Moderan

by David R. Bunch

  “Hello!?”

  He didn’t say anything. He came on closer, still looking, staring.

  “You’re that little wavering thing,” I shrieked, for suddenly I knew. “You’re out of the corridor of Folly Man!”

  I thought he smiled a little. He didn’t say anything, I was sure of that. But he moved, came nearer, until he almost touched me.

  “How did you get in through all that firing? Through the Walls? My guards and devices?” By now I was not only yelling, scared to death, I was curious as I could be. I thought I heard a tinkly bubbling laugh. Or perhaps it was but the clanking of my metal in great fear. “WHO ARE YOU?” I cried.

  When he gave only a smile for reply and stared at me with his hard no-quarter eyes, I suddenly trembled so with my flesh-strips that I lost control of my brain and fell down. I saw he was sitting atop my chest bouncing up and down to the piston blasts of my heart when I regained some control of my mind and looked out. And I seemed to hear several voices chirping like tiny new-metal beetles sound from far, and then nearer, “I’m your conscience, Your Conscience, YOUR CONSCIENCE. You left me, thought you left me in Folly Man, ON THE ROAD TO MODERAN.” Voices like that scared me so much that I leaped to my feet and sent the vague blurred shape tumbling toward a Wall. He landed right-side-up and stared at me straight-on. He kept staring. . . .

  “Listen,” I said, because my brain ached around its flesh-strips so much and at the roots of the joins that I knew I couldn’t go on like this, “I’ll make a deal. You say you’re my conscience. O.K. I don’t more than half believe you here in Moderan at this late year. But O.K. And I KNOW I can kill anything I don’t like. I KNOW—” He stood there grinning. “O.K.” I hastened to say, “I’ll let you stay if you’ll promise to let me tie you up and put you under the bed. I’ll use you then, whenever I need to. Like I do the Miss Statue Woman. And I won’t need you,” I muttered under my breath. “I won’t, I won’t.”

  I thought he agreed. I remember trussing something up with chains and a big wire. And then I must have collapsed and lay there several days while the Stronghold ran on Automatic, the way it does when I sleep . . . the way it does. . . .

  Sometimes, thinking it all over, I could almost decide that nothing had happened at all.

  At other times I’d feel sure Someone was there, watching me, evaluating me. And then I’d have that weird crazy feeling, like I didn’t even want to go blast down one of my neighbor’s Walls or enjoy the discomforts of the new-metal kitten and the diamond-tooth tiger child. And ever since I’d made that agreement about putting him under the bed, I had left the Miss Blue-Eyes strictly alone, though I had wanted her madly. But the plain truth was we were not wed.

  Then came the day I shut my eyes and was thinking clean and I “knew” it had all been a strange dream. He couldn’t have got through that Max Fire, and past all my guards and devices. With the relief of knowing again that the ways of Moderan were safe and right I felt my blood lose its thinness and I thought again of my work—and my Joys! I raced to the bed under which lay my darling one and I unfolded down on my hinges, and the eagerness flooding my flesh-strips made me tinkle in all my new-metal parts. But as I was pulling her toward me, breathing hard and fumbling for her life switch madly, something hit me, hit me with hard baffling fact. My Miss Statue Woman, my Blonde Blue-Eyes, my Darling One, somehow had got herself trussed up . . .with chains and a big wire . . . And between me and a couple of Little Wrecks something wavered and smiled and started up talking, like new-metal beetles, like voices from far . . .“I’m your conscience, YOUR CONSCIENCE . . .”

  Well, it’s Last-Go, I may as well tell you, Ultimate Contingency and Final Fire. Unless something can be done. Something strange is in this Stronghold and I can’t go on with it thus. Before I’ll live with conscience I’ll say the secret word! I’ll signal the demolition box in the mountain of the Last Hope Stand. I’ll blow my Stronghold, me, him, Everything, into the uncountable skies, into all the eternities—I who had hoped to live forever with my Stronghold and my Joys.

