SINCE I had made my terms with the Court men, and especially FIP Z-U, the days had danced for me, they had played music, they had passed like dreams of mean. . . .
I remember I was feeling especially good on a day; the worries were all cut back, a sheen was in the air, a shimmer, as the sun beat through the lean white vapor shield of August and smote our plastic yard sheets. I was wondering what for diversion, what for Joys, what summer sport should I choose to program into my Sched, the big brain that served me, tweetle and shimmer and flare.
But who knows, just because the day dawns fair, with worries cut back to dormant, a fine sheen of sun and the tin birds turned on in the silver trees—who knows? There are clouds that wander the world, there are storms that walk in the land, there are disgruntled men who would hammer-stroke the very face of omnipotent God if it got in their walking way.
He was such a one.
I knew that a lot of new-metal was headed down the track; my warner set up that almost-steady whine. There were very few bleep-outs, those smaller softer sounds that jag at the metal drone of danger and indicate flesh-strip. I envied him in a way, for perhaps he was more metal than I; I think I did not fear him, for I had all the Stronghold guns at my beck and the other great kill potential at my call. But I accorded him an honor that usually is from fear, an honor generally reserved for armies, or new invasion principles my Enemies send in to get me, or men I know as deranged. I set him up for Study, flashed him on the Close Look. And in a way, by so doing, I had him awesome and dread while he was still a long way out.
But it did no hurt; he was awesome and dread while still a long way out. YES! Truly. His head was shaped more like a hammer’s head than a human head, and he seemed to peck and tap and pound at the distances as he came on steadily, a huge sun-glinty shape, not hurrying, not loitering, but just coming on at a dogged peck, peck, peck. Straight and gradual he came, not looking aside at all, right down the slot. And I began to wonder if he was coming to see me, or if I and my great complex of weaponry just happened to be flat athwart the road he had chosen to peck, peck, peck. But soon it would be time to know, for soon it would be time to stop him and either open the gates or not open them. He could be God’s own Chosen or Satan’s righthand help, either one, and he couldn’t come on down this close to me and my fort and not be judged. The time for turning aside he had passed a good while back, when the orange flares went up and the warning leaflets pattered down. It was the generally understood Warning of the Line that we used in the Stronghold country. And if ever it was ignored, I had just seen it ignored by this hammer-headed shape. A man? Well—? Who could say?
All the warning formalities slid past him as though they had never been; the greeting, if heard, was flagrantly left unreturned. He came on, pressing up to the gates, which I allowed him to do since I had checked him well on the Close Look, and the weapons and decontamination reports had both given him clear sail. But even against the closed gates he did not stop; he continued his dogged footwork and the peck, peck, peck of his head. CRAZY! Well, I suppose.
I eased the gates back gently with the OPEN power on SLOW and he passed through the hollow square. When he came close to where I stood half down from my peep-box of steel, but with one foot, for safety, still in the door, he seemed to sense my presence and he swiveled his head a very few degrees from the straight-on that seemed to be his choice.
“Owner?” The voice was a raspy drone; he was still moving.
“Yes. And halt!”
For a surprise he halted, stopped dead in his pecking tracks, then spun until he faced me. “Just passing through. I hurt not where I walk. I respect the life-rights of others. But generally I do not deviate. My mission? If I have one—well, it’s very hard to know.”
“I am Master of Stronghold 10,” I said, “the fortress with the best war record in all this wide land. Your coming on past the flares and the dropping leaflets was my choice to give; your pecking past the gates was my choice to allow; your going at all, unblasted, past the Warning of the Line was my choice to extend. I hope for no misunderstand—”
“If I’ve found God, then this is the end of the trail!” He reached at a tin belt that seemed low on his solid waist, and faster than I could follow he held a huge black hammer lightly in either hand. My face could almost feel them crashing through metal and flesh-strip and bone. Then strangely he laughed, a cracked unbelievable sound that was hardly of mirth, and he returned the hammers to the tin belt where they hung like two black questions, I could not help thinking. “I’d almost given up finding God.” Then he laughed again. “But all jesting aside, and satire, let us not speak of God. He’s why I’ve gone over to metal for the rest of the Long Trip.”
“Are you an iron minister?” I asked. “Do you speak up for an old faith sometimes? Do you cry out for redemption of a world?” I meet them all here in the slot where the Big Travel goes past my fort, and I’m ready to make allowances for them all. But with him I thought maybe I had gone too far when I saw those long steel hands turn to hunting birds in stoop and then become snake heads as they fell. He rested them on the hammers lightly where they hung.
