"We'll never know," said Lou.
"I don't want to know," said Kroner. "I want to remember this scene and think of him as a little bit of all of us."
"You're talking poetry," said the Old Man. "That's good, that's good."
Paul, alone inside, exhaled a puff of smoke with too much force, and coughed.
The men on the porch whispered something.
"Well, gentlemen," said Doctor Gelhorne, "shall we go?"
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
If Doctor Paul Proteus, former manager of the Ilium Works, hadn't found reality disquieting at all points, he wouldn't have shown himself in the saloon before boarding the last boat for the Mainland. As he made his way along the gravel path toward the noise and light of the saloon, however, the field of his consciousness narrowed down to a pinprick, and filling the field was a twinkling shot-glass.
The crowd fell silent as he entered, and then exploded into even greater excesses of happy noise. Quickly as Paul glanced about the room, he didn't catch a single man looking at him, nor, in the blurred vision of excitement, did he recognize a single face among these old friends.
"Bourbon and water," he said to the bartender.
"Sorry, sir."
"Sorry about what?"
"I can't serve you."
"Why not?"
"I've been told you're no longer a guest at the Meadows, sir." There was a prim satisfaction in the bartender's voice.
A number of people observed the incident, Kroner among them, but no one made a move to change the bartender's ruling.
It was a crude moment, and in its fetid atmosphere Paul made an ultimately crude suggestion to the bartender, and turned to leave with dignity.
What he still had to learn was that without rank, without guest privileges, he lived on a primitive level of social justice. He wasn't prepared when the bartender vaulted the bar and spun him around.
"Nobody says that to me, sonny Jim," said the bartender.
"Who the hell do you think you are?" said Paul.
"I'm no goddamn saboteur," said the bartender hotly. Everyone heard it, the ugliest word in the language, one that permitted no muttering withdrawal, no shaking of hands and forgetting it. Son-of-a-bitch could be softened with a smile, but not saboteur.
Somehow the idea of a wrecker of machines had become the smallest part of the word, like the crown of an iceberg. The greatest part of its mass, the part that called forth such poisonous emotions, was undefined: an amalgam of perversions, filth, disease, a galaxy of traits, any one of which would make a man a despicable outcast. The saboteur wasn't a wrecker of machines but an image every man prided himself on being unlike. The saboteur was the man who, if dead, would no longer make the world a trying place to live in.
"You want me to say it again?" said the bartender. "Saboteur. You're a stinking saboteur."
It was an electrifying situation, an elemental situation. Here one big man had offered the ultimate insult to another big man. No one looked as though he were willing to bring the drama to an end, or as though he thought he could. It was like seeing a man caught in a threshing machine, beyond saving. As long as God had precipitated the tragedy, the onlookers might as well watch and learn what a threshing machine would do to a man once it caught him.
Paul hadn't hit anyone since his sophomore year in high school. He had none of what bayonet instructors hoped to instill in their pupils, the will to close with the enemy. It was an unpromising sort of will, he thought. Still, obedient to some system of involuntary nerves and glands, his hands tightened into fists, and his feet spaced themselves to form a solid bipod from which to swing.
Just as there is no encore for the 1812 Overture save "The Stars and Stripes Forever," so Paul had no choice of rejoinders. "Saboteur yourself," he said evenly, and swung at the bartender's nose.
Absurdly, the bartender collapsed, snuffling and snorting. Paul walked out into the night, like Wild Bill Hickock, like Dan'l Boone, like the bargeman on the book jacket, like - He was suddenly spun around again. For a split second, he saw the bartender's red nose, white face, white apron, and white fist. A brilliant flash illuminated the inside of his skull, and then midnight.
"Doctor Proteus - Paul."
Paul opened his eyes to find himself staring up at the Big Dipper. A cool breeze played across his aching head, and he couldn't see where the voice was coming from. Someone had stretched him out on the cement bench that ran the length of the dock, to be loaded with the band and the outgoing mail aboard the last boat for the Mainland.
"Doctor Proteus -"
Paul sat up. His lower lip was shredded and puffed, and his mouth tasted of blood.
