Cat's Cradle (18 page)

The castle was built according to the wish of Tum-bumwa, Emperor of San Lorenzo, a demented man, an escaped slave. Tum-bumwa was said to have found its design in a child’s picture book.

A gory book it must have been.

Just before we reached the palace gate the ruts carried us through a rustic arch made of two telephone poles and a beam that spanned them.

Hanging from the middle of the beam was a huge iron hook. There was a sign impaled on the hook.

“This hook,” the sign proclaimed, “is reserved for Bokonon himself.”

I turned to look at the hook again, and that thing of sharp iron communicated to me that I really was going to rule. I would chop down the hook!

And I flattered myself that I was going to be a firm, just, and kindly ruler, and that my people would prosper.

Fata Morgana.

Mirage!

F
RANK AND
I couldn’t get right in to see “Papa.” Dr. Schlichter von Koenigswald, the physician in attendance, muttered that we would have to wait about half an hour.

So Frank and I waited in the anteroom of “Papa’s” suite, a room without windows. The room was thirty feet square, furnished with several rugged benches and a card table. The card table supported an
electric fan. The walls were stone. There were no pictures, no decorations of any sort on the walls.

There were iron rings fixed to the wall, however, seven feet off the floor and at intervals of six feet. I asked Frank if the room had ever been a torture chamber.

He told me that it had, and that the manhole cover on which I stood was the lid of an oubliette.

There was a listless guard in the anteroom. There was also a Christian minister, who was ready to take care of “Papa’s” spiritual needs as they arose. He had a brass dinner bell and a hatbox with holes drilled in it, and a Bible, and a butcher knife—all laid out on the bench beside him.

He told me there was a live chicken in the hatbox. The chicken was quiet, he said, because he had fed it tranquilizers.

Like all San Lorenzans past the age of twenty-five, he looked at least sixty. He told me that his name was Dr. Vox Humana, that he was named after an organ stop that had struck his mother when San Lorenzo Cathedral was dynamited in 1923. His father, he told me without shame, was unknown.

I asked him what particular Christian sect he represented, and I observed frankly that the chicken and the butcher knife were novelties insofar as my understanding of Christianity went.

“The bell,” I commented, “I can understand how that might fit in nicely.”

He turned out to be an intelligent man. His doctorate, which he invited me to examine, was awarded by the Western Hemisphere University of the Bible of Little Rock, Arkansas. He made contact with the University through a classified ad in
Popular Mechanics
, he told me. He said that the motto of the University had become his own, and that it explained the chicken and the butcher knife. The motto of the University was this:

He said that he had had to feel his way along with Christianity, since Catholicism and Protestantism had been outlawed along with Bokononism.

“So, if I am going to be a Christian under those conditions, I have to make up a lot of new stuff.”

“Zo,” he said in dialect,
“yeff jy bam gong be Kretyeen hooner yoze kon-steez-yen, jy hap my yup oon lot nee stopf”
.

Dr. Schlichter von Koenigswald now came out of “Papa’s” suite, looking very German, very tired. “You can see ‘Papa’ now.”

“We’ll be careful not to tire him,” Frank promised.

“If you could kill him,” said Von Koenigswald, “I think he’d be grateful.”

“P
APA
” M
ONZANO
and his merciless disease were in a bed that was made of a golden dinghy—tiller, painter, oarlocks and all, all gilt. His bed was the lifeboat of Bokonon’s old schooner, the
Lady’s Slipper;
it was the lifeboat of the ship that had brought Bokonon and Corporal McCabe to San Lorenzo so long ago.

The walls of the room were white. But “Papa” radiated pain so hot and bright that the walls seemed bathed in angry red.

He was stripped from the waist up, and his glistening belly wall was knotted. His belly shivered like a luffing sail.

Around his neck hung a chain with a cylinder the size of a rifle cartridge for a pendant. I supposed that the cylinder contained some magic charm. I was mistaken. It contained a splinter of
ice-nine
.

“Papa” could hardly speak. His teeth chattered and his breathing was beyond control.

“Papa’s” agonized head was at the bow of the dinghy, bent back.

Mona’s xylophone was near the bed. She had apparently
tried to soothe “Papa” with music the previous evening.

“‘Papa’?” whispered Frank.

“Good-bye,” “Papa” gasped. His eyes were bugging, sightless.

“I brought a friend.”

“Good-bye.”

“He’s going to be the next President of San Lorenzo. He’ll be a much better president than I could be.”

“Ice!” “Papa” whimpered.

“He asks for ice,” said Von Koenigswald. “When we bring it, he does not want it.”

“Papa” rolled his eyes. He relaxed his neck, took the weight of his body from the crown of his head. And then he arched his neck again. “Does not matter,” he said, “who is President of …” He did not finish.

I finished for him. “San Lorenzo?”

“San Lorenzo,” he agreed. He managed a crooked smile. “Good luck!” he croaked.

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

“Doesn’t matter! Bokonon. Get Bokonon.”

I attempted a sophisticated reply to this last. I remembered that, for the joy of the people, Bokonon was always to be chased, was never to be caught. “I will get him.”

“Tell him …”

I leaned closer, in order to hear the message from “Papa” to Bokonon.

“Tell him I am sorry I did not kill him,” said “Papa.”

“I will.”

“You
kill him.”

“Yessir.”

“Papa” gained control enough of his voice to make it commanding. “I mean
really!”

I said nothing to that. I was not eager to kill anyone.

“He teaches the people lies and lies and lies. Kill him and teach the people truth.”

“Yessir.”

“You and Hoenikker, you teach them science.”

“Yessir, we will,” I promised.

“Science is magic that
works.”

He fell silent, relaxed, closed his eyes. And then he whispered, “Last rites.”

