Moderan

PART ONE

The Beginnings

THINKING BACK (OUR GOD IS A HELPING GOD!)

FLESH seemed doomed that year; death’s harpies were riding down. The once-beautiful, sweet and life-sustaining air was tinged with poison now, and man drank at his peril from the streams that had once been pure. He prayed to a God that was said to be in all things good, true and beautiful, but especially was thought to be all sternness and goodness, justice and loving-care, in some milk-white place far away, On High. And those prayers if answered were answered very obliquely indeed. For the air got deeper in poison from the tinkering with lethal things the flesh-man indulged in when not praying, and the water got fuller with danger as each new explosion pounded the bomb-fevered air. There was talk of the End; great discussions were handled in great halls across the land. Treaties were signed among statesmen to help the air get better, to allow the streams to recover and run pure once again. But even as the flesh-hands grasped the pens to scrawl the marks of good faith in some countries, fear lashed at capitals in other countries. Arsenals were tested anew. Things done were undone. The air got sicker; the streams ran not pure but pure danger—There seemed no chance for flesh-man, and his God seemed entirely silent wherever He was, wherever His white throne was. The HOPELESS signs were out everywhere. Little children asked that they be allowed to go quickly and not grow up hurting and maimed. Adults in what should have been the full flower of brave manhood and fair womanhood quaked, looked heavenward for some hopeful sign and, finding none, fell down and cried bitterly. The aged ones, quavering and whining now, finally decided that yes, truly they were most glad that they were so very old. The flesh billions courted at the Palace of Danger so ardently had turned against them and the mass wedding of Death and Destruction seemed now all but assured.

And then—and then this chance! Offered to all. It came first as small hope, the rumor of it, a faint faint breath of a chance seeping through the flesh-fouled metropolises. And then it was confirmed as glowing fact when the tour went round that year, year of the Greatest Darkness. And yet—and yet they scoffed, scoffed by the billions at this man working his hinges and braces, would not believe his heart was an ever-last one, had no credulity for his new wonderful lungs that could breathe him a forever-life even in bomb-tainted air. When they saw that his hands were steel they yelled robot! robot! When they saw that his eyes were wide-range, mechanism-helped, and that he’d a phfluggee-phflaggee button on his talker that he pressed from time to time to aid in his speech expression they laughed and yelled . . .

Somewhere in the wide blue space heavens there are this day a billion laughs still going, a billion raw guffaws orbiting, each closely chased by a shriek, a yelled scream that never quite catches the laugh it matches. Those strange laughs and scream nose cones that circle, and must forever, make a queer motion-monument to the unbelievers who could but laugh when they had the great dream shown them plain and who screamed over a chance that was gone when the swift black wagons of death came with death’s own personal cloth-lined boxes. But some of us SAW! We BELIEVED! We came over to the New Land. We submitted our bodies for help. We were not disappointed.

Consider the dreams we have captured here in New Processes; think of the fears turned back now in New Land; stand up and bow the head for Moderan. And know it has changed our outlook from quaking oh-God-help-us fear to massive and stalwart non-fear. Now we have Time! We can hold Time in our firm sure hands and regard it as the brightest brightest candle, one that will never burn down. We have Time arrested and shackled, imprisoned in our replacements. Though it run with the speed of light a million times over, though it run with inexpressible speed, it is as though it stayed just with us here. A million years of it can slip past our ever-last hinges and we nod, wave, ride on deep in our hip-snuggie chairs and give thanks. To our god. For YES! when we captured Time we placed it in the rib cage of each man and sealed it there in each man’s calm-beating heart. And should a heart falter in the rib cage of any man, it is not the worry of a piffle’s worth. We have but to send off to the Big Parts Warehouse where, with other spare parts, gleaming hearts rest in rows, acres and acres of beating hearts, warmed-up and idling, ready to see a man through, each man having at least ten replaceable good ones in full repair at all times. YES, we, The Believers, intend to keep what we have; we’ll never let go! We have Time, once the arch enemy of all, like a babe in a basket—calm. We have taken an old man’s scythe blade; his long, dirty beard we have shorn. He still stands gaunt with his gloomy clothes wrestled about him, sardonic and wishing for a chance at us, to do harm. But his hourglass is out at both ends now and for us, endless, the endless sands roll through.

