I moved in on him and I was ready to punch him down. Then I saw he had a strange look. He stared me back with gleaming, beaming, funny eyes, and there was about him something of the manner of, not a man, but more a machine-man. “This is Moderan,” he said. “We’re building New Land here. When these misters detect a soft place in our soil, they rush right over and batter it into submission. They look random and nonchalant, I know. But really they’re not. When they seem to be just standing, they’re sampling things from ’way off, maybe. You see, they own very sensitive feet. It’s built in. If there’s a soft place in their sphere of detection, they’ll get it through these sensitors in the feet. Treading here, they’ll get a vibration from a hollow place out there. They’re programmed to hate hollow places. They rush right over and stick in the jammy-ram cylinder when they get wind of a hollow place. By hollow place, I mean a piece of the land surface that isn’t as hard as it should be.”
“Oh, yes! And that’s important!?”
“VERY.” Then he looked at me cold-eyed. “Maybe you’d better come with me. I can leave these machines for awhile. These jammy-rams are programmed so that really all I have to do is put in my time. And take care of unusual occurrences, like when two signals cross at the juncture of spheres of detection. This happens but rarely, but when it does, whooee! look out! we have, as you saw, the strange, hilarious and altogether inefficient phenomena of two jammy-rams going for the same hole. (By hole, I mean a piece of the land surface that isn’t as firm as it should be.) Very hard on jammy-rams and also it doesn’t make for a good tamping job at the hole either. And when you’re building for forever, that’s one of the things you really do want and must have—a good tamping job at the hole.” He wasn’t kidding. I saw he wasn’t kidding.
We got into his flap-hap airabout scoot that he used to check on plans and we went up high. And far as the eye could gaze I saw the flats. All dotted with jammy-ram monsters was about three-quarters of this far-as-I-could-see area of the flats, brown-black scraped-off earth speckled with the darker, wandering and nonchalant spots that were machines doing, I had just been told, a very efficient and important piece of detection work and finalization execution at the hole. Then far down near the horizon, and at the edge of the dots that were jammy-rams, I saw how the browny-black changed to a blur that was gray or grayey-white. He slipped me a pair of long-rangers for the eyes and I zeroed in on the blur. “The new ice age!”
“Not at all!” he returned. “Or maybe just precisely, if you want to see it so. But this ice age, if you want it so—go ahead, call it that!—is for the species, not against it. You’ll never see this ice age rolling up boulders or creeping along with mammoth bones in its teeth. This ice age is covering up dirt, not just rearranging it. That’s plastic you’re looking at, man! I’m out here as an advance guard for plastic. It’s a friendly deadly-competitive hell-for-plastic devil-take-the-hindermost race between my jammy-rams and me on one side and that creeping gray edge on the other. And we’re gaining!” He smirked with satisfaction. And if I hadn’t already decided he was some kind of a Great One, I would have suspected right now that he was just some kind of a small jackass overseer type taking a lean satisfaction from staying on top of his small-small job. But surely not. Surely this was a Planner, a mover, a shaker and a rearranger of the World Scheme. At least a mover, a shaker, and a rearranger of the surface of the earth.
“Why—what—?” I sputtered. Yes! I was snowed in just now, as deep back in the murk as I ever like not to be.
He looked hot-eyed with little bulbs at me. He really bored in hard. He seemed to be making some kind of a tough decision about whether I really existed or not. Anyway, I got that impression, so hard was his bright-bulb stare. “Say, you are cleared for this,” he finally said, “aren’t you?”
I remembered some gates and some guards I had passed many days and many many miles long back. Far down at the edge of the place where things were old and wrecked, I remembered that hard cross-questioning, and the lie detectors, and the probing, the probing in—“I think I’m cleared,” I answered. “Would I have got this far if I had not been? Some things like tin eagles have hung over me all the long way, as it is, circling, circling, as I came slowly on my tired shank’s mares . . . I take it you people are taking no chances whatsoever with what you’ve got down here.”
“We take no chances! Show me, if you’ve got it!”
