The Celestial Steam Locomotive (The Song of Earth) (38 page)

But he’d never been able to visualize the dawning of intelligence and the newer life-forms because, secure in his closed world, he had not conceived of the existence of the Greataway and Starquin, the Five-in-One.
 

The Vision recurred from time to time during the succeeding days. It would come around a corner of his mind and walk across his landscape. He was unable to subject it to any real control; like the
Eloise
, it seemed to exist apart from him. It walked with a grace all its own. It stirred him in a way he couldn’t explain. He tried to capture it, to extrapolate on it, to trace it back to its origins, but he couldn’t. It
was
, and it was strangely
beautiful
, and he could-n’t control it. So he let it play with the gibbons and ride the stegosauruses.
 

Then one day the
Eloise
was back.
 

Quickly he asked it about the Vision.
 

“I am
she
, Mole,” said the
Eloise
, and he knew that
she
was sad. “The Vision is myself, and I want you to think of it that way. You see, we won’t be meeting again. You’re going away, physically away, to a place where dreams will come much more easily and you’ll be able to share them with other people. So please take my Vision with you, and look after it always.”
 

Then she stayed with him for a long time and walked through his world in the form of the Vision, and put things right where they were wrong—and, to his regret, obliterated the dinosaurs, which had been an enjoyable part of his evolutionary game. But she put so many wonderful things in their place that it was worth it: whales and stars and orchids, and humans with animal genes and beautiful faces.
 

And before she left him forever, she gave him the final gift.
 

A new creature appeared, and the
Eloise
merged his ego with it.
 

“This is the real
you,
Mole,” she said.
 

They buried Eloise beside a tall ironwood tree not far from the Dome. It did-n’t seem right to recycle her. After they’d tamped down the dark soil and returned to the Dome, Lord Shout said, “She’d been ill for some time, Zozula. She knew she would never see the delta and her people again.”
 

“How does the Mole feel about this?” asked Zozula.
 

“I have no way of knowing.” The Mole had been sitting quietly on the floor when they carried Eloise out and he was still sitting there, attended by the pretty nurse, Tashi.
 

She looked up. “He’s fine, Lord Shout. Eloise was thinking to him just before she died.”
 

“Does he know she’s dead?”
 

“I think so.”
 

“Well...” said Zozula uncertainly, thinking of Eloise’s pathetic, flabby body. “She wasn’t much.” In his way, he was trying to console Lord Shout.
 

“The Mole isn’t much, either.”
 

Zozula glanced at him and said, “According to Eloise, he’s ready for the Rainbow. Let’s get him to bed. Would you like to come and watch?”
 

Lord Shout thought of the shelves, the drips and the electrodes. “No, I don’t think so.” He walked across to the Mole and kissed him briefly, and when he turned back there were tears in his eyes. “Thank you, Zozula,” he said. “Thank you for your hospitality and everything. It’s time for us to go home now. My men are waiting outside.”
 

“Us?” Zozula glanced at the Mole.
 

“I hope you don’t mind,” Lord Shout said evenly, as the nurse left the Mole and joined them. “Tashi is coming with me.”
 

Zozula sighed. “I don’t need to remind you—”
 

“No, you don’t. You made that point very clear. But I have to remind you, Zozula—there are other considerations in life besides the perpetuation of the species. After all, you and Eulalie... It’s a pity that Tashi and I can’t have children, but it’s not a disaster. The human race is far from extinct.” He held out his hand. “Goodbye, and thank you again.”
 

Zozula clasped it. “Thank you for the Mole,” he said.
 

Within an hour the Mole slipped quietly into Dream Earth, and the Rainbow hardly noticed his coming.
 

The Girl had left the Land of Lost Dreams several days previously. Elated by her success in the Forest of Fear and her defeat of Blind Pew, she had forced her way into the more normal planes of Dream Earth by sheer strength of psy. She was confident that she could return to the real world by the same method, but meanwhile she needed time to recuperate.
 

