The Celestial Steam Locomotive (The Song of Earth) (3 page)

The images firmed but they were not right, not what he wanted. The shapes suggested women’s bodies—breasts and buttocks. The gale took on an appearance of long tawny hair, swirling. He forced his thoughts toward the elements themselves, rather than the images they dragged from his subconscious. The breasts became sails, full and straining, the lithe limbs formed the geometry of a ship. He thought of Man and the ocean, of death and power. The projection area showed shapes without form but with infinite strength—almost terrifying. Manuel shivered and took the helmet off. He was beginning to get a feedback effect from his own projected thoughts. And he hadn’t got the love in there, even now.
 

He remembered the day he’d been given the machine. A nothing day, when he’d tired of the beach, tired even of the ocean, and walked into the hills until even the great Dome was a small bubble behind him and his breath came quickly from oxygen starvation. A day of strange unrest when he wondered at everything: the Dome, the sky, the village, the purpose. A day of changes.
 

As he lay on his back catching his breath and watching alpaca clouds, he heard a voice.
 

“Manuel.”
 

A tall woman stood there, dressed in a black cloak. Her face was pale and her eyes regarded him dispassionately. Some versions of the legend relate that she then cried, in a ringing voice, “Arise, Manuel, and fulfill your destiny!” And she may have, but the Rainbow says not. Reality is never quite so dramatic as legend, although it can be interesting enough.
 

The woman stood, and Manuel lay looking at her—rather sulkily, resenting her air of authority. She carried a smooth-sided box. Finally, Manuel climbed to his feet and leaned against a stunted tree.
 

“I must talk to you, Manuel. You are young and naturally rebellious, but I am hoping you will have the sense to listen to what I say and not treat it as the ravings of an old woman. And I am old, older than you could ever guess.” She watched him calmly and coldly, and there was something unearthly about her that cowed Manuel and made him bite back the sharp reply that rose readily to his lips. It seemed the wind had stopped blowing now and the horse clouds hung motionless, as though pinned to the backdrop of the sky.
 

Manuel swallowed and said, “I’ll listen.”
 

“You are going to be a famous man, Manuel. In the distant Ifalong minstrels will sing of your exploits—and of your companions. You will have adventures such as men have never dreamed of.”
 

“The Ifalong?” The word was unfamiliar.
 

“You probably think of Time as a single thread extending into the future and never ending. That is the general view in your village. But you must think of Time as a tree, Manuel. A tree that grows forever, always creating new branches.”
 

“That would be a big tree,” said Manuel, thinking literally.
 

“Out in the Greataway there is a tree called the ‘beacon hydra.’ It extends a thousand kilometers into space and is so huge that its very bulk will affect the orbit of its planet. I want you to think of Time as bigger even than the beacon hydra. Each branch and each twig represents a possibility where your future life might take one course or another, depending on what you do. Or what others do. The possibilities are infinite, and each possibility is called a ‘happentrack.’
 

“The Ifalong is the total of all these happentracks in the future, when there are a billion different ways things might have happened.”
 

“Oh.” He thought about that for a while and it seemed to make sense. “And how about the Greataway? What’s that?”
 

“The Greataway is just about everything, Manuel. In the old days, when your race used to travel in three-dimensional ships, they called it ‘High Space.’ But Space is all bound up with Time too, and could consist of an infinite number of happentracks. The ‘Greataway’ is the name for all of that.”
 

“Who are you?” asked Manuel. “How do you know all these things?”
 

“I am a Dedo,” said Shenshi, for it was she. Then she laid the box on the ground beside Manuel. “This is for you.”
 

“What is it?”
 

“It’s an old machine. They were popular many years ago. You are an unusual boy for your time, Manuel, and I think you will find this machine interesting.”
 

“What does it do?”
 

“Nothing that does not come from yourself. It will help you develop your talents, ready for that day when the Triad is formed and Starquin is released from the Ten Thousand Years’ Incarceration. Then your purpose will be fulfilled, and mine, too.” Her voice was utterly without emotion, as flat as if produced by a machine.
 

