THE CELESTIAL STEAM LOCOMOTIVE
Michael G. Coney
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Gateway Introduction
Contents
Epigraph
Prologue - A Place Called Earth
Here Begins that Part of The Song of Earth Known to Men as The Creation of the Triad
Manuel
The Quicklies
The Storm
The Storm-Girl
Shantun the Accursed
The Coming of the Mole
The Dying Goddess
The Girl Who was Herself
The Oracle in the Fountain
When Eulalie Came Down
When the Dream Girl Bigwished
Reincorporation
The Martyrdom of Raccoona Three
Mauel Talks with God
Legend of the Axolotl
By the Axolotl Pool
Triad!
Here Ends that Part of The Song of Earth Known to Men as The Creation of the Triad
The Astral Builders
The First Quest of the Triad
At the Delta
The Aqualily Grotto
Eloise and the Mole
The Celestial Steam Locomotive
The Captain was a Specialist
The Little Passenger
Dreams Alone Are not Enough
Sliver's Nemesis
The Wheeled Dog
The Basilisk
Legend of the Wolf-Cat
The May Bees
The Five Fears
The Hosts
The Blind Man
Cold Fire
The Math Creature
The Bearback Riders
The Return of Manuel
Re-education of the Mole
The Death of Eloise
Elizabeth's Retrenchment
Delta's End
Eloise's Legacy
Website
Also by Michael G. Coney
Dedication
Author Bio
Copyright
They ride the sky-train SHENSHI from Azul to Santa Beth. The driver’s name is Silver and the fireman’s name is Death.
—The Song of Earth
Prologue: A Place Called Earth
They call me Alan-Blue-Cloud.
That is what they call me when they gather to hear my stories, when the Dedos (Daughters of Starquin), the Dream-Essences and the ex-Keepers come together in form or in spirit on the barren hillside that I inhabit. Sometimes manlike creatures come, too, and sit beside the stream that skirts the hill, clasping their arms about their knees and gazing up toward me. I don’t know what they think of while they listen. They sit and they watch, sometimes as many as fifty of them, chunky and hairy, while the aesthetic forms of the higher beings flit among them or hover over them, or just are.
I tell them tales of Old Earth.
Time has lost its meaning now. Nothing much has happened on Earth since the Departure, and many of the higher beings have forgotten what happened before that. Me? I can’t forget. I remember everything except how I came into being and how I came to live on this hillside among the rocks and loose screen. Everything else I remember, and many things that happened before I existed—these memories I have gleaned from legends and stories and books and computers of man. I am memory.
Memory is unnecessary on Earth. Out there, in the Greataway and on the other worlds, things are happening all the time. So memory is important, out there. Occasionally They come too, and ask me things.
It is difficult to distinguish fact from legend, and after much consideration I have decided it doesn’t matter. I have spoken with men, with Dream People and Dedos, with Specialists and Cuidadors and psycaptains, and I have found no consensus on what is fact; it depends on the viewpoint. Interestingly enough, legend—which is by definition distorted—gives a far more acceptable view of events. Everyone agrees on legend, but nobody agrees on fact. So I simply repeat what I hear, with no embellishments, but with due warnings.
The story I am about to tell is substantially true.
It concerns three people of differing backgrounds who came together and tried hard to accomplish something that was important to them—and although they didn’t know it at the time, it was important to a Supreme Being too. They succeeded in what they attempted, which gives the story a ring of triumph and glory. The three people became, in fact, legendary figures...
My story takes place during the year 143,624 Cyclic, and it is about three humans of varying species who became known as the Triad. There are other stories, too. These stories relate to events that took place at different times during Earth’s history, but they are all essential to the central theme of the Triad, and of Humanity.
Humanity... I see thirty-two humans listening to me now, and it is satisfying to see children among them. Other living things are in the valley, sensed in the infrared or in a nearby happentrack or visible as light sources or as dancing souls. An Almighty Being is also with us this evening, passing through our speck in the Greataway, pausing, maybe out of gratitude for a favor of long ago. He listens.
You are listening, too.
Here Begins that Part
of The Song of Earth
Known to Men as
The Creation of the Triad
where three humans come together
after their several adventures,
having been chosen by Starquin the Five-in-One
for the purpose
of fulfilling his mighty Intent
Manuel
Manuel sniffed the air.
