Oh, God! was I sailing a kite in a pinhole, was I riding a vernal moon in a summer storm, all snow; was I scratching the lobes of my ears with the second joints of my toes? WOW! and WOW!! Were all things impossible, possible now? . . . jug-jug-jug, phu-phu-phu, bam-bam-bam, jug-jug-jug, gaaru-gaaru-gaaru, phu-phu-phu, gaaru-gaaru-gaaru—possible now . . . ? All the people who had written and overwritten about this thing—in the Old Days old Mailer and Hemingway, say—had they been right all along? I believed now that they had (for the tiniest moment in all the world, I believed) garu-garu-garu, wham-wham-wham-bam-a-bam-wham-WHAAMMM-A-BAMM-WHAAMMM—OOOh-OOOhhh-OOOOOhhhhh-OOOOOOOHHHHH-uh . . .
Then switch-off—all through when over, another moment of truth gone into the irretrievable blanks of time. But a great one, a truly GREAT moment of truth this time one surely gone down now to petition admittance somewhere at a Gate where a Book is kept in a Castle of Pure Light, and that Castle all of a Purpose to keep safe the record of those moments that tell the Great Story and never die.
YES! That’s how it was! The day I got my new-metal mistress from the new-metal mistress store in the Land of the New Time.
AND SO WHITE WITCH VALLEY
WHEN MODERAN was all beginners-new and the plans not set-mold, it was envisaged that a few outstanding, very special wives might be “replaced” and allowed to share the Stronghold forever-life with their Stronghold master husbands. But there were, on science grounds, long and bitterly contested debates as to whether any female of the species would be strong enough to stand that nine-months battery of the “replacement” operations. Finally, in a spirit of benevolent bravado and what-the-hell charity and choice, the panel, all men, all great new-metal scientists trained in every aspect of surgery and flesh-strip care, and all, so it chanced, bachelors, said, “Give it a whirl! What-the-hell! What’s to lose?” WHAT’S TO LOSE!!?? Hey!! Now!!!
Out of the shambles of Back There she came, like walking doom come down, all the way out of the havoc, the bomb smear, the fallout far and everywhere, through the utterly-destroyed countryside, a game little woman walking, surely impelled the long way by the one rhythmic vow: “He’ll never get away; I’LL FIND HIM; he’ll never escape from ME.”
It was months after I, fully certified as Stronghold-master material, had left the hospital and was comfortably ensconced in my fort. I had learned already how to behave passably as one of the elite-elite new-metal masters, had gunned through a couple of triple-try-out Max Shoots to establish honors fine and ashine, had come to enjoy the ordinary Joys of the ruling new-metal man, had even chosen and got delivery on my new-metal mistress doll, that marvel of science and love from “an old dream in the mind.” THEN IT HAPPENED! Like blockbusters. Like retribution. Like, in the Old Days, red-hot knives cutting toes off and fingers off and ears off and the nose off and the chin off and the testicles off and winches pulling the guts out to grind them while the eyeballs fell back in the blasted and blackened brains and baked there and the blood turned to hot boiling concrete in a pot on a laser beam stove. GOD! Like learning of conscription for a Great War in the Times Past. Like confirmation of cancer and less than a year to go. Like OH, YES, definitely—congratulations, you two! kootchy-koo—a POSITIVE report on that unmarried pregnancy long ago. Like OH CHRIST! Like OH GOD!! Like OH GOD GOD DAMN!!!
“GREETINGS,” it said. It came delivered by transmail, a night letter kind of thing, like from the Old Times, flashed on my Viewer Screen in the midst of a perfect day. I had just fought the new-metal kitten against the diamond-tooth tiger cub for a variety time thrill-and-Joy diversion of pure savagery and fun. I had just learned by Official Announcement from my War Room Speaker Wall that General War would resume all over Moderan next Tuesday and I had been chosen IN. (A heady honor this, for a new-metal Stronghold man—after only two triple-try-out Max Shoots and one Stand-Down Inspection for Rate to be chosen IN for War!) Oh, didn’t LIFE in MY GARDEN look budded-up for bloom!?
Then “GREETINGS”! Just as I, in honor of all the other good things that had befallen me that day, had decided to cap it with new-metal mistress Joy, it had sounded. That tweetle and twootle warning of domestic announcement and nag tweetle-twootled throughout all my fort. Oh, disgusting, disrupting, uncouth, uncultured, cluttered sound, that—so unlike the great sturdy BOONK ZOONK BOONK alerts from my War Room Speaker Wall, and usually presaging some minor niggle-naggle announcement or directive from the Needle Building and its Court Men Most High. They surely dreamed day and night there on how to nag us citizens to distraction on small counts.
