The war, let me say, that followed was a tremendous success; the doll bombs homed with dispatch down to the kill, the White Witch rockets flashed far and wide over steel-topped Moderan, and the high-up weird shrieking wreck-wrecks were never better. But next truce time I could hardly wait to get on the viewer-talk and ask all around at the Strongholds if any had seen this huge blind horse and his rider. The negative replies I received and the quizzical, odd, lifted-eye looks on the viewer-talk told me it was perhaps not best to inquire of this strange horse and his rider again.
INTERRUPTION IN CARNAGE
WHAT MASSIVE thing had gone wrong, what tremendous, perhaps irretrievable, error had been committed in all our images? In Moderan. What cardinal principle of the land transgressed—VIOLATED! to put the mighty dream down low? Yesterday he was something, one of us—snarling, grinning, looking for Joys, hiding at his time of terror in his peep-box of steel, mounting his wars, making good his plans to invade us, going about his day, with an eye out for the ever-lurking Disaster or the always possible Win, being entirely a fits-in “right” man of his times. But today! TODAY!!!???
It was just at first salvo that we had discovered it, or at least had started to suspect. By second and third salvos the mounting fear was in us as coldly we eyed our View. There was a hole in the kill stuff going out, a blank place in the noise of firing, some imbalance over all. And we had planned such a perfect war! The weak Strongholds had been ruled out, and the perfect boxes were formed, with the big Strongholds in lined order and at the four corners the super Strongholds (of which I was one) going with the strong stuff, symmetrical for massive murder. Junior wars were out, major wars were in; and this was to be almost a total commitment of the kill capabilities of the world.
As leader Stronghold and Grand Marshal of the carnage I called a halt in our battle and went over personally to see why there was a hole being left in our firing. The other Stronghold masters all came over in their beams, some even sending their pictures, for this was a most unusual thing and we all wondered. By merely sending their beams and their pictures to parley, and staying home themselves, busily, bravely in the Stronghold, I knew they were shoring up things for better battle progress later, taking advantage of me, of course, wishing to topple me, but of such is the cross of leadership, and I tried to bear it nobly, and certainly without mean-malice, for, given their chance, unquestionably I should have been doing as they—THE SAME THING!
What a work of science is a metaled man—yesterday. Today. . . with both wide-range mechanized eyes staring at some distant far-far nothing, or some nothing close as those iron shutters there that once he could shade down across his head holes, when he wanted to turtle down, close the iron gates up to the eye cores and say he was not home, not home to anyone . . . But mostly he was home, this man, home to living, home to Joys, home to hate, an easy, open man, not closed and mean unto the world—good, a reliable, large man, one who would at the littlest need of a carnage put his Stronghold on the ready footing of total war—all out! and max-effort fight it until all the rockets, the bombs, the walking missiles and the doom-doom flares were loosed upon the world. And now—Today ore dumps and flesh-strip morgues are full of him.
Just under his gun lids he lay, half smiling, a cool death-smirk upon his iron face, one of his iron hands clutching some little odd-faced totem, an unimportant-looking voodoo doll, it seemed to me, but perhaps some charm piece, to him, of total luck, a happy-omen thing that he had had in better days when the wars had gone good, GOOD for him, and he was—entirely ungutting his neighbors—WINNING! The other hand was flung out in an odd ungraceful flinging, cockangled toward a gun tube, bespeaking a quick surprise, I thought, and the iron fingers were all sprangled out and splayed upward, as though reaching, or warding, or wanting to receive some offer. I wondered. Who knows about that moment—who knows? WHO KNOWS ABOUT THAT MOMENT THAT FINALLY COMES?
