The Sirens of Titan: Chapter 9: A Puzzle Solved Summary & Analysis

The narrator notes that “the best-selling book in recent times” is Rumfoord’s revised version of the Bible, followed by a cookbook purportedly written by Beatrice, then Rumfoord’s Pocket History of Mars, then a children’s book named Unk and Boaz in the Caves of Mercury. On Mercury, Unk and Boaz read messages of hope spelled out by the harmoniums. The messages are written by Rumfoord, who arranges the harmoniums himself. It takes three Earthling years for Unk to notice Kazak’s footprints in the cave. By this point, Unk and Boaz have been living on different levels of the cave and rarely interacting. They split up after about a year on Mercury, when Unk has a brief psychotic break and attacks Boaz for calling a completely average-looking harmonium “cute.”

Having spotted Kazak’s footprints, Unk decides to follow them. Boaz sleeps in a “home vault” with a door on it to protect him from the adoring harmoniums. Boaz feels sorry for Unk, who he believes has gone insane, and is pointlessly denying himself the company of the harmoniums. Before they stopped speaking, Boaz would tell Unk, “Don’t truth me […] and I won’t truth you.” It meant that Boaz didn’t want to hear the truth about the harmoniums or any other truth that would make him upset. Reciprocally, Boaz doesn’t tell Unk the truth that Stony Stevenson is dead, and that Unk killed him. Boaz talks to the harmoniums, speaking to himself on their behalf and addressing himself as “Uncle Boaz.”

Ever since he first entered the chrono-synclastic infundibulum, Rumfoord discovered that he is “crazy about good music.” Now, Boaz is putting on a concert for the harmoniums, having finally learned how to do so without killing them, as harmoniums can easily be killed by a “lethal overdose of music.” Unk, meanwhile, thinks about Stony, dreaming that if they were to be reunited they would be unstoppable. Unk believes that the people who live above the caves in the “skyscrapers” want to prevent him and Stony from finding each other. He believes it is these people who are writing messages with the harmoniums, whom Unk hates.

Then, suddenly, Unk sees a new message spelled in harmoniums, one that explains simply and clearly how to escape the caves. He rushes to tell Boaz, who doesn’t react with joy. Instead, Boaz says that two messages he saw recently now make sense. One said, “BOAZ, DON’T GO!” while the other said, “WE LOVE YOU, BOAZ.” Unk warns that this is a “trap.” He asks that Unk give him some time to think about whether he wants to leave, explaining that while Unk may not like the harmoniums, Boaz loves them, and they love him. At this moment, Boaz remembers he left the tape recorder turned on and playing music to the creatures, and rushes to turn it off in a panic.

Unk, meanwhile, tries to find a way to turn the ship upside down, because this is what the message the harmoniums spelled told him to do. Unk manages to successfully do so, and at this moment Boaz comes in weeping, carrying the bodies of dead harmoniums. Boaz asks if they should divide their supplies (there is enough to last 500 years), and Unk is shocked to hear that Boaz is planning to stay in the caves of Mercury. Boaz explains that he is to blame for the deaths of the harmoniums, because he got too excited about the prospect of his own freedom and forgot about them. Boaz was never able to be good to other people, but he is good to the harmoniums, and thus wants to stay living among them until he dies.