WE WENT without scouts out, I and my hinge-joints walking; no reconnaissance cleared us to safety. When it came to aid, we were as lonely as God. Of Old Days. No help! But if we made it, if we pulled it off, we could, in victory, throw our Stronghold into one big green plastic snake factory of defiance; we could sit in the gleaming fine hip-snuggie that was big and built like a throne; we could push our phfluggee-phflaggee button on our talker at them each and every one and laugh and laugh. We could say HA!
So we eased out fast from our Stronghold that vapor-purpled day of the big-effort morning. We caught them napping. We had prepared it with a maximum-weapons fire so severe they were sure we had come up with that new multiple launch we had threatened them with for more than a hundred days. When the hint of a truce went round they snapped the white flags up with such dispatch that I could just see them racing to their lever beds to lie there, take a peace break and be thankful old Stronghold 10 (that’s me!) had deigned to be merciful. I, be merciful? Ha, I just DID NOT have that multiple launch! That’s all. And if they had borne the battle out another day, or even another few hours, I would have paid dearly for having thrown up all that ammo at one time, on a big blow, on a gamble. But if you have the large mailed fists in your arsenal of reputations, the ammo stacked in heaps round about and some good bogus ordnance camouflaged nicely, and are ready to hazard a little with the stern gruff voice of the launchers, they’ll snap the white flags up. They’ll give you the truce for a journey.
I had my truce, so I stood out bold from my Stronghold. I turned me five times around, there under the purple vapor shield of September with the vague sun hinting at autumn. I tapped my steel finger ends together in a little manner of cornball nonchalance and really hammed up my studied indifference to let them know old Stronghold 10 (that’s me!) was a pretty special dog, and don’t tread on that multiple launch. But mostly I just tried to act like a man out to stroll in a rose garden. In Old Days. Because I didn’t want them to suspect I was going for the Big Transformation, all the marbles and the whole game. Let their silly faces build up to have that supreme agony of the Big Surprise; let them out the green-envy paint and paint their foiled gnashing selves green-envy-green after I had accomplished the Big Stolen March. Silly old bogus guys; little old Stronghold masters! MEN!
Sure, we were the great ones of Moderan, the new-metal people, the metal-and-people people, the peotals! We had all been “replaced.” Up to a point. Standing around in a truce time we could all clink our steel eyeballs at one another with the threats on, clench our big mailed fists in unison with the spikes up and pull our flexi-flex new-metal lungs full with arrogance and pride. But what did that prove? Tigering around in a battle time we could all rush to our War Rooms and press the launcher buttons at each other for a big max-shoot of hate. But what could that say? When all was clinked and launched, when all was said and done, we still had that tinge of flesh-strip yet about us, holding our shapes in place and causing us to vary and have rivalries. For example, even after the most disastrous of max-shoots, I was willing to wager all my ten new-metal fingers, with my ten toes and some ears thrown in, that I had new-metal parts and good green factory blood superior to any of theirs. They were prepared, I knew, to wager just as vigorously against me. How human, how fleshly, and how expected. And how unnecessary it would all be after I had consolidated this Big Startling Gain.
Perhaps there were reasons. I wasn’t surprised when the air started filling with recon. The first one came up lazy-wing style, just eased out from a neighboring Stronghold like a housebird airing its feathers in Old Times, stroked about a little on some vagrant breezes passing through and then sat there, high on its tin lifters, waving them ever so slightly to keep airborne, but mostly just riding quietly on the air passing by and watching me like a cat might watch a mouse hole. In Old Barns. I didn’t mind. And then all the Strongholds for miles about started putting up their own tin house-vultures, all by coincidental accident, you know, nonchalant, casual, as though time for some tin buzzard exercise. I thought a little grimly of the comment this was on the flesh-strips. Silly little old Stronghold masters, curious, bad, prying men. Flesh-fouled! Jealous! The tin buzzards were their watch-birds, don’t you see? For all their planned we’re-not-looking the tin ones hung high and watchful on my trail all the long way, to report my progress. I, to move on Big Dream with a cover of spy birds watching? What a dreadful comment on the world!
About halfway out, at the point of fully committed, at the place of no-turning-back, questions rose in my throat and a metal fog whirled in my brain. I was cut with doubts like fire throwers. Had I brought enough introven for this journey? Would the hinge-joints hold? How about tears? Yes, how about tears? Would I encounter the big frustrations and need tears, many tears, a multitude of tears more than I had provided for in the little plastic bag clutched down from a new-metal hand? What if the stay-at-home Stronghold masters, seeing their chance, and craven as I know, should pick this time to sweep the countryside with a maximum weapons fire? Of course my head weapons man, left in charge of Stronghold-10-at-home, would answer them back rocket for rocket. But where would I be then? Picked clean and utterly gone, blasted. Oh, there were things to give one pause out on that stark homeless plastic, with the tin buzzards riding as hostile escort and the mutants about one’s feet.
