Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut [44]
Terror, grief, and desolation—
Hut, tup, thrup, fo!—
Come to every Earthling nation!
Hut, tup, thrup, fo!—
Earth eat fire! Earth wear chains!
Hut, tup, thrup, fo!
Break Earth’s spirit, spill Earth’s brains!
Hut, tup, thrup, fo!
Scream! Tup, thrup, fo!
Bleed! Tup, thrup, fo!
Die! Tup, thrup, fo!
Doooooooooommmmmmmmmm.
The factories of Phoebe were still going full blast. No one was idling in the streets to watch the chanting heroes pass. Windows winked as dazzling torches inside went off and on. A doorway vomited spattering, smoking yellow light as metal was poured. The screams of grinding wheels cut through the soldiers’ chant.
Three flying saucers, blue scout ships, skimmed low over the city, making sweet cooing sounds like singing tops. "Toodleoo," they seemed to sing, and they skimmed away in a flat course while the surface of Mars curved away beneath them. In two shakes of a lamb’s tail, they were twinkling in space eternal.
"Terror, grief and desolation—" chanted the troops.
But one soldier was moving his lips without making a sound. The soldier was Unk.
Unk was in the first file of the next to the last rank of his company.
Boaz was right behind him, his eyes making the back of Unk’s neck itch. Boaz and Unk, moreover, were made Siamese twins by the long tube of a six-inch siege mortar which they were carrying between them.
"Bleed! Tup, thrup, fo!" chanted the troops. "Die! Tup, thrup, fo! Doooooooooommmmmmmmmm."
"Unk, old buddy—" said Boaz.
"Yes, old buddy?" said Unk absently. He was holding, amid the confusion of his soldier’s harness, a live hand grenade. The pin had been pulled. To make it go off in three seconds, Unk had only to let go of it.
"I done fixed us up with a good assignment, old buddy," said Boaz. "Old Boaz—he takes care of his buddy, don’t he, buddy?"
"That’s right, buddy," said Unk.
Boaz had arranged things so that he and Unk would be on board the company mother ship for the invasion. The company mother ship, though it would, through a logistical fluke, be carrying the tube of the siege mortar, was essentially a noncombat ship. It was meant to carry only two men, the rest of the space being taken up by candy, sporting goods, recorded music, canned hamburg- ers, board games, goofballs, soft drinks, Bibles, note paper, barber kits, ironing boards, and other morale-builders.
"That’s a lucky start, ain’t it, old buddy—getting on the mother ship?"
"Lucky us, old buddy," said Unk. He had just chucked the grenade into a sewer as he passed.
There was a spout and roar from the throat of the sewer.
The soldiers hurled themselves to the street.
Boaz, as the real commander of the company, was the first to raise his head. He saw the smoke coming from the sewer, supposed that it was sewer gas that had exploded.
Boaz slipped his hand into his pocket, pressed a button, fed to his company the signal that would make them stand up again.
As they stood, Boaz stood, too. "God damn, buddy," he said, "I guess we done had a baptism of fire."
He picked up his end of the siege mortar’s tube.
There was nobody to pick up the other end.
Unk had gone in search of his wife and son and his best friend.
Unk had gone over the hill on flat, flat, flat, flat Mars.
The son that Unk was looking for was named Chrono.
Chrono was, by Earthling reckoning, eight years old.
He was named after the month in which he had been born. The Martian year was divided into twenty-one months, twelve with thirty days, and nine with thirty-one. These months were named January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December, Winston, Niles, Rumfoord, Kazak, Newport, Chrono, Synclastic, Infundibulum, and Salo.
Mnemonically:
Thirty days have Salo, Niles, June, and September, Winston, Chrono, Kazak, and November, April, Rumfoord, Newport, and Infundibulum. All the rest, baby mine, have thirty-one.
The month of Salo was named after a creature Winston Niles Rumfoord knew on Titan. Titan, of course, is an extremely pleasant moon