  GETTING REGULAR

  DISGRACE! A Stronghold in disgrace! I awoke that gray-shield morning to the taste of old green brass in my throat and the heavy pistoning of my heart as I lay on my hard bed remembering. And let me say here, I am not prepossessing as I lie on my bed of levers playing the mechanism to lift me; at my ease I do not look like a god. I must look more like a suit of old armor once would have looked if it had in the ancient days rolled in some thick-sliced bacon and then gone to bed on a bridge truss. Yes, we look like walking steel shells with flesh piping, in Moderan, and we think of wars and good pounding. To live forever, to be our true bad selves—those are our twin destinations.

  And now to face the Court Most High and explain of disgraceful demeanor, of deviation—that was what I had to do. Oh, I could stand them off for awhile, perhaps forever, if they would play the fair game by way of the frontal attack. I could lie behind my eleven steel walls in my Stronghold, put the fort on the status of Continuous-Blast, let the missiles roll, let the walking doll bombs go, let the Honest Jakes and the high-up weird screaming wreck-wrecks launch and perhaps stand off hell and the Courts till time itself grew old. But they wouldn’t attack fair; I knew that. In fact, they wouldn’t attack at all, what you could call attack. And that was the galling thing. There I’d lie with all that kill potential hanging, ready to go at the press of the big orange switch in my War Room. And what would the Court men, the Hall men, do? They’d hint. They’d lounge in the L-Towers up there in their big-deal offices at their Best-View window desks in the Needle Building that’s so tall and high-spired that the pennon pole pierces the vapor shield. They’d swap the stories, chew at the big smoke ropes, spit at the diamond-speckled gold spittoons, smile their new-alloy teeth and perhaps turn off my trees. Or, allowing the trees to stand, they might not let the tin birds come down to sing in them. Or, say they left my trees and birds alone, what about flowers? Perhaps they’d use their influence to get the people at Central to turn off my flowers. And how would I look? There I’d be with the only Stronghold for miles around sitting there with the heavy ammo bristling and in heaps and no pretty flowers blooming round about on spring-metal stems to soften the horror. How would I look? How would I feel? Or perhaps they’d send over their bomphlateers with the hint specials, those subtle little leaflets saying something like STRONGHOLD 10 NOT IN ACCEPTABLE CITIZENSHIP STATUS AGAIN THIS VAPOR SHIELD. STRONGHOLD 10 IN ARREARS FOR 5 VAPOR SHIELDS BACK. STRONGHOLD 10 URGED PLEASE TO GET REGULAR. Just that. Well, I know who Stronghold 10 is. Stronghold 10 is me. And I know what a vapor shield is, even if once I mightn’t have. A vapor shield is a month. Each month is a different vapor shield in Moderan, and I don’t quarrel with that. May is green, October is bright orange, just to illustrate. The gray one I’m in now is March, very sad and full of threat potential I’ll have you know.

  So suppose I get a leaflet raid. And once they start leaflets, they don’t usually just shower you with one leaflet. Oh my, it’s a dozen anyway, usually. So one morning lying there on my lever bed playing the risers and slingers to lift me there’s suddenly ten of my tin men around me, each with a leaflet. And they’re acting solemn, but really looking happy and pleased that the boss man has got himself in a spot of trouble. So I take the hint pages they hand me and I crumple said pages into a twelve-leaf crumpled-leaflet paper ball and I fling that crumpled-leaflet twelve-page hint ball disdainfully over toward a couple of Little Wrecks on the missile line. Have I fooled anybody? I have not. Those tin men know when the boss man hasn’t acted right. They know when Stronghold 10 is on the run.

  So I’m thinking—that gray March morning of realization there on my lever bed thinking back—I guess I owe it to myself and my men to get regular. I sure didn’t owe it to Central or those crooks up in the L-Towers of the Needle Building looking at the view, chewing at the big smoke ropes, pot-shotting the diamond-speckled gold spittoons and acting like pieces of God.

