Moderan
Page 28
A thousand years flung back. With a little cloud. Ten centuries of progress raped. Our assurance torn from us on a summer’s day, like a pronouncement of cancer. In Old Times. Oh, the horror of the pronouncement, let us remember. The draining of strong men’s bravado. The nagging dread. The what’s to do? The reorganization of thinking, and pride gone, and assurance broken asunder. To leave? What? To leave a man who cowered in his bones, his quaking bones. Dividing his life by years,, his chances by seconds, to come up with a strange and bitter quotient. To run, to cry, to yell, to scream, to shriek—HELP! And there was no help, no aid, no any hope of aid. We are that way now. We have no worse than the cancer. In Moderan. Believe—believe me!
To understand, you must know we are the peotals; the metal-and-people people who had long ago, in a “discovery,” come up with a wonderful new-metal alloy that would fuse with our flesh and “replace” us down to a very minimum of flesh-strip holding our shape in bounds and keeping us linked up to the human. And that, I believe, was the main trick, thinking back—we became more than steel men in our durability, and yet we remained linked to the human in our ability to hate and take pleasure. Metal humans! Well, what’s to improve on that? Our organs became little engines and metal bellows and small tanks for chemical changes. Just as an instance, consider my heart. It became a sturdy motor to hammer out fine strokes according to my heart-gauge settings. Consider the lungs. They became metal accordion bellows that (supposedly) had no boundary on their lasting. They were of and for forever. And so on it went in all of our new-metal parts. Our flesh-strips we fed introven. How could such pride not cry out for a fall?
And when pride has fallen, how pick it from the ground? How starch the unstarched rag man and make him stand again? What steel ribs for his ravel? There must be a way. But we cower now. We cower.
Consider me here now on my lever bed, my arms and legs stacked neat against a wall. (When I cower, I really like to cower; I like to lie like a lump as helpless as I may. Then too, let’s admit it, my crusted hands and feet, steel-fingered and steel-toed, set up a fearsome jingling when I tremble as I’m scared. And sometimes my knees clank together and you’d think I still had bones and that the kneecaps, unfleshed with their knocking. were beating a clank-dinge of fear. No! When I cower, I’ll take off the tremble things that could betray old bravery, and I’ll lie like a lump on my hard bed and think back.) There may be a way.
Consider how we were once in Moderan, before this cloud raged up that set us back to the dark a thousand years. Expertly served by Gad-Goes in our very automatic Strongholds we sat like little monarchs, had each our place in the hate leagues of our times and warred from sun to sun, and far into the night, manning switch panels of War Rooms in Moderan’s almost constant Big Shoot. And in the infrequent truce times, with Big Shoot uneasily in false armistice, we’d have our joys mapped out. Maybe it’d be a diamond-tooth tiger cub fighting a fierce new-metal kitten in our own individual sporting and game rooms. Or maybe it’d be a down on our knees by the lever bed to drag out the new-metal mistress. Most Stronghold masters kept one for a variety time in Joys. With her life switch full to ON, our heart switch toggled to frantic! and our pale green blood pounding out our great need in a hurry, the war would soon be recessed for us—ah completely! But the point is, in Moderan before the cloud there was no urgency of time. Big Shoot or truce and Joys time, we took it all large, knowing we did not have to measure out our moments like a flesh man of Old Days.
But consider poor us now; we’re back in that old field and White Beard holds the sickle. We speculate on graves and know our homes as coffins. We cannot see a bank of raw earth anywhere but what we shake and dread. And looking at the yard sheets of gray and sterile plastic that clothes most of our landscapes, we know that soon or late, despairing of the Dream, half eaten by the cloud, we’ll probably hack and enter—our dead selves going home. We divide our time again into compartments, the old way—it’s in our thinking. We make the grim subtractions and shudder the minuends. We multiply and add and still come up with the same voice talking—nearer death, NEARER DEATH—
And that’s why I’m on my bed like a cold lump this morning. I’m thinking. THINKING. With one ear cocked to danger and the threat that’s looking for me I try to think of ways. I’ve chased it in my brain until my head’s all tracks now and all the tracks are circles, and a little red demon in there rides the coal-black car at a furious speed. And he is grim and frowning most of the time. But sometimes he slows and smiles most ingratiatingly and says through the whitest of teeth, “Hi!” Just that and that’s all. But I think I know what he means.
