David R. Bunch - Moderan.pdf - David R. Bunch - margozap

The Strongholds

Moderan is a world where computer-directed wars are the pastime, the purpose in being, the religion,

and the sport. When human feelings enter such a world, confusion and consternation are the result...

David R. Bunch's "Moderan" stories comprise one of the most distinctive and celebrated bodies of work

in all of science fiction.

David R. Bunch

MODERAN

AVON

PUBLISHERS OF

DISCUS - CAMELOT - BARD

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publications where much of the material in this book

first appeared in different form:

Ultimate Publishing Company, Inc.

AVONBOOKS

A division of The Hearst Corporation

959 Eighth Avenue

New York,New York10019

Published by arrangement with Virginia Kidd, Literary Agent.

whatsoever. For information address Virginia Kidd, Literary Agent,Box 278,Milford ,Pa.18337

FirstAvon Printing, May, 1971

AVON TRADEMARK REG.U.S. PAT. OFF. AND

FOREIGN COUNTRIES, REGISTERED TRADEMARK -

MARCA REGISTRADA, HECHO ENCHICAGO,U.S.A.

Printed in theU.S.A.

Introduction 7

PART I: THE BEGINNINGS

Thinking Back (Our God Is a Helpful God!) 21

No Cracks or Sagging 25

The Butterflies Were Eagle-Big that Day 35

New Kings Are Not for Laughing 41

One Time, a Red Carpet... 47

Battle Won 52

Head Thumping the Troops 56

New-Metal Mistress Time 59

And So White Witch Valley 62

The Bird Man of Moderan 65

Bubble-Dome Homes 71

One False Step 75

Survival Packages 80

New-Metal 85

Of Hammers and Men 87

The Stronghold 91

2064, or Thereabouts 92

Penance Day in Moderan 98

Strange Shape in the Stronghold 102

Getting Regular 108

The Walking, Talking I-Don't-Care Man 115

PART II: EVERYDAY LIFE IN MODERAN

To Face Eternity 123

In the Innermost Room of Authority 124

The Problem 127

Playmate 130

A Husband's Share 133

The Complete Father 137

Was She Horrid? 142

A Glance at the Past 147

Educational 151

It Was in Black Cat Weather 155

Sometimes I Get So Happy 159

Remembering 162

A Little Girl's Xmas in Moderan 166

The Flesh-Man from Far Wide 172

PART III: INTIMATIONS OF THE END

The One from Camelot Moderan 179

Reunion 184

The Warning 189

Has Anyone Seen this Horseman? 194

Interruption in Carnage 198

The Miracle of the Flowers 206

Incident in Moderan 215

The Final Decision 220

Will-Hung and Waiting 228

How They Took Care of Soul in a Last Day for a Non-Beginning 229

How It Ended 233

INTRODUCTION

Quaint they were, these records, strange and ancient, washed to shore when the Moderan seas finally

unthawed. Played in the old-fashioned machine way we, the beam people, the Essenceland Dream

people, easily divined, they told of a very different world, a transition world, if you will, between what we

are now and the death and defeat these people hoped to overcome. New metal man! It does have a ring.

MODERAN! It did seem pretty great in concept, I'm sure, and, who knows, perhaps it had a reasonable

chance for success. But all societies, all civilizations, all aspirations it seems must fail the unremitting tugs

of shroudy time, finally, leaving only little bones, fossils, a shoe turned to stone maybe, a bone button in

the sea perhaps, a jeweled memento of an old old love. In this case, tapes were left, wherein a great

"King" had set down his story of hopes, fears, wars - yes, WARS! Perhaps this "King" was a writer of

some skill, a kind of doomed King James. His prose does have a flair, although sometimes it turns

tedious, I'm afraid; sometimes he belabors the obvious and becomes vague when he needs to elucidate;

sometimes he's fat when he should be lean, lean when fat would be better. Or at least it seems to me

these things are true. But then, I am the true machine efficiency, here as essence man, my perfections

against his human flaws - quite unfair!

