The Celestial Steam Locomotive (The Song of Earth)

by Coney, Michael G.

  “That’s right.”

  “Transportation in the manner you suggest is dangerous and unreliable and has been proved addictive. It’s safer to walk.” The lugubrious eyes searched their faces.

  “The possibility of success outweighs the danger.” Zozula had been through this before, many times. Cuidadors are valuable and so is the Rainbow, and the purpose of the Reasoner was to ensure that they considered all the consequences before passing on.

  The eyes had swiveled to the Girl. “You have a neotenite with you. Her body is unsuited to traveling.”

  “We know that. We will help her.”

  “The young man is a Wild Human. He is nervous and bewildered. Traveling in the Greataway involves an element of Belief. He looks like a skeptic who might panic.”

  “On the contrary, I’ve been amazed at his adaptability to unusual situations.”

  “Has any of you traveled in this way before?”

  “No.”

  “Are you proposing to disincorporate?” The Reasoner had become interested. After countless millennia of asking standard questions and probing similar replies, he had at last been presented with a new concept.

  “Probably not. I’d like to try as we are. If we disincorporate we become similar to the Dream People in status, which means that we couldn’t reincorporate at our destination. We want to get off the Train.”

  “Has anyone ever done that?”

  “I really have no idea.” Zozula made his voice offhand, confident. “I’d be glad if you’d let us pass, now. We’ve considered the matter thoroughly and, right or wrong, we are determined in our purpose.” This was the standard Statement of Absolution, which let the Reasoner off the hook.

  “Pass,” replied the creature automatically and relapsed into its normal amorphous state, many of its cells expanding to gaseous matter and merging with the vast body of the Rainbow. A large proportion of the Rainbow is composed of tissues from terrestrial and alien creatures, organic matter being far more effective in the resolution of complex problems than the original and cumbersome conglomerations of chips and circuits—although these are in the Rainbow, too. A small part of the Reasoner remained coherent, wrestling with the implications of the recent conversation, devising an endless series of questions with probable answers for use if a similar situation developed.

  The three humans moved on into a world of half-seen shapes, strange smells and odd sensations.

  Zozula, in touch with his surroundings and experienced in the workings of the Rainbow, said, “Here.” A small globe of light swam toward him and he cupped it in the palm of his hands.

  He concentrated...

  First they heard the sounds, a distant rumble rising to a roar as the mists fell aside and revealed a vast, star-roofed chamber whose pellucid walls were lined with insubstantial gothic columns. It was a pounding roar with a four-beat rhythm, accompanied by a surging hiss. Manuel flinched as the others walked forward, and he held back, watching with scared eyes.

  The Locomotive thundered in the center of the chamber.

  The flimsy walls of the chamber vibrated. The carriages trailed behind the Locomotive endlessly, disappearing into the void. The squat chimney hurled smoke into space, and the wheels whirled in a flashing blur.

  Yet the train remained stationary.

  “What is it?” asked Manuel, still hanging back.

  “The Celestial Steam Locomotive.” Zozula was not so confident as he sounded. “It’ll take us where we want to go.”

  “It’s scary.” Manuel was a brave youth, but this was the first time he’d seen a large and complex piece of machinery in action. He could imagine only too well the result of falling into that churning steel. A thrill of primeval fear tingled down his spine. “Let’s get away from it, shall we? We could ride mules instead.”

  “The Locomotive was made by men, so it’s much safer than mules, Manuel.”

  “But... how does it work?” The boy watched a glittering piston shuttling to and fro.

  “Some of the principles are lost in antiquity.” Zozula watched the valve gear too, but with awe and fascination. “I became interested in the Locomotive some time ago, so I did some research, with the aid of the Rainbow. It seems the machine is driven by heating water until it becomes steam, using a coal fire. The steam tries to occupy a greater space than before and pushes against a piston. The piston is joined to the middle wheels by a connecting rod, and the driving wheels are coupled together with another rod.”

  The Girl fidgeted. Manuel asked, “What’s that big metal box, there?”

