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Now I shall tell you all a tale, of the conditions outside Péng-shĭ Angle at that time.
The face of the lunar sphere is not more distant-remote from us. Oh, you are simply unable to imagine, truly unable to imagine. I don't know if I'm able to tell the matter clearly to you all, but it's all set down in a textbook; if you're willing, you can read it . . . a textbook written by an important person, a military leader wrote it, who afterwards became a general (but that was much after this matter, and in a different army) and he was named T. Huá-lái-Shì58 Kāng-Méi-Ēn.59
That textbook? Well, that textbook was entitled «The Finish of the Start.›› It is the first scroll in a twelve-scroll set of memoirs. Those memoirs are entitled: «Follow Tai-Yi: The Seizure-by-Force Boundary-Struggle. ››
War had been approaching, war with a larger and larger threat; eventually it threatened everything, as the ultrasonic radiation devices went beyond hysteria and attained the level of terror. But the «Epoch›› publication said that there was time for the public to think-enter wrong-wrong60 about the situation.
The experts thought of a separation plan. Break up the cities, scatter-separate, diffuse the population and industry, so that for even the greatest bomb they should be a target so small as not to be worth mentioning.
But dispersal intensified a tremendous weakness—they needed many more freight trains, many more cargo ships, many more transport aircraft, moving forward raw material and moving out finished products not connected to each other, according to the duty roster. Well, they weren't easy to attack and destroy, but they made it easier to completely cut off the traffic-thread of supply.
The decision-people said not to adopt a dispersal method but rather to excavate air-raid shelters. But not merely air-raid shelters—the factories must dig for ore-sand, drill to fetch oil, and extract cooling elements combined with heated air—cause them not to rely upon cargo that might never arrive, nor even to be able to talk about this (because the war would be continuous for so much time; it might be for a second, it might be for an unbearable eternity) that the workmen would be unable to stay down belowground, nor to rely on the ability of brains to reach the image-making boards and go-study laboratories and matter-assemble boards, because the brains might go the way to death, or be turned into something that couldn't be recognized as brains.
Well, the underground factories designed for themselves very completely, designed in a never-stopping always-curving rise.
Just as we and our machines appeared to be facing an enemy, with every advancing step we needed to grow more skillful, more clever, more swift than the enemy race. Faced with the matter of our having fewer and fewer soldiers, to rely on the pure inference-gathering that, with war every day continuing to descend, more and more many people were slaughtered, and only fewer and fewer remained to manufacture the slaughter-people military-devices. Against this, to ensure that the factories could not be captured nor subjected to danger, they couldn't hesitate to stand watch over these factories and guard their money and valuables against evil—to stand guard against every sort of mechanism, every sort of restraint-equipment, exploding-thing and die-light that men were able to devise—and later the machines would dominate everything. The machines would never stop speeding up production—producing more and more quickly, able to more and more powerfully slaughter people.
Another step in the descent—these fortress-type factories hung up hooks to each other, so that the factories that it was difficult to think of defending, in the difficult-to-think-of event that they should sink, would when faced with destruction or extinguishment send out a signal, maintaining the original mission and giving this assignment to the nearest other factory—so that the surviving factories would share the responsibility for the work, increase production speed, advance another step towards ending life, while there were yet fewer guardians operating still more kill-people-devices.
And they had a last-of-all plan—to arrange for the machines to supply good things, housing, clothing and means of transport to a nation of people recovering from nobody-knew-what sort of bomb, bacteria, poisonous gas—if only the war were to continue to descend, no matter what sort of military device you could think of—the outcome could not be escaped.
Naturally, the machines were equipped with the components necessary for a peace signal: that is, the free air itself. Never ceasing to take surveys of the atmospheric layers, the machines producing war-goods would change to produce peace-goods-materials.
And such indeed was made.
Yet, how could it have been known, that the machines would be unable to distinguish between wartime and peacetime?
Here was Dĭ-Tè-Lü61: ten-times-ten-thousand yingmŭ of uninhabited desolate land, windows covered by curtains, walls broken to bits. Looking down from above, the wails of the city. But underground—ah, the pulse of activity could be seen beating quickly! The rumble-rumble opening-and-contraction of the raw material transport-channels, pulling in raw material and ore-sand, belch-belch-producing finished automobiles. Transport-channels looking like spiderwebs extended to the iron-ore bedrock beneath the lakes. Row upon row of barges sailed forth from the water-mud shipyards like the submarine base at Luò-Lĭ-Áng,62 and without men to draw their sails the submarines swam the lakes and canals; going to their product drop-off locations, the submarines surfaced carrying glittering brand-new Buick-nameplate and Plymouth-nameplate automobiles.
