“We have come with our once discarded souls,” explained Stalog Blengue. “It is our fondest wish that you shall go at once so that we may start the long job of repairing these weathered souls and the world. If you choose to stay, you leave us no hard decision; we’ll but run our soul trains through your buildings and smash you down! With soul power! So choose.”
The palest of the Palest Greens said nothing, indeed, gave no token of hearing, except there was the recorded sound of the merest clink of one tin brain-pan going against another, high and far away, and the eyes gleamed in the big reflectors green and cold and entirely evil for a little while. And Stalog Blengue knew the message had been received where the brains swam in their tin brain-homes. “We will wait no longer than midnight of this must day for you to go,” the hollowed-anvil voice said and withdrew.
Stalog Blengue clanked his iron shoes back to the trains of his soul-strong friends. “He heard,” said Stalog Blengue. “The head pale-pale man heard. I could tell by the way his eyes gleamed in the big reflectors, green and cold and very evil for a little while, that he heard. He’ll tell the others and I think, seeing all the hands moving on the walls, they’ll go. All of them MUST go!” A great cheer went up from the soul-strong people then from all the ten soul trains. After awhile Stalog Blengue lifted a misty hand up high and asked for silence. “Now,” said Stalog Blengue, “let us begin to be ourselves again, ourselves with good souls. With hard trying and hard praying let us make for our souls good homes, even here hard embattled as we are in these steel times. And perhaps with ten million years of good effort we and the world can begin to hope to be allowed to start in to come back toward that place all of us left on the way of our wrong ‘discoveries.’ At least we are not without hope, for our souls have again been taken up. . . .”
And all the trains cheered again. . . .
Next day, early, meaning business, the Birds went up again—this time wing loaded to optimum with Final Arguments. The trains simply left high-skyward in the flimsiest gas imaginable—from direct hits from the Arguments—enough bubble-dome homes were leveled to merely smudge marks on the plastic to be example, and this silly sad talk of soul was never heard from again in Moderan.
HOW IT ENDED
THE END of the world started small that day. Casually, in high greeny-blue summer. . . .
I remember well what I was doing—even what I was thinking—that precise instant it started. It was in the time of the Summer Truces. We had completed late our great Spring Wars that year and we were all somewhat exhausted, though deliciously happy. Many honors had been won, many Strongholds shattered to shambles and many the gun lids that were hanging, and the ramparts in many places were crying for shoring. But we were a fulfilled group that last summer, we who had survived, hate-happy to the extreme, ready for Joys and in all cases planning for mean points in our own Stronghold complexes. Yeahh! Summer Truces!!
Then a wump bomb hit far to the north. I heard it on my detectors and it made a queer dry sound. I knew right away it had hit something that wasn’t properly a wump bomb target. And in all Moderan truth it should not have been out there at all, not in the Truces. And what were those strange little blips and bleeps coming across on my Viewer Plate? I would have thought them from shattered slivers and shards of thin new-metal, but that seemed unlikely. No one in his right Moderan mind would use a wump bomb on a flimsy metal objective. The wumps were for ultimate ultimate blasting and heaviest waves of destruction. They were designed for the Strongholds and the deep-down bunkers of concrete and new-made steel.
There were many points of conjecture. Out here thinking it over on this small last mountain of plastic, leaving these notes on the permotapes in my mind as a last record, watching the flesh-mutant men finish tearing our once great land back to where it all began, I cannot be sure. I can only replay the conjectures. Privately, I think it might have been an accident. I think it might have been that a bomb-happy Stronghold master was just firing a jubilee leftover wump to the far void in celebration of the end, finally, of the long spring season of war; it had stretched on through early summer. And this wump could have hung in the launch sling just for that too-long instant. (It happens, but it happens usually in war, and who could care then?) Instead of winging then on that beautiful far trajectory that a normal firing would have insured, it fell then, crazily off course, really on no course at all, into a neighbor’s tin flower bed. And in that flower bed a thing more precious to him than Strongholds was . . . So it’s rumor and conjecture. But so many times in all the history of the world an accident has been so much more pertinent than all the careful plans. And I think it was again.
