The Celestial Steam Locomotive (The Song of Earth)

by Coney, Michael G.

  The other Cuidadors had retired for the night, all except Zozula, haggard and grief-stricken, sitting at the console and searching endlessly, filling the Rainbow Room with battling dragons, hurricanes, floating islands, Bale Wolves, convivial scenes in spacebars, lovemaking in zero gravity. Everything became green again, quite suddenly, as though the sight of all this artificial pleasure made the organic constituents of the Rainbow feel nauseated.

  And every so often the images shifted, showing quick flashes of Reality: the interior of the Dome, the jungle, the ocean. Bits of the past were plucked from real history: a primitive execution. Happentracks of the Ifalong were displayed in a frightening nova. As though the Rainbow—that Earth-girdling, linked, organic-mechanical-electronic repository of human knowledge and intelligence—were going crazy.

  “I have to find her,” whispered Zozula to himself. “Eulalie said... Eulalie...” He pressed his lips together.

  Juni’s voice came from behind, startling him. “Much more of this and the mind of every blubber will be wiped clean. And then where would we be?”

  “Somebody will have to go in through the Do-Portal,” said Zozula.

  “Go in and do what?”

  “There are... creatures in there. Half-human, half-Rainbow. They may know what the trouble is. We can ask them, at least. I’m not getting anywhere with this console.”

  “Well, I’m not going in there.”

  A door opened and Brutus appeared, effortlessly wheeling a big metal container hung about with life-support systems. As if this were a signal, a huge replica of him appeared in the middle of the Rainbow Room, peering this way and that from under heavy brows while he worked with strong and nimble fingers, whittling a stick. An angry red wash swilled over this scene from another happentrack. The real Brutus stopped in his tracks, watching the scene with alarm.

  “Maybe we should send Brutus in there,” said Zozula. “The Rainbow seems to have some kind of empathy with him.”

  “Not Brutus. Not a Specialist,” said Juni.

  “Why not?” He looked at her in surprise.

  “It’s not... appropriate.”

  “Well, he’s Selena’s assistant, after all. She says he has an amazing ability with programs that she herself had found unintelligible.”

  The Rainbow suddenly tolled, a deep bell-like reverberation. There was a gibber of accelerated sound. The Brutus-image was dancing about like a performing animal. “Who else can we send in?” shouted Zozula above the din. “Do you want us to call a meeting of Cuidadors and discuss it? You know what that means.”

  “Zo—I don’t care what else you do, but you can’t use a Specialist for this job. Not this particular job, you understand me?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Juni made a small gesture of impatience, glancing at Brutus, who had drawn closer, mesmerized by his own image. She said quietly, “The blubbers are True Humans, Zo. Or they will be, once we get the genetic program sorted out. Their minds, their thoughts in the Rainbow—they’re True Human minds.”

  “I know that, for God’s sake.”

  “Well, do I have to spell it out for you? I’m not letting any Specialist get in behind there and have the chance to meddle around with the lives and minds of ten thousand True Humans!”

  “But Brutus? He’s just a gorilla-man.”

  “Exactly!”

  “You’re talking nonsense, Juni.”

  “No. You’re living in a world just as unreal as the blubbers’ dreams, that’s the truth of it! Listen to me, Zo. The Specialists envy us and resent us. We clothe them, we feed them, we command them—at one time we made them. They may seem subservient, they may obey us, but always remember that some of them were bred with qualities that made them almost... superhuman. Remember Captain Spring!”

  Zozula laughed outright. “Captain Spring is just a legend!”

  “She was real, and in many ways she was better than True Humans. The resentment of the Specialists has been building for millennia, Zo. Don’t you understand, they hate us! And you want to turn Brutus loose among thousands of helpless True Humans? He’d wipe out the whole lot! He’d erase them!”

  She stormed out and Zozula stared after her in dismay. She was quite capable of routing the Cuidadors out of bed and calling for a vote of no confidence. He turned to Brutus.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Her tongue runs away with her sometimes.”

