The Steam-Driven Boy

by Sladek, John

  ‘Now I want you to have the Start-Afresh Calliope. It will be delivered to you the day after my death. But I must caution you to read the enclosed instructions carefully, and so avoid the costly mistakes I have made. With this machine, you will be able to become whomever you please. But you must realize that not all change is for the better.

  ‘Your affectionate friend,

  ‘Gabriel Pemberly’

  I turned to the ‘instructions’, fifty-odd pages of closely written formulae and diagrams:

  ‘Let x equal … impermeable haft … Zn (quoin B (n*0)) … parseworthy, or … marriage of skull and weight … pars (x-ln y) dy … times four-stealths 0/ … groined poss … have been the result of … cow … 14 millions … light-averages spoiling rise … nerve-clips? But no! Anti-next … wherein the fast remove … nz (poss B*) … which I call another haft … star, Q.E.D.’

  I could not make head or tail of it. Discarding it, I tried to think no more about the awesome possibilities of the machine. Over a week later, I pointed to a body on a slab at the Morgue, and identified it as that of Pemberly. He had put a bullet in his tormented brain.

  ‘And the steam-organ?’ I asked.

  ‘The day after the funeral,’ said the surgeon, ‘Pemberly delivered it to me. In person.’

  ‘What?’

  My shout awakened Lord Suffield, who launched at once into his anecdote again: ‘Sent a servant to the Governor with three jars of jam and a letter, the beggar ate one jar along the way. Explained to him the letter had betrayed him, gave him a damned good thrashing. Next time I sent him with three jars of jam and a letter. This time he hid the letter behind a tree, so it wouldn’t be able to see him eat the jam. Didn’t have the heart to thrash him that time, I was laughing so hard. Oh, by the bye …’

  When his lordship was asleep again, the surgeon replied to my question.

  It was a younger, hardier Pemberly who delivered the Calliope to my door.

  ‘I’m not an apparition,’ he said impatiently. ‘And if you’d taken the trouble to read my instructions, you’d understand well enough why I’m here, the day after my own funeral. But never mind, come out and have a look at it.’

  ‘It?’

  ‘The Start-Afresh Calliope!’ he declaimed. Leading me out to the street – and so stupefied was I that I ventured out in waistcoat and shirt-sleeves – he showed me a wagon burdened with an immensity of steel and brass.

  It did somewhat resemble a calliope. But the pipes stood in no regular order, but branched and twisted in all directions, connecting to a variety of implements. I recognized a clock-face, a pair of bellows, sprockets and weaving machinery. The stops had been marked with some private cipher of Pemberly’s.

  After firing the boiler and checking a valve, he took his seat at the keyboard, poised both hands and shouted:

  ‘Let the Music of Change begin!’

  I could stomach no more of this madness. It seemed clear to me that this person had murdered old Pemberly and now sought to impersonate him. I turned back to the house to send for the authorities, saying that I only meant to put on my coat.

  ‘The Music of Change cannot wait,’ he said, and began to play.

  The melody was some popular air, but his arrangement made it uncannily beautiful and terrifying together. Thunder … the wail of a lost soul … the ring of crystal … the snap of fresh lather … no, nothing can convey it. I digress.

  Like most surgeons, I have next to my front door a polished brass plate, stating my name and profession. The music caught and stiffened me as I was about to go inside, and I looked at – and into – this plate. I saw my own startled face, and behind me, the back of Pemberly, hunched like Satan at the keyboard.

  He glowed. That is, he gave off no light, but a kind of unearthly intensity. I could look inside him, and see other persons glowing through his skin and clothes.

  Here was a younger Pemberly, working at his Steam Barber; an even younger, studying chemistry; a schoolboy; an infant. Here too were Pemberly the financier, barrister, bishop, general –

  My focus changed, and I saw the name upon the plate was not my own. The focus changed back, and I saw too that my face was not my own, but the face of Pemberly the surgeon.

  ‘So that’s it!’ I shouted in his voice.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said coolly. ‘I’m living off you for a time, old man. Hope you don’t mind.’ He shut off the organ and strolled away, leaving me the accursed contraption and the twice-accursed man you see before you now.