I do remember, and I remember well all that happened in those few quick instants that settled the fate of us all—I remember a frantic garble on my Warner Phone. I could not translate, but I recall having the thought that it sounded not so much like a warning full of hate as much as it sounded like an apology, or an argument for understanding. “Forgive, FORGIVE, and let’s enjoy the Summer Truces,” I remember thinking in those first few seconds, though I was much occupied. Of course I had no way of knowing then even a conjecture toward the enormity of the transgression that might have been, and my only hint was those strange out-of-place blips and bleeps on my Viewer Plate.
The transgressed Stronghold replied, of course. Even in the pleasantest times of the Summer Truces you couldn’t let old neighboring Stronghold to the right or to the left, in front or behind, have at you with a wump bomb. Retaliation, swift and sure, was right in any season. Retaliation brought reply in deadly earnest, but even so, in those first few moments, we might have limited the war. We could have enjoyed a little show on our Viewer Expanders rather than two red-hot sorehead Strongholds having a GO when they should have been in deep truces. But we didn’t act when action was of the essence. Just say that statesmanship was at a low ebb that day with us all. We muffed the ball. We played with our new-metal mistresses; we stroked the new-metal kittens, stacked the cards of indifference and “drank” the punch-introven when we should have been saving the world.
Treaties were honored honored and honored. Oh, how they honored those treaties in the north! And the war spread swiftly south. In five minutes we had all entered and Moderan awoke to the terrible knowledge that it was high tide and rising. (I will say this, I far to the south was the last to get in the blasting. But honesty, always and all ways, makes me hasten to admit that it was not statesmanship. Where is she now? Oh, what lump of cindered metal now in some far lost place is she with whom I played those fateful crucial instants when I should have been saving the world? But I will say, with her life-switch full to ON and I toggled to passion-frantic, she was very good that day. Oh, all for love and the world—well?)
Our world went down, DOWN, that war. It was the END. From a small, casual, and I say accidental, start of one wump bomb in the wrong place that day, it built fast through the mounting moments of havoc. Thinking of it now, far in the last retreatable corner of our lost world, I cannot say just why it built to such forcible ruin. We had fought many many wars in our glorious past and had come through with our great battle-dead, honors, and our Strongholds only partially shattered to shambles. But in ten minutes this time Moderan was gone.
Most of us quite early, thinking fast and doing the right planned thing, even in the midst of hard-pressed final war, had delivered our families out. And that might have been truly our finest instant. I, after deep self-debate, even thumbed loose the wump zeroed to White Witch Valley, where the wife lived and plotted with the last of her plastic men. The mercy shots had already gone home to the country of Little Brother and Little Sister, shattering them to high skies and all winds in that province where they awaited the hours of “replacement.” And with mercy taken care of we settled down to war.
It was ultimate ultimate gunning, ultimate hate hardware on the wing or walking. Whatever else may be said, it is true that we brought the world to a high starry state of development not only in hate attitud
e but also in the hardware to make that attitude so much more than an empty dream or a gesture. And I’ll always, even to the last of my introven, even unto that final final instant just before the flesh-strips starve and I become a few shaped metal parts in some flesh-mutant’s dusty brag museum, remember that beautiful moment. A moment, whose like the world may never see again, when the air over all the world was almost one solid sheet of explosives. Rockets were hitting their brother rockets on the wing and bringing off tremendous detonations. The mighty wumps, engineered to stand such mid-air collision and still home on to their designated programmed kill were nudging each other mightily in the air. The walking doll bombs, those magical horror-things designed to take the low road to their rendezvous with destruction, fought each other on the plastic. Some passed on safely and well to their programmed assignation of find-and-destroy; some in the thickness of this traffic fought each other so staunchly for the right of passage that they exhausted their horror and left their punch right there with each other. Some mighty battle god sitting far in the vapor shield on a cloud shaped like pillage that day could probably have had himself the one show of his life. (All vaunted feats of firepower and destruction in the Old Days—even Dresden under the bombers, Tokyo with the firebombs and Hiroshima and Little Boy—all these rolled into one flame-and-bang must have been only as the front-leg kick of a sick lightning bug compared to this. YES! we were really blasting that day!) But I’m convinced there was no god for us anywhere that day—just the sick greeny-blue vapor shield of poisoned August standing out there in a sky gone suddenly for us endless and terrible, far-spreading and indifferent witness to the self-destruction of a world.
