The Celestial Steam Locomotive (The Song of Earth)

by Coney, Michael G.

  “I don’t know! For God’s sake, Zozula, I’ve no idea! I feed him and keep him clean, and sometimes he waves those... things. I’ve no idea what’s going on in his mind, or even if he has a mind. He’s my son, and I don’t know anything about him!”

  Zozula looked at the misshapen head, at the blank places where the eyes ought to be, and just for a moment imagined a whirling of thoughts in there, quick and brilliant, unable to find release, belying the terrible blankness of the exterior. Who could tell? He drew a parallel with the Rainbow—seemingly an immense bank of fog occupying one wall of a vast room, useless and mute unless you knew how to communicate with it.

  And the tragedy was, that skill in communication was virtually lost. There were programs of great value in there, knowledge and techniques that could probably solve all the world’s problems. But they couldn’t be drawn out, understood and learned from. Nevertheless they were there.

  The Mole’s thoughts were probably there. If the Cuidadors couldn’t help the Mole, nobody could. For a moment Zozula thought about the Mole’s thoughts and the form they might take—and the germ of an idea took shape in his mind.

  He said, “Help me carry him up the ladder.”

  The Dying Goddess

  After Zozula had settled Lord Shout and the Mole into their quarters, he made his way to the relaxation room. Three of the Cuidadors sat there, and the dead echo of long silence was in the air. Zozula sat down on a golden couch, not knowing what was going on.

  Eulalie said finally, an edge of horror in her voice, “I’m dying. That’s what you’re afraid to tell me, isn’t it?” She had risen. Now she walked to the window and looked down at the clouds, looked up at the brightness of the late afternoon sky, pale gray through the age-darkened glass. She couldn’t look at Zozula.

  Ebus, the Dome physician, said, “There are some more tests I could make.” “How long do I have?” She swung round. Ebus hesitated, glanced at Zozula, who was still sitting and gazing at his wife and companion of many centuries, uncomprehending. How can you comprehend death, when you live that long? Ebus said, “Maybe a week.”

  “A week? There’s been a mistake, Ebus.” The horror had become desperation in her voice. “I’ve practiced my Inner Think religiously, every morning. I’ve never been so in tune with myself. I feel fine, except for... Look at me!”

  They looked. It was not easy to believe Eulalie was dying. Tall and beautiful, she wore a long white dress of Grecian style; her hair, likewise, was long.

  Over the millennia the Keepers had come to dress like the gods their charges considered them to be. There was scarcely a line on her face, her neck was pale and smooth, no veins marred the delicacy of her hands.

  “We keep up appearances,” murmured Ebus. Why should he remind her that the Inner Think was not perfect because humans were not perfect; that concentration lapsed, cells were missed; that the thinking areas of the brain were themselves the most difficult to revitalize? She knew all that.

  An hour later they were able to face the situation more reasonably. Ebus now went to the heart of the matter. “This doesn’t give us long to find a replacement,” he said.

  “Ebus!” Zozula was outraged. He glanced at Eulalie. She met his look with understanding and sympathy. He and she were different from the others. They were throwbacks. Like Manuel, they knew love.

  And now, born of love, an idea slipped into Zozula’s mind.

  “There’s one way out, if you can bring yourself to take it,” he said quietly. “Those happenings in Dream Earth—who’s to say they’re less real than what happens out here? It’s a logical little world in the computer—up to a point—with its own rules. If you could bear the change, it’s possible that we could program your brain-patterns into the Rainbow and hook you up to a spare host.”

  So much for Zozula’s high principles. An hour ago he’d spoken about the Cuidador’s duty to the Dream People and the impossibility of finding room for the Mole because it would mean erasing a neotenite’s mind. Now, in shock and grief, he was suggesting doing just that.

  They watched Eulalie. She took a peach from a bowl and bit into it, savoringly, as though it were the last thing she would ever do.

  “So I would live on as a Dream Person, with one of those bodies?” she asked calmly.

  “I’d be able to visit you, of course,” said Zozula quickly. “Maybe your real body wouldn’t be very pleasant, but that’s immaterial. You could Bigwish yourself into whatever Dream form you chose. Your present form, if you wanted.”

