Moderan by David R. Bunch

Author:David R. Bunch
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2018-07-03T12:27:20+00:00

IT WAS IN BLACK CAT WEATHER

IT WAS in black cat weather and jack-o’-lantern times that she stood beneath his window, hallooing, holding five long slim boxes stacked in her scabbing arms. A vague iron shadow over by the fence was holding some object that a little resembled a boat.

“Daddy,” she yelled, “come see what we have brought to you. And there’s lots more. Over in Good Long Rest. And think how many more—all over, in all the others. And think how many more . . . Come see!”

Of course he knew that her five boxes contained nothing really, at least not anything you could—well, not anything. And of course iron Mox was carrying one of the THINGS out of Good Long Rest. Entirely forbidden. . . .

He arose from his hip-patty chair, the good den lounger, the gentle undulater, where he sat mostly now, one-childed and wifeless, the Calm Waiter, and thought on Universal Deep Questions, problems of the world. He chewed at his throat with the fixer, probing and prying, trying to ease some at the place that was worked all in gold against cancer, and he said in his preplanned speech, working hard with his mouth, following along with the tapes, “Daphalene! you are not to take the iron Mox with you anymore to Good Long Rest. Because he gets the THINGS! Even though I set him on Dumb Servant, Alternate Set, he still somehow changes to Human Set and goes for the THINGS. I don’t care if you want to take those long stocking boxes down there alone day in and day out three hundred and sixty-five days a year for the twenty-five next years and bring back—well, bring back whatever it is you say you find down there. But no more of this stuff of Mox and the big dirty damp THINGS. Understand?

“And Mox!” Mox came lumbering in on his blunt boat-shaped feet, holding a big box lightly out as though it contained something much wanted. When it was not taken at once, Mox dropped the box resoundingly to the ground and shook his arms high up into himself until his iron hands were hanging like calm leaves from his shoulder beams, a strange shrug. Then he flapped his hands and flashed his bulb eyes on and off in his usual greeting manner. “Skip the fawn stuff. Flick off your Human switch, Mox, and go on Dumb Servant, Alternate Set switch. NOW!” He complied. “Pick up that dirty THING you dropped almost on my feet.” He did that. “Back to Good Long Rest! And fix! Fix so no one knows you’ve disturbed.”

They disappeared into the black-cream night, and his throat being tired from the shouting, and without tape fixed now to yell Daphalene to come back, they both walked away, an iron thought-tape thinker and a little girl wading into the shadowless thick dark under a moonless low sky and clouds on the edge of late October rain. She was Daphalene, his daughter Daphalene in the

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