  I am forced to live out a life – an immensely successful life – for Pemberly, as Pemberly. I still know who I am. I have all my own memories, yet I am conscious of another soul inhabiting my body and feeding upon my experiences. And though I know I am Fatheringale, it would appear madness to say so.

  I know not how many other lives Pemberly has appropriated, but I meet myself everywhere I go. Perhaps the process will not end until all of humanity is one great, babbling version of him. I can only hope, before that day comes, I shall have the courage to take my own life.

  As I had not actually heard the Calliope play, I thought the poor surgeon insane, and I intimated as much to Lord Suffield when the other had taken his departure.

  ‘Mad? Not old Pemberly. One of the best doctors around, you know. Up for a knighthood, I understand. Or is that some other Pemberly? Daresay two or three’ll be on the Honours List this year. Damned ambitious clan. Always meeting one who’s worked his way up. Met a High Court Justice the other day named Pemberly. Nice enough fellow, but he talked utter rubbish. Two glasses of port, and the fellow started actually insisting he was someone else! Used peculiar words, too: “the chock of choice”, “the scabbard of pork opinion”, the something of … rubbish like that. Funny lot, the Pemberlies, but not mad.’

  A servant came into the room, at the far end, to clear the tables. Did he not resemble Dr Pemberly? And did he not move as if animated by a clockwork truss? No, a trick of the light, no doubt, or my weariness. There is no mad inventor playing arpeggios upon the human race. The whole story is nothing but a celery of no compass!

  RALPH 4F

  BY HUGOGRE N. BACKS

  (1911 WINNER OF THE ‘HUGOGRE’ AWARD)

  Chapter I. The Runaway

  Ralph 4F, the world’s chief scientific expert, studied the calendar. Today was March 15, 2720. With any luck, his intricate radium experiment should be completed within five days. That would be –

  Ralph’s calculations were interrupted by a frantic cry that issued from the Peer-afar machine.

  ‘Help! Help!’

  This machine, through a complicated arrangement of scientific apparatus, allowed the inventor to see and hear events which were not actually right before him, but dozens, even hundreds of miles away. While the old-fashioned telephone had used wires to transmit only voices, the Peer-afar used vibrational waves travelling at high speed through the aether, to transmit voices and images together! Ralph glanced now at the polished mirror plate of the Peer-afar.

  He was looking right into the frightened eyes of a pretty young woman, and it was not hard to guess from her surroundings what had frightened her, for she and an elderly man in banker’s clothes seemed to be the occupants of a runaway motorcar! As Ralph watched in horror, the young lady lost consciousness, and the vehicle careered out of sight!

  Without wasting a second, the powerfully-built scientific inventor sprang to the controls of his special flyer, the Hummingbird. Like its namesake, the Hummingbird was capable of flying vertically, sideways, backwards – even of standing still in mid-air, for hours at a time, as though gravity were a mere fancy. In a short time, Ralph had brought the craft to a stop over the runaway motorcar. Then, lowering a powerful magnet, he picked up the car as a child might pick up an iron filing.

  Chapter II. Fenster

  When Ralph had revived his guests with tablets of artificial brandy, they introduced themselves.

  ‘I am Jerome V8,’ said the banker, ‘and this is my daughter, Dori
s XK100. How can we ever thank you for saving our lives?’

  Ralph blushed, and dared not glance at the pretty young lady. ‘By allowing me to show you around our city,’ he said. ‘You are both strangers here, I believe?’

  Doris smiled, revealing a dimple. ‘Yes, we just got off the “Jet” aeroplane from Council Bluffs, didn’t we. Dad?’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed the distinguished banker. ‘Tell me, Ralph, why is it called a “jet” plane? It certainly didn’t look black to me!’

  ‘No indeed.’ Ralph, who had invented the “jet”, chuckled with kindly amusement at the old man’s error. ‘I called it the “jet” not because it is black, but because of the way it jettisons hot gases from the rear. These, pushing against the air, drive the craft ever forward.’*

  As he explained, Ralph studied the girl keenly. He felt a deep attraction to Doris, thought he had known her but a few minutes, as measured by his extremely accurate electric clock.

  ‘But see here,’ he said. ‘You haven’t told me how you came to be trapped in that runaway car.’