"Paul, sir -"
The voice seemed to be coming from behind the spiraea hedge at the foot of the dock. "Who's that?"
Young Doctor Edmund Harrison emerged from the shrubbery furtively, a highball in his hand. "I thought you might want this."
"That's real Christian of you, Doctor Harrison. Guess I'm well enough to sit up and take nourishment now."
"Wish I'd thought of it. It was Kroner's idea."
"Oh? Any message?"
"Yes - but I don't think you'll want it. I wouldn't, if I were in your spot."
"Go ahead."
"He says to tell you it's always darkest before the dawn, and every cloud has a silver lining."
"Um."
"But you ought to see the bartender," said Harrison brightly.
"Aaaaaah. Tell me all."
"He's got a nosebleed that won't stop because he can't stop sneezing. Looks like a vicious circle that with luck could last for years."
"Wonderful." Paul felt better. "Look, you'd better beat it before your luck runs out and somebody sees you with me."
"Mind telling me what on earth you did?"
"It's a long, sordid story."
"I guess. Boy! one day you're king, the next day you're out on your tail. What're you going to do?"
Talking softly there in the dark, Paul began to appreciate what a remarkable young man he'd picked to sit down beside the first day - this Ed Harrison. Harrison had apparently taken a liking to Paul, and now, with no personal reasons for turning against Paul, he was sticking with him as a friend. This was integrity, all right, and a rare variety, because it often amounted, as it might amount now, to career suicide.
"What am I going to do? Farm, maybe. I've got a nice little farm."
"Farm, eh?" Harrison clucked his tongue reflectively. "Farm. Sounds wonderful. I've thought of that: up in the morning with the sun; working out there with your hands in the earth, just you and nature. If I had the money, sometimes I think maybe I'd throw this -"
"You want a piece of advice from a tired old man?"
"Depends on which tired old man. You?"
"Me. Don't put one foot in your job and the other in your dreams, Ed. Go ahead and quit, or resign yourself to this life. It's just too much of a temptation for fate to split you right up the middle before you've made up your mind which way to go."
"That's what happened to you?"
"Something like that." He handed Harrison the empty glass. "Thanks, better beat it. Tell Doctor Kroner it never rains but what it pours."
The cabin cruiser, Spirit of the Meadows, grumbled into her slip, and Paul climbed aboard. A few minutes later the band got on with their instruments, and a last call was put out over the loudspeakers. The lights in the saloon blinked off, and knots of remarkably sobered roisterers crossed the parade ground to their tents.
The rattle of the switch, the scratch of a needle, and the loudspeakers sang for the last time that night:
"Fare thee well, for I must leave you,
Please don't let this parting grieve you;
Fare thee well, the time has come for us to say goodbye.
Adieu, adieu, kind friends, adieu, yes, adieu! . . ."
And Paul waved wanly, apathetically. This was goodbye to his life so far, to the whole of his father's life. He hadn't had the satisfaction of telling someon
e he'd quit, of being believed; but he'd quit. Goodbye. None of this had anything to do with him any more. Better to be nothing than a blind doorman at the head of civilization's parade.
And as Paul said these things to himself, a wave of sadness washed over them as though they'd been written in sand. He was understanding now that no man could live without roots - roots in a patch of desert, a red clay field, a mountain slope, a rocky coast, a city street. In black loam, in mud or sand or rock or asphalt or carpet, every man had his roots down deep - in home. A lump grew in his throat, and he couldn't do anything about it. Doctor Paul Proteus was saying goodbye forever to home.
"So long," he said. And then, in spite of himself, "So long, gang."
A laggard group, genuinely inebriated, was being coaxed out of the saloon. They were singing an effusively sentimental rendition of "Toast the Oak." They draped their arms over each other's shoulders; and made clumsily for the great tree. Their voices came clearly to Paul over the flat, green lawns:
"Grown from but an acorn,
Giant now you are;
May you ne'er stop growing;
Rise to the stars!
Proud sy-him-bol a-hov
Ourrrrrrrrs."
