Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut [87]
Beatrice and Chrono walked quickly over the catwalks and ramps to the ladder, climbed the ladder. They brushed past Malachi Constant in the doorway of the space ship without any sort of greeting. They disappeared inside.
Constant followed them into the space ship, and joined them as they considered the accommodations.
The condition of the accommodations was a surprise—and would have been a surprise to the custodians of the estate in particular. The space ship, seemingly inviolable at the top of a shaft in sacred precincts patrolled by watchmen, had plainly been the scene of one or perhaps several wild parties.
The bunks were all unmade. The bedding was rumpled, twisted, and wadded. The sheets were stained with lipstick and shoe polish.
Fried clams crunched greasily underfoot.
Two quart bottles of Mountain Moonlight, one pint of Southern Comfort, and a dozen cans of Narragansett Lager Beer, all empty, were scattered through the ship.
Two names were written in lipstick on the white wall by the door: Bud and Sylvia. And from a flange on the central shaft in the cabin hung a black brassière.
Beatrice gathered up the bottles and beer cans. She dropped them out the door. She took the brassière down, and fluttered it out the doorway, awaiting a favorable wind.
Malachi Constant, sighing and shaking his head and mourning Stony Stevenson, used his feet for pushbrooms. He scuffed the fried clams toward the door.
Young Chrono sat on a bunk, rubbing his good-luck piece. "Let’s go, Mom," he said tautly. "For crying out loud, let’s go."
Beatrice let go of the brassière. A gust caught it, carried it over the crowd, hung it in a tree next to the tree in which which Rumfoord sat.
"Good-by, all you clean and wise and lovely people," said Beatrice.
12
THE GENTLEMAN FROM TRALFAMADORE
"In a punctual way of speaking, good-by."
—WINSTON NILES RUMFOORD
SATURN HAS NINE MOONS, the greatest of which is Titan.
Titan is only slightly smaller than Mars.
Titan is the only moon in the Solar System that has an atmosphere. There is plenty of oxygen to breathe.
The atmosphere of Titan is like the atmosphere outside the back door of an Earthling bakery on a spring morning.
Titan has a natural chemical furnace at its core that maintains a uniform air temperature of sixty-seven degrees Fahrenheit.
There are three seas on Titan, each the size of Earthling Lake Michigan. The waters of all three are fresh and emerald clear. The names of the three are the Winston Sea, the Niles Sea, and the Rumfoord Sea.
There is a cluster of ninety-three ponds and lakes, incipiently a fourth sea. The cluster is known as the Kazak Pools.
Connecting the Winston Sea, the Niles Sea, the Rumfoord Sea and the Kazak Pools are three great rivers. These rivers, with their tributaries, are moody—variously roaring, listless, and torn. Their moods are determined by the wildly fluctuating tugs of eight fellow moons, and by the prodigious influence of Saturn, which has ninety-five times the mass of Earth. The three rivers are known as the Winston River, the Niles River, and the Rumfoord River.
There are woods and meadows and mountains.
The tallest mountain is Mount Rumfoord, which is nine thousand, five hundred and seventy-one feet high.
Titan affords an incomparable view of the most appallingly beautiful things in the Solar System, the rings of Saturn. These dazzling bands are forty thousand miles across and scarcely thicker than a razor blade.
On Titan the rings are called Rumfoord’s Rainbow.
Saturn describes a circle around the Sun.
It does it once every twenty-nine and a half Earthling years.
Titan describes a circle around Saturn.
Titan describes, as a consequence, a spiral around the Sun.
Winston Niles Rumfoord and his dog Kazak were wave phenomena—pulsing in distorted spirals, with their origins in the Sun and their terminals in Betelgeuse. Whenever a heavenly body intercepted their spirals, Rumfoord and his dog materialized