The Steam-Driven Boy (2 page)

Agnes began to cry. Everyone was someone else. No one was who they were. The garbageman scrutinized her messages to the milkman. In the park, the pigeons all wore metal capsules taped to their legs. There were cowpies in the country, but no cows. Even at the supermarket you had to be careful. If you picked out items that seemed to form any sort of pattern …

‘Are there any popsicles left?’ Glen asked.

‘No. There’s nothing in the icebox but some leftover custard. We can’t eat that, it has a map in it. Glen, what
are
we going to eat?’

‘I don’t know. How about … the baby? Well, don’t look at me like that! You found him in the oven, didn’t you? Suppose you’d just lit the oven without looking inside?’

‘No! I will not give up my baby for a – casserole!’

‘All right, all right! I was merely making a suggestion, that’s all.’

It was dark now, throughout the lead-walled house, except in the kitchen. Out the quartz picture window, dusk was falling on the lawn, on the lifeless body of ‘Mr Green’. The television showed a panel discussion of eminent doctors, who wondered if eating were not the major cause of insanity.

Agnes went to answer the front door, while Glen went back to the kitchen.

‘Excuse me,’ the priest said to Agnes. ‘I’m on a sick call. Someone was good enough to loan me his Diaper Service tuck, but I’m afraid it has broken down. I wonder if I might use your phone?’

‘Certainly, Father. It’s bugged, of course.’

‘Of course.’

She stood aside to let him pass, and just then Glen shouted, ‘The baby! He’s at the custard!’

Agnes and the priest dashed out to see. In the clean, well-lighted kitchen, Glen stood gaping at the open refrigerator. Somehow the baby had got it open, for now Agnes could see his diapered bottom and pink toes sticking out from a lower shelf.

‘He’s hungry,’ she said.

‘Take another look,’ grated Glen.

Leaning closer she saw the child had pulled the map from the custard. He was taking photos of it with a tiny, baby-sized camera.

‘Microfilm!’ she gasped.

‘Who are you?’ Glen asked the priest.

‘I’m –’

‘Wait a minute. You don’t look like a man of the cloth to me.’

It was true, Agnes saw in the light. The breeze rustled the carbon-paper cassock, and she saw it was held together with paper clips. His stole was, on closer examination, a strip of purple stamps.

‘If you’re a priest,’ Glen continued, ‘why do I see on your Roman collar
the letterhead of my office
?’

‘Very clever of you,’ said the man, drawing a pistol from his sleeve. ‘I’m sorry you saw through our little ruse. Sorry for you, that is.’

‘
Our?
’ Glen looked at the baby. ‘Hold on. Agnes, what kind of a vehicle did he drive up in?’

‘A diaper truck.’

‘Aha! I’ve been waiting a long time to catch up with you – Diaper Man. Your chequered career has gone on far too long.’

‘Ah, so you’ve recognized me and my dimple-kneed assistant, have you? But I’m afraid it won’t do you much good. You see, we already have the photos, and there is a bullet here for each of you. Don’t try to stop us!’

Watching them, the false priest scooped up the baby. ‘I think I had better kill the two of you in any case,’ he said. ‘You already know too much about my
modus operandi
.’ The baby in his arms waved the camera gleefully and gooed its derision.

‘All right,’ said Diaper Man. ‘Face the wall, please.’

‘Now!’ said Glen. He leaped for the gun, while Agnes deftly kicked the camera from the baby’s chubby fist.

The infant spy looked startled, but he acted fast, a tiny blur of motion. Scooping up two fistfuls of custard, he flung them in Glen’s eyes. Gasping, Glen dropped the gun, as the infamous pair made their dash for freedom.

‘You’ll never take me alive!’ snarled the false priest, vaulting into his truck.

‘Let them go,’ said Glen. He tasted the custard. ‘I should have realized earlier the baby wasn’t ticking, he was
clicking
. But let them go; they won’t get far anyway, and we’ve saved the map. For whatever it’s worth.’

‘Are you all right, darling?’

‘Fine. Mmmm. This is pretty good, Agnes.’

She blushed at the compliment. There was a muffled explosion, and in the distance they could see flames shooting high in the air.

‘Esso bombing the Shell station,’ said Glen. The gas war had begun.

They say that G. was once a man of great commerce, head in fact of a large computer corporation most of whose factories were aboard ships. These ships sailed constantly, through ocean after ocean, leaving in their wakes bits of printed circuit board and bright scraps of wire. G. and his corporate image were known everywhere; he wanted for nothing, and yet –

Yet, sitting in his comfortable office overlooking the showrooms and guard dogs, G. was not very happy. Happy, yes, but not very. Everything he saw made him so
tired
: the array of push-buttons, the towers …

One day an engineer came to show him the latest secret processes.

‘Look here. This funny material
does something
to the circuit. See? The electrons just get so far, and then they disappear?’

G. thought about this for a minute. He ordered an automobile built of the funny material. When it was ready, he climbed in and let it carry him off down the turnpike.

After he had driven just so far, he came to a toll-gate. The new car rolled to a stop. A man in a peculiar uniform stepped from the ticket booth and called out to him.

‘Glad you could make it, Mr G.’

‘But how did you know my name?’

‘Well, I guess about everybody knows you, Mr G. Come on, I’ll take you to the Reception Hall.’

As they walked, G. examined the stranger’s peculiar uniform. If you looked at it out of the corner of your eye, it might be any bright colour. Only if you looked directly at it was it plain and brown.

‘Wait here, in here,’ said the man, stopping at the door of the Reception Hall. ‘The examiners will be ready to see you in a minute.’

‘The examiners?’

‘Oh yeah. Everyone has to take an examination, you know. I’m sorry we can’t make an exception for such a V.I.P. as yourself, but you know the saying: Regulations are made to be kept.’

G. had to wait in the stuffy hall for hours. He inspected the single tattered magazine in the rack, but it was unreadable. For one thing, every page showed the same picture, with a different headline-caption underneath. The headline-captions were all written in foreign languages, apparently a different language for each page. Supposing they were translations of one another, G. leafed through searching for the English version, but there was none. He read:

‘S
NIAG
RUOY TUB
ESOL
OT
G
NIHTON EVAH
UOY!
E
TINGI
KROW
EH
T FO
S
REKROW!
E
LBANIMOBA SI
NOITIDOC
NAMUH
EH
T!’