As always happened in the distant past, and still happens perhaps in those small pockets of retardation, the simple flesh-fouled countries, we milled for awhile and were, confronting the totally-terrible fact, undecided. They were all there with me at this chief’s ending-side, albeit I was the only one there in my actual corporeal image. But their beams and their pictures were so adequate and brisk that all could be decided here, and they could be home, as they should be, as I most certainly should have been, given their chance, preparing a bigger battle for later. The question was what to do with this man who had died, it appeared, a natural-causes death (a thing entirely out in Moderan) thus shattering us all to the very core of the foundation of our Mighty Dream. YES! With our flesh-strips few and played-down, and the bulk of us new-metal-man now, had we not conquered death, that is, did we not now control death? Well, we had certainly dreamed so. Though we might bring it to ourselves, and millions, in some great carnage for a proud or a playful cause, had we not bested that death that came so steadily! like night stealers, that breakdown kind of death that crept so slowly dark-thieflike, backdoors-way through the life tubes, encroaching year on year until finally, all darkly, it took command and the news flashed out like explosion, “DEATH CAME FROM NATURAL CAUSES”? That old-fashioned, quaint, disgraceful, degrading, unmanly kind of death—OH NO!
“I’LL TAKE HIM HOME!” I said. What an impulsive thing to say, what a difficult impulse to indulge! “I may be able to fix him,” I said and immediately I had said it I felt a cold gray shame flush up around my new-metal head holes—the ear shafts, the nostril tunnels, the eye cores—all the places where my head flesh-strips were reacting. What an odd-ball thing to say of a man, another human soul, “I may be able to fix him!” “I’ll hope to get him well,” I blurted. “I’ll try.”
Was I a doctor? No, I was not a doctor. Was I one skilled more than most others in new-metal man maintenance, metal-wound repair or flesh-strip starvation correction? Indeed I was not. Was I one to feel the Great Dark grab me when one of us was down, down not to rise again, graceless, woundless, spit-hung in Ending, the caked death-froth cold on the iron lips and the two wide-range New Processes eyes spewing their sightless courses at heaven, at hell, at NOTHING? Indeed I was. Indeed, I was that.
So, reluctantly, they gave me a week, voting there in conclave with their brisk beams and their pictures, a week of total hole in the action, a cessation, the Truce! although some, mostly the young, naturally were impatient. To get on with the shooting, the launching, the firing of all was their passion.
Once home I thought of putting some engine in him slyly. . . on the sly. . . in the deep night, shutting out all the prying beams, the lead curtains up everywhere, and he and I alone deep in the Stronghold, in my innermost Corrector Room—the quick and the dead confronted. It was tempting. It could have been done, of course, oh, it could have been easily done, and done so well that he would walk again, his eyes would seem to see again, and yes, he could talk to us. He could rejoin his Stronghold and continue the war! But he would be then really only a weapons man, devoid of all human quality, and I would know it. NO! I could not be that false, not to him, not to them, not to any of us. Although it might be best for them to dream on in their mighty death-masking fool’s dream. But to engine him up again with only his own lean juice, his own flesh-strips—to make him rise up natural, to give him back to hate and all the human wants, the grins, the snarls, the grunts, the groans, the chatter of living, the pleasure and displeasure, to put him on the human plane again in total defiance of the Big Dark of the Cold Nothing—that’s what I wanted to do.
The dream went pretty, prettily—in my mind. The thoughts went like hope-gardens, all flowers in bud or bloom. But he went—NOT—
My head tracked it awhile—how many hours, how many days, I do not know. But they found me, near the end of the week they had given me, out on the homeless plastic. I had loaded him in a little iron-wheel wagon, somehow in a little iron-wheel utility wagon, the kind my weapons men use sometimes for short-hauling BLAMM shots up to the launch slings. And they asked me, out there with
their beams and their pictures—where? where going? “Going—GOING?” I said, looking at them a million incomprehensions. “GOING!?” I cried. And I looked at the iron color of the dome that was over us, the finally inescapable bowl of the limitless prison-wall sky, gray and gray and gray, time’s unlimited smothery murk. “GOING???!!!” I shrieked, and I looked into my own smoky thoughts far as I could go toward some possible port of arrival. “GOING???!!!”
They were kind. I will say this, they were kind. They had me, they finally had me, and they knew it. But they didn’t use it so, and for that I honor them. Perhaps they made allowances for my derangement because they were certain that I was fighting their battle too, and privately I believe they knew that we had all lost. But they persuaded me differently, put on a brave show with their dancing faces and beams and told me that there had been no loss, a horrible hardly-explainable accident maybe, but no loss, and we were not diminished.
