The Steam-Driven Boy

by Sladek, John

  ‘Do you smoke?’

  ‘Oh, no thanks. But you go ahead. I like the smell of a man’s cigarette.’

  Exhaling a cloud of aromatic smoke, he said, ‘Let me think, now … ’

  She lit two cigarettes and handed him one. When he had lighted their cigarettes, Mansard closed his eyes.

  He consumed her with his eyes: her cold-reddened nose, print dress, feet swelling out of water-stained wedgies. His apartment, a penthouse over the supermarket, was filled each evening with soft Muzak. Alone at night, he’d listen, smoking one of his specially blended cigarettes in the dark. The apartment could take her for granted; why couldn’t he?

  ‘How can you love him?’ he said, touching his glass to hers. ‘He even hates himself!’

  But she would not speak. ‘It’s no good, our meeting like this,’ she said, ‘Mansard. Secret rendezvous in elegant nite spots. Dancing till dawn in posh cafes. Moonlit rides with the top down. Our own flower code. Losing a cool ten G’s at Chuck-A-Luck and laughing like the crazy fools we are. “The wrong hotel room.” Billets-doux. Smoking menthol by mountain rills. Appearing nightly in an exclusive engagement. Sailing. In fact, all water sports, including snow and ice as water. And finally, my love, leaping down a volcano, together.’ She seemed unable to speak.

  Mansard thought of Dean. Just place the International audio wall probe against any wall, and pick up sounds, voices, in the next room. Dual listening device, used by law enforcement officers on a world-wide basis, attaches to any phone. The Snooper – world’s only private listening device, used by law enforcement officers, amplifies sound 1,000,000 times. Looks like a briefcase. Peeping Tom snooper scope is no bigger than a fountain pen, yet gives 6x magnification.

  ‘I want to meet this “Dean”,’ Mansard said suddenly.

  ‘So you want to degrade yourself,’ said Dr Sky. ‘Why, do you think? Has it anything to do with the time my father strapped me to my little potty chair?’

  ‘His father did nothing of the kind,’ said Mansard evenly. ‘I never said he strapped me down, only strapped me.’

  ‘Why did we feel trapped?’

  ‘Re did strappado me once,’ said Mansard. ‘He had some notion it would make me grow taller, have more confidence with tall women, business associates. As usual, he was right.’

  ‘So we tell ourselves.’

  Mansard recalled. ‘He used to force-feed me. Vivisected my dog, to explain to me the mysteries of biology. Poor Spike.’

  ‘Or poor you, you mean.’

  ‘Yes, Dad never ceased preparing me for future happiness. He had a nurse read Kant to me while I slept. I had this recurring nightmare of being chased by a synthetic a priori proposition. I always wanted to go to Europe, but I never did.’

  ‘What do you dream of recently?’

  Mansard Eliot took down the dream in shorthand, a skill he’d learned in three short weeks. ‘Last night I dreamed I was a member of a kid gang. We were beating a toilet with big chains. The sight of all that lavender porcelain being torn away made me sick, but I didn’t dare let on.

  ‘Then I was in the hospital, where the doctors were scraping pain or paint from me, using chisels and saws. It seemed to be the pineapple festival. I got up and ran down a hall lined with red formica. There were thousands of people all going to the big pineapple fire. I saw a man eating a doughnut made of ice cream, and I noticed it was a rose wreath from my grave. There was money all over the floor, and lucky charms, but it was electrified. I tore along on my scooter, whose headlamp seemed to show darkness instead of light. It was all tinker toys ahead of me, and cages full of live soap. I had to hurry, before the bureau closed, but the hands on my watch were wrong, no matter how I turned it to look at it.

  ‘At the movie tent, the screen was blank, but everyone sat watching. “What is it?” I asked my mother, the projectionist. “See for yourself,” she said. The x-ray glasses had some instructions written on them, on the cardboard bows, but in code. I deciphered it letter by letter: it was a letter from Monique van Vooren to Mamie van Doren, giving the menu. I ordered coffee eggs. They were beautiful, made of transparent plastic garden hose and film – but just then mass was starting. Father Zossima, Father Coughlin, Father Divine, Father Christmas, Father Flanagan, Father Keller and Father were officiating, but then I had to climb a windy mountain, strangely grown with hornets. At the top was – never mind.

