Cat's Cradle: Chapters 105–127

I was compelled to canter down the stone spiral staircase in search of a bathroom. I availed myself of one adjacent to “Papa’s” suite.

I was compelled to canter down the stone spiral staircase in search of a bathroom. I availed myself of one adjacent to “Papa’s” suite.

Dr. von Koenigswald slipped the tholepin of an oarlock from its socket in the gunwale of the gilded dinghy.

Dr. von Koenigswald, the humanitarian with the terrible deficit of Auschwitz in his kindliness account, was the second to die of ice-nine.

“General,” I told Frank, “that must be one of the most cogent statements made by a major general this year. As my technical advisor, how do you recommend that we, as you put it so well, ‘clean up this mess’?”

“A funeral pyre!” he cried, really pleased with himself. “I’ll have a great big funeral pyre built out by the hook, and we’ll have the bodies and the bed carried out and thrown on.”

His glassy smile went away and he turned sneeringly nasty for a moment—a moment in which he told her with all possible contempt, “I bought myself a job, just the way you bought yourself a tomcat husband...”

Somewhere, in that violet, velvet oblivion, I heard Angela say something to me.

The tale went like this: On that fateful Christmas Eve, Angela went into the village for Christmas tree lights, and Newt and Frank went for a walk on the lonely winter beach, where they met a black Labrador retriever.

But the bodies still had to be carried to the funeral pyre. We decided that this should be done with pomp, that we should put it off until the ceremonies in honor of the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy were over.

I’m not quite sure why we hid him. I think it must have been to simplify the tableau.

The rest of his speech was in American English. He had a written speech with him—fustian and bombast, I imagine. But, when he found he was going to speak to so few, and to fellow Americans for the most part, he put the formal speech away.

Perhaps Minton had inhaled too much acetone, or perhaps he had an inkling of what was about to happen to everybody but me.

They were going to shoot the effigies of what H. Lowe Crosby had called “practically every enemy that freedom ever had.”

The conversation went very fast, and new voices entered in. They were the voices of the castle’s timbers lamenting that their burdens were becoming too great.

Only my complacent Mona crossed the crack with a simple step.

The crack gnashed shut; opened wider, leeringly. Still trapped on the canted deathtrap were H. Lowe Crosby and his Hazel and Ambassador Horlick Minton and his Claire.

Our arms were now extended imploringly to the Mintons.

Out they went; then down they went in a cataclysmic rush, were gone!

An enormous worm with a violet mouth was directly overhead. It buzzed like bees. It swayed. With obscene peristalsis, it ingested air.

At least we could think. And one thing I thought was that the creature comforts of the dungeon did nothing to mitigate the basic fact of oubliation.

The stability was of a wildly dynamic sort, for the tornadoes were as numerous as ever, and tornadoes remain numerous to this day. But their mouths no longer gobbled and gnashed at the earth. The mouths in all directions were discretely withdrawn to an altitude of perhaps a half of a mile. And their altitude varied so little from moment to moment that San Lorenzo might have been protected by a tornado-proof sheet of glass.

We let three more days go by, making certain that the tornadoes had become as sincerely reticent as they seemed.

One thing did catch my eye: a lavender corona about the queer plug that was the peak on the hump of Mount McCabe.

I joined her at the top of the ridge. She was looking down raptly into a broad, natural bowl.

Mona and I approached the clearing gingerly, avoiding the morbid statuary.

Mona and I approached the clearing gingerly, avoiding the morbid statuary.

These people made a captive of the spurious holy man named Bokonon. They brought him here, placed him at their center, and commanded him to tell them exactly what God Almighty was up to and what they should now do.

The mountebank told them that God was surely trying to kill them, possibly because He was through with them, and that they should have the good manners to die.

They had moved out the moment the winds had abated, while Mona and I had stayed underground for another three days.

“Save our soullllls,” Hazel intoned, singing along with the transmitter as she sewed, “save our soulllllls.”

Several times I had offered the obvious notion that God had taught them. And I knew from onerous experience that he would neither reject nor accept this theory.

I recalled a thing I had read about the aboriginal Tasmanians, habitually naked persons who, when encountered by white men in the seventeenth century, were strangers to agriculture, animal husbandry, architecture of any sort, and possibly even fire.

I recalled a thing I had read about the aboriginal Tasmanians, habitually naked persons who, when encountered by white men in the seventeenth century, were strangers to agriculture, animal husbandry, architecture of any sort, and possibly even fire.

But Bokonon had been there, too, had written a whole book about Utopias, The Seventh Book, which he called “Bokonon’s Republic.” In that book are these ghastly aphorisms: The hand that stocks the drug stores rules the world.