The Celestial Steam Locomotive (The Song of Earth) (18 page)

They reached the big river shortly after they’d eaten, although they did-n’t see it at first. The stream they’d been following widened and the ground became swamplike, so they turned east, toward the sea. Before long they caught glimpses of an immense spread of brown water through the trees, flowing sluggishly east. The shrugleggers splashed on. The air became uncomfortably humid and thousands of tiny, biting flies joined them.
 

“This is awful,” said the Girl. The others silently agreed and even the shrugleggers seemed dispirited, their stride flagging, their hairy bodies soaked with rank sweat and swamp water.
 

By late afternoon Zozula had had enough and asked Manuel with unusual deference, “Shall we stop for the night, now?”
 

“If you like.”
 

“How do we light a fire?” They’d turned away from the river and halted on a knoll that appeared a little drier than the surrounding forest.
 

“We can’t.” Manuel glanced up. The sun was too low now, striking the forest at an angle and totally absorbed by the canopy.
 

“So how do we keep the... animals away from us?”
 

“We climb a tree,” said Manuel. “The shrugleggers can look after themselves.”
 

So it was that two days later three exhausted explorers reached the lazy, branching waters of the delta. They found a small tribe of Wild Humans living in a clearing who were able to direct them toward the Island of Lazy Children, as they called it. The Triad crossed deep arms of the river on the shrugleggers’ backs. The creatures were excellent swimmers, moving fast, with powerful froglike sweeps of their legs, and easily outpacing the crocodiles. The sun was at its height when they reached a sandy bank free of vegetation.
 

“This is the place,” said Zozula. “According to those people, it’s the only inhabited island in the area.” He would have seen the buildings by now, if there had been any. He remembered the tall minarets, the vehicles, the people of True Human form, and he compared that vision with this: a muddy beach, a tangle of scrub beyond. An enormous disappointment was mounting in him, and yet his disappointment was not unexpected. He sighed. “The Rainbow’s been acting so strangely, lately. It got the timeframe wrong.”
 

“I don’t even see any ruins,” said Manuel. He kicked at the sand as though hoping to uncover a midden. “I told you there was no city.”
 

“The Rainbow can project into the Ifalong,” said Zozula dully. “The city might not have happened yet.”
 

“You mean we’ve come all this way for nothing?” asked the Girl.
 

“No,” said Manuel. “There are people here—the villagers said so. We only have to find them. Perhaps they can tell us something.”
 

“I think we’ve found them.” The Girl pointed down the beach. One of the recumbent forms that at first glance they had taken for land manatees had raised itself up on one elbow and was looking their way. It lifted a hand and waved feebly.
 

And so the Triad met the Lazy Children.
 

Zozula regarded the row of dirty, seminaked people lying in the mud. Was this what they’d come to see? These people were no more True Human than the Girl. They were fat and weak—in fact, they bore a clear physical likeness to her. There were eight of them, a group of five and a group of three. Only one of them seemed to be awake, and now he smiled pleasantly, indicated himself and said: “Trevis.”
 

Then he shouted, a series of fluid sounds. The first word was undoubtedly “Eloise,” as though it were a summons.
 

“Manuel,” whispered the Girl, “are these men or women?” She’d seen weird things in Dream Earth, but at least people were divided into two more-or-less distinct categories. She found these almost hairless humans with vestigial genitals slightly unnerving.
 

“I’m not sure. A bit of both, I think.” Manuel also felt some distaste. Then a movement caught their attention.
 

A figure walked toward them from the forest, carrying a small baby about one year old. It was the baby that made the Triad decide that this particular Lazy Child was female, which later proved to be an accurate assessment.
 

“I am Eloise,” said the girl. “And you must be from the Dome.” She regarded them in turn, nodding as she examined the Girl. “You’re exactly as we thought you’d be. I’m afraid we may seem a bit strange to you, though.” She glanced downstream. “And we’re nervous too. Some of us may be hiding within ourselves.”
 

