Salo was too jangled by sorrow to care for his own safety – to understand, even, that he might be frightening to someone. He stood for a moment on a block of seasoned Titanic peat near his landing. His grieving feet sucked at the damp stone. He pried loose his feet with a tremendous effort.
On he came, the flashes from Chrono’s knife dazzling him.
“Please – ” he said.
A rock flew out of the knife’s dazzle.
Salo ducked.
A hand siezed his bony throat, threw him down.
Young Chrono now stood astride Old Salo, his knife point pricking Salo’s chest. Beatrice knelt by Salo’s head, a rock poised to smash his head to bits.
“Go on – kill me,” said Salo raspingly. “You’d be doing me a favor. I wish I were dead. I wish to God I’d never been assembled and started up in the first place. Kill me, put me out of my misery, and then go see him. He’s asking for you.”
“Who is?” said Beatrice.
“Your poor husband – my former friend, Winston Niles Rumfoord,” said Salo.
“Where is he?” said Beatrice.
“In that palace on the island,” said Salo. “He’s dying – all alone, except for his faithful dog. He’s asking for you – ” said Salo, “asking for all of you. And he says he never wants to lay his eyes on me again.”
Malachi Constant watched the lead-colored lips kiss thin air soundlessly. The tongue behind the lips clicked infinitesimally. The lips suddenly drew back, baring the perfect teeth of Winston Niles Rumfoord.
Constant was himself showing his teeth, preparing to gnash them appropriately at the sight of this man who had done him so much harm. He did not gnash them. For one thing, no one was looking – no one would see him do it and understand. For another thing, Constant found himself destitute of hate.
His preparations for gnashing his teeth decayed into a yokel gape – the gape of a yokel in the presence of a spectacularly mortal disease.
Winston Niles Rumfoord was lying, fully materialized, on his back on his lavender contour chair by the pool. His eyes were directed at the sky, unblinkingly and seemingly sightless. One fine hand dangled over the side of the chair, its limp fingers laced in the choke chain of Kazak, the hound of space.
The chain was empty.
An explosion on the Sun had separated man and dog. A Universe schemed in mercy would have kept man and dog together.
The Universe inhabited by Winston Niles Rumfoord and his dog was not schemed in mercy. Kazak had been sent ahead of his master on the great mission to nowhere and nothing.
Kazak had left howling in a puff of ozone and sick light, in a hum like swarming bees.
Rumfoord let the empty choke chain slip from his fingers. The chain expressed deadness, made a formless sound and a formless heap, was a soulless slave of gravity, born with a broken spine.
Rumfoord’s lead-colored lips moved. “Hello, Beatrice – wife,” he said sepulchrally.
“Hello, Space Wanderer,” he said. He made his voice affectionate this time. “Gallant of you to come, Space Wanderer – to take one more chance with me.
“Hello, illustrious young bearer of the illustrious name of Chrono,” said Rumfoord. “Hail, oh German batball star – hail, him of the goodluck piece.”
The three to whom he spoke stood just inside the wall. The pool was between them and Rumfoord.
Old Salo, who had not been granted his wish to die, grieved in the stern of the gilded rowboat that was beached outside the wail.
“I am not dying,” said Rumfoord. “I am merely taking my leave of the Solar System. And I am not even doing that. In the grand, in the timeless, in the chrono-synclastic infundibulated way of looking at things, I shall always be here. I shall always be wherever I’ve been.
“I’m honeymooning with you still, Beatrice,” he said. “I’m talking to you still in a little room under the stairway in Newport, Mr. Constant. Yes – and playing peek-a-boo in the caves of Mercury with you and Boaz. And Chrono – ” he said, “I’m watching you still as you play German batball so well on the iron playground of Mars.”
He groaned. It was a tiny groan – and so sad.
The sweet, mild air of Titan carried the tiny groan away.
“Whatever we’ve said, friends, we’re saying still – such as it was, such as it is, such as it will be,” said Rumfoord.
The tiny groan came again.
