THE SKY closed up high that early-morning day, and all seemed usual-fine over steely Moderan. Then there came a cover-break as vapor far aloft grew most pointy and great-dangerous claws that dipped and seethed, swished and swirled, as all subheaven appeared to fight. He (still in his slinger bed) wondered and felt almost young for a little while, seeing this sky excitement enliven his usually-dull weather wall. He had, in all his remembered times, even in Olderan, gone getter in the dark and swirly days, when King Death and Queen Threat seemed about to extend their sways to include cloud cover and all the world under. Yes! there moved strange danger-sign, doom portent and emblems of disaster, in the air that regulated early-morning day, but only for a little while. Then all rolled smooth to the slate-gray vapor shield of old December, and he knew that another full day of Knob Time was ironed in. Central had thumbed right again, the correct knobs had sunken home and things were now switch-functional and normal-toggles-it in the sky over steely Moderan.
And things were switch-functional and normal-toggles with him too. To all outside appearances. But old (and older did they turn). Some catch in the smooth workings, a malfunction of the Joy-trims, was in the heart and mind now, clawing the good times down, negating all his tall ambitions, selling short his many strong longings for power—everything now sunken to ciphers. Floating airborne zeros and great blank rectangles of levitated Nothing rolled, bumped and collided in his mind; and he moved on a vast windless plain where all the flat in the world was end-to-end and side-to-side. A strong and gummy stillness boxed his ears and smacked his face to almost smotheration while he tried to coax his mind and his combative spirit closed him down, clamped upon him and would not let him run. Yes! Did Stronghold #9 have mental dejection and old-iron lassitude? Was he a copout now in the great life-wars for top-up? Was he old? Was He Old? WAS HE OLD?
(Yes! Yes! YES!) But he still dreamed of a Battle. That Meeting-Down-the-Wind seemed planned, and had been for as long as he could think back upon it. Some gigantic contention, with just himself on one side and all the others out there . . . He would dream a white horse charging, two little new-metal children cheering from the arms of a beautiful new-metal lady, and the Enemy, in all the colors that would challenge the integrity of all-white, staging the doom-power up. Maybe . . . maybe . . . today . . . ?
Stronghold #9 rose from his slinger bed (which rising was a slinging out, at the press of a switch, of all the metal-and-flesh-strip load that he now was) and went at once from his in-bed long-thought to walk upon the parapet of his stark fort, which fort was also termed Stronghold #9. (In these ominous and great times, when men were mostly new-metal held together by a few flesh-strips where green fluids coursed in tube-miles, and metal brain pans sloshed for real chemical thinking, the protector-complex—that is, the Stronghold—and the man “replaced” were one and the same designation. Stronghold 9, the man; Stronghold 9, the fort. YES! And, in a way, a man now really was but a little fort that strolled, what with all his new-metal shell protecting toward peril—and peril all everywhere!)
Round and round he slumped now under the slate-gray vapor shield of that December day, and a district seasons-weather automatic seeing him plod gave him a wind thumb, depressed the cold-gales button to let a chill and whistly movement of wintry atmosphere attend his meditations. Sometimes, in their locked-on menialities, the lowly civil servants of a place, through instinct, perceive a thing clearer and more thoroughly than they ever could through brain. Our December attender in weather control for the district that encompassed Stronghold 9 could clearly ascertain, by the downburdened shoulders, the low-bent head and the thirk thirk thirk of the round and round on the parapet, that here walked a man with a Stronghold load of tough thoughts in his brain pans and tremendous hurts across his pain baffles. So why not flip him the wind digit to go with his terrible despair and let him leg old worry-and-woe out in a hurricane gale? Pour it on! If it had been flesh times and Old Days, I strongly do suspect that this little weather civil attender was the type who would have spirited the grieved one’s new maroon scarf from Christmas back to the store in a snow-down, to pay in on Easter eggs (it was that bad!)—just to let the worrier savor better the weather and tough times as he strode the anxious planks.
But The Trip comes on headlong, and The Trip does bloom full-scale, no matter what’s a what or who’s a who. The Trip does get us on the legs we trip; The Trip does take us on the legs we sit. The Trip is a getter and a taker. Yes! THE TRIP! Like old elephants, hide-slack and sick, tremble-lumbering home to ancient pachyderm grave sites; like old dogs in the Old Years succumbing for many a kennel-bed day and then up-ping on a last morning to break out and run run run that final doggy dash, many and many a mile, as if to shake the Dread Thing down the wind—but nothing shakes it. It is the no-shake shaker of us all. YES!