Our god? YES! Let us speak of our god. Once, in a long-ago almost-forgotten time, there was this Truce of the Dozen Days among the Stronghold folk while all of us made the pilgrimage. By foot or tunnel car or roll-go all of us came to the great plastic plain of the Dream Realized, and in one massive movement, at a prearranged signal in Time, told by our carefully synchronized etern-tells, all of us toggled our knee switches over to the setting marked Kneel Down. And with a crash and tinkle that thundered through the red vapor shield of that happy September we were all folded down. Some thought he bestowed a blessing on all of his children that day. Some said that he waved and nodded, and still others held that he smiled. And some there were who would swear through all the rest of their lives, eternal lives, that YES! there had been this miracle, when the voiceless gave voice in thunder, when the eyeless gazed rays of lightning through the gay and thick pink air. But I heard only the silence that day across the wide shimmering acres of gleaming radiant folk all folded down, beheld only a sharp sheen as of silver when the sun slid through for a little as some small hitch came about in a place far away where many great drive wheels and drive shafts were supplying our vapor-shield power.

So we see what we need to see, hear what our needs make us hear. Something deep in the flesh-strips of some of them required a vision, a man-like thing smiling, reassuring them, and so they saw a smile. Some needed a nod, a fatherly wave of the hand, and some required words even from essentially a silent god. But for me it was enough to behold—silent, adamant, marvelous—the calm strength of the moveless voiceless gleam and be reassured. Yes, he was our silent great god on the wide plastic plain of the Dream Realized, a massive reminder to homage, and our guide star since a time when New Processes Land was very new.

And when you think of all we are delivered from by his wonderful workability and help, you will not smirk at that gleaming presence, that shining shimmering wonder, the very substance of Deliverance, tall and pure. For a tall god stands in our country to remind us always of the greatest deliverance from fear ever conceived in this world. See a New Processes man in all of his staunch stainlessness, deep in his hip-snuggie chair, sitting calm as a cold bowl of oil. Know his heart is set to Dormant-Cool, and know his flexi-flex New Processes lungs are breathing him just enough of the skull-and-cross-bones air to keep him calm-cool alert. Further know he is happily, languidly, working on some Universal Deep Problem for his truce-time amusement until Big Shoot starts up again and his Stronghold can shudder to action once more, happily, totally involved with total war. And furthermore be firmly reassured that New Processes man has no worries pounding his think-tapes to gray, no anxiety about Time going by, no apprehensions concerning surprises at war, no fears in the pale green blood of his brain pans—none at all.

And then the flesh-man—oh, consider. CONSIDER him—the sick few that are left. Please do. Then perhaps you will see why we in our new-shining glory, flesh-strips few and played-down, pay homage to a massive stick of new-metal placed as our guide star when New Processes Land, our great Moderan, was new!

NO CRACKS OR SAGGING

SOMETIMES, from the brink of our great involvements, we move in our minds back to remember things of seemingly small-bore significances that loom, in the recalling times, extra-large. The day I crossed over, the day I went in to Moderan, out in the rolled and graded fields, far as the eye could reach, were these long-legged tamping machines. Essentially they were huge black cylinders swung spinning between gigantic thighs and calves of metal. There seemed an air of casualness about these strange black monsters as they loafed on their tall-thighed legs and twirled their cylinders about in what appeared to be, at times, almost totally contrived, excessive and meaningless nonchalance. Then, at no signal that I could detect, at no prompting that I could learn of, one or another of the machines would rush right over to a spot of ground and, seeming to bend forward a little at the waist, unleash the fury of its cylinder at the fresh earth underneath as though in great glee and highest concentration. The two-legged machine, once started, would really pummel that spot of earth with the front end of its cylinder for upwards of, say, thirty minutes or maybe even three-quarters of an hour, increasing its battering motion as the minutes passed. Then, appearing to know without any guessing when enough was plenty, and withdrawing a dirt-caked cylinder-end, the machine, as it erected to full height from its leaned position, would wander away and rejoin other loafing, waiting machines as though nothing of any consequence had really occurred at all.