  So, arising from
my lever bed much later that Gray March morning, I went up to the Needle Building. I took no one with me, for let me say here, I alone am Stronghold 10 when it comes to dealing with the outside world; I am the complete master at Stronghold 10; I am the only one with a flesh-strip and what you might call a reasonable brain. Even my blonde blue-eyes, my real darling, my complete mistress, my sweetheart doll—cause of all my present dilemmas and my future in doubt—did not have a flesh-strip. She was all loving steel, as you might say, even when her life-switch was thumbed full to ON and we were sweethearting. But I’ll admit she had me going one time, so mixed up that I aimed to defy all the powers that be, give her part of one of my lesser flesh-strips (I swear I aimed to do this) leave her life-switch full to ON and make her queen of my Stronghold forever, my wife! It would have got me expelled from the Society of Stronghold Masters, I have no doubt, and perhaps brought war, terrible and continuing, between me and the Authorities. Well, it didn’t happen. I aimed to do it, but I waited too long. I dillydallied while she pleaded; I demurred while she begged. And now it is too late; she is gone. To where, I know not. One brown-vapor-shield thoughtless time I left her life-switch to ON carelessly, when we were through loving, and she went—over the eleven steel walls somehow—maybe with the help of the tin men. But I digress; she is gone. Perhaps it is better so. The gray-green cloud of all these ill events she engendered overwhelms me even now, and I must right things.

  So, as I was saying, I went up to the Needle Building, alone. I told my head weapons man, Slag Morgbawn, nominal second in command, and commander of the Stronghold when I am gone, to wait a full day and a night and then come for me if I had not by that time come back. You never know what you’ll meet out there on that mutant-milled plastic. Usually nothing, for it will recently have been swept by a Maximum Weapons Fire. (So I’m taking a chance, you say, on the weapons man? But not so much as you’d suppose. He’d need my flesh-strips before he could be a king, acceptable to the Society of Stronghold Masters. My flesh-strips are his hope. Yes, he’d come for me, dead or alive. I was sure of that.)

  The eleven gates rolled back and I passed from my Stronghold; I toddled over the homeless plastic, plop-plip-plap-plop, a Stronghold man out of his Stronghold, walking hard but going slow in his hinges, as helpless and defenseless almost as a new baby bird out of the shell in the old days. You would think I should go with an iron cover of missiles; you would think I should have steel escorts and threats in explosives walking hard by my side. But that suggests a complete, almost hopeless misunderstanding of Moderan and the way we play out here in this greatest of all modern lands. You see, outside my Stronghold I am no longer a force; my neighbors do not regard me. When I am out of my fortress my aura of status attends me only in so far as I must go to deal with powers extraordinary, such as the Courts and the Hall men. To the others Stronghold 10 is always whoever is at the moment manning the eleven steel walls and directing the terrible weapons.

  I had advised my lieutenant, the head weapons man, not to break out any thoughtless war or any war of zest while I walked the homeless plastic. And I knew he would not break out a plot war, because one blast of the launchers would pick me utterly clean with not even a flesh-strip left to show, and my flesh-strips, as I was saying, were his one and only hope for ever being more than a weapons man. Vain, senseless, empty hope, of course. But you see how forces balance, ambition sometimes checkmates treachery, and some things are dismally usual even in Moderan.

  So I reached the Lid and did not get caught in a cross-fire, my one fear really, that two peripheral Strongholds would start a zest war, or a plot war, and catch me, the innocent victim. The Lids were where, all over the Empire, you took the small tunnel cars up to Capitol. I kicked the switch, the Lid slowly rose and I eased down a flight of steps to the small black car in the pressure tube. Setting the General switch to Capitol and the Specific Destination switch to NB125 I was whisked with incredible swiftness through a thousand black miles. I was dumped gently at the landing pod in front of Room NB-125, sky high in the Needle Building.

  The door swung silently open and a small screening man looked at me. He was a service mechanism and did this small, almost useless task of screening for the Hall men, who were chewing the smoke ropes, aiming nonchalantly at the diamond-speckled gold spittoons, relaxing and playing God. I say this was almost useless screening, because that wasn’t the way we played the game, to take a blaster when we went up to see the men in the Needle Building. We went in cringing and fear. If they said we weren’t good citizens and hadn’t been for a certain number of vapor shields past, that was the story. All we could do was hope for terms. How they got to be a collective known as the Needle Building is too involved for me to relate to you here.