She intended to use this time to good purpose. Her experiences in the real world with real people had made a profound impression on her. Zozula, Lord Shout, Eloise, the Cuidadors, Manuel—particularly Manuel—had taught her that there was no substitute for genuine relationships and emotions. She was longing to get back out there—contrary to Zozula’s worst fears—but meanwhile she was not unhappy. There was much to do. She had to instill a little sense into these phonies.
 

Eulalie would have been proud of her.
 

She visited the Coconut Shy, where people stood in a huge circle throwing stones at a crowd of whimpering, abandoned smallwishes, and she strode into the middle of them. Using her own psy, she galvanized the smallwishes and organized them into a quick-witted team that began to chuckle and dodge, catching the stones and throwing them back, making the Dream People look like fools, until the game was no fun anymore.
 

“Who is this girl?” a powerful felino asked. The 122nd millennium was in vogue at the time.
 

“I don’t know,” boomed an Us Ursa, “but she’s the ugliest creature I’ve ever seen! Is she real, or is she a smallwish? Wish her away, someone, and let’s get on with the game!”
 

“I have the psy,” announced a slender jester, jingling his bells and advancing on the Girl.
 

He disappeared in a puff of smoke.
 

“He had nothing,” said the Girl, facing the Dream People as they began to move toward her. “He was only a smallwish, bluffing. Just think about that for a moment. You people have drifted so far away from reality that you don’t know a smallwish when he’s right beside you!”
 

“So what?” someone called. “As long as it’s fun!”
 

“All of you are phonies,” shouted the Girl, as an angry murmur began to build up. “But some of you are
totally
fake! You’re not even really there! You exist in other people’s minds! Once they stop believing in you, you’ll cease to exist, just like the Celestial Steam Locomotive!”
 

“Wish her away!”
 

“You can’t!” And suddenly a podium appeared behind the Girl, and she turned her back on them and mounted the steps. Taking a microphone, she stared deliberately at the crowd. The felino was real, and that fighting
grupo
of felinas, too. And the caiman, and the kikihuahuan digger. But that huge Us Ursa, blustering and calling on others to pool their psy and eliminate her...
 

“You!” she shouted, pointing at him. “Fade out!”
 

And he did. He was gone in an instant and the grass where he’d stood was not even bruised.
 

“Has it ever occurred to you,” the Girl asked, “that many of those people you call friends, whom you share your adventures with, are not real? Did you ever think they might not have minds of their own, but were just somebody else’s smallwish that battened onto you—not because they liked you, but simply because they needed your belief to maintain their existence? You’re surrounded by a crowd of freeloaders, leeching away your psy! Look around and ask yourself—how many real friends do you have?”
 

And in the thoughtful silence, a small voice cried, “How can I tell?”
 

A leonid roared, “Use your common sense, of course! Shut your ears to questioners and rabble-rousers, and just believe that human beings are good—and fun—and that Earth is the most wonderful planet in the Universe! Our psy is the gift of the Rainbow and we must use it wisely and well. This girl has taught us a lesson we needed, and I for one am thankful. Now, I’m sure we all have a lot of thinking to do!”
 

He strode away and was cut down by a dozen skeptical smallwishers and flickered out like a snuffed candle.
 

Felinos stared at felinas and caiman-eyed tumpiers. A group of identical El Tigres held their breath, glancing at their legendary wives, the beautiful Serenas. A lone Saba could be seen running her hands over her own body, her wondering eyes scared. A faint sigh came from the ether where an invisible god thing had been hovering, and a small pack of African hunting dogs began to sniff one another, whimpering uncertainly. Robots watched; Mohals and Solons gazed at Esmeraldas.
 

A Karina disappeared.
 

Then the panic began.
 

