Quotes
Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn't always so lucky. Less than a century ago men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them. They could not name even one of the fifty-three portals to the soul.
Gimcrack religions were big business. Mankind, ignorant of the truths that lie within every human being, looked outward — pushed ever outward. What mankind hoped to learn in its outward push was who was actually in charge of all creation, and what all creation was all about.
Mankind flung its advance agents ever outward, ever outward. Eventually it flung them out into space, into the colorless, tasteless, weightless sea of outwardness without end. It flung them like stones. These unhappy agents found what had already been found in abundance on Earth — a nightmare of meaninglessness without end. The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death. Outwardness lost, at last, its imagined attractions. Only inwardness remained to be explored. Only the human soul remained terra incognita. This was the beginning of goodness and wisdom. What were people like in olden times, with their souls as yet unexplored?
The crowd knew it wasn't going to see anything, yet its members found pleasure in being near, in staring at the blank walls and imagining what was happening inside. The mysteries of the materialization, like the mysteries of a hanging, were enhanced by the wall; were made pornographic by the magic lantern slides of morbid imaginations — magic lantern slides projected by the crowd on the blank stone walls.
The title derived from the fact that all the words between timid and Timbuktu in very small dictionaries relate to time.
Winston Niles Rumfoord had run his private space ship right into the heart of an uncharted chrono-synclastic infundibulum two days out of Mars. Only his dog had been along. Now Winston Niles Rumfoord and his dog Kazak existed as wave phenomena — apparently pulsing in a distorted spiral with its origin in the Sun and its terminal in Betelgeuse. The earth was about to intercept that spiral.
CHRONO-SYNCLASTIC INFUNDIBULA — Just imagine that your Daddy is the smartest man who ever lived on Earth, and he knows everything there is to find out, and he is exactly right about everything, and he can prove he is right about everything. Now imagine another little child on some nice world a million light years away, and that little child's Daddy is the smartest man who ever lived on that nice world so far away. And he is just as smart and just as right as your Daddy is. Both Daddies are smart, and both Daddies are right. ... The reason both Daddies can be right and still get into terrible fights is because there are so many different ways of being right. There are places in the Universe, though, where each Daddy could finally catch on to what the other Daddy was talking about. These places are where all the different kinds of truths fit together as nicely as the parts in your Daddy's solar watch. We call these places chrono-synclastic infundibula. ... You might think it would be nice to go to a chrono-synclastic infundibulum and see all the different ways to be absolutely right, but it is a very dangerous thing to do. The poor man and his poor dog are scattered far and wide, not just through space, but through time, too. Chrono (kroh-no) means time. Synclastic (sin-class-tick) means curved toward the same side in all directions, like the skin of an orange. Infundibulum (in-fun-dib-u-lum) is what the ancient Romans like Julius Caesar and Nero called a funnel. If you don't know what a funnel is, get Mommy to show you one.
He was worth three billion dollars, much of it inherited. His name meant faithful messenger. He was a speculator, mostly in corporate securities. In the depressions that always followed his taking of alcohol, narcotics, and women, Constant pined for just one thing — a single message that was sufficiently dignified and important to merit his carrying it humbly between two points. The motto under the coat of arms that Constant had designed for himself said simply, The Messenger Awaits. What Constant had in mind, presumably, was a first. class message from God to someone equally distinguished.
"When I ran my space ship into the chrono-synclastic infundibulum, it came to me in a flash that everything that ever has been always will be, and everything that ever will be always has been."
