Moderan

by David R. Bunch

  He came on at a walking windmill’s pace, if you can imagine an old windmill got loose from its place over an old well and come walking down the wind. As he came nearer I saw it was not a windmill at all, but just a tall sprangly man flailing his long new-metal arm shafts and walking the difficult four-corner walk of the “replaced” flesh-strip people, plop-plip-plap-plop, over the homeless way.

  I had my bravery about me a little that day, so I did not all at once break scared for the Stronghold Wall. I sat and watched him, thinking how wild he was, how flailing the arm swing, how difficult the feet went to move him into his Journey. At the crossways he wavered, jigged on his steel step-outs, flapped his hands in a paddler’s way and, I judged, made the decision. The decision was to pass through the Big Place on the Y, my place! the big steel citadel where fingers reached up to high heaven, probing fingers of search beams, where hinges opened up orange halves of skin steel to disclose the bristling launch pads, and the gun lids, light and easy on the gun tubes, were always ready.

  It was strange that he whistled a tune as he came down the great plastic way leading up to my fortress. Just at the farthest edge of my powers to hear it, with the Aid on Very High, I could catch that tune, a churchly kind of thing, but not of the church militant, gutty and strike them dead for God, but more of the church entreating, suppliant, begging of man some preposterous, impossible, never-to-be-gained concession—indeed, a very disturbing thing. But for anyone to whistle any tune while walking so hard at my gun points, even in truce time, was a thumbed nose at the whole house of my logic, and almost I could not believe it. Curses and dark looks and the howl box going would be more the expected thing. But he was a whistler, a smiler, and he carried a small bouquet! I noticed as I studied him on my medium-X pocko-scope viewer while he was yet a long way out. A man in the Stronghold country carrying a small bouquet?! Better should he be with laser-beam guns low and easy on the waist, foul mean tricks under the breastplate, steel-dissolving acids in secret recesses of the thumbs, to punch at the eyes of strangers, and a couple of wedge-shaped hammers to hammer a man apart if ever he got him down. A small bouquet! Well, we wouldn’t trust that either!

  As a belated gesture at prudence my better brains took hold and I broke for the Stronghold Wall. Cursing ourselves for slowness we started the check-out probe, broke out the latest in look tubes, put the new Scan Scope on fine-tooth-comb, evaluated his whole potential, put our entire vast complex of weaponry on steady alert, GONOW, just in case, and we canceled the leave of a couple of weapons men who, I happened to know, had been seeing much too much anyway of some women robot community workers in town. In addition to all this, with a great swing to the dark side of bravery, I raced for my peep-box of steel. If he was coming to take me with some tricks wrapped up in a set of steel daffodils—well, he wouldn’t find me out there in my long gray hair like some old grandma knitting a doll bomb’s cloak. NO!

  But duly checked he proved clean, the bouquet was indeed a harmless one—little blue spring jump-ups made of steel, and some tin rose buds, quite out of season of course, and a couple of scraggly daffodils, new-metal and a shade off-color, I thought, but, all things considered, a very versatile and a pleasant enough bouquet. I wouldn’t have minded to have had it, just out of sentiment, but I couldn’t, with trying, think of any awards I had coming just now, and the committees in town were jealous, so they wouldn’t be sending me any tributes, floral or otherwise. Perhaps he was en route to some shrine and votive candles down the wind, and, with his walking, by about Xmas he’d get there. But why shouldn’t a windmill-shaped man spend the better part of a year walking toward a shrine and some votive candles down the wind? By about Xmas Eve he could be on the outskirts and camp there, and dead on the twelfth bong of midnight, with sharp timing, he could lurch in with his metal handful and fling it down at the feet of a stuttery startled keeper of candles, and perhaps he would wish to yell at the candle keeper, “FOR THE BIRTHDAY!”—whatever that could mean? Years have been spent in worse ways. YES!