Elizabeth’s Retrenchment, as it later became called, occupied a tiny period in the life of Dream Earth, yet later historians agreed that it was perhaps the most important event ever to occur in that imaginary world. During one subjective week the observed population fell from some 50,000 to around 15,000 persona, and the effects spread from Dome to Dome throughout Earth by way of the Rainbow’s circuits. No doubt the Rainbow accelerated the process, once it had started, on the grounds that it was beneficial for the population as a whole and freed up vast areas of the computer for more useful work. The Retrenchment was followed by a period of comparative significance known as the Age of Caradoc, during which the environment of Dream Earth became more logical and increasingly subject to the natural laws found in the real world. In this way, the neotenites became prepared for their eventual release from dependency on the Dome, although it was many years before they lived Outside in any numbers. By which time, of course, they were not neotenites.
 

The Retrenchment did not happen easily. Thirty-five thousand people do not give up their identities without a fight—and after the initial panic even the Dream People began to resist the rate of disincorporation as their friends and creations disappeared before their eyes.
 

On the fifth day of the retrenchment, the opposition got itself organized. A thousand Dream People had called for a night’s respite from the orgy of suspicion, and an unnatural quiet hung over Dream Earth. Ten thousand smallwishes—waitresses, mistresses, stunt men, gigolos—trembled in their beds. One smallwish bided his time, surrounded by a bodyguard of real Dream People who were expending the last flickers of their psy in reinforcing his credibility. In four days they had identified the origins of the Retrenchment, identified the Girl and learned something of her past. They and their small-wish were ready.
 

The Girl awakened on the sixth morning. Having seen no reason why she shouldn’t sleep comfortably like anyone else, she had taken a room at the Admiral Benbow Inn. This was a pleasant place that had been operated by its smallwisher, Mrs. Hawkins, for several years. Mrs. Hawkins was an anomaly in Dream Earth: a person who liked to get through the day with a minimum of smallwishes; a person of abundant common sense who had supported the Girl through some of the more difficult phases of the Retrenchment.
 

“Stay in bed this morning,” said Mrs. Hawkins. “I’ll bring you breakfast.”
 

“That’s a good idea,” said the Girl gratefully. “I’m all psy’d out. I need to hole up for a while, otherwise somebody might take advantage of me. I have plenty of enemies out there. And anyway, now I’ve set everything in motion, it can carry on without me.”
 

“You’ve earned a rest.” Mrs. Hawkins drew the curtains. Outside, it was still dark.
 

“Somebody’s interfering with the sun,” said the Girl, suddenly uneasy.
 

“It must be those people who call themselves the Reactionaries,” said Mrs. Hawkins, scanning the eastern sky for signs of daybreak. “They sent a public broadcast through the village yesterday afternoon while you were away, asking people to stop wasting their psy searching for smallwishes. They said the whole structure of Dream Earth might break down, with so much skepticism abroad.”
 

“That’s nonsense,” said the Girl. “The Rainbow handles Composite Reality.”
 

“So you’ve told me, and I believe you—but it doesn’t make the day any lighter. And there are a lot of people out there who are getting pretty scared. Even real people aren’t sure whether they might be smallwishes themselves, and they don’t want to find out.”
 

“I’m sorry,” said the Girl after a moment. “I hadn’t thought of that too much. It seemed there were bigger issues.”
 

“You did the right thing, all the same,” Mrs. Hawkins reassured her, leaving the room.
 

Still uneasy, the Girl got up and went to the window. A few lights were on in the handful of houses that constituted the village. The single winding street was empty in the predawn grayness. The villagers, no doubt questioning the lateness of the sunrise, remained indoors, where their authenticity was less likely to be challenged. Then the Girl caught sight of a movement to the west, where the lane disappeared into mists and rolling meadowland. A lone figure was approaching the village. At least somebody was not afraid.
 

She would not have been human if she hadn’t felt some regret for the disappearance of all those smallwishes. It was not their fault they were not real. And false or not, they felt a very real fear at the prospect of ceasing to exist. Consoling herself with the knowledge that it would all be over in a couple more days, she opened the window and leaned out to see who this lonely traveler was.