And seeing the game was gone truly for the showdown I turned at last to my GRAND GRAND ULTIMATE. It was the GRANDY WUMP, a weapon so terrible that I had to set my brain to Cold Thoughts Wide and Heedless to be able even to stand the knowledge that I held such dread firepower in the palm, as it were, of my new-metal hand. This thing my Corps of Engineering for the Final Solutions of Problems had discovered for me just a few whiles back, and I had been saving it tight to spring as SURPRISE, or for some future practical need. Or perhaps just as an argument of conquest. I had been debating. But now the debate seemed over; the GRANDY was forced to my hand. To come out alive, with some semblance of my world left, was still my aim. Only my Stronghold would be left, and that a thing much shaken, but from that we could rebuild. So I thumbed it loose from where it nestled in its launch gear deep in the guts of my great Stronghold, the Grandy Wump, a thing so much improved over the common wump that the comparison could be that of a feather in the Old Days falling on to a common mountain as opposed to another mountain falling on that mountain. And so you see?
To guard well the secret of the Grandy Wump I had installed it—which I felt sure was the one-and-only of its kind in all the world—deep in the center of my great defense-offense complex. Naturally I was aware that its launching would tear floors and perhaps lift the entire roof from my Stronghold. But for complete secrecy and to be the lone possessor of such power I was willing to pay the price. Yes! nearly anything. The moment of its thumbing loose HAD to be a heady moment for me; my new-metal heart, without any manual change in its settings, raised up such a great bang-and-boom beat as I have never known before. TO HAVE THE WORLD! my brain and heart thought together as my thumb flicked to the launch knob.
What happened? WHAT HAPPENED? To have the world and then not to have the world. WHAT HAPPENED!? I do not cry for understanding. I do not cry for sympathy. I do not cry. Oh God, god or gods, I do not. But I must leave it here on the tapes—WHAT HAPPENED?
The second I thumbed it loose, I knew. Oh, how I knew! when the air started filling with rooftops. Words and sounds I do not have to speak of this vile deed vilely enough; this thing defeats all language of the world. But I must try—for the tapes: Sticky-fingered, conniving, cheating, dishonest, lying, untrustworthy, dishonorable, low LOW, flesh-encumbered little new-metal vile Stronghold masters who would steal, how had they? Oh God or gods, or whatever, if ever, tribunal or agency of higher judgment ever anywhere, judge them, judge them now! Grind their memory under heaviest wheels of Justice; take any good deeds, if ever, ever done by them and regard those out-of-character happenings as amongst the most heinous monster-jokes that have ever been. Oh, this limited language! With its strongest words of indictment much too weak I cannot demean these people even a thousandth part of a small fraction of their deserts enough. But let’s ask all agencies of Justice, if any there be or any hint of any, and let these agencies, if any there be, or any hint, chase the flesh-strip ghosts of these vile Stronghold masters, now deceased, throughout all the universes of coming time and ask them, ask them like cold winds down icy valleys of snow mountains in chilliest places, like conscience in the Old Days, “HOW DID YOU STEAL THE SECRET OF THE GRANDY WUMP from honorable Stronghold 10?” (I was Stronghold 10.)
Yes, world to come, they did that. When my roof went with the Grandy, and almost immediately I saw other roofs start lofting to the skies, I knew. Not only had they stolen my secret, but vile, vile to the last and plotting, apparently they had installed detective devices to steal my moment of firing. Oh, how close I came to being caught asleep then. What if they had fired first? It does give one pause, doesn’t it? Monstrous men!
