The Sirens of Titan

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr

  The first is, “Here I am, here I am, here I am.”

  The second is, “So glad you are, so glad you are, so glad you are.”

  There is one last characteristic of the creatures that has not been explained on utilitarian grounds: the creatures seem to like to arrange themselves in striking patterns on the phosphorescent walls.

  Though blind and indifferent to anyone’s watching, they often arrange themselves so as to present a regular and dazzling pattern of jonquil-yellow and vivid aquamarine diamonds. The yellow comes from the bare cave walls. The aquamarine is the light of the walls filtered through the bodies of the creatures.

  Because of their love for music and their willingness to deploy themselves in the service of beauty, the creatures are given a lovely name by Earthlings.

  They are called harmoniums.

  Unk and Boaz came in for a landing on the dark side of Mercury, seventy-nine Earthling days out of Mars. They did not know that the planet on which they were landing was Mercury.

  They thought the Sun was terrifyingly large—

  But that didn’t keep them from thinking that they were landing on Earth.

  They blacked out during the period of sharp deceleration. Now they were regaining consciousness—were being treated to a cruel and lovely illusion.

  It seemed to Unk and Boaz that their ship was settling slowly among skyscrapers over which searchlights played.

  “They aren’t shooting,” said Boaz. “Either the war’s over, or it ain’t begun.”

  The merry beams of light they saw were not from searchlights. The beams came from tall crystals on the borderline between the light and dark hemispheres of Mercury. Those crystals were catching beams from the sun, were bending them prismatically, playing them over the dark side. Other crystals on the dark side caught the beams and passed them on.

  It was easy to believe that the searchlights were playing over a sophisticated civilization indeed. It was easy to mistake the dense forest of giant blue-white crystals for skyscrapers, stupendous and beautiful.

  Unk, standing at a porthole, wept quietly, He was weeping for love, for family, for friendship, for truth, for civilization. The things he wept for were all abstractions, since his memory could furnish few faces or artifacts with which his imagination might fashion a passion play. Names rattled in his head like dry bones. Stony Stevenson, a friend… Bee, a wife… Chrono, a son… Unk, a father…

  The name Malachi Constant came to him, and he didn’t know what to do with it.

  Unk lapsed into a blank reverie, a blank respect for the splendid people and the splendid lives that had produced the majestic buildings that the searchlights swept. Here, surely, faceless families and faceless friends and nameless hopes could flourish like—

  An apt image for flourishing eluded Unk.

  He imagined a remarkable fountain, a cone described by descending bowls of increasing diameters. It wouldn’t do. The fountain was bone dry, filled with the ruins of birds’ nests. Unk’s fingertips tingled, as though abraded by a climb up the dry bowls.

  The image wouldn’t do.

  Unk imagined again the three beautiful girls who had beckoned him to come down the oily bore of his Mauser rifle.

  “Man!” said Boaz, “everbody asleep—but not for long!” He cooed, and his eyes flashed. “When old Boaz and old Unk hits town,” he said, “everybody going to wake up and stay woke up for weeks on end!”

  The ship was being controlled skillfully by its pilot-navigator. The equipment was talking nervously to itself—cycling, whirring, clicking, buzzing. It was sensing and avoiding hazards to the sides, seeking an ideal landing place below.

  The designers of the pilot-navigator had purposely obsessed the equipment with one idea—and that idea was to seek shelter for the precious troops and matériel it was supposed to be carrying. The pilot-navigator was to set the precious troops and matériel down in. the deepest hole it could find. The assumption was that the landing would be in the face of hostile fire.

  Twenty Earthling minutes later, the pilot-navigator was still talking to itself—finding as much to talk about as ever.

  And the ship was still falling, and falling fast.

  The seeming searchlights and skyscrapers outside were no longer to be seen. There was only inky blackness.

  Inside the ship, there was silence of a hardly lighter shade. Unk and Boaz sensed what was happening to them—found what was happening unspeakable.

  They sensed correctly that they were being buried alive.

  The ship lurched suddenly, throwing Boaz and Unk to the floor.

