'Did you hear what I said?' Barbara inquired. It was 1968 again.
'Of course.' He had been dozing.
'If you're going to act like a child, maybe we'll just have to treat you like a child.'
'That isn't what happens next,' said Billy.
'We'll see what happens next.' Big Barbara now embraced herself. 'It's awfully cold in here. Is the heat on?'
'The heat? '
'The furnace-the thing in the basement, the thing that makes hot air that comes out of these registers. I don't think it's working.'
'Maybe not.'
'Aren't you cold?'
'I hadn't noticed.'
'Oh my God, you are a child. If we leave you alone here, you'll freeze to death, you'll starve to death.' And so on. It was very exciting for her, taking his dignity away in the name of love.
Barbara called the oil-burner man, and she made Billy go to bed, made him promise to stay under the electric blanket until the heat came on. She set the control of the blanket at the highest notch, which soon made Billy's bed hot enough to bake bread in.
When Barbara left, slamming the door behind her, Billy traveled in time to the zoo on Tralfamadore again. A mate has just been brought to him from Earth. She was Montana Wildhack, a motion picture star.
Montana was under heavy sedation. Tralfamadorians wearing gas masks brought her in, put her on Billy's yellow lounge chair; withdrew through his airlock. The vast crowd outside was delighted. All attendance records for the zoo were broken. Everybody on the planet wanted to see the Earthlings mate.
Montana was naked, and so was Billy, of course. He had a tremendous wang, incidentally. You never know who'll get one.
Now she fluttered her eyelids. Her lashes were like buggy whips. 'Where am I?' she said.
'Everything is all right,' said Billy gently. 'Please don't be afraid.
Montana had been unconscious during her trip from Earth. The Tralfamadorians hadn't talked to her, hadn't shown themselves to her. The last thing she remembered was sunning herself by a swimming pool in Palm Springs, California. Montana was only twenty years old. Around her neck was a silver chain with a heart-shaped locket hanging from it-between her breasts.
Now she turned her head to see the myriads of Tralfamadorians outside the dome. They were applauding her by opening and closing their little green hands quickly.
Montana screamed and screamed.
All the little green hands closed fight, because Montana's terror was so unpleasant to see. The head zoo keeper ordered a crane operator, who was standing by, to drop a navy blue canopy over the dome, thus simulating Earthling night inside. Real night came to the zoo for only one Earthling hour out of every sixty-two.
Billy switched on a floor lamp. The light from the single source threw the baroque detailing of Montana's body into sharp relief. Billy was reminded of fantastic architecture in Dresden, before it was bombed.
In time, Montana came to love and trust Billy Pilgrim. He did not touch her until she made it clear that she wanted him to. After she had been on Tralfamadore for what would have been an Earthling week, she asked him shyly if he wouldn't sleep with her. Which he did. It was heavenly.
And Billy traveled in time from that delightful bed to a bed in 1968. It was his bed in Ilium, and the electric blanket was turned up high. He was drenched in sweat, remembered groggily that his daughter had put him to bed, had told him to stay there until the oil burner was repaired.
Somebody was knocking on his bedroom door.
'Yes?' said Billy.
'Oil-burner man.'
'Yes?'
'It's running good now. Heat's coming up.'
'Good.'
'Mouse ate through a wire from the thermostat'
'I'll be darned.'
Billy sniffed. His hot bed smelled like a mushroom cellar. He had had a wet dream about Montana Wildhack.
On the morning after that wet dream, Billy decided to go back to work in his office in the shopping plaza. Business was booming as usual. His assistants were keeping up with it nicely. They were startled to see him. They had been told by his daughter that he might never practice again.
But Billy went into his examining room briskly, asked that the first patient be sent in. So they sent him one-a twelve-year old boy who was accompanied by his-widowed mother. They were strangers, new in town. Billy asked them a little about themselves, learned that the boy's father had been killed in Vietnam-in the famous five-day battle for Hill 875 near Dakto. So it goes.
While he examined the boy's eyes, Billy told him matter-of-factly about his adventures on Tralfamadore, assured the fatherless boy that his father was very much alive still in moments the boy would see again and again.
'Isn't that comforting?' Billy asked.
And somewhere in there, the boy's mother went out and told the receptionist that Billy was evidently going crazy. Billy was taken home. His daughter asked him again, 'Father, Father, Father-what are we going to do with you?'