Norman Spinrad - The Iron Dream

Feric pondered his place in the common human destiny as his long, powerful strides carried him closer to the dozen or so figures on the walkway ahead of him. As a young man in Borgravia, he had easily mastered several areas of endeavor: the art of motive mechanics, the science of sloganeering, the crafts of interior and exterior design, clothing design, and pamphleteering. He had secured a livelihood from each of these sources at one time or another. Moreover, his pride in his true humanity, and the encouragement of his father, had caused him to study deeply the subjects of history, genetics, and military art for their own sakes. It seemed to Feric that a man of his varied skills would never lack for gainful employment.

His deepest desire, however, was not to enrich himself but to serve the cause of true humanity to the best of his ability. To this end, two choices seemed open to him in this new life in Heldon: embark upon a military career or enter politics. The choice was a difficult one. On the one hand, a military career promised the quickest road to concrete patriotic action, but only provided that the political leadership of the High Republic developed the will to properly employ its armed forces. On the other hand, politics was an avenue by which he might gain access to the very circles in which such decisions were made, but only by a tedious and deadening process of accommodation, wrangling, and weaseling, which struck Feric as essentially unmanly.

He resolved that he would not make such a momentous decision until destiny gave him a clear sign, one way or the other.

While he pondered these weighty affairs, the natural reflexes of his superb body and his consequent rapid gait bad carried him to within a few strides of his fellow immigrants on the bridge, and when he chanced to look up at them, his jaw fell open in amazement and dismay.

For there on the Ulm bridge, shuffling toward the bastion of genetic purity, was an incredible gaggle of the most blatant and disgusting mutants and mongrels imaginable! Here was a Parrotface whose mutated teeth formed an unmistakable beak. Here was a female Blueskin, and three humpbacked dwarfs, one with the Toadman warted skin as well. And a manlike being whose gait clearly revealed two extra joints in his legs, alongside an Egghead with a grossly warped elipsoid skull. This was a sight common enough to the streets of Gormond, but on the bridge to Heldon, in a sense Helder territory itself, it was an inexplicable phantasm of horror.

Furiously, Feric broke into a near run, and caught up with the gristly menagerie in a few quick strides. “Halt!” he shouted. “What is the meaning of this?”

The collection of mutants came to a shambling halt and regarded Feric with a mixture of fear, befuddlement, and awe, which nevertheless seemed to him to have a hint of surliness.

“Your pleasure, Troeman?” the Parrotface croaked hoarsely in a vile voice which, however, seemed basically free of guile or malice.

“What are you folk doing on the bridge to Heldon?”

The quasi-men stared at him in what seemed to be genuine incomprehension. “We are traveling to the town of Ulmgam, Trueman,” the female Blueskin finally ventured.

Were these creatures totally incapable of comprehending the impossibility of the situation? “How were you allowed on this bridge?” Feric demanded. “Surely creatures such as yourselves will not presume to tell me that you are Helder citizens!”

“We travel on the customary day passes, Trueman,” the Parrotface said.

“Day passes?” Feric muttered. Lord, were they actually issuing passes of entry to mutants? What treason to true humanity was this? “Let me see one of these passes,” he commanded.

The Egghead reached into a greasy oilskin pouch which hung on a ragged thong about its neck and handed over a small red card. The card was made of cheap paperboard rather than plastic; nevertheless, it bore the Great Seal of Heldon and an engraved border of tiny locked swastikas, the traditional motif of the Ministry of Genetic Purity. In simple block lettering of a rather inelegant design, the card proclaimed: “Day pass good for ten hours sojourn in Ulmgarn only on the date of May 14, 1142 A.F. Transgression of these terms punishable by death.”

Thoroughly disgusted, Feric handed the card back. “Is this common practice?” he asked. “Are non-citizens commonly admitted across the river for limited stays?”

“Provided there is a job to be done that true men, such as yourself, deem beneath their proper station,” one of the dwarfs said.

So that was it! Feric had heard that Universalism was gaining popularity among the masses of Heldon, but he had scarcely imagined that the insidious doctrine promulgated by the Doms had sufficient influence to actually weaken the stringency of the genetic purity laws. The Universalists demanded the breeding of mindless slave creatures to perform menial tasks, the sort of perversion of protoplasm that the Dominators practiced in Zind.

They were not yet powerful enough to achieve this unspeakable end, but apparently they had stirred up the slothful masses to the point where the craven government was actually permitting mutants to work in Heldon as a sop to this tendency.

“Revolting!” Feric muttered, and with a dozen long strides, he put the wretched quasi-humans behind him.

What he had seen thus far had deeply disturbed him. He had not yet entered Heldon proper, and already he had observed a customs fortress under the sway of a Dominator and a shocking relaxation of the genetic purity laws that could only be traced to the influence of Universalists.

Was the High Republic rotten to the core or merely contaminated around the edges? At any rate, his duty as a true man was clear: to exert his powers to the utmost to restore the rigor of the genetic purity laws, to work for their stringent, indeed fanatic enforcement, and to make full use of whatever opportunity destiny granted him to further this sacred cause.

With new determination and a growing sense of mission, Feric quickened his pace and fairly loped along the walkway toward the town of Ulmgarn and the great reaches of Heldon stretching majestically beyond.

The Ulm bridge debouched directly onto the main street of the town of Ulmgarn: an enameled sign atop a slim cast-iron pillar informed Feric that this substantial boulevard was known as Bridge Way. Before him was a spectacle that warmed his soul, burning away both the off-river breeze and the deeper chill of his encounters in the customs fortress and on the bridge. For the first time in his life, he beheld a town built by true men on uncontaminated soil and inhabitated by healthy specimens of the pure human genotype; what a difference from the sordid squalor and decay of Gormond!

In Gormond, the streets and walkways were naught but rude rocks pounded into the earth with hammers, on which one might expect to find the foulest of ordure and muck. The streets of Ulmgarn were paved with smooth, perfectly maintained concrete, and the walkways, too, were of concrete artfully decorated with inlaid glazed bricks in yellow, gold, and green, and both were spotless.

In Gormond, the ordinary buildings were of sheet metal and timber, and the larger ones of unadorned poured concrete. Here the ordinary buildings were of glazed brick in a multitude of colorful hues, set off with lushly modeled wooden facings; the more majestic edifices were of rich, dark, polished stone, embellished with ornate brasswork facades and heroic statuary. Swarming on the streets of Gormond was a mongrel horde of Blueskins, dwarfs, Eggheads, Parrotfaces, Toadmen, countless other varieties of pure mutants and mongrelized crosses, and human-mutant hybrids; a random collection of bits and pieces of dozens of different species cobbled together piecemeal and dressed for the most part in reeking rags. In grand contrast, the streets of Ulmgarn were graced by fine specimens of true humanity wherever the eye might fall: tall fair men with blond or brown hair, blue or green eyes, and all their parts of the proper order and in the right places, handsome women of the same coloring and configuration, and all dressed in a rich variety of garments of leather, nylon, linen, and silk, furs and velvets, adorned with silver and gold jewelry and many-colored embroidery.