The Steam-Driven Boy

by Sladek, John

  ‘YIOU HIAVIE NIOTHIINGI TIO LIOSIE BIUTI YIOURI GIAINISI!’

  In the background was a curbing. The flame must have been in the middle of some street.

  ‘ERO KFOITR GHKEEN IRW TOS!’

  Very near the flame was a kind of box.

  ‘INTABIL UNHABIL UNEAEBAL UNHABIL INUABLAL UNMABIL IJNAABAL INNABEBIL UNCABIL INOABAL INNABIL UNDABIL UNIABAL INTABIL UNIABAL INOABAL INNABEBIL UNIABAL INSABEBIL UNAABAL UNBABIL INOABAL UNMABIL UNIABAL INNABIL UNAABAL UNBABIL UNLABIL UNEABAL!’

  The monkey looked in a way human, but small and dark.

  ‘HE CUAE IONDTION AN TBOMABLS!’

  He wondered if his entire, spectacular life had been leading up to this – to die in a waiting-room, leafing through an irritating magazine.

  ‘TH HMN CNDTN S BMNBL!’

  Or if this waiting itself were a part of the test.

  ‘HET MUNAH NOCDTINOI SI BONIMAABEL!’

  Anyway, if this was the kind of thing they were filling their magazines with these days – pictures of a monkey which had somehow escaped from its box and caught fire – he was more than happy to remain a busy and ignorant executive with no time to read!

  ‘I BOMB CONDUIT NOISE-NAIL – HAM THEN!’

  This headline looked almost English, but it made no more sense than the others. What, for instance, was a ‘noise-nail’ supposed to be?

  ‘THEROE HEROUMEROAN CEROONERODEROITIEROON ISERO ABEROOMEROINEROABEROLEROE!’

  He threw the magazine down in disgust, just as the four examiners walked into the room.

  They introduced themselves as Stone, Brown, White and another whose name G. did not catch. The four looked so much alike, wearing identical drab suits and regimental ties, that G. was never quite sure which one was speaking to him.

  ‘You have three tests to take,’ one said. ‘Naturally you may fail the first two, but the third is as we say ultra-important. If you fail that you’ve had it. All clear?’

  G. nodded. ‘When do I start?’

  ‘Right away. We’ll take you to the Test Centre.’

  Outside there was just one winding, dusty road leading past the Reception Hall. Not far away stood a series of red signs with white lettering. G. could just make out the first two:

  ‘BEARDS GROW QUICKLY

  IN THE GRAVE’

  He hoped to read the rest, but the examiners led him off in the opposite direction.

  Now that he had a chance to look at them, G. saw the four were also similar in feature and physique. They were heavy, thick-waisted men, with flat noses and facial scars, and the twisted tissue made them seem to smile ironically, the way an old boxer smiles as he holds the bucket for a young boxer to spit in. It was with this cynical smile that one of them pointed at a distant spire. ‘I’m hungry,’ he said.

  They began to climb along a ridge, and G.’s attention was caught by a small lake far below. It was almost covered with what looked like low-flying clouds or enormous suds.

  At the sharpest part of the curve, they saw a break in the white guard rail. A vehicle lay on the hillside below them, overturned and in flames. G. stopped for a moment to look, then hurried to catch up with the others.

  ‘Shouldn’t we do something?’ he asked.

  ‘Too late!’ shouted the first examiner, turning a neat hand-spring.

  ‘Happens all the time!’ bellowed the second, flinging himself into a triplet of somersaults.

  The third ripped off his belt and began skipping rope without breaking his stride. ‘They never learn!’ he screamed.

  ‘What do they think a guard rail is for, anyway – decoration?’ boomed the last, leaping into the air to do a lightning-fast entrechat.

  While wondering at his companions’ lack of compassion, G. was no grumbler; he plodded on. Presently one of them shouted, ‘There’s the Test Centre!’

  The others grinned at one another, and one of them, nudging G., said, ‘Isn’t the air beautiful?’

  It did seem a question, and G. was too busy looking over the Test Centre to try framing an answer.

  The Test Centre, as far as he could see, looked exactly like the Reception Hall. Its thick, concrete-block walls were windowless. A single elm obscured most of the large sign painted on one side wall: ‘… E! THIS MEANS YOU!’

  As they approached the glass doors, a beggar accosted them. His smile, as he held out a fasces of pencils, was even more scar-twisted and cynical than those of the examiners. His suit, too, was a frayed copy of theirs, and around his shirtless throat was an oily regimental tie.

  ‘Pencils, boss?’

  One of the examiners hit him hard, in the mouth and stomach, then moved courteously to open the door for G.

  ‘That’s the kind of thing we came along to protect you from,’ he said. G. raised his eyebrows, but could think of no reply. For just a second, he longed to be once more in his own cool corridors, among the clean young systems analysts.