  ‘Hacking my way through the swamp, I went down into a subway station. All the trains ran to a place called “Breakfast”. I started the engine with a huge, three-pronged key. Gladys and I sped along the highway, chased by a synthetic a priori proposition. They proposed to lock her away in a priory, see –’

  ‘Time’s up!’ cried the doctor, waking to his wrist alarm. ‘We’ll take up there tomorrow.’

  ‘But I haven’t told you half of it! Then I was spearing –’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I have another patient. Write it all down, we’ll discuss it tomorrow.’

  Mansard hid in a phone booth in the lobby, until he saw Dr Sky leave with his golf bag.

  Dean was short, fat and altogether friendly-looking. For example, he wore a t-shirt with the message ‘Thank God It’s Friday’, though it was only Wednesday. His arms were tattooed with Dumbo and Pinnochio.

  ‘Navy?’ asked Eliot, taking the initiative.

  ‘No, I just wanted ’em. Who knows why kids do these crazy things, anyway.’ Remove unwanted hair. Learn meat cutting: people must eat! Mansard noticed Dean had a faint, not unpleasant halitosis. Robbed of your high school diploma?

  ‘So you’re Glad’s boss?’ Dean, a bald, perspiring man whom Mansard Eliot had just met, laughed.

  ‘That’s right. She’s told me so much about you, Mr –’

  ‘Call me Dean,’ Dean said. ‘Want a beer? We got two kinds.’

  Mansard decided it was time to speak. ‘I think we can talk this over like civilized people, Dean.’

  Dean smiled. ‘Dalu ’mun karon fenna,’ he said. ‘Waa narrapart weearn manuungkurt barrim barrim tillit impando. Nxabo amacebo: amakwata nekra wai?’

  ‘I want you to give Gladys her freedom.’

  ‘So Glad tells me. It’s sure okey by me. I’ll miss the old sock, but –’ He made a deprecating gesture, as if to say ‘Mes sentiments!’

  Mansard took from his pocket a bullet. ‘Glad to hear you take it like a man, Dean,’ he said. ‘So many men of your station – no offence intended – would have made a scene, screamed bloody murder, and so on.’

  ‘I’m just curious, understand, but why do you want her?’

  Jo the silence, Eliot’s watch emitted a tiny electronic scream. Why did he want her? How to put it into words? He glanced over at her, sitting before the television with her feet up. Half her face was in shadow. From the other half, her hand removed blackheads at regular intervals, using a silvery plunger. He thought of the times she had refused to come to him, times when he’d rushed into the closet to press his burning face into a cool, damp mop, inhaling the sweet-sour fragrance of her. Her mop!

  ‘One wearies of explanations,’ he said.

  ‘That reminds me, what about the kids?’

  ‘I was thinking we’d send them to some sort of school or camp,’ said Mansard easily. ‘You know, nothing terribly expensive, but exclusive enough. We’ve written to Auschwitz, for one.’

  Dean raised an eyebrow. ‘Bet it’s hell trying to find anything reasonable these days.’

  ‘And how! Prices are absurd – it must be the administration.’

  ‘Just what Glad was saying the other day. Her very words. I don’t know what the country’s coming to.’ Dean’s face grew red. He slapped the table, shouting, ‘Damn it all to hell! It makes me sick the way the government pushes around the Little Guy!’ Inside this pencil is a quality stapler! Inside this exact replica of a bottle of scotch is a 9-transistor radio that’s on its way to being the executive gift! 24-kt golden peanuts contain lighter, pillbox, or executive toolkit!

  ‘I couldn�
�t agree more,’ said Mansard. He opened a small, gold-filled penknife. Usually it was used to clip the ends from the cigars he had made up in Havana and flown in by special plane. Today, however, he put it to a new use, clipping off the bullet’s nose.

  ‘What’s that you’ve got there, a bullet?’

  ‘Yes, a slug.’

  Dean opened two kinds of beer. ‘I see you’re making a dum-dum out of it. Neat idea.’

  Mansard showed him the gun. Dean’s eyes widened. ‘That’s a beauty!’

  ‘Thanks. I call it my gat.’ Eliot worked the action back and forth.