But when you go for the Big One, the Cool Victory, the Whole Show, you must not count the reasons for not going. The one overriding and incontrovertible reason for going must slash at you like a peeled sun. Let the fears stay in the vapor shield where the dark is. Those jealous teeth of all your enemies do not gnash easily; you’ll have to go like a star; you’ll have to hold them with some benumbing cool and fixed reason why you should be aloft there shining higher than they. You’ll have to believe it yourself, believe it so much that all your not believing it will be hammered down to a flat nothing place, or better, a smoothed walking-road for you to stride on. You’ll have to believe it so much that you could be roused out of any despair, or questioned awake from deepest darkest sleep, and you would still somehow reach down for something, some little last ounce of resolve, and say, “Yes, I’m best, much better than they. I must stir about to arrange it. I, a king deserving the homage of them all!”
In a little valley I saw his little building. After the long time on the plastic, the hard walking and the miles under the hostile cover of spy birds, it seemed I had made it, with my tears still unused in the plastic tear bag and with enough introven left in my portable flesh-strip feeder to see me through another day and a night, if need be. But there should not be that need.
Slowly, deliberately—as a man should moving down on his final dream—I strode across the few yards of plastic that separated me from the white building; it was shaped somewhat like half a ball, I thought, except the arc it sat on was much flattened, dug in the ground quite a bit and surrounded by steel curls, as from lathes, and scrap pieces of statues. The tall metal man at the forge I could glimpse through an open door had a big arm flexing, going hard, working a tiny bellows, and I wondered at the smoke coming out of an old-fashioned tin smoke flue. Could it be the wrong place after all? Was the Dream to elude me once again? But no! There on the floor, playing like a small dog, was the little flesh mutant man who had first told me of this good chance.
It had been a truce time and I, in a hip-snuggie chair, lounging just outside the eleventh, outermost Wall of my Stronghold, had been waiting for a war to flare up, to break the monotony, when he had scampered across from a tenth rise on my left to tell me of the Big Deal. I was surprised and unbelieving at first, and then I was believing and trustful. His clear blue eyes had sparkled with such a clean bright light; his laughter had seemed so bubbly and fine. “You’ll be a king!” he had said. “Come at the next truce time. I’ll tell no other. And do not ask me why.” I hadn’t asked him why. If a small mutant man I hadn’t even seen before recognized a king from the full-blown distance of a tenth rise on my left, and that king was I, I’d never press him for reasons. Oh, he had seemed so true-saying in his blue-eyed innocence; his laughter was so tinkly and sweet. I loved this guy, loved his discernment. And it made such sense to me, this picking me for the very ascendant thing.
But hey now! and here now! This, except for the tall metal smith, the small mutant man and the cleanness of the walls, seemed more like a cross between a common smithy of Old Times and a place where they sculptured statues. It didn’t, somehow, seem like a place where a man of Moderan would receive the Final Miracle; it didn’t, somehow, seem like the spot where a man of Moderan would become the One Only, having outstripped all his fellows toward a goal.
Wondering, I moved through the open door. I drew myself up, worked my hinges and braces to stand me to tallest tall. I cleared my throat, hawked up a little flick of new-metal windpipe and said, speaking, I hoped, as a king should speak, “I am come! —It’s about those flesh-strips.”
He leaped to his feet, scampered over to shake my new-metal hand and said, “Your crown is ready, the ‘replacement’ strips are forged and all you have left to do is pick your style in pedestals.” His clear and guileless eyes splashed sparkles of that strange laughing innocence that had so reassured me before.
Yes, I may as well tell you, the trip back home was hell. The tin buzzards went a little past the white building, did their one-eighties and were ready to hang on my trail all the long road back. About halfway up on the tedious and galling hard way home I stopped and fed myself introven. And over by some tin flowers—all knelt down as though admiring the tin petals, to fool the enemy watch-birds—I used all the tears I had brought. Then I went on home, tail-up and like an armed king moving—slow, slow as we go working our hinges and braces, but with glares out and stares all about and holding them with my dare. And already in my mind I was making plans again to open on all the enemy Strongholds a massive Max Fire in the old ways of the contests for supremacy. Never must they know how I was taken in by the little blue-eyed mutant, how my plans to steal a march on them all and be the One Only man had ended in such a keen disappointment. In Moderan.
All that the tin buzzards had seen was a new-metal-and-flesh-strip peotal man going into the white building working his hinges and braces, and a new-metal-and-flesh-strip peotal man coming out the same way. They could not have known of the bitterness, the harshness, the total rage, the complete anger with which I had denounced the little mutant man as I flung the crown to the floor. Or how as a final act of contempt I had gone into his back room and, moving agilely as I could among all his “princes,” had kicked each and every one of his iron pedestals five times each with both of my new-metal feet. When I went past him on my way out, working my hinges and braces furiously as I could, and ready to strangle him, except he was beneath my notice to that extent, I hissed, “What in the world led you to imagine I’d take plain iron bands for my flesh-strips? And what could have caused you in the first place to believe I’d want to stand on a pedestal? And what, WHAT!” I screamed, with the high blasters turned on in my voice box, and a rising windage going, “could it possibly net me in distinction to become the ONE ONLY man, all ‘replaced’ and tall and hard in Moderan, if I have to be dead!? Dead!! DEAD! as a statue?”