  The violence brought violent relief.

  “Home at last,” yelled Boaz. “Welcome home!”

  Then the ghastly feeling of the leaf-like fall began again.

  Twenty Earthling minutes later, the ship was still falling gently.

  Its lurches were more frequent.

  To protect themselves against the lurches, Boaz and Unk had gone to bed. They lay face down, their hands gripping the steel pipe supports of their bunks.

  To make their misery complete, the pilot-navigator decreed that night should fall in the cabin.

  A grinding noise passed over the dome of the ship, forced Unk and Boaz to turn their eyes from their pillows to the portholes. There was a pale yellow light outside now.

  Unk and Boaz shouted for joy, ran to the portholes. They reached them just in time to be thrown to the floor again as the ship freed itself from an obstruction, began its fall again.

  One Earthling minute later, the fall stopped.

  There was a modest click from the pilot-navigator. Having delivered its cargo safely from Mars to Mercury, as instructed, it had shut itself off.

  It had delivered its cargo to the floor of a cave one hundred and sixteen miles below the surface of Mercury. It had threaded its way down through a tortuous system of chimneys until it could go no deeper.

  Boaz was the first to reach a porthole, to look out and see the gay welcome of yellow and aquamarine diamonds the harmoniums had made on the walls.

  “Unk!” said Boaz. “God damn if it didn’t go and set us down right in the middle of a Hollywood night club!”

  A recapitulation of Schliemann breathing techniques is in order at this point, in order that what happened next can be fully understood. Unk and Boaz, in their pressurized cabin, had been getting their oxygen from goofballs in their small intestines. But, living in an atmosphere under pressure, there was no need for them to plug their ears and nostrils, and keep their mouths shut tight. This sealing off was necessary only in a vacuum or in a poisonous atmosphere.

  Boaz was under the impression that outside the space ship was the wholesome atmosphere of his native Earth.

  Actually, there was nothing out there but a vacuum.

  Boaz threw open both the inner and outer doors of the airlock with a grand carelessness predicated on a friendly atmosphere outside.

  He was rewarded with the explosion of the small atmosphere of the cabin into the vacuum outside.

  He slammed shut the inner door, but not before he and Unk had hemorrhaged in the act of shouting for joy.

  They collapsed, their respiratory systems bleeding profusely.

  All that saved them from death was a fully automatic emergency system that answered the explosion with another, bringing the pressure of the cabin up to normal again.

  “Mama,” said Boaz, as he came to. “God damn, Mama—this sure as hell ain’t Earth.”

  Unk and Boaz did not panic.

  They restored their strength with food, rest, drink, and goofballs.

  And they then plugged their ears and nostrils, shut their mouths, and explored the neighborhood of the ship. They determined that their tomb was deep, tortuous, endless—airless, uninhabited by anything remotely human, and uninhabitable by anything remotely human.

  They noted the presence of the harmoniums, but could find nothing encouraging in the presence of the creatures there. The creatures seemed ghastly.


  Unk and Boaz didn’t really believe they were in such a place. Not believing it was the thing that saved them from panic.

  They returned to their ship.

  “O.K.,” said Boaz calmly, “there has been some mistake. We have wound up too deep in the ground. We got to fly back on up to where them buildings are. I tell you frankly Unk, it don’t seem like to me this is even Earth we’re in. There’s been some mistake, like I say, and we got to ask the folks in the buildings where we are.”

  “O.K.,” said Unk. He licked his lips.

  “Just push that old on button,” said Boaz, “and up we fly like a bird.”

  “O.K.,” said Unk.

  “I mean,” said Boaz, “up there, the folks in the buildings may not even know about all this down here. Maybe we discovered something they’ll be just amazed about.”

  “Sure,” said Unk. His soul felt the pressure of the miles of rock above. And his soul felt the true nature of their predicament. On all sides and overhead were passages that branched and branched and branched. And the branches forked to twigs, and the twigs forked to passages no larger than a human pore.

  Unk’s soul was right in feeling that not one branch in ten thousand led all the way to the surface.

