King of the Scepter'd Isle (Song of Earth) (50 page)

“You can tell whose son he is, can’t you?” said Sally disgustedly.

“We’ll be back before you know
it, Marc,” Nyneve assured him. “This isn’t your usual kind of space travel.”

“Oh … all right, then.”

“Coming, Arthur?”

“Not this time.” The tall man smiled. “Those people will need a leader, particularly over the next couple of days. I can’t leave them now.” He kissed Nyneve and hurried away. “See you soon!” he called.

“He’s another one,” said Sally. “The world is full of them.”

Nyneve said, “Join hands and stand with me beside the Moon Rock.” She placed a hand in one of the indentations. Concentrating, she used the technique taught her by Avalona long ago.

“Oh!” cried Sally, as they lay suspended in their invisible capsule, watching the stars drift by. “Now this is
really
flying.”

Two days later the remnants of the revelers around Pentor Rock were startled by the sudden fiery materialization of three people, who in the meantime had traveled to many worlds and found an ideal one, where the gravity was less than half of Earth’s, and slender trees reached to an orange sky. This world was equally suitable for Swingers and Wingers.

One month later Adam led a mass exodus from Earth.

A curious thing happened to Nyneve shortly after they left Earth on that first occasion. She became aware of an immense presence drifting along the same psetic line as herself. For a while she and her companions were engulfed by this presence, although only she was aware of it. It was a presence she’d met before: huge and wise and almost immortal—and certainly inevitable. It
glanced
at her as it passed, and filled her mind with one simple remark.

“Thank you,” said Starquin, as he passed by.

“Isn’t this exciting!” cried Sally. “I never want to go back to Earth!”

*  *  *

After a moment Afah
said, “You’re going to stay here?”

“Of course,” said Fang. “You can send the other gnomes down as soon as you like. We’ll set up gnomedom again in Mara Zion.”

“It’s not going to be easy. You’ll be living on the same—what do you call it?—happentrack as the humans.”

“Arthur and Nyneve will see we come to no harm. Things are going to be a lot better from now on. And anyway …” Fang glanced at the sky. Was it his imagination, or did Misty Moon look a little more distinct? “Happentracks can do funny things. What about you, Afah?”

The furry kikihuahua looked down at the dark mass of the moor. People were lighting fires, and figures could be seen dancing. “When we looked into Dream Earth,” he said, “we found a gentle people living gentle lives that harmed nobody, full of pleasant imaginings and kindness. Then, in defiance of all we kikihuahuas stand for, we helped to teach them once again about fighting and killing and evil. We’ve turned them back into the savages they used to be, thirty thousand years ago.”

“We had to free them from the Tin Mothers. It was the only way.”

“We had to free them from our own careless invention, which we ourselves had outgrown. We’ve visited all kinds of unhappiness on these poor humans, and there will be more to come. They’ve tasted blood and they’ve remembered what it used to be like to be human. Now they’ll have to adapt to life outside the domes, and they’ll use their newfound aggression to do it. They’ll be fighting one another for food and living space. They’ll pull all their old weapons out of the cupboard. They’ll fire up their spaceships. Everything they do will be against the Kikihuahua Examples—yet it is we who triggered them off.”

“I found Nyneve’s stories rather fun, myself.”

“That’s because you have some human genes in you.”

“Come on, Afah. You’re taking it too hard. There’s nothing you can do about it now. What’s done is done.”

“There is something we can do, and I’m going to make sure we do it. We can stay around until the humans recover from the first flush of their new vitality, and then we can guide them in the ways of the Examples.”

“You may have to stay
around for a long time.”

“Time is of no consequence to a kikihuahua asleep in a bat.”

A month later the Mara Zion gnomes returned to Earth.

With the Princess at his side, Fang ruled wisely and well for two hundred and thirty-six years. In the fortieth year of his leadership the happentracks diverged and the gnomes found themselves once again in a world free of humans. Nyneve visited them often, but Arthur and his subjects were visible only in the umbra, gradually becoming less distinct.

The Princess bore Fang twelve more children, and the conception of each was enjoyed to the full by this unusually virile couple. Despite their own changed views on sex, the other Mara Zion gnomes never quite got used to such unashamed fecundity.

“Where will it all end?” asked the Miggot when Fang announced the onset of the eighth—or it may have been the ninth—pregnancy. “Is there no limit to this perversion?”

It ended many years later, one cool autumn evening when the Princess was seen walking slowly through the forest with the aid of a gnarled stick. She sat on a stump in a small clearing where mushrooms grew in a circle, and waited. The humanoid woman who materialized there saw her tear-stained face and nodded. She accompanied the Princess back to her dwelling, picked up the wrapped bundle, and together they walked to a mist-enshrouded lake.

The Princess watched without surprise as a narrow black boat appeared around a headland with a number of black-cowled human figures at the oars. Her companion, also dressed in black, stepped aboard and laid the bundle on a bench in the center of the boat. The Princess took her place beside the bench, and the woman returned to the shore.

“Thank you, Nyneve,” said the Princess as the oars-women bent to their task.

“Thank you,” the Dedo called back. “Thank you both.”

The Princess watched as Nyneve turned and
walked slowly back into the forest of Mara Zion, head down, until the mists hid her from view.

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Cat Carina

The Celestial Steam Locomotive

For Shanna, Ryan, Nicki, Mandy, Terry and David with all my love

Michael G. Coney (1932 – 2005)

Michael G. Coney is the award-winning author of such novels as
Syzygy
,
Monitor Found In Orbit
,
Brontomek!
,
Cat Karina
, and
The Celestial Steam Locomotive
. His short stories have appeared in magazines the world over and are frequently included in anthologies.

A Gollancz eBook

Copyright © The Estate of Michael G Coney 1989

All rights reserved.

The right of Michael G Coney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2013 by Gollancz

The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

Orion House

5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

London, WC2H 9EA

An Hachette UK Company

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 575 12946 7

All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

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