What made them the latest style?
Why, reliance on industrial planning! Because the old style underwent a change of appearance. The '61 flow-body-move model moved over for the '62 8-type ultra-flow-body-move model; double-bright headlamps became triple-bright; white-ring wheel-belts became pine-blue-colored and then moved back to black wheel-belts.
It was a matter of planning efficiency.
What the founding ancestors learnt of production was basically like this: what you build doesn't matter; it only matters to have people want to buy it. Don't worry about humanity's powers of judgment. They are a worthless sort. Powers of judgment are unable to transport manufactured products, unable to push commerce. Rather you should depend on the man-and-monkey habit of curiosity.
Of course, curiosity depends on keeping secrets.
So, generations of automobile manufacturers tested many of the latest devices, produced by workmen who promised to keep their mouths shut. There was no atomic bomb explosion method kept so excessively secret. All of Dĭ-Tè-Lü repeated their safeguard procedures: Every year when it was time for the latest style, the streets were filled with canvas-covered mystery-playthings; people discussed this—oh, right—they couldn't help but laugh; this was most funny; yet while they were delighted, they felt queer; it was perfectly correct to make a joke of the mystery, but behind the joke the people wished to own the new-model automobiles themselves.
Then the manufacturers put up their ears. Ah, so that's how it is. Curiosity, no? So they rented a secret compartment, to design brand-new freezing equipment, then made a big fanfare revealing this. Yessiree, Bob! The electric iceboxes were immediately snatched up. Right, it was like madness.
The United States radio corporation had no choice but to accept the lesson, and use it themselves to add a flourish; when the Vinyl record-image-device was made, it was good for continuous use, was colored, extremely up-to-date. They designed it secretly, and then, the very last-of-all flourish, they deliberately revealed the secret; this was the clever touch that the Manhattan63 corporation hadn't learnt—the secret that concealed the true secret. Because the Vinyl-image program was only a sort of smokescreen; it was the ultimate sort of security measure; the Vinyl-image campaign-program was only a cover for the program imported underneath.
This transported manufactured goods. But the whole affair had its limits. Mankind itself cannot keep a secret.
So be it, some anonymous bigshot said; we will all let humanity perish-drop! Let a machine design the look of the new models! Attach a design component. Cause the design-shift-tester-devices and the randomly-select-devices to proceed with the reform in a fashion exceeding man's ability to imagine. Give the factories self-automation; conceal them underground; provide them with a sort of procedure to make them able to weave new procedures for themselves. Truth to say, why shouldn't it be like this? As Kē-Gé-Lán had come to quote Chá-Lĭ F. Kǎi-té-Lín: "Our purpose in go-study is to cause the customers to attain discontent," and machines can confirm the occurrence of this as well as any sort of man. Truth to say, they can do it better than a man.
So, the whole world was a place filled with quartz-stone caves, which sent forth many mysteries without stopping. The war gave industry a very good start, beginning with the method of dispersal, and then, thanks to bomb-avoid, the factories were concealed in rock; now security procedures rendered the factories a self-contained system. Products flowed out in a wild huge unstopping wave.
Yet they were unable to stop coming down. It wasn't possible to get inside the caves to deactivate the machines, nor even to slow them down. The people whom it was originally thought would consume the products were for the greatest part already nonexistent; the products emerging in a quick unstopping flow had to be consumed. The auspicious-widespread-appraisal people had to market the products, and in this respect they were very skillful.
This was the situation outside: an extremely-very busy, extremely-very big place. Don't hesitate to count the very big destruction received during the Great War.
I can't tell you how very busy, nor how very big; I'm only able to tell you all a very little of that situation. There was a building, covering many yingmú, known as the Five-Angled Skyscraper. Of course it had five sides: a side for the Army, a side for the Navy, a side for the Air Force, a side for the Marine Corps, and it had a side for the business office of the Yóu-Sī-Dì and Lŭ-Mĭ-Lún-Dì auspicious-wide spread-appraisal corporation.
So, here was this great building the Five-Angled-Skyscraper, which was the center of the United States in every respect. (There was also this locality known as "Go-Parliament,"64 but that system is not very important. In fact it wasn't important at the time.)
