Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut [45]
Salo, Rumfoord’s crony on Titan, was a messenger from another galaxy who was forced down on Titan by the failure of a part in his space ship’s power plant. He was waiting for a replacement part.
He had been waiting patiently for two hundred thousand years.
His ship was powered, and the Martian war effort was powered, by a phenomenon known as UWTB, or the Universal Will to Become. UWTB is what makes universes out of nothingness—that makes nothingness insist on becoming somethingness.
Many Earthlings are glad that Earth does not have UWTB.
As the popular doggerel has it:
Willy found some Universal Will to Become, Mixed it with his bubble gum. Cosmic piddling seldom pays: Poor Willy’s six new Milky Ways.
Unk’s son Chrono was, at eight years old, a wonderful player of a game called German batball. German batball was all that he cared about. German batball was the major sport on Mars—in the grammar school, in the Army, and in the factory workers’ recreation areas.
Since there were only fifty-two children on Mars, Mars got along with just one grammar school, right in the middle of Phoebe. None of the fifty-two children there had been conceived on Mars. All had been conceived either on Earth or, as in Chrono’s case, on a space ship bringing new recruits to Mars.
The children in the school studied very little, since the society of Mars had no particular use for them. They spent most of their time playing German batball.
The game of German batball is played with a flabby ball the size of a big honeydew melon. The ball is no more lively than a ten-gallon hat filled with rain water. The game is something like baseball, with a batter striking the ball into a field of opposing players and running around bases; and with the fielders attempting to catch the ball and frustrate the runner. There are, however, only three bases in German batball-first, second, and home. And the batter is not pitched to. He places the ball on one fist and strikes the ball with his other first. And if a fielder succeeds in striking the runner with the ball when the runner is between bases, the runner is deemed out, and must leave the playing field at once.
The person responsible for the heavy emphasis on German batball on Mars was, of course, Winston Niles Rumfoord, who was responsible for everything on Mars.
Howard W. Sams proves in his Winston Niles Rumfoord, Benjamin Franklin, and Leonardo da Vinci that German batball was the only team sport with which Rumfoord was at all familiar as a child. Sams shows that Rumfoord was taught the game, when a child, by his governess, a Miss Joyce MacKenzie.
Back in Rumfoord’s childhood in Newport, a team composed of Rumfoord, Miss MacKenzie, and Earl Moncrief the butler, used to play German batball regularly against a team composed of Watanabe Wataru the Japanese gardener, Beverly June Wataru the gardener’s daughter, and Edward Seward Darlington the half-wit stable boy. Rumfoord’s team invariably won.
Unk, the only deserter in the history of the Army of Mars, now crouched panting behind a turquoise boulder and watched the school children playing German batball on the iron playground. Behind the boulder with Unk was a bicycle he had stolen from a gas-mask factory’s bicycle rack. Unk did not know which child was his son, which child was Chrono.
Unk’s plans were nebulous. His dream was to gather together his wife, his son, and his best friend, to steal a space ship, and to fly away to some place where they could all live happily ever after.
"Hey, Chrono!" cried a child on the playground. "You’re up to bat!"
Unk peered around the boulder at home plate. The child who came up to bat there would be Chrono, would be his son.
Chrono, Unk’s son, came up to bat.
He was small for his age, but surprisingly manly through the shoulders. The child’s hair was jet black, bristly—and the’ black bristles grew in a violently counter-clockwise swirl.
The child was left-handed. The ball rested on his right fist, and he prepared to hit it with his left.
His eyes were deep-set, like his father’s eyes. And his