  Brutus’s deep eyes were unfathomable. In his low, slow voice he said, “Just tell me to go through the Do-Portal and I’ll do it.”

  Zozula was silent.

  The Brutus-image disappeared, to be replaced by something equally strange. The red wash had faded and the distant ceiling of the room had become a pale blue.

  There was a city of tall pink buildings with lofty walkways between and wheeled vehicles below. People of True Human appearance walked about. There was a spaceport, and a broad river that looked familiar...

  Zozula sighed. This was not Dream Earth, but it was no more real. It was a historical scene, probably. He guessed it to have been around the Age of Resurgence—the 80th millennium. Checking his guess, he requested a date. The Rainbow told him: 143,624 Cyclic.

  That was the present day!

  The angle of vision changed as though the observer had stepped back, and now the surrounding landscape could be seen. Zozula grunted. He had recognized the delta north of the Dome—in fact, as he watched, the Dome itself came into view, along with the village of Pu’este, looking as it did now.

  Was this real, or was the Rainbow creating anachronisms? Storing the information away in his mind, Zozula requested Dream Earth.

  A clear image appeared. In a ballroom there was a party, people laughing, dancing and drinking, and blue rain falling.

  Zozula passed a hand over his brow and attributed a momentary dizziness to simple exhaustion. It had been a long time since he’d slept, and the memory of Eulalie was still strong, so that in his tiredness he kept getting little hallucinations, seeing her face suddenly or hearing her speak a fragment of a sentence. So when he heard the soft voice behind him—“Zozula”—he swung round with a sudden wild, irrational hope.

  But it was an old woman dressed in a black cloak.

  “How did you get in here?”

  “It’s of no importance.” Her eyes were pitiless and Zozula suddenly shivered. There was total calculation and knowledge in the way she looked at him—and there was no sympathy. “I believe you seek a girl who is lost in your machine.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I know everything, Zozula.” She stepped forward and stood beside him, and it seemed as if she brought a cold wind with her. She placed a hand on the console and the colors of the Rainbow faded. One face appeared: that of a young blonde woman, smiling, looking up. Then the background filled in: a shower of balloons, a crowd of people jumping up and down, batting the balloons to one another and spilling drinks. Now sounds of laughter came, and delighted screams and sharp reports as the balloons burst.

  “She,” said Shenshi. “She is the one.”

  “No,” said Zozula. “That’s a Marilyn. The girl we’re looking for is Herself. And I’d be glad if you didn’t interfere with—”

  “She is the one. You may reincorporate her. She is the girl who will be called Elizabeth in time to come. She has been chosen by a chance of happentracks, as have you. You, she and a young man named Manuel will form the Triad. You will remove the Hate Bombs and free Starquin from his Ten Thousand Years’ Incarceration.”

  Gazing into her face, hypnotized, Zozula said, “I... don’t know...”

  “Follow your happentrack, Zozula.” The dark eyes seemed to contain Universal knowledge. Shenshi looked at him steadily for a moment, then left.

  Zozula blinked. Something momentous had just happened, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember quite what it was. There was an image of a girl in the Rainbow Room, a beautiful girl with fair hair. Obviously she was the girl Eulalie had trained. Leaning forw
ard, he stroked the tactile surfaces in an ancient pattern, his fingers fumbling because he’d never issued this particular instruction before. Like a child learning to write, he murmured to himself:

  Reincorporate...

  Zozula opened an ancient panel stiff with dust and noted the position of a winking blue light. Then he took an elevator to the appropriate level. His heart was pounding. He summoned two Specialists to his side—raccoonwomen, dedicated nurses—and asked them to make up a stretcher. They followed him as the walkway bore them past endless shelves of barely living beings. The smell was indescribable: a sweet, deathly stink of antiseptic and human wastes. Here and there nurses scurried, watching viewscreens, making minute adjustments to valves and drips, sponging down their fleshy patients.

