The Celestial Steam Locomotive (The Song of Earth)

by Coney, Michael G.

  The rock face was glassy smooth too, as Zozula observed when he squeezed through the crevice after the dog. Now an incredible scene opened up before him.

  And sitting nearby was a familiar figure.

  The math creature’s mind was a curious thing. It had developed in a vacuum, where it had extrapolated on the barest minimum of data. The creature had been able to assimilate his own shape, although at first his spatial perception was so undeveloped that he was unable to perceive it as a shape. It was simply a succession of lines—routes over which he could run his sensory extensions.

  Other shapes intruded. There was the hard Underneath, there were the occasional softnesses of beings that had a superficial linear resemblance to himself, and there were Things. These were small, purposeless shapes placed within his range by other beings. Then there was Food, and the Opposite of Food, both accompanied by Sensations.

  Simple mathematics had occurred to him two years after his creation. He’d constructed symbols in his mind and woven them together, and gradually discovered a satisfaction even greater than Food. Algebra followed naturally, but as he built supposition on supposition, a nagging feeling of incompleteness began to obsess him. In some way, it seemed, he ought to be able to relate this mental toy to his special situation. Initially, that might seem terribly complex, but it could be reduced into order by making a few simple assumptions. As he thought, he ran his sensory extension absently along the edge of one of his Things—and suddenly the assumption was right there.

  He assumed the existence of a straight line. He assumed points and angles, circles and trapeziums. Then, with an effort, he assumed infinity—just for the purpose of the exercise. Not because it really was. Such assumptions were easy—to an imaginative mind already three years old that had nothing else to think about...

  Picture, now, the creature after fifteen standard years of development, his mind an intricate structure of mathematical concepts. He sat in the middle of these concepts, juggling them as he saw fit, pushing out the boundaries of new knowledge when he felt like it, always totally in control, always obeying his rigid logic. Picture a mathematical version of the imaginings of the delta’s Lazy Children.

  Picture within that inhuman body the greatest mathematical genius the world has ever known or ever will know. Picture, if you can, a knowledge exceeding even that of the Rainbow—at least in this one so very logical subject.

  Then picture, after a period of strange and uncomfortable physical experiences, the collapse.

  His work that day has no name. It dealt with a realm of pure mathematics so exalted that no words will ever be found to describe it. Theorems were propounded, demonstrated and proved, and the creature’s heart was beating fast and painfully with the excitement of it. Another Truth was within his grasp. It was coming—as it always did—that moment of revelation. It was...

  It was an extraordinary shining Thing, moving and shapeless, which tumbled his theorems and notions like atoms into confusion. It terrified the creature with its insistence and permanence. It stood there among the ruins of his mathematics. It was possessed of qualities he’d never dreamed of, qualities he couldn’t even name. It stood apart, without having to be felt, with an existence of its own, which made nonsense of everything.

  It... hated him.

  The creature writhed and grunted, his sensory extensions exploring himself and the limits of physicality around him, but he could find no explanation there, either. The shining Thing was, yet it was not. Where was it?

  It was totally illogical, and—the worst part—it was bent on destroying him. He could not escape; he was trapped within his own mind.

  The Thing moved!

  His physical self was gone, snatched away from him!

  Now he had no sensory appendages, no Food, no Opposite of Food, no Underneath, nothing.

  He knew the depths of fear...

  Time passed and nothing further happened. The Thing seemed to have gone and the creature peered out nervously from underneath himself. Nothing bad happened. Tentatively, the math creature began to impress his logic on the landscape. He glided across a plain of utter featurelessness, toward perfectly triangular mountains. He passed through them as though they were composed of mist.

  The sun was a brilliant faceted ruby in a sky devoid of clouds. The horizon, where there were no mountains, was ruler-straight.

  The math creature moved through a flat world that grew more geometric with each thought. Soon right-angled mountains appeared and two-dimensional extensions projected from them for use in future theorems. Meanwhile, the sky had become multi-dimensional and the ruby sun glittered from all conceivable angles, repeating itself into infinity.

  And the world around him obeyed his thoughts because it was that kind of world, within the Rainbow and close to Dream Earth.

  Finally, from memory, he recreated himself.

  Zozula stood still for a long time, gazing with tears in his eyes at the creature. It looked so lost, so lonely in all this savage jaggedness, a sad little lump of soft flesh banished by the Rainbow because it was too clever.

  “My master!” cried the dog in delight and trotted forward and began to lick the creature. The creature flapped at it in a gesture that obviously intended affection.

  Zozula walked up to the creature, swallowed and said gently, “Come on, Mole. I’m going to take you home.”

  The Mole, unhearing, patted the dog.

  The Rainbow did not relinquish the Mole easily.

  Zozula explained to the dog, and the dog spoke into the mind of the Mole. And the Mole contracted and became a small irregular crystal-thing that Zozula was able to pick up. The mountains swayed and the ground heaved.

  Zozula and the Mole were blown into the Greataway like a wisp of thistledown.

  Zozula screamed, but the sound never left his mouth. He kicked, but there were forces infinitely greater than his at work. His mind was assailed by a series of emotions from some source outside himself: rage, hatred, jealousy. He was snatched this way and that, as though in a maelstrom, while his joints creaked and huge blows buffeted him.