A little sheepishly I took him back, hauling in a common iron-wheel wagon, the kind used sometimes for short-hauling BLAMM shots in Strongholds, what had once been a lordly Stronghold master, an iron cock-of-the walk, a man refined to the lastest last refinement, a man not made for natural-causes death, a man to LIVE! and bring the lordly monster-death of broiling grandiose war to a whole world if he so chose. He was awkwardly placed in the wagon, too big for it anyway, and his arms and legs were all akimbo, and some of these things were dragging, however much I might regret that, and I was working my hinges and braces furiously in the awkward hurry-walk of the new-metal “replaced” people, plop-plip-plap-plop, over the homeless way, hauling this dead hunk of metal and flesh-strip, that had once been a man, back for a decision. Their beams followed us, some of their likenesses shepherded us along, and we made quite a picture there, I suppose.
Later we had to decide what best to do—there were many questions. Should we give this man, the whole man, a decent old-fashioned burial, prayers and all to go with his old-fashioned death or should we, as was quite permissible in a clear-cut case of mighty-battle-death, award his flesh-strips to another Stronghold master to be used, where applicable, as spare parts for longer wear at war. In this latter case we would give this resigning—not dead, just resigning!—Stronghold master the short, in absentia, strictly honorary laudatory awards-type service, and CERTAINLY! without prayers and heaven-promise. And we could melt his metal down in a little ceremony and send it to that place on the Great Plastic Plain of the Dream Realized where he could be joined to his god—our god—a massive stick of new-metal set as our guide star when Moderan was new.
To me just then, looking at this definite sprawled quietus, it didn’t seem really to make much difference how we disposed of him. If it went the Moderan way, the metal shell of him melted down could go to join the Great Shaft, that massive stick that grows and lives and talks to us, a fact to count on, a god substantial, tall on the Great Plastic Plain. Or, if we by vote decided it, the metal shell of him could go on to become merely a weapons man, with an engine in him, a functional bit of pleasant moving nonsense meaning nothing at all, nothing at all. If it went the quaint old-fashioned heaven-promise way, with the full burial, the prayers, the talk of Something that would arise, Something far lighter than mist or air, Something that, of such frailty, was Eternal—well, I suspected that down in his long home he would heavily lie, sightless eyes looking toward his stopped toes forever.
“WHAT MEANS IT ALL AT ALL?” I shrieked in awful-frenzy shriek, retrogressed again toward madness shout, “THIS MAN IS ALL-GONE GONE! As we must in time ALL be. Come Faith or kidding Dream.” But they reasoned with me again, right out there with their beams in front of me, talking, and some of them with their pictures sent out dancing, all of them really trying to stress how unseemly it was that I, a super Stronghold master, should so break down and be felled by natural-causes death. In Moderan. Where, officially, there was no natural-causes death. So finally I relented, gave in to the pressure and was persuaded.
What really happened, I suppose, was that I began to feel guilty. Why should I, I asked myself, just because I thought I had looked so deep and had seen so plain the clear NOTHING, hold up these good iron-purposed people who wanted to get on with the shooting, the launching, the firing of all? I had no right! They were dancy and brim-up with temporary aims, all entirely decent folk wanting to get on with the Big Battle, the killing marathon, and hurl contestful death at each other night and day in the big world hurly-burly. Why should I turn sour-heart and tell them there was nothing at the end of all this but this—the definite blank quietus? “He grew careless,” I shouted, “probably, and didn’t ply the rules and play the game. Didn’t feed himself the right introven maybe. His flesh-strips likely starved. Or maybe they just turned mouldy and unhealthy around the metal and flesh-strip joins because he didn’t practice Moderan hygiene properly. Why should we care if he corroded? Should we let one careless, shiftless, entirely unworthy member of society completely block-buster a central dream? Or hold up our contest? WE SHOULD NOT! We’ll just store him in some old back-century chapel, shove him into a crypt until this war is over. Then we’ll decide what to do with a bum who winged it and wouldn’t fight.” And the cheers started up, what would have been salvo upon salvo for me, from the beams and the pictures.