I rolled up my sleeves and showed him the two bright-orange M’s that had been stamped on my lower arms, at the clearing gates a long while back. I thought that might be what he wanted to see, and it was. “You’re cleared! And you’re a whole lot more than that!” He peered more closely at the M’s. “You probably don’t know it now, but you’re a whole lot more than just cleared!” There was in his voice a note of admiration that I couldn’t believe was faked. Yes, he meant it. He pointed at some small symbol under each M. “You probably don’t know exactly what those mean,” he mused, “but I do. I really do.” Then he shook his head in what I had to read as sadness, and he seemed to slip in memory a long way down. “Too old,” he muttered, “too old and too many bridges gone crackling down in the floods, the flames and the always-present wrecking of the days, before this thing came up for me. But you—you’re just right! You’re young and apparently you passed your tests with colors flying, really whipping out there in the breeze. I bet you’re stamped just about all over! under your clothes.”
“Yeah, they stamped me up pretty well. Then they told me to get going. Pointed me a road, gave me maps and charts and said, ‘Get on up there. They’re a-building, and you’re sure to be in time.’ Is this what they meant?”
“NOOO. Not for you! This is what I qualified for. I was a Moderan Early-Early. But I was too old and time-ravaged and event-hurt before this gold chance came up for me. But you, you’re young and right and on the mark. I can tell you now, you’ll be a Stronghold master, one of the elite-elite, if you can stand those operations. And there’s no reason why you can’t. I stood what ones they allowed me to, in good shape. And you’re to be allowed the maximum. I can read it by those small marks under the M’s. CONGRATULATIONS!” Impulsively he let go of the controls of the flap-hap and grabbed my right hand with both of his hands. I really got a steel handshake that day!
After awhile we landed, back at the place where we had started, and there were two jammy-rams going for the same hole again, so it was altogether to the good that we had arrived back at this station when we did. He rushed right over and straightened things out by slapping the two silly rammers on their rumps, with a certain rhythmic beat, as I had seen him do in that other instance. “A very bad spot, this here,” he announced, coming back. “Something about the spheres of detection right here at this locale, which you’ll notice is a little bit of a depression, taken on the large, causes tangling of the spirals. Really not the fault of the machines, not at all, for they just do what they’re programmed for and that’s it.”
“You really know how to do it!” I exclaimed, for something intuitively told me now that here was just a little serving man, really, a victim, who could do with some praise.
He swelled a lot with good pride as his chest came up a notch. “You know, I developed that technique myself—slapping them on the rump that way with a certain beat. Breaks up their rhythm, jiggles the connections and they just wander away for awhile, not knowing what in hell else to do. After a short time, though, they settle right back down again, the rhythm of their programming is restored and they’re good serviceable jammy-rammers once more.”
“Anyway, I think that’s neat, slapping these big earth fornicators on the rump that way to send them off just twirling their dirty cylinders at the air, all puzzled and deranged. Sort of shows man’s mastery somehow. Yet—huh?”
“YEAH! Thought it up myself, kind of by accident really. Saw it’d work when my foot slipped and I fell against one of them one time, flailing my arms for balance. Adopted the method. All against procedures, naturally. SAY! y
ou should see what I’m really supposed to do when something like this comes up. About twenty-five to thirty forms to fill out giving the pinpoint time and place and my ideas on why the foul-up. I’m furiously filling out the forms, see, after I’ve immediately and at once sent in the signal to headquarters that two jammy-rammers are at the same hole, COME WITH ALL SPEED! About sixteen big shots hop off their new-metal mistresses up at headquarters, their secretaries, you know, jump in their flap-hap air-about jet scoots and slam off out here as though hell itself were inside coming out. All this time the two poor jammy-rams with their signals crossed are beating hell out of each other’s rammers, making a bigger scarred-up soft place in the graded surface than there was before, and generally compounding futility to the top degree. But the big shots get there fast, in about two to five minutes—I will say this for them, they’re prompt—and they rush out of their jet-slap airabout scoots and have their big cigars fired up and are clearing their throats and considering things almost before the two mixed-up jammy-rams are scarcely one-third through with their programmed cycle of earth ramming. Which makes it harder, really, because naturally being big-deal men of action, these headquarters fellows (do something, even if it’s wrong! you know) signal off out there at once for the Separator task forces, which come in on the heavy transports in about ten minutes more, and these Separator troops throw big chain links around the intensely working jammy-rams and drag them away from the hole, the jammy-rams still fighting to finish the cycle, naturally, of course. Ever try to pull a jammy-ram by force away from the hole before he’d finished his cycle?”