There was something about Manuel’s purpose being fulfilled that struck a sinister note with the boy. He gulped and looked into the hooded eyes of the woman, but could read nothing there.
 

He blinked, and she was gone.
 

He carried the Simulator home. He was an inquisitive boy, as well as an intelligent one, and he soon found out how to put the helmet on his head and arrange his thoughts and produce his mind-paintings. Others tried, people who spied on him and wondered at his machine. They sneaked into his shack and donned the helmet, and some of them produced representational images: a particular hill, a jaguar, the Dome.
 

Only Manuel could coax
feeling
out of the Simulator, however.
 

The door burst open and the gale swirled around the room, bringing sand and weed, knocking things over. A man stood there, peering into the gloom. “Manuel?”
 

“Yes?”
 

It was Hasqual. Although a villager, Hasqual was a wanderer at heart and only the thin air kept him in the vicinity of Pu’este. On occasions when the winds shifted, he’d been gone for months, returning with tales nobody believed, disturbing yarns that frightened the kids.
 

“This is going to be a bad storm, Manuel.”
 

“I know.” The youth’s face was somber in the diffused light from the Simulator.
 

Hasqual watched the images abstractedly. “You’d better come up to the church for the night—most of the village is there. Some of the roofs have gone already. A heavy sea could sweep right over this place of yours, and the tide’s coming in fast.”
 

“I’ll stay here.”
 

“You’re a damned fool, you know that?”
 

“It’s not your problem.”
 

“Suit yourself.” Hasqual was gone and the shack was empty again. Manuel went to the window and looked at the storm. Rain was drilling against the crystal. Some trick current of the wind made it stream upward and sideways, rather than down. Now the clouds became patchy, the rain intermittent. The wind was rising still, driving salt puddles across the beach, whining about the woodwork of the shack. Manuel wanted to shout, to sing. It grew darker, and the storm became a secret monster, tromping around out there, occasionally bellowing.
 

He went outside and secured the crude storm shutters against the windows. He dragged his boat farther from the water, finally tucking the craft right under the cliff near the shack. His vicunas were gone, probably sharing with Hasqual a presentiment of giant waves. Manuel returned to the shack and stood dripping in the middle of the floor in the darkness, feeling drunk, feeling omnipotent with the richness of the air.
 

The colors played before the Simulator. Manuel wondered about kindling a lamp, but decided against it. He stood watching the tiny shifting clouds; then he sat down and put the helmet on again. Carefully suppressing the elation that threatened to exclude everything else from his mind, he thought of the hurricane. He allowed the tumultuous sounds from outside to soak into his brain. The twisting clouds in the mind-painting ordered themselves; the foreground became a realistic contrast to the fantasy of weather. He thought
a crab
—and a crab appeared in the picture: not factual, just a suggestion sidling across wet sand.
 

Something pounded on the door.
 

The painting was beautiful, yet it still lacked that indefinable element. Manuel tried a few thought—images; ships, fish, storm-tossed trees. They didn’t work. He erased them hastily before they intruded upon the colors of the storm itself.
 

Outside, the wind rose to a sudden crescendo. The pounding on the door intensified.
 

Manuel tried people in his picture, slipping in girls, forgetting them as quickly. They didn’t fit, either. They were too... earthy.
 

He became aware of the door. He removed his helmet and listened. He heard a voice, a cry of desolation, of distress, of loss. It struck something deep inside Manuel—not simply because he was a compassionate person, but more because he felt a strange and wild recognition, as though the cry had come from within his own soul.
 

So now he wondered if he’d imagined it. He listened, breathless. He heard it again: a sobbing. A cry for help.
 

Now he thought he’d be too late. He ran to the door and fumbled with the heavy bar, releasing it and throwing it aside. The wind snatched the door out of his hand and crashed it against the wall. Something fell to the floor and smashed. Manuel stood in the open doorway, staring... That moment is caught forever in a million minds. It will never be forgotten so long as there is a memory in the Rainbow, so long as Man walks or crawls or oozes.
 