Rumfoord watched it leave as though it were a smoke ring.
“There is something you should know about life in the Solar System,” he said. “Being chrono-synclastic infundibulated, I’ve known about it all along. It is, none the less, such a sickening thing that I’ve thought about it as little as possible.
“The sickening thing is this:
“Everything that every Earthling has ever done has been warped by creatures on a planet one-hundred-and-fifty thousand light years away. The name of the planet is Tralfamadore.
“How the Tralfamadorians controlled us, I don’t know. But I know to what end they controlled us. They controlled us in such a way as to make us deliver a replacement part to a Tralfamadorian messenger who was grounded right here on Titan.”
Rumfoord pointed a finger at young Chrono. “You, young man – ” he said. “You have it in your pocket. In your pocket is the culmination of all Earthling history. In your pocket is the mysterious something that every Earthling was trying so desperately, so earnestly, so gropingly, so exhaustingly to produce and deliver.”
A fizzing twig of electricity grew from the tip of Rumfoord’s accusing finger.
“The thing you call your goodluck piece,” said Rumfoord, “is the replacement part for which the Tralfamadorian messenger has been waiting so long!
“The messenger,” said Rumfoord, “is the tangerine-colored creature who now cowers outside the walls. His name is Salo. I had hoped that the messenger would’ give mankind a glimpse of the message he was carrying, since mankind was giving him such a nice boost on his way. Unfortunately, he is under orders to show the message to no one. He is a machine, and, as a machine, he has no choice but to regard orders as orders.
“I asked him politely to show me the message,” said Rumfoord. “He desperately refused.”
The fizzing twig of electricity on Rumfoord’s finger grew, forming a spiral around Rumfoord. Rumfoord considered the spiral with sad contempt. “I think perhaps this is it,” he said of the spiral.
It was indeed. The spiral telescoped slightly, making a curtsey. And then it began to revolve around Rumfoord, spinning a continuous cocoon of green light.
It barely whispered as it spun.
“All I can say,” said Rumfoord from the cocoon, “is that I have tried my best to do good for my native Earth while serving the irresistible wishes of Tralfamadore.
“Perhaps, now that the part has been delivered to the Tralfamadorian messenger, Tralfamadore will leave the Solar System alone. Perhaps Earthlings will now be free to develop and follow their own inclinations, as they have not been free to do for thousands of years.” He sneezed. “The wonder is that Earthlings have been able to make as much sense as they have,” he said.
The green cocoon left the ground, hovered over the dome. “Remember me as a gentleman of Newport, Earth, and the Solar System,” said Rumfoord. He sounded serene again, at peace with himself, and at least equal to any creature that he might encounter anywhere.
“In a punctual way of speaking,” came Rumfoord’s glottal tenor from the cocoon, “good-by.”
The cocoon and Rumfoord disappeared with a pft.
Rumfoord and his dog were never seen again.
Old Salo came bounding into the courtyard just as Rumfoord and his cocoon disappeared.
The little Tralfamadorian was wild. He had torn the message from its band around his throat with a suction-cup foot. One foot was still a suction cup, and in it was the message.
He looked up at the place where the cocoon had hovered. “Skip!” he cried into the sky. “Skip! The message! I’ll tell you the message! The message! Skiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip!”
His head did a somersault in its gimbals. “Gone,” he said emptily. He whispered, “Gone.
“Machine?” said Salo. He was speaking haltingly, as much to himself as to Constant, Beatrice and Chrono. “A machine I am, and so are my people,” he said. “I was designed and manufactured, and no expense, no skill, was spared in making me dependable, efficient, predictable, and durable. I was the best machine my people could make.
“How good a machine have I proved to be?” asked Salo.
“Dependable?” he said. “I was depended upon to keep my message sealed until I reached my destination, and now I’ve torn it open.
“Efficient?” he said. “Having lost my best friend in the Universe, it now costs me more energy to step over a dead leaf than it once cost me to bound over Mount Rumfoord.