Dangerous Visions (48 page)

In Moderan we are not often between wars, but this was a truce time. A couple of Strongholds in the north had malfunctioned—some breakdown in their ammo-transport belts, I think—and we had all voted to hold up the war a day or so to give them a chance to get back in the blasting. Don't get me wrong—this was no lily-white flower-heart fair-play kind of thing or love-thy-neighbor-Stronghold sort of hypocrisy, like might have been in the Old Days. This was a hard-neck commonsense compromise with reality. The bigger and better the war, the bigger and better the chance to hate voluminously and win honors. It was as simple as that.

But at any rate, it was between wars that I was doing some odd-job things just outside the eleventh, outermost Wall of my Stronghold. To be right truthful, I was mostly just sitting out there in my hip-snuggie chair, enjoying the bleary summer sun through the red-brown vapor shield of July and telling my head weapons man what to do. He was, so it chanced, polishing an honors plaque that proclaimed on Wall 11 how our fort, Stronghold 10, was FIRST IN WAR, FIRST IN HATE, AND FIRST IN THE FEARS OF THE ENEMY.

Things were getting tedious. What I mean is, it was getting dull, this sitting around between wars, directing the polishing of plaques and dozing in the filtered summer sun. Out of sheer boredom, and for the amusement of it all, I suppose, I was just about ready to get up and start beating my weapons man with my new-metal swagger stick loaded with lead. Not that he wasn't doing an excellent job, you understand, but just to have something to do. I was saved this rather stupid and perhaps pointless, though not altogether unpleasant, expedient by a movement on the ninth hill to my left. Quickly I adjusted my widerange Moderan vision to pinpoint look, threw my little pocko-scope viewer up to my eyes and caught a shape.

When it got there, it was a shape, all right! I immediately saw it was one of those pieces of movement—man? animal? walking vegetable?—well, what are we going to say for most of these mutant forms that roam the homeless plastic in Moderan? When he stood before me, I felt disturbed. Strangely I felt somehow guilty, and ashamed, that he was so bent and twisted and mushy-looking with flesh. Oh, why can't they all be hard and shining with metal, and clean, like we Stronghold masters are, with a very minimum of flesh-strip holding them in shape? It makes for such a well-ordered and hate-happy life, the way we masters are in Moderan, so shiny and steellike in our glory, with our flesh-strips few and played down and new-metal alloy the bulk of our bodily splendor. But I suppose there must always be lower forms, insects for us to stride on . . . . I decided to try speech, since I couldn't just sit there with him looking at me so. "We're between wars here," I said conversationally. "Two of the mighty Strong-holds of the north broke down, so we decided to hold up."

He didn't say anything. He was looking at the honors plaque on Wall 11 and at the weapons man polishing the proud words. "It's just a kind of fill-in in-between job," I said. "Besides, it gives me a chance to doze out here in this filtered summer sun while the weapons man does the work. But it gets tedious. Before you came, I was right on the point of getting up to start beating him with my new-metal swagger stick loaded with lead, even if he is all-metal new-metal alloy, and doing an excellent job, and probably wouldn't have felt the beating anyway. But just to have something to do, you know. As you perhaps realize, a Stronghold master mustn't do any real work in Moderan. It's against the code." I laughed a little, but strangely I felt nervous in my flesh-strips and vague along the rims of my joins. Why did he look at me that way? Even so, why should the stares of such an insignificant piece of life affect me at all?

Could he talk? He could. Blue soft lips parted and a yellow-pink piece of gristly meat jigged up and down in wet slop in his mouth that was raw-flesh red. When this somewhat vulgar performance of meat and air was through, I realized he had said, "We had a little funeral for Son a while ago. We hacked away at the plastic with our poor makeshift grave kits and put him under the crust on time. We hurried. We knew you couldn't guarantee much truce. I come to thank you for what you did."

I shook a little at this strange speech and turn, then recovered myself quickly and waved a steel hand airily. "Consider that I'm thanked," I said. "If you'd wish a steel flower for a decoration, take one."

He shuddered in all his loose-flesh parts. "I came to thank you," he told me in what I supposed passed for blunt speech in his tribe, "not to be ridiculed." In his stare there was a look of puzzlement and doubt now.