Yes, we are the essence people, a long way up the world from the world that these tapes told of. We

truly have gained the immortality that these knaves could only dream of. CRUDE! Oh, yes, crude they

were, and yet they had a certain verve and élan, surely, as evinced by these things a "King" set down, a

kind of clown "King" certainly, but oh, so serious all the same. He was self-centered - who could doubt

it? He was running scared most of the time, scared of himself, scared of time, scared of his Enemies, all

other men; scared of the White Witch - scared scared. And yet there is, we have to say, the matter of the

very human redeeming grace in this shell of a man who could, so terribly encumbered, screw

braggadocio to the sticking point and go windily through the world, crowing, "I am greatest I Am

Greatest I AM GREATEST - and I'll prove it!" And "hearing" these tapes and setting these stories down

for you, I have become more than doubly convinced that this man, this "King," if you please, this

Stronghold #10, had somehow a concept of his own worth that at least equaled his arsenal of fears and

overcame them. And that would have to be quite a concept of worth, and quite an overcoming, for his

fears were truly great.

I have not given you all of the tapes, because, as most people before us have done, he tended to repeat

himself in hammering home his fears, his aspirations, his accomplishments, his failures. To be truthful with

you about what I have done, I have picked out the tapes that, while telling his "tale complete" made the

greatest impression on me. That's pretty human, isn't it?

And, have no doubt, I am human. I'll tell you briefly a little more about who I am, and then we'll get on

with the business of MODERAN. I am, as I said, essence-man, as almost all of us are now, with the

exception of those in a little landlocked and sea-starved country that - YES! still calls itself Olderrun. I

am from the big machines. I do not have to die. I and my kind are truly, if you will, the heirs of the

MODERAN dream, as set forth in these stories I am going to give you from the tapes (give them to you

essentially unaltered, although; certainly, I could improve upon them, for I am from the Machines! I am

efficient). To be brief, it was discovered for us, nay! not discovered, evolved, a way to save man from

the grave soil and the Eternal Dark. A real way to save him, not an abracadabra way of dreams or

religion or any other myth-fakery - nay, not even the way of MODERAN, which almost won the game.

This way we have is real and complete so long as those big machines keep rolling in the North to succor

our beams. And of course they WILL! We have machines watching and keeping up machines. We have

an entire hierarchy of spies and counterspies of the machines and the most complete machine-machine

repair service ever dreamed up by either mortal or immortal man. They'd endure. I KNOW THEY

WILL! (They just have to.)

When she and I, my dear love dream of the moment (we were paired by punched beams!) went on this

beam excursion, transported by those big transmitters in the North, who would have thought we would

come up with one of the rare literary finds of our, or any, generation? It was to have been just one of

those routine love trips of the essence people, you know, just riding out to a dream love-place picked by

the Love Dictator of Essenceland and having an essence time to break the monotony, a little petting of

the sex beams, could be, a lot of beamish talk, surely surely, and, in short, a love picnic in the beamish

essence times. And then I looked down at my beamish feet, and there it wasl washed up from the

thawed, once machine-frozen, Moderan sea, the tapes of this book. I whooped; I spilled my love and

her beams into the sea water as I dropped her fast for this unique thing. Good sport that she was and is,

she dried her beams and agreed with me that this possibly was more important than love. We gave the

signal to be beamed home again, the Love Dictator gave his consent and we stayed up all the beamish

night at her place; playing with this book, figuring out the tapes, marveling at the literary finesses of it. And

from such a crude age too! Well, one never knows, does one?

An early tape, "No Cracks or Sagging," is a rather long, leisurely thing, but it does cover a lot of ground!

It's a waggish tale, I fell in love with it - (those jammy-rams and their solemn mission so ridiculously

executed!) - and I believe it is a key and dominant chapter to set the stage for your initial good concept

and growing understanding of the Mighty Dream these Moderan people worked at. To coat the whole

solid earth with plastic - imagine! To freeze the very oceans solid - whew! To tamp, anywhere and

everywhere, all the soft places... And my beamish hat off to them, they did it! They truly, in their world,

one of the great great worlds in the long long history of man, had, for a time, "No Cracks or Sagging."

