Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut [35]
So Rosewater told him. It was The Gospel from Outer Space, by Kilgore Trout. It was about a visitor from outer space, shaped very much like a Tralfamadorian, by the way. The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low.
But the Gospels actually taught this:
Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn’t well connected. So it goes.
The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn’t look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out loud again:
Oh, boy—they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time!
And that thought had a brother: “There are right people to lynch.” Who? People not well connected. So it goes.
The visitor from outer space made a gift to Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels.
So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn’t possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was.
And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections!
Billy’s fiancée had finished her Three Musketeers Candy Bar. Now she was eating a Milky Why.
“Forget books,” said Rosewater, throwing that particular book under his bed. “The hell with ’em.”
“That sounded like an interesting one,” said Valencia.
“Jesus—if Kilgore Trout could only write!” Rosewater exclaimed. He had a point: Kilgore Trout’s unpopularity was deserved. His prose was frightful. Only his ideas were good.
“I don’t think Trout has ever been out of the country,” Rosewater went on. “My God—he writes about Earthlings all the time, and they’re all Americans. Practically nobody on Earth is an American.”
“Where does he live?” Valencia asked.
“Nobody knows,” Rosewater replied. “I’m the only person who ever heard of him, as far as I can tell. No two books have the same publisher, and every time I write him in care of a publisher, the letter comes back because the publisher has failed.”
He changed the subject now, congratulated Valencia on her engagement ring.
“Thank you,” she said, and held it out so Rosewater could get a close look. “Billy got that diamond in the war.”
“That’s the attractive thing about war,” said Rosewater. “Absolutely everybody gets a little something.”
With regard to the whereabouts of Kilgore Trout: he actually lived in Ilium, Billy’s hometown, friendless and despised. Billy would meet him by and by.
“Billy—” said Valencia Merble.
“Hm?”
“You want to talk about our silver pattern?”
“Sure.”
“I’ve got it narrowed down pretty much to either Royal Danish or Rambler Rose.”
“Rambler Rose,” said Billy.
“It isn’t something we should rush into,” she said. “I mean—whatever we decide on, that’s what we’re going to have to live with the rest of our lives.”
Billy studied the pictures. “Royal Danish,” he said at last.
“Colonial Moonlight is nice, too.”
“Yes, it is,” said Billy Pilgrim.
And Billy traveled in time to the zoo on Tralfamadore. He was forty-four years old, on display under a geodesic dome.