  ‘I understand a forty-five is powerful as hell,’ said Dean. ‘Knock a man down if you only get him in the little finger. But how’s the recoil?’

  Mansard loaded and cocked the gun. ‘Well, it seems big at first, but I’ve been practising.’

  Gladys stood up as he sighted along the barrel at Dean’s heart. ‘No you don’t!’ she tittered, throwing herself in the line of fire.

  A lady traveller to Europe should take: four pairs of nylon panties, six pairs of nylon stockings, two petticoats, two bras, a cardigan sweater, a pair of slacks or bermuda shorts, a pair of sandals, a pair of good, sturdy walking shoes, a pair of dressy heels, bathing cap and suit, one knit daytime dress, one drip-dry daytime blouse …

  ‘Damn,’ said Dean, looking down at the body. ‘I’m really going to miss her. You notice how loyal she was – died trying to save my life – notice that?’

  ‘Yes. I expect the police will be wanting this.’ Mansard took from his pocket a personalized pencil with his name in gold, set of twelve, 60¢ ppd., inserted it into the barrel of the automatic so as to preserve his prints, and handed it over.

  THE MOMSTER

  They were letting him down easy. It was more humiliating, at least for Sewell, to be let down easy by a machine.

  It leaned back in its swivel chair, looked above his head, and placed its plastic fingertips together. It feigned reluctance to speak.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Sewell, but frankly we have our doubts. Your test scores … I wouldn’t like to say positively no at this time, you understand, but the outlook is bleak. Bleak.’

  ‘I get the message. Don’t Call Galactic Explorations, you’ll call me.’ Roger Sewell stood up. ‘But I’d have appreciated getting the shaft from GX via a human interviewer, and not from a thing that looks human from the waist up only.’

  ‘Wait.’ The machine held up a hand wearing a military class ring. ‘Wait, bear me out. It’s this kind of behaviour we might have expected, knowing your test scores. You must learn to deal with given reality, Mr Sewell.

  ‘Now we’ll submit your scores and application to the board, and their decision will be final. You aren’t out of the running yet, unless you wish to be.’

  Sewell wanted to step around behind the desk, grab the coax that formed the bottom half of the interviewer, and twitch it out of its socket, leaving ‘him’ frozen with that smarmy smile on ‘his’ face. But he also wanted to be an explorer, and there was only one way to get out there, through GX.

  Therefore he remained seated, staring at a poster of an explorer with the usual equipment: cleft chin, white teeth, blond hair being rumpled by an alien wind, and far-seeing blue eyes. Three lightning bolts carried the message:

  ‘IT TAKES GUTS.’

  ‘IT TAKES IMAGINATION.’

  ‘ARE “YOU” MAN ENOUGH?’

  Behind him the interviewer cleared its throat. ‘We’ll be calling you, then, Mr Sewell.’

  Whoever the board were (and he imagined a coven of humanoid mechanisms grinning and nodding at one another), they did finally approve his application. When he had signed his contract, things moved into high gear. In one day he was uniformed, inoculated and given a brief lecture on his destination, New Cedar Rapids. Early the next morning, he was transmitted.

  He snowshoed the quarter mile of sand from the receiver to the main tent, wearing an oxygen mask and goggles. It was unpleasant just the same, slogging along. The wind was cold, flailing him with grit. By the time he’d arrived, he felt as if his neck and ears were bleeding, and his scalp caked with dirt.

  Through his grimy goggles he saw two figures waiting to greet him inside the plastic tent, a man and a woman. It was only when he had got inside that Sewell realized the ‘woman’ was a machine. ‘She’ was of indeterminate age, slim, almost pretty, if you didn’t notice the hinged jaw.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, shaking his dusty hand. ‘I’m Rita, your partner here. This is Benny, the man you’re rotating for some well-earned rest back home.’

  Oddly enough, it was she who seemed spontaneous and alive, while Benny behaved like a run-down clock. He did not offer to shake hands, but only stared at Sewell for several moments; then turned and, walked slowly away. He returned with a log book and pen.

  ‘I’ll sign out, then,’ he said, looking hesitantly from one to the other.

  ‘He wants you to sign in,’ Rita explained. ‘So he can leave.’

