Moderan
Page 34
But alas, it is most true, most of the locked tough battles are done in the somehow numbing chill, in the clenched-hands four-walls agony of the spirit willed to no-tears—no tears for Them to scoff at, no tears for you hidden, either. (No music sends us in, and no music brings us out!) And combat is essentially just a matter of attacking in there, when the artillery goes all still, and pounding Pounding POUNDING until something gives away ground, either their resolve defending or your attacking verve. If you come out walking, or even crawling—still able to move some distance up or back, you will know you have done very well. If they litter you out, cold-out on some stretcher bound for death, you must beg forgiveness of all the proud ghosts of past combat and all the fast eagles of war, for somehow you will know that something quite foul befell. YOU. Instead of THEM (THE OTHERS) being down—kicked, hammered, bludgeoned, sliced, diced, dismembered, chopped, sausaged, clobbered, gut-jellied, clubbed, liquefied, gassified, cremated, rendered-out, annihilated, destroyed, finally-finished-done—it is Y O U, most personal PERSONAL YOU. This is a matter of caring. A way of being a man. In Moderan.
So what was that down there!? Very small ants crawling, black and in multitudes far down on the plastic fields? Stronghold #9 stopped on a little rise for a little while, switched dead the roller-road, unlocked from his post stand, lifted out of his foot wells, edged off the roller sheet and surveyed the distances below. The voice from L-Tower had directed him to entrain to a certain spot; that spot was in his sharp Moderan vision now and calibrated in; that spot was surrounded by the small spots crawling the slow and circular crawl. “Inexorable, that’s the word I think of,” muttered Stronghold #9. (It was a phfluggee-phflaggee mutter.) “No last and final Big Dragon?? Just little— . . . growlies . . . . . . !?”
“YOU WILL GO ALONE. YOU WILL CARRY NOTHING BUT YOURSELF. YOU ARE THE FINAL WEAPON, FINALLY YOU. GOOD LUCK, GOOD HUNTING, AND GOOD DAY, GOOD OLD MASTER 9, huk huk huk,” the L-Tower voice had said. (GOOD DAY??)
•
He unloaded off the roll-go down by that HARD plastic spot there on the plastic plains, just a bundle of tired old iron and old flesh-strip tube miles now, and a brain that sloshed less than clear-thinking in the too-old chemical pans. How pathetic he was! How pathetic they all were away from their guards and their guns, even in the best of times! But this was One of Them old now, old and unhomed, afoot and alone, sent down here to Spot 0, by L-Tower orders. Spot 0! How he had dreaded it! But this at last, and surely, was the final acid test. This clearly was what all the preparation—all the battles, all the lessons, all the loves—had all ever been about, since that very very first day so long and foggy back ago in the dark antiquity of the ignorance and prehistory of flesh-fouled Olderan, when mother’s big birthday effort had unloaded him into the cold.
His first urge here was to panic, turn it all off and self-destruct, which power—if not the right—was surely his. But he ruled that out at once, with an iron will such as few iron wills have ever been before. Now now, not for worlds, not ever—even in a truly hopeless and foregone bad situation of encircling doom and all hell breaking wild—would he, with a cowardly move, negate all the proud battles ever he had won for God, self and L-Tower. Nor would he besmirch even one metal thread of those proud pennons-to-victory that now hung as glory reminders high over his fort and encircled his fort’s Brag Tower day and night like giant airborne fangs pulled from dragons most hell-foul and vanquished. No! not this old 9. At that small, shining moment at Spot 0 it just may be that this old master climbed to more sparkling sunlight, glory and élan than he ever had before even come close to. It probably was truly his very shiniest space.
The L-Tower voice came again into his set, booming and bouncy: “CONGRATULATIONS, STRONGHOLD 9. YOU HAVE UNLOADED OFF DOWN THERE AT DESTINATION SPOT 0 IN VERY NEARLY RECORD MOVEMENT. YOUR EXEMPLARY ACTIONS TODAY HAVE ALREADY, QUITE CLEARLY AND IN ALL TRUTH, ADDED NEW LUSTER TO YOUR ALREADY MEDAL-LOADED FAME. BUT NOW, SO THAT WE MAY ‘GO OFF’ OUR SETS AND ENJOY NOON HOUR, WE NEED YOU TO KNOW YOUR PROJECTED READINGS FOR NOW CAMPAIGN. REPLY PLEASE.”