Suddenly I found the whole thing growing quite ludicrous. Here I was, a Moderan man between wars, minding my own business, sitting outside the eleventh Wall of my Stronghhold, waiting for the war to resume, and some strange walking lump of sentimentality that I didn't even know existed hurries across from the ninth hill to my left to thank me for a funeral. "You had a good one?" I suggested. Frantically I tried to remember things from the Old Days. The mourners stretched down for a mile? Music—a lot? Flowers—banked all about?

"Just us," he said, "I and his mother. And Son. We hurried. We were sure you couldn't give much time from all the busy times. We thank you for what you did—for the decency."

Decency? Now, what an odd word! What could he mean by decency? "Decency?" I said.

"The rites. You know! We had time for a little prayer. We asked that Son be allowed to live forever in a happy home."

"Listen," I said, a little fed up already with all this, "I don't more than half remember from the Old Days enough about this to discuss it. But you poor flesh mutants bury your dead and then ask that they be allowed to rise and live again about twenty-five times lighter than a dehumidified air bubble. Isn't that about it? But isn't that taking quite a chance? Why don't you just get wise and do it like we Moderan masters do? Just have that operation while you're young and vigorous, throw away what flesh you don't need, 'replace' yourself with all-metal new-metal alloy 'replacements' and live forever. Feed yourself this pure honey-of-introven extract we've come up with and it's a cinch, you'll have it made. We know what we've got, and we know how to live . . . . And now, if you'll excuse me, according to that report arriving at this very moment over the Warner, those Strongholds that aborted the war seem to be fixed up again. We stopped the blasting because of them so we'll just have to really move now to make up hate-time. I would guess the firing may be a little heavier than you've ever seen it."

Through the last parts of this speech I watched what looked like puzzlement and doubt flicker strangely across his flesh-encumbered countenance. "You stopped the war because—because those two Strongholds aborted in the north? You—you didn't really do it then so we could bury Son and have the decency?!" A cold thought must have wrapped him round; he seemed to shrink and shrivel and go inches shorter right there on the plastic. I marveled anew at the great hard times these flesh things gave themselves with their emotions and their heart palpitations. I thumped my "replaced" chest in a kind of meditation and thanked the lucky iron stars in our splendid new-satellite heavens for my calm-cool condition. "In a little while," I said, "we'll open up this blasting. We're clearing the lines now for first countdown and a general resumption. You see, we try to start even. After that it's every Stronghold for itself to just blast away and make the most expeditious use of the ammo."

He looked at me a long time for some sign of joking. After a while he said in a tone that I supposed with the flesh things passed for great sadness and great resignation, "No, I guess you really didn't stop it so we could bury Son and have the decency. I guess it truly was the aborted Strongholds in the north. I see now I read something true and fine into it and that true and fine something wasn't there at all. And so I—I came across to thank you for a decency—for nothing—"

I probably nodded ever such a little, or possibly I didn't, because I was hearing the Voice now, hearing the Warner say that all was about in readiness for Great Blast to go and for the masters again to take their positions at the switch panels of War Rooms. "That's it!" I said to no one and nothing in particular. "It'll be double firing now and around-the-day launching of war heads until we make up our time in hate units."

Just as, bidding my weapons man not to forget the hip-snuggie, I was about to turn and go, hustle off to my War Room and resume Great Blast, a cold sound struck through my steel. What was that high whimpering along the plastic? Then I saw. It was the little flesh-bum. He had lost control of his emotions, had fallen down and was now blubbering real tears. "It's okay, don't be scared," I shouted at him as I turned to hurry. "Keep low in the draws, avoid even halfway up hills and travel swiftly. You'll make it. We fire only at peaks, first go."

But as I passed through the Wall and was bidding the weapons man make all secure, I noticed the little flesh-fellow remained prone, blubbering along the plastic. He was not making any effort to get clear and save himself! And suddenly old Neighboring Stronghold to the east let loose with such a cheating early burst that the little flesh-bum was quite pancaked down—indeed even far further than pancaked, as it got him with a deadly Zump bomb that I'm sure was capable of punching him to the center of the earth even as he was being vaporized to high sky and all winds, and I was ever so glad this had fallen just a little bit short of my complex. But as I glanced at the smoking havoc and a large patch of nothing now, where but a moment before had been the good plastic earth-cover, I could not help but rejoice that the war was certainly again GO. For the flesh-bum I didn't even try for tears, and nothing in my mind could bring my heart rain as I raced on to the War Room to punch my launch knobs down.