There was a reverent pause, broken by an exclamation. "Jesus!" It was Berringer's voice, Berringer's word.
" 'Smatter?"
"Look at the tree - around the bottom!"
"Holy smokes!"
"Somebody's stripped the bark off clear around," said Berringer hollowly.
"Who?"
"Who do you think?" said Berringer. "That stinking saboteur. Where is he?"
The Spirit of the Meadows gunned her engines and backed into open water.
"Hey," cried a lonely, frightened voice in the night. "Hey - somebody's killed the Oak."
"Killed the Oak," echoed the shore.
The loudspeakers clattered on again, and a chilling war whoop filled the air. "Beware the Ghost Shirt!" shrieked a terrible voice.
"Ghost Shirt," said the shore, and all was deathly still.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
En route by air from Miami Beach to Ithaca, New York, home of Cornell University, the Shah of Bratpuhr caught a nasty cold. When seven prakhouls (that quantity of fluid that can be contained in the skin of an adult male Bratpuhrian marmot) of Sumklish improved the Shah's spirits but did nothing for his respiratory system, it was decided that the plane should land in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in order that the Shah might rest and try the magic of American medicine.
With seven prakhouls of Sumklish under his belt, the Shah called cheery messages to pretty female Takarus on his way to the doctor's office.
"Pitty fit-fit, sibi Takaru? Niki fit-fit. Akka sahn nibo fit-fit, simi Takaru?"
Khashdrahr, who was without the benefit of Sumklish, was livid with embarrassment. "Shah says it is a nice day," he explained unhappily.
"Fit-fit, pu sibi bonanza?" called the Shah to a small blonde who had her hands in a streetcorner manicure machine.
She blushed, and jerked her hands from the machine and stalked away, leaving the machine to buff away at nothingness. A street urchin stuck his grubby hands in for the remainder of the operation, and drew them out with gleaming, red-enameled nails.
"I'm glad he likes the weather," said Halyard glumly. For many weeks now, they'd traveled without the subject's coming up once, and Halyard had hopefully told himself that the Shah really was different from his other guests in this respect, different from the French and Bolivians and Czechs and Japanese and Panamanians and Yaps and. . . . But, no. The Shah, too, was now getting curious about American-type women. Halyard, at a frightful price in dignity, was once more going to have to perform the role of utterly perfect host - or pimp.
"Fit-fit?" called the Shah, as they pulled up to a stoplight.
"Look," said Halyard reproachfully to Khashdrahr, "tell him he just can't walk up to any American girl at all and ask her to sleep with him. I'll see what I can do, but it won't be easy."
Khashdrahr told the Shah, who waved him away. Before anyone could stop him, the Shah was out on the sidewalk, confidently confronting a startlingly beautiful, dark-skinned brunette. "Fit-fit, sibi Takaru?"
"Please," said Halyard to her, "please excuse my friend. He's a bit under the weather."
She took the Shah's arm, and together they climbed back into the limousine.
"I'm afraid there's been a terrible misunderstanding, young lady," said Halyard. "I hardly know how to put it. I, ah, he, that is - What I mean to say, rather, is he wasn't offering you a ride."
"He was asking for something, wasn't he?"
"Yes."
"There's been no misunderstanding."
"Fit-fit," said the Shah.
"Quite so," said Halyard.
Khashdrahr began looking out of the window with fresh interest, wildness, in fact, and Halyard had difficulty holding himself in check.
"Here we are," said the driver. "Here's Doctor Pepkowitz's office."
"Yes, well, you wait in the car, young lady," said Halyard, "while the Shah goes in here for a cold treatment."
The Shah was grinning, and inhaling and exhaling rapidly.
"His sniffles are gone," said Khashdrahr wonderingly.
"Drive on," said Halyard. He had seen a similar miracle cure of an Ecuadorian brigadier's hives.
The girl seemed restless and unhappy, and utterly out of character, Halyard thought. She smiled constantly, unconvincingly, and was apparently anxious to get the whole thing over with. Halyard still couldn't believe that she knew what the whole thing was.
"Where are we going now?" she said, grimly cheerful. "A hotel, I suppose."