  Jerome V8 looked serious. ‘I believe it to be the work of an old enemy of ours, a disappointed suitor for Doris’s hand, named Fenster 2814T.’

  Chapter III. Sight-seeing

  Aloft once more in his flyer, Ralph pointed out to his two guests many of the city’s worthwhile sights. There were the great, smoking electrical power plants, busily turning black fossils into pure light as easily as a cow turns grass to milk. There were sewage plants, waterworks, factories and office buildings, streets, highways and mighty bridges. Jerome V8 expressed interest in the mammoth traffic jams, filled with motorcars of every description. Doris was impressed by the famous ‘skyscraper’ buildings, especially the huge Empire State Building with its giant climbing ape.

  On landing, Ralph took the banker for a walk, while Doris refreshed herself at an elaborate and up-to-date beauty parlour. The two men walked past store windows displaying an astonishing variety of modern goods: waterless hand cleansers, soap powders that were kind to hands, tiny cigars, furniture of aluminium tubing and woven glass, sun-tanning lotions, shoes of artificial rubber and clothes of strange new materials, electrical toothbrushes, radios hardly bigger than cigar boxes, electrical self-stimulators, comfortable trusses and a breathtakingly realistic replica of dog excrement. Jerome V8 marvelled at mysteriously luminous crucifixes, metal-plated baby shoe mementos, a dribble glass, coin-operated drycleaners’ and photographers’ establishments, and at new artificial fabrics which looked and felt like ordinary wool, but were far more expensive.

  ‘I wanted the opportunity of talking to you, sir,’ Ralph said. ‘I know this may seem forward of me, but I’d like to ask if you have any objection to my – my calling upon your daughter.’

  ‘Done!’ cried the old banker, wringing his hand. ‘Now let’s go see how Doris is getting along.’

  As they approached the beauty parlour, a rude stranger, carrying a heavy bundle, brushed past them. Ralph scarcely glanced at the swarthy man, whose countenance was shaded by the peak of a cloth cap. But Jerome V8 looked at the stranger, staggered and grew pale. ‘It is –‘ he gasped and, clutching his chest, slumped to the ground. Ralph bore him inside and looked for Doris.

  She was nowhere to be found.

  Chapter IV. Voice from the Grave

  ‘His heart has stopped. Something must have given him a terrible shock,’ muttered Ralph, bending over the disagreeable old corpse.

  ‘I’m a heart surgeon,’ said a man, stepping forward from the crowd of curious onlookers. ‘Can I help?’

  ‘You might attempt to re-graft some veins from the old man’s legs into his heart,’ Ralph suggested. ‘I know it has seldom been attempted, but here’s how it might work.’ Rapidly he sketched a schematic diagram upon the old man’s stiff shirtfront. Then he turned to the staff of the beauty parlour. ‘I want all the light and mirrors directed upon this massage table over here. Boil this set of manicure knives and scissors, and get plenty of clean towels.’ In another minute he had converted an electrical hair dryer into an emergency heart-lung machine.

  Several days later, the old banker everyone had given up for dead spoke – a voice from the grave. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that account is an ingrown cheese …’

  Still later, Ralph asked him about his heart attack. ‘Yes, it was seeing that man carrying the bundle – he looked just like Fenster 2814T. If I hadn’t knowed better, I’d have guessed that he had Doris in that bag. Where is Doris, by the way?’ At that moment the old man expired a second time, this time from old age – the killer and crippler science will never defeat.

  Doris abducted! Ralph bit his lip until the blood ran cold, for he had no doubt that the stranger was Fenster, and that he had kidnapped Doris XK100! But where could he have taken her?

  ‘Where can they be?’

  Chapter V. The Turning Point

  ‘I think I can help you there,’ said a newsboy with an honest manner. ‘Fenster 2814T and his lovely victim are most likely at his secret laboratory – an artificial moon circling about the earth.’

  Chapter VI. Fenster’s Mistake

  In one corner of the magnesium room sat a clergyman, chained to a rubidium chair by unbreakable ytterium chains. In his bound hands was a prayerbook, opened at the marriage service. Strapped to a vanadium table in the centre of the laboratory lay Doris. Fenster stood lowering at her and gloating.

  ‘So you won’t marry me, eh?’