“No. Never did that.”
“No,” he laughed, “course you didn’t. But it can be done with enough horsepower pulling at the jammy-rams and strong enough chains. Tears up the jammy-rams though and causes them to have to be sent away many many miles to the repair stations. Then I just complete the filling out of the forms, and procedures are maintained, and everything’s unstrained, happy and satisfied with the headquarters boys.”
I laughed. He laughed, “Yeah, if I hewed to the line of procedures in every way, that long ice-edge of the plastic would be covering me up but completely! Along with my jammy-rams, in no time at all. I run my show out here, the big-deal headquarters men can log more time on their new-metal secretaries, I stay ahead of the plastic, and who’s to care if I cut a few procedural corners right in twain?”
“Nobody should care,” I agreed.
He looked at me, and a half-smile toyed at the corners of his mouth, this proud, vain, little man. “You know what’d happen, if they found out, if they ever found out how I slap those jammy-rammers on the rump with a certain beat to short-cut procedures? Why, I’d be riding out of here in chains in just minutes, that’s what’d happen. Yeah! Procedures are the god in New Land. It’s got to be that way, of course—but still, once in awhile, I think a practical mind is best. I usually give those jammy-rams a little extra oiling, or a polish-and-pet with the ‘slick up, shine up’ kit to help them get back straight and forget their humiliation, and it works out.” And suddenly, I had a dazzling flash of insight. This man was really pretty usual! Procedures were for everyone but him. All at once I found myself not admiring his cunning little rump-slapping transgression of the rules quite as much as I thought I would. But then, as I’ve found out in the past, all people disappoint me, soon or late. They just don’t measure out. “What about that plastic? What about those jammy-rams, for that matter?” I yelled. “You’ve flown me over wide expanses of scraped and graded earth swarming with milling, wandering and soil-fornicating jammy-rams. You’ve also flown me over wide areas of whitey-gray plastic that was smooth and cold as ice from where I sat. There’s some reason for all this? You seem to think it’s important. Outside of being your job, is it important?”
His eyes went hard-bright. He was not a friendly man just then. But soon he relaxed, when something had clicked in his mind, I guess. “Sure,” he answered, “it’s very much of importance. But being so lately from Old Land, and coming a far way from where all is wrecked and cindered, as I understand it, I guess you wouldn’t know. Forgive me. I was getting a little flame-hot at you just then. I thought you were ridiculing. But I know now, remembering your background, it’s ignorance. And ignorance can be admirable, if the person came by it honestly. Flippant, flyblow, half-baked wiseacreing is about the worst thing in the world, compared to honest ignorance.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Now, to answer your question about the scraped-off rolled-down land, the jammy-rams and the plastic: You see, we’re moving down toward where you came from. We’ll get it all in time. Surely you must know that the earth is poisoned. From what I’ve heard, where you are from is not only poisoned, but wrecked and cindered as well. We stopped just short of that havoc up here; therefore there is this place for you from Old Land to come to. But our land was poisoned by science ‘progress’ as much as yours was. So we’re covering all with the sterile plastic, a great big whitey-gray envelope of thick tough sterile plastic over all the land of the earth. That’s our goal. It’s a mammoth task, but for mammoth tasks man has behemoth machines. The mountains go into the valleys, the creek banks go into the creeks, the ditch sides go into the ditches, the golf courses are smoothed, the mine tailings are scattered—and all is coated. At the necessary places we make the reservoirs for runoff and freeze it solid. The oceans we will deal with in our own time, our own time and well enough. There are several plans, one being to use our scientific knowhow to freeze the oceans solid, another being to shoot the oceans out into space in capsules and be done with all that surplus water forever. The new-metal man, which I am to a degree, and which you are to become to a much much higher degree, will need very little water . . . But now it’s the land we’re doing. The water is a later task. But when we get all through, I visualize an earth of such tranquility and peace in nature that it must be the true marvel of all the ages. The surface of our globe will be a smooth tough grayey-white hide. When our water plans are finalized the rainfall will be no more. No more will man be fleeing floods anywhere in the world. In cloudless heavens the winds will have died in our even temperatures; no more will man go sky high in the twisters. The air will hang as a tranquil envelope over essentially a smooth gray ball, the smoothness being broken only by the Strongholds and the bubble-dome homes. Trees, if we want them, will spring up from the yard-holes at the flick of a switch. The flowers will bloom just right and on time in wonderful bloom-metal. Animals—there will be no animals, unless we should want a few tigers and lions and such, all mechanical of course, for a staged jungle hunt. Yes! it will be a land for forever, ordered and sterilized. That’s the Dream!”
