He eyed me through two cold and passive globes that jumped about half a foot out from his face on sticks and glinted like sheet steel can. But when he drew them to him I noticed that these eye globes were really just some pretty ordinary ice-blue steel eyeballs. “Let us not be mind-reading.” He said it very calmly, evenly; the voice had a machine sound. “Nor wild-guessing neither. I’m dressed as a butcher, yes, one way you look at it. And a scientist too, I’m sure you must agree. But I do not make cuts; nor do I experiment. I’m a guards-man and a symbol. I mainly stand here just inside the gate of the M’s of Moderan, to greet you as you come stumbling in from Old Land. I listen to your very best personal story of adversity and woe, if you want to tell me it. And I check you for the M’s that you must have, from that other gate a long way back, if you’re to stay here.”
“I’VE GOT THEM! I really have the M’s!” And I moved in to the total strip-down so that he might see how really much I was M-ed up.
He looked quizzical. The ice-ball blue eyes jumped about six inches out, each on its own stick again, and they nodded, but not in unison. It was one at a time, like alternate crazy winking. “WOW! WOW! WOW!” he finally said, “WHOOEE! ZOWEE! and WUP! WUP! you really do. And I’m programmed to give you the wow! wow! wow! whooee! zowee! wup! wup! when I see something like this. It’s not too unusual, and yet it’s not everyday either. What I mean is, you’re to be a Stronghold master, right up as far as anyone can do it. That is, if you can stand the operations. Each M is a major awful cut, you may or may not know.”
“I have the M’s,” I said simply, humbly as I could. “I’ll try to honor them in every way that courage, steadfastness, bravery, common true grit, love of country, and respect for my ancestors can do for any cause. And if that be not enough, I’ll throw in some generous portions of élan and a lot of spirit of the corps! I WILL NEVER SURRENDER.” Sure, I was half scared to death, as I most usually am in unsure situations, but I wasn’t about to let anyone but me know a thing about it. Especially was I not going to show the white feather to this talking tin can dressed up as a butcher-scientist-guardsman and poking blue-glass in-out abracadabra crazy unearthly eye globes at me. And besides, pose and all, fears and all, braggadocio and bluff on the rocks—I had parlayed it all one time all the way up to Chief-in-Chief of the Bangs, in the Old Life. Not exactly a nobody. . . I could do it!
While I was standing there being scared and determined not to show it, indeed committed even to being courageous, the guardsman simply stamped on a switch and where we stood became at once a roll-go. We moved along swiftly past houses shaped like bubbles, past bubble-dome homes, toward a tall building a short way in, and during the small ride he dutifully helped me regain my clothes. While he was doing that he gave me the wow! wow! wow! whooee! zowee! wup! wup again, and that made me feel better. Near the entrance to the tall building he handed me my certification, the forms of which I suppose he already had made up in big duplicate stacks which he carried in some secret space just under the door to his breastplate. I noticed that the certification was a very simple orange card carrying on one side, in heavy lettering in midnight black, the code w! w! w! w! z! w! w! (which I saw no reason whatsoever to try to translate) and on the other side the simple typed notation saying, “Entitled to full schedule.”
“I hope every last M is a big Big BIG success and each and every awful cut worthwhile.” He just said it in his strange machinelike voice, surely programmed, as I headed toward the doors of the tall white building and he reversed the roll-go to ride back to the gate of M’s. I never saw him more.
Do you like to watch blood? Do you like to watch your own blood? Do you like to watch any blood spurting, gurgling, gushing, falling into very clear clean glass containers, missing and falling on to the floor sometimes, going all over until everything is that funny foamy red color, with all your towels, rugs, cloths and sponges soaked and the smell . . . ? Do you? Do you like to watch flesh being snipped, sliced, carved, shredded and made over. Do you? Do you like to watch your own flesh . . . . . . . . . ? How about bones? Do you like to see bones sawed? I mean, like butchers in a butcher shop? Do you like to watch live near-relative bones being gone after with big axes? Do you like to see own bones slipped out of flesh and skin? (Oh, they seem strange, so unhomed wet and slick!) I mean, do you like personal boning? Do you . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ?
