THE BUBBLE-dome home, the live-alone houseball, was as much a part of the total Moderan scene as was, say, a Stronghold. Or a flesh-strip. Or a roll-go. The bubble-dome home was for underprivileged country, where lived until they died, the millions on millions who had not qualified for Stronghold country. As has been told before, only the elite-elite went up to that big-deal scene where the defense complexes were eleven steel walls thick, where kill-kill of all description swung easy and handy-down under the gun lids, and the cone-balls rolled all day all night high in the vapor shield over the Strongholds, testing for danger, testing for war! NO! not everyone could qualify for that scene. Only the young males, usually, the finest of the breed, moved up to that chance. The old ladies, the middle ladies, the young girls, the maimed men, the weak and the weary men of all description—all lived in mediocrity, each in his or her own live-alone houseball, watching the days go, seeing a life ebb, knowing that the course had to be collision with the Terrible Date. For not one of these rabble people had qualified for enough of the operations to be of and for forever.
It was a waste. All pandering to weakness is a waste. What a country We could have had in Moderan, what greatness and what Joy, had it been all the elite-elite up in Stronghold country firing those big guns at each other, the high exhilaration of war broken only for small truces and great Joy.
But Central was weak. Ruthless Central was weak, here—once. Those nine old shells, with their flesh-strip percentages that could equal or outdo any Stronghold master’s (in fact, they had all been Stronghold masters before their elevation; I expect in due time to be elevated) were weak. I can imagine how they chewed at their smoke ropes long and long up there in the L-Towers of the Needle Building that day, how they spat at the gold-banded jeweled cone spittoons all day up there, how they argued and almost fought in their frustration. Nine old men, nine old shells—faced with a battle that they could not win.
Of course the flesh-strips of humanity told these nine high ruling judges to save the people, let them live, build them homes, give them the operations to the very limits of their capacities to absorb and survive those operations. But the new-metal steel charisma of these leaders placed most high must have argued for sanity. And the sane course had to be to let these people die. At once! They could never excel; they had not, not one of them, even the smallest slightest chance of ever absorbing enough operations to be of the elite-elite. They could only clutter the Moderan Dream. With one important exception. The young boys! YES! They would, some of them, surely grow up to challenge us in their turn. And that might have been the one overriding consideration, the young boys, that caused those nine old hulls when Moderan was a very new country to render that hard-argued five-to-four decision: LET THE COMMON PEOPLE LIVE.
It was a bum decision! That was my unqualified sane opinion at the time, and I think it had to be the unqualified sane opinion of anyone who was already at the top, a Stronghold master. Who needed more people? Not us, and that was for sure. We were already set in our Hate Leagues, we had just enough for dandy wars all of the time, with the exception of the small time outs for truces and Joys, and we were designed for forever. That seemed a set and final fine set of conditions, so far as I am concerned.
But the decision was rendered; we had to live with it. Oh, there was talk of marching on the Needle Building, of firing at the L-Towers, and a lot of other wild irresponsible letting off of steam, talkwise, was done. But nothing came of any of it, finally. The Moderan Dream was left irrevocably saddled with these rheumatic old ladies, these bummy old men, these meaningless-futured young girls and all the rest of the under-par ragtag of humanity. Until they should die. Which they would, eventually, because they were not physically strong enough to stand that battery of operations that would move them up to the land of the forever Dream. But these nine old human hulls in a five-to-four further dog-fit of humanity had decreed that all these people should not only be allowed to live out their natural spans, but should also be certified to receive the Moderan operations to the physical limits of their capabilities to receive them and to absorb them. WHOOFF! Thus compounding and prolonging the blot on the Moderan Dream for ages and ages.
Oh, so easily could this all have been taken care of directly. To mollify their outdated feelings of humanity these nine old nut hulls could have, after voting more realistic convictions, appended this Order from the Court: LET THEM GO GENTLY. In a trice these people could have gone then. Oh, it would have taken but the very minimum of planning. BEAUTIFUL! Central could have decreed a compulsory Joy Day for all the underprivileged people in the land. Then all over Moderan gigantic Joy Stadiums could have been thrown together, hurriedly made and of the very flimsiest of construction materials. For a one-time use. On Joy Day they would have come in their thousands then to the Joy Stadium of their choice, usually, of course, the one nearest them. Not one of the underprivileged people would have been excused from participation in this massive Joy Day celebration. The common people—men, women and children in out-of-bed health, the bedridden, the wheel-chaired, the halt, the blind, all of them, even the criminals from their prison cells—all would be transported in for Joy. At a common instant, at a signal from some watch-ball on high perhaps, a steel finger in Central would touch a small jolly-color orange button marked GO GENTLY. Each Joy Stadium and its thousands of celebrators then would simply in a twinkling be a POUFF! a FLASH! and then a small black smudge-blot on the plastic. Which smudge-blot could be easily and simply wiped off by a steel roving-custodian of the Land Surface Upkeep Forces. BEAUTIFUL! YES! We have the know-how for such solutions.
Then, and also, we have nine old nut heads scratching, very reluctantly, I’m sure, a flesh-strip small itch of conscience. So, as a result, in their millions and millions the bubble-dome homes, the live-alone houseballs, housing for the mediocre millions, sprang up all over stern and mighty Stronghold-centered Moderan, in almost any spot that wasn’t in direct interference with the firing periphery of a Stronghold.
YES! What a waste! All that time, all that energy, all that expenditure—oh, think what it could have meant toward the betterment of our life, the advancement of the Moderan Dream, if it all could have been used correctly! Better defense, maybe, swifter-firing Strongholds, almost surely, or perhaps even experimentation and study for a science breakthrough for more steel in the elite-elite new-metal man, and less flesh-strip—this always core and central to the Moderan Dream. There was a lot of time, energy, expense and know-how went into those bubble-dome homes, and don’t you ever think otherwise!
And yet—and yet all honesty, even here by my Wall of Steel, makes me confess a thing. Some nights, in a time of quiet, when the high cone-balls of my warning complex twirl round and round and say nothing, when every battle flag hangs limp on its pennon pole, when the weapons men, having no duties whatsoever to perform, make not even the smallest scratch-scratch sound of metal moving on metal within my Walls, I think stark thoughts. I think of people in their live-alone houseballs enjoying the services of gad-goes, waited upon by automatics, and fighting each his own personal unwinnable Battle of Time. I think of my father and mother and five sisters somewhere OUT THERE, each one in a personal bubble-dome home. I think of two little children, Little Brother and Little Sister. And ultimate ultimate piercing thought—That Woman! in White Witch Valley. I walk my mile in the night then—pounding, ringing, clattering across the silent battlements, round and round on the lookout ledge of my Stronghold’s highest roof. And sometimes in the moon-show—cold and weird and cluttered now with conquest, that pale chill light wan through the vapor shield—I ask myself THE QUESTION. And sometimes, rather than answer THE QUESTION, I lift a truce up early and gun in all the Strongholds for a big Max-Up of Hate. But sometimes I answer THE QUESTION, and the answer makes me sad. No, I answer, very softly, no and no. Very softly. I pound my flesh-strips then, I claw at my soft percentages, I wish for more steel! But it’s still NO. No, I wouldn’t have voted with the minority up in that L-Tower. I too, finally, would have voted to give the common sub-par people more time to think about, and try to get ready for, each his own personal Terrible Date. And thus the failure of it all and the Dream diminished by even me, until I can get more steel—MORE STEEL!