  I wonder what the nurses think of them, Zozula speculated. He stole a glance at the raccoon-girls riding the walkway with him, neat and pretty with bright eyes, ready smiles, trim figures... And he thought of Brutus, tirelessly working to reproduce the True Human form, without success. We count them as our inferiors, thought Zozula, yet they spend their lives working to preserve the helpless and mindless remains of the True Human race. Can’t Juni see that counts for something?

  And one of the nurses grinned at him and gave him a wink of joyful sexuality.

  Maybe I’ve lived too long, thought Zozula, smiling back despite himself. As time goes by I seem to accumulate dilemmas like warts.

  They arrived at their destination, which was indicated by a blinking blue light and a crowd of excited nurses. A small man—indistinguishable from a True Human except for a dark nevus covering the upper part of his face—was obviously relieved to see him.

  “Thank Whirst you’ve come, Zozula. I’ve never seen anything like this before. This patient suddenly began to show the most peculiar symptoms... We had to restrain her—I’m sorry. And the blue light keeps flashing. Why does it flash?” He asked in bewilderment. He’d never seen this happen before, neither had his ancestors ever described it. It simply never happened.

  “I’ve reincorporated this patient,” Zozula explained.

  There was a murmur of excitement. “Has a True Human been bred?” somebody asked.

  They were pleased at the possibility. They wanted it to happen.

  “I’m afraid not. We have no replacement for Eulalie except...” He regarded the neotenite, which was now twitching, its eyelids flickering.

  “Poor girl,” said a nurse.

  “Wake her very slowly,” said Zozula.

  In the morning Zozula called on Lord Shout, whose quarters were situated in a remote area of the Dome and at a great height. As he entered, he was alarmed at the strange quality of the light: yellowish, with hard shadows.

  Then he became aware of the vast panorama spread before him, a dizzying

  view of mountains, valleys, tiny villages and, blue and hazy, the ocean.

  “What... ?” He sat down quickly and closed his eyes.

  “I sent two of my tribesmen up the ladders and they cleaned off the crystal,” Lord Shout explained. “I hope you don’t mind. They didn’t like the job much, I can tell you. It’s almost two kilometers up, and the winds are strong out there, so they tell me.”

  “It certainly looks... different.”

  “It was always meant to be that way, you know. It’s just like an ordinary window that got dirty over the years.”

  Zozula opened his eyes carefully. “It’s the height. There’s so... so much out there. I’ve only seen Outside from ground level before. Did you have to open up all that?”

  “It’s the way I think,” said Lord Shout simply. “I think Outside, you think Inside.” He glanced at the creature in the corner. “I wonder how the Mole thinks.”

  Zozula said carefully, “I don’t want to get your hopes up too high, but we have a vacant bed coming up. I’ve reincorporated a neotenite. I’d like the Mole to take her place.”

  “But you said Dream Earth might drive him mad!”

  “The decision is yours, of course. It’s a chance you’ll have to take. But ask yourself—what’s the alternative?” He nodded toward the Mole, who was unusually active today. Grimaces furrowed his face and then were gone. Odd croaks and hoots escaped him. His appendages pattered against the floor.

  The decision was quickly made. “It’s very kind of you to go to all this trouble,” said Lord Shout.

  “I have other motives. I think the Mole may have developed in an unusual way. With only logic to guide him, his mind could be a thing of purity and perfection, which would help us tone down some of those ridiculous excesses of Dream Earth. And there’s another thing...”

  He paused so long that Lord Shout said, “Yes?”

  “He might be able to help us to a better understanding of how the Rainbow works and find us some of those old genetic research programs... Somewhere in there is the answer to the neoteny problem. Somewhere, the Rainbow is storing the recipe for True Humans.”

  “Aren’t you placing too much emphasis on physical appearance?”

  “Yes, I am. I’ve often thought about that. But it’s my duty, after all. It’s why I’m a Cuidador. It’s part of my job to preserve the True Human form, so what else can I do?”

  There was a faint buzz at the door and a nurse came in, bright and pretty. She gave Lord Shout a special smile, then went to attend to the Mole’s needs.