Bobby Denton's voice grew hoarse and hushed. "You want to fly through space? God has already given you the most wonderful space ship in all creation! Yes! Speed? You want speed? The space ship God has given you goes sixty-six thousand miles an hour — and will keep on running at that speed for all eternity, if God wills it. You want a space ship that will carry men in comfort? You've got it! It won't carry just a rich man and his dog, or just five men or ten men. No! God is no piker! He's given you a space ship that will carry billions of men, women, and children! Yes! And they don't have to stay strapped in chairs or wear fishbowls over their heads. No! Not on God's space ship. The people on God's space ship can go swimming, and walk in the sunshine and play baseball and go ice skating and go for family rides in the family automobile on Sunday after church and a family chicken dinner!" Bobby Denton nodded. "Yes!" he said. "And if anybody thinks his God is mean for putting things out in space to stop us from flying out there, just let him remember the space ship God already gave us. And we don't have to buy the fuel for it, and worry and fret over what kind of fuel to use. No! God worries about all that. "God told us what we had to do on this wonderful space ship. He wrote the rules so anybody could understand them. You don't have to be a physicist or a great chemist or an Albert Einstein to understand them. No! And He didn't make a whole lot of rules, either. They tell me that if they were to fire The Whale, they would have to make eleven thousand separate checks before they could be sure it was ready to go: Is this valve open, is that valve dosed, is that wire tight, is that tank full? — and on and on and on to eleven thousand things to check. Here on God's space ship, God only gives us ten things to check — and not for any little trip to some big, dead poisonous stones out in space, but for a trip to the Kingdom of Heaven! Think of it! Where would you rather be tomorrow — on Mars or in the Kingdom of Heaven? "You know what the check list is on God's round, green space ship? Do I have to tell you? You want to hear God's countdown?" The Love Crusaders shouted back that they did. "Ten! — " said Bobby Denton. "Do you covet thy neighbor's house, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, or anything that is thy neighbor's?" "No!" cried the Love Crusaders. "Nine! — " said Bobby Denton. "Do you bear false witness against thy neighbor?" "No!" cried the Love Crusaders. "Eight! — " said Bobby Denton. "Do you steal?" "No!" cried the Love Crusaders. "Seven! — " said Bobby Denton. "Do you commit adultery?" "No!" cried the Love Crusaders. "Six! — " said Bobby Denton. "Do you kill?" "No!" cried the Love Crusaders. "Five! — " said Bobby Denton. "Do you honor thy father and thy mother?" "Yes!" cried the Love Crusaders. "Four! — " said Bobby Denton. "Do you remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy?" "Yes!" cried the Love Crusaders. "Three! — " said Bobby Denton. "Do you take the name of the Lord thy God in vain?" "No!" cried the Love Crusaders. "Two! — " said Bobby Denton. "Do you make any graven images?" "No!" cried the Love Crusaders. "One! — " cried Bobby Denton. "Do you put any gods before the one true Lord thy God?" "No!" cried the Love Crusaders. "Blast off!" shouted Bobby Denton joyfully. "Paradise, here we come! Blast off, children, and Amen!"
"Things fly this way and that, my boy," he said, "with or without messages. It's chaos, and no mistake, for the Universe is just being born. It's the great becoming that makes the light and the heat and the motion, and bangs you from hither to yon.
"Tell us!" shouted a man, and he was merely fed up — not enraged. "We've got a right!" shouted a woman. She showed her two fine children to Constant. Another woman told Constant what it was the crowd felt it had a right to. "We've got a right to know what's going on!" she cried. The riot, then, was an exercise in science and theology — a seeking after clues by the living as to what life was all about.
"Man — you must have some kind of guardian angel — lets you keep cool as a cucumber, no matter what," said the chauffeur admiringly. This comment interested Constant, for it described well his attitude in the midst of the mob. He took the comment at first as an analogy — as a poetic description of his mood. A man who had a guardian angel would certainly have felt just as Constant had — "Yes, suh!" said the chauffeur. "Sumpin' sure must be lookin' out for you!" Then it hit Constant: This was exactly the case. Until that moment of truth, Constant had looked upon his Newport adventure as one more drug-induced hallucination — as one more peyotl party — vivid, novel, entertaining, and of no consequence whatsoever. The little door had been a dreamy touch . . . the dry fountain another . . . and the huge painting of the all white touch-me-not little girl with the all white pony . . . and the chimney-like room under the spiral staircase . . . and the photograph of the three sirens on Titan . . . and Rumfoord's prophecies . . . and the discomfiture of Beatrice Rumfoord at the top of the stairs . . . Malachi Constant broke into a cold sweat. His knees threatened to buckle and his eyelids came unhinged. He was finally understanding that every bit of it had been real! He had been calm in the midst of the mob because he knew he wasn't going to die on Earth. Something was looking out for him, all right.
