Breakfast of Champions Page 0,41

Dwayne, “and I couldn’t help wondering if that was what God put me on Earth for—to find out how much a man could take without breaking.”

• • •

“I’ve lost my way,” said Dwayne. “I need somebody to take me by the hand and lead me out of the woods.”

“You’re tired,” she said. “Why wouldn’t you be tired? You work so hard. I feel sorry for men, they work so hard. You want to sleep for a while?”

“I can’t sleep,” said Dwayne, “until I get some answers.”

“You want to go to a doctor?” said Francine.

“I don’t want to hear the kinds of things doctors say,” said Dwayne. “I want to talk to somebody brand new. Francine,” he said, and he dug his fingers into her soft arm, “I want to hear new things from new people. I’ve heard everything anybody in Midland City ever said, ever will say. It’s got to be somebody new.”

“Like who?” said Francine.

“I don’t know,” said Dwayne. “Somebody from Mars, maybe.”

“We could go to some other city,” said Francine.

“They’re all like here. They’re all the same,” said Dwayne.

Francine had an idea. “What about all these painters and writers and composers coming to town?” she said. “You never talked to anybody like that before. Maybe you should talk to one of them. They don’t think like other people.”

“I’ve tried everything else,” said Dwayne. He brightened. He nodded. “You’re right! The Festival could give me a brand new viewpoint on life!” he said.

“That’s what it’s for,” said Francine. “Use it!”

“I will,” said Dwayne. This was a bad mistake.

• • •

Kilgore Trout, hitchhiking westward, ever westward, had meanwhile become a passenger in a Ford Galaxie. The man at the controls of the Galaxie was a traveling salesman for a device which engulfed the rear ends of trucks at loading docks. It was a telescoping tunnel of rubberized canvas, and it looked like this in action:

The idea of the gadget was to allow people in a building to load or unload trucks without losing cold air in the summertime or hot air in the wintertime to the out-of-doors.

The man in control of the Galaxie also sold large spools for wire and cable and rope. He also sold fire extinguishers. He was a manufacturer’s representative, he explained. He was his own boss, in that he represented products whose manufacturers couldn’t afford salesmen of their own.

“I make my own hours, and I pick the products I sell. The products don’t sell me,” he said. His name was Andy Lieber. He was thirty-two. He was white. He was a good deal overweight like so many people in the country. He was obviously a happy man. He drove like a maniac. The Galaxie was going ninety-two miles an hour now. “I’m one of the few remaining free men in America,” he said.

He had a penis one inch in diameter and seven and a half inches long. During the past year, he had averaged twenty-two orgasms per month. This was far above the national average. His income and the value of his life insurance policies at maturity were also far above average.

• • •

Trout wrote a novel one time which he called How You Doin’? and it was about national averages for this and that. An advertising agency on another planet had a successful campaign for the local equivalent of Earthling peanut butter. The eye-catching part of each ad was the statement of some sort of average—the average number of children, the average size of the male sex organ on that particular planet—which was two inches long, with an inside diameter of three inches and an outside diameter of four and a quarter inches—and so on. The ads invited the readers to discover whether they were superior or inferior to the majority, in this respect or that one—whatever the respect was for that particular ad.

The ad went on to say that superior and inferior people alike ate such and such brand of peanut butter. Except that it wasn’t really peanut butter on that planet. It was Shazzbutter.

And so on.

16

AND THE PEANUT BUTTER-EATERS on Earth were preparing to conquer the shazzbutter-eaters on the planet in the book by Kilgore Trout. By this time, the Earthlings hadn’t just demolished West Virginia and Southeast Asia. They had demolished everything. So they were ready to go pioneering again.

They studied the shazzbutter-eaters by means of electronic snooping, and determined that they were too numerous and proud and resourceful ever to allow themselves to be pioneered.

So the Earthlings infiltrated the ad agency