  After she’d gone, Lord Shout said, “She’s a Specialist, that nurse. A raccoon-girl. Her name is Felicia, and I slept with her last night. She’s loving and intelligent.” He awaited Zozula’s comment.

  After a while, the Keeper said quietly, “But she won’t bear your child. Whatever you say, however you feel about her, however often you do it, she’s a different species. And that’s our tragedy.”

  The Martyrdom of Raccoona Three

  Polysitians, Paragons, Wild Humans, True Humans, neotenites, Dream People... It is difficult to conceive the sheer diversity of human species and varieties developed over the course of history—particularly in such a time as now, when so many of those varieties have become extinct. There was the First Species: the union of ape and Paragon known as Original Man. Then there was the Second Species, in three varieties: True Humans, Wild Humans, adapted to oxygen-deficient air, Polysitians, adapted to oxygen-rich air. And the Third Species, the Specialists, in countless varieties. Next there was the Fourth Species, in two varieties, the first of which was the neotenites. This is neither the time nor place to discuss the second of those varieties, for The Song of Earth must retain some mystery. And finally there was the Fifth Species, which Manuel and Zozula knew as the Quicklies. These were the forms of Man.

  Of all these forms, the most diverse was the Specialists. There is a famous story that tells of their beginnings, during the period known as the Renaissance Years. The events told in the story took place in the year 91,137 Cyclic, when Space exploration was in a temporary eclipse. Mankind, for a while, and not for the first time, had turned in on himself. The Renaissance Years were the years of artistic experimentation, of the great playwrights and poets, actors and moodmen. The theaters and opera houses were full again, the city streets sprouted statues, and living murals decorated the walls. New programs were fed into the Rainbow, and the Dream People dreamed fresh and beautiful dreams before they returned to their bodies, because neoteny had not claimed them yet. Composers and emotes gathered in asqui rooms and talked and sang while day and night went by unnoticed. It is said that the roots of The Song of Earth sprang from this age. It was a good era to live in, an age of wealth and idleness, of freedom from danger. High Space was dead, but there was plenty happening on Earth.

  Into this age the Specialists were born...

  They were hardly noticed at first. Men quoted verse, and women fashioned pottery glazed with timeslip, giving a magical luster. And the darling of the footlights was La Rialta of the thunderous voice and incredible range. La Rialta... The name stirs a million memories in the Rainbow. La Rialta... The ultimate in womanhood, a g
reat, lovely, sexual creature who sang like an angel—or like the Devil, if the role demanded. La Rialta, who in her later years ran to fat, so that she dominated the stage like a mountain, mocking her suitors, who scurried around her like rodents with their tiny voices and puny frames. La Rialta, symbol of an age of opulence and art.

  But somebody had to do the work behind the scenes.

  Around this time Mankind was in the midst of its love affair with the kikihuahuas, those space-going genetic engineers who had progressed far beyond the use of machinery. And there was a lesson to be learned from the kikihuahuas.

  The lesson was put to practical use by one Mordecai N. Whirst, a dour and seemingly emotionless individual from Scotia. Using principles known for millennia, coupled with no small measure of courage, he proceeded to alter the make-up of human cells, replacing certain genes with genes selected from animal stock. There is no way of making that statement without being aware that it would have shocked and horrified almost every human born before that date, and quite a number thereafter.

  But people soon got used to the datachimps, who pounded untiringly at computer keyboards with nimble fingers, great accuracy and little imagination.

  Physical courage, patience, quick reactions and many other qualities became available in the laboratories. The kikihuahuas had used the techniques for thousands of years, so why shouldn’t humans? The newcomers were called Specialists, in recognition of their special abilities and the special tasks they were expected to perform. They took over quite a lot of work from the aging machines. Specialists prepared food, piloted solar shuttles, stood guard outside restricted areas. A Specialist was appointed file clerk to the world premier.

  And a Specialist murdered La Rialta.

  Raccoona Three did not have the looks that humans of her era could sympathize with. Humans—although they did not know it—were beginning to evolve from the Second to the Fourth Species. Their cheeks were plump, their faces broad, their heads relatively big, and they liked it that way.