"Have you ever considered the possibility," said Rumfoord, "that everything went absolutely right?"
"No," said the Space Wanderer simply. The idea did not startle him, could not startle him - since the idea proposed was so far beyond the range of his jerry-built philosophy.
"Would you recognize your mate and child?" said Rumfoord.
"I - I don't know," said the Space Wanderer.
"Bring me the woman and the boy who sell Malachis outside the little iron door," said Rumfoord. "Bring Bee and Chrono."
The Space Wanderer and Winston Niles Rumfoord and Kazak were on a scaffold before the mansion. The scaffold was at eye-level for the standing crowd. The scaffold before the mansion was a portion of a continuous system of catwalks, ramps, ladders, pulpits, steps, and stages that reached into every corner of the estate.
The system made possible the free and showy circulation of Rumfoord around the grounds, unimpeded by crowds. It meant, too, that Rumfoord could offer a glimpse of himself to every person on the grounds.
The system was not suspended magnetically, though it looked like a miracle of levitation. The seeming miracle was achieved by means of a cunning use of paint. The underpinnings were painted a flat black, while the superstructures were painted flashing gold.
Television cameras and microphones on booms could follow the system anywhere.
For night materializations, the superstructures of the system were outlined in flesh-colored electric lamps.
The Space Wanderer was only the thirty-first person to be invited to join Rumfoord on the elevated system.
An assistant had now been dispatched to the Malachi booth outside to bring in the thirty-second and thirty-third persons to share the eminence.
Rumfoord did not look well. His color was bad. And, although he smiled as always, his teeth seemed to be gnashing behind the smile. His complacent glee had become a caricature, betraying the fact that all was not well by any means.
But on and on the famous smile went. The magnificently snobbish crowd-pleaser held his big dog Kazak by a choke chain. The chain was twisted so as to nip warningly into the dog's throat. The warning was necessary, since the dog plainly did not like the Space Wanderer.
The smile faltered for an instant, reminding the crowd of what a load Rumfoord carried for them - warning the crowd that he might not be able to carry it forever.
Rumfoord carried in his palm a microphone and transmitter the size of a penny. When he did not want his voice carried to the crowd, he simply smothered the penny in his fist.
The penny was smothered in his fist now - and he was addressing bits of irony to the Space Wanderer that would have bewildered the crowd, had the crowd been able to hear them.
"This is certainly your day, isn't it?" said Rumfoord. "A perfect love feast from the instant you arrived. The crowd simply adores you. Do you adore crowds?"
The joyful shocks of the day had reduced the Space Wanderer to a childish condition - a condition wherein irony and even sarcasm were lost on him. He had been the captive of many things in his troubled times. He was now a captive of a crowd that thought he was a marvel. "They've certainly been wonderful," he said, in reply to Rumfoord's last question. "They've been grand."
"Oh - they're a grand bunch," said Rumfoord. "No mistake about that. I've been racking my brains for the right word to describe them, and you've brought it to me from outer space. Grand is what they are." Rumfoord's mind was plainly elsewhere. He wasn't much interested in the Space Wanderer as a person - hardly looked at him. Neither did he seem very excited about the approach of the Space Wanderer's wife and child.
"Where are they, where are they?" said Rumfoord to an assistant below. "Let's get on with it. Let's get it over with."
The Space Wanderer was finding his adventures so satisfying and stimulating, so splendidly staged, that he was shy about asking questions - was afraid that asking questions might make him seem ungrateful.
He realized that he had a terrific ceremonial responsibility and that the best thing to do was to keep his mouth shut, to speak only when spoken to, and to make his answers to all questions short and artless.
The Space Wanderer's mind did not teem with questions. The fundamental structure of his ceremonial situation was obvious - was as clean and functional as a three-legged milking stool. He had suffered mightily, and now he was being rewarded mightily.
The sudden change in fortunes made a bang-up show. He smiled, understanding the crowd's delight - pretending to be in the crowd himself, sharing the crowd's delight.
Rumfoord read the Space Wanderer's mind. "They'd like it just as much the other way around, you know," he said.