  The examiners showed him to a soundproof cubicle and explained the three tests:

  ‘You just type your answers on that there keyboard, see?’

  ‘And the computer asks you more questions.’

  ‘The first two tests are a kind of warmup …’

  ‘… then the computer gives you the real battle problem.’

  ‘Good luck, now.’

  They left him alone with the computer typewriter, which at once asked him the first question:

  ‘C GAVE B AS MANY TIMES AS MANY APPLES AS A HAD AS B NOW GIVES C OF HIS OWN APPLES. C GAVE A ENOUGH APPLES TO MAKE A’S TOTAL 5 TIMES WHAT B ORIGINALLY HAD. WHEN C HAD EATEN ENOUGH OF HIS OWN APPLES TO LEAVE HIM 2/3 OF WHAT A NOW HAS, HE HAD LOST ALTOGETHER 4 TIMES AS MANY APPLES AS HE GAVE A. A NOW GIVES C 1/7 OF HIS APPLES, AND C BUYS AS MANY MORE AS HE GAVE B, THUS DOUBLING HIS TOTAL SUPPLY. A WILL GIVE B 1 MORE APPLE THAN C WILL GIVE B. IF B EATS 2 APPLES, HE WILL THEN HAVE 5 TIMES AS MANY APPLES AS A NOW GIVES HIM. A WILL FINALLY HAVE 1 LESS APPLE THAN C NOW HAS, AND C WILL FINALLY HAVE 1/2 AS MANY APPLES AS HE HAD ORIGINALLY. B NOW HAS 1/2 AS MANY APPLES AS C HAD AFTER HE GAVE B AS MANY APPLES AS A WILL GIVE B. C NOW HAS 4 TIMES AS MANY APPLES AS THERE ARE MONTHS REMAINING IN THE YEAR. WHAT MONTH IS IT?’

  G. answered or failed to answer, and the second question came:

  ‘ASSUMING THEM TO BE “SUSPENSIONS” OF ONE ART MEDIUM IN ANOTHER, LIST THE FOLLOWING SIX WORKS IN ORDER OF IMPORTANCE, CATEGORIZING THEM BY DEGREE OF SUSPENSION, AND DISCUSSING THE TYPE OF SUSPENSION, WHETHER ANALOGICALLY COLLIDAL OR OTHERWISE, HOW MUCH OF EACH MEDIUM HAS GONE INTO SUSPENSION, ETC.

  ‘1. O. FLAKE, “DER ZELTWEG”

  ‘2. J. ASHBY, “DESIGN FOR A BRAIN”

  ‘3. CLYDE OHIO, “EXTENSION”

  ‘4. R. MUTT, “FOUNTAIN”

  ‘5. J. C. ODEON, “O”

  ‘6. L. POSTMAN AND R. D. WALK, “PERCEPTION OF ERROR”’

  When G. had made an attempt at answering this, there came a third:

  ‘A PRIEST AND THREE NUNS ARE SHIPWRECKED ON A DESERT ISLAND WITH NO HOPE OF RESCUE. FOOD IS RUNNING LOW, AND UNTIL THEY CAN RAISE SOME CROPS, THERE IS SERIOUS DANGER OF STARVATION. IN AN ACCIDENT, THE PRIEST LOSES BOTH ARMS. HE IS BARELY SAVED, BUT A DILEMMA ARISES: WHETHER OR NOT THE FOUR MAY EAT HIS SEVERED ARMS, INCLUDING OR EXCLUDING THE CONSECRATED FOREFINGERS AND THUMBS.

  ‘WITHOUT HIS HELP, FARMING GOES SLOWLY. IT IS CLEAR THAT IN A FEW YEARS THEY MAY ALL STARVE TO DEATH, UNLESS THEY BREAK THEIR VOWS OF CHASTITY AND PROCREATE.

  ‘THE PRIEST HAS A DREAM IN WHICH WHAT HE SUPPOSES TO BE AN ANGELIC MESSENGER APPEARS, BATTERED AND BLOODSTAINED, TO INFORM HIM THAT THE DEVIL HAS TEMPORARILY TAKEN CONTROL OF HEAVEN AND REIGNS SUPREME. WHOEVER DOES NOT IMMEDIATELY RENDER WORSHIP TO SATAN WILL BE CAST INTO HELL. “IT IS ONLY TEMPORARY,” THE ANGEL STRESSES. “I’M SURE THE LORD HAD SOME REASON FOR ALLOWING THIS TO TAKE PLACE.”

  ‘SOLVE THESE DILEMMAS.’

  For the second test, the computer opened up to show G. a passage down into the earth. He followed it to a room containing three appliances: an automatic washer, a garbage dispos
al and a television set. As printed placards directed him, he took off his shirt and tie and put them into, respectively, the washer and the disposal. The shirt was torn to threads instantly, and though he managed to retrieve the tie, it was wrinkled and covered with grease. He managed to knot it correctly nevertheless.