“GREETINGS: STRONGHOLD 10,” it said, and I, interrupting VERY RELUCTANTLY my settings for passion-and-love for new-metal mistress doll, switched to boredom-and-yawns awaiting a Court Man’s routine directive to paint-and-fix, shape-up! at the Stronghold, or perhaps a gentle nudge in bold letters toward contributing more strongly and with surer élan next vapor shield to the Court Men’s Welfare Fund. Then my wide-range Moderan vision narrowed in to scoop off the message coming through on the wall. And the mountains crumbled down to the seas again! The sky collapsed like a sledgehammered egg! My new-metal shell shrank until I was crushed, a shard in a metal world. I died . . . YOUR WIFE . . . ARRIVED LAST EVENING . . . OPERATIONS GOING FINE . . . YOU WILL SOON BE A TEAM . . . AGAIN . . . BEST WISHES . . .
Was there a smirk in that BEST WISHES, a snicker-sneer implied from a Court Man Most High remembering mountainous problems and nagging times most sore a long long while ago? Was someone laughing, saying, “Better you than I, old chump chump, ha HA!” of my plight? Whatever or however, let it be known that from the time of that fateful tweetle and twottle message I lived nine months dead, I was paralyzed, I had no spark nor spunk, I enjoyed nothing, I was a new-metal zombie going cold and cold and cold on a cold routine, a true case of the walking death dying stiller, going chillier, waxing more unresponsive to any of life’s halloo. And when she arrived—and oh God, she did arrive, that tough strong little woman with the ice-blue terror eyes, having stood those very serious and stark operations nine months like a summer breeze on shore—she arrived to RUN the Stronghold! Oh, yes, the full take-over. No partnership here. Had there ever been? Ha! . . .
My case was not unique. All over Moderan that spring, when we were beginners-new and the plans not set-mold, they came walking in, struggling, falling down, getting up to come on, most of them with one aim in view—not to let that disappearing surviving rat husband get away with a thing. I’M YOUR WIFE, seemed, in their minds, to say it all and leave no questions of any kind. Doom was final; doom was sealed-down doom. That gray twilight terror-life of wife-husband husband-wife (WEEAAOOOHH YEEAAOOOHH OOHH OHH) must never be changed, not even by the ending of a world.
Well, we fellows in Moderan did not stand that nonsense. We had other ideas. Moderan was man country with man aims and man views. When it became stark-clear that the forever-life was not feasible with a flesh-strip helpmate of female steel that could not be turned-off turned-on, we moved them out. It was as simple as that. We formed a Commission for the Relocation of Old New-Metal Shrews. We moved them to a place prepared for them, the walled province of White Witch Valley. The walls are high there; it is a prison, vast and maximum-security; the guards, we hope, will never sleep there, nor relax on their rounds on the walls. My God help us all if there ever is a prison break from the walled province of White Witch Valley!
THE BIRD MAN OF MODERAN
IT WAS early along in my Stronghold reign, after I had won me a couple of world Max Shoot-Outs and had established myself as the current Greatest Man, that I began to think again of other things; I began to think of . . . aspects . . . Purpose . . . Beauty . . . Community Interest. . . .
I went down to see him that apple-green spiced day, riding the roll-go road like any little man, like a citizen of Old Times, gliding through Moderan’s fixed and automatic spring. It was May. Everything was up; everything was out; Central Seasons had handed that big iron switch to ON to send old winter reeling once again. The plastic snow s
heets had turned over and under as wheels spun deep in the ground, and the spring yard sheets had come up and over on the drums in that fair and equal exchange that makes seasons switch no problem in our great Moderan. How Nature used to struggle to bloom those poor blooms up! Everything in conflict, fighting for a toe hold, beating the frost nip down or being beaten down . . . petty struggle . . . to nothing . . . and all so unnecessary. Now we have it all on giant drums with yard sheets, divided into four—winter part, spring part, summer part and fall—and turning a season up in plastic is just play now where once old Nature struggled . . . hard.