  The space ship, thanks to the brilliantly-conceived sensing gear on its bottom, had sensed its way easily down and down and down, through one of the very few ways in—down and down and down one of the very few ways out.

  What Unk’s soul hadn’t suspected yet was the congenital stupidity of the pilot-navigator when it came to going up. It had never occurred to the designers that the ship might encounter problems in going up. All Martian ships, after all, were meant to take off from an unobstructed field on Mars, and to be abandoned after landing on Earth. Consequently, there was virtually no sensing equipment on the ship for hazards overhead.

  “So long, old cave,” said Boaz.

  Casually, Unk pressed the on button.

  The pilot-navigator hummed.

  In ten Earthling seconds, the pilot-navigator was warm.

  The ship left the cave floor with whispering ease, touched a wall, dragged its rim up the wall with a grinding, tearing scream, bashed its dome on an overhead projection, backed off, bashed its dome again, backed off, grazed the projection, climbed whisperingly again. Then came the grinding scream again—this time from all sides.

  All upward motion had stopped.

  The ship was wedged in solid rock.

  The pilot-navigator whimpered.

  It sent a wisp of mustard-colored smoke up through the floor-boards of the cabin.

  The pilot-navigator stopped whimpering.

  It had overheated, and overheating was a signal for the pilot-navigator to extricate the ship from a hopeless mess. This it proceeded to do—grindingly. Steel members groaned. Rivets snapped like rifle shots.

  At last the ship was free.

  The pilot-navigator knew when it was licked. It flew the ship back down to the cave floor, landing with a kiss.

  The pilot-navigator shut itself off.

  Unk pushed the on button again.

  Again the ship blundered up into a blind passage, again retreated, again settled to the floor and shut itself off.

  The cycle was repeated a dozen times, until it was plain that the ship would only bash itself to pieces. Already its frame was badly sprung.

  When the ship settled to the cave floor for the twelfth time, Unk and Boaz went to pieces. They cried.

  “We’re dead, Unk—we’re dead!” said Boaz.

  “I’ve never been alive that I can remember,” said Unk brokenly. “I thought I was finally going to get some living done.”

  Unk went to a porthole, looked out with streaming eyes.

  He saw that the creatures nearest the porthole had outlined in aquamarine a perfect, pale yellow letter T.

  The making of a T was well within the limits of probability for brainless creatures distributing themselves at random. But then Unk saw that the T was preceded by a perfect S. And the S was preceded by a perfect E.

  Unk moved his head to one side, looked through the porthole obliquely. The movement gave him a perspective down a hundred yards of harmonium-infested wall.

  Unk was flabbergasted to see that the harmoniums were forming a message in dazzling letters.

  The message was this, in pale yellow, outlined in aquamarine:

  IT’S AN INTELLIGENCE TEST!

  chapter nine

  A PUZZLE SOLVED

  In the beginning, God became the Heaven and the Earth…. And God said, ‘Let Me be light,’ and He was light.

  —The Winston Niles Rumfoord

  Authorized Revised Bible

  For a delicious tea snack, try young harmoniums rolled into tubes and filled with Venusian cottage cheese.

  —The Beatrice Rumfoord

  Galactic Cookbook

  In terms of their souls, the martyrs of Mars died not when they attacked Earth but when they were recruited for the Martian war machine.

  —The Winston Niles Rumfoord

  Pocket History of Mars

  I found me a place where I can do good without doing any harm.

  —BOAZ IN SARAH HORNE CANBY’s

  Unk and Boaz in the Caves of Mercury

  The best-selling book in recent times has been The Winston Niles Rumfoord Authorized Revised Bible. Next in popularity is that delightful forgery, The Beatrice Rumfoord Galactic Cookbook. The third most popular is The Winston Niles Rumfoord Pocket History of Mars. The fourth most popular is a children’s book, Unk and Boaz in the Caves of Mercury, by Sarah Horne Canby.

  The publisher’s bland analysis of Mrs. Canby’s book’s success appears on the dust jacket: “What child wouldn’t like to be shipwrecked on a space ship with a cargo of hamburgers, hot dogs, catsup, sporting goods, and soda pop?”

