The Celestial Steam Locomotive (The Song of Earth) (23 page)

The forest sang to Spring. It sang a song of light and darkness, of youth and strength and simple things. Spring awakened, yawning, and stretched. Her arms were powerful motors, her fingers steel claws. She stood, a movement of fluid grace. The jungle vegetation rustled while she listened and sniffed, but she detected no menace, nothing but the breeze.
 

She snapped off a stem and drank dew from a cup-shaped leaf. She stepped quietly through the lush growth and soon arrived at the riverbank, where bright flapping things, blue bats, hovered above the river and drank from its surface. Spring tensed, the muscles of her calves bunching, then flung herself out and down, cutting the water in a clean dive. Bats scattered, and the ripples widened, and the river flowed on.
 

Spring slid beneath the surface, parting water plants and investigating rocky little caverns in the riverbed, watching big fish retreat, watching shoals of smaller fish dividing to swim around her. None of these creatures was frightened. Spring surfaced, blowing water... And swallowed some.
 

The partnership of Macrobes and Man had begun.
 

Now the ship seemed a long way off and, like the indignities of the past few days, unimportant. Strength and confidence flowed through Spring like brandy. She swam rapidly to the other side of the river and clambered onto the bank. Hearing a rustling, she climbed a tree, peering down from among the foliage.
 

She caught herself uttering a strange, low sound. It escaped from her throat involuntarily.
 

Two men were pushing their way through the jungle beneath her. One was a mechanic—she couldn’t remember his name. The other was the plump little cook, Perry. Her throat seemed to vibrate as she uttered the sound again. Perry paused, looked around, but not up; then the two men moved on. Spring relaxed. She bore them no ill will, but they were encroaching on her territory, the jungle...
 

That night she dreamed bizarre dreams of a land she’d never seen. She was alone in this land, and she was hungry. The hunger fed the power that surged through her body and she paced to the edge of the forest. The small creatures ran aside, sensing that she hunted. Other creatures were less perceptive. They went about their complicated business as though she weren’t there—monkey-shaped creatures with complicated rituals, motley pelts and little strength: men.
 

She watched them from the shadows and her belly was a chasm of longing. They chattered, chanted, clashed metal objects and blew through pipes. They stripped off their pelts and rubbed them on river rocks. They rode elephants. Only their numbers made them difficult prey. They were weaker than the boar, softer than the ghavial, more cowardly than the bull and smaller than the elephant. But they were many and she was one.
 

Then a solitary man approached the forest.
 

“I told you. Hell, I told you she was dangerous.”
 

The second regarded the mutilated remains, his stomach heaving. “Oh, God. You’re saying
she
did this, First?”
 

“No doubt about it. Look at those scratches. Those were made by human fingernails.”
 

“But... He’s... He’s been
emptied out.
Where are his organs and such? Hell, First, he’s been disemboweled. She wouldn’t do that. No human being would do that.”
 

“But the big cats would. That’s what they used to do. They’d make their kill, then they’d eat the soft parts first. The entrails. The delicacies.”
 

“Oh, God. Don’t talk like that.”
 

“She’s out there, you know. She’s out there listening, sniffing, waiting. We can’t treat her like a human being—she’d kill us all. She’s reverted to type.” The first stared at the green curtain of the jungle. “We should have hunted her down right at the start.”
 

“You can’t hunt down a woman, First.” Another crew member spoke. “Okay, so she’s different. But not
this
different. I can’t believe she did this. Hell, we don’t know what monsters are out there. Anything could have got him. This jungle is full of possibilities!”
 

As the day went by and another night approached, their fears grew. They lit huge fires and crouched beside them, staring into the blackness around. They huddled close and whispered horror stories to each other, and whimpered at every sound.
 

Meanwhile, out in the forest, Captain Spring slept alone—or not really alone, because in truth she would never be alone again. She had drunk the water that in years to come would be called “bor.” Nobody else had drunk from the river yet; that would come later. The ship’s instruments had detected something peculiar in there, tiny living organisms with an unusual unity of purpose. So the microbiologists took samples for analysis and for the time being everybody drank rainwater.
 

In the morning the first officer gathered his posse. “I’m not going through another night like that. I doubt if I slept ten minutes. We’re going out there today and we’re going to hunt that thing down.”
 

“The captain?” One of the officers looked doubtful.
 

“We’re going to hunt down whatever killed our man. Maybe it isn’t the captain—I could be jumping to conclusions.” Wisely, the first was adjusting his position. “Maybe it’s an indigenous carnivore. Whatever it is, it has a taste for Man now, and it’ll come back for more. We have to get to it first.”
 

Now she stood beside a fern-fringed lagoon, naked and glistening in the sun. Motley bats fluttered about her and other small creatures had gathered, too—a beaverlike thing with a smiling duckbill, a varied shoal of fish with big-O mouths, tiny spider monkeys that wove webs to catch drifting spores, and many others. They all gathered around Spring in unafraid curiosity. She was the only carnivore they had ever met. They examined her, twittered at her, sat on her.
 

Spring was changed. She watched them all with her amber eyes and she registered what she saw from three conflicting viewpoints: human, feline—and alien. Sometimes she smiled, sometimes she uttered her low growl; and when she growled the creatures moved away. They were learning fast.
 

Spring hadn’t eaten for a day and a night. The hunger aroused a threefold tension in her mind, which was why she stood smiling and growling at the lagoon, irresolute.
 

She heard voices and a crashing in the bushes. The tip of a laser rifle waved like a deadly banner above a field of arrowreed. The animals scattered, leaving Spring alone. Snarling, she turned, backing into a cave within the root system of a giant tree.
 

“You hear that? I heard something. Over there!”
 