It was written large in the founding contracts of Moderan that no Stronghold master “with his flesh-strips few and played-down and the bulk of him new-metal man now” would ever have to face Last Call and go The Trip. But things are what Things are. Wave a contract at it and say ha! I don’t have to. HA! HO! HEE! . . . . . . REFUSE to be old!! CRAP!!!
Tweettlleeoo! Tweettlleeoo! tweettlleeoo! tweety! tweety! tweet! Well, there it was. The L-Tower people were beaming him. In an under edge of his mind he had suspected that they probably would. Any day now. “GREETINGS, STRONGHOLD 9, MOST OBEDIENT SERVANT, GREAT MASTER IN YOUR OWN RIGHT, MOST VAUNTED WARRIOR OF MODERAN, AND MISSILE HERO OF THE WORLD, YOUR NOW ASSIGNMENT IS—” He switched it off. He didn’t listen to any more. He didn’t need to. He knew what was going on. The same thing had happened, less than a month ago, to old-line Stronghold 6, where young-smartass Stronghold 3,159,813,425.6 (new model!) had just moved in and now ruled large. (With a lot of gimmicky new smartass ideas on how to run a gun-down for a world shoot-out.) Yes, metal-fatigue, tube-mile obstructions and plaque in the brain pans were setting in on the old line. (Cite your contract! File a grievance! Threaten to sue! Make them live-up! Who? Who? WHO?) HO! L-Tower was the governing body of Moderan.
So with shrouds in the sky, the cloud bags like death’s-heads in the wind’s push, and the dark birds of Ending edging their terrible wing-jerk on to flock the air with symbol-tone, Stronghold 9 would go down toward where it was supposed to be for him—take the roll-go to go The Trip. —As had been his wont, always, he had prepared himself the best he could for victory and this day. Knowing full well his hinge joints now, laboring, would not be half so lightning-fast and reflex-sure as once they had been easily, for a whole week he had plied them with the best oil that there was. From the great parts-and-replacement warehouses high on old Redo Row he had brought up new flexers for his lungs—well back—thinking what a bad terrible thing should one or two less-efficient whiffs of the skull-and-crossbones air do him down, be the difference, in some horrid near-equal Last Combat. The age-use aberrations of the eyes he had countered with fine-line adjustments of the best lenses to be had in all wide Moderan. His heart he had checked and valve-tightened; the piston strokes were adjusted combat-rate—one-more-time.
Now for The Enemy! And what would he be like? Old 9 had always wondered about the Last Enemy. Even in the great great times of the world-gun-down winnings for him, when all his world at his new-metal feet bussed ground, and the very cosmos seemed his renown plane, when the flame-ball sun danced for him in very heaven it almost seemed and his picture, flown large and blown flattering, swung for world reverence tall over all the Moderan miles, he had wondered. On a little back edge of his mind, yes, he had! Even when young and at thrust into the most beautiful new-metal maidens for a jug-a-jug jab-a-jab upsa garu garu garu boom-a-boom-A-BOOM-AYYYY . . . uh uh uh ohuu . . . . . . he had known the cold thought. (The iced question was never in all his life entirely out of his mind, let’s admit it.)
Maybe HE would come on a dark horse shaped like a launcher, and he, #9, could counter with Old White. If he’ll show his head, I’ll blast him! thought #9. If he wants to fight me one-on-one, we’ll do it! I and my fort against him where he stands. I’ll give him the Grandpa Wumps, the high-up weird screaming wreck-wrecks, the White-Witch missiles bite and the doll bombs as they run. I’ll slap his guts shreddy with my new cosmos-range seek-and-destroy man-blammers. I’ll dice him down like pickles in the Old Times, with my multi-head slaw sludgies. He’ll wish he’d never—
•
Tweettlleeoo! tweettlleeoo! tweettlleeoo! tweety! tweety! tweet! (L-Tower!) “START ROLL-GO 11:42 1/5 CURRENT; BE SPOT 0 NOON.” (Going in on Spot 0 at high noon! Well, L-Tower could be expected—diabolic, cynical, ambivalent unto the end.)