Once two machines started for the same spot of earth, and it was quite a show to watch them both hunch into battering position at the same time, take aim at the same place and start battering each the other’s cylinder almost as much as they pummeled the ground. An overseer for tamping machines watched this ridiculous punching contest for awhile before he went over and drummed each machine on the rump just enough to break up the rhythm of their misdirected jab-jab-jab and send them both packing off twirling their cylinders as though they hadn’t really wanted to use them anyway. The job was awarded to a third machine, a troubleshooter reserve type who soon hunched into position and went about poking away at the place as though the world were entirely new and jolly to him and heigh-ho, jig-jig, holiday, holiday, go Go GO!

What goes WHAT GIVES!? I asked the overseer of tamping machines, my voice with wonder like a child’s, my eyes surely bulged out like, in the Old Days, a frog’s.

Time goes, life stays, heigh-ho heigh-hey, he recited. And then he said. What are you, some kind of a humorist, or something? What do you mean, what goes, what gives?

What goes, what gives? Explain these grim, grotesque and altogether hilarious actions. I wish to be instructed. I want to understand. I see nothing but burlesque here. Is there more?

Is there more!? Man, is there more!! Then he looked at me more closely. Why! you’re from Out There! Old Times! he ejaculated. Perhaps you really do not understand at all. Maybe you really do mean, ‘What goes, what gives?’ 

I mean WHAT GOES, WHAT GIVES! My fists were doubled by now and I saw I could easily go into my punch-now talk-later mood for sure.

Travel far?

I came far enough. In miles. In time. In blasted hopes and withering dreams. In tear I came. In trouble. YES, I came far enough. And now to find, near the place of my chartered destination, if I came on course and if I drew my lines correctly on the charts they gave, a kind of antic Silly Farm. Where big two-legged machines that are essentially, as I see it, just contrivances for carrying around those big proddy rammers, at wholly random instances and to no practical purpose at all, try to have sexual intercourse with the soil.

You’re quite a talker. Why don’t you cut through, more? Go direct to your statement and pummel your meaning? Be more like these machines? You can see, when they get that signal, they don’t beat around the bush. They go right over there and then it’s just phoo phoo phoo, jig jig jig, bam bam bam, until the job’s done.

WHAT JOB? WHAT’S DONE?

The solution is to cover the pollution. The answer is to get rid of the cancer. Ho ho ho.

I moved in on him and I was ready to punch him down. Then I saw he had a strange look. He stared me back with gleaming, beaming, funny eyes, and there was about him something of the manner of, not a man, but more a machine-man. This is Moderan, he said. We’re building New Land here. When these misters detect a soft place in our soil, they rush right over and batter it into submission. They look random and nonchalant, I know. But really they’re not. When they seem to be just standing, they’re sampling things from ’way off, maybe. You see, they own very sensitive feet. It’s built in. If there’s a soft place in their sphere of detection, they’ll get it through these sensitors in the feet. Treading here, they’ll get a vibration from a hollow place out there. They’re programmed to hate hollow places. They rush right over and stick in the jammy-ram cylinder when they get wind of a hollow place. By hollow place, I mean a piece of the land surface that isn’t as hard as it should be.

Oh, yes! And that’s important!?