"Yes," said Halyard unevenly.
"Good." She patted the Shah on his shoulder, and burst into tears.
The Shah was distressed and tried clumsily to comfort her. "Oh, nibo souri, sibi Takaru. Akka sahn souri? Ohhh. Tipi Takaru. Ahhhh."
"There, now," said Halyard. "See here."
"I don't do this every day," she said, blowing her nose. "Please excuse me. I'll try to be better."
"Certainly. We understand," said Halyard. "The whole thing has been a terrible mistake. Where would you like us to leave you off?"
"Oh, no - I'm going through with it," she said gloomily.
"Please -" said Halyard. "Perhaps it would be better for all concerned if -"
"If I lost my husband? Better if he shot himself or starved?"
"Certainly not! But why would those terrible things happen if you refused to - That is -"
"It's a long story." She dried her eyes. "My husband, Ed, is a writer."
"What's his classification number?" said Halyard.
"That's just it. He hasn't one."
"Then how can you call him a writer?" said Halyard.
"Because he writes," she said.
"My dear girl," said Halyard paternally, "on that basis, we're all writers."
"Two days ago he had a number - W-441."
"Fiction novice," Halyard explained to Khashdrahr.
"Yes," she said, "and he was to have it until he'd completed his novel. After that, he was supposed to get either a W-440 -"
"Fiction journeyman," said Halyard.
"Or a W-255."
"Public relations," said Halyard.
"Please, what are public relations?" said Khashdrahr.
"That profession," said Halyard, quoting by memory from the Manual, "that profession specializing in the cultivation, by applied psychology in mass communication media, of favorable public opinion with regard to controversial issues and institutions, without being offensive to anyone of importance, and with the continued stability of the economy and society its primary goal."
"Oh well, never mind," said Khashdrahr. "Please go on with your story, sibi Takaru."
"Two months ago he submitted his finished manuscript to the National Council of Arts and Letters for criticism and assignment to one of the book clubs."
"There are twelve of them," Halyard i
nterrupted. "Each one selects books for a specific type of reader."
"There are twelve types of readers?" said Khashdrahr.
"There is now talk of a thirteenth and fourteenth," said Halyard. "The line has to be drawn somewhere, of course, because of the economics of the thing. In order to be self-supporting, a book club has to have at least a half-million members, or it isn't worth setting up the machinery - the electronic billers, the electronic addressers, the electronic wrappers, the electronic presses, and the electronic dividend computers."
"And the electronic writers," said the girl bitterly.
"That'll come, that'll come," said Halyard. "But Lord knows getting manuscripts isn't any trick. That's hardly the problem. Machinery's the thing. One of the smaller clubs, for instance, covers four city blocks. DSM."
"DSM?" said Khashdrahr.
"Excuse me. Dog Story of the Month."
Khashdrahr and the Shah shook their heads slowly and made clucking sounds. "Four city blocks," echoed Khashdrahr hollowly.
"Well, a fully automatic setup like that makes culture very cheap. Book costs less than seven packs of chewing gum. And there are picture clubs, too - pictures for your walls at amazingly cheap prices. Matter of fact, culture's so cheap, a man figured he could insulate his house cheaper with books and prints than he could with rockwool. Don't think it's true, but it's a cute story with a good point."
"And painters are well supported under this club system?" asked Khashdrahr.
"Supported - I guess!" said Halyard. "It's the Golden Age of Art, with millions of dollars a year poured into reproductions of Rembrandts, Whistlers, Goyas, Renoirs, El Grecos, Dégas, da Vincis, Michelangelos . . ."
"These club members, they get just any book, any picture?" asked Khashdrahr.
"I should say not! A lot of research goes into what's run off, believe me. Surveys of public reading tastes, readability and appeal tests on books being considered. Heavens, running off an unpopular book would put a club out of business like that!" He snapped his fingers ominously. "The way they keep culture so cheap is by knowing in advance what and how much of it people want. They get it right, right down to the color of the jacket. Gutenberg would be amazed."
Vonnegut, Kurt - Player Piano (v5.0) Page 23