God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater_ Or, Pearls Before Swine - Kurt Vonnegut [64]
"If my clients lose this case, they will lose their modest house and average furnishings, their used car, their child's small sailboat, Fred Rosewater's insurance policies, their life savings, and thousands borrowed from a loyal friend. These brave, wholesome, average Americans have bet everything they have on the American system of justice, which will not, must not, cannot let them down."
On Eliot's side of the layout were two pictures of Sylvia. An old one showed her twisting with Peter Lawford in Paris. A brand new one showed her entering a Belgian nunnery, where the rule of silence was observed.
And Eliot might have reflected on this quaint ending and beginning for Sylvia, had he not heard his father address the old stranger affectionately as "Mr. Trout."
"Trout!" Eliot exclaimed. He was so startled that he momentarily lost his balance, grabbed the birdbath for support. The birdbath was so precariously balanced on its pedestal that it began to tip. Eliot dropped The Investigator, grabbed the birdbath with both hands to keep it from falling. And he saw himself in the water. Looking up at him was an emaciated, feverish, middle-aged boy.
"My God," he thought to himself, "F. Scott Fitzgerald, with one day to live."
He was careful not to cry out Trout's name again as he turned around. He understood that this might betray how sick he was, understood that he and Trout had evidently gotten to know each other during all the blackness. Eliot did not recognize him for the simple reason that all of Trout's bookjackets showed him with a beard. The stranger had no beard.
"By God, Eliot," said the Senator, "when you told me to bring Trout here, I told the Doctor you were still crazy. You said Trout could explain the meaning of everything you'd done in Rosewater, even if you couldn't. But I was willing to try anything, and calling him in is the smartest thing I ever did."
"Right," said Eliot, sitting gingerly on the fountain's rim again. He reached behind himself, retrieved The Investigator. He rolled it up, noticed the date on it for the first time. He made a calm calculation. Somehow, somewhere, he had lost one year.
"You say what Mr. Trout says you should say," ordered the Senator, "and you look the way you look now, and I don't see how we can lose tomorrow."
"Then I will certainly say what Mr. Trout says I should say, and not change one detail of my make-up. I would appreciate, though, a last run-through of what Mr. Trout says I should say."
"It's so simple," said Trout. His voice was rich and deep.
"You two have been over it so many times," said the Senator.
"Even so," said Eliot, "I'd like to hear it one last time. "
"Well—" and Trout rubbed his hands, watched the rubbing, "what you did in Rosewater County was far from insane. It was quite possibly the most important social experiment of our time, for it dealt on a very small scale with a problem whose queasy horrors will eventually be made world-wide by the sophistication of machines. The problem is this: How to love people who have no use?
"In time, almost all men and women will become worthless as producers of goods, food, services, and more machines, as sources of practical ideas in the areas of economics, engineering, and probably medicine, too. So—if we can't find reasons and methods for treasuring human beings because they are human beings, then we might as well, as has so often been suggested, rub them out."
"Americans have long been taught to hate all people who will not or cannot work, to hate even themselves for that. We can thank the vanished frontier for that piece of common-sense cruelty. The time is coming, if it isn't here now, when it will no longer be common sense. It will simply be