  “The cylinder. This type of locomotive has four of them, one on either side and two more inside. That’s where the steam goes before it pushes the piston, see?”

  “I see that. But what I don’t see is—what’s it all for?”

  “For?”

  “All this noise. All this effort. What does it do?”

  “Well, I... Once there were locomotives all over Earth and they pulled trainloads of people along steel rails...” Zozula went on to describe a period in Earth’s history that he only half understood.

  Manuel’s mind began to wander and his gaze slid across the platform, which looked as though it was paved with a white quilt, to the faint columns against the wall. It seemed he saw a figure standing there. Zozula droned on. His words meant little to Manuel, who couldn’t understand why vast numbers of people should want to move from place to place. The story lacked credibility, and he suspected Zozula had made it up to cover his lack of knowledge.

  The Locomotive began to lose its terrible aspect and Manuel edged toward it while Zozula talked. The Girl stumped forward until she stood beside the great machine itself. The wheels whirled within a meter of her body and sparks and smoke erupted in a fountain from the chimney above. Steam hissed from the glands where the piston entered the cylinder and the din of exhaust was a throbbing roar. Zozula talked on, shouting to make himself heard.

  Suddenly the Girl shouted, too. “No!”

  “What?”

  “You make the Locomotive sound fusty and ordinary and dull, no better than a mechanical llama.” The wheels had no rails beneath them. They spun above a bottomless void that dropped sheer from the platform edge. “The Locomotive is the most beautiful thing in the world, and at first it was the best thing Mankind had ever done. Everything about it is perfect and has its purpose, and the decorations add to the beauty of its shape, instead of hiding it.” Her fingers traced the brass beading around one curved splasher. The warm metal was vibrant and alive. “This Locomotive is the distillation of everyone’s idea of what a machine should look like. It’s composed of a million small-wishes, a million dreams of beauty.” Above her the huge boiler throbbed, tapering from the square-topped firebox to the black cylindrical smokebox. The boiler, like the cab and tender, was a warm green lined out in gold and black. Above the buffers sat a large brass bell.

  “And the worst thing is,” said the Girl, “that this lovely machine is used to provide pleasure for idiots.”

  Zozula looked a shade annoyed at having his discourse interrupted. Manuel’s curiosity had been aroused, however. “How did it happen, Girl? How was the machine built?” Daring, he reached out and touched the hot metal, which throbbed with a thrilling kind of life he’d never encountered in the village.

  “It’s a legend of the Dream People,” said the Girl. “Zozula will probably say it’s all a load of nonsense. I thought it was real at the time, and I think I met a man who was actually involved in building it. Although Bigwishes make you forget most things, you know. Maybe it is nonsense.”

  “Don’t bother about Zozula,” said Manuel. “Tell us how it came about.”

  And so, standing in that phantom railway station in Dream Earth, the Girl told the Artist and the Oldster the story of the Celestial Steam Locomotive. And she told it accurately and well, and the Rainbow recalls that all this did happen, even though it happened in Dream Earth.

  This is the story she told...

 
Once there was a man who had tried everything Dream Earth could offer and had eventually Bigwished himself into the form of a small child, in the hope that a new innocence would give meaning to his life, and in the hope that he could somehow build a solid background of facts and memories and events for himself and thereby gain a true identity. He intended to grow up slowly, the way children used to—to experience puberty, adulthood and middle and old age. And in the end, he determined, he would experience death. He would snuff himself out, Totally. In the space of a mere seventy years, he reasoned, he would gather a rich and complete viewpoint on life, far more than he’d ever achieved in his previous shallow persona, in thousands of years of cheap fun.

  It was a brave and commendable program.

  One day the Truthful-Woman-who-dwelt-in-a-Fountain had a visitor. It was a small boy, about eleven years old. He was crying. He’d been in his present form long enough to have relearned what Dream Earth—life, in fact—is all about. He was scared.

  “They tell me you can see into the Ifalong.” He wore a lustrex shap from a forgotten era and he was twisting the fabric nervously between his fingers.