"Unusual first name you got, Mr. Rowley," said the pilot. "Beg your pardon?" said Constant nauseously. He was looking through the plastic dome of the cockpit cover — looking up into the evening sky. He was wondering if there could possibly be eyes up there, eyes that could see everything he did. And if there were eyes up there, and they wanted him to do certain things, go certain places — how could they make him? Oh God — but it looked thin and cold up there! "I said you've got an unusual first name," said the pilot. "What name's that?" said Constant, who had forgotten the foolish first name he had chosen for his disguise. "Jonah," said the pilot.
"I just wish we could go out to the chrono-synclastic infundibula together," said Rumfoord. "So you could see for once what I was talking about. All I can say is that my failure to warn you about the stock-market crash is as much a part of the natural order as Halley's Comet — and it makes an equal amount of sense to rage against either one." "You're saying you have no character, and no sense of responsibility toward me," said Beatrice. "I'm sorry to put it that way, but it's the truth." Rumfoord rocked his head back and forth. "A truth — but, oh God, what a punctual truth," he said.
"Rebuttal — a punctual word if there ever was one," said Rumfoord. "I say this, and then you rebut me, then I rebut you, then somebody else comes in and rebuts us both." He shuddered. "What a nightmare where everybody gets in line to rebut each other."
"Look," said Rumfoord, "life for a punctual person is like a roller coaster." He turned to shiver his hands in her face. "All kinds of things are going to happen to you! Sure," he said, "I can see the whole roller coaster you're on. And sure — I could give you a piece of paper that would tell you about every dip and turn, warn you about every bogeyman that was going to pop out at you in the tunnels. But that wouldn't help you any." "I don't see why not," said Beatrice. "Because you'd still have to take the roller-coaster ride," said Rumford. "I didn't design the roller coaster, I don't own it, and I don't say who rides and who doesn't. I just know what it's shaped like."
"Look forward to being really in love for the first time, Bea," said Rumford. "Look forward to behaving aristocratically without any outward proofs of your aristocracy. Look forward to having nothing but the dignity and intelligence and tenderness that God gave you — look forward to taking those materials and nothing else, and making something exquisite with them."
"A butt like two beebees," Malachi Constant's father Noel had said of Fern. "Ransom K. Fern is like a camel who has burned up both his humps, and now he's burning up everything else but his hair and eyeballs."
Fern read two books a day. It has been said that Aristotle was the last man to be familiar with the whole of his own culture. Ransom K. Fern had made an impressive attempt to equal Aristotle's achievement. He had been somewhat less successful than Aristotle in perceiving patterns in what he knew. The intellectual mountain had labored to produce a philosophical mouse — and Fern was the first to admit that it was a mouse, and a mangy mouse at that. As Fern expressed the philosophy conversationally, in its simplest terms: "You go up to a man, and you say, 'How are things going, Joe?' And he says, 'Oh, fine, fine — couldn't be better.' And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn't be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody's having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much." This philosophy did not sadden him. It did not make him brood. It made him heartlessly watchful. It helped in business, too — for it let Fern assume automatically that the other fellow was far weaker and far more bored than he seemed.
The first sentence in Genesis, as some people may know, is: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Noel Constant wrote the sentence in capital letters, put periods between the letters, divided the letters into pairs, rendering the sentence as follows: "I.N., T.H., E.B., E.G., I.N., N.I., N.G., G.O., D.C., R.E., A.T., E.D., T.H., E.H., E.A., V.E., N.A., N.D., T.H., E.E., A.R., T.H." And then he looked for corporations with those initials, and bought shares in them. His rule at the beginning was that he would own shares in only one corporation at a time, would invest his whole nest-egg in it, and would sell the instant the value of his shares had doubled.
"Mr. Constant," he said, "right now you're as easy for the Bureau of Internal Revenue to watch as a man on a street corner selling apples and pears. But just imagine how hard you would be to watch if you had a whole office building jammed to the rafters with industrial bureaucrats — men who lose things and use the wrong forms and create new forms and demand everything in quintuplicate, and who understand perhaps a third of what is said to them; who habitually give misleading answers in order to gain time in which to think, who make decisions only when forced to, and who then cover their tracks; who make perfectly honest mistakes in addition and subtraction, who call meetings whenever they feel lonely, who write memos whenever they feel unloved; men who never throw anything away unless they think it could get them fired. A single industrial bureaucrat, if he is sufficiently vital and nervous, should be able to create a ton of meaningless papers a year for the Bureau of Internal Revenue to examine. In the Magnum Opus Building, we will have thousands of them! And you and I can have the top two stories, and you can go on keeping track of what's really going on the way you do now."