  They handed me the report through a slit in the peep-box of steel, and, since the evaluation was entirely negative on danger, I gave the three signed orders, official and duly sealed, to open the gates on SLOW. When he was just alongside the peep-box, but still far out in the spacious Stronghold square, I invited him to halt. He turned toward me, whirled his flowers in a circle of rainbow hues and kept on coming, grinning, slapping the cold March air with his glinty windmill arms and the steel-and-tin blooms. I turned to my peep-box security, saw the triple locks were on and ran through my mind again the things to do in a time of maximum danger to ME. Ultimate contingency! And the bouquet kept on walking! Should he not stop! I was already deep in that personal commitment to trigger the trip-box ground and let him fall to his doom. He or I again, the old question, and I a great Stronghold master not even considering a lapse that would let me be taken by a man with a steel-and-tin nosegay. Though all my security devices had cleared him while he was still outside, how could I be absolutely sure that he had not smuggled some terrible acid through in each cute petal and stamen and stem of a very evil bouquet? And he would thrust that acid through at my eyes, aiming all too accurately at the slit in the peep-box steel. OH! . . .

  But just as I could almost feel that evil explosive acid slamming into my innocent eyes and jumping the eyeballs out, he halted. And not a second too soon! One steel toe just was touching the line that marked the last small place he could go in his present direction without a terrible reversal at right angles—downward—to where certain devices, that for security reasons I cannot fully describe to you, would grind him in less than five seconds flat to a powder finer than dust. Yes, I could open the ground up under him at any given place in the Stronghold square.

  “I bring to you my flowers,” he said, as I swam back to the present from the near commitment of a terribly violent deed. Let it be said about me, I have never quite got used to it. And sometimes I think my rating as the strongest and bravest of all the Stronghold masters is only a big blatant sham. A man with that rating should be able to do it easily, with one mind tied behind him, so’s to speak, and the minimum in concentration, almost as he breakfasted, as he tossed off his orange introven. (Here in Moderan, you understand, we, the new-metal flesh-strip people, must have all our food in a juice, with special flesh-strip nutrients.) An army of common men then done in before egg soup, and the giants along with the toast juice, and the spies and the lady guerrillas sent down along with the introven tea—sitting there calmly, you know, just casually thumping the buttons, sending my enemies down to the grind grind grind. Oh, I have got through it. Naturally, I have had to. I have sent whole captured armies down through my floor, all down, even to the last silly camp-follower girl, down to my secret hacking and grinding devices, and I have mailed the dust back home in giant-size envelope bags, back to their state ministers, with some clever notation such as, “Returning your army; reduced to reduce mailing costs.” But mostly I just sent them back with a simple “Man dust—could not use” and the correct department address scrawled on the big mailing bags. And of course I always submitted a bill to them later for mailing and shipping costs, which, I regret to say, for it says so very much of the human shortcomings, was very seldom paid. Oh such are the ways of disgruntled backward countries, reduced from their honor, all honor almost, by defeat. But, as I started to point out, I have never done any of this destruction without the terrible tensions settling in, without a maximum concentration of my powers to do the necessary correct thing. And sometimes, therefore, I thought perhaps I wasn’t cut out for this greatness. But I have kept on at it, and no one can in truth say that I haven’t made a good show.

  “I bring to you my flowers.” No, his voice was not scratchy and harsh, as an old windmill needing an oil bath might sound, as I had expected. His voice was a soft silken prayer, a prayer to be friends, but what treachery can be wrapped up in that too, I reflected.

  I was back now from the terrible place where
my terrible deeds are done. I was back to the day and the air and the man in front of me, I was back from death. For—yes, I die just a little always when the dread-black deeds are done. But I was back now to slyness, canniness, sharpness, suspicion, slickness—the human relation on the level of everyday. I would have to feel him out.

  I thumbed the triple locks open, pushed my peep-box door a small slit ajar and confronted him in this more open way. “Are you out from a committee in town?” I asked. “Have they evaluated me and decided I should receive some special token for deeds? Have they at last come awake?”

  A small frown crossed on his face plates just where the face flesh-strips fused to his new-metal head. He flung out his new-metal arms in a gesture that made me in some ways wish that he had that toe just a little bit over the line, the destruction line, so that I in all conscience could drop him down to the knives and the grinder devices to bring that look and that contemptuous mockery-in-arm-swing to the total status of dust. But I didn’t do it, of course. Out of curiosity, and some strong sense of fairness, I endured him. “A world of gusty gutty deeds with guns wishes for rewards,” he said. “But I have a larger aim. When I say, ‘I bring to you my flowers,’ I mean I bring to you the essence of my flowers. Indeed, I do not bring you actually this bouquet. For this bouquet, if you care to know, is one of my hands!”