VERY. Then he looked at me cold-eyed. Maybe you’d better come with me. I can leave these machines for awhile. These jammy-rams are programmed so that really all I have to do is put in my time. And take care of unusual occurrences, like when two signals cross at the juncture of spheres of detection. This happens but rarely, but when it does, whooee! look out! we have, as you saw, the strange, hilarious and altogether inefficient phenomena of two jammy-rams going for the same hole. (By hole, I mean a piece of the land surface that isn’t as firm as it should be.) Very hard on jammy-rams and also it doesn’t make for a good tamping job at the hole either. And when you’re building for forever, that’s one of the things you really do want and must have—a good tamping job at the hole. He wasn’t kidding. I saw he wasn’t kidding.

We got into his flap-hap airabout scoot that he used to check on plans and we went up high. And far as the eye could gaze I saw the flats. All dotted with jammy-ram monsters was about three-quarters of this far-as-I-could-see area of the flats, brown-black scraped-off earth speckled with the darker, wandering and nonchalant spots that were machines doing, I had just been told, a very efficient and important piece of detection work and finalization execution at the hole. Then far down near the horizon, and at the edge of the dots that were jammy-rams, I saw how the browny-black changed to a blur that was gray or grayey-white. He slipped me a pair of long-rangers for the eyes and I zeroed in on the blur. The new ice age!

Not at all! he returned. Or maybe just precisely, if you want to see it so. But this ice age, if you want it so—go ahead, call it that!—is for the species, not against it. You’ll never see this ice age rolling up boulders or creeping along with mammoth bones in its teeth. This ice age is covering up dirt, not just rearranging it. That’s plastic you’re looking at, man! I’m out here as an advance guard for plastic. It’s a friendly deadly-competitive hell-for-plastic devil-take-the-hindermost race between my jammy-rams and me on one side and that creeping gray edge on the other. And we’re gaining! He smirked with satisfaction. And if I hadn’t already decided he was some kind of a Great One, I would have suspected right now that he was just some kind of a small jackass overseer type taking a lean satisfaction from staying on top of his small-small job. But surely not. Surely this was a Planner, a mover, a shaker and a rearranger of the World Scheme. At least a mover, a shaker, and a rearranger of the surface of the earth.

Why—what—? I sputtered. Yes! I was snowed in just now, as deep back in the murk as I ever like not to be.

He looked hot-eyed with little bulbs at me. He really bored in hard. He seemed to be making some kind of a tough decision about whether I really existed or not. Anyway, I got that impression, so hard was his bright-bulb stare. Say, you are cleared for this, he finally said, aren’t you?

I remembered some gates and some guards I had passed many days and many many miles long back. Far down at the edge of the place where things were old and wrecked, I remembered that hard cross-questioning, and the lie detectors, and the probing, the probing in—I think I’m cleared, I answered. Would I have got this far if I had not been? Some things like tin eagles have hung over me all the long way, as it is, circling, circling, as I came slowly on my tired shank’s mares . . . I take it you people are taking no chances whatsoever with what you’ve got down here.

We take no chances! Show me, if you’ve got it!

I rolled up my sleeves and showed him the two bright-orange M’s that had been stamped on my lower arms, at the clearing gates a long while back. I thought that might be what he wanted to see, and it was. You’re cleared! And you’re a whole lot more than that! He peered more closely at the M’s. You probably don’t know it now, but you’re a whole lot more than just cleared! There was in his voice a note of admiration that I couldn’t believe was faked. Yes, he meant it. He pointed at some small symbol under each M. You probably don’t know exactly what those mean, he mused, but I do. I really do. Then he shook his head in what I had to read as sadness, and he seemed to slip in memory a long way down. Too old, he muttered, too old and too many bridges gone crackling down in the floods, the flames and the always-present wrecking of the days, before this thing came up for me. But you—you’re just right! You’re young and apparently you passed your tests with colors flying, really whipping out there in the breeze. I bet you’re stamped just about all over! under your clothes.

