Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut [18]
It is worth stopping the narrative at this point to say that this cock-and-bull story told to Beatrice is one of the few known instances of Winston Niles Rumfoord’s having told a lie.
This much of Rumfoord’s story was true: The Whale was going to be renamed and fired on Tuesday, and the President of the United States was announcing a New Age of Space.
Some of the President’s comments at the time bear repeating—and it should be remembered that the President gave the word "progress" a special flavor by pronouncing it prog-erse. He also flavored the words "chair" and "warehouse," pronouncing them cheer and wirehouse.
"Now, some people are going around saying the American economy is old and sick," said the President, "and I frankly can’t understand how they can say such a thing, because there is now more opportunity for progerse on all fronts than at any time in human history.
"And there is one frontier we can make particular progerse on and that is the great frontier of space. We have been turned back by space once, but it isn’t the American way to take no for an answer where progerse is concerned.
"Now, people of faint heart come to see me every day at the White House," said the President, "and they weep and wail and say, ’Oh, Mr. President, the wirehouses are all full of automobiles and airplanes and kitchen appliances and various other products,’ and they say, ’Oh, Mr. President, there is nothing more that anybody wants the factories to make because everybody already has two, three, and four of everything.’
"One man in particular, I remember, was a cheer manufacturer, and he had way overproduced, and all he could think about was all those cheers in the wirehouse. And I said to him, ’In the next twenty years, the population of the world is going to double, and all those billions of new people are going to need things to sit down on, so you just hang on to those cheers. Meanwhile, why don’t you forget about those cheers in the wirehouse and think about progerse in space?’
"I said to him and I say to you and I say to everybody, ’Space can absorb the productivity of a trillion planets the size of earth. We could build and fire rockets forever, and never fill up space and never learn all there is to know about it.’
"Now, these same people who like to weep and wail so much say, ’Oh, but Mr. President, what about the chrono-synclastic infundibula and what about this and what about that?’ And I say to them, ’If people listened to people like you, there wouldn’t ever be any progerse. There wouldn’t be the telephone or anything. And besides,’ I tell them and I tell you and I tell everybody, ’we don’t have to put people in the rocket ships. We will use the lower animals only.’ "
There was more to the speech.
Malachi Constant of Hollywood, California, came out of the rhinestone phone booth cold sober. His eyes felt like cinders. His mouth tasted like horseblanket purée.
He was positive that he had never seen the beautiful blond woman before.
He asked her one of the standard questions for times of violent change. "Where is everybody?" he said.
"You threw ’em all out," said the woman.
"I did?" said Constant.
"Yah," said the woman. "You mean you drew a blank?"
Constant nodded weakly. During the fifty-six-day party he had reached a point where he could draw almost nothing else. His aim had been to make himself unworthy of any destiny—incapable of any mission—far too ill to travel. He had succeeded to a shocking degree.
"Oh, it was quite a show," said the woman. "You were having as good a time as anybody, helping