  “That is sometimes true. What is the matter, boy?” There was no real sympathy in the Oracle’s voice. People had forgotten how to be moved by childhood’s woes.

  “I want to know what will happen to me.”

  “Whatever you want will happen. Surely you know that.”

  “I may have made a mistake. I think I’ve done something stupid.”

  “Everybody does. It doesn’t matter.”

  “I think I’ve killed myself.”

  Now the Oracle’s curiosity was aroused. “Tell me.”

  “I Bigwished myself into this form five years ago. Life hasn’t been easy since. You’ve no idea how cruel people can be to a kid—all those psycaptains and Romans and Goths, they don’t give a damn. Being a kid is worse than being Yourself.”

  And the Oracle delved into her memory and saw a face, smooth and beautiful, and a legend of horror that might have been more than a legend. It was a legend that, thousands of years later, she was destined to repeat to a fat and ungainly girl who could barely walk. Quickly dropping the train of thought, the Oracle said, “Perhaps you should have thought of that before you Bigwished.”

  “I wanted to live life like a person of Old Earth. You know—grow up, grow old and die. I wanted to know what life was really like.”

  “If you’re telling me you’ve changed your mind, fine. In fifty years or so, when you’ve built up the psy, Bigwish into something else, why don’t you?”

  Now the boy’s voice broke. His Bigwish had been very comprehensive. “I won’t be able to build up the psy fast enough. It seems I’m slow to recover. Even if I never smallwish again it’ll take me at least eighty years to accumulate a Bigwish. I’ll probably be dead before then.”

  The Oracle was silent for a long time. Her mind flicked through the Ifalong and she could see no way out. “You will die,” she said at last.

  “You mean I won’t be able to Bigwish in time?”

  “You won’t.”

  “So what shall I do?” The voice was a wail of despair.

  Maybe it was at that moment that the Oracle felt an awareness of what was in store for Mankind in the Ifalong. If so, it is paradoxical that the medium should have been a scared Dreamer who had bitten off too much. The Oracle didn’t answer for a long time. As she searched the happentracks, adding a human touch to the mechanical deliberations of the Rainbow, a panorama began to unfold that made her feel faint with its sheer immensity. She saw a coming-together and a branching apart, a discovery and a great Rebirth. Possibilities flooded through the synapses, data clicked in from all Earth and the far reaches of the Greataway. Rainbows from other Domes lent their input, and the Oracle let it all come, let it all come, sifted it. At last, very conscious that she was sitting right at the conjunction of radiating happen-tracks of enormous import, she said very slowly, having analyzed the probable effects of different word-patterns:

  “Perhaps you should make the most of what time is left to you.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Man used to be creative. Perhaps too creative. But in recent millennia he found things too easy and Art disappeared. It’s easy to smallwish up a Picasso, but it’s a different matter to paint Guernica. I think perhaps you should create something.”

  “Create what?”

  “If I told you that, I’d be doing your work for you. I suggest you study Man’s early history, before he became absorbed in passive pursuits. Smallwish yourself a history terminal, let the data flow over you and immerse yourself in the thinking and emotions of the time. Then, when you’re ready, create something big. The ultimate work of art, based on an era before Art became a meaningless concept.”

  The boy thought deeply. Tiny images went through his mind, traces of a wasted life that each Bigwish was supposed to erase but never quite did. Psycaptains and Romans and Goths, and women of all times. When at last he looked at the Oracle, his eyes were shining.

  “I’ll do it,” he said.