#9 answered L-Tower: “We’ll start, as has been our wont always on the lower readings, to ‘feel’ the Enemy. As the fighting waxes warm, we’ll take it up to high, Higher and HIGHEST, until, at the zenith of battle—and you can count on this!—we’re sure to be on MAX!” He eavesdropped his set then (perhaps at such a stark time for him he could be forgiven this one small transgression) and he heard two off-frequency voices far in L-Tower, one saying in proudest exultation, “I JUST knew it!” and the other in derision judging, “Damned fool! Doesn’t he know what’s going on down there?”
The official voice from L-Tower said: “THANK YOU, AND GOOD HUNTING. WE’LL BE BACK TO PICK YOU UP LATER.”
•
He stood down ready now from the roll-go track, tall as he could and proud, a battle tank geared for war; and there was something of the high singing in his tube miles again, as it had always been with him combat-bound, either in Old Days or now. (But this only for such a little while—now—oh, briefly.) Then empty pieces of soul attacked him—fiercely, it seemed to him—and mocked him high in his mind’s sky where they stormed. The real clouds, shroud-resembling, moaned and mewed in the slate-gray vapor-shield over him as they slid up and back and across on December; a music was from somewhere far away and cold. Then the doombirds moved up from down sky where they had for so long been circling in a holding pattern for death. The ribbon flocks flashed out to cover him with shadows, and the wing bundles broke on cue, exploded and came on with that peculiar sizzling sound of thin metal surfaces in swift movement dividing air. Old 9 looked up, and he knew. . . a strange strange feeling . . . He moved in on them then—forward—the Great Last Battle—. . . and no weapon now but him, by himself with no breastworks . . . lone . . . alone . . . oh, lonely. . . high noon!
•
At the end of noon hour they resurrected their sets’ power and tried again for old 9. No answer came in their phones across the plastic miles from Spot 0. They flipped to Area Scan and got the distinct sounds of savage growling, and also they heard those peculiar small plippy noises that new-metal makes across plastic-yard-sheet ground when dragged. “They’ve just now got him down! They’re mauling him and they’re dragging him!” said L-Tower FIP Z-U.
“Anyone else, they’d have had him in shreds long ago,” judged L-Tower SPAG O-N Z-U. “Shall we throw the viewers on him?”
“Nah, too expensive,” said FIP Z-U. “Just for a death. He’s a tough old tank, but we know what’s going on down there. The little growlies’ll gulp his edibles after a hot time tearing him to pieces and fighting over his strips. And then they’ll stack his tin for us. —In payment for all that fun fighting and a bite to eat for lunch, huk huk huk.”
“And we’ll send the rubbish cart down for him in the morning, early—if we think about it—and rush his ‘remains’ into Tall Pots at Melt Back.”
“Naturally.”
“With the usual rewards for the toggle scavengers, the switch retrievers and the circuit-breaker vigilantes, of course.”
“Right-as-feedback, naturally and for sure! Those things are sometimes as-is reusable!”
The L-Tower people yawned the boredom yawn for a bit then and after recording how he went—“Went tough”—they quietly, methodically, punched the destruct-and-destroy buttons to “take down” all those proud flags and all those pennons like dragon fangs flying—strung to victory—far away on the bastions and battlements of Stronghold #9. And then, in preparation for the next master, and with no more thought and ceremony than in the Old Days the squashing to death of a flea, they switch-togged his number to zero (0) in Moderan’s decurtate The Automated Book of the Strongholds and Heroes.
THE HEARTACHER AND THE WAREHOUSEMAN
IT WAS high on old Re-Do Row, that big Moderan warehousing
fix-strip, where this little cringe-guy walked by with his heart
in a metal carry-sack, a regular Moderan tote-poke:
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br /> and a lead from a hole in his chest trailed down
to connect to his heart in the bag—oh! STRANGE—weird thing!
(But this was Moderan, hey! where ALL people are metal-and-
people [peoples?] [metals?] [peotals?] who take pride in their ever-last
parts; where men are mostly new-processes steel now and everyone
thinks like a fort—tough, warheads firing, just-try-me! NOW! I’m rough!)
