- •Vice-president in Charge of Volcanoes 9
- •I thought the worst of everyone, and I knew some pretty sordid things about Dr. Asa Breed, things Sandra had told me.
- •I asked Dr. Breed how many people were trying to reach the General Forge and Foundry Company by eight o'clock, and he told me thirty thousand.
- •I smiled at one of the guards. He did not smile back. There was nothing funny about national security, nothing at all.
- •I was surprised and mawkishly heartbroken. I am always moved by that seldom-used treasure, the sweetness with which most girls can sing.
- •I asked Marvin Breed if he'd known Emily Hoenikker, the wife of Felix; the mother of Angela, Frank, and Newt; the woman under that monstrous shaft.
- •I admitted I was.
- •If you wish to study a _granfalloon_,
- •I talked to the Mintons about the legal status of Franklin Hoenikker, who was, after all, not only a big shot in "Papa" Monzano's government, but a fugitive from United States justice.
- •I was so gay and mean,
- •I looked up _Monzano, Mona Aamons_ in the index, and was told by the index to see Aamons, Mona.
- •I was in the bar with Newt and h. Lowe Crosby and a couple of strangers, when San Lorenzo was sighted. Crosby was talking about pissants. "You know what I mean by a pissant?"
- •I looked for Mona, found that she was still serene and had withdrawn to the rail of the reviewing stand. Death, if there was going to be death, did not alarm her.
- •Irrelevantly, I found that I had to know at once who the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy had been.
- •I asked the driver who the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy had been. The boulevard we were going down, I saw, was called the Boulevard of the Hundred Martyrs to Democracy.
- •I undertook to explain the deeper significance of the cat's cradle, since Newt seemed disinclined to go through that song and dance again.
- •Is a form of treason.
- •I thought at first that this was a fairly comical suggestion. But then, from Angela's reaction, I learned that the suggestion was serious and practical.
- •I told Angela and Newt about it.
- •I looked at Mona, meltingly, and I thought that I had never needed anyone as much as I needed her.
- •I laughed.
- •Inwardly, I agreed to become the next President of San Lorenzo.
- •I got off the floor, sat in a chair, and started putting my shoes and socks back on.
- •I had stopped ruling. "I see you do," I said.
- •I See the Hook 95
- •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.
- •I did not drink the rum.
- •I asked who the caricaturist was and learned that he was Dr. Vox Humana, the Christian minister. He was at my elbow.
- •I turned to Castle the elder. "Sir, how does a man die when he's deprived of the consolations of literature?"
- •I'm not quite sure why we hid him. I think it must have been to simplify the tableau.
- •I supposed that the ceremonies might as well begin, and I told Frank to suggest to Ambassador Horlick Minton that he deliver his speech.
- •It separated me from my fellow men.
- •I made up a tune to go with that and I whistled it under my breath as I drove the bicycle that drove the fan that gave us air, good old air.
- •I Am Slow to Answer 121
- •I let my mind go blank. I closed my eyes. It was with deep, idiotic relief that I leaned on that fleshy, humid, barn-yard fool.
- •In the background of this cozy conversation were the nagging dah-dah-dahs and dit-dit-dits of an automatic sos transmitter Frank had made. It called for help both night and day.
- •I hated to see Hazel finishing the flag, because I was all balled up in her addled plans for it. She had the idea that I had agreed to plant the fool thing on the peak of Mount McCabe.
I got off the floor, sat in a chair, and started putting my shoes and socks back on.
"I suppose you--you perform--you do what we just did with--with other people?"
"_Boko-maru?_"
"_Boko-maru_."
"Of course."
"I don't want you to do it with anybody but me from now on," I declared.
Tears filled her eyes. She adored her promiscuity; was angered that I should try to make her feel shame. "I make people happy. Love is good, not bad."
"As your husband, I'll want all your love for myself."
She stared at me with widening eyes. "A _sin-wat!_"
"What was that?"
"A _sin-wat!_" she cried. "A man who wants all of somebody's love. That's very bad."
"In the case of marriage, I think it's a very good thing. It's the only thing."
She was still on the floor, and I, now with my shoes and socks back on, was standing. I felt very tall, though I'm not very tall; and I felt very strong, though I'm not very strong; and I was a respectful stranger to my own voice. My voice had a metallic authority that was new.
As I went on talking in ball-peen tones, it dawned on me what was happening, what was happening already. I was already starting to rule.
I told Mona that I had seen her performing a sort of vertical _boko-maru_ with a pilot on the reviewing stand shortly after my arrival. "You are to have nothing more to do with him," I told her. "What is his name?"
"I don't even know," she whispered. She was looking down now.
"And what about young Philip Castle?"
"You mean _boko-maru?_"
"I mean anything and everything. As I understand it, you two grew up together."
"Yes."
"Bokonon tutored you both?"
"Yes." The recollection made her radiant again.
"I suppose there was plenty of _boko-maruing_ in those days."
"Oh, yes!" she said happily.
"You aren't to see him any more, either. Is that clear?"
"No."
"No?"
"I will not marry a _sin-wat_." She stood. "Good-bye."
"Good-bye?" I was crushed.
"Bokonon tells us it is very wrong not to love everyone exactly the same. What does _your_ religion say?"
"I--I don't have one."
"I _do_."
I had stopped ruling. "I see you do," I said.
"Good-bye, man-with-no-religion." She went to the stone staircase.
"Mona . . ."
She stopped. "Yes?"
"Could I have your religion, if I wanted it?"
"Of course."
"I want it."
"Good. I love you."
"And I love you," I sighed.
The Highest Mountain 94
So I became betrothed at dawn to the most beautiful woman in the world. And I agreed to become the next President of San Lorenzo.
"Papa" wasn't dead yet, and it was Frank's feeling that I should get "Papa's" blessing, if possible. So, as _Borasisi_, the sun, came up, Frank and I drove to "Papa's" castle in a Jeep we commandeered from the troops guarding the next President.
Mona stayed at Frank's. I kissed her sacredly, and she went to sacred sleep.
Over the mountains Frank and I went, through groves of wild coffee trees, with the flamboyant sunrise on our right.
It was in the sunrise that the cetacean majesty of the highest mountain on the island, of Mount McCabe, made itself known to me. It was a fearful hump, a blue whale, with one queer stone plug on its back for a peak. In scale with a whale, the plug might have been the stump of a snapped harpoon, and it seemed so unrelated to the rest of the mountain that I asked Frank if it had been built by men.
He told me that it was a natural formation. Moreover, he declared that no man, as far as he knew, had ever been to the top of Mount McCabe.
"It _doesn't_ look very tough to climb," I commented. Save for the plug at the top, the mountain presented inclines no more forbidding than courthouse steps. And the plug itself, from a distance at any rate, seemed conveniently laced with ramps and ledges.
"Is it sacred or something?" I asked.
"Maybe it was once. But not since Bokonon."
"Then why hasn't anybody climbed it?"
"Nobody's felt like it yet."
"Maybe I'll climb it."
"Go ahead. Nobody's stopping you."
We rode in silence.
"What _is_ sacred to Bokononists?" I asked after a while.
"Not even God, as near as I can tell."
"Nothing?"
"Just one thing."
I made some guesses. "The ocean? The sun?"
"Man," said Frank. "That's all. Just man."