At such times I roll and thresh on the lever bed until one of my weapons men comes to attend me. “Bring me my legs and arms,” I shriek. “Strap on my hands. Saddle white go-darts for the fields tomorrow. Make sure it’s a swinging day among the launch pads. Check for an All’s Ready.” And when it’s done I clamber from my bed. I walk the steel walk of the upright Captains, clop clip clap, toggling my hinges and braces. And sometimes I go all sly. I cuff and kick at my tin men; or maybe I’ll rub them and pet them with a soaked rag of their favorite oil. I curse and rave through the Stronghold; or maybe it’s soft sweet songs I sing. I calculate my brains and wonder what’s for crazy. I could slap down the sky with all the hate I own. Or is it that my once bright sword is now crossed by futility?
And soon I’m in my War Room. If there’s a Big Shoot on I gun it hotly. I press such buttons that almost the fury of crossed launchings shudders my great Walls down. If there is no war, I start one with peripheral fire to gun in all the Strongholds. And there we sit, all of us under the same threat of the eating cloud, our rockets beautifully firing, our skies torn to exploding light and all our world gone to shudder while we give each other Max Fire.
And nobody wins and nobody loses, and after awhile a truce flares up; the diversion is over, taken by a small uneasy peace, and we ride on into our days under the threat that continues and has made a joke out of the once proud, the once invulnerable, the everlasting (we thought) new-metal Moderan.
The threat? The cloud? The dragon that has un-masked the Dream and made a mockery out of our plans to live forever in steel-topped Moderan? Well, it isn’t time exactly that eats us, the idea of wearing out, I mean. It never was that exactly, not even in Old Days. There was always the something else—a disease, an accident, or just old age, which was a special disease all its own, I would say, or maybe old age was the most terrible-horrible accident of all. But our threat is special and seems so “right” for us, if something had to be. What I mean is, it seems so “right” for us because it could only happen in a land like ours. And unless we stem the threat, which I see small hope of doing as things are now, we must be completely doomed in less than a million years. I believe not even bones of Strongholds will stand then, unless something can be done. You see, there is an eating cloud loose in our land. Think of it as time nibbling away at eternity; think of it as common rust nibbling a steel bar. Then think of us as eternity, but we can be a bar that is eaten. For we have boundaries. Or am I being vague because I do not wish to walk in and say it plain. Who in Old Days liked to say, “Well, I have a little bone rot that’s thinning out my chances here and there,” or, “I have some t.b. germs having lungs at lunch time; an active family they that I’m hosting out of goodness—”? Well, you see?
But let’s cut through this verbiage, have done with roundabouts, blast in and say it clear. WE ARE BEING EATEN BY THE ALL-METAL NEW-METAL EATERS, STRANGEST MUTANTS OF ALL TIME. And now you know; we have told of our shame. They go in clouds of little shark-jawed atoms. One June Wednesday it came to me, first time—low over the metal flowers a strange cloud lifting black and louring, like damp smoke of Old Days. And high up were others, riding the air like eagles. Of Old Times. And when it hit me it settled in like small-small things, a million of which, grouped, might make a dot as big as a pencil speck, bumped together, lumped and came on in very hard in their overly eager landings to
get at me. Then they spread into that dark, thinnest of films all of us came to know so well. Up and down and across me they moved that first day of a truce time while I sat outside my Stronghold in a hip-snuggie chair and conjectured. (I knew it couldn’t be secret war from a neighboring Stronghold, because in our great hate leagues we have rules that are honored.) Then with the tiniest sound of sand across a stone they lifted, and as they gained I threw up a great spyglass, and to my eyes so many times multiplied they looked like a black drift of condors fanning away, the small-small things. I didn’t know it then, but I was lesser by a little than I had been. For they were digesting me! now in a short Joy flight of their own—the flying black marauders, living, multiplying animals that clawed at us like rust!