After "No Cracks or Sagging" came several tapes dealing with the "replacement" operations that set this

man "firmly on the road to the Moderan Dream." But this man was generally so hung up on his own

suffering and apprehensions through this period of his life that these stories came out to be generally in

very poor taste, indeed. There wasn't a fingernail pulled out or a bone sawed in two or a new-metal part

put in that this man didn't feel strongly about. Yet, he was no coward. Ah no, not this man who was

ultimately to become the great Stronghold #10, "one of the greatest Captains in all wide Moderan." I

believe he was set in the teeth with as much bravery and determination as any man who has ever lived.

After that dreary nine months in the hospital, during which time our man was repeatedly sawed, hacked

and "replaced," which he more or less summarizes in the gruesome tape "The Butterflies Were Eagle-Big

That Day" (in the name of all squeamishness, I've heavily cut and censored that one), we see him up and

out in the generally more hopeful one, "New Kings Are Not for Laughing" and claiming his fort in "One

Time a Red Carpet..." In these, understand, he has already become a man of Moderan, "the bulk of him

new-metal man now, his flesh-strips few and played-down, his organs ever-last engines, his brains

ingenious green fluids sloshing in pans."

Not long had he been out of the nine-months nightmare of the operations and fully ensconced in his fort

than, like true lust-man that he was, he set out to get it. What I mean is, with the wife-nuisance problem

due to be settled for him, as well as for all the Stronghold masters of Moderan, he went for his new-metal

doll, his "tin can mistress," if you will, his "Faithful Fun." It was his due, it was not as unseemly as it may

somehow seem, and he was not really a bad man and a dirt-head all-the-time, not by the standards of his

age. And we see, in the tapes, implications that he had suffered some reverses on the "field of love," long

before he became a new-metal man. So I for one am rather glad, I feel good in my beams, I mean, that

he could so love a tin can doll (a new-metal mistress, you know) that he could give all his Big-Joy-Time

to it if he so chose and never tire of it. And then, if he did tire, he did not have to explain. The OFF

switch would just place the night down in that sweet cog-wheeled brain of his sweet metal doll, and he

could be about more manly things then, such as blasting a neighbor's Wall down, say, or smearing a

whole continent away. CONVENIENT!

So "New-Metal Mistress Time" to you!

But lest you gain the false notion of universal new-metal mistress bliss and no sex-worry in Moderan, it

was, I must in fairness hasten to amend, not always quite that way. Our man it seems, being human, was

a walking welcome mat for many problems. However much he might try not to, wherever he went,

whatever much percentage of steel he might attain to (except 100%, I suppose, which sublime state he

never quite reached), he would, sooner or late, feel that cold hand clutch the shoulder and hear that hard

voice command, "Come with me, man, I have some human-type adversities for YOU to battle." So it

was with a new-metal mistress he became more than just a little unwisely fond of. Yes, in "Remembering"

we see him in the love-anguish wringer just as much as any all-flesh man might be. His new-metal

mistress of the current moment has run away. With a tin man? With another Stronghold master? With a

rival? With a stranger? Whom? whom? What? what? How? how? and why? why? It's a wry little thing,

really. I mean, truly it's something to think that a mighty Stronghold master could become so enamored of

a tin can woman that, upon betrayal, he'd spend long dormant months just thinking up punishments for

her. The more I think about this little sketch and certain other stated and implied attitudes that keep

cropping up in the other tapes, some of which I have set forth for you, some of which I have kept back

for one reason and another (considerations of personal likes and dislikes, mostly, because I'm so human

yet), the more I'm SURE that this man HAD suffered former great reverses on the "field of love." His

Armies of Amour had, I believe, been betrayed, tricked, surrounded for ignoble capture, sent flying in

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