The eastern sky was dark, blending with the grayness of the sea. Manuel—a Wild Human who was superstitious, like all of his kind—wondered if God had thrown up a veil there, to hide some terrible mischief he was perpetrating out in the South Atlantic. Maybe he would ask God about that, later. The strengthening wind brought the tang of ozone. Manuel sniffed again and felt momentarily light-headed. There was a storm coming and tomorrow there would be d
riftwood on the beach, and perhaps pieces of fascinating wreckage. The oxygen-rich air lifted the boy’s spirits. He gave a shout of joy and ran across the sand, paralleling the waves, kicking them as they swirled around his ankles and were spent and easily defeated.
Giving the ocean one last kick, laughing, he turned and ran toward the shack that sat huddled under the low cliff. He opened the door and entered—and stopped dead.
Somebody was there. He smelled a presence, and as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom, he could see a figure sitting in his only chair. He froze, fearing that it was the strange old woman who had been seen around these parts lately.
But the voice was low and soft, with a Pu’este intonation.
“Hello, Manuel.”
He exhaled, his gaze straying to the place where his Simulator was hidden, but the carefully placed heap of brush was undisturbed.
“Hello, Ellie,” he said casually, wondering.
Ellie was safe as a tame guanaco. She was the niece of old Jinny in the village of Pu’este—and, some said, a daughter of one of old chief Chine’s more human moments. The chair in which she sat had been fashioned by Manuel from a driftwood tree stump, and her form was soft and sweet against the wizened timber. So far as Manuel could tell in the half-light, she wore very little.
“Manuel... ?”
“Yes? What do you want, Ellie?”
She hesitated. Manuel was strange, that much was acknowledged in the village. But for two weeks, now, his body had tormented her with unconscious challenges and she’d felt herself wriggling, her breath coming faster when he was near. That morning he’d passed her on the road, and she thought she’d seen something in his eyes when his gaze met hers for an instant. So here she was. But he was known to be strange.
“I was waiting for you,” she said.
Manuel likewise was on his guard. He had his desires too, and a while ago they’d centered on another village girl, a darkly pretty thing called Rhea, after a ridiculous local bird. Recently Rhea had asked, “Why do you keep looking at me like that, Manuel? You want sex—Right, let’s get going. I don’t have all day.” And afterward, when he’d clung to her in affection and gratitude, she’d said, “Get away. You’re making me sweaty. Don’t you have anything to do... ?”
Innocently, Manuel said to Ellie, “What were you waiting for?”
She didn’t answer. Instead she asked, “Why do you live here all alone?”
“It’s peaceful. I like the sound of the sea.”
“You like the sound of the sea.” She repeated it carefully, as though it were a foreign language.
“You haven’t told me why you’re here, Ellie.”
“I was curious. You’re a strange one, Manuel, you know that? What do you do in church? I saw you coming back. You spoke to Dad Ose up there, but you did something else. You went inside by yourself. You’ve got a girl in there?”
“I spoke to God. Why did you come here?”
“I saw the clouds and I said to myself, ‘I’ll see Manuel.’”
“Don’t lie to me, Ellie.”
“I wanted sex,” she muttered. She’d never been ashamed of it before, but now, with this odd youth standing above her, it seemed an inadequate reason for having come. Her body began to cool down. Fleetingly she wished she were back in the village helping fat Chine fight off the encroaching guanacos.
“Is that all?” Manuel seemed disappointed.
“Well... It’s good enough, isn’t it? You do find it good, don’t you, Manuel?” She was out of the chair, reaching for him.
“I can’t describe how I find it.” Millennia ago Wild Humans might have had a word for it, but not now. “I just feel that sex isn’t good enough by itself. Just touching for a few seconds and then walking away, like animals do. It’s not enough.”
“I’ll stay the night if you want me to, Manuel.”
“That’s not what I mean.” His gaze moved toward the hidden Simulator again and he found himself thinking of his latest composition. He called it The Storm. It was the best mind-painting he’d ever done, but he still wasn’t satisfied with it. “There’s something inside my mind that I want to use... that I want to give, Ellie. I don’t know if I can give it to you. I don’t think you’d understand what it was, if you had it.”