And now we’re eaten all the time in Moderan, we and our Strongholds, as the black clouds lift and land upon us to nibble a metal fill. If we’re inside, our Strongholds shut so tight not even smoke can penetrate, they sit upon the roof tops and enjoy repasts there. And so it is all the same—we or our Strongholds, finally. Sooner or later the great collective mutants, small-small with the insatiable need for a metal meal, must eat us each and every bit, all but the flesh-strips, us and our Strongholds, and on a last Joy flight they’ll go out with the last metal of the last new-metal man and the last metal of the last Stronghold, to digest the last of once great Moderan. Then I suppose they’ll die too, unless they can lift into another land of metal, another planet, another someplace else for their terrible need. And so you see . . . ?
THE JOKE
IN A WAY it could have been the greatest day in history. It was simply the day that the dead man was due to come back. And this no seance thing, no occult posturing from some medium’s self-hypnosis trance. Nor was it from religious prophecy. This was to be real and scientific.
The boxes were to be flown in from the four far-distant places. (Three were already here; it remained but for the fourth to come jet-tubing in.) “To the four corners,” he had directed. “Send me to the four corners of the earth and leave me parted and dead for ten years. Then reassemble here at the Great Conclave, ten years hence, and see me reassembled! I should have much to tell you when I return. Back from that Dark Country. Ha!”
They seized on his suggestion eagerly that day ten years ago. Before he should become afraid and withdraw his magnificent offer, they prepared him for the dismemberment that would fit him for storage in the four bronze boxes. The limbs and outer shell would be easy; they were mostly hinged metal. The few flesh-strips he owned could be safely, if painstakingly, parted from the fusion nearo-flesh that held them to the metal bones. The pale green blood that hammered life to the tube miles of his flesh-strips would have to be carefully drained and stored in the thick cold bottles that could, if need be, keep pale green blood unchanged for more than a thousand years. The heart, the lungs and all the other organs that remained to this man of metal and flesh-strip (all everlast organs and precision-made) would likewise be stored in the necessary containers for their keeping. All this would be divided as equally as it could be among three bronze boxes. The fourth bronze box must be reserved for that most special thing, the brain, surely the home, the guardian, the keeper, the supplier—what word is adequate?—of the human essence-of-being.
The human brain by now, in the Advanced Peoples, was a scientific marvel incorporating almost all that had ever been learned about chemistry, mechanics, mathematics and electricity. Except for the original human brain, that I keep thinking must surely have had some Divine origin, nothing else, and I mean nothing else, had ever been made that could compare with this brain that, with greater or lesser degrees of refinement, was owned by each and every member of the Advanced Peoples. Now, I don’t mean to tell you that each of the Advanced Peoples had a Great Brain. Certainly not! Not every member had need of a Great Brain. The Great Brains were earned and awarded (the awards being made in the operating rooms of hospitals) according to certain rigidly prescribed prerequisites. Primarily the awards were earned in “schools” where those who were worthy proved their worthiness for higher things by adjusting to each new operation quickly and using that advancement to prepare for yet a more sophisticated advancement. I will not tell you that everyone had his chance, because he didn’t! These things were largely in the hands of families that were in on the ground floor of brain rebuilding years ago, when all this started, and they sent (it was only natural) their sons and daughters now (almost totally manufactured now, starting with the sperm bank for the flesh-strips) up to the brain shops for the operations. It was a status thing, of course.
The lesser members of the Advanced Peoples, being a little out of all this, leaned on their brooms (figuratively) that they used to sweep the floors (not really!) for the elite, and it may have been that they were a little jealous and unhappy. But usually these lesser members seemed quite content as they sat all day in their bubble-dome homes on the plastic and enjoyed day after day the technological results of the discoveries of the Brains. And when a brain advancement proved to be useful, practical and safe, all the lesser members were called up for the necessary operation in due time. So really, in practise, even the lowliest member of the Advanced Peoples was never more than four or five brain operations behind the mightiest Brain in the land. Yet, four or five is quite a bit, in a way. Yes! And finally there was one Magnificent Brain in the land who was one whole operation ahead of anyone else anywhere. (Ah well, somehow it has always seemed necessary to have gradations. And how else would existence be worth the candle?)