  The boy studied history, as the Oracle had suggested, and, as time went by, he tried everything. He painted abysmal pictures, he wrote verse that no minstrel has repeated since. He chopped chunky nudes from rock, he built a minareted temple that kindly Dream People quickly smallwished into nothingness. He was labeled a madman. He sang songs without melody in a tuneless voice, and people avoided him. And in no time at all, so it seemed, he was fourteen years old and passionately interested in the bodies of women. Fortunately for history, the fear of ultimate death was even stronger than this interest, and he channeled his burgeoning drives into his quest. It is fair to say that by now he probably had more drive than anybody in Dream Earth. So he continued to study with a growing frenzy while he wove monstrous tapestries, created and destroyed perfect football teams, designed dancing dinosaurs and spread across the countryside a sinuous and psychic River of Knowledge up which people swam, growing ever more learned as the strange water penetrated their pores, until, addicted, they could not rest until they reached the source. As their knowledge increased, so did their awareness of what they did not know—and so did their fear of what awesome Consciousness the source might be. In their minds the source gained a capital S, and the seeking of it lent a new meaning to life and the purpose of Mankind. It is perhaps significant that nobody ever reached the Source; their minds exploded with accumulated trivia long before that point. In their zeal they had forgotten that knowledge, to be useful, should have a directed purpose.

  And if they had discovered the Source, they would have been disappointed. No august Being sat there on a throne waiting to welcome them into an unimaginable Kingdom. Instead there was a little black box and a multicolored cable leading to a concealed terminal of the Rainbow. It was nevertheless an incredible achievement on the boy’s part. He had succeeded in creating real objects on Dream Earth—the box and the cable—a feat that could normally only be matched by the Keepers. It didn’t happen again, not for millennia, not until the Cap of Knowledge appeared. The boy was unique. He was ready.

  He was sensitive, at the most sensitive age. He had redirected urges. He dreamed of power, of might and thrust. Things from the past moved in majesty through his mind. He was still a child, and he thought as children always had—and the images began to clarify, began to take shape from a particular period of Earth’s history, from a fleeting instant in Time when Mankind had grown a million years in one century, a time of quick changes and therefore of haunting nostalgia. That was what art and beauty were all about: nostalgia. He woke one morning trembling at the discovery, knowing where art had gone. If nothing changes, then there can be no nostalgia for things past and lost. And without that beautiful sadness, art withers.

  He sat on a grassy slope overlooking a valley, and another child’s mind sat in his mind, guiding him. There was a stream in the valley and he smallwished and threw a bridge across it, an old brick arch, moss-d
appled and sturdy. Then he leveled the ground and laid a path of crushed rock. He placed balks of timber crosswise on the path and gave them a tar scent of their own. He placed two cast-iron chairs on each balk, then he laid twin gleaming rails in the chairs and pinned them in place with wooden blocks, so that they were exactly four feet, eight and one-half inches apart, an ancient measurement that the child’s mind within his mind had taught him. For a long time he sat there regarding the track through the valley and the little bridge.

  Then, all psy’d out, he rested for nine years.

  They came to him slowly, the Dream People. Over the years they dropped by, the mandarins and the troglodytes, Java Man and Miss Orange Blossom and the Travelers, and they admired his panorama. They were tempted to spoil it, to send a golden projectile rocketing along those rails, but they did-n’t. Instead, forgetting for a moment their relentless quest for pleasure, they gave a little of their psy and helped him.

  A Captain Sylvia laid a frame. She laid it carefully, to the boy’s instructions, not sure what she was creating but wanting to help. She created a strangely wrought, roughly rectangular thing of steel, and placed it between the tracks. Then, wondering what had possessed her, she jetted to Jamaica. Everybody jetted to Jamaica, that era.

  Now they came more often, partly out of a most unusual pity for this person who was destined to die, and partly from curiosity. At this stage, the boy could have become a cult figure and his work ruined by overenthusiastic helpers, but it didn’t happen. History does not relate why. A Shut-Out created the driving wheels, a bogus Thing-from-the-Nameless-Planet forgot to be fierce long enough to couple them and a sad Girl-who-was Herself spent a long time on the intricate axleboxes, finally threading the axles, pressing on the wheels and mounting them on the frames. For a few months—an incredibly short time in history—people rode the frame up and down the track, marveling at its mysterious ingenuity and the mind of the boy who had created it. For them it was enough, and for a while the boy had no more visitors.