  On a few happentracks he died and his body materialized at the feet of the Reasoner beside the Do-Portal.

  On many happentracks he lived for millennia, his brain cells being absorbed into a tired memory bank, his flesh lending substance to Bigwishes; but he never saw the Outside again.

  On just three happentracks he was ejected forcibly onto the floor of the Rainbow Room, bruised, breathless and terrified, and was violently sick at the feet of Selena, who had been trying to operate the console. In his memory was the echo of the dog’s cry, I’m real! I’m real! but the dog was not beside him any longer.

  These last three inauspicious happentracks were the ones that, in the Ifalong, encompassed the Quest of Manuel, the Battle with the Bale Wolves, and the Release of Starquin...

  The Bearback Riders

  They had been riding for hours. Their leader was a giant dressed in robes of fur with many tails that streamed in the wind. Dark and bearded he was, and his teeth showed whitely in a fierce grin of anticipation. His eyes were the blue of the Viking and on his head he wore a brazen helmet. His right hand clutched the handle of a flail, and his left was dug deeply into the shaggy coat of his mount.

  His mount was a huge bear. Brown and bounding, larger than any bear of Early Earth, it covered the ground in great leaps, scaling rises and loose ground with a surefootedness no horse could match.

  The followers were similarly mounted and clad, ten of them, and they uttered yells of excitement as they rode. They were the Bjorn-serkrs.

  Now they entered a region of quiet grassland and woods, and their yelling shattered the stillness. Birds left the trees in flocks and rocketed from under the feet of their mounts. Other animals watched nervously from the cover of the woods, sensing the purpose of this mad gallop and wondering in their dim animal way who the quarry was.

  The quarry was a girl.

  Mounted on an eland, laid
across its back and clutching its horns, she went like the wind, the grass hissing under flying hooves. She wore a pale green robe that, like those of the hunters, billowed behind her and lent her an ethereal air as she flitted among the trees. As she rode, she wept, and the wind whipped the tears from her cheeks. She wept in elementary fear, while the hunters yelled in elementary anticipation.

  And that was the way they rode, mindlessly, across the grassland and through the forest.

  Manuel was never able to work out what happened that night in the Land of Lost Dreams. All he knew was that when he awakened, the scenery was different and the Girl, the dog and Zozula were gone. After his initial fright, his natural resilience took over and he began to enjoy the adventure and to assume he was back on real Earth. It was good to be able to make his own decisions again.

  He walked in a place of great beauty—a place even more beautiful than Pu’este. It was warm and the afternoon sun slanted through the leaves of the elm trees and lighted the branches of gnarled oaks. The ground was carpeted with short grass and small wildflowers, blue and violet. He sat beside a lake where bright dragonflies hovered and a small furry animal was drinking without fear.

  The beautiful place seemed to be holding its breath, waiting.

  A youth slipped into this picture. He strolled from behind a tree with his hands in his pockets, whistling. He was dressed in a green tunic and brown pants and wore a hat with a partridge’s tailfeather in it. When he saw Manuel, his whistling stopped in mid-phrase.

  “Who are you?” he called.

  “Manuel. Who are you?”

  “John O’Greenwood. I live here. You don’t.” But there was no challenge intended. He sat down, picked a stem of ryegrass to suck on and regarded Manuel inquisitively. “You’re a funny-looking fellow, I must say. You have a chest like a Cornish wrestler, yet your arms are skinny. Well? Have you lost your tongue?”

  Manuel said carefully, “Is it the custom of this place to trade insults?”

  “Custom? No—it’s just my way. I’m an outspoken fellow, don’t you know? People get used to me in time. You’ll get used to me, I’m sure.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to get used to you.” It had been so peaceful here before this spry fool showed up.

  Now the youth unslung a lute and struck a few soft chords. Without looking at Manuel, he sang a quiet song with a strange, limping rhythm:

  When first my lover came to me she wore a dress of green.

  The next time she was clad in white, in Avalayn's demesne

  He went on for a long time, telling the tale of a search for a lost lover, while Manuel forgot his irritation under the influence of the insistent chords and the plaintive, simple lyrics. When John O’Greenwood was finished and the last words had fled across the lake and melted into the trees, Manuel asked, “What’s that song?”

  “It’s just a song. A song of Earth. It said something to you, did it? That’s the way with songs, and this song in particular. That’s maybe why I’m better at singing than talking.”

  “The song ended without saying whether you found the girl.”

  “The finding doesn’t matter. The searching is the thing. Some things are better not found. I know of people who have everything they could possibly want, everything they could wish for. And would you believe that everything is not enough? So they have this mythical place called Avalayna, and they search for it—because it’s the perfect place where everything is as wonderful as it possibly could be. They search for this perfect place even though they know they’re not going to find it—or maybe because they’re not going to find it.”

  “I want to find somebody,” said Manuel stubbornly. “The search is taking too long.”

  “Finding can be a lot worse than searching.”

  “Not in this case it won’t.”