The detail in the furnishings of Room 223 that interested young Malachi so was a photograph of himself. It was a photograph of himself at the age of three — a photograph of a sweet, pleasant, game little boy on an ocean beach. It was thumbtacked to the wall. It was the only picture in the room. Old Noel saw young Malachi looking at the picture, and was confused and embarrassed by the whole thing about fathers and sons. He ransacked his mind for something good to say, and found almost nothing.
That is when I started the business with the Bible and you know what happened after that. It looked as though somebody or something wanted me to own the whole planet even though I was as good as dead. I kept my eyes open for some kind of signal that would tell me what it was all about but there wasn't any signal. I just went on getting richer and richer. And then your mother sent me that picture of you on the beach and the way you looked at me out of that picture made me think maybe you were what all the big money buildup was for. I decided I would die without ever seeing any sense to it and maybe you would be the one who would all of a sudden see everything clear as a bell. I tell you even a half-dead man hates to be alive and not be able to see any sense to it. The reason I told Ransom K. Fern to give you this letter only if your luck turned bad is that nobody thinks or notices anything as long as his luck is good. Why should he? So have a look around for me, boy. And if you go broke and somebody comes along with a crazy pro position my advice is to take it. You might just learn something when you're in a mood to learn something. The only thing I ever learned was that some people are lucky and other people aren't and not even a graduate of the Harvard Business School can say why.
A small, low-flying, fast-flying moon sailed in the violet sky overhead. Unk didn't know why he thought so, but he thought the moon was moving too fast. It didn't seem right. And the sky, he thought, should be blue instead of violet. Unk felt cold, too, and he longed for more warmth. The unending cold seemed as wrong, as unfair, somehow, as the fast moon and the violet sky.
(71.) Unk, old friend — almost everything I know for sure has come from fighting the pain from my antenna, said the letter to Unk. Whenever I start to turn my head and look at something, and the pain comes, I keep turning my head anyway, because I know I am going to see something I'm not supposed to see. Whenever I ask a question, and the pain comes, I know I have asked a really good question. Then I break the question into little pieces, and I ask the pieces of the questions. Then I get answers to the pieces, and then I put the answers all together and get an answer to the big question.
His ship was powered, and the Martian war effort was powered, by a phenomenon known as UWTB, or the Universal Will to Become. UWTB is what makes universes out of nothingness — that makes nothingness insist on becoming somethingness.
"Both the man and his mate were frequent visitors. to the psychiatric wards of their respective hospitals. And it is perhaps food for thought," said Rumford, "that this supremely frustrated man was the only Martian to write a philosophy, and that this supremely self-frustrating woman was the only Martian to write a poem."
The person chiefly responsible for the technological triumphs of the Martian suicide was Salo, Rumfoord's friend on Titan. Salo was a messenger from the planet Tralfamadore in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Salo had technological know-how from a civilization that was millions of Earthling years old. Salo had a space ship that was crippled — but, even in its crippled condition, it was by far the most marvelous space ship that the Solar System had ever seen. His crippled ship, stripped of luxury features, was the prototype of all the ships of Mars. While Salo himself was not a very good engineer, he was none the less able to measure every part of his ship, and to draw up the plans for its Martian descendants. Most important of all — Salo had in his possession a quantity of the most powerful conceivable source of energy, UWTB, or the Universal Will to Become. Salo generously donated half of his supply of UWTB to the suicide of Mars.
He wished to change the World for the better by means of the great and unforgettable suicide of Mars. As he says in his Pocket History of Mars: "Any man who would change the World in a significant way must have showmanship, a genial willingness to shed other people's blood, and a plausible new religion to introduce during the brief period of repentance and horror that usually follows bloodshed.
