THE VAPOR shield was basic brown that month, with overtones that made it almost golden at times and at other times almost gray and grayish black. And though this was usual vapor for October, there was this autumn, grimly, a difference. From somewhere far removed, far out from this Land That Aimed at Forever, a pall of melancholy came, a feeling of closure, of things finished and going into a last white wintertime. (Ah yes, winter still came to the Land That Aimed at Forever, in spite of all the warm vapor shields that were meant to control the sky.)
And though the State set all its tin mandolin-men to playing in yards across the land, and ordered all its happy color-throwers wherever they might be to shoot diversion hues up at the basic brown shield, and though the perfume-men, their atomizers armed with every pleasant scent, ran spraying across the plastic fields and through the yards of towns, and though at night, with the vapor shield ebbed in, the shape-men threw the great pattern panoramas up into the bland, though chilling now, October sky, there was, despite all this, no surcease. The thing that had upset them all was there, continuing, dread in its verdict.
The Council met to hear a fateful proposal put in the form of motion. Stalog Blengue, sitting like a stone near the center of the Council, remote and metal-fogged but clear as to their need, clattered to full stature on his gold-and-silver-and-iron “replaced” legs to put the awful question before them all. Then they asked in their hearts and they asked each other, “Is this that maximum thing for which we have so long waited and feared? Is this that degree of ultimate contingency for which we have, at almost unheard-of expense, built and equipped and maintained the Maximum Diversion Birds? Shall the Birds go now to distract the fearful people?”
The debate raged in Council for five contestful days. Meanwhile, the people drew what comfort and diversion they could from the magic in the yards, the color-throwers, the perfume-men, the pattern display in the black-blue October nights, and sometimes, feeling great pity for the shaken people, the Central Station would throw the switch and press the button that would spring up the pansy lids. Then all over that broad land, in all the plastic yards, in all the fields of fall, flowers would leap through the yard-holes and wave a bit of May on spring-metal stems, even though grimly it was October. And through it all, in the very most central province of the Land That Aimed at Forever, that dread reality lay—yes, lay and mocked them all in the shack of stubborn old Grandpa Zagk.
In the debate in Council almost every speaker, whether for or against the proposal to use the Birds, took the opportunity to describe in oratory each tedious detail of the maximum things he thought the Birds could do. It was told by one Council member how, from the giant “cages” on the perimeter of Preparedness Field, the Birdmen would spring them up, how the vapor shield would be special-brown that day, how the silver of two million great wings all together would make a blinding show as soaring they rode quietly in the searchlights for a moment just above the buildings. Then, as at a signal, they would in a compelling show of raw power flap a cadenced rhythm to step into the brown autumnal sky, all for the height of perhaps a quarter of a mile, and they would open their mouths then all at once, with a bright fluid streaming out to form the figures of people in the vapor shield, brighter red than the blood that used to be and grotesque beyond all common imagining. Following that would come the sense-chilling noise, a special shrill and grating cry from the throats of a million birds, and then, with little brown sacks of oil, they would start bombing the people, all out in the yards now to watch the Birds. Following the oil bombardment there would come more intensive bombing with small bags of common sand and other grimes and grits that had been swept up by Central Sweep in the daily rounds and packaged in the neat gritty-grime bombs. Then, after the last sand bomb and the last neat gritty-grime bomb had tumbled from the sky, the dead cold moment of silence would come, just before all the Birds, having changed their tapes, would sing forth happy tunes of celebration and dancing. Compelled by the happy tunes to jump and pirouette in the streets of their own special City of Joy the hapless people of the State That Aimed at Forever would be completely diverted, what with the oil from the sky dripping from them, and the sand and other grimy quantities quite covering them and working into their metaled joints and grinding at the join cracks between flesh-strip and “replacement.” For these people, you must know, were not usual in the Land That Aimed at Forever. Eternity for them had been plotted by a science that worked full days and went that “extra mile” in discoveries; through “replacement” they were designed for forever. And who could say that it was not great and who could say that it was not possible? After the last of the last flesh-strip had been taken by new-metal? Their scientists said yes—yes! And time, the last lone counting arbiter, had not as yet convinced them how harshly it must finally deal with such upstart and impossible dreams and such arrogant aspirations.