But just as the wild salvos for me were getting well underway, a young and vigorous little Stronghold captain, who had been watching and listening from a long way out, stepped in closer, just straightened his hinges and braces jauntily, flexed his kneecaps about twice and sent his beams out dancing with his picture shooting fire to blurt there an indictment and an offer that beat my suggestions very very much. I had to admit it. “THE BUM!” he cried. “Not one wound, not one single gash of the battle for his death badge! BUM! BUM!! BUM!!! If he had died a battle-damage death, his Stronghold all caved in, all the gun tubes hanging and the launch pads jammed—snarling up to the surface of his rubble and ready to go at us all, at everything! with just his two bare metal hands—BRAVO!! But this useless, guileless, gutless, hateful, grandma kind of death of the smiling hate-gone quitter—pshaw!”
Then the beams of the little captain and his picture raised hands to plead that we listen sharply, and he went on, a little less impassioned now but in a voice that told that all of his substance and being was entirely back-up for what he said. “Since he didn’t ply the rules and play the game,” he reasoned, “this thief, this failure, this unspeakable blot who would steal our Dream and set us, back-hoped to NOTHING, on the terrible waves of Time to die—he is not one of us, not truly, could not ever have really been one of us. Therefore, let us strike him out of the League. We’ll blackball him through Forever! We’ll burn his image and flay his name before the stars on high. That’ll take care of him. Then, just to be sure, we’ll dump him in that big underground Zero Corrector machine, you know, the new one in the North, the one that can chew whole fortresses to a powder finer than dust in less than five seconds flat. Then all we have to do is fix our minds the right way. Cling to the fact that he never happened. So our Dream, our death-conquering sacred Dream, our Plan of life forever through flesh-strip, new-metal and introven, will be fixed whole again, patched new, fine as it has ever been! And you can get on then with that grand war that, though I am not worthy to be in it, I watch and learn in every day, and I thrill to every death-weighted shot. And some day, maybe, when the iron invitations go out and mighty mechanized trumpets make their call, the sweetest of all music in this world, then maybe—”
Burst upon burst of wildly appreciative applause broke forth for the little captain then, for him whose clear-headed and wise suggestions had solved our dilemma about natural-causes death in Moderan. Yes, we’d fix this bum who had embarrassed us so badly, fix him so that it would be in fact that he had never been. We’d vote him out. We’d burn his image and flay his name before the Universe’s high heaven. And then, just to make sure, we’d grind him underground in our own sure device for reducing to powdery dust all unwanted and u
nworthy things. YES! Yea, little captain!
So we moved up this wise little captain who, in fact, had been gunning for long for major rank, beamed him a notice to get ready for war, he was in! the fight would resume next Wednesday, which was tomorrow. So, in the end, near disaster to our Mighty Dream brought Joy to one, and if I do say so, albeit a little reluctantly, new blood in the lists probably didn’t hurt us a bit, and our war was as successful as any I’d ever seen. And just to set the record straight, in deference to Mighty Truth, all ways and always, I must record that once again I recovered well and came back strong to refute a general and growing suspicion that before too many years more I might be ready for the Zero Machine, the Great Corrector, myself. Amidst the relentless havoc and the general shambles of all our shattered Strongholds I stood up once more as the Tall One and, walking proud-up around among the stacked great battle dead, accepted my prizes humbly as I could—“most efficient warrior of all,” “most courageous battler in show,” “best planner of strategy overall, by far,” and finally the final accolade for one who would “steadfastly and without question use it all in unswerving and uncompromising holocaust to bend the world in battle to his own tall will.”
THE MIRACLE OF THE FLOWERS
WE WERE having an old-fashioned March-month in Moderan that year; Central had turned off Weather and was letting the big ball roll out its own. I was sitting outside my Stronghold in a truce time, enjoying a storms-up time, the wind gusts whirling about my steel armpit hinges, being tuneful in my new-metal nose, and withal howling at my tin ear shafts a pleasant enough spring song. It may be that I slept, but I do not think that I slept. I think the start that took me was not from sleep, but from wakefulness to greater wakefulness. And when you see what looks like a windmill walking away from a wind—!
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