Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut [58]
The ship carrying Bee and Chrono and twenty-two other women was not fired upon when it landed. It did not land in a civilized area.
It crashed into the Amazon Rain Forest in Brazil.
Only Bee and Chrono survived.
Chrono emerged, kissed his good-luck piece.
Unk and Boaz weren’t fired upon either.
A very peculiar thing happened to them after they pressed the on button and took off from Mars. They expected to overtake their company, but they never did.
They never even saw another space ship.
The explanation was simple, though there was no one around to make it: Unk and Boaz weren’t supposed to go to Earth—not right away.
Rumfoord had had their automatic pilot-navigator set so that the ship would carry Unk and Boaz to the planet Mercury first—and then from Mercury to Earth.
Rumfoord didn’t want Unk killed in the war.
Rumfoord wanted Unk to stay in some safe place for about two years.
And then Rumfoord wanted Unk to appear on Earth, as though by a miracle.
Rumfoord was preserving Unk for a major part in a pageant Rumfoord wanted to stage for his new religion.
Unk and Boaz were very lonely and mystified out there in space. There wasn’t much to see or do.
"God damn, Unk—" said Boaz. "I wonder where the gang got to."
Most of the gang was hanging, at that moment, from lamp posts in the business district of Boca Raton.
Unk’s and Boaz’s automatic pilot-navigator, controlling the cabin lights, among other things, created an artificial cycle of Earthling nights and days, nights and days, nights and days.
The only things to read on board were two comic books left behind by the shipfitters. They were Tweety and Sylvester, which was about a canary that drove a cat crazy, and The Miserable Ones, which was about a man who stole some gold candlesticks from a priest who had been nice to him.
"What he take those candlesticks for, Unk?" said Boaz.
"Damn if I know," said Unk. "Damn if I care."
The pilot-navigator had just turned out the cabin lights, had just decreed that it be night inside.
"You don’t give a damn for nothing, do you?" said Boaz in the dark.
"That’s right," said Unk. "I don’t even give a damn for that thing you’ve got in your pocket."
"What I got in my pocket?" said Boaz.
"A thing to hurt people with," said Unk. "A thing to make people do whatever you want ’em to do."
Unk heard Boaz grunt, then groan softly, there in the dark. And he knew that Boaz had just pressed a button on the thing in his pocket, a button that was supposed to knock Unk cold.
Unk didn’t make a sound.
"Unk—?" said Boaz.
"Yeah?" said Unk.
"You there, buddy?" said Boaz, amazed.
"Where would I go?" said Unk. "You think you vaporized me?"
"You O.K., buddy?" said Boaz.
"Why wouldn’t I be, buddy?" said Unk. "Last night, while you were asleep, old buddy, I took that fool thing out of your pocket, old buddy, and I opened it up, old buddy, and I tore the insides out of it, old buddy, and I stuffed it with toilet paper. And now I’m sitting on my bunk, old buddy, and I’ve got my rifle loaded, old buddy, and it’s aimed in your direction, old buddy, and just what the hell do you think you’re going to do about anything?"
Rumfoord materialized on Earth, in Newport, twice during the war between Mars and Earth—once just after the war started, and again on the day it ended. He and his dog had, at that time, no particular religious significance. They were merely tourist attractions.
The Rumfoord estate had been leased by the mortgage holders to a showman named Marlin T. Lapp. Lapp sold tickets to materializations for a dollar apiece.
Save for the appearance and then the disappearance of Rumfoord and his dog, it wasn’t much of a show. Rumfoord wouldn’t say a word to anyone but Moncrief, the butler, and he whispered to him. He would slouch broodingly in a wing chair in the room under the staircase, in Skip’s Museum. And he would cover his eyes with one hand and twine the fingers of his other hand around Kazak’s choke chain.
Rumfoord and Kazak were billed as ghosts.
There was a scaffolding outside