  Needle Building FTP Z-U was the tall sad-eyed god-piece assigned to deal with my omissions. Through perforations in the new-metal alloy of his face “replacement” he had a real moustache growing that was bristly and sad-color brown; his peeping new-metal eye globes were cloudy-blue. Let me say here, being looked at by Needle Building FIP Z-U was something like being looked at by two small balls of used bath water on top of a scrub brush in the Old Days. Slender sawtoothed particles of string-metal slime seemed to float across those sorrowing cold eyes to accentuate their threat and true deadliness. “Stronghold 10!” he said like the voice of God and doom all at once.

  “Yes SIR,” I said and hated my heart its pistoning terrible lunging, hated my flesh-strips their cold rancid sweat.

  “Stronghold 10, your war record is in a sad, abused state, showing neglect. Why, there have been whole weeks when you have not once warred against a neighbor. And internally, according to our daily survey conducted by the new Spy-Ray method, which I have not the slightest reason to doubt in accuracy, you have not come up to any acceptable standard either.” He looked at me, letting the cold cloud-blue spots not waver. He ticked his metaled throat in a way to have done honor to ten times the great dignity of a board chairman in the Old Days. “As a higher-culture man,” he rasped, “living in the Age of Truth where war is the measuring stick and destruction the achievement by which we award prizes, what do you have to say for your laggard conduct, by way of explanation, or perhaps—expiation?”

  I gulped. I tried to adjust my heart to be calm. I launched into a great explanation of how I intended to clear my record and get regular. I told him of wars I had in the blueprint stage, some ready to go, if need be, early as tomorrow. Warming to the subject I explained an intricate plan I had for drawing ten neighbor Strongholds into one grand conflict against me, explaining how my central location would make such a course feasible. And, in effect, many of them could claim conflict credit for themselves in warring against each other while they were blasting at me, thereby bringing greater overall battle glory to our sector. Not only was I going to make up for my irregularity the past six months, I was going to do extra. Even through their muddy dead color I saw his sad eyes gleam a little. And I felt then that his was a heart that would joy really only for a man of dedicated hate and destruction potential.

  “So I give you more time for getting External in order,” he said, the words walking lean and clean, like fighters that can get you either high or low, “what about Internal?”

  I had hoped he would soon ask that question, for it is in Internal that I used really to shine. In fact, before my retrogression, I was well on my way toward having in Internal the best overall mean-record of any in our sector. I was inventive. I could think of ways. And then came the terrible retrogression.

  My heart was calm now; I was breathing a regular flex-flex of my new-metal lungs; I knew what he listened for, and I was prepared to soon say it, “SIR,” I said, “in Internal I expect to resume almost immediately the Stronghold 10 Backstobbin. You know, the plan that proved so successful in the past.” He nodded, and I continued. “In that plan, as perhaps you’ll recall, every day is a contest. My ‘people’ are mean to each other from morn to night, and far into the late hours. The person with
the most mean-points, and I’ve worked out an almost infallible scoring system, will not only get to stay up all night in the Stronghold and be mean on his own, he’ll be day mean-master until outscored. SIR, as I’ve found it, it’s a startlingly efficient method of getting the help to be really mean to each other. They have not only the basic incentive implicit in their natures, they have this added incentive of winning prizes. Of course, we’ll award ribbons . . . Also, I’ll be mean myself, Internally.”

  His eyes were showing his happiness and pleasure; the saw-toothed metal pieces were swishing madly in what looked like watery void. “Stronghold 10,” he said, “we once had high hopes for you. And now you have almost rekindled fully all those hopes with your terrible and fine plans. But before I made a decision, will you tell me what happened to spoil your great record? I think I know, but I want to know if you know.”

  “SIR,” I said, “she’s gone now and her silly sad talk of love—” And he nodded; it was so little a nod, but it had that firm special all-important quick little hitch of the neck-strips that told me this god-piece, this FIP Z-U, really understood and was with me again.