No one had ever told him how it would be, and there had been nowhere in his life for him to learn much about how it would be. They had never given him seminars on this thing, which thing was, may be, the most important aspect of them all. And the workshops on the Last Enemy were never held. He had to rely on instinct, that intuition still deep-locked in his flesh-strips—“weaknesses” from the ages long and gone. Being a warrior, and naturally battle-ordained as one of Moderan’s most prestigious shooters, he somehow pictured something final and grand done under combat flags and eagles on steel wings. And perhaps, the night just prior to the Great Last Battle, flooding along the sky the distant sounds of faultless music would be pealing, stirring and clear, for a last-farewell cotillion. And the beautiful new-metal maidens wearing their little iron frillies . . .“Oh, wear this next to your pumper, Love, for me!” “I WILL! . . . and I’ll come back . . .”
But alas, it is most true, most of the locked tough battles are done in the somehow numbing chill, in the clenched-hands four-walls agony of the spirit willed to no-tears—no tears for Them to scoff at, no tears for you hidden, either. (No music sends us in, and no music brings us out!) And combat is essentially just a matter of attacking in there, when the artillery goes all still, and pounding Pounding POUNDING until something gives away ground, either their resolve defending or your attacking verve. If you come out walking, or even crawling—still able to move some distance up or back, you will know you have done very well. If they litter you out, cold-out on some stretcher bound for death, you must beg forgiveness of all the proud ghosts of past combat and all the fast eagles of war, for somehow you will know that something quite foul befell. YOU. Instead of THEM (THE OTHERS) being down—kicked, hammered, bludgeoned, sliced, diced, dismembered, chopped, sausaged, clobbered, gut-jellied, clubbed, liquefied, gassified, cremated, rendered-out, annihilated, destroyed, finally-finished-done—it is Y O U, most personal PERSONAL YOU. This is a matter of caring. A way of being a man. In Moderan.
So what was that down there!? Very small ants crawling, black and in multitudes far down on the plastic fields? Stronghold #9 stopped on a little rise for a little while, switched dead the roller-road, unlocked from his post stand, lifted out of his foot wells, edged off the roller sheet and surveyed the distances below. The voice from L-Tower had directed him to entrain to a certain spot; that spot was in his sharp Moderan vision now and calibrated in; that spot was surrounded by the small spots crawling the slow and circular crawl. “Inexorable, that’s the word I think of,” muttered Stronghold #9. (It was a phfluggee-phflaggee mutter.) “No last and final Big Dragon?? Just little— . . . growlies . . . . . . !?”
“YOU WILL GO ALONE. YOU WILL CARRY NOTHING BUT YOURSELF. YOU ARE THE FINAL WEAPON, FINALLY YOU. GOOD LUCK, GOOD HUNTING, AND GOOD DAY, GOOD OLD MASTER 9, huk huk huk,” the L-Tower voice had said. (GOOD DAY??)
•
He unloaded off the roll-go down by that HARD plastic spot there on the plastic plains, just a bundle of tired old iron and old flesh-strip tube miles now, and a brain that sloshed less than clear-thinking in the too-old chemical pans. How pathetic he was! How pathetic they all were away from their guards and their guns, even in the best of times! But this was One of Them old now, old and unhomed, afoot and alone, sent down here to Spot 0, by L-Tower orders. Spot 0! How he had dreaded it! But this at last, and surely, was the final acid test. This clearly was what all the preparation—all the battles, all the lessons, all the loves—had all ever been about, since that very very first day so long and foggy back ago in the dark antiquity of the ignorance and prehistory of flesh-fouled Olderan, when mother’s big birthday effort had unloaded him into the cold.
His first urge here was to panic, turn it all off and self-destruct, which power—if not the right—was surely his. But he ruled that out at once, with an iron will such as few iron wills have ever been before. Now now, not for worlds, not ever—even in a truly hopeless and foregone bad situation of encircling doom and all hell breaking wild—would he, with a cowardly move, negate all the proud battles ever he had won for God, self and L-Tower. Nor would he besmirch even one metal thread of those proud pennons-to-victory that now hung as glory reminders high over his fort and encircled his fort’s Brag Tower day and night like giant airborne fangs pulled from dragons most hell-foul and vanquished. No! not this old 9. At that small, shining moment at Spot 0 it just may be that this old master climbed to more sparkling sunlight, glory and élan than he ever had before even come close to. It probably was truly his very shiniest space.