Von Koenigswald called Dr. Vox Humana in. Dr. Humana took his tranquilized chicken out of the hat-box, preparing to administer Christian last rites as he understood them.

“Papa” opened one eye. “Not you,” he sneered at Dr. Humana. “Get out!”

“Sir?” asked Dr. Humana.

“I am a member of the Bokononist faith,” “Papa” wheezed. “Get out, you stinking Christian.”

S
O
I
WAS PRIVILEGED
to see the last rites of the Bokononist faith.

We made an effort to find someone among the soldiers and the household staff who would admit that he knew the rites and would give them to “Papa.” We got no volunteers. That was hardly surprising, with a hook and an oubliette so near.

So Dr. von Koenigswald said that he would have a go at the job. He had never administered the rites before, but he had seen Julian Castle do it hundreds of times.

“Are you a Bokononist?” I asked him.

“I agree with one Bokononist idea. I agree that all religions, including Bokononism, are nothing but lies.”

“Will this bother you as a scientist,” I inquired, “to go through a ritual like this?”

“I am a very bad scientist. I will do anything to make a human being feel better, even if it’s unscientific. No scientist worthy of the name could say such a thing.”

And he climbed into the golden boat with “Papa.” He sat in the stern. Cramped quarters obliged him to have the golden tiller under one arm.

He wore sandals without socks, and he took these off. And then he rolled back the covers at the foot of the bed, exposing “Papa’s” bare feet. He put the soles of his feet against “Papa’s” feet, assuming the classical position for
boko-maru
.

“G
OTT MATE MUTT
,” crooned Dr. von Koenigswald.

“Dyot meet mat,”
echoed “Papa” Monzano.

“God made mud,” was what they’d said, each in his own dialect. I will here abandon the dialects of the litany.

“God got lonesome,” said Von Koenigswald.

“God got lonesome.”

“So God said to some of the mud, ‘Sit up!’”

“So God said to some of the mud, ‘Sit up!’”

“ ‘See all I’ve made,’ said God, ‘the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.’”

“ ‘See all I’ve made,’ said God, ‘the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.’”

“And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.”

“And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.”

“Lucky me, lucky mud.”

“Lucky me, lucky mud.” Tears were streaming down “Papa’s” cheeks.

“I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.”

“I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.”

“Nice going, God!”

“Nice going, God!” “Papa” said it with all his heart.

“Nobody but You could have done it, God! I certainly couldn’t have.”

“Nobody but You could have done it, God! I certainly couldn’t have.”

“I feel very unimportant compared to You.”

“I feel very unimportant compared to You.”

“The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around.”

“The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around.”

“I got so much, and most mud got so little.”

“I got so much, and most mud got so little.”

“Deng you vote da on-oh!”
cried Von Koenigswald.

“Tz-yenk voo vote lo yon-yo!”
wheezed “Papa.”

What they had said was, “Thank you for the honor!”

“Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.”

“Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.”

“What memories for mud to have!”

“What memories for mud to have!”

“What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!”

“What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!”

“I loved everything I saw!”

“I loved everything I saw!”

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

“I will go to heaven now.”

“I will go to heaven now.”

“I can hardly wait …”

“I can hardly wait …”

“To find out for certain what my
wampeter
was …”

“To find out for certain what my
wampeter
was …”

“And who was in my
karass
…”

“And who was in my
karass
…”

“And all the good things our
karass
did for you.”

“And all the good things our
karass
did for you.”

“Amen.”

“Amen.”

B
UT
“P
APA
”
DIDN’T DIE
and go to heaven—not then.

I asked Frank how we might best time the announcement of my elevation to the Presidency. He was no help, had no ideas; he left it all up to me.

“I thought you were going to back me up,” I complained.

“As far as anything
technical
goes.” Frank was prim about it. I wasn’t to violate his integrity as a technician; wasn’t to make him exceed the limits of his job.

“I see.”

“However you want to handle people is all right with me. That’s
your
responsibility.”

This abrupt abdication of Frank from all human affairs shocked and angered me, and I said to him, meaning to be satirical, “You mind telling me what, in a purely technical way, is planned for this day of days?”

I got a strictly technical reply. “Repair the power plant and stage an air show.”

“Good! So one of my first triumphs as President will be to restore electricity to my people.”

Frank didn’t see anything funny in that. He gave me a salute. “I’ll try, sir. I’ll do my best for you, sir. I can’t guarantee how long it’ll be before we get juice back.”

“That’s what I want—a juicy country.”

“I’ll do my best, sir.” Frank saluted me again.

“And the air show?” I asked. “What’s that?”

I got another wooden reply. “At one o’clock this afternoon, sir, six planes of the San Lorenzan Air Force will fly past the palace here and shoot at targets in the water. It’s part of the celebration of the Day of the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy. The American Ambassador also plans to throw a wreath into the sea.”

So I decided, tentatively, that I would have Frank announce my apotheosis immediately following the wreath ceremony and the air show.

“What do you think of that?” I said to Frank.

“You’re the boss, sir.”

“I think I’d better have a speech ready,” I said. “And there should be some sort of swearing-in, to make it look dignified, official.”

“You’re the boss, sir.” Each time he said those words they seemed to come from farther away, as though Frank were descending the rungs of a ladder into a deep shaft, while I was obliged to remain above.

And I realized with chagrin that my agreeing to be boss had freed Frank to do what he wanted to do
more than anything else, to do what his father had done: to receive honors and creature comforts while escaping human responsibilities. He was accomplishing this by going down a spiritual oubliette.

S
O
I
WROTE MY SPEECH
in a round, bare room at the foot of a tower. There was a table and a chair. And the speech I wrote was round and bare and sparsely furnished, too.