Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut [4]
He was worth three billion dollars, much of it inherited.
His name meant faithful messenger.
He was a speculator, mostly in corporate securities.
In the depressions that always followed his taking of alcohol, narcotics, and women, Constant pined for just one thing—a single message that was sufficiently dignified and important to merit his carrying it humbly between two points.
The motto under the coat of arms that Constant had designed for himself said simply, The Messenger Awaits.
What Constant had in mind, presumably, was a first-class message from God to someone equally distinguished.
Constant looked at his solar watch again. He had two minutes in which to climb down and reach the house—two minutes before Kazak would materialize and look for strangers to bite. Constant laughed to himself, thinking how delighted Mrs. Rumfoord would be were the vulgar, parvenu Mr. Constant of Hollywood to spend his entire visit treed on the fountain by a thoroughbred dog. Mrs. Rumfoord might even have the fountain turned on.
It was possible that she was watching Constant. The mansion was a minute’s walk from the fountain—set off from the jungle by a mowed swath three times the width of the path.
The Rumfoord mansion was marble, an extended reproduction of the banqueting hall of Whitehall Palace in London. The mansion, like most of the really grand ones in Newport, was a collateral relative of post offices and Federal court buildings throughout the land.
The Rumfoord mansion was an hilariously impressive expression of the concept: People of substance. It was surely one of the greatest essays on density since the Great Pyramid of Khufu. In a way it was a better essay on permanence than the Great Pyramid, since the Great Pyramid tapered to nothingness as it approached heaven. Nothing about the Rumfoord mansion diminished as it approached heaven. Turned upside down, it would have looked exactly the same.
The density and permanence of the mansion were, of course, at ironic variance with the fact that the quondam master of the house, except for one hour in every fifty-nine days, was no more substantial than a moon-beam.
Constant climbed down from the fountain, stepping onto the rims of bowls of ever-increasing sizes. When he got to the bottom, he was filled with a strong wish to see the fountain go. He thought of the crowd outside, thought of how they, too, would enjoy seeing the fountain go. They would be enthralled—watching the teenyweeny bowl at the tippy-tippy top brimming over into the next little bowl ... and the next little bowl’s brimming over into the next little bowl ... and the next little bowl’s brimming over into the next bowl ... and on and on and on, a rhapsody of brimming, each bowl singing its own merry water song. And yawning under all those bowls was the upturned mouth of the biggest bowl of them all ... a regular Beelzebub of a bowl, bone dry and insatiable ... waiting, waiting, waiting for that first sweet drop.
Constant was rapt, imagining that the fountain was running. The fountain was very much like an hallucination—and hallucinations, usually drug-induced, were almost all that could surprise and entertain Constant any more.
Time passed quickly. Constant did not move.
Somewhere on the estate a mastiff bayed. The baying sounded like the blows of a maul on a great bronze gong.
Constant awoke from his contemplation of the fountain. The baying could only be that of Kazak, the hound of space. Kazak had materialized. Kazak smelled the blood of a parvenu.
Constant sprinted the remainder of the distance to the house.
An ancient butler in knee breeches opened the door for Malachi Constant of Hollywood. The butler was weeping for joy. He was pointing into a room that Constant could not see. The butler was trying to describe the thing that made him so happy and full of tears. He could not speak. His jaw was palsied, and all he could say to Constant