The L-Tower voice came again into his set, booming and bouncy: “CONGRATULATIONS, STRONGHOLD 9. YOU HAVE UNLOADED OFF DOWN THERE AT DESTINATION SPOT 0 IN VERY NEARLY RECORD MOVEMENT. YOUR EXEMPLARY ACTIONS TODAY HAVE ALREADY, QUITE CLEARLY AND IN ALL TRUTH, ADDED NEW LUSTER TO YOUR ALREADY MEDAL-LOADED FAME. BUT NOW, SO THAT WE MAY ‘GO OFF’ OUR SETS AND ENJOY NOON HOUR, WE NEED YOU TO KNOW YOUR PROJECTED READINGS FOR NOW CAMPAIGN. REPLY PLEASE.”
#9 answered L-Tower: “We’ll start, as has been our wont always on the lower readings, to ‘feel’ the Enemy. As the fighting waxes warm, we’ll take it up to high, Higher and HIGHEST, until, at the zenith of battle—and you can count on this!—we’re sure to be on MAX!” He eavesdropped his set then (perhaps at such a stark time for him he could be forgiven this one small transgression) and he heard two off-frequency voices far in L-Tower, one saying in proudest exultation, “I JUST knew it!” and the other in derision judging, “Damned fool! Doesn’t he know what’s going on down there?”
The official voice from L-Tower said: “THANK YOU, AND GOOD HUNTING. WE’LL BE BACK TO PICK YOU UP LATER.”
•
He stood down ready now from the roll-go track, tall as he could and proud, a battle tank geared for war; and there was something of the high singing in his tube miles again, as it had always been with him combat-bound, either in Old Days or now. (But this only for such a little while—now—oh, briefly.) Then empty pieces of soul attacked him—fiercely, it seemed to him—and mocked him high in his mind’s sky where they stormed. The real clouds, shroud-resembling, moaned and mewed in the slate-gray vapor-shield over him as they slid up and back and across on December; a music was from somewhere far away and cold. Then the doombirds moved up from down sky where they had for so long been circling in a holding pattern for death. The ribbon flocks flashed out to cover him with shadows, and the wing bundles broke on cue, exploded and came on with that peculiar sizzling sound of thin metal surfaces in swift movement dividing air. Old 9 looked up, and he knew. . . a strange strange feeling . . . He moved in on them then—forward—the Great Last Battle—. . . and no weapon now but him, by himself with no breastworks . . . lone . . . alone . . . oh, lonely. . . high noon!
•
At the end of noon hour they resurrected their sets’ power and tried again for old 9. No answer came in their phones across the plastic miles from Spot 0. They flipped to Area Scan and got the distinct sounds of savage growling, and also they heard those peculiar small plippy noises that new-metal makes across plastic-yard-sheet ground when dragged. “They’ve just now got him down! They’re mauling him and they’re dragging him!” said L-Tower FIP Z-U.
“Anyone else, they’d have had him in shreds long ago,” judged L-Tower SPAG O-N Z-U. “Shall we throw the viewers on him?”
“Nah, too expensive,” said FIP Z-U. “Just for a death. He’s a tough old tank, but we know what’s going on down there. The little growlies’ll gulp his edibles after a hot time tearing him to pieces and fighting over his strips. And then they’ll stack his tin for us. —In payment for all that fun fighting and a bite to eat for lunch, huk huk huk.”
“And we’ll send the rubbish cart down for him in the morning, early—if we think about it—and rush his ‘remains’ into Tall Pots at Melt Back.”
“Naturally.”
“With the usual rewards for the toggle scavengers, the switch retrievers and the circuit-breaker vigilantes, of course.”
“Right-as-feedback, naturally and for sure! Those things are sometimes as-is reusable!”
The L-Tower people yawned the boredom yawn for a bit then and after recording how he went—“Went tough”—they quietly, methodically, punched the destruct-and-destroy buttons to “take down” all those proud flags and all those pennons like dragon fangs flying—strung to victory—far away on the bastions and battlements of Stronghold #9. And then, in preparation for the next master, and with no more thought and ceremony than in the Old Days the squashing to death of a flea, they switch-togged his number to zero (0) in Moderan’s decurtate The Automated Book of the Strongholds and Heroes.