Two doctors, steel-spliced, tall and coldly no-nonsense business got after me right soon. I don’t mean I was running, but I did intend to move in slow-on-slow on the white building, reconnoiter, take my time, rubberneck a little, scout the washrooms, the furniture, the iron bedpans and the steel nurse corps. But the doctors soon led me away, one of them eagerly snatching from me the card of “full schedule.”
We went in to where the lights were blue and cold. I was walking with all my flesh-self going for the last time that day. I had my mind closed in close as I could about me, cold and tight-holding, my body tucked in small, to walk into the Terrors Total and the hell of the Blue Unknown. What a mispicture it is, this scene of the big bluff fighter striding in tall into his danger, chest puffed, shoulders winged, and breast being battle-drummed, tom-tommed, if you will, in a rousing challenge of pure defiance. A nice painting, this! But give a man some ultimate testing and see how he fares in. He crouches in all low, small, shrunken, clutching and clawing his keepsakes in the pockets and the mind, scared-scanning eyes trying to see every direction at once, talking to himself, cursing, praying, muttering, crying, and hoping with all the hope he owns one of two things he may do—get through it with some honor to see another day, or die without too much dishonor and brave the Total Night.
I knotted my thoughts that day to all the fists I had ever owned in the whole perilous world of men and events. I flashed a message to my nerves to be as solid as cement pipes if ever they could for just ten minutes now of testing in Total Time. But what gains it? Why try so hard? What could it matter, ever, in the face of the Total Dark, whether or not one more little flesh bum flew his life ship into the Wall, pretending to be somewhat jaunty? Yes, I thought I had been tricked for the Journey all the way in to Death’s big sky, and I was determined to go there as bravely as any man can do it. I just didn’t know . . . what really was . . . in store. . . .
How do you like push-button surgery? How do you like WATCHING push-button surgery? How do you regard being marked off in cuts and boning plans more than ever was a side of Angus in the Old Days? How do you get along with the idea of conferences about the orange M’s, huddling with the steel-spliced doctors—battle-planning for pain—before they’d go for you each day with the overhead-rigged knives?
For know, we took it M by agony M, bleeding by bleeding cut, starting in early November, for nine months, I and the steel-spliced medicos. (Without a shadow of a doubt they were surgeons of keenest skill.) I watched every cut of the flesh, every nick of the bones, every taking out of a member, every putting in of an implant, for that was part of the plan. The doctors would not make a move, would not so much as scratch the boundary of an M, unless I was fully awake, competently aware. To be born again! and to feel and see how that you were born again. YES! For some time, some later Moderan time, when you stood up tall at your buttons of war, your fort on the status of continuous blast and all the world gunned in against you and each other, it would not prove out well for you to prove out squeamish. To be a Stronghold master was a duty and a trust, not to mention a terrific opportunity. And it might as well be found out in the bed of the cutting-in whether or not a candidate had the “guts.” So ran the thinking of the Planners of Moderan.
Oh, sure, there were deadeners, but never quite enough. Always just on the edge of all the hurt you could take, clamped down in a stark white bed in a cold blue room and watching from a box of glass that separated your head from the rest of you, the box of glass being very clear for viewing and, with the sized slot for your neck, fitting q
uite snugly and putting your head in a still still world of its own. To watch pain! Do you like to watch pain, the surgical refinements poised above you, high on ceiling tracks, and the not-quite-human doctors working the buttons and smirking, and you wondering where it would fall, oh God, where would it next fall? and it falling and bringing up blood, always the blood, and a part of you and holding that part of you for the too long time just right for you to observe through the box of glass . . . the blood dripping, always the blood . . . and when it came time for the move up to head, they made that move, planned the points-and-edges adjustments, changed the tracks, got settings so right-on-the-nose precisely right that the gleaming knives would fall . . . and thus they made the move up there to do MY head! to work on the face flesh-strips, the brain slosh pans and the green brain fluids, the knives falling and flicking and snicking like cold silver rain in that area of former sanctuary-stillness where the glass box had been . . . Did I see it? DID I SEE IT!? They flashed it all, almost realer than real, on a wall viewer, and the only part I didn’t get to see all the way at the doing was the doing over of the eyes, when they gave me that miraculous wide-range Moderan eyesight. But I heard that all on the provided screen: “Knives in left-side eye socket; knives in right-side eye socket; coring out left-side eyeball now; coring out right-side eyeball now; and folks, there’s blood! don’t think there isn’t blood comes up and out when you core eyeballs; always the blood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .” And sure, later they played all of it over for me, in accent colors, on the biggest wall viewer they had. . . .