And here was this military leader Kāng-Méi-Ēn, in his red-colored uniform, the uniform with epaulets, and from his waist hangs a small ornate gold-plated double-edged sword. He was in the Yóu-Sī-Dì and Lŭ-Mĭ-Lún-Dì corporation's waiting room, watching television. He'd already been waiting in there for an hour, and eventually the people summoned him.
He went in.
Don't any of you try to imagine the sort of frame of mind he had when he entered that pigskin-wall-protected room. You can't guess. But you should know that he was convinced this room held the key that would open his way to an infinite road; he was convinced of this beyond any doubt, and as it afterwards unfolded, he was right about this.
"Major," an old man said not at all politely; this man was remarkably like Kē-Gé-Lán, remarkably like Jié-Kè Tài-Yī, because they were all very much the same sort of man, these charcoal-colored white people65 of the first flow-great-study social class. "Major, he is conversing with us long-distance. It's just the sort of situation we feared. And there have been difficulties."
"Yeah, right, xiānsheng!"
Major Kāng-Méi-Ēn had a stiff-straight body posture, very much of soldierly bearing, because he had worked as an army officer for fifteen years, and this was his first opportunity to take part in battle. He had escaped the Great War—oh, yeah the entire ground force had escaped the Great War; the war ended so quickly, that the troops on maneuvers weren't able to get to it—and warfare hadn't come since that time. Except under certain specially designated conditions, it wasn't safe to fight. But perhaps those conditions were being provided now, he thought. And if he could lead a go-on-journey force, and could do a remarkable job, then a thing like that ought to have big say for the career of a major today!
And so he stood in stiff-straight posture, fully vigilant, standing with his vision shooting in four directions. His straw hat was held under one arm, and one hand was on the sword-handle of his sword, and he looked extremely ferocious. Hăi, that's to be expected. The image being received on the television inside that pigskin-wall-protected boardroom would make every honest army officer extremely ferocious. The government authorities of the United States had been made to look the fool!
"L.S.," said the image of the face and chest of the old man on the copy-image screen, "they have stood up to me! They have taken my broadcast-device from me, cleared away my sprinkle-release-medicines, taken away my deep-sound-fixture. All I have left is this transmitter-lid!"
This Kē-Gé-Lán whose image was being seen in the room was no longer so gentle and cultivated; he seemed very agitated, and extremely angry.
"Truly interesting," comment-said Mr. Mă-FĒi-Dài whose underlings of the comparatively intimate sort called him "L.S." "They hadn't taken that transmitter-lid too. They should have known that you would contact us, and that we would retaliate."
"But they wanted me to get in touch with you!" that voice from the kinescope shout-said. "I explained' this matter to them, L.S. They are becoming like mad. They think war should arrive."
After a bit more talk, L.S. Mă-FĒi-Dài turned off the television.
"We'll give them what they want, right, Major?" he said, his own form standing stiff-bolt-upright like a poker.
"We'll do just that, sir!" the major said, and he saluted and turned his body round to leave. By then he could already feel the eagles on his shoulder-epaulets—and who could know what lies ahead or say, but that there may be five-pointed stars!
The first retaliatory journey began at once; the people of Péng-shĭ Angle should have expected them to adopt such measures afterwards, could have expected it—and in reality they got it.
I've already told you all, that there hadn't been warfare for a period of time, although many-many people still prepared for warfare as for them it was the first-rate priority. You all must feel that outside Péng-shĭ Angle this matter seemingly had no contradictory nature.
First the Great War had caused people, no matter what, from adopting any fierce manner. The old style of warfare—that is to say warfare using guided missiles and radioactive material and atomic cannon—was already most supremely costly and caused people not to deploy it. Only great fortune was able to prevent the sudden development that this globe would be able to wipe itself thoroughly clean, and provide perishment-fall for the people, to have nothing any more complex than the jĭsuŏdòngwù66 develop, and that world only good for single-cell creatures to gradually start anew. The present situation wasn't like that.
First of all, atomic explosives had received severe restriction. The entire world had approximately twenty or thirty nations possessing the hydrogen bomb or more advanced .military devices, and every one of those nations had men on duty twenty-four hours of every day, with their fingers ready to press the knob; except that whichever nation would dare to first use atomic weapons again, they would press down those knobs and thoroughly clean-perish-fall the Earth. So this was not viable.
