during the voyage. Neither Constant nor Beatrice had been interested. Martian veterans never were.
Inevitably, the long voyage had drawn Constant closer to his mate and child – closer than they had been on the gilded system of catwalks, ramps, ladders, pulpits, steps and stages in Newport. But the only love in the family unit was still the love between young Chrono and Beatrice. Other than the love between mother and son there was only politeness, glum compassion, and suppressed indignation at having been forced to be a family at all.
“Oh, my – ” said Constant, “life is funny when you stop to think of it.”
Young Chrono did not smile when his father said life was funny.
Young Chrono was the member of the family least in a position to think life was funny. Beatrice and Constant, after all, could laugh bitterly at the wild incidents they had survived. But young Chrono couldn’t laugh with them, because he himself was a wild incident.
Small wonder that young Chrono’s chief treasures were a goodluck piece and a switchblade knife.
Young Chrono now drew his switchblade knife, flicked open the blade nonchalantly. His eyes narrowed. He was preparing to kill, if killing should become necessary. He was looking in the direction of a gilded rowboat that had put out from the palace on the island.
It was being rowed by a tangerine-colored creature. The oarsman was, of course, Salo. He was bringing the boat in order to transport the family back to the palace. Salo was a bad oarsman, never having rowed before. He grasped the oars with his suction-cup feet.
He had one advantage over human oarsmen, in that be had an eye in the back of his head.
Young Chrono flashed light into Old Salo’s eye, flashed it with his bright knife blade.
Salo’s back eye blinked.
Flashing the light into the eye was not a piece of skylarking on Chrono’s part. It was a piece of jungle cunning, a piece of cunning calculated to make almost any sort of sighted creature uneasy. It was one of a thousand pieces of jungle cunning that young Chrono and his mother had learned in their year together in the Amazon Rain Forest.
Beatrice’s brown hand closed on a rock. “Worry him again,” she said softly to Chrono.
Young Chrono again flashed the light in Old Salo’s eye.
“His body looks like the only soft part,” said Beatrice, without moving her lips. “If you can’t get his body, try for an eye.”
Chrono nodded.
Constant was chilled, seeing what an efficient unit of self-defense his mate and son made together. Constant was not included in their plans. They had no need of him.
“What should I do?” whispered Constant.
“Sh!” said Beatrice sharply.
Salo beached his gilded craft. He made it fast with a clumsy landlubber’s knot to the wrist of a statue by the water. The statue was of a nude woman playing a slide trombone. It was entitled, enigmatically, Evelyn and Her Magic Violin.