The bones were special special rock-bottom hurt, like drilling a thousand dozen teeth all at one time for you might be and all drills touching nerves—WEEEAAAOO-OHHH . . . WEEAAAOOOHHH . . . WEEEAAAOO-OHHH . . . OOOHHH . . . OOOHHH . . . It was at the boning of bones that I discovered that the hospital was providing me with special things in my foods and beverages so that I might experience more pain per second without losing consciousness—WEEEAAAOOOHHH . . .WEE-EAAAOOOHHH . . . WEEEAAAOOOHHH . . . OOOHHH . . . OOOHHH . . . than I would have otherwise been able to do . . . (It is well known that the ordinary everyday average person in the Old Days went through his entire average-Joe or average-Jane life without scratching the surface even of the solid experiences of physical pain that the human body can be made capable of. And that was of course, in a way, a total-experience loss.)
I will say in passing (and I will admit this had had me concerned at first) that they did a little-miracle splendid job on my penis and other sex parts—all complexities of the system being left responsive and vibrant, and yet all parts of the complex done to forever-last. BRAVO!
. . . while the sterile steel hard-driving nurses ran efficient and cold on spur tracks up to the edges of beds. . . .
Finally it was over, the whole pain-crammed rebuilding thing, OVER! I guess I stood it quite well, really, looking back. I stood it! And that was the main thing. I was true to the orange M’s. I became a Man of Moderan! My flesh-strips were few and played down now and the “replacements” of new-metal alloy were the bulk of my bodily splendor. And no matter to what high posts of honor and power I may attain in the world now, which is my oyster, I’ll always remember with special fondness and a jaunty pride the day I crossed over, the day I passed through the gate of the Moderan M’s, the day that the butterflies of apprehension and resolve were eagle-big in my stomach and my mind.
NEW KINGS ARE NOT FOR LAUGHING
OUT OF the hospital, out of the nine-months mutilation, out of the nine-months magic, released and alone. The steel-spliced doctors knew they had made a monster. They were proud of me, their monster, as doctors must always be proud of successes in their field; but they knew that now I was a kind of King, and they were merely doctors. Their arrogance was small-town lording now, their lording outlorded, as it were. No matter how born or made, a King WILL be a King. They got rid of me. They loaded me out. They quick-shifted me into the seething yeasty world; and with almost no parting ceremony. And with the very minimum of instructions and equipment (which was load plenty-enough) to stand me down on my trip. But somehow a King must be a King, know how to behave as a Captain of his times and domesticate his wild situations, no matter what the odds.
With my portable flesh-strip feeder, my book of instructions for new-metal limb control, my plastic mechanical tear bags (for even a King must sometimes cry, you will allow) and all the other paraphernalia to get me started, or at least to sustain me until I should attain my Stronghold sanctuary, I sailed out from the hospital steps, the arrogant doctors watching. Something like a small iron frigate from the Old Days, I guess I was, loaded to the gunwales and standing forth on end.
Walking was easy, really. Plop-plip-plap-plop—one foot in front of the other, pick-them-up-and-plunk-them-down, toggle your hinges and braces, go with the arm swing for balance, flail the air with those blades when you go to tumble down—determine, determine, DETERMINE! determine that you will move along. Go for the tear bags when things get too uncertain, stop—think—cry (oh yes, a King can cry), curse if you want to, and hate, hate, hate. But keep on walking, don’t let those steel-spliced doctors see, don’t let anyone see how it is.
GOD! being a new-metal man wasn’t going to be easy. Let me tell you here and now, being a new-metal man was going to take some swinging. BUT I WOULD.