Rumfoord had that magnificently-led few on Mars — and he was their leader. He had showmanship. He was genially willing to shed the blood of others. He had a plausible new religion to introduce at the war's end. And he had methods for prolonging the period of repentance and horror that would follow the war. These methods were variations on one theme: That Earth's glorious victory over Mars had been a tawdry butchery of virtually unarmed saints, saints who had waged feeble war on Earth in order to weld the peoples of that planet into a monolithic Brotherhood of Man.
"The name of the new religion," said Rumfoord, "is The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. "The flag of that church will be blue and gold," said Rumfoord. "These words will be written on that flag in gold letters on a blue field: Take Care of the People, and God Almighty Will Take Care of Himself. "The two chief teachings of this religion are these," said Rumfoord: "Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God.
"The teachings of this religion will seem subtle and confusing at first," said Rumfoord. "But they will become beautiful and crystal clear as time goes by. "As a presently confusing beginning," said Rumfoord, "I shall tell you a parable: "Once upon a time, luck arranged things so that a baby named Malachi Constant was born the richest child on Earth. On the same day, luck arranged things so that a blind grandmother stepped on a rollerskate at the head of a flight of cement stairs, a policeman's horse stepped on an organ- grinder's monkey, and a paroled bank robber found a postage stamp worth nine hundred dollars in the bottom of a trunk in his attic. I ask you — is luck the hand of God?
The planet Mercury sings like a crystal goblet. It sings all the time. One side of Mercury faces the Sun. That side has always faced the Sun. That side is a sea of white-hot. dust. The other side faces the nothingness of space eternal. That side has always faced the nothingness of space eternal. That side is a forest of giant blue-white crystals, aching cold. It is the tension between the hot hemisphere of day-without-end and the cold hemisphere of night-without-end that makes Mercury sing.
They have weak powers of telepathy. The messages they are capable of transmitting and receiving are almost as monotonous as the song of Mercury. They have only two possible messages. The first is an automatic response to the second, and the second is an automatic response to the first. 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.
In the beginning, God became the Heaven and the Earth . . . And God said, 'Let Me be light,' and He was light.
"I don't know what's going on," said Boaz in his thoughts, "and I'm probably not smart enough to understand if somebody was to explain it to me. All I know is we're being tested somehow, by somebody or some thing a whole lot smarter than us, and all I can do is be friendly and keep calm and try and have a nice time till it's over." Boaz nodded. "That's my philosophy, friends," he said to the harmoniums stuck to him. "And if I'm not mistaken, that's yours, too. I reckon that's how come we hit it off so good."
"I found me a place where I can do good without doing any harm, and I can see I'm doing good, and them I'm doing good for know I'm doing it, and they love me, Unk, as best they can. I found me a home. "And when I die down here some day," said Boaz, "I'm going to be able to say to myself, 'Boaz — you made millions of lives worth living. Ain't nobody ever spread more joy. You ain't got an enemy in the Universe.'" Boaz became for himself the affectionate Mama and Papa he'd never had. "'You go to sleep now,'" he said to himself, imagining himself on a stone deathbed in the caves. "'You're a good boy, Boaz,'" he said. "'Good night.'
It was a Tuesday afternoon. It was springtime in the northern hemisphere of Earth. Earth was green and watery. The air of earth was good to breathe, as fattening as cream. The purity of the rains that fell on Earth could be tasted. The taste of purity was daintily tart. Earth was warm. The surface of Earth heaved and seethed in fecund restlessness. Earth was most fertile where the most death was.
"'I am not your father,'" said Redwine. "'Rather call me brother. But I am not your brother. Rather call me son. But I am not your son. Rather call me a dog. But I am not your dog. Rather call me a flea on your dog. But I am not a flea. Rather call me a germ on a flea on your dog. As a germ on a flea on your dog, I am eager to serve you in any way I can, just as you are willing to serve God Almighty, Creator of the Universe.'"
"What happened to you?" said the congregation. Unk shook his head vaguely. He could think of no apt condensation of his adventures for the obviously ritual mood. Something great was plainly expected of him. He was not up to greatness. He exhaled noisily, letting the congregation know that he was sorry to fail them with his colorlessness. "I was a victim of a series of accidents," he said. He shrugged. "As are we all," he said.
