Cat's Cradle: Chapters 1–28

Conveyances and motives, both conventional and bizarre, have been provided.

In the autobiographical section of The Books of Bokonon he writes a parable on the folly of pretending to discover, to understand: I once knew an Episcopalian lady in Newport, Rhode Island, who asked me to design and build a doghouse for her Great Dane. The lady claimed to understand God and His Ways of Working perfectly.

I do not intend that this book be a tract on behalf of Bokononism.

“Since your late father is generally recognized as having been one of the chief creators of the bomb, I would very much appreciate any anecdotes you might care to give me of life in your father’s house on the day the bomb was dropped...."

“I am sorry to say that I don’t know as much about your illustrious family as I should, and so don’t know whether you have brothers and sisters. If you do have brothers and sisters, I should like very much to have their addresses so that I can send similar requests to them...."

Just give me the bare bones of your story.

Father, as you probably know, spent practically his whole professional life working for the Research Laboratory of the General Forge and Foundry Company in Ilium.

Frank kept it hidden in what he called his ‘wall safe’ in his bedroom. Actually, it wasn’t a safe but just an old stove flue with a tin lid.

Angela was one of the unsung heroines of the atom bomb, incidentally, and I don’t think the story has ever been told.

One week after that, little Zinka presented herself at the Russian Embassy. She said Americans were too materialistic. She said she wanted to go back home.

I said I wasn’t interested, and she was bright enough to say that she wasn’t really interested either. As things turned out, we had both overestimated our apathies, but not by much.

Breed was a pink old man, very prosperous, beautifully dressed. His manner was civilized, optimistic, capable, serene. I, by contrast, felt bristly, diseased, cynical.

Breed was a pink old man, very prosperous, beautifully dressed. His manner was civilized, optimistic, capable, serene. I, by contrast, felt bristly, diseased, cynical.

I thought the worst of everyone, and I knew some pretty sordid things about Dr. Asa Breed, things Sandra had told me.

“Just about where the Research Laboratory is now was the old stockade. That was where they held the public hangings, too, for the whole county.”

“There was one man they hanged here in 1782 who had murdered twenty-six people. I’ve often thought somebody ought to do a book about him sometime. George Minor Moakely. He sang a song on the scaffold. He sang a song he’d composed for the occasion.”

The stop-and-go signs, garish ghosts in the sleet, went through their irrelevant tomfoolery again and again, telling the glacier of automobiles what to do.

When we joined the mainstream of mankind in the company street, a woman behind us wished Dr. Breed a merry Christmas. Dr. Breed turned to peer benignly into the sea of pale pies, and identified the greeter as one Miss Francine Pefko.

“Not me.” Miss Pefko wasn’t used to chatting with someone as important as Dr. Breed and she was embarrassed. Her gait was affected, becoming stiff and chickenlike.

“Well...,” rumbled Dr. Breed expansively, “how do you like us, now that you’ve been with us—how long? Almost a year?”

She turned to examine Dr. Breed, looking at him with helpless reproach. She hated people who thought too much.

“If there’s something you don’t understand,” urged Dr. Breed, “ask Dr. Horvath to explain it. He’s very good at explaining.” He turned to me. “Dr. Hoenikker used to say that any scientist who couldn’t explain to an eight-year-old what he was doing was a charlatan.”

Ceremoniously, Dr. Breed put his arm around me without actually touching me, indicating to the guards that I was under his august protection and control.

“I’m sorry to hear a member of the Laboratory family using that brackish, medieval word,” said Dr. Breed. “Every one of those exhibits explains itself. They’re designed so as not to be mystifying. They’re the very antithesis of magic.”

“I’m sorry to hear a member of the Laboratory family using that brackish, medieval word,” said Dr. Breed. “Every one of those exhibits explains itself. They’re designed so as not to be mystifying. They’re the very antithesis of magic.”

Miss Naomi Faust was a merry, desiccated old lady. I suppose she had served Dr. Breed for almost all his life, and her life, too.

“The Marines, after almost two-hundred years of wallowing in mud, were sick of it,” said Dr. Breed. “The general, as their spokesman, felt that one of the aspects of progress should be that Marines no longer had to fight in mud.”

“What the general had in mind was a little pill or a little machine. Not only were the Marines sick of mud, they were sick of carrying cumbersome objects. They wanted something little to carry for a change.”

“In his playful way, and all his ways were playful, Felix suggested that there might be a single grain of something—even a microscopic grain—that could make infinite expanses of muck, marsh, swamp, creeks, pools, quicksand, and mire as solid as this desk.”

Dr. Breed was interrupted by whispers in his outer office, whispers loud and portentous.

I was surprised and mawkishly heartbroken. I am always moved by that seldom-used treasure, the sweetness with which most girls can sing.

“Their trucks and tanks and howitzers are wallowing,” he complained, “sinking in stinking miasma and ooze.”

Dr. Hoenikker had only to go calling on Laboratory neighbors—borrowing this and that, making a winsome neighborhood nuisance of himself—until, so to speak, he had baked his last batch of brownies.

At any given time a karass actually has two wampeters—one waxing in importance, one waning.

At any given time a karass actually has two wampeters—one waxing in importance, one waning.

She gave me a frank and interesting reply, and a piquant smile to go with it.

There was a toy gyroscope, wound with string, ready to whirr and balance itself.

“I don’t think he ever answered a letter,” mused Miss Faust. “People had to get him on the telephone or come to see him if they wanted an answer.”

I found that the picture was of an humble little war memorial in front of a small-town courthouse.

“Hello, fellow anthropoids and lily pads and paddlewheels,” he said to Miss Faust and me. “Yes, yes!”