"The other way around?" said the Space Wanderer.
"If the big reward came first, and then the great suffering," said Rumford. "It's the contrast they like. The order of events doesn't make any difference to them. It's the thrill of the fast reverse - "
Rumfoord opened his fist, exposed the microphone. With his other hand he beckoned pontifically. He was beckoning to Bee and Chrono, who had been hoisted Onto a tributary of the gilded system of catwalks, ramps, ladders, pulpits, steps and stages. "This way, please. We haven't got all day, you know," said Rumfoord schoolmarmishly.
During the lull, the Space Wanderer felt the first real tickle of plans for a good future on Earth. With everyone so kind and enthusiastic and peaceful, not only a good life but a perfect life could be lived on Earth.
The Space Wanderer had already been given a fine new suit and a glamorous station in life, and his mate and son were to be restored to him in a matter of minutes.
All that was lacking was a good friend, and the Space Wanderer began to tremble. He trembled, for he knew in his heart that his best friend, Stony Stevenson, was hidden somewhere on the grounds, awaiting a cue to appear.
The Space Wanderer smiled, for he was imagining Stony's entrance. Stony would come running down a ramp, laughing and a little drunk. "Unk, you bloody bastard - " Stony would roar right into the public address system, "by God, I've looked in every flaming pub on bloody Earth for you - and here you've been hung up on Mercury the whole bloody time!"
As Bee and Chrono reached Rumfoord and the Space Wanderer, Rumfoord walked away. Had he separated himself from Bee, Chrono, and the Space Wanderer by a mere arm's length, his separateness might have been understood. But the gilded system enabled him to put a really respectable distance between himself and the three, and not only a distance, but a distance made tortuous by rococo and variously symbolic hazards.
It was undeniably great theater, notwithstanding Dr. Maurice Rosenau's carping comment (op. cit.): "The people who watch reverently as Winston Niles Rumfoord goes dancing over his golden jungle gym in Newport are the same idiots one finds in toy stores, gaping reverently at toy trains as the trains go chuffa-chuffa-chuffa in and out of papier-mâché tunnels, over toothpick trestles, through cardboard cities, and into papier-mâché tunnels again. Will the little trains or will Winston Niles Rumfoord chuffa-chuffa-chuffa into view again? Oh, mirabile dictu! . . . they will!"
From the scaffold in front of the mansion Rumfoord went to a stile that arched over the crest of a boxwood hedge. On the other side of the stile was a catwalk that ran for ten feet to the trunk of a copper beech. The trunk was four feet through. Gilded rungs were fixed to the trunk by lag screws.
Rumfoord tied Kazak to the bottom rung, then climbed out of sight like Jack on the beanstalk.
From somewhere up in the tree he spoke.
His voice came not from the tree but from the Gabriel horns on the walls.
The crowd weaned its eyes from the leafy treetop, turned its eyes to the nearest loudspeakers.
Only Bee, Chrono, and the Space Wanderer continued to look up, to look up at where Rumfoord really was. This wasn't so much a result of realism as it was a result of embarrassment. By looking up, the members of the little family avoided looking at each other.
None of the three had any reason to be pleased with the reunio
n.
Bee was not drawn to the scrawny, bearded, happy boob in lemon-yellow long underwear. She had dreamed of a big, angry, arrogant free-thinker.
Young Chrono hated the bearded intruder on his sublime relationship with his mother. Chrono kissed his good-luck piece and wished that his father, if this really was his father, would drop dead.
And the Space Wanderer himself, sincerely as he tried, could see nothing he would have chosen of his own free will in the dark, malevolent mother and son.
By accident, the Space Wanderer's eyes met the one good eye of Bee. Something had to be said.
"How do you do?" said the Space Wanderer.
"How do you do?" said Bee.
They both looked up into the tree again.
"Oh, my happy, handicapped brethren," said Rumfoord's voice, "let us thank God - God, who appreciates our thanks as much as the mighty Mississippi appreciates a raindrop - that we are not like Malachi Constant."