  Well, that shook me. Somehow that jerked me up and slammed me down more times, harder, than if he had suddenly revealed that he had a new-metal arm that ended in a built-in knife or a gun. In this world where a person needs all the good steel hands he can get, why would a man deliberately cut himself down by one-half? Or was it deliberate? “Is this some punishment?” I asked. “Did you do a cowardly deed one time and so to forever set you apart in a world of courage and gritty deeds they cut off one of your hands and replaced it with a small floral display? HA.”

  The look he gave me, hard scowl all down the face flesh-strip and steel, made my prudent courage edge my thoughts back toward trip levers for a floor block’s quick drop-down. But I didn’t drop him down, of course. I listened when he said, “So you’ve got hands to grasp levers, fingers designed to the buttons and fingernails to scratch a steel conscience, perhaps, that perhaps does not exist at all. And yet I think you have a conscience, man! That’s why I’m here; that’s why I’m walking. And I’ll walk on down across this bristling world right into the gun points if I may, and of course I may—I’ll have to! until your conscience, and all like it, make of all these guns a giant flower pot. You think I’m joking. Oh, to come to such a world where such an aim seems joking.” With that last he flung himself, all quite unexpected by me, quite flat before me on the ground, and he began to beat his floral hand upon the yard sheets. The pale blue of the spring jump-ups, the deep red of the all-out-of-season rose buds and the yellow of the mangy daffodils made flashing bright small color arcs as he beat them one-two-three, one-two-three, a hypnotic maddening cadence, on the ground.

  When he was through with it he lay quite spent, facedown, his beautiful, but now shattered, hand stretched out at greatest length toward me, his chest bellows of the standard New Processes everlast lungs going at quite a rate to catch him up, and he looked, all things taken into consideration, mostly like some interesting old heap of discard. I noted casually that, though his shattered hand was stretched out at maximum toward me, not even a piece of the farthest-out shredded daffodil was across the danger line. I relaxed, breathed easier and could not help asking, “How many bouquets do you wear out, man, in the average year?”

  He came up off the ground like some old fallen tall scarred sunflower lifted up by a magic sun to stand again. A glow was in him and all round him, and I do guess he could turn on switches for effect; he fixed me with a pious man’s pure pious stare. “I do not wear out any. God takes care of me, and, among all the miracles He shows, I do not think it too much to ask of you to accept that after each performance my metal hand grows back. And now if you’ll read these, and play sometime with these—during next truce time, perhaps, or even this one—I will not, perhaps, have occasion to bother you again this year.” Then he handed me, from some baggage space under his breastplate, about the usual standard things to read—pamphlets that held out such very dubious allegations as the flat statements that flowers were better than guns, that love was better than hate and that human understanding was more to be strived for than a Stronghold full of bully-bombs. Also, there was the usual promise that God was coming to strike us down because we had been so mean. Well, sure, I’d seen it all before, but I thanked him as I glanced at the pamphlets he’d handed me. And the little things to play with—they weren’t so very much either, I thought. Mostly they were standard pieces of dogma, a gaunt beardy man hanging down in the usual they-know-not-what-they-do way (and you wondered why, as a price for going up there, he had not fought them until his muscles were all torn blood, until at least some of those eyeballs were out and rolling down that hill and intestines, at least in some measure, were wrapped around lance sticks and trees) and The Child of course (and you fought not to have the reflection that if you cared for the world enough, and trusted the world enough to ever be caught out without enough hammers on your side, they were sure, in the end, to nail you up to a limb). And the usual black beads were there on strings which he said he hoped I would not take too lightly, they were not meant to be pull chains, but were meant to be fondled and clutched about, each bead, as I thought of a nice personal wish, pious of course. I thanked him for all and was courteous about these things, from some deep-set far-back urge to be hopeful about these things, and something in his steel stare was not to be lightly taken.