Let it be emphasized here that, passionately fond as Rumfoord was of great spectacles, he never gave in to the temptation to declare himself God or something a whole lot like God. His worst enemies admit that. Dr. Maurice Rosenau, in his Pan-Galactic Humbug or Three Billion Dupes says: Winston Niles Rumfoord, the interstellar Pharisee, Tartufe, and Cagliostro, has taken pains to declare that he is not God Almighty, that he is not a close relative of God Almighty, and that he has received no plain instructions from God Almighty. To these words of the Master of Newport we can say Amen! And may we add that Rumfoord is so far from being a relative or agent of God Almighty as to make all communication with God Almighty Himself impossible so long as Rumfoord is around!
"Something went wrong," said the Space Wanderer. He sounded apologetic, as though the series of misfortunes were somehow his own fault. "A lot of things went wrong." "Have you ever considered the possibility," said Rumfoord, "that everything went absolutely right?"
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 — "
"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.
Once upon a time on Tralfamadore there were creatures who weren't anything like machines. They weren't dependable. They weren't efficient. They weren't predictable. They weren't durable. And these poor creatures were obsessed by the idea that everything that existed had to have a purpose, and that some purposes were higher than others. These creatures spent most of their time trying to find out what their purpose was. And every time they found out what seemed to be a purpose of themselves, the purpose seemed so low that the creatures were filled with disgust and shame. And, rather than serve such a low purpose, the creatures would make a machine to serve it. This left the creatures free to serve higher purposes. But whenever they found a higher purpose, the purpose still wasn't high enough. So machines were made to serve higher purposes, too. And the machines did everything so expertly that they were finally given the job of finding out what the highest purpose of the creatures could be. The machines reported in all honesty that the creatures couldn't really be said to have any purpose at all. The creatures thereupon began slaying each other, because they hated purposeless things above all else. And they discovered that they weren't even very good at slaying. So they turned that job over to the machines, too. And the machines finished up the job in less time than it takes to say, "Tralfamadore."
The Earthlings behaved at all times as though there were a big eye in the sky — as though that big eye were ravenous for entertainment. The big eye was a glutton for great theater. The big eye was indifferent as to whether the Earthling shows were comedy, tragedy, farce, satire, athletics, or vaudeville. Its demand, which Earthings apparently found as irresistible as gravity, was that the shows be great. The demand was so powerful that Earthlings did almost nothing but perform for it, night and day — and even in their dreams. The big eye was the only audience that Earthlings really cared about. The fanciest performances that Salo had seen bad been put on by Earthlings who were terribly alone. The imagined big eye was their only audience.
"Tralfamadore," said Rumfoord bitterly, "reached into the Solar System, picked me up, and used me like a handy-dandy potato peeler!"
"No, no — no pity, please," said Rumfoord, stepping back, afraid of being touched. "It's a very good thing, really. I'll be seeing a lot of new things, a lot of new creatures." He tried to smile. "One gets tired, you know, being caught up in the monotonous clockwork of the Solar System." He laughed harshly. "After all," he said, "it isn't as though I were dying or something. Everything that ever was always will be, and everything that ever will be always was." He shook his head quickly, and cast away a tear he hadn't known was on his eyelid.
An explosion on the Sun had separated man and dog. A Universe schemed in mercy would have kept man and dog together. The Universe inhabited by Winston Niles Rumfoord and his dog was not schemed in mercy. Kazak had been sent ahead of his master on the great mission to nowhere and nothing.
"I am not dying," said Rumfoord. "I am merely taking my leave of the Solar System. And I am not even doing that. In the grand, in the timeless, in the chrono-synclastic infundibulated way of looking at things, I shall always be here. I shall always be wherever I've been. "I'm honeymooning with you still, Beatrice," he said. "I'm talking to you still in a little room under the stairway in Newport, Mr. Constant. Yes — and playing peek-a-boo in the caves of Mercury with you and Boaz. And Chrono — " he said, "I'm watching you still as you play German batball so well on the iron playground of Mars." He groaned. It was a tiny groan — and so sad. The sweet, mild air of Titan carried the tiny groan away. "Whatever we've said, friends, we're saying still — such as it was, such as it is, such as it will be," said Rumfoord. The tiny groan came again. Rumfoord watched it leave as though it were a smoke ring. "There is something you should know about life in the Solar System," he said. "Being chrono- synclastic infundibulated, I've known about it all along. It is, none the less, such a sickening thing that I've thought about it as little as possible. "The sickening thing is this: "Everything that every Earthling has ever done has been warped by creatures on a planet one- hundred-and-fifty thousand light years away. The name of the planet is Tralfamadore.