“You’ve nothing to be frightened of,” said Zozula gruffly.
 

“We have everything to be frightened of,” said Eloise. “You are going to destroy us.”
 

She overrode their protestations.
 

“Yes, you are,” she said. “Even though you don’t know it. Even though you may never know it. Trevis says so, and Trevis is almost always right, particularly when he projects from the theories of Yato. There are some queer things happening in the Greataway these days, and some beings are moving to protect themselves and their territory. Recently I caught a glimpse of a great knowledge out there—it just touched me for a moment as it traveled in that weird vehicle we see in the Greataway sometimes.”
 

“The Celestial Steam Locomotive,” Zozula guessed. “I’d heard it could transcend the Dome. That proves it—it’s in the Greataway.”
 

“The Skytrain isn’t the kind of place where you’d expect to find much intelligence,” the Girl objected. “From what I hear, it’s full of a bunch of idiots from Dream Earth who have nothing better to do than to gamble with the only lives they have.”
 

“Anyway,” said Zozula to Eloise, “what do you people know about the Greataway?”
 

Eloise ignored his question. “The intelligence was there,” she said, “and it was traveling. It was very clever in its limited field, and its math was almost as advanced as ours. That’s how I came to notice it—the math. We named it the math creature, but it seems to have dropped out of sight, now. Probably your Rainbow killed it out of jealousy.”
 

“How do you know—”
 

She glanced at Zozula thoughtfully. “I’m sorry we’re not True Humans and that we have no city. But you see, we build these things in our minds, so it’s natural for us to imagine our bodies in a perfect form, just like our machines and buildings and mathematical formulae. It’s just as easy as building ugly.”
 

“How do you know all this about us?” asked Zozula harshly.
 

“I’m telepathic, of course. Now, as to what you want from us—”
 

“What I want,” said Zozula, “is to
talk
. I don’t like having questions lifted from my mind. I’d rather put them myself, if it’s all the same to you.”
 

Eloise grinned suddenly, like a child. “You should see what Trevis can do!”
 

“Tell him not to, please.”
 

“Now you’re the frightened one!” Eloise sat on the sand, feeding the baby from a pale gourd because she had no proper breasts. The infant coughed and spluttered but seemed to be getting the pale liquid down. Apart from a hint of hydrocephalus, it looked a normal, if fat, infant. “I didn’t bear this baby myself,” she said in answer to the Girl’s unspoken question. “That wouldn’t be possible, I’m afraid. It... came from another tribe.”
 

“But you are female?” the Girl couldn’t help but ask.
 

“I feel female. That’s enough for our purpose. And now—although Trevis is telling me it’s inevitable that you will destroy us—I think it’s dangerous to discuss our tribe any further...” Her eyes were inward-looking. “We have theorized that Space and Time can be infinitely divided into... ‘happentracks,’ you would call them. Since the number of happentracks arising from any moment are infinite, there must exist in the...” she glanced at Zozula, “... the
Ifalong
many happentracks on which you do not destroy our civilization. In spite of what Trevis says.”
 

“Civilization?” Zozula found the word presumptuous.
 

“You must have seen our work, otherwise you wouldn’t have come here. Our art, our science... everything. I think civilization is the right word in your language—it’s a little bigger than a culture. Don’t be put off by our bodies. That’s a very unimportant plane of our existence.”
 

Eventually the strain went out of the atmosphere as they lit a fire, aroused the sleeping figures, cooked Manuel’s meat and talked. The Lazy Children were particularly interested in the Girl, covertly inspecting her as they ate, nodding to one another as though telepathic points were being made.
 

“Where are the rest of your tribe?” asked the Girl at one point.
 

“In the forest,” said a Lazy Child named Hopho. “We raise crops in there, after a fashion. We’re not very practical people.”
 

The Girl began to climb to her feet. “I’d like to see.”
 

“No!” Eloise pulled her down again, adding apologetically, “The less you see, the better. These people here are our leaders. They can tell you anything you want to know.”
 