Yet—somewhere—and surely—this one had passed through a fire,
of sorts, that had quite cooked away all jollity, all mirth, all “life,”
from a face where the smile gadgets now just did not work.
However, and nevertheless, a grim kind of try and a “gameness forever”
was set in that face and you knew, YES, KNEW! that this man’s moves
would never, in all his days, be for give-up-and-quitting. “MISTER WAREHOUSEMAN!”
I peered down Evaluator peep-grooves out through new-steel’s best Moderan walls;
I thumbed all scans up to HIGH-SCAN-ON-SCAN, using SCAN-RAY-SCAN (the best);
I set the metal stocktakers to doing it!
You can believe that I looked this One quite QUITE over!
(A man with his heart in a bag?! a metal Moderan carry-poke!?)
But he was clean-on-CLEAN; no weapons bristled;
no sneaky-devices showed hidden, either (not that I could
tell). So I let him in: just hauled the big orange-half doors back
into their wall-wells. “Yes?” I glowered, cold phfluggee-phflaggee
voice talking. Now, just for an instant, he trembled and I knew,
yes, realized how he must be feeling just then, here at last
(after HOW many HARD years of travel?) stark-finally
before the HIGH WAREHOUSEMAN of all wide Moderan—big-ONE, COLD-dude,
BIGGEST-brother!—in charge of ALL parts checkouts, and especially metal spare hearts—ME.
(You see, I haven’t always been Moderan steel, either. I feel. I understand. And I
CARE for others.) (A little.) “MISTER—mister WAREHOUSE-MAN!” The trembling
was over, and a man, mission-seized, stood before me. Cold-on
the eyes struck-in; the metal hands doubled and beat rage down
hard on a place where a heart sat deep in a sack, with a lead
going straight into a hole in a chest—weird, oh, WEIRD—WEEEOOo!
“MISTER WAREHOUSEMAN! our country has no heart!
I HAVE NO HEART—YOU HAVE NO HEART,
and YOU, the keeper of hearts—YOU!—
ARE a warehouseman!” He cast that last
just sort of out there to dingle-a-dangle—hard, hard line,
shrieked loose in the jet scream. (Yes, in my job,
the NUT always stops here.) “Well, now,”
I said, carefully selecting my speech nog-toggers
through tibs on my talk phfluggee-phflaggee,
“let us sort-it, NOW, look through!” And I half-twitched
a metal indicatory shoulder nodward toward
wide-and-deep “pump bins” where a whole big new
load of fresh metal hearts reposed and glowed,
just day before yesterday delivered from that zone
where they made them: Hearts ’n’ Parts. “What,”
I asked, again carefully selecting the speech nog-toggers,
“kind of a heart might you be seeking—and needing—TODAY—hey, mister?”
“A heart! a heart!! a Heart!!! A HEART!!!!”
(Oh, he was SCREAMING)
“REAL!! heart. And NOT a can. I HAVE a can! MISTER
WAREHOUSEMAN.” I saw how it could go nasty.
I rang for the guard devices and they very
effectively came on their steel tracks from those places
where they nestled as bulges in walls until such times
as I might need them to help with NUTS
out of hand. Quickly they ringed me, steel man after steel man.
Safer I felt then; so I said, hard, my sternest talk-toggers
strong-on for loud-sounds: “HELL’S BELLS, MAN, THIS IS MODERAN!
GET WITH IT, MAN! SELECT A HEART, OR SCRAM. CHOOSE ONE,
OR HIT THE ROLL-GOS, BUM!” (WELL—I couldn’t
fool around. He was unnecessarily taking up
my time. He was BOTHERING me.) I had parts to
sort and things to catalogue. There well might be
a new shipment of metal windpipes today, or maybe
a latest prosthesis for the metal brain drains on head pans,
due any day now. Or a new breakthrough in fingers.
Or lungs. A warehouseman’s job is not an easy one. Try it
sometime! And I was the Chief. Along with all the other
parts, I! was the only One who had the newest hearts,
zinged in by whisk-lift—every week!—and all sizes ready, right there in my “pump bins.”
He took my hint. He left. Just picked up his
pump in its tote-poke from its place on my out-flow
check-one-and-GO counter and cringed through the “leave” space.
