Creatures of Light and Darkness

THE COMING OF THE STEEL GENERAL

Upward stares Wakim, seeing the Steel General.

“Faintly do I feel that I should have knowledge of him,” says Wakim.

“Come now!” says Vramin, his eyes and cane flashing fires green. “All know of the General, who ranges alone. Out of the pages of history come the thundering hoofbeats of his war horse Bronze. He flew with the Lafayette Escadrille. He fought in the delaying action at Jarama Valley. He helped to hold Stalingrad in the dead of winter. With a handful of friends, he tried to invade Cuba. On every battleground, he has left a portion of himself. He camped out in Washington when times were bad, until a greater General asked him to go away. He was beaten in Little Rock, had acid thrown in his face in Berkeley. He was put on the Attorney General’s list, because he had once been a member of the I.W.W. All the causes for which he has fought are now dead, but a part of him died also as each was born and carried to its fruition. He survived, somehow, his century, with artificial limbs and artificial heart and veins, with false teeth and a glass eye, with a plate in his skull and bones out of plastic, with pieces of wire and porcelain inside him-until finally science came to make these things better than those with which man is normally endowed. He was again replaced, piece by piece, until, in the following century, he was far superior to any man of flesh and blood. And so again he fought the rebel battle, being smashed over and over again in the wars the colonies fought against the mother planet, and in the wars the individual worlds fought against the Federation. He is always on some Attorney General's list and he plays his banjo and he does not care, for he has placed himself beyond the law by always obeying its spirit rather than its letter. He has had his metal replaced with flesh on many occasions and been a full man once more- but always he hearkens to some distant bugle and plays his banjo and follows-and then he loses his humanity again. He shot craps with Leon Trotsky, who taught him that writers are underpaid; he shared a boxcar with Woody Guthrie, who taught him his music and that singers are underpaid; he supported Fidel Castro for a time, and learned that lawyers are underpaid. He is almost invariably beaten and used and taken advantage of, and he does not care, for his ideals mean more to him than his flesh. Now, of course, the Prince Who Was A Thousand is an unpopular cause. I take it, from what you say, that those who would oppose the House of Life and the House of the Dead will be deemed supporters of the Prince, who has solicited no support-not that that matters. And I daresay you oppose the Prince, Wakim. I should also venture a guess that the General will support him, inasmuch as the Prince is a minority group all by himself. The General may be beaten, but he can never be destroyed, Wakim. Here he is now. Ask him yourself, if you'd like.”

The Steel General, who has dismounted, stands now before Wakim and Vramin like an iron statue at ten o’clock on a summer evening with no moon.

“I have seen your beacon, Angel of the Seventh Station.”

“Alas, but the title perished with the Station, sir.”

“I still recognize the rights of the government in exile,” says the General, and his voice is a thing of such beauty that one could listen to it for years.

“Thank you. But I fear that you have come too late. This one-this Wakim-who is a master of temporal fugue, would, I feel, destroy the Prince and thus remove any basis for our return. Is that not so, Wakim?”

“Of course.”

“… Unless we might find a champion,” says Vramin.

“You need look no further,” says the General. “It is best you yield to me now, Wakim. I say this with no malice.”

“And I reply with no malice: Go to hell. If every bit of you were to be destroyed, then I feel there would no longer be a Steel General-and there would never be again. I think a rebel such as yourself deserves annihilation, and I am here.”

“Many have thought so, and I am still waiting.”

“Then wait no longer,” says Wakim, and he moves forward. “The time is here, and begging to be filled.”

Then Vramin encircles Madrak and himself with green fires, and they look upon the facing of the masters.

At this moment Bronze rears, and six diamonds flash among the colors of Blis.