  But over all that my reason told me to laugh, fling the little dolls and their beads at him, make a small snowstorm of the pamphlets and, for taking up my time, drop him down to the stones where the big grinders would teach him this world’s true terms soon enough. But instead I compromised. I told him his performance had been interesting. I hoped he would be able to find a metal worker who would fix his hand back together without too much trouble, and yes, I wished him Godspeed on down to the next Stronghold square.

  He turned to me and stood with his head bowed for a long instant, his shoulders twitching and shaking, and I wondered if truly he prayed some sobbing shoulder-twitch prayer for all the sins to be lifted from what in his mind must seem a tragic and near-hopeless world of real day-to-day metal strength. (These dreamers, these pamphleteers, these bead pushers usually don’t like that day-to-day metal strength; they’d rather talk of a Day.) Or had I hurt his feelings and that shoulder-twitch was just sobbing? When he turned again, slowly, ever so slowly, his flowered hand was uplifted, and—yes! YES! it was—whole! It was fixed back! Not shattered, not shattered at all. NOT SHATTERED! And he stared at me the straight locked-on stare of what I suddenly thought must be the true-true stare of a new-metal snake in love, and he edged his toes over the line, inexorably over the forbidden never-never line. While I stood and did nothing; under that stare I did nothing.

  My flesh-strips were congealed; my hands were heavy as two huge hammers that a giant could never lift up. And he kept coming, inches over the line now and still moving, the eyes holding and the miracle flowers about eye-high and slowly turning. Oh . . . OH . . . It may be that terrible screams tore up from the very bottom sacs of my breath space; it may be that they did not. I only know that after a while I could not stand it, and long before he attained reach-handed distance of the peep-box of steel I rushed from the door and slow, slow as we go, I hurried to him, the slow hurry of the “replaced” flesh-strip people, but the very best we can do. And when we met, after all the hard striving to close the gap, I embraced the rough beautiful petals and over and over I cried, “A miracle! A Miracle! A MIRACLE!” And he wisely eyed me with the loving-snake stare and said nothing. But after a while, when I was able to release the flowers, he gave me what passed for his blessing and slowly he backed away. Back over the line. There he gave me a little talk, explaining ho
w glad he was that he could bring me this exaltation, God’s own true showing, and he hoped I would never be without it. Then he explained how God’s work truly somehow gets done, but to get done better sometimes it were better that the benefited help a little to send him of the flower hand on down to the next God-needful place. In short, it cost money, and could he have some, not to pay him—NEVER! but to help him help? Of course I gave him a generous gift from my treasure, and I directed that a weapons man bring, in addition, a very special and valuable blood-red gem that I hoped he, the pious one, could fit into his bouquet as a forever remembrance of this, for me, great day. “Oh NO!” he said, but he took it and put it, the valuable gem, for hard times (he said) along with the other treasure, under his breastplate. And I noticed for the first time then, without really being much shaken by it, an odd thing: the hand with which he put away the money and gem was nearly all flesh yet, a beautifully-shaped sensitive mostly-flesh hand, one you would think of as clasped over its gentle brother in gentle prayer, always in prayer . . . PRAYING HAND!

  Then he was gone out through the Stronghold square, and, as a last order just before I collapsed and lay for many many days in a beautiful heavenly dream, I directed that the gates be opened so that this wonderful miraculous man could go on his wonderful miraculous way.

  Of course it hit me, in the very first half hour after I had awakened from my long dreamy sleep, rested and ready to be of the world again—it hit me how it was! HOW IT MUST HAVE BEEN! At first I was all fired up to beam my neighboring Stronghold the warning, for the man with the flower hand was probably, with his walking, about due for there. But then I thought NO, let old neighboring Stronghold get it too. Probably do him good. And didn’t we all have it coming? But I couldn’t help wondering how long it would be before someone figured it out in time, and all on his own, that when old windmill flower-hand man turned for an instant to seem solemnly to pray, that jerky shoulder-twitch praying for the sins of the world, he was really, from the supply he carried in the baggage room under his breastplate, just changing hands. YES!! that dexterous flesh-hand had screwed on another bouquet!