And airplanes, for the same reason, lost a large part of their function-use. The satellites equipped with round-round look-at-bright eyeballs kept watch on every nook of the world day and night without stopping, so that you wouldn't dare throw so much as a dynamite bomb, because perhaps one myopic person keeping watch on the satellites as they moved about the Earth's face might mistake that ordinary bomb for a nuclear bomb—and thereby press those knobs.
In this such fashion, there only remained the infantry to resort to.
However that mustn't be just an infantry! An arrangement of twenty-three men, they possessed the firepower of the entire Napoleon67 army group. A group was made up of approximately two hundred and fifty men; it can be confirmed that the First World big-War could be won by relying on them.
Portable weapons produced dozens of reality-slivers of iron-and-steel mesh, bullets that flew and hit so swiftly that you couldn't help but aim at a target and the bullet hole would cut it in half. If everybody's eye could see the locality, the rifle bullets could fly to it. If the eye met up with black sky, or dense fog, or because the hills blocked eyesight, whether the eye could see or not, then the infrared ray-aim-device, the radar and pulse-bright interfere type observe-devices could take the place of you and me and hit that target, like as if it were nearly as much as ten mă68-units away from you in broad daylight.
This was right to say, that these were the most advanced weapons in all the world. In fact the weapons that this infantry put up were of such a modern sort that while one half of a military company was still busy studying how to use them, the other half had already stepped back and found them unable to be used again. In the event of having a 13-model double-belted-uranium-drill white-of-the-eye move-all-weather aiming-device, who would then want a 12-model type?
Truth to say, that was the number-one triumph of the era; in fact, the design-quick discard-as-useless and highspeed turnaround plan of the farthest-back-original television set or automobile from Dĭ-Tè-Lü slowly came to expand its aspect to include carbines and rocket cannon.
This scene was utterly wonderful, and utterly terrifying.
And so, battlewards, or towards whatever disaster could occur, people approached the state of heroism.
Major Kāng-Méi-Ēn (this is said in his writings) led an entire military company, altogether two hundred and fifty-two men, and started towards Péng-shĭ Angle. Aircraft brought them to the Lehigh69 province, that had been covered with radiation-ray burn-fragments, but the scorched earth was once again lacking dangerous qualities. Inside there they changed over to automobiles and continued to advance.
Major Kāng-Méi-Ēn was an extremely calm and cool-headed man. The sandy soil all round Péng-shĭ Angle still possessed radioactivity, but it did not present any questionability. Because his army division's equipment was very-extremely complete and advanced. Kē-Gé-Lán could use a shield, but the United States Army could easily outshield him; Kē-Gé-Lán drove an automobile made of lead, but this go-on-journey force used for their travel iridium metal-cast70 vehicles, with appropriate gamma-ray protect-screen equipment on top.
Each group had its own half-track lead-move-transport vehicle. Not only did each man have his own portable weapon; the top of each vehicle was equipped with a 105-millimeter big cannon. The big cannon on top had shoot-by-itself attachments and auto-controlled insurance interlock. Hydraulic brackets supported the big cannon's ten-thousand-direction orient-plate. Radar sought its target. Auto-controlled digit computers collected data about the direction in which their target was going to fly.
In the personnel-transport-vehicle up front, Major Kāng-Méi-Ēn sent down the last-of-all command to his rank-and-file soldiers:
"This is war approaching, brethren! The decision of when to fight has now already arrived! For a long period of time you've all drilled for battle, and now you're already personally on the scene. I don't know what Destiny will bring us inside there—" in saying this he waved an arm to touch the morning in the direction of Péng-shĭ Angle, and this posture was conveyed into each move-transport-vehicle in the entire motorcade, via the on-the-spot reflected stereoscoping multicolor image—"but come victory or defeat, and I know we'll have a victory, I want each of you men to know that you've all joined the best military company, that has joined the best regiment, that has joined the best fight-in-the-open-country infantry group, that has joined the best division—"
Just then, from the 105-mm big cannon on the leading personnel transport vehicle, there arose a rumble-rumble sound, because the radar equipment had already found its target all by itself, while the cannon fired at a moving thing it had seen, and this cannon dwarfed the sound of the major, so that he couldn't extend his tribute to the large military force, the division headquarters, the army group and the Supreme High Command.
The Battle of Péng-shĭ Angle had begun.