IT WAS high on old Re-Do Row, that big Moderan warehousing
fix-strip, where this little cringe-guy walked by with his heart
in a metal carry-sack, a regular Moderan tote-poke:
and a lead from a hole in his chest trailed down
to connect to his heart in the bag—oh! STRANGE—weird thing!
(But this was Moderan, hey! where ALL people are metal-and-
people [peoples?] [metals?] [peotals?] who take pride in their ever-last
parts; where men are mostly new-processes steel now and everyone
thinks like a fort—tough, warheads firing, just-try-me! NOW! I’m rough!)
Yet—somewhere—and surely—this one had passed through a fire,
of sorts, that had quite cooked away all jollity, all mirth, all “life,”
from a face where the smile gadgets now just did not work.
However, and nevertheless, a grim kind of try and a “gameness forever”
was set in that face and you knew, YES, KNEW! that this man’s moves
would never, in all his days, be for give-up-and-quitting. “MISTER WAREHOUSEMAN!”
I peered down Evaluator peep-grooves out through new-steel’s best Moderan walls;
I thumbed all scans up to HIGH-SCAN-ON-SCAN, using SCAN-RAY-SCAN (the best);
I set the metal stocktakers to doing it!
You can believe that I looked this One quite QUITE over!
(A man with his heart in a bag?! a metal Moderan carry-poke!?)
But he was clean-on-CLEAN; no weapons bristled;
no sneaky-devices showed hidden, either (not that I could
tell). So I let him in: just hauled the big orange-half doors back
into their wall-wells. “Yes?” I glowered, cold phfluggee-phflaggee
voice talking. Now, just for an instant, he trembled and I knew,
yes, realized how he must be feeling just then, here at last
(after HOW many HARD years of travel?) stark-finally
before the HIGH WAREHOUSEMAN of all wide Moderan—big-ONE, COLD-dude,
BIGGEST-brother!—in charge of ALL parts checkouts, and especially metal spare hearts—ME.
(You see, I haven’t always been Moderan steel, either. I feel. I understand. And I
CARE for others.) (A little.) “MISTER—mister WAREHOUSE-MAN!” The trembling
was over, and a man, mission-seized, stood before me. Cold-on
the eyes struck-in; the metal hands doubled and beat rage down
hard on a place where a heart sat deep in a sack, with a lead
going straight into a hole in a chest—weird, oh, WEIRD—WEEEOOo!
“MISTER WAREHOUSEMAN! our country has no heart!
I HAVE NO HEART—YOU HAVE NO HEART,
and YOU, the keeper of hearts—YOU!—
ARE a warehouseman!” He cast that last
just sort of out there to dingle-a-dangle—hard, hard line,
shrieked loose in the jet scream. (Yes, in my job,
the NUT always stops here.) “Well, now,”
I said, carefully selecting my speech nog-toggers
through tibs on my talk phfluggee-phflaggee,
“let us sort-it, NOW, look through!” And I half-twitched
a metal indicatory shoulder nodward toward
wide-and-deep “pump bins” where a whole big new
load of fresh metal hearts reposed and glowed,
just day before yesterday delivered from that zone
where they made them: Hearts ’n’ Parts. “What,”
I asked, again carefully selecting the speech nog-toggers,
“kind of a heart might you be seeking—and needing—TODAY—hey, mister?”
“A heart! a heart!! a Heart!!! A HEART!!!!”
(Oh, he was SCREAMING)
“REAL!! heart. And NOT a can. I HAVE a can! MISTER
WAREHOUSEMAN.” I saw how it could go nasty.
I rang for the guard devices and they very
effectively came on their steel tracks from those places
where they nestled as bulges in walls until such times
as I might need them to help with NUTS
out of hand. Quickly they ringed me, steel man after steel man.
Safer I felt then; so I said, hard, my sternest talk-toggers
strong-on for loud-sounds: “HELL’S BELLS, MAN, THIS IS MODERAN!
GET WITH IT, MAN! SELECT A HEART, OR SCRAM. CHOOSE ONE,
OR HIT THE ROLL-GOS, BUM!” (WELL—I couldn’t
fool around. He was unnecessarily taking up
my time. He was BOTHERING me.) I had parts to
sort and things to catalogue. There well might be
a new shipment of metal windpipes today, or maybe
a latest prosthesis for the metal brain drains on head pans,
due any day now. Or a new breakthrough in fingers.
Or lungs. A warehouseman’s job is not an easy one. Try it
sometime! And I was the Chief. Along with all the other
parts, I! was the only One who had the newest hearts,
zinged in by whisk-lift—every week!—and all sizes ready, right there in my “pump bins.”
He took my hint. He left. Just picked up his
pump in its tote-poke from its place on my out-flow
check-one-and-GO counter and cringed through the “leave” space.
“OUT!”—“YOU were NO help,” I thought I heard him smoulder, or something
like that, far back over a leaving shoulder. Oh, well, some people
apparently just don’t want help, I thought. I was HERE. I have
the BEST hearts anyWHERE in the whole game; he could have had
whatever his work-order called for. Some people (peotals) are just
hard to make sense of. NO? —I got busy. And yes, the new fingers
came, and parts for heads that day and fresh new-metal lungs—
Oh, it was day BIG at the warehouse. No time for BUMS.
—Nevertheless and how-come-ever?! SOMETHING deep down in the few flesh-strips I still own
writhed loose and troubled, CAUSED concern (I have to admit it); late-on-late
that night when things grew chill-still quiet and I lay in my slinger
bed far back in Sleep-Wing of Parts Warehouse, trying to turn-off—
pitch-black except for the blink-dims constantly monitoring and counting
the stock bins, and a call coming over and over; and I wondering where oh, where
he was: all night long out there somewhere, cold on the homeless plastic,
lunch-sacking his pump and still pleading, “A heart! a heart!! a Heart!!! A HEART!!!!”? A heart?!