Summary (Critical Survey of Literature for Students)

Malachi Constant arrives at the Rumfoord estate to witness a materialization. Winston Niles Rumfoord, who is chrono­synclastic infundibula, scatters everywhere between the sun and Betelgeuse and appears various places sporadically. He is to materialize and Constant is invited to witness. Constant is a billionaire playboy who inherits his father Noel’s estate.

Rumfoord materializes and tells Constant that he, Constant, will eventually go to Mars, Mercury, back to Earth, then to Titan. He and Beatrice, Rumfoord’s wife, will have a child named Chrono. Chrono will pick up a good­luck piece on Mars and carry it to Titan. Beatrice and Constant are chary of their union. Constant sells the company that owns the only known transportation to Mars, which is a spaceship called The Whale, which Beatrice buys. This buying and selling, along with Constant’s fifty­six­day party, which ends with him giving away all his oil wells, ruins Constant financially, and Beatrice is likewise ruined financially.

Upon losing all his money, Constant is open for options. Secret agents from Mars recruit him for the Martian army. Beatrice is surreptitiously recruited. On the spaceship to Mars, Constant rapes Beatrice. When on Mars, they are separated and their memories are erased from their brains.

Constant begins as an officer but after eight years he is made a private and is nicknamed Unk. His first act after having his memory cleared out for the seventh time is to execute his best friend Stony Stevenson in front of ten thousand Martian soldiers. Before Unk strangles Stevenson, Stevenson manages to tell him, “Blue stone . . . Barrack twelve . . . letter.” Unk finds the stone and the letter. Written on it are things about Stevenson; about the antennas under the soldiers’ skulls, which make them do whatever the commanders want; about Beatrice and Chrono; and about the Martian army and its plans to make war on Earth. It informs Unk that Boaz, a private first class

in the army, does not have an antenna in his head and that he is the one who gives pain to everyone and controls everyone in Unk’s squad. The letter is signed by Unk.

The war on Earth is a complete disaster from the Martian point of view. Before boarding the spaceship, Unk deserts the army and finds Beatrice and Chrono. They do not know him or care about him. Unk is returned to his unit, where he and Boaz are put on a spaceship designed by Rumfoord to go to Mercury instead of Earth and thus Unk and Boaz miss the war.

Unk and Boaz are stranded deep in a cavern on Mercury where there is no life except for harmoniums, small creatures that live by eating vibrations. Boaz is especially attached to the harmoniums. He plays music from the ship’s tape collection, and he allows his favorite harmoniums to feed from his own pulse. Rumfoord occasionally arranges harmoniums on the walls of the caves to give Unk and Boaz messages. The final message is to turn the ship upside down and it will fly out. Boaz stays with the harmoniums and Unk travels on to Earth, where he is greeted as the Space Wanderer, the messiah of the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. Rumfoord knows of many events that will transpire in future times and prophesied that Unk will arrive on Earth, exactly as he does, and that when he is asked what happened to him he will reply, “I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.” As Unk does exactly what was forecast, the religion Rumfoord set up becomes even stronger, as the only one on Earth in which predictions actually came to pass.

Rumfoord stages an elaborate ceremony in which Unk is told by Rumfoord that he strangled Stevenson. This is Unk’s final blow, as he wished, since reading the message, to find his best friend. Rumfoord explains to Unk that he was Constant before becoming Unk and that Constant is the symbol of evil to the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. With Beatrice and Chrono, Unk is martyred and sent away in exile to live out his life on Titan.

Upon arrival in Titan, Rumfoord informs Salo, the Tralfamadorian machine long stranded, that the replacement part for his spaceship is now there, in the form of Chrono’s good­luck piece. Salo does not realize that the entire history of human life on

Earth is for his sake. Human life is made to exist by the Tralfamadorians, who are working to get Salo the replacement part as quickly as they can.