"There it is — friend," he said to his memory of Rumfoord, "and much consolation may it give you, Skip. Much pain it cost your old friend Salo. In order to give it to you — even too late — your old friend Salo had to make war against the core of his being, against the very nature of being a machine. "You asked the impossible of a machine," said Salo, "and the machine complied. "The machine is no longer a machine," said Salo. "The machine's contacts are corroded, his bearings fouled, his circuits shorted, and his gears stripped. His mind buzzes and pops like the mind of an Earthling — fizzes and overheats with thoughts of love, honor, dignity, rights, accomplishment, integrity, independence — " Old Salo picked up the message again from Rumfoord's contour chair. It was written on a thin square of aluminum. The message was a single dot. "Would you like to know how I have been used, how my life has been wasted?" he said. "Would you like to know what the message is that I have been carrying for almost half a million Earthling years — the message I am supposed to carry for eighteen million more years?" He held out the square of aluminum in a cupped foot. "A dot," he said. "A single dot," he said. "The meaning of a dot in Tralfamadorian," said Old Salo, "is — "Greetings." The little machine from Tralfamadore, having delivered this message to himself, to Constant, to Beatrice, and to Chrono over a distance of one hundred and fifty thousand light years, bounded abruptly out of the courtyard and onto the beach outside. He killed himself out there. He took himself apart and threw his parts in all directions.
It was all so sad. But it was all so beautiful, too.
"The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody," she said, "would be to not be used for anything by anybody."
"I miss her," he said. "You finally fell in love, I see," said Salo. "Only an Earthling year ago," said Constant. "It took us that long to realize that a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."
On the trip back to Earth, Salo suspected that he had made a tragic mistake in suggesting to Constant that he return to Earth. He had begun to suspect this when Constant insisted on being taken to Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.A.
"You are tired, so very tired, Space Wanderer, Malachi, Unk," said Salo. "Stare at the faintest star, Earthling, and think how heavy your limbs are growing." "Heavy," said Constant. "You are going to die some day, Unk," said Salo. "Sorry, but it's true." "True," said Constant. "Don't be sorry." "When you know you are dying, Space Wanderer," said Salo hypnotically, "a wonderful thing will happen to you." He then described to Constant the happy things that Constant would imagine before his life flickered out. It would be a post-hypnotic illusion.
"Good luck," whispered Salo. "We don't say that down here," whispered Constant. Salo winked. "I'm not from down here," he whispered. He looked around at the perfectly white world, felt the wet kisses of the snowflakes, pondered hidden meanings in the pale yellow streetlights that shone in a world so whitely asleep. "Beautiful," he whispered.
Salo had hypnotized him so that he would imagine, as he died, that he saw his best and only friend, Stony Stevenson. As the snow drifted over Constant, he imagined that the clouds opened up, letting through a sunbeam, a sunbeam all for him. A golden space ship encrusted with diamonds came skimming down the sunbeam, landed in the untouched snow of the street. Out stepped a stocky, red-headed man with a big cigar. He was young. He wore the uniform of the Martian Assault Infantry, Unk's old outfit. "Hello, Unk," he said. "Get in." "Get in?" said Constant. "Who are you?" "Stony Stevenson, Unk. You don't recognize me?" "Stony?" said Constant. "That's you, Stony?" "Who else could stand the bloody pace?" said Stony. He laughed. "Get in," he said. "And go where?" said Constant. "Paradise," said Stony. "What's Paradise like?" said Constant. "Everybody's happy there forever," said Stony, "or as long as the bloody Universe holds together. Get in, Unk. Beatrice is already there, waiting for you." "Beatrice?" said Unk, getting into the space ship. Stony closed the airlocks, pressed the on button. "We're — we're going to Paradise now?" said Constant. "I — I'm going to get into Paradise?" "Don't ask me why, old sport," said Stony, "but somebody up there likes you."