Yeah, they stamped me up pretty well. Then they told me to get going. Pointed me a road, gave me maps and charts and said, ‘Get on up there. They’re a-building, and you’re sure to be in time.’ Is this what they meant?

NOOO. Not for you! This is what I qualified for. I was a Moderan Early-Early. But I was too old and time-ravaged and event-hurt before this gold chance came up for me. But you, you’re young and right and on the mark. I can tell you now, you’ll be a Stronghold master, one of the elite-elite, if you can stand those operations. And there’s no reason why you can’t. I stood what ones they allowed me to, in good shape. And you’re to be allowed the maximum. I can read it by those small marks under the M’s. CONGRATULATIONS! Impulsively he let go of the controls of the flap-hap and grabbed my right hand with both of his hands. I really got a steel handshake that day!

After awhile we landed, back at the place where we had started, and there were two jammy-rams going for the same hole again, so it was altogether to the good that we had arrived back at this station when we did. He rushed right over and straightened things out by slapping the two silly rammers on their rumps, with a certain rhythmic beat, as I had seen him do in that other instance. A very bad spot, this here, he announced, coming back. Something about the spheres of detection right here at this locale, which you’ll notice is a little bit of a depression, taken on the large, causes tangling of the spirals. Really not the fault of the machines, not at all, for they just do what they’re programmed for and that’s it.

You really know how to do it! I exclaimed, for something intuitively told me now that here was just a little serving man, really, a victim, who could do with some praise.

He swelled a lot with good pride as his chest came up a notch. You know, I developed that technique myself—slapping them on the rump that way with a certain beat. Breaks up their rhythm, jiggles the connections and they just wander away for awhile, not knowing what in hell else to do. After a short time, though, they settle right back down again, the rhythm of their programming is restored and they’re good serviceable jammy-rammers once more.

Anyway, I think that’s neat, slapping these big earth fornicators on the rump that way to send them off just twirling their dirty cylinders at the air, all puzzled and deranged. Sort of shows man’s mastery somehow. Yet—huh?

YEAH! Thought it up myself, kind of by accident really. Saw it’d work when my foot slipped and I fell against one of them one time, flailing my arms for balance. Adopted the method. All against procedures, naturally. SAY! you should see what I’m really supposed to do when something like this comes up. About twenty-five to thirty forms to fill out giving the pinpoint time and place and my ideas on why the foul-up. I’m furiously filling out the forms, see, after I’ve immediately and at once sent in the signal to headquarters that two jammy-rammers are at the same hole, COME WITH ALL SPEED! About sixteen big shots hop off their new-metal mistresses up at headquarters, their secretaries, you know, jump in their flap-hap air-about jet scoots and slam off out here as though hell itself were inside coming out. All this time the two poor jammy-rams with their signals crossed are beating hell out of each other’s rammers, making a bigger scarred-up soft place in the graded surface than there was before, and generally compounding futility to the top degree. But the big shots get there fast, in about two to five minutes—I will say this for them, they’re prompt—and they rush out of their jet-slap airabout scoots and have their big cigars fired up and are clearing their throats and considering things almost before the two mixed-up jammy-rams are scarcely one-third through with their programmed cycle of earth ramming. Which makes it harder, really, because naturally being big-deal men of action, these headquarters fellows (do something, even if it’s wrong! you know) signal off out there at once for the Separator task forces, which come in on the heavy transports in about ten minutes more, and these Separator troops throw big chain links around the intensely working jammy-rams and drag them away from the hole, the jammy-rams still fighting to finish the cycle, naturally, of course. Ever try to pull a jammy-ram by force away from the hole before he’d finished his cycle?

No. Never did that.

No, he laughed, "course you didn’t. But it can be done with enough horsepower pulling at the jammy-rams and strong enough chains. Tears up the jammy-rams though and causes them to have to be sent away many many miles to the repair stations. Then I just complete the filling out of the forms, and procedures are maintained, and everything’s unstrained, happy and satisfied with the headquarters