Next, Perry’s voice. “Don’t shoot! For pity’s sake don’t shoot! Wait until you see it properly...”
 

Now Perry, clutching the rifle that he’d brought just for show, followed the others to the water’s edge.
 

“She’s around here somewhere.” The first’s head snapped this way and that. “I can smell her. Like a zoo.”
 

Perry, about to say something, suddenly found himself turning around.
 

Later, he could never admit to himself exactly what he saw. Afterward, he described to others how he saw Spring emerging from behind a twisted tree. He told himself that, too. He saw a beautiful, naked woman with extraordinary eyes, a wealth of auburn hair and a wonderful figure, walking their way.
 

He did not—not even for an instant—see a Bengal tiger, eyes blazing as it paced toward them, muscles rippling and gathering, tail flicking, ready to charge. Maybe some other Perry saw that, some other fat cook on some other happentrack.
 

Spring said, “Hello, men. Could someone lend me a jacket? My clothes fell in the river.”
 

The silence, the stillness. The first officer like a statue, the guns pointing carefully nowhere. The moment when it must be done, if it was going to be done at all. And Perry taking two quick steps away from the hunting party toward the quarry, getting in the line of fire. Unhesitatingly he did this, still uncertain whether that quarry was animal or human, only certain that it did-n’t matter. And the quarry herself, very much a lovely woman, smiling at them all and walking toward them with a swaying grace that was almost feline, but totally feminine...
 

And the first was peeling his thermocoat off, while the others grinned foolishly, unable to look away from all this beauty.
 

“Here,” said the first. “Put this on. And then maybe you can help us, Captain. There’s some kind of dangerous animal around here. We’ve lost a man. You have more of an empathy with this kind of country—no offense intended. Perhaps you’ll join us.”
 

“And where have you been all this time, anyway?” asked Perry.
 

Perry was forgotten by history, but Captain Spring captured the imagination of ages. Not only because of what she did, but also because of what she was, a tiger-woman of exceptional beauty—some say the most beautiful woman who ever lived, although standards change. In recognition of what she was and what she did, humans found a place for her in The Song of Earth—just a verse or two, but enough to ensure her fame. At first reviled as a villainess as notorious as the earlier Marilyn, she later became a heroine, when bor was recognized for what it was: a great gift to Mankind. And now, who is to say whether bor is good or bad? The only certain thing is that Earth is a different place because of it.
 

The captain and crew of the
Golden Whip
were rescued from the planet Talk-to-Yourself six standard months later and taken back to Earth. Before the Macrobes—which were the active constituents of bor—were isolated, they had spread. Their advantages became apparent, so their carriers were outlawed by the heads of Earth...
 

Ages later, the Macrobes resurfaced in a felina named Karina, daughter of El Tigre, who passed them on to her son John.
 

The centuries passed, and the Macrobes reappeared in the body of a young poet named Jimbo in a village then called Puerto Este...
 

The Captain was a Specialist of feline-human link.
 

She brought to Earth the captivating seeds of Inner
 

Think.
 

So runs a couplet in The Song of Earth.
 

It’s what you do when you’ve done everything else.
 

There was a little man on Dream Earth who was doomed to many years of living among people much bigger and more beautiful than he and who, through his own foolishness, had lost a chance of real love. In his time he’d had many names and now, like the Girl, he had none. And like many Dream People before him, he’d given up hope. So there was nothing to be lost by taking a certain step into a world that—yet again—seemed exciting and different. A world of action and adventure, with perhaps a seasoning of
real
danger... He could even persuade himself that it was a courageous and creditable thing to do.
 

So the little man, trembling, did it.
 

The Song of Earth relates his adventures in the normal dimensions of Dream Earth, as though he were a secondary character. Now, however, for a short time, he becomes a principal, with several stanzas to himself, commencing:
 

There came a little passenger who climbed aboard the Train.
 

His heart was full of sadness and his eyes were full of pain.
 

He’d been scared when he joined the Skytrain and he was still scared. All around him people were laughing, drinking, yelling, quarreling—the women blonde and brassy and bouncy-beautiful, in the current vogue, and the men strong and handsome. Strong enough to break him in half. Beside him, a tall suntanned man told endless stories of hunting and valor, of facing the charging rhino and of the sniveling coward who fled. The Great White Hunter stared challengingly around often, as though sniffing the air for cowards. It seemed to the scared little man that the hunter sniffed him out every time.
 

Meanwhile, the carriage swayed and the metallic clicking of rail joints sounded as a counterpoint to the brittle laughter. It was dark outside, but occasionally a tiny gleam passed by. Whether these were lighted houses or stars, the little passenger had no way of knowing. Mostly the black windows showed merely a reflection of the inside of the carriage and the bluff, noisy travelers. What was he doing here? Whatever had possessed him to ride the Skytrain?
 

More to the point, why hadn’t he at least had the sense to wait a few years until he’d built up the psy to Bigwish himself into some more suitable form?
 

A small girl cuddled near, watching him with big doe eyes. She had pointed ears and there was a
brownness
about her, a toylike furriness. “Isn’t this wonderful?” Her voice was childlike and squeaky. “Aren’t all these people just the
nicest?
I love a train, too. Don’t you?”
 

“Yes.” There was something artificially naive about her that the little passenger found even more subtly frightening than the more brazen characters around. She would go to her death without ever finding out what the world was really like.
 

And who can say she isn’t better off?
thought the little man wildly. He remembered the ballroom and the blue rain and his hopeless quest, and he wished he were back in Dream Earth, where at least he could control his own destiny. Here on the train a smallwish had no effect, so it seemed. His psy seemed to be drained, flowing into a common pool.