After five minutes of spirited dancing by all the captive folk, according to the fanciful legislator, the Council would broadcast a short announcement advising the people to again take up their courage, go home, clean off the oil and grime as best they could and resume their normal everlasting lives for the glory of the State. Toward the end of the announcement, in a voice of casual afterthought, high points from the News-of-the-Day would be given. A careful and clever allusion would be made, hinting that in the interests of research—do not fret—things were as they were and should be in the house of Grandpa Zagk.
Some members were inclined to titter at this view of Maximum Diversion as given by one legislator. But no one tittered, I believe, at the gravity of the problem they all faced. However, in the end, after all the debate, and by the narrowest of margins, it was decided not to use the Maximum Diversion Birds. Quiet on their pads they stayed, like giant monuments to waste and fanciful expenditures, in the huge Bird “cages” at Preparedness Field.
Quite another course was taken finally to shield the people from worry about the dread condition that lay at Zagk’s house. The Central Council took measures, such as declaring a government preserve of all the fields and yards immediately adjacent to the house of this wilful and stubborn old man who had upset the plans and calculations of an entire state. On the perimeter of this restricted space, giant sun-scopes and reflectors were installed to make, on vaporless days when the sun was allowed to shine, such a ring of heat and light around the new government preserve that no one dared to look in that direction. At night or on days when the sun was not allowed to shine, the eyes of the curious were barred from prying at Grandpa Zagk’s house by light beams of such candle power that he who looked more than a glance that way was never able to see again, and all the parts of his eyes that were not “replaced” became black and dead. But the basis of the problem was not attacked at all, for the cold real truth is this: even the Central Council, with its giant brains searching steadily through the green liquids in the metal brain pans, was starkly and chillingly stalemated. Nowhere could they find a way to regain for themselves and for their country what Grandpa Zagk had lost for them all.
Stalling for time the Council broadcast bulletins daily to the effect that all was well with Grandpa Zagk. The reflectors and sunscopes, the light and power of the searing beams—all were explained as tribute to a hero, a kind of perpetual adulation. He was pictured as a “first,” the earliest man of history to get the Certificate of Complete Replacement and be destined to live an active corporeal life forever. Then statues, life-size, almost exact replicas of Grandpa, began to spring up all over that plastic land.
It was during this period of statues that hints began to come in the news, subtle suggestions that rounded out the Council’s plans for a final solution, so far as they would ever be capable of a final solution, of the Grandpa Zagk question. In the most oblique of ways and by the most tangential of methods it was hinted that it was not entirely alien to possibility, even probability, that Grandpa Zagk might be leaving on a trip. Any day now. Yes! He might yield to popular galactic demand and go away to other peoples, and for a long time, to show them at first-hand the wondrous reality of himself, the all-replaced new-metal forever-man. If he went, he most surely would go alone in a bright new, most gleamy, wonderful and fast, latest fashion in space boats. Yes!
Then, on a night of compulsory celebration, when the automatic bands were up in all the band-stands, when projectile cases of praise flashed through the sky for the “first,” when all the light and noise and explosion of whoopee raged far and wide, five Council members, wearing the special glasses that only they could own, stepped into the terrible beams and went down the road to Grandpa. By an old speckled building, the Grandpa Zagk house, a new lean space boat lay.
On a sack of blue gander feathers he had kept from his childhood days in Olderun, lying moveless as an iron log, Grandpa Zagk seemed not to regard the EVERLASTING-ACTIVE-LIFE certificate he held in metaled “replaced” hands. And he seemed entirely unabashed that, lying like a corpse, he was violating the spirit of the award somewhat and making a joke of the code of the Land That Aimed at Forever. But around the frozen corners of his mouth there hovered a subtle smirk, almost as if he were aware, almost as if he knew—He did not move or talk when by the secret lid they took him through the floor. He made no sign of protest when they thumbed the small gate back in the dark passage, and he seemed entirely uncaring when they put him on the subterranean car. They rode a long time in the underground passage then, the grim Council members, with Grandpa Zagk like an iron joke among them . . . While high above them the sky ran with light where a new lean space boat leaped through the vapor shield; made stars danced and words of comment branded on the clouds, spelled out in letters of dazzling brilliance twenty-five miles high and half that wide, made the allusions: GRANDPA ZAGK LOVES PEOPLE OF OTHER LANDS. Grandpa Zagk Must Show People of Other Lands His Wonderful New-Metal Body. —GOOD-BYE, GOOD LUCK, WE LOVE YOU, GRANDPA ZAGK . . .
That night, deep underground, in a far-away corner of the State, where the subterranean car reached the farthest limit of its passage in one direction, yet another “statue” was installed for Grandpa.