The back of the Space Wanderer's neck ached some. He lowered his gaze. His eyes were caught by a long, straight golden runway in the middle distance. His eyes followed it.
The runway ended at Earth's longest free-standing ladder. The ladder was painted gold, too.
The Space Wanderer's gaze climbed the ladder to the tiny door of the space ship on top of the column. He wondered who would have nerve enough or reason enough to climb such a frightening ladder to such a tiny door.
The Space Wanderer looked at the crowd again. Maybe Stony Stevenson was in the crowd somewhere. Maybe he would wait for the whole show to end before he presented himself to his best and only friend from Mars.
11. WE HATE MALACHI CONSTANT BECAUSE . . .
"Tell me one good thing you ever did in your life."
- WINSTON NILES RUMFOORD
And this is how the sermon went:
"We are disgusted by Malachi Constant," said Winston Niles Rumfoord up in his treetop, "because he used the fantastic fruits of his fantastic good luck to finance an unending demonstration that man is a pig. He wallowed in sycophants. He wallowed in worthless women. He wallowed in lascivious entertainments and alcohol and drugs. He wallowed in every known form of voluptuous turpitude.
"At the height of his good luck, Malachi Constant was worth more than the states of Utah and North Dakota combined. Yet, I daresay, his moral worth was not that of the most corrupt little fleidmouse in either state.
"We are angered by Malachi Constant," said Rumfoord up in his treetop, "because he did nothing to deserve his billions, and because he did nothing unselfish or imaginative with his billions. He was as benevolent as Marie Antoinette, as creative as a professor of cosmetology in an embalming college.
"We hate Malachi Constant," said Rumford up in his treetop, "because he accepted the fantastic fruits of his fantastic good luck, without a qualm, as though luck were the hand of God. To us of the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent, there is nothing more cruel, more dangerous, more blasphemous that a man can do than to believe that - that luck, good or bad, is the hand of God!
"Luck, good or bad," said Rumfoord up in his treetop, "is not the hand of God.
"Luck," said Rumfoord up in his treetop, "is the way the wind swirls and the dust settles eons after God has passed by.
"Space Wanderer!" called Rumfoord from up in his treetop.
The Space Wanderer was not paying strict attention. His powers of concentration were feeble - possibly because he had been in the caves too long, or on goofballs too long, or in the Army of Mars too long.
He was watching clouds. They were lovely things, and the sky they drifted in was, to the color-starved Space Wanderer, a thrilling blue.
"Space Wanderer!" called Rumfoord again.
"You in the yellow suit," said Bee. She nudged him. "Wake up."
"Pardon me?" said the Space Wanderer.
"Space Wanderer!" called Rumfoord.
The Space Wanderer snapped to attention. "Yes, sir?" he called up into the leafy bower. The greeting was ingenuous, cheerful, and winsome. A microphone on the end of a boom was swung to dangle before him.
"Space Wanderer!" called Rumfoord, and he was peeved now, for the ceremonial flow was being impeded.
"Right here, sir!" cried the Space Wanderer. His reply boomed earsplittingly from the loudspeaker.
"Who are you?" said Rumford. "What is your real name?"
"I don't know my real name," said the Space Wanderer. "They called me Unk."
"What happened to you before you arrived back on Earth, Unk?" said Rumfoord.
The Space Wanderer beamed. He had been led to a repetition of the simple statement that had caused so much laughing and dancing and singing on Cape Cod. "I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all," he said.
There was no laughing and dancing and singing this time, but the crowd was definitely in favor of what the Space Wanderer had said. Chins were raised, and eyes were widened, and nostrils were flared. There was no outcry, for the crowd wanted to hear absolutely everything that Rumfoord and the Space Wanderer might have to say.
"A victim of a series of accidents, were you?" said Rumfoord up in his treetop. "Of all the accidents," he said, "which would you consider the most significant?"
The Space Wanderer cocked his head. "I'd have to think - " he said.
