Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut [41]
Even the little sample twinge they had given him in the hospital had been excruciating. He gulped air now, like a fish dying on a riverbank, remembering the big pain Boaz had slammed him with in the barrack. He would rather die than risk another pain like that.
His eyes watered.
If he had tried to speak, he would have sobbed.
Poor Unk didn’t want any trouble from anybody ever again. Whatever information he gained from the letter—information gained by another man’s heroism—he would use to avoid any more pain.
Unk wondered if there were people who could stand more pain than others. He supposed this was the case. He supposed tearfully that he was especially sensitive in this regard. Without wishing the writer any harm, Unk wished the writer could feel, just once, the pains as Unk felt them.
Then maybe the writer would address his letters to someone else.
Unk had no way of judging the quality of the information contained in the letter. He accepted it all hungrily, uncritically. And, in accepting it, Unk gained an understanding of life that was identical with the writer’s understanding of life. Unk wolfed down a philosophy.
And mixed in with the philosophy were gossip, history, astronomy, biology, theology, geography, psychology, medicine—and even a short story.
Some random examples:
Gossip: (22.) General Borders is drunk all the time. He is so drunk he can’t even tie his shoelaces so they will stay tied. Officers are as mixed up and unhappy as anybody. You used to be one, Unk, with a battalion all your own.
History: (26.) Everybody on Mars came from Earth. They thought they would be better off on Mars. Nobody can remember what was so bad about Earth.
Astronomy: (11.) Everything in the whole sky revolves around Mars once a day.
Biology: (58.) New people come out of women when men and women sleep together. New people hardly ever come out of women on Mars because the men and the women sleep in different places.
Theology: (15.) Somebody made everything for some reason.
Geography: (16.) Mars is round. The only city on it is called Phoebe. Nobody knows why it is called Phoebe.
Psychology: (103.) Unk, the big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart.
Medicine: (73.) When they clean out a man’s memory on this place called Mars, they don’t really clean it completely. They just clean out the middle of it, sort of. They always leave a lot of stuff in the corners. There is a story around about how they tried cleaning out a few memories completely. The poor people who had that done to them couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk, couldn’t do anything. The only thing anybody could think of to do with them was to housebreak them, teach them a basic vocabulary of a thousand words, and give them jobs in military or industrial public relations.
The short story: (89.) Unk, your best friend is Stony Stevenson. Stony is a big, happy, strong man, and he drinks a quart of whisky a day. Stony doesn’t have an antenna in his head, and he can remember everything that ever happened to him. He pretends to be an intelligence scout, but he is one of the real commanders. He radio-controls a company of assault infantrymen who are going to attack a place on Earth called England. Stony is from England. Stony likes the Army of Mars because there is so much to laugh about. Stony laughs all the time. He heard what an eightball you were, Unk, so he came over to your barrack to have a look at you. He pretended he was a friend of yours, so he could hear you talk. After a while, you got to trust him, Unk, and you told him some of your secret theories about what life on Mars was all about. Stony tried to laugh, but then he realized that you had turned up some things that he didn’t know anything about. He couldn’t get over it, because he was supposed to know everything, and you weren’t supposed to know anything. And then you told Stony a lot of the big questions you wanted