  ‘For some well-earned,’ said Sewell drily. He took the book and signed, wondering about the other man. Couldn’t he have shaken hands or said hello? All right, he was tired, but –

  ‘Goodbye, Benny,’ the machine said. Benny mumbled a reply, slipped on the mask and stumbled away, not even looking at Sewell.

  ‘Roger Sewell,’ she read from the book. ‘May I call you Roger?’

  ‘Suit yourself. Where do I put my stuff?’

  ‘I’ll have to clean up Benny’s quarters for you – it’s a pigsty. Honestly, I don’t know how you men can get that way, I really don’t. I don’t have an official name, by the way. My makers called me Rita, but my friends usually call me Mom.’

  ‘Mom? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. A joke? Because that’s what they need out here, maybe, a mom. Because they depend on me? I don’t know.’

  Sewell decided to call her nothing at all.

  ‘Well, what are my duties going to be? What’s the routine?’

  She smiled. ‘We can talk about that tomorrow. Right now I’ll clean up your room, Roger, and then maybe you’d like to take a nap. You must be tired from your trip.’

  He didn’t like this. ‘No, I’m not tired at all, as a matter of fact. And I’ll clean the room myself, thank you.’

  He did, and dumped Benny’s miserable effects – dirty socks, a bent deck of cards, a comb fluffy with dead hair – into a plastic bag. He installed Jane’s picture, his philosophy books, his journal. After making the bed, he sat on it, and prepared to meditate. The door slammed open.

  ‘I thought you might like a nice cup of tea, Roger. I could have made coffee, if you’d preferred, but I was making tea anyhow and so I just thought I’d try it out on you. You sort of look like a tea man to me, I could be wrong, but usually I can tell a tea or coffee person just by looking at them. The only ones who ever throw me are the cocoa people, and thank God there aren’t many of them. I don’t know what it is, but I never have trusted a man who likes cocoa all the time, so you know what I mean? Oh, I know it’s silly, but …’

  He sat there, amazed, and watched her. She talked on about tea, about the different kinds, and the fact that they all come from the same plant, but from different parts of it, harvested at different times of the year. She spoke briefly of tea ceremonies, of which she personally knew nothing, she would be the first to admit, and of unjust tea taxes and the Revolutionary War. She went on, until the tea grew cold in the cup she was holding. Then she went back to the kitchen.

  Sewell wedged a chair against the door. When he had meditated for half an hour, he felt mildly euphoric, full of energy and ready to start work. The chair began to crack.

  ‘Why have you got your door fastened? Roger, it’s only me, bringing you a cup of tea. Roger?’

  The chair splintered and in she came, beaming through the steam. As he drank the tea, she told him Benny and the others had always liked a cup of tea at about this time of day. Of course Benny was English, and liked his tea with milk. S
he preferred lemon, some nothing. Then there were catnip tea, camomile tea and mint tea …

  Sewell finally stopped the flow by asking her about the work.

  ‘Oh don’t worry about that, not today. You just got here, for goodness sake. Take it easy.’

  ‘I didn’t come here to take it easy,’ he found himself shouting. ‘I came here to explore. Now are you going to tell me the set-up, or am I going to switch you off?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She was silent a moment, twisting her fingers in the ends of her apron strings. ‘Roger, I didn’t want to tell you this right away, but the fact is, there just isn’t any set-up. There just aren’t any duties for you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He leaped up and grabbed her by the throat. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘It’s true,’ she said evenly. ‘You can check the general rules bulletin, and the roster of back orders, clear back thirty years ago, when we first came here to Cedar Rapids.’

  ‘I believe I’ll do just that!’ He slammed her against the wall and strode into the office. An hour later, when she brought him a sandwich and milk, he was sitting with his hands tangled in his gritty hair.

  It was true. The first explorers had measured the planet, discovered its single mountain chain, examined the consistency of the sand that buried nearly everything else, plumbed the two lakes, tested their water, and recorded the weather.

  Now, as far as GX was concerned, the work was finished. Daily weather observations and periodic examination of the sand could best be done by machines. A man would be stationed on New Cedar Rapids to keep GX’s claim clear, ‘just in case’. There was nothing for him to do, for two years.

  ‘I think I’ll go out and scout around anyway,’ he said, later that evening. ‘Where’s the oxygen equipment?’