•
It was the current Mightiest Brain in all Advanced Land who had volunteered to go on this trip to, as he had seemed to hint, investigate death. It was at the Great Conclave of Brains, held each year for the Mightiest One and for all those who were no more than three operations removed from the Mightiest One. And of very special consequence that year were the Four, all from first-line families, powerful, pushy men who had earned and connived their way to a place only one rung from the very top. At the windup of the Great Conclave for that year there was this final meeting, to honor just the Finest Four and the One. The music was strident, the dancers were superb, the perfectly-formed metal maidens removed things of dress in a way that pleased these Finest and the One, and perhaps they syringed into their flesh-strips a little more of the spiked introven than was altogether safe for them to do. Came a point when the Mightiest One had that clear wild look in the tiniest bulbs of his eyes. The metal of his fists rattled down on the great table at which he sat in honor with his Four. “I’ll do it!” he said, “I’ll do it!” Perhaps he was just too full of the music and the dancers, the stripping and the introven that was spiked. Then too, maybe at a certain point of advancement the Death-Wish, which is always with us, becomes almost intolerably intensified. But I think—almost know—it was really somewhat less than all these things. I think he had just thought about this a long long time and had planned. And from the way he outlined how it should be done, even producing blueprints and instruction sheets from a baggage space just under his hinged breastplate, there is really no way to think that this was a spur-of-the-moment great offer. Surely it was thought out!
The Finest Four were stunned at first by his unique proposal. Indeed it was not every Conclave that saw a Leader so bemuse himself that he would agree to be cut up and sent away, dead, for ten years. The chances were overwhelming, the side issues something to drool over (mentally, oh sure, in these dry metal mouths) and what if he did really solve the riddle of death? The Four, not quite so drunk as their Leader appeared to be, fell to chuckling and then to laughing in thunder, and while they were pumping his hand and slapping his back in congratulations, each one in apparent jollity found a way to force a little more spiked introven into his Leader’s back flesh-strips. While he lay in rigid drunkenness, they removed enough of his parts that he could not change his mind. Then they hurried to make the necessary arrangements and send him away in four separate big boxes. “Our Leader’s wish is law,” they all said in
unison, and then they laughed, “Ha ha!” all together.
Do I need to tell you, human nature being what it is, that they planned to, while he was away, whisk ahead of him in the operations? Do I need even to tell you that each one of them planned to somehow outstrip the other three and someway forge to the fore to be the real top-banana Brain? Can’t you just see how there must have been ten years of chaos in this land?
•
And now the ten years were up, gone in the small mist of time that ten years would make in a land conceived and dedicated (seriously) as the Land Where People Last Forever. —Three rockets were in and three bronze boxes rested on the dais. The all-important fourth box was still out there somewhere, perhaps far away, perhaps near. Who could know? Maybe it had even ceased to exist, destroyed in some small calamity in a far place. Truly, the Magnificent Four had been far too busy plotting how to best each other in the operations (which even so had ended in stalemate; each had had three) to be keeping tabs on any bronze boxes. Gladly they had sent them away to the four corners, following, let it be said to their credit, to the letter the instructions their Leader had drawn from the space just under his breast-plate before he had blissfully passed out from the spirits in the introven. But after they had sent them away, the Four had forgotten the boxes.
As time dragged along now while awaiting the arrival of the fourth box, the Finest Four became more and more the Fretful Four. They were worried about many things, and certainly not very important among their worries was concern over what their former Leader may or may not have found out about the Country of Death. Former Leader? Certainly! He could not be their Leader now, could he? Not when they were, each of them, two full brain operations ahead of him! How break the news to him, what do with him? Those were just two of the things that worried our Four Conspirators. They drummed their steel fingers on the steel table where they waited. They had more of the spiked introven than was good for them. They got ideas, dangerous, unfair ideas. Finally came that time when eight tiny bulb eyes glowed in a kind of agreement. They read each the other’s thoughts. “Even if that fourth box does come in,” they all said at once,