  The television flickered at him a series of stills of famous actresses, which G. correctly identified as Carole Lombard, Gene Tierney, Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield. Their eyes seemed to follow him wherever he walked in the room. After several repeats of the series, the words, ‘PROCEED TO NEXT ROOM’ appeared on the screen. G. obeyed.

  He was in the waiting-room of a large air terminal, standing before Gate I. Suddenly a crowd of people came running out of Gate I and knocked him down. No one stopped to see if he were hurt; the entire mob rushed over to Gate III and disappeared. G. had barely time to get to one knee (and examine the other, which was bleeding) when a second group galloped out of Gate II, swinging infants and suitcases. He had time to see how pleasantly ordinary they were – neat computer programmers, jolly tourists, old folks, women in print dresses and men in straw shoes, attaché cases, cameras, zip bags of dirty diapers – before they ran him down.

  These hurried to Gate IV, leaving G. with a cut lip, a torn lapel and scraps of animated conversation:

  ‘… on a non-sked … bonded and … potty … Did you see that chicken sandwich?’

  There was no time for G. to get out of the way. He was run over and trampled in quick succession by passengers bound from Gates III to I, IV to II, I to II, II to I, III to II, IV to III, I to IV, II to III, III to IV and IV to I. By now, he was barely able to crawl into the next room, a barracks.

  The soldiers wearing Aggressor army fatigues and cockscomb helmets saw him and roared out oaths in Esperanto. They trussed G. to a ladder and began hacking bits from him and toasting them over cigarette lighters. Yet even through his intense pain, G. knew all this would end happily; he didn’t mind the torture as much as not being allowed to smoke.

  A bell rang. The soldiers hurriedly took off their Aggressor uniforms and put on Army green. They ‘discovered’ G. still strapped to a ladder and released him. Was he all right? they wanted to know. One soldier bet him it had been hell, being a prisoner of the inhuman Aggressor. G. smiled and shrugged, and asked if anyone had a cigarette, preferably filtered. No one smoked, and though one sergeant offered him a chocolate bar, G. felt badiy treated. He was weary and restless at the same time; he would have liked to do anything … sell pencils, anything …

  As a veteran, G. was taken to lead the parade past his own suburban home. Joan, his wife, waved at him from the front yard, which needed a bit of trimming. She had changed her hair style he noted, giving an extra grin to her hair. It looked nice, at least from a distance. He waved, and she waved back, he thought. They were like that – casual, you know?

  The street was lined with neat programmers and systems analysts, who showered him with the punchings from punched cards.

  ‘Thanks, boys. Back to work now.’

  At the end of the street was the square red can. When he saw it, G. knew what he must do to pass the test. Somewhere in the background, four-foot, up-to-the-minute-news letters spelled out the computer’s problem:

  ‘THEY SAY THAT G. WAS A MAN OF GREAT COMMERCE, HEAD IN FACT OF A LARGE COMPUTER CORPORATION …’

  The crowds watched this news with solemn interest, but when it caught up with the present, they broke into cheers.

  ‘… IT WROTE, AND THEN G. TOOK UP THE CAN AND POURED THE GASOLINE OVER HIMSELF. HE ASKED A NEARBY GENERAL FOR A LIGHT, AND THOUGH THE GENERAL WAS A NONSMOKER HIMSELF, HE WAS A GENTLEMAN. HIS BUTANE LIGHTER WORKED ON THE FIRST TRY.

  ‘G. MADE A LOVELY FLAME, EVEN IN BLACK AND WHITE,’ it wrote, and then G. took up the can …

  THE BEST-SELLER

  A SYNOPSIS

  Book One: Adrian

  Four couples gather at a small seaside hotel for a summer vacation. The hotel is located on an island connected to the mainland by a bridge. On the morning of their arrival, the bridge is washed away by a storm, and they are stranded.

  All of them have read the Decameron, and the time is heavy upon them. Instead of relating tales, they elect to make up stories – perhaps true, perhaps not – about the eight of them and their relationships. One person will be delegated each day to chronicle the day’s events, embellish them in any way he pleases and read them in the evening to his companions.

  Adrian Warner, the architect, draws the first day. He writes in a blunt, honest manner, such as might be expected from a worker in concrete.

  He begins with an account of how his wife, Etta, falls in love with another guest, the ruthless young steel executive, Farmer Bill. Caught by the morning storm, these two take shelter in a cave on the beach. Bill returns her caresses but nor her love. Though she is beautiful, Farmer Bill despises her as he despises his wife, Theda, a dark-eyed beauty who is also the only brewmistress on this continent. He loves only Glinda Cook, a thin, pale Southern girl with a dreamy manner, mouse-brown hair and crooked teeth.