“Mister,” he said, “I’m in your Stronghold not by choice, certainly not as a guest. And yet I would not be mocked at either. You opened the gates. I didn’t ask it. If you had left them closed I’d still be pecking at them, with my feet going. I’d use the hammers after awhile. I was once stopped a year at a little mountain cliff, down province, a whole pecking year. After that long the cliff began to crumble, and I walked on through. With me it absolutely doesn’t matter—pecking at a Stronghold here, battering a mountain cliff down province, or walking on through cleared and free in the open vapor-shield air. I’ll wear out time until I’m tired of time, and then I’ll just turn off the knobs I move by. I have absolutely no faith, no known purpose for being, and if I find God’s face, or any part of that face, I’m programmed to strike it with both hammers as fast as I can hit, and as hard. There are reasons for all this, which I fully explain about once every twenty-five years.” He looked at an elaborate time device swung down from his new-metal neck and I knew years, months, weeks, days, hours—all of it down to the last second-tick were cornrningled there in a jumble of calendars and red whirling blades. If metal can grin—well, he grinned, an open kind of smirk. “You just missed the big recital by a year, some six weeks, five days and a certain assorted amount of ticking seconds, round minutes and dragging jumbly hours,” he said.
“Maybe you could camp here until the time comes up to talk, and then I could hear your tale,” I said, because I had my humor about me as well as one of my feet in safety, in the door of the peep-box of steel.
“Just say I found the Answers,” he said. “Just say you’ve seen the walking-talking Don’t-Care man, one being who has escaped The Grip. It wasn’t easy, it took a long time, and planning, but I think I’ve achieved it finally, the ultimate resolution of that built-in agony, the Life-Death Predicament of Man.”
That was a big statement he’d just loaded out there at the last.
“YES! the walking-talking Don’t-Care man rests well at night. He just leans up somewhere against a post, a creek bank, a tree, an old missile launching shell, anything—turns off the switches and leaves it programmed so that he’ll be turned back on at a suitable morning time. And always in him there’s the assurance of the wonderful option; at any time the walking-talking Don’t Care decides to, he can, when he shuts down the switches at night, neglect to program his awakening, and it’ll be all over—OVER!”
“But here!” I could not help suggesting, “hasn’t any kind of a man, at any time in history, in effect always had that option, to not awake in the morning? Self-death is just a little less old than life. Or did I miss something?”
“YES!” he howled in derision, “you missed it almost all. The walking-talking Don’t-Care man is different because he is so indifferent. I’ve outsmarted God by a long and slow maneuver. I’ve left myself on a hundred dozen operating tables, down the days, down the line. The flesh I was and the soul I was supposed to be have left out through a hundred dozen hospital garbage pails and thus were scattered on many many big rivers and many many refuse-burning fires. And now I’m all ‘replacements’—heart, brain, blood, nerves, everything—all metal now, all automatic, all programmed—wonderful! And you know something? I never dream at night. How could I dream at night? I’m all turned off when I turn in. HA!”
This fellow had a point. I began to see his plan. The rest of us new-metal folk, with our flesh-strips few and played-down, had schemed to defeat the Predicament of Man, the agony of his transience and long-death fears in the world, by simply living forever. We’d conquer the big conundrum by never facing it. YES! But truly I was beginning to see how that could turn tedious. And now this one, who styled himself the Don’t-Care one, had come up with a new and shining plan that beat ours very much. Man slowly turned to metal, with all his thoughts, actions, needs programmed! Well, that certainly would seem to have solved the Great Mystery and the Great Fear in a logical scientific way. The flesh-body and the soul so piecemeal gone that neither existed now anywhere at all, neither to be held accountable and neither to be up for redemption. And who could say he had transgressed? Had he killed himself? Ho! He had merely transformed himself. And when he turned off the switches for the last time and, tiring of it all, did not program another day, could you say he then had killed himself? I think you could not reasonably charge metal with suicide, not logically.
Then a question took me as he stood there so bland and self-assured, his two snake-head hands lightly on the hammers where they swung. “Why, since He has allowed you to solve it, The Problem, would you wish to strike at His face with those two hammers, if you met that face ever, partly or in whole?”
For awhile he just stared at me, and, if metal can hate, I would say that he hated. He whipped out the two black hammers and stood there, each one threat-posed. For all his metal bravado and the total-defiance stare the voice seemed old when he spoke: “Intelligence was not left out when they built my head back together. My thoughts are metal now, but they work out. Don’t I know who put me in The Predicament in the first place? Don’t I know!? And the fact that He allowed me to change, warns me that He could probably change me back. And by God, I’ll go down fighting, striking until these hammers are all worn down and my arms are all metal shreds, before He’ll change me back to a man!”
Then he left me, pecking through the walk-out part of the Stronghold square. When he attained the far side, I thumbed the gates back for his leaving. He went out still pecking, going going—for his ending. Who—what knows where?