"I'll spare you the trouble," said Rumfoord. "The most significant accident that happened to you was your being born. Would you like me to tell you what you were named when you were born?"
The Space Wanderer hesitated only a moment, and all that made him hesitate was a fear that he was going to spoil a very gratifying ceremonial career by saying the wrong thing. "Please do," he said.
"They called you Malachi Constant," said Rumfoord up in his treetop.
To the extent that crowds can be good things, the crowds that Winston Niles Rumfoord attracted to Newport were good crowds. They were not crowd-minded. The members remained in possession of their own consciences, and Rumfoord never invited them to participate as one in any action - least of all in applause or catcalls.
When the fact had sunk in that the Space Wanderer was the disgusting, irking, and hateful Malachi Constant, the members of the crowd reacted in quiet, sighing, personal ways - ways that were by and large compassionate. It was on their generally decent consciences, after all, that they had hanged Constant in effigy in their homes and places of work. And, while they had been cheerful enough about hanging the effigies, very few felt that Constant, in the flesh, actually deserved hanging. Hanging Malachi Constant in effigy was an act of violence on the order of trimming a Christmas tree or hiding Easter eggs.
And Rumfoord up in his treetop said nothing to discourage their compassion. "You have had the singular accident, Mr. Constant," he said sympathetically, "of becoming a central symbol of wrong-headedness for a perfectly enormous religious sect.
"You would not be attractive to us as a symbol, Mr. Constant," he said, "if our hearts did not go out to you to a certain extent. Our hearts have to go out to you, since all your flamboyant errors are errors that human beings have made since the beginning of time.
"In a few minutes, Mr. Constant," said Rumfoord up in his treetop, "you are going to walk down the catwalks and ramps to that long golden ladder, and you are going to climb that ladder, and you are going to get into that space ship, and you are going to fly away to Titan, a warm and fecund moon of Saturn. You will live there in safety and comfort, but in exile from your native Earth.
"You are going to do this voluntarily, Mr. Constant, so that the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent can have a drama of dignified self-sacrifice to remember and ponder through all time.
"We will imagine, to our spiritual satisfaction," said Rumfoord up in his treetop, "that you are taking all mistaken ideas about the meaning of luck, all misused wealth and power, and all disgusting pastimes with you."
The man who had been Malachi Constant, who had been Unk, who had been the Space Wanderer, the man who was Malachi Constant again - that man felt very
little upon being declared Malachi Constant again. He might, possibly, have felt some interesting things, had Rumfoord's timing been different. But Rumfoord told him what his ordeal was to be only seconds after telling him he was Malachi Constant - and the ordeal was sufficiently ghastly to command Constant's full attention.
The ordeal had been promised not in years or months or days - but in minutes. And, like any condemned criminal, Malachi Constant became a student, to the exclusion of all else, of the apparatus on which he was about to perform.
Curiously, his first worry was that he would stumble, that he would think too hard about the simple matter of walking, and that his feet would cease to work naturally, and that be would stumble on those wooden feet.
"You won't stumble, Mr. Constant," said Rumfoord up in his treetop, reading Constant's mind. "There is nowhere else for you to go, nothing else for you to do. By putting one foot in front of the other, while we watch in silence, you will make of yourself the most memorable, magnificent, and meaningful human being of modern times."
Constant turned to look at his dusky mate and child. Their gazes were direct. Constant learned from their gazes that Rumfoord had spoken the truth, that no course save the course to the space ship was open to him. Beatrice and young Chrono were supremely cynical about the festivities - but not about courageous behavior in the midst of them.
They dared Malachi Constant to behave well.
Constant rubbed his left thumb and index finger together in a careful rotary motion. He watched this. pointless enterprise for perhaps ten seconds.
And then he dropped his hands to his sides, raised his eyes, and stepped off firmly toward the space ship. As his left foot struck the ramp, his head was filled with a sound he had not heard for three Earthling years. The sound was coming from the antenna under the crown of his skull. Rumfoord, up in his treetop, was sending signals to Constant's antenna by means of a small box in his pocket.
The Sirens of Titan Page 19