  “Ah!” John O’Greenwood regarded him quizzically. “Another lovesick fellow, eh? Well...” And now he stood, shrugging his shoulders into the strap of his lute. “You should be here, not me.”

  With this puzzling statement he disappeared among the trees.

  Manuel stood staring into the waters of the lake, where some quirk of reflection made him appear slim, like John O’Greenwood. He was thinking of the Girl and how she’d seen her reflection for the first time in the axolotl pool, and how she’d cried. It seemed a long time ago. He wondered where she was and what she was doing.

  Again, the forest seemed to be waiting.

  Now, filtering through the trees from a long way off, came the sound of shouting.

  Manuel heard. A queer excitement ran through him.

  There was death in the shouting, and recklessness. It was the kind of shout that men give when their senses have left them. It was a shout that went right back to the early Paragonic era, when men were little more than apes and the legendary Union had not taken place, when they hunted capybara with sticks and stones and yells. The sounds were that primitive.

  Now Manuel heard hooves drumming.

  A flash of pale green caught his eye, a half-seen movement among the farthermost trees. The hooves drew closer and Manuel saw the thing again: a large animal, running fast with something on its back. Then the creature swerved and emerged from the trees, heading straight across the clearing toward the lake.

  It was a huge antelope with a girl clutching its horns, a girl dressed in green, her robe floating like a cloud. The beast’s eye showed the white of terror as it plunged toward the water and, reaching the edge, leaped.

  Manuel was staring at the girl.

  The eland hit the surface and spray fountained from its forelegs. The girl lost her grip and flew on, striking the water a couple of meters beyond the animal and disappearing. The eland swam on.

  Manuel dived in. A paleness swirled past him and he grabbed, drew it to him and found something soft and struggling in his arms. Kicking his way to the surface, he swam to the bank, crawled ashore and dragged the girl after him. She was coughing weakly. The dress clung to her, but now it was white, and the girl was slender and dreamlike; a thrill ran through Manuel’s body. She lay face down, coughing water. Her hair was fair even when wet and matted. He didn’t dare turn her over.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, and the words seemed dull, as words always would on an occasion such as this.

  “I... I... I think so.” She spoke into the grass, and Manuel’s mind was racing.

  She turned over and looked up at him.

  Her eyes were blue and her mouth sad, and the robe stuck to her like wet seaweed, outlining her shoulders and breasts, emphasizing the slender waist and full hips. Manuel thought wildly: With those eyes and that hair she’s an inappropriate sea-child...

  “Belinda,” he whispered.

  “Is it really you, Manuel?”

  “How... How did you... ? Where... ?”

  She touched his lips with her fingers. “Don’t ask questions.”

  He kissed her. Her lips were warm and wet. His arms were around her, lifting her from the ground and hugging her to him. Her body was warm despite her wet clothing, with a warmth that seemed to consume him. For a long moment of wonder they kissed—and then the mad yelling drew nearer, and shouts of discovery.

  They sat up, gasping from the length of the kiss.

  A group of nightmare riders milled about the clearing on padding mounts, gesticulating and pointing. The leader rode up to Manuel. The bear stopped, its muzzle a meter from Manuel’s face, so close that he could smell the fishy stink of its breath. The man hauled at the bear’s shaggy neck so that the brute reared up, and from this eminence he addressed Manuel.

  “Who the devil are you?”

  Manuel would have run long before this if Belinda hadn’t been there. Now he held his ground, staring up. “Manuel,” he said, as it seemed he had introduced himself many times before; but this time the name came out as if it really meant something—almost as if he had said, “Starquin.” For an instant Manuel wondered at the power of his own name.

  The Bjorn-serk
r felt it too. He blinked.

  One of his followers shouted, “He’s not the Rescuer!”

  “He’ll do.” The Bjorn-serkr raised his flail—a handle connected by a thong to a knobby chunk of oak—and whistled it down in the general direction of Manuel’s head. “Out of my way, fool! Give me the girl!”

  “No.” As the oak descended for the second time, Manuel grabbed it and hung on and was lifted from the ground by the power of the rider’s arm. He swung against the bear’s flank, snatched at the fur and then got an arm around the man’s waist.

  “What are you doing?” The voice was incredulous. Laughter came from the other Bjorn-serkrs. Off balance, the rider tumbled from his mount, Manuel falling with him but making sure he landed on top. Manuel still had hold of the hardwood and the handle swung free. He crashed it down on the man’s temple.

  Apparently unhurt, the Bjorn-serkr said mildly, “I wish you’d go away.” Then abruptly losing his temper as the laughter from the onlookers continued, he flung Manuel from him, rose and kicked him in the ribs. Manuel rolled with the kick. The man reached for Belinda, roaring. She shrank away, trying to get to Manuel. Manuel jumped up. The man’s back was toward him. He swung the flail again but mistimed his blow as the other made a grab for Belinda. The thong caught the man on the side of the neck, and the handle whirled around his throat and locked against a protuberance on the oak. With his neck encircled, the man staggered away, gurgling and plucking as the flail threatened to garrote him.

  Manuel went to Belinda and put an arm around her waist. He felt omnipotent. The other riders were staring at him. The leader, wrenching the fail away from his neck, charged over to his bear and mounted, muttering.