“Then why did you bring them here to Marachek?”
“I didn’t! They were sucked through the gateway, when I opened it. I aimed for this place myself because the Center is always easiest to reach.”
“Then suggestions are own in order as to our immediate course of action.”
“Let us rest here awhile, and I will keep these two entranced. We might just open us another gateway and leave them.”
“’Twould be against my ethics, brother.”
“Speak not to me of ethics, thou inhuman humanist!-Caterer to whatever life-lie man chooses! Th'art an holy ambulance-chaser!”
“Nevertheless, I cannot leave a man to die.”
“Very well… Hello! Someone has been here before us, to suffocate a toad!”
Madrak turns his eye upon the goblet.
“I’ve heard tales that they might endure the ages in tiny, airless crypts. How long, I wonder, has this one sat thus? If only it lives and could speak! Think of the glories to which it might bear witness.”
“Do not forget, Madrak, that I am the poet, and kindly reserve such conjectures to those better able to say them with a straight face. I-“
Vramin moves to the window, and “Company,” says he. “Now might we leave these fellows in good conscience.”
Upon the battlements, mounted like a statue, Bronze whinnies like a steam whistle and raises three legs and lets them fall. Now he exhales laser beams into the breaking day and his rows of eyes wink on and off.
Something is coming, though still unclear, through the dust and the night.
“Shall we, then?”
“No.”
“I share thy sentiment.”
Sharing, they wait.
SEXCOMP
Now everyone knows that some machines make love, beyond the metaphysical writings of Saint Jakes the Mechanophile, who posits man as the sexual organ of the machine which created him, and whose existence is necessary to fulfill the destiny of mechanism, producing generation after generation of machinekind, all the modes of mechanical evolution flowing through man, until such a time as he has served his purpose, perfection has been reached, and the Great Castration may occur. Saint Jakes is, of course, a heretic. As has been demonstrated on occasions too numerous to cite, the whole machine requires a gender. Now that man and machine undergo frequent interchanges of components and entire systems, it is possible for a complete being to start at any point in the mech-man spectrum and to range the entire gamut. Man, the presumptuous organ, has therefore achieved his apotheosis or union with the Gaskethead through sacrifice and redemption, as it were. Ingenuity had much to do with it, but ingenuity of course is a form of mechanical inspiration. One may no longer speak of the Great Castration, no longer consider separating the machine from its creation. Man is here to stay, as a part of the Big Picture.
Everyone knows that machines make love. Not in the crude sense, of course, of those women and men who, for whatever economic purposes may control, lease their bodies for a year or two at a time to one of the vending companies, to be joined with machines, fed intravenously, exercised isometrically, their consciousness submerged (or left turned on, as it would be), to suffer brain implants which stimulate the proper movements for a period not to exceed fifteen minutes per coin, upon the couches of the larger pleasure clubs (and more and more in vogue in the best homes, as well as the cheap street-corner units) for the sport and amusement of their fellows. No. Machines make love via man, but there have been many transferences of function, and they generally do it spiritually.
Consider, however, an unique phenomenon which has just arisen: the Pleasure-Comp-the computer like an oracle, which can answer an enormous range of inquiries, and will do so, only for so long as the inquirer can keep it properly stimulated. How many of you have entered the programed boudoir, to have enormous issues raised and settled, and found that time passes so rapidly. Precisely. Reverse-centaur-like-i.e., human from the waist down-it represents the best of two worlds and their fusion into one. There is a love story wrapped up in all this background, as a man enters the Question Room to ask the Dearabbey Machine of his beloved and her ways. It is happening everywhere, always, and there can often be nothing quite so tender. More of this later.
Now comes Horus who, seeing Bronze on the wall, deposeth and saith: “Open this damned gate or I’ll kick it down!”
To which Vramin makes reply over the battlement, saying:
“Since I did not fasten it, I am not about to undo it. Find your own entrance or eat dust.”
Horus does then kick down the gate, at which Madrak marvels slightly, and Horus then mounts the winding stair to the highest tower. Entering the room, he eyes the poet and the warrior-priest with some malevolence, inquiring:
“Which of you two denied me passage?”
Both step forward.
“A pair of fools! Know you that I am the god Horus, fresh come from the House of Life!”
“Excuse us for not being duly impressed, god Horus,” says Madrak, “but none gave us entrance here, save ourselves.”
“How be you dead men named?”
“I am Vramin, at your service, more or less.”
“… And I, Madrak.”
“Ah! I’ve some knowledge of you two. Why are you here, and what is that carrion on the table?”
“We are here, sir, because we are not elsewhere,” says Vramin, “and the table contains two men and a toad-all of whom, I should say, are your betters.”
“Trouble can be purchased cheaply, though the refund may be more than you can bear,” says Horus.
“What, may I inquire, brings the scantily clad god of vengeance to this scrofulous vicinity?”-Vramin.
“Why, vengeance, of course. Has either of you vagabonds set eyes upon the Prince Who Was A Thousand recently?”
“This I must deny, in good faith.”
“And I.”
“I come seeking him.”
“Why here?”
“An oracle, deeming it a propitious spot. And while I am not eager to battle heroes-knowing you as such-I feel you owe me an apology for the entrance I received.”
“Fair enough,” says Madrak, “for know that our hackles have been raised by a recent battle and we have spent the past hours waxing wroth. Will a swig of good red wine convey our sentiments-coming from what is, doubtless, the only flask of the stuff on this world?”
“It should suffice, if it be of good quality.”
“Bide then a moment.”
Madrak fetches forth his wine bulb, swigs a mouthful to show it unsullied, casts about the room.
“A fit container, sir,” he says, and raises up the down-turned goblet which lies upon the table. Wiping it with a clean cloth, he fills it and proffers it to the god.
“Thank you, warrior-priest. I accept it in the spirit in which it was offered. What battle was it which so upset you that you forgot your manners?”
“That, Brown-eyed Horus, was the battle of Blis, between the Steel General and the one who is called Wakim the Wanderer.”
“The Steel General? Impossible! He has been dead for centuries. I slew him myself!”
“Many have slain him. None have vanquished him.”
“That pile of junk upon the table? Could that truly be the Prince of Rebels, who one time faced me like a god?”
“Before your memory, Horus, was he mighty,” says Vramin, “and when men have forgotten Horus, still will there be a Steel General. It matters not which side he fights upon. Win or lose, he is the spirit of rebellion, which can never die.”
“I like not this talk,” says Horus. “Surely, if one were to number all his parts and destroy them, one by one, and scatter them across the entire cosmos, then would he cease to exist.”
“This thing has been done. And over the centuries have his followers collected him and assembled the engine again. This man, this Wakim, whose like I have never seen before,” says Vramin, “voiced a similar sentiment before the fugue battle which racked a world. The only thing which keeps them from laying waste-excuse the poor choice of words-to this world Marachek, is that I will not permit them to awaken again from a state of temporal shock.”