Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut [57]
Most important of all—Salo had in his possession a quantity of the most powerful conceivable source of energy, UWTB, or the Universal Will to Become. Salo generously donated half of his supply of UWTB to the suicide of Mars.
Earl Moncrief, the butler, built his financial, procurement, and secret service organizations with the brute power of cash and a profound understanding of clever, malicious, discontended people who lived behind servile façades.
It was such people who took the Martian money and the Martian orders gladly. They asked no questions. They were grateful for the opportunity to work like termites on the sills of the established order.
They came from all walks of life.
The modified plans of Salo’s space ship were broken down into plans for components. The plans for the components were taken by Moncrief agents to manufacturers all over the world.
The manufacturers had no idea what the components were for. They knew only that the profits on making them were fine.
The first one hundred Martian ships were assembled by Moncrief’s agents in secret depots right on Earth.
These ships were charged with UWTB given to Moncrief by Rumfoord at Newport. They were put into service at once, shuttling the first machines and the first recruits to the iron plain on Mars where the city of Phoebe would rise.
When Phoebe did rise, every wheel was turned by Salo’s UWTB.
It was Rumfoord’s intention that Mars should lose the war—that Mars should lose it foolishly and horribly. As a seer of the future, Rumfoord knew for certain that this would be the case—and he was content.
He wished to change the World for the better by means of the great and unforgettable suicide of Mars.
As he says in his Pocket History of Mars: "Any man who would change the World in a significant way must have showmanship, a genial willingness to shed other people’s blood, and a plausible new religion to introduce during the brief period of repentance and horror that usually follows bloodshed.
"Every failure of Earthling leadership has been traceable to a lack on the part of the leader," says Rumfoord, "of at least one of these three things.
"Enough of these fizzles of leadership, in which millions die for nothing or less!" says Rumfoord. "Let us have, for a change, a magnificently-led few who die for a great deal."
Rumfoord had that magnificently-led few on Mars—and he was their leader.
He had showmanship.
He was genially willing to shed the blood of others.
He had a plausible new religion to introduce at the war’s end.
And he had methods for prolonging the period of repentance and horror that would follow the war. These methods were variations on one theme: That Earth’s glorious victory over Mars had been a tawdry butchery of virtually unarmed saints, saints who had waged feeble war on Earth in order to weld the peoples of that planet into a monolithic Brotherhood of Man.
The woman called Bee and her son, Chrono, were in the very last wave of Martian ships to approach Earth. Theirs was a wavelet, really, composed, as it was, of only forty-six ships.
The rest of the fleet had already gone down to destruction.
This last incoming wave, or wavelet, was detected by Earth. But thermo-nuclear devices were not fired at it. There were no more thermo-nuclear devices to fire.
They had all been used up.
And the wavelet came in unscathed. It was scattered over the face of the Earth.
The few people who were lucky enough to have Martians to shoot at in this last wave fired away happily— fired away happily until they discovered that their targets were unarmed women and children.
The glorious war was over.
Shame, as