She stood in a deep drift of coarse weed, and tiny crabs crawled around her legs. More clumps of weed flew past, wind-borne. One wrapped around her shoulder and she flinched, shaking it off. She stood blinking at the diffused light of the Simulator with blue eyes, watching the miniature storm with wonder and a little fear, her long fair hair plastered wetly around her neck and trailing away like the tatters of a flag in a battle. She wore a ragged loinskin and not much else; just the remains of a fine skin shirt clinging to one breast, leaving the other bare. She was a picture, a storm-painting of beauty and perfection distilled from a thousand myths.
 

“Come in!” shouted Manuel as a wall-hanging flew past him, sucked out into the wild night. He saw the tide, only meters away.
 

The girl entered and he forced the door shut, barring it again. She stood in the center of the room, water flowing from her body, eyes downcast, her clothes stuck to her. She said nothing. Her stance was oddly submissive; possibly she was in shock. She was different from any girl, from any human Manuel had known. She was incredibly slim, with none of the heavy-chestedness of the village girls, yet a quiet strength flowed from her.
 

“What were you doing out there?” Helplessly, Manuel regarded her. “Maybe you’d like a hot drink.” He forced himself to stop staring and busied himself about the shack, puffing the dull embers of his hearth into life, throwing on dry brushwood, so that it crackled and blazed and the girl looked like a goddess of fire. He poured milk into a pot and stirred in a pinch of peyote, then hung the pot from a hook among the flames. He looked around, wondering what else he ought to do. He wasn’t used to company. “Here, dry yourself,” he said, hating himself for his thoughtlessness and handing her a fur. “And here’s a dry robe.”
 

She took off the remains of her clothes, watching him with blue eyes set in a grave, oval face with a small nose and round chin, saying nothing. The mouth was sad, but he felt it would smile nicely, given something to smile at. The impossibly slender body was strong, with neat pink-tipped breasts and solid thighs. Manuel was staring again. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life. She dried herself and drew the robe around her body.
 

Manuel pulled himself together and poured her a drink. It was barely warm, but the peyote would do her good. He guided her to his chair and she sat down. She sipped at the drink, her gaze wandering around the room, pausing here and there before returning to Manuel. She still hadn’t spoken.
 

Soon the mug was empty, and he took it from her, placing it on a shelf. When he turned back, she was asleep. He sat on the floor and watched her for a long time, saw her lashes lying against her cheek, watched the slow rise and fall of her breasts where the robe had fallen open, admired her hair, her nose, her toes. She slept on. He wanted to awaken her, to talk to her. He hadn’t heard her voice yet. It occurred to him that she might not speak his language.
 

As he sat irresolute, his gaze fell upon the Simulator, still projecting its storm-image, recalling his mind to the hurricane that buffeted the shack.
 

He placed the helmet on his head, keeping his eyes on the images.
 

He thought.
 

A paleness appeared among the wild eddying of clouds, at first formless but becoming clearer by the second. It was a face, a girl’s face, melancholy and oval, with a round chin, blue eyes and a cloud of fair hair flying in the wind. The hut shook to a fresh blast. For a long time Manuel sat there, taking the helmet off in case the girl-image became too definite, watching the shift and play of color while the wind howled in from the sea and the girl lay asleep. It was not perfect. It needed days of work, yet. Other moods must be captured within the complex patterns of the Simulator, other images to lend the creation depth. It was not perfect, but the basic elements were there. The storm, and the girl.
 

It was a beginning...
 

By morning the main force of the storm had moved inland, ploughing a furrow of destruction fifty kilometers wide across the villages of the coastal strip before disappearing into the interior and spending itself among the mountains and ruined cities. The villagers of Pu’este returned to their huts—or what remained of them—and began resignedly to reroof while the strength of the rich air remained in the valley. The guanacos remained, too. They had been converging on the village for days, and now they formed a vast carpet of life that had to be shoved aside before repairs could commence.