  And Eulalie was tempted, let there be no mistake about that. When a person has lived as long as she had, even the unthinkable can seem better than dying. She thought for a long time before replying. “Thank you, Zo. But that would only be dragging things out. My time’s arrived, and I’ll accept it. Ebus is right. Our first duty is to the Dream People, and the most important thing now is to find a replacement for me. As it happens, I do have a replacement in mind.”

  Juni, the dietitian, spoke for the first time. “She’ll be a...” She couldn’t finish. Distaste wrinkled her perfect face.

  “A blubber.” Ebus used the unkind word for neotenite. “That’s right—there are none of the old humans left.”

  “There are humans outside.”

  “Barrel-chested freaks,” said Ebus. “Don’t fool yourself, Juni—they’re a completely different variety. They’ve evolved away from the true form just as radically as the neotenites have, only their adaptation is much more favorable. They’re hardy, but you can’t say much else in their favor. I’ll support Eulalie’s choice. A blubber it must be. And you never know—Selena might have a breakthrough in the breeding program before long. Only yesterday she said that gorilla-man of hers—what’s his name... ?”

  “Brutus,” said Eulalie sharply. Ebus could grate on a person sometimes.

  “Yes. Brutus has come up with a new approach that she has some hopes for. Funny, isn’t it, to think of a Specialist leading the way in genetic research?”

  Eulalie went to her room, took pills and slept, and dreamed of decay, and awakened with her throat hoarse. She guessed she’d been screaming. She caught sight of a little cleaning cavy slipping discreetly away and wondered if she’d also been incontinent. It seemed she’d been seeing that little rodent each morning for many years now, without giving it any thought.

  It was an unhappy, silent dinner that night. Selena, the biologist and geneticist, arrived late and depressed. With her was her assistant. Although she didn’t intend that Brutus should eat at the same table, she needed his moral support. He was a man of heavy build and gentle nature, and over the years Selena had learned to depend on him a lot. He stood a little behind her, hands making slight washing motions, smiling apologetically. There were gorilla genes in his make-up, a frequent characteristic in those skilled in medical science.

  “What’s the matter, Lena?” Zozula asked her.

  Brutus was shaking his head in huge embarrassment.

  Selena said miserably, “I’ll have to deprocess this year’s crop, every last one of them. They were telepaths again, too—wonderful minds. Do you know, Zo, it’s been two hundred and eighteen years since we’ve successfully bred a True Human—and the same goes for all the other Domes on Earth. Why? What’s gone wrong? How can we ever awaken the Dream People if we only have neotenite bodies to give them? What does that say for our duty? Sometimes I wonder why we’re here at all!”

  Meanwhile Brutus wrung his hands and agonized for these True Humans who were burdened with such great duties that their very souls seemed to shrink under the weight of them.

  Eulalie was sitting there. She didn’t know whether to put on a brave front, or to let herself go, break down and join Selena in tears. She decided the latter course would look like self-pity, so she set her face in an expressionless mask. It was the worst possible time for Selena’s announcement...

  After dinner Zozula, Juni, Eulalie and Ebus visited the Rainbow Room. Eulalie sat in her accustomed seat and pla
ced her hands on the tactile surfaces of the console, tuning in. The room began to fill with images. She saw blue skies and a hot sun, so she formed clouds and dropped rain. She saw a storm at sea and a boatful of Burts and Bucks and Sophias and Gretas who were enjoying it too much and growing prideful in their immortality, so she turned down the wind and smoothed the ocean, and the Burts and Bucks and Sophias and Gretas grew bored and began to bitch and quarrel like normal people again. Eulalie scanned Dream Earth quickly, watching the Dream People playing while their bodies lay at rest elsewhere in the Dome. The 52nd millennium was a popular choice at the time.

  Eulalie said, “Somewhere about here...”