“I want to know how the Rainbow picked up your... your imaginings,” said Zozula. “The Rainbow only monitors physical events, so far as I know. How can it possibly record thoughts?”
 

Hopho said, “We do more than think. Our work is very factual and logical, and our latest gestalt—that’s Trevis, Antilla, Buth, Stril and I—is the most powerful we’ve ever had. We’ve transcended the limitations of our own craniums and tapped into the Greataway. Somewhere out there our city exists—maybe on just a single happentrack—and our starships, our art and our mathematics. Your Rainbow is aware of this. It didn’t find us on Earth with its scanners. It detected us in the Greataway...”
 

Later, Zozula asked, “Why are you so sure we’re going to destroy you? You don’t interfere with us in any way. I’m in charge of Dome Azul, and I certainly don’t bear you any ill will.”
 

Gently, Trevis spoke. “Thank you, my friend. But you are not in charge of Dome Azul. The Rainbow is.”
 

“Nonsense! We can ignore the Rainbow anytime we like! And anyway, why would the Rainbow want to destroy you?”
 

“Because we are a tiny nuisance to it, a cinder in its eye that affects the clarity of its logic and vision. And the Rainbow senses our potential for greatness, our huge knowledge that expands much more quickly than its own—because the Rainbow was designed only by ordinary human minds and by itself. We sit in the Greataway now, and the Rainbow sees us like a small, deadly snake; dangerous but vulnerable. The original purpose of the Rainbow was to serve and protect humanity. Now, it feels it has to protect itself. It is very simple to stamp on us...
 

“When your Rainbow issues our death sentence,” Trevis continued, “you will not recognize it as such. So you will not be able to help us. It was preordained, ever since Mankind first gained his thirst for knowledge...”
 

By evening the conversation had turned to the problems of the Dome and the growing unpredictability of the Rainbow and the machines it controlled: the robots, the kitchen, the recycling unit. “That’s why we came, mainly,” said Zozula. “We thought you’d be able to help us. Unless we get the Rainbow repaired quickly, it will destroy the Dome. There are other Domes too, all over Earth. I called one of them, and its terminal of the Rainbow is acting strangely too. We can’t identify the problem.”
 

“I’m sorry,” said Trevis.
 

“I took a chance the other day,” said Zozula. He told them about the Mole. “I’d hoped to send him into the Rainbow as a kind of interpreter, because in some ways he’s like you—he’s grown up without outside influences and he might have brought a pure kind of logic with him. But the Rainbow rejected him. It pushed his mind straight back into his own head. Now I simply don’t know what to do. The Mole was our last hope, but he just sits there and we don’t know what he’s thinking, or if he’s capable of thought at all.”
 

“Perhaps Eloise could help you.”
 

“Eloise?” He regarded the female thing.
 

“She’s probably our most intuitive telepath. She could tell you what’s going on in the Mole’s mind. Perhaps she could prepare him, too; make him a bit more compatible with the Rainbow.”
 

Eloise said quickly, “I’d be happy to come back to the Dome with you.”
 

“Why?” Zozula was suspicious.
 

“I work alone here, building a time-city. I’m not a member of any gestalt, since my partner was taken by crocodiles two years ago. So nobody will miss me for a while. If you will bring me back when I’m through, I’d like to go with you. It would be a new experience, and I’ll be able to use it in my time-city.”
 

“Eloise has traveled before,” said Trevis.
 

Zozula was still uncertain. “How do I know you won’t wreck the Rainbow? You say it intends to eliminate you.”
 

Trevis said, “You have to understand the Ifalong. Certainly there may be happentracks where Eloise destroys the Rainbow. But I can visualize a million times more happentracks where Eloise’s help is instrumental in your success.”
 

“Is that the best chance you can give us?”
 

“There’s no such thing as certainty,” said Trevis with a smile. “That’s one of the drawbacks of the Greataway we live in.”
 

And speaking soundlessly to Eloise, mind to mind, he asked,
“Why did you tell them about the math creature?”