“But you still haven’t told me why those jammy-rams ram at the soil in such a ridiculous way!” Yes, I could listen to the grandest plan in all the universe and still feel the bones of a jagged ragged uncomfortable question nag at my dissenting throat. And anyway, I felt he owed me an answer on less grandiose terms. Anyone could have a big puff-ball dream about how to make the earth into such an ordered place as almost to stump the imagination. But would it ever happen? Well, I for one would call it more than a small cosmic miracle if man, a spark of life tediously evolved from the dead cold elements himself, should so organize his forces as to rearrange those elements to have essentially a dead cold planet again before he departed. It would seem to me a dismal, and more than a little depressing, closing of the ring, for sure. “Tell me about the jammy-rams!” I shouted.
“Well, as you should have guessed awhile back, the jammy-rams are just clever and sophisticated machines, science’s marvels, you might say, for making sure that the surface we’re coating is packed and solid everywhere. We want no cracks or sagging in the plastic. The mammoth graders and rollers do the big smoothing and packing jobs, and they’re now miles on beyond. And miles back the other way, as we saw in our flap-hap airabout scoot ride, is the ice edge of the plastic this whole thing is all about. And my jammy-rams
and I are in between, the artistic effort really, the ones who care, seeing that the whole thing comes not to naught because of small soft places left untended to make an improper bedding for the plastic. YES! we’re the crux of it!” I could see that his was a proud calling.
I looked about and far and wide strolled still on that smoothed and rolled-down earth the tall cylinder-carrying monsters, and many was the jammy ram that was hunched into the position and having a go at the jug-jug-jug, phoo-phoo-phoo, bam-bam-bam that was its main mission. “How long will I be in that hospital,” I asked abruptly, thinking now of my future and many things.
“Nine months,” he answered at once, gently rump-stroking a nearby jammy-ram that was having a go at a soft place in the hard hide of the soil. “That’s the full transformation, and you’re scheduled for it, from the markings I read under the orange M’s.” He stuck out a hand, and I shook it, felt its cold steel. “Good luck, boy, with the operations. When we meet again, if we meet again, you’ll be a Stronghold master, one of the elite-elite. Youth will be served. I missed my chance, failed my hunt, ordered my gray battalions on to the impossible fields too late and lost—due to no fault of my own. It was age and fate.” He turned away, and I knew he was fighting a battle.
I went on up toward the place where the operations were nine-months long, where according to rumor, iron nurses, sterile and capable, ran on spur tracks up to the edges of beds, where a man, if of the CHOSEN, might receive enough part-steel to be a king in his times.
THE BUTTERFLIES WERE EAGLE-BIG THAT DAY
I PASSED through a gate of glowing orange M’s and went up to a man who stood guardlike, watchful and stiff. He had a butcher’s clothes on, or was it a scientist’s neat smock a bit loose-and-hanging on a watchman’s ramrod pose?
“You may cut me in! I came to join! If you’re the butcher—”
Moderan Page 4