Rumfoord disappears and Beatrice moves into his home on Titan. Salo self­destructs and Constant lives in Salo’s spaceship. Chrono goes to live with the giant blue birds of Titan, the most noble creatures on the planet. Chrono’s final gesture to Constant and Beatrice is to show appreciation for them having given him life.

Beatrice dies and Salo comes back to life. Salo gives Constant a ride to Earth, where he dies on a street corner. His last thought is a posthypnotic illusion, placed in his mind by Salo, that makes him believe that Stevenson comes to greet him and take him to paradise.

Characters Discussed (Great Characters in Literature)

Malachi Constant

Malachi Constant, called Unk, the world’s richest and luckiest playboy, whose name

means “faithful messenger.” Having inherited from his father, Noel, a previously

infallible system for stock investment, Malachi is told by Winston Niles Rumfoord that

he will lose his money, marry Rumfoord’s wife (Beatrice), have a child, and move to

Saturn’s largest moon. Despite all of his efforts to the contrary, these events occur.

Lawsuits deplete his capital; he is impressed into the army of Mars and fitted with a

radio control; he rapes Mrs. Rumfoord while drunk; he engenders a son, Chrono; he is

lost on Mercury; he returns to Earth, where he is vilified by Rumfoord’s new Church of

God, the Utterly Indifferent; and he is forced to retreat with Beatrice and Chrono to

Titan.

Winston Niles Rumfoord

Winston Niles Rumfoord, a former millionaire, member of the social elite, and explorer.

He is now, with his dog Kazak, a collection of particles that materialize at regular

intervals. Stylish, elderly, and possessing a winning smile, Rumfoord has had the

power to foresee the future ever since he drove his spaceship into a time tunnel, or

“chrono-synclastic infundibulum.” In an attempt to manipulate Earth’s history, he

creates a suicidal army on Mars, whose destruction engenders global remorse and the

formation of a new religion. All of this is done to force his wife and Malachi to marry

and create a son whose good-luck piece must be transported to Titan, where it is

needed by a visiting alien.

Beatrice (Bee) Rumfoord

Beatrice (Bee) Rumfoord, the reserved, privileged, and too-proper virgin wife of

Winston. A tall and beautiful woman in her late thirties at the story’s start, her central

desire is to remain chaste and so frustrate her husband’s predictions. Her rape by

Malachi defeats both wishes and makes her the mother of Chrono. During the story’s

forty years, she loses her affectation as well as teeth and one eye. In the end, she loves

both Malachi and her son.

Chrono

Chrono, the son of Malachi and Beatrice. This juvenile delinquent unknowingly carries

the secret of Earth’s history. Born on Mars as the product of his mother’s rape,

Chrono, a dark and sociopathic player of German bat ball, picks up a piece of scrap

metal in a flamethrower factory. This good-luck charm is the key to the story. As the

reader discovers in the end, all the plot’s involutions serve to take Chrono’s talisman to

Titan, where it is needed as a replacement part for an alien spaceship.

Salo

Salo, an interstellar robot from the small Magellanic Cloud. A sentient and ultimately

caring machine, the orange Salo has a head on gimbals, three inflatable feet, no arms,

and three eyes. He carries the single word “Greetings” across the galaxy. His

spaceship’s breakdown has forced the members of his home planet, Tralfamadore, to

use their “Universal Will to Become” to influence Earth’s history such that it would

produce, in the form of Chrono’s good-luck charm, the piece needed for the

spaceship’s repair. In the end, Salo learns to love Rumfoord more than his robot

mission, and it is this emotion more than the absurd machinations of planetary fate that

becomes his triumph.

Stony Stevenson

Stony Stevenson, Malachi’s only friend and one of the commanders of the army of

Mars. Stony is an admirer of Unk because Unk resists the brainwashing to which he is

repeatedly subjected. Ironically, Unk (or Malachi) strangles Stony to death after a final

and effective mind cleansing. This execution takes place under radio control and in

Malachi’s complete ignorance. It demonstrates yet again how little human wishes have

to do with personal or collective fate.