“OUT!”—“YOU were NO help,” I thought I heard him smoulder, or something
like that, far back over a leaving shoulder. Oh, well, some people
apparently just don’t want help, I thought. I was HERE. I have
the BEST hearts anyWHERE in the whole game; he could have had
whatever his work-order called for. Some people (peotals) are just
hard to make sense of. NO? —I got busy. And yes, the new fingers
came, and parts for heads that day and fresh new-metal lungs—
Oh, it was day BIG at the warehouse. No time for BUMS.
—Nevertheless and how-come-ever?! SOMETHING deep down in the few flesh-strips I still own
writhed loose and troubled, CAUSED concern (I have to admit it); late-on-late
that night when things grew chill-still quiet and I lay in my slinger
bed far back in Sleep-Wing of Parts Warehouse, trying to turn-off—
pitch-black except for the blink-dims constantly monitoring and counting
the stock bins, and a call coming over and over; and I wondering where oh, where
he was: all night long out there somewhere, cold on the homeless plastic,
lunch-sacking his pump and still pleading, “A heart! a heart!! a Heart!!! A HEART!!!!”? A heart?!
PUBLICATION HISTORY
Stories not listed below were originally published in Moderan, Avon Books, May 1971.
“No Cracks or Sagging,” originally published under the title “No Cracks or Saggings” in The Little Magazine, Spring 1970
“One False Step,” Fantastic Stories of Imagination, May 1963
“Survival Packages,” Fantastic Stories of Imagination, April 1963
“2064, or Thereabouts,” originally published under the pseudonym Darryl R. Groupe in Fantastic Stories of Imagination, September 1964
“Penance Day in Moderan,” Amazing Science Fiction Stories, July 1960
“Strange Shape in the Stronghold,” Fantastic Stories of Imagination, March 1960
“Getting Regular,” Amazing Science Fiction Stories, April 1960
“The Walking, Talking I-Don’t-Care Man,” originally published under the title “The Walking, Talking, I-Don’t-Care-Man” in Amazing Stories, June 1965
“Playmate,” Fantastic Stories of Imagination, June 1965
“A Husband’s Share,” Fantastic Stories of Imagination, October 1960
“The Complete Father,” Fantastic Science Fiction Stories, January 1960
“Was She Horrid?,” Fantastic Science Fiction Stories, December 1959
“A Glance at the Past,” Diversion, April 1959; Fantastic, October 1970
“It Was in Black Cat Weather,” originally published under the title “Black Cat Weather” in Fantastic Stories of Imagination, February
1963
“Sometimes I Get So Happy,” Fantastic Stories of Imagination, August 1963
“Remembering,” Amazing Science Fiction Stories, April 1960
“A Little Girl’s Xmas in Moderan,” originally published under the title “A Little Girl’s Xmas in Modernia” in Coastlines, Autumn 1958
“The Flesh-Man from Far Wide,” Amazing Science Fiction Stories, November 1959
“The One from Camelot Moderan,” Descant, Winter 1962
“Reunion,” Amazing Stories, February 1965
“The Warning,” Amazing Stories, November 1962
“Has Anyone Seen This Horseman?,” Shenandoah, Winter 1961
“The Miracle of the Flowers,” The Smith/7, October 1966
“Incident in Moderan,” Dangerous Visions, Harlan Ellison ed., Doubleday 1967
“The Final Decision,” Amazing Stories, February 1961
“How They Took Care of Soul in a Last Day for a Non-Beginning,” originally published under the title “Last Day and a New Beginning” in Renaissance, 1962
“How It Ended,” Amazing Stories, January 1969
“A Little at All Times,” Perihelion Science Fiction, Summer 1969
“The Joke,” Fantastic, August 1971
“Two Suns for the King,” Worlds of If, April 1972
“The Good War,” Fantastic, December 1972
“In the Land That Aimed at Forever,” Fantastic, May 1974
“Among the Metal-and-People People,” New Dimensions IV, Robert Silverberg ed., New American Library 1974
“The Dirty War,” Eternity SF, Vol. 2 1973
“When the Metal Eaters Came,” Galaxy, June/July 1979
“A Little Girl’s Spring Day in Moderan,” Galaxy, September/October 1979
“December for Stronghold 9,” Amazing Science Fiction Stories, June 1982
“The Heartacher and the Warehouseman,” POLY, 1989