For I believe truly that the eye-blink moment of my firing first saved me. I cannot explain it in any other way, either that or sheerest sheerest luck and a miracle, and, as you should know, I do not believe in either of these. I believe in hardware, firepower abundant and the smack to the Stronghold first. But being saved, the last surviving Stronghold master, what gains it? My world is gone, all flattened and in rubble, even my Stronghold, everything finished by the most sophisticated weapon ever made, the Grandy Wump.
From somewhere, within hours, the little flesh-mutants came, howling over the rubble. Where had they been? Yes, we had known that a certain number of them existed. Even in the highest-shining times of shining Moderan a few flesh-mutants were always around, gibbering over the plastic, hiding in deep-down holes, living in cracks and crevices of our plastic-yard-sheet land. A few of us had them in our Strongholds from time to time, for laughs, for diversion, amused as they talked their nonsense out of hissing holes instead of communicating by our good Moderan methods of mechanical voice boxes and phfluggee-phflaggee buttons in the hands. But none of us regarded them seriously, I believe, or gave the least thought to how they lived. At least and for sure I didn’t. I, one of the shining masters of the world, grand in the high percents of my new-metal steel “replacements” with my flesh-strips few and played down—I had no serious time for such filthy, soft, mushy creatures.
And now the mutants come from everywhere, rolling on in, tearing it all back to NOTHING. In one howling onslaught just by being, they are carrying the Dream far back past darknesses we had been far in advance of even on the first full day of shining Moderan. To watch them must be my punishment, I suppose, as I wait on the last plastic mountain (though I do not know why I should receive punishment). I, the greatest and last of the great GREAT Stronghold masters (once very staunch in my new-metal steel “replacements”), the most refined thing that had ever been . . . going down before this wave of evil flesh coming and still coming. . . .
But wait! Before they reach this totally exposed little Stronghold that is left me, my little plastic mountain, and claw it down in their howling brutish momentum that seems unstoppable now, let me set one thing straight in the tapes. If there had been honor in the world, amongst my neighbors, if they had not stooped to the vile theft of my war secret, perhaps to save their unworthy selves, I should have won the war. Then my Stronghold would have been left to me, and these mushy creatures out here would have meant nothing. Any time I chose I could have swept them back to their deep-down holes and their crevices with a maximum weapons fire. They would have served as my clowns and diversion then, not my executioners. Oh, they would have kept to their places, all right. So you see, it
is evil in others that seals one down, especially one’s thieving neighbors stealing war secrets.
And another thing, since my mind goes clear here at the last and I’m thinking of everything, what was it in that tin garden when the wump bomb hit, what thing was it the Stronghold master regarded higher even than Strongholds? Don’t laugh, don’t laugh! I think it was his new-metal mistress out for a small summer stroll in the tin flower beds, and before he had enjoyed his Joys. And that explains the strong little blips and bleeps on my Viewer Plate. Small bits of new-metal would have shown thus; tin bits from tin flowers would not have registered at all.
Thus I leave you, for the mountain shakes now at the base. If these tapes survive, and if there is any creature anywhere, in the future times, who has a machine sophisticated enough to give them life, perhaps it will be worth conjecturing why Moderan was ended. Was it because of evil in the world and common theft? Or perhaps you’d rather think of it as all the fault of a woman who should have been serving her function in her master’s great bedrooms instead of strolling in the flower beds. Or if you’ve a simpler turning of mind you may see the end as a happening inevitable for soon or late, the natural result of all that firepower. But I say no, NO! to that—no, to the end—not if my neighbors had played fair! I would have, from the GRANDY WUMP safety of my superior, specially endowed Stronghold, been able to shatter them to high skies and all winds then in relative security, thus winning ME the war and saving ALL the world!
PART FOUR
Apocrypha from After the End
A LITTLE AT ALL TIMES
I HAD FORSAKEN my hip-snuggie chair and the Long-View Problem Survey in the Room of Deep Thinking. I had my legs and arms stacked by the wall. I had taken to my bed to mull the problem. My heart was on rest-beat, my brain on max, as I lay like a metal keg, or a little legless and armless suit of old armor, on my lever bed and thought back. Yes, it had started then, that June Wednesday. Then! On my lever bed thinking back I could see it all, then, clear.
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