I got off at the place marked RESTRICTED AIR, BIRD FIELD, just stepped from the roll-go road and worked my hinges and braces across to where IT was. Like any common man. Sightseeing. Rubbernecking. A citizen interested in a phase. The bird guards tried to stop me well out on the plastic plains, read me the Book of Security, told me their jobs, started to draw snub weapons. I flashed then #10’s great eagle-studded seal, eyed them as a king eyes rats and kept on walking, pleased at the way their glances curdled when the awful thought struck home, wondered if years on they might not hand voice tapes to steel guardchildren, telling how on one awful day in May grandsire had bungled, had in his impetuous little duty rounds challenged a King . . . and lived.
Even so, the warnings went up and out from the Complex of Birds, and there was a bit of a flurry overall that the greatest battle man in all wide Moderan should so come down. To see birds! Usually they went in in ersatz, the great steel Stronghold chiefs, sending an aidede-camp to do this thankless chore of seeming to be interested in the birds, community betterment, the flowers, the vapor shield color change and other such homely procedures network in the Plan. They only did it for points, most of these Stronghold clowns, knowing that the snoop cars of the Evaluators were always up and out, checking to see what a man did for Community Interest when the guns were gone all silent and the truce-stopped war loads swung free and easy in the launch slings, ON HOLIDAY! But I went because I wanted to. And you can believe this or not—I’m always seeking something. I search for it day and night. Even when the heavens are all ablaze with war fire, I keep thinking. Not that I’m a soft man or a candidate for bloom man. Nor am I a fright man. Nor even the King of Good Wishes. Essentially I’m a doubt man, out-search and looking. And except in war, when all is beautiful and killing, strength and anger gone solid action, everything channeled to knowable goals, I’m edgy.
I stamped in, steel-on-steel. I salvoed my voice into the Welcome Wall speaker cone, “STRONGHOLD 10 IS HERE TO SEE A LAUNCH. And perhaps understand more about the world. I understand the war part of it. And well I should I guess!” I felt my head and neck and face flesh-strips blushing, going modest. “This is Stronghold 10,” I blundered on, “the greatest Stronghold in all wide Moderan. Winner of the war plaques for destruction and the emblem of the crossed bombs for excellence. I’VE BEATEN THEM ALL! I find peace sometimes hard to take. In peace, when the birds go and the flowers bloom and the trees pop-shoot back, surfacing out of the yard holes, couldn’t we have a kind of peace warfare overall? I mean, like you, your part of it, wouldn’t it be more in keeping if you launched the birds all up in a kind of Battle-Stations-for-Beauty? This sending them up to tweetle and twootle and flap and float a bit of color through the already colored air, what’s the sense? Man! you could have a big bird rally for each district of Moderan, each bird could do its battling best to stay up against all the other birds, and the last one up would be the strongest, the staunchest, and therefore the most beautiful. Huh? I bet an eagle or a condor’d win it, huh? I’m condor-built myself, cross taloned with eagles—big, strong, tough—mean as battling hell. But I think you know that, seeing as how I’m Stronghold 10, the world’s current Greatest Man.” I eased back on the phfluggee-phflaggee then, because I really had been talking too much, and perhaps I might regret. And besides, I was here as a visitor, not a braggart-suggester. It was not my place, I’m sure, to revise Moderan in peace just because I happened to be the current greatest war man. What an upstart Captain I might be thought, a Stronghold master popping off down here to see the bird shots, alone, without proper security clearance even, and wasting no time in coming up with my own ideas for revision. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Just show me a launch of warblers, pewees or some such, and I’ll head on back to my guns.”
To tell you the truth, I was uncomfortable—as I always am—on a mission of peace. I’m better with anger and blasters. Much better. Always was. And yet, I’m always wanting something, as I said, something else, and it drives me on, down to the wedge end, into the corners of search. Even now I tingled with the hope of it, my flesh-strips writhed and remembered, my steel parts seethed, rasped, wrinkled and shouted, so disturbed they were by the flesh parts quivering. YES! I was a jelly mess as I waited, the current greatest Captain of all wide Moderan (winner of the first-place Plaques of Destruction and the crossed bombs for excellence in the latest total world gun-down) quivering like some old granny dame of Old Times anticipating a granny thrill. I was anticipating a thrill, all right, the thrill of the discovery of a little part of the secret of Soft Beauty in the world. And scared I was that it might too much unsettle me, might prove too much for me to see this man, this Captain of Birds, this prince on fire with a mission of peace, an Apostle of Soft Beauty and surely one against guns in the world. I felt clumsy all at once; my plaques at home seemed nothing all at once; I felt I almost would trade my entire Stronghold just now for one glimpse of the true secret of the birds and sweet beauty in the universe. YES! I’d go barefoot in metal across the trouble-boiling world, a clanking clunking Messiah, all unarmed, ungunned, to lecture to them—amidst shot and shell one Light-seeing evangel Captain standing tall as trees, all bared to danger, shouting, “NO! NO! THAT’S NOT THE WAY!”