  Glinda is not, it is true, happy with her husband, Van Cook the popular columnist. But if anyone is captain of her heart, it is the effeminate, smirking hagiographer, Dick Hand.

  That evening at dinner, Van Cook recklessly declares that he loves Mrs Rand, and challenges Dick to a duel. Dick laughingly suggests water pistols of ink and bathing suits.

  ‘Done!’ Cook cries fiercely.

  The duel takes place on the hotel terrace after dinner. Far down the beach can be heard the plaintive notes of Etta’s English horn (a professional musician, she has wandered off by herself to practice). Each of the combatants is given a water pistol loaded with ink the same colour as his own bathing trunks: Cook has red, Hand has washable black. The winner is to be decided by Dolly Hand, a large, raw-boned woman of fifty, said to have once been a drum majorette. Dolly seems utterly uninterested.

  Cook fouls intentionally, clinching and squirting red ink in Hand’s eyes. Dick is somewhat of a coward, and fails to score a hit on his opponent. After a few futile sallies, he contents himself with squirting his ink at Adrian, who is attired in a white dinner jacket. Hand makes several such passes before timekeeper Glinda calls a halt.

  When the fight is over, Cook’s fouling becomes evident. He has been hitting in the clinches, and the red ink until now has hidden the blood. Glinda begins to tenderly wipe Dick’s battered face, but he pulls away from her and, giggling, squirts more black ink at Adrian. The architect, angry, leaps to his feet.

  ‘See here now!’ he cries. Then his face grows ashen as he looks down at the black stain on his jacket.

  The others demand to know who won – but Dolly, the referee, cannot be found! She has slipped away during the fight, and someone reports seeing her white-booted figure dragging another woman away down the beach. The sound of Etta’s horn has stopped.

  The stains on Adrian’s jacket form letters, spelling ‘I LOVE Y’.

  Book Two: Theda

  In his languorous and elliptic style, the sloe-eyed brewmaster reveals that all that has gone before is a lie. Adrian Warner is a bitch and a liar. She has lied about the sex of everyone.

  First of all it is she, not her husband Etta, who loves the lady foundry exec, Farmer Bill. Yesterday Adrian pretended affection for him, Theda, only until she persuaded him to fall for her. But today, as Theda puts it, the truth outs.

  Passing the grape arbour this morning, on his way to the summer house, Theda hears Adrian confess her love for Farmer Bill. Bill rejects this love, declaring in turn that she loves only the manly Etta. Yesterday Etta seemed to love her too, but today, since his night with Dolly on the beach, Etta seems oddly distracted.

  Theda is in a hopelessly false position now, sick with love for a confirmed lesbian. Another surprise awaits him as he enters the summer house. Someone throws arms about Theda and kisses him toughly – it is Etta!

  ‘Careful you don’t ruin your lip,’ says T
heda, squirming away. Etta laughs heartily at his ignorance of music. Confessing that he has been converted the previous night from heterosexuality by Dolly, Etta invites Theda to spend tonight alone on the beach. Sickened, the brewmaster refuses.

  Coquettish Van Cook still pursues Dolly, but the big drum major kicks her in the eye at lunch. He appears to flirt instead with her husband, Glinda, a shy Southern boy. Glinda passes Dick Hand a note protesting that he still loves her, and chiding her for her silly infatuation with Van Cook. Theda, who delivers the note, asks her about this.

  ‘It’s true,’ Dick sighs. ‘I’m a hagiographress, you know. I’ve even offered to prove a saint in her ancestry – anything – but she refuses to even speak to me. Sometimes I wish Dolly and I could change sex. …’

  The rest of the day is sultry and oppressive with rage and desire, as they all sit around the hotel lounge. Farmer spends hours scrawling Etta’s name on the tablecloth, even drawing his profile. Etta glowers at Theda, and tries to tear up his manuscript. In the ensuing fight, Theda loses an ear, which his opponent eats.

  Book Three: Van

  With all respect to those who have gone before him, the columnist states that both Theda and Adrian have had their reasons for exaggerating some truths, concealing others. Perhaps it is up to a newspaperman, a dealer in facts, to get at some kind of objectivity about this, as he calls it, ‘love nest’.

  He makes no apology about his passion for Dick Hand, but let him cast the first stone, etc., for the truth is, there isn’t a man or woman among the eight who isn’t queer this third day.

  The little balding hagiographer, a former goalee for a prominent Canadian hockey team, now loves none but A. Warner. This architect, designer of the well-known Piedmont Tower and famed for his new building principle, the ‘concrete truss’, remains firm in his attachment to 35-year-old steel magnate Farmer Bill. The ironic quadrangle is complete, for Bill, long supposed an entrenched hetero, has conceived love for the narrator. Farmer Bill came to power through a merger between a steel corporation and the molybdenum trust of which he was co-chairman three years ago. He is now married to the former Theda Baker, and has one child, Ebo.