According to the little packet of special maps and instructions the steel-spliced ones had slung around my neck at our parting, I was to be Stronghold 10. I looked at that number and at first it meant nothing. Nothing at all. Then I thought more, the new green juices in the fresh-made brain pans sloshing and fuming, and I thought, STRONGHOLD 10! YES! STRONGHOLD 10 FOREVER! Stronghold 10 must never disgrace Moderan. Stronghold 10 must achieve. Stronghold 10 must win honors. Stronghold 10 must be heroic. Stronghold 10 must be brave. Stronghold 10 must be the strongest, toughest, meanest, most hateful, most arrogant, loudest-mouthed, most battle-hungry hellion-hearted Stronghold in all the wide wide world. YES!
But first, just right now, soon, THE NEXT ORDER OF BUSINESS! Stronghold 10 must find his Stronghold.
After five hours of walking hard and going perhaps a stingy mile and a half, and some of that in circles, I stood lost in a little plastic draw, and quite bewildered. The vapor shield was scarlet August that burning month, the tin flowers were up in all the plastic plant holes, the rolling ersatz pastures were all aflutter with flash and flaunt of blooms. A sheen was in the air, a shimmer, and a million devils of heatstroke walked out and wrapped me close in my shell. And I was lost on this seventh day of hot August.
I’ll always remember him, the way he came walking, a big man all shrunken in the torso, all bent down along the back curve, all sere and wrinkled in the face areas, so very terribly black-brown, like meat cooked too long on the bone. He had surely been through some maximum havoc—fire maybe, maybe fire and wind together, maybe flood too, wife-trouble and relatives thrown in could be, almost surely a war, possibly all standard disasters known to man, and some not so standard. He looked that bad. Yes, truly. THE WAR mostly—probably. And when he talked, I knew some problem surely had wrecked him even past what showed. Perhaps he had lost some parts that really counted one time. Anyway, his voice was a womanly squeak now as he said, “Lost, mister?”
I swiveled to take him in fully, practicing coming down to hard-stare with my new wide-range Moderan vision, and I thumbed at the book, seeking the page on speech. (Oh, remember, I was new new-metal and the hospital had not kept me over for many practice runs. Not in any phase, let alone speech.) But it wasn’t so hard really. NO! of course not. All one had to do was be a mechanical genius to run oneself, a broadcaster speech specialist in order to talk, and a few other things to be able to operate as a new-metal man smoothly and with élan. Mostly, for just right now, forget the refinements and just try to find the right buttons. When I pushed the phfluggee-phflaggee too hard and it shouted, I mean I shou
ted, “SURE AM,” he jumped about five in the air. I could guess he wasn’t used to that voice-button shouting, and I could also suppose he expected lip movement (I learned to do that later) and maybe better inflection too (which I learned later, as well). I tried again and said, passably I hoped, phfluggee-phflaggee voice going smoother, “I’m looking for Stronghold 10. I AM Stronghold 10. When I get there.” Then I tried a little voice-button laugh, just for kicks, and it came out “HA! Huk!”
“OH!” he said, wet slop slopping, gristle-meat tongue doing a dance, wind in the windpipe working, GOD! what an old-fashioned method just to communicate a few verbal salutes. Hadn’t we needed improvement for quite a long time there? “I think I know,” he finished, squeak-voiced and all, and still scared, “but you look so funny! Like a polished-up scrap heap, sort of. And all that load!” His fried-like wrinkled cheeks puffed then and he was consumed for awhile with a tiny squeaky belly laugh.
“Well, I’m not funny,” I snapped, furiously working the buttons, “not funny at all. I’m to be a King. I AM A KING! If I can just find where. And this stuff is all stuff I need to get me started, be sure of that.”
“I guess I know,” he piped up, stopping the laugh off tight. “I mean, you said Stronghold 10. And well, there’s a big pile up there of stuff. I mean, it’s a castle, really. WOW! I mean it’s like nothing I ever saw!” And he stood entranced, thinking, I had to guess, on what he’d seen.
“HOO! it’s got a big 10 on it that shines out day and night. That 10 must be in jewels. Or maybe just some kind of paint. But it’s too much for me. I’ve walked by just to look at that 10 sometimes. And usually things would happen. Or I should say ALWAYS, here of late, things would happen. I guess they’ve got all that BLAM! stuff working and perfected now. And all those walls and towers!”
“YEAH?” I phfluggee-phflaggeed. “Really?”
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