Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut [93]
The pair had found an updraft.
Neither great bird flapped a wing.
No movement of so much as a pinfeather was inharmonious. Life was but a soaring dream.
"Graw, " said one Titanic bluebird sociably.
"Graw, " the other agreed.
The birds closed their wings simultaneously, fell from the heights like stones.
They seemed to plummet to certain death outside Rumfoord’s walls. But up they soared again, to begin another long and easy climb.
This time they climbed a sky that was streaked by the vapor trail of the space ship carrying Malachi Constant, Beatrice Rumfoord, and their son Chrono. The ship was about to land.
"Skip—?" said Salo.
"Do you have to call me that?" said Rumfoord.
"No," said Salo.
"Then don’t," said Rumfoord. "I’m not fond of the name—unless somebody I’ve grown up with happens to use it."
"I thought—as a friend of yours—" said Salo, "I might be entitled—"
"Shall we just drop this guise of friendship?" said Rumfoord curtly.
Salo closed his third eye. The skin of his torso tightened. "Guise?" he said.
"Your feet are making that noise again!" said Rumfoord.
"Skip!" cried Salo. He corrected this insufferable familiarity. "Winston — it’s like a nightmare, your talking to me this way. I thought we were friends."
"Let’s say we’ve managed to be of some use to each other, and let it go at that," said Rumfoord.
Salo’s head rocked gently in its gimbals. "I thought there’d been a little more to it than that," he said at last.
"Let’s say," said Rumfoord acidly, "that we discovered in each other a means to our separate ends."
"I—I was glad to help you—and I hope I really was a help to you," said Salo. He opened his eyes. He had to see Rumfoord’s reaction. Surely Rumfoord would become friendly again, for Salo really had helped him unselfishly.
"Didn’t I give you half my UWTB?" said Salo. "Didn’t I let you copy my ship for Mars? Didn’t I fly the first few recruiting missions? Didn’t I help you figure out how to control the Martians, so they wouldn’t make trouble? Didn’t I spend day after day helping you to design the new religion?"
"Yes," said Rumfoord. "But what have you done for me lately?"
"What?" said Salo.
"Never mind," said Rumfoord curtly. "It’s the tag-line on an old Earthling joke, and not a very funny one, under the circumstances."
"Oh," said Salo. He knew a lot of Earthling jokes, but he didn’t know that one.
"Your feet!" cried Rumfoord.
"I’m sorry!" cried Salo. "If I could weep like an Earthling, I would!" His grieving feet were out of his control. They went on making the sounds Rumfoord suddenly hated so. "I’m sorry for everything! All I know is, I’ve tried every way I know how to be a true friend, and I never asked for anything in return."
"You didn’t have to!" said Rumfoord. "You didn’t have to ask for a thing. All you had to do was sit back and wait for it to be dropped in your lap."
"What was it I wanted dropped in my lap?" said Salo incredulously.
"The replacement part for your space ship," said Rumfoord. "It’s almost here. It’s arriving, sire. Constant’s boy has it—calls it his good-luck piece—as though you didn’t know."
Rumfoord sat up, turned green, motioned for silence. "Excuse me," he said. "I’m going to be sick again. "
Winston Niles Rumfoord and his dog Kazak were sick again—more violently sick than before. It seemed to poor old Salo that this time they would surely sizzle to nothing or explode.
Kazak howled in a ball of Saint Elmo’s fire.
Rumfoord stood bolt upright, his eyes popping, a fiery column.
This attack passed, too.
"Excuse me," said Rumfoord with scathing decency. "You were saying—?"
"What?" said Salo bleakly.
"You were saying something—or about to say something," said Rumfoord. Only the sweat at his temples betrayed the fact that he had just been through something harrowing. He put a cigarette in a long, bone cigarette holder, lighted it. He thrust out his jaw. The cigarette holder pointed straight up. "We won