  They swung over mountains, green fields and a sparkling river. Snow and more meadows, brown timber chalets. Tiny yellow flowers and a fresh scent they couldn’t smell. Eulalie locked in on a girl walking up a hill, following a rough path in the sunlight. She wore a white blouse embroidered in red and a short green skirt. Goats parted to let her by, watching with wise idiots’ eyes, munching.

  “We’ll hold this image...” said Eulalie.

  The girl had been singing, but now she stopped. Above the brow of the hill a chalet had come into her view, painted brown and yellow and red. People sat at tables on the balcony. Nearby a ski lift strode up a mountainside. The girl was not very pretty compared with the other people. She smiled.

  She said, “I wish...”

  “Oh, no!” whispered Eulalie. “She must not wish. We could lose track of her that way!”

  The Girl Who was Herself

  Her heart felt so joyful that there was not room for it, no room in her small body for all this happiness. In any case she was breathless from the climb. She paused and, without realizing it, found herself saying, “I wish...” And somewhere else, Eulalie said, “Oh, no! She must not wish!”

  The girl—who in legend would ever afterward be known as the Girl—caught herself and laughed. The goats, the sheep, the mountain laughed with her as she reached the chalet and climbed the steps to the balcony. Here were wooden tables and chairs, with scarlet serviettes and bright silver cutlery, opalescent china. There was a smell of new cedar and grass, coffee and bacon. Most of the tables were occupied; people chatted and laughed and ate. The Girl sat down at a vacant table for two and indulged in a daydream: If she opened her eyes, Burt would be sitting opposite.

  “Can I get you something?”

  She opened her eyes and found a breasty waitress leaning over her, a relic of some forgotten smallwish that nobody had been dissatisfied enough to alter or abolish.

  She smiled at the mirage. “Coffee, please. And bacon and scrambled eggs. Two. And apple juice first.”

  The waitress smiled back with inappropriate seductiveness and swayed off to the kitchen. The Girl sighed with satisfaction, relaxed and regarded the diners. The man at the next table had his back to her but looked familiar, and as he turned to address his companion, she saw that it was BURT! and her heart thumped and she was breathless. But then she saw his eyes. They dwelt on her for an expressionless instant, and he was not her Burt, he was just a Burt. She could tell. After all, if her Burt were not different from all the others, how could she love him the way she did?

  Her coffee arrived and she drank thoughtfully. An Elizabeth I swept by, regal in flowing robes, a caveman grunting beside her and taking advantage of his present guise to behave like an animal. He caught the Girl’s eye and, instantly forgetting the Elizabeth I, sat down heavily opposite the Girl. He seized a croissant in his hairy paw and munched, watching her unblinkingly.

  “Go away, please,” said the Girl.

  “I stay.” The caveman grinned with his mouth full. He was totally naked, although furry. Mercifully, the table hid him from the waist down.

  “Move on, you bum.” A quiet voice spoke. The caveman looked up; then his eyes widened and he scuttled off. The David, smiling pleasantly, sat in the vacant chair. “Do you mind?”

  “No, I’m glad.” The Girl smiled also. “I don’t like cavemen. I can’t understand why anyone should Bigwish themselves into one,” she added in a burst of confidence. David seemed nice.

  But then, they usually were...

  “When you can’t think of anything else, you revert to the animal,” said David sadly. “It’s a trend. I’m sure there are more cavemen about these days. Last week a pack of them stormed a casino at Monaco and smashed up the equipment. By the time we’d smallwished it all together, there wasn’t an atom of psy left among us. By the Rainbow, was I ever exhausted...”

  The Girl was about to say that Yourself was a very good person to be, when all other guises had become boring. She’d been Herself for some years now, and it wasn’t always easy without a Dream persona to blanket the emotional shocks so frequent in Dream life. But she didn’t say anything. Instead she listened to David and thought about her Burt. Her thoughts were real love thoughts, quite unlike the stylized, glamorous imaginings of most Dream People. Soon her meal was finished. But David showed no sign of leaving, so she made some excuse and stood. When Burt appeared, she didn’t want him to see her talking to another man; she had a suspicion that he was inclined to jealousy. She descended the steps to the grassy meadow, looking around.

  People were emerging from cabins, carrying skis. She watched Burt’s cabin, trying not to appear too obvious.