“Try me. I’m a very understanding person, Manuel. Joao, Pietro, the others, they all say how understanding I am.” She was standing very close, so that her hard little nipples touched his chest with their fire, and her lips turned up to his. “Sex is the most wonderful thing there is. It’s the best thing we do, better than eating roast peccary, and it makes you feel so good. What’s the matter with you, Manuel? I’m prettier than Rhea, surely. You didn’t mind sex with her.” She pouted. “Aren’t I good enough for you?”
“There has to be something more.”
“What more can there be?”
“You don’t feel anything more?” He took her hands, and now he was the desperate one, trying to see into her eyes in the dim, storm-laden light.
“I feel enough, Manuel. Don’t worry.” She spoke softly, mimicking his way. If this was how the strange boy wanted it, why not? There were worse ways.
“And what do you feel, Ellie?”
“I need a man, of course. You know.”
“Ellie... Please go away. Go back to the village. There are plenty of men there.” Still holding her hands, he led her outside, where the wetness swept in from the sea, a blend of rain and salt spray, and the horizon was very black. And the air was like whiskey.
Ellie sniffed it and, suddenly exhilarated, tossed her head, so that her hair flew like blackbirds, and laughed. “You’re crazy!” she shouted into the wind. “A crazy boy!” Something flashed by; it might have been a Quickly. “And I’m crazy too, coming here. Goodnight, Manuel! Sleep well, and dream of what you might have had!” She made a playful snatch at him but he swung away, smiling too.
He watched her go and wondered at the thing she was lacking, and—of course—regretted not having had her anyway. But he had more important things to do.
The Quicklies
Manuel had built the shack when he was fourteen years old. That was five years ago. Pu’este had endured for untold centuries and the people lived in stone houses, rethatching the roofs every fifty years or so. But Manuel’s shack, like Manuel, was different, fashioned with painstaking care from driftwood and whalebone, mud and dried kelp and vine, a cohesive mass of matted material hard against the low cliff of brown sandstone at the north end of the bay.
Manuel was proud of it and didn’t mind people visiting; naively, he thought they came to admire. He became mildly annoyed when the Quicklies ran by, though—fighting and snarling and bumping into things and frightening the vicunas. In the early days he’d made a few abortive attempts to befriend the Quicklies and had even persuaded a gentler female to snatch food from his hand. But the thing that always puzzled Wild Humans had soon happened, and the female Quickly had been moving much more slowly the following morning—and then she had died, attacked by her own kind and mortally wounded.
Manuel piled more driftwood on his fire, then pacified his vicunas, which had become alarmed at the sudden sparks and crackling and were stamping and tossing their heads. He looked eastward, where the horizon was now massed with huge black clouds. He walked to the water’s edge and turned. From here he could see over the top of the low cliff to the distant hills. Tiny forms were moving. The guanacos were still converging on the valley. Dust clouds rose as the wind brushed the village fields. Wise Ana—the plump, cheerful woman who lived alone in a sandstone cave beside the road to the village—was gathering in her wares, closing down her store for the night. Sapa cloth fluttered. Thoughtfully, Manuel returned to the shack and brought out his meal, a reef fish wrapped in leaves and clay. He laid it in the fire.
He was sucking his fingers clean when he heard the twittering clamor from farther up the beach. The Quicklies were coming, probably hunting for food. He stepped into the hut and
brought out the rest of his catch, three parrot fish that he’d been saving for his evening meal. He laid them on the beach; then, on an impulse, returned to the shack and brought out his most prized possession—the Simulator. He sat down before it and turned it on.
Manuel often found himself doing things for which there could be no explanation under the code of human behavior existing in the year 143,624 Cyclic. Wild Humans ran for shelter when they heard the Quicklies coming. As they ran, they caught up sticks, rocks, anything they could lay their hands on to defend themselves. The Quicklies were the ultimate in abominations and, so it was rumored, could strip a man to the bone in fifteen seconds flat. The rumor lacked concrete evidence, since nobody had ever lived to tell the tale, but it served to explain the curious disappearances that had bothered the fat chief Chine for many years.
“Elacio’s gone,” Chine had said one day. “The Quicklies got him. I saw his bones washing out on the tide.”
Manuel, who happened to be near, broke into the chorus of superstitious groans from the villagers. “Elacio fell into the Bowl,” he said, referring to a peculiar local landmark. “I saw him down there yesterday. His neck was broken. The sirens had already started to eat him, but you could still tell who it was.”
The Celestial Steam Locomotive (The Song of Earth) Page 1