  Dr. Frank Minot, in his Are Adults Harmoniums?, sees something more sinister in the love children have for the book. “Dare we consider,” he asks, “how close Unk and Boaz are to the everyday experience of children when Unk and Boaz deal solemnly and respectfully with creatures that are in fact obscenely unmotivated, insensitive, and dull?” Minot, in drawing a parallel between human parents and harmoniums, refers to the dealings of Unk and Boaz with harmoniums. The harmoniums spelled out for Unk and Boaz a new message of hope or veiled derision every fourteen Earthling days—for three years.

  The messages were written, of course, by Winston Niles Rumfoord, who materialized briefly on Mercury at fourteen-day intervals. He peeled off harmoniums here, slapped others up there, making the block letters.

  In Mrs. Canby’s tale, the first intimation given that Rumfoord is around the caves from time to time is given in a scene very close to the end—a scene wherein Unk finds the tracks of a big dog in the dust.

  At this point in the story it is mandatory, if an adult is reading the story aloud to a child, for the adult to ask the child with delicious hoarseness, “Who wuzza dog?”

  Dog wuzza Kazak. Dog wuzza Winston Niles Rumfoord’s dreat big mean chrono-synclastic infundibulated dog.

  Unk and Boaz had been on Mercury for three Earthling years when Unk found Kazak’s footprints in the dust on the floor of a cave corridor. Mercury had carried Unk and Boaz twelve and a half times around the Sun.

  Unk found the prints on a floor six miles above the chamber in which the dented, scarred, and rock-bound space ship lay. Unk didn’t live in the space ship any more, and neither did Boaz. The space ship served merely as a common supply base to which Unk and Boaz returned for provisions once every Earthling month or so.

  Unk and Boaz rarely met They moved in very different circles.

  The circles in which Boaz moved were small. His abode was fixed and richly furnished. It was on the same level as the space ship, only a quarter of a mile away from it.

  The circles in which Unk moved were vast and restless. He had no home. He traveled light and he traveled far, climbing ever higher until he was stopped by cold. Where the cold st
opped Unk, the cold stopped the harmoniums, too. On the upper levels where Unk wandered, the harmoniums were stunted and few.

  On the cozy lower level where Boaz lived, the harmoniums were plentiful and fast-growing.

  Boaz and Unk had separated after one Earthling year together in the space ship. In that first year together, it had become clear to both of them that they weren’t going to get out unless something or somebody came and got them out.

  That had been clear, even though the creatures on the walls continued to spell out new messages emphasizing the fairness of the test to which Unk and Boaz were being subjected, the ease with which they might escape, if only they would think a little harder, if they would only think a little more intricately.

  “THINK!” the creatures would say.

  Unk and Boaz separated after Unk went temporarily insane. Unk had tried to murder Boaz. Boaz had come into the space ship with a harmonium, which was exactly like all the other harmoniums, and he’d said, “Ain’t he a cute little feller, Unk?”

  Unk had gone for Boaz’s throat.

  Unk was naked when he found the dog tracks. The lichen green uniform and black fiber boots of the Martian Assault Infantry had been scoured to threads and dust by the touch of stone.

  The dog tracks did not excite Unk. Unk’s soul wasn’t filled with the music of sociability or the light of hope when he saw a warm-blooded creature’s tracks, saw the tracks of man’s best friend. And he still had very little to say to himself when the tracks of a well-shod man joined those of the dog.

  Unk was at war with his environment. He had come to regard his environment as being either malevolent or cruelly mismanaged. His response was to fight it with the only weapons at hand—passive resistance and open displays of contempt.

  The footprints seemed to Unk to be the opening moves in one more fat-headed game his environment wanted to play. He would follow the tracks, but lazily, without excitement. He would follow them simply because he had nothing else scheduled for the time.

  He would follow them.

  He would see where they went.

  His progress was knobby and ramshackle. Poor Unk had lost a lot of weight, and a lot of hair, too. He was aging fast. His eyes felt hot and his skeleton felt rickety.