  She saw a Jayne leaning against a tree, her face buried in her hands. Being Herself, the Girl was of a sympathetic nature, unlike normal Dream People who can only think of themselves. The Girl straightaway became sad. She approached the Jayne and put her hand on her shoulder.

  “Can I help?”

  She was too late. Jayne, in the grip of some unknown sorrow, had Bigwished her way out of it.

  Impulses sped to the Rainbow’s Composite Reality bank. An electron fled from the liver tissues of a sloth, and a memory stored itself in an impure quartz molecule. Minute electrical charges flickered to and fro, adjusting the Composite Reality, adjusting every Dream Person in the Dome.

  The Girl watched Jayne with horror, as life and death and torture and Reality flashed through Jayne’s mind—as she saw the Earth for what it really was. For just an instant, a lifetime’s instant. Then Jayne’s face shimmered and her body shifted, straightened.

  Jackie smiled. Dark, wide of mouth, eyes wide-set, too.

  “Hi there, friend,” said Jackie. “What goes on here?” Her voice was musical, with a slight, indefinable accent. “A ski chalet, is it? Great!”

  The Girl chased a memory of a sad blonde for a moment, then it was gone. She never gave the Jayne another thought, because the Rainbow thriftily deletes memories of nonexistent personae.

  Burt appeared, carrying climbing gear. He closed the chalet door behind him and walked toward the Girl, smiling. He was tall and broad, dressed in heavy clothing that made him look like a huge bear, and the Girl loved him with all her heart. He wore ropes over his shoulder, and big boots with spikes, and a strong belt around his waist upon which bright climbing things glittered.

  The Girl walked toward him. Little blue swallows swooped and turned around the yellow eaves of the chalet. The Dream People on the terrace were laughing.

  Burt walked right on past the Girl as though she wasn’t there and took the arm of the Jackie with the wide mouth. She laughed and hung onto him, and together they walked toward the mountain.

  The Girl watched them go.

  The Oracle in the Fountain

  Within a crystal rising ninety meters high,

  There lives a sad-eyed woman who can never tell a lie.

  -Song of Earth

  The Girl just had to get away. She smallwished, a special small-wish that the Dream People use when things get on top of them and they need a few straight answers. She wished herself before the Oracle.

  The misty clouds cleared and she was standing before the moat of a fairy castle with pink walls and a multitude of blue spires that towered into the clouds. The drawbridge was down and the portcullis was up. She walked hesita
ntly forward.

  “Come in.”

  The voice came from all around her, or maybe from within her mind. She crossed the drawbridge, while tame unicorns watched and golden carp leaped from the blue waters of the moat, twisting to catch a glimpse of her. There was music in the air, tinkling and melodic. She walked on through the archway as tall men bowed, dark-haired and muscled. A courtyard occupied the middle of the fairy castle, and in the center of the courtyard a fountain played. People moved to and fro in stately fashion, left over from smallwishes—not real, but beautiful and dressed in diaphanous robes and adding to the atmosphere of the place.

  The Girl stopped before the fountain. The waters rose before her, but never came down. They lifted into the clouds and became clouds themselves, tipping the castle spires like cotton wool, yet still letting the sunlight flood the courtyard. As the Girl watched, the rising waters formed a globe before her, playing over the surface in a thousand conflicting currents. A face appeared within the globe, the face of a beautiful woman, more beautiful than any man’s smallwish, with hair of finest silver threads and eyes of a color beyond the spectrum.

  “What’s your name, child?”

  “I have no name.” The Girl regarded the face with awe and admiration. “I am Myself.”

  “When you have all of history to choose from, that is something to be admired. Place your hand in the waters.”

  The Girl did this.

  “Now ask your question.”

  “My question is about the future. I simply want to know what is to become of me. Why am I here in this place, and why can’t I join in the fun like everybody else? Why do I feel it is so important to be Myself, when it only causes me pain? Why can’t I make friends and be loved? It seems to me there is something wrong with the world when the whole purpose of existence is to pleasure yourself until you’re sick. Surely there’s something else!”