  Doris wept and struggled against the iridium straps, to no avail. Fenster spoke again.

  ‘Not good enough for you, I spose, like your precious inventor, the accursed Ralph 4F! But now you must marry me, will-ye or nill-ye, and there’s nothing Ralph can do about that. Ha ha ha, I’d like very much to see him invent his way out of this one!’

  At that moment Ralph 4F burst open the curium door, rushed across the room, and delivered Fenster such a compliment upon the face that the blood flowed freely. Two policemen appeared, ready to drag the cowardly 2814T away.

  ‘But how –?’ he gasped.

  Ralph smiled. ‘You made one mistake, Fenster – that of gloating over your victim for thirteen weeks. I located your “moon” lab by means of an electrical telescope that greatly increases my powers of observation. Then I used my radio transmitter to draw off all the aether between you and earth, so that you sank gently to the ground and were, as we say, electrically “grounded”. Then I took the nearest police station to pieces, brought them here via airship and reassembled them all around you. You’re in jail, Fenster, and if you hadn’t been so busy smirking, a glance at your altimeter would have told you as much.’

  The baffled criminal was dragged away and beaten.

  Doris and Ralph clasped hands; their eyes announced their engagement. ‘My name will be yours,’ she said, ‘4F Ralph. Like this:

  4 F R

  For ev-er!’

  Ralph took up the game:

  ‘U R Y I * 2 ¢ I M 4 U 4 F R

  ‘You are why I start to sense I am for you forever!’

  ‘X QQ me,’ she replied. ‘I ½ 2 P.’

  ENGINEER TO THE GODS

  BY HITLER I. E. BONNER

  Jeremiah Lashard had a string of letters behind his name as long as his arm, which was itself exceptionally long. Since his days as boxing champion of M.I.T., this misanthrope hadn’t particularly felt the need of asking favours of anyone. No one had helped him become a chess Grand Master, a world-renowned oenologist, an Olympic medal winner, frisbee expert and astronaut. No one had given him a hand with his hit plays and best-selling novels. No one helped discover ‘light water’, name a new family of spider, invent the Lashard bearing or create ‘Lashard’s Law’ of capital gains.

  Lashard lived in seclusion on Thunder Crag, though by no means alone. Today he sat on the veranda at his specially-built typewriter, pounding out a pulp science-fiction story, while simultaneously dictating a botanical paper to his butler.

  Jerry Lashard’s butler was
an attractive young woman, as were all his servants. It saved time.

  He paused to sample his highball, a secret mixture in which a single honeybee floated like a cherry. Over the rim of his glass he studied the young woman climbing the path to his house. Lashard approved of the way the twisting path dealt with her curves.

  ‘Hello,’ she called.

  ‘Baby, if you’re a reporter you’ve had a long climb for nothing. Take my advice, go back to town and make up a story of your own. It’s the only interview you’ll ever get.’

  ‘You big lunk! I’m no reporter, I’m Dr Janet Cardine, your new assistant!’

  ‘My apologies, Jan. It’s just that I’ve been having a lot of trouble lately, from reporters and – others. Trudy will show you to your room. Valerie will get you a sandwich, Conchita will make you a highball, and while Lana changes your bed linen and Maureen unpacks your bag, Sylvia will bring you back here, so I can show you the lab.’

  Half an hour later he led Jan to the great underground laboratory.

  ‘Wow! You must have hollowed out the whole mountain!’

  ‘I did. Needed more room because this part of the lab is going to be a factory.’

  ‘A factory? What on earth for?’

  ‘Long story. Suppose we go for a swim, while I explain. The pool is right in there, and I’ll bet Gloria or Velma has a bikini that’ll fit you.’

  The swim enabled him to appraise her other qualifications, while picking her brain about power sources.

  ‘There’s solar power, of course,’ she said, ‘and wind, running water, tides, any heat source, nuclear reactors, fossil fuels … but why do you want to know so much about power?’

  ‘For my factory.’

  ‘Yes, but how about the light company? Surely it would be cheaper to have them string power pylons up the mountain side –’

  ‘But the light company has reasons for not wanting me to become a manufacturer. For one thing, they know how I like to save time and effort. I think they’re afraid I’ll find some way to cut my power needs in half.’