I needn’t have worried. He came on in dirty steel, a short-stump man, hangdog, a mere district Captain of Birds, a reduced Stronghold master in very fact, and one, I supposed, plotting to get back a fort. He looked all around in confusion until at last his mechanical wide-range Moderan eyes discovered me. Fastening on to my substance they narrowed in to evaluate, and he looked, I thought, like some stubby iron goose quick-swiveling its head as he pressed a button that squawked, “Welcome, Stronghold 9, welcome to Bird Launch.” When I started to wave and to shout my protest, he narrowed in more with his eyes and tried again and this time, hitting the right button, it came out, “Welcome, Stronghold 10, welcome to Bird Launch, and excuse. And Stronghold 9, excuse, if monitoring.” Then some of his all-metal help glided up on the power floor and without further ceremony hustled ME! as if I were anyone! into an iron cylinder at the forward edge of the room. It was the bird launch observation cylinder and I soon saw that I had a very good view of a wide expanse of uncluttered vapor-shield distance. Perhaps Beauty would soon appear there and sound would tell me how. I waited all wrinkly and undone. For Beauty’s showing.
Soon a flurry of dark fast-moving spots appeared in the vapor-shield distance of my view area. “Warblers’ launch,” a metal voice said, most mechanically, “warblers’ launch for Twelfth District. Stay on cue for sparrows. Pewees next.” And so it went, all through the launch of many kinds of mechanized, metal birds. My view area would fill with dark, swift-arrowing spots, and soon a mechanical voice would tell me what was awing. We went with this from warblers, sparrows, pewees, all through past eagles and were just ready for condors when something deep in me gave way to outrage. “Hell’s fire!” I shouted, and I thumped on the sides of the view cylinder, “let me out of here. I came down here in good faith, and all I’m getting is spots before my eyes. Hell’s fire!”
“Retrieve Stronghold 12,” the recall voice said—“excuse, retrieve Stronghold 5, excuse, retrieve—retrieve Stronghold?—Stronghold of current viewing—retrieve retrieve . . .”
So they took me out of the metal view cylinder, and I confronted the hangdog man. I was really burned and ready; my explosion tolerance, never too far undergroun
d, was up and ready to blow. I put the button on YELL and I let it blast: “Here I, Moderan’s greatest current man, take time off from my duties—hell, I could be home supervising fusing for the next world shots—to come down here and show Community Interest and maybe pick up a few points as well as a few pointers that might do me some good. And what happens? Hell! Your metal dunces cram me into the view tube and you let on like it’s a big deal. And hell, you don’t even remember more’n half of the time who I am. And what do I see? Spots! Warblers’ launch. Spots! Sparrows’ launch. Spots! Pewees’ launch. Spots! And on through past eagles. HELL! I could’ve stayed home and drawn spots on pieces of paper. And waved that before my eyes. Hell’s fire! Blast! Damn! and THUNDERATION!”
“Now, now, don’t be so touchy-tough. We all have our little problems. Yours seems to be one of misunderstanding. You came down here expecting to see beauty at the launch. For the Tenth District. Where you should have gone to see beauty at the launch for the Tenth District was to the Twelfth District. WHERE WE SHOOT IT AT is where the beauty is. Not where from. See? Now, if you’ll just hustle your tail right on out of here, you might just get over there in time to see the condors come in. To Twelfth District. In fact, if you’ll take a flash car and rush-ass it, I’ll make an exception and hold up condor launch for a few sees. Just for you! I’ll fake a slight malfunction after eagles. O.K.?”
“No, it’s not O.K. I think I’ve been had. Someone told me when looking for beauty to go to the birds. But I think I’ve misunderstood something. I’ve been pretty busy at war, though.”
“Sure you have. And being a war man, what we do with the birds should grab you pretty much. I mean, it should appeal to your sense of the tightness of things. The citizens, generally, don’t know it, but by and large we don’t send the birds up for nothing. Not for beauty, and that’s for sure. It’s really a little training exercise they go on, each time we launch. Just suppose we should ever need to change bird heads for warheads, huh?” And his bulb eyes gleamed as he leered, and he nudged through the air toward me, like a conspirator.
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