In my small room with the red-cover bed and the two gray shade-drawn windows I would see the Tower, not in the sundown of memory, for indeed I had never been there, but in the moonlight of thinking. And in my thinking it would be a glorious thing, if only four feet tall, with the moon striking down on the tank that would hold my chains, and the platform inviting, empty. A tall form would stand in the street, hale and straight for an instant, in the moonlight of thinking (although
I
am a good five inches less than a decent height), then turn and stride for the goal, in good tread, in good speed, the chains riding easy on two little carriers with wheels, silent and clear of the road. In a celebration of moonglow we would scale the Tower to its very top and easily sit on the platform over the metal tank. The chains would slip silently from the wheeled carriers, down through the slotted holes of the tank, pulling our feet after them, until we sat quite triumphantly in silence measuring the win we had done. Not ashamed of the smallness of our victory, indeed quite not ashamed, we would pull out the gay flaunters we had saved, long and patiently saved, against this hour of our deed. Inflating the two small balloons, one red, one almost impossibly bright green, and tying one each to a wrist, we would sit there gay and victorious in the moonglow, our chains down in the tank, our head up in the stars, from a Tower but four feet tall . . . . So much for moonglow.

The mornings yawn, the sun comes real, cruel and bright, to magnify our chains. The moonglow is gone and the thinking. It is instinct now, pure instinct and fight, to face them where they snarl. Sure, we have dreamed of elephants, big brown elephants with gold houses on their backs and we in a house each morning, riding down in triumph, striding down on stately elephant strides to our tank and leaping off so fast onto the platform that no one would see our chains. A clink, a slip, a small tink-rattle and they're gone, down in the tank, the chains quite gone to all the world but us, and we sitting high on the platform, four feet high, blowing up the balloons and stone-facing to the crowd. And the crowd muttering, angry, disappointed, somehow debased, and refusing finally to believe that their victim is truly without his chains. I can see them now, bobbing their tonsured and greasy and bald and curled and shave-cut gray old heads together in small worry-clusters, pecking out their shame and their shameful need, wanting somehow to know, desperately needing to know, that though they may not be there now showing to the air, somehow the chains are still there. They must be! Oh yes, they'll circle the tank; they'll peer and thump and in small-childish spite kick at my elephant, and they'll hate me as I sit so gay with my celebration balloons whipping in a spanking cherry-apple wind on that bloom-filled rejoiceful fair spring day. And some one of them, some desperate bright spiteful one of them, will suddenly think all on a sorry debased instant, "They're in the tank! Probably. He's dropped them down through holes!" Then it will hit them all, like a big wave on a beach hit them, break across them and engulf them with the pleasant wetty thought, "We've got him again! They're in the tank. Probably! He's dropped them down through holes!"

Well!—then it will be just a short matter of bringing up the X-ray machines, taking pictures from all sides and all angles and confirming what is to be confirmed. They'll cut in after that, with their big acetylene torches, and some will be on the far side from the heat, with little can openers, busily working, making with the marks, so desperate will be their need to get in through the bottom, expose me and confirm that I still have my chains. The acetylene torches will get in; the can openers will not. But it will be all the same. They'll pull my chains out through the bottom of the tank, through the holes they've carved with the acetylene, and they'll pull my legs out too as far as it is reasonable to do it. And I know I'll make a sorry sight then, my celebration balloons whipping smartly and pertly above, green and red flashes in the apple-cherry-blossom air, my leg chains, feet and legs blooming small common unnecessary arcs, twin-pendulumlike down from the tank holes, and I in between the gaiety and the common shame, grim and exposed and determined . . . . So much for elephants. So much for Towers and tanks too, for that matter. But don't think we've been beaten. Defeated?
Oh no
! I've a trick for it; for just this kind of thing, I've a trick.