The Celestial Steam Locomotive (The Song of Earth) (39 page)

The figure was moving slowly between the high hedgerows in a curiously zigzag fashion, so that the Girl might have thought he was drunk if it had not been for the steady purposefulness of his gait. It was almost as though he were searching, the way he walked steadily from one side of the lane to the other, working his way toward the village like a sailboat against the wind. Then, as she watched, his course straightened and he walked beside the eastern hedge. And now she could see that his arm was extended and he seemed to be jabbing at the foliage as he walked, possibly with a stick, almost as though he was...
 

Blind.
 

As the Girl moved back from the window and the great pounding began in her heart, the figure passed a lighted window and she saw the black cloak, the pallid face. She sank into a chair, trying to smallwish herself somewhere else, knowing that she had already exhausted her psy, beginning to tremble uncontrollably...
 

Then she heard the tap-tap of the blind man’s stick on the street, and a pause.
 

“Go away,” she whispered. “Go away, please.”
 

Then shuffling footsteps, and a long scraping as the stick was drawn along the wall of the inn.
 

She heard the door latch rattle downstairs. Then there was an insistent knocking and she heard Mrs. Hawkins call, “Wait a moment, there! I’m coming as fast as I can!”
 

She heard the front door creak open, and a muffled conversation. Next, footsteps on the stairs... Mrs. Hawkins’ footsteps. They stopped outside the door.
 

“There’s a man come to see you.” Mrs. Hawkins lowered her voice. “A poor old blind man—such a sorry sight. I think he wants you to help him.”
 

“Send him away,” whispered the Girl. Then she heard the dreadful shuffling on the stairs. “Oh, no... no,” she groaned.
 

“What’s that? I can’t hear you.”
 

“For God’s sake, get rid of—”
 

And the door crashed open.
 

She caught one glimpse of Mrs. Hawkins’ startled face before the innkeeper was thrust aside and Pew sprang into the doorway, cloak whirling about him, rolling eyes staring this way and that from under the green eyeshade, stick jabbing toward her like a rapier. He scuttled forward, slammed the door behind him and threw the bolt.
 

“Now, me beauty...” he snarled.
 

The Girl had moved into the far corner of the room. Beside her stood a table with china ornaments on it. Striving to concentrate her thoughts, she dragged her gaze away from the terrifying figure of the blind man to a small figurine: a china shepherdess. She looked from the shepherdess to the blind man, gauged the distance and said “I wish...”
 

Too slowly, the figurine rose from the table and soared toward Pew’s head.
 

He swung his stick contemptuously and batted it aside.
 

“Ye forget,” he said quietly. “‘Tis no simple fool ye deal with.” He began to advance a slow step at a time, crouching, stick stabbing at her. “‘Tis a troublemaker you are—and I’m going to make an end to all that.”
 

“Yes, but I’m real”—the Girl’s stouthearted effort was spoiled by an involuntary gulp—“and you’re only a smallwish! You can’t hurt me!”
 

“Ha!” Judging her position by her voice, he swung his stick. It crashed to the wall a fraction from her head, bringing down a shower of plaster. She stumbled aside, and Pew, casting his stick away, flung himself on her with a yell of triumph. “By the Powers, I have ye!” He ran his fingers over her, chuckling. “Now, lass, ye’ll suffer.”
 

The Girl slumped to the floor, paralyzed with fear. Her success in the Swamp of Submission was forgotten; all past events faded into the horror of the present—the stinking form of Blind Pew pressing her into the floor, his bony knees digging into her flesh, his skeletal fingers kneading and probing her body while all the time he chuckled and cursed and drooled, until his fingers, tiring of their entertainment, crept upward and began to fasten themselves on her throat.
 

He can’t do this,
she thought.
He simply can’t—he’s only a smallwish!
 

“Now we’ll see who’s real,” said Pew, an age-old creation reinforced by a thousand of yesterday’s wishes.
 

There was a thundering in the Girl’s head like storm waves against the base of a cliff.
 

As though from a different happentrack, she heard a voice say, “You don’t know what’s real and what isn’t, blind man.”
 

“Eh?” The pressure relaxed for a moment as Pew swung round in surprise. “And who might you be, me lad?”
 

Pushing the blind man’s cloak away from her eyes, the Girl saw a vision. Standing in the middle of the room was a handsome young man wearing a crimson doublet and black pants. Beside him stood a girl of unusual beauty, fair-haired and dressed in a long silver dress studded with jewels. They made a somewhat foppish couple, but the Girl was in no position to criticize them on that count. The young man smiled. “I am Caradoc,” he said.
 

“Never heard of you.”
 

“I don’t often bother to appear in person,” said Caradoc, “but you and a few others have been making a nuisance of yourselves this last couple of days. Speaking of which...” Noticing the darkness outside, he drew his sword and pointed it at the window.
 

The sun crept over the horizon and the village lit up.
 

“By thunder,” muttered Pew, as the sunlight warmed his face. He scrambled to his feet and edged toward the door. “Ye have strange powers, mister!”
 

“Wait!” The sword was at Pew’s throat and Caradoc’s expression held no mercy. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you here and now.”
 

“Have pity,” Pew began to whimper, pawing at the blade. “I’m only a poor wretched smallwish, the creation of other men’s evil.”
 

“A little more than that by now, I think. You’ve been around too long, Pew. You’ve taken on a kind of substance.” A trickle of blood showed at the tip of the sword as Pew jerked back with a squeal of fright. “But not so much substance that I couldn’t finish you off if I wished. I’m not going to, however—not right now. I’ve spoken with the Oracle, and she tells me there is a twisted purpose in your existence. So you must live—for a while, anyway. But I’ll tell you this, Pew: Once you’ve fulfilled your destiny in the Ifalong, I shall dispose of you. Until then, I advise you to get back to the Land of Lost Dreams, where you can’t do any harm.”
 

He dealt the blind man a stinging blow across the shoulders with the flat of the blade. Pew gave a yelp of fright, scuttled for the door, tripped over his stick and fell heavily, snatched it up as he scrambled to his feet, slid the bolt aside and jerked open the door, and was gone. They heard his footsteps thundering down the stairs and out into the street, then the frantic tap-tap-tap as he hurried back down the lane the way he’d come.
 

“And now,” said Caradoc, smiling, “it’s time we sent you home, Girl.”
 

Forty-three standard minutes later the Triad was reunited in the Rainbow Room. Manuel was the first to see the Girl as she waddled through the Do-Portal, still shaken, but smiling as she caught sight of them.
 

“Girl!” The room was empty now; all the images had gone. There was just the distant figure toward which Manuel ran, Zozula following with more dignity.
 

“Girl!” Manuel seized her hands, grinning. “How
are
you? What have you been doing? I thought we’d never see you again!” The Girl, laughing too, said, “Manuel, you don’t know the half of it.” “Well, tell me! Come and sit over here. Get her something to eat,” he ordered a passing nurse in peremptory fashion.
 

Zozula arrived. “It’s good to see you again, Girl,” he said formally. Then, to Manuel’s amazement, he took her hand and kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Tell us what’s been happening to you,” he said.
 

They sat on gossamer couches and the Girl luxuriated as Manuel arranged cushions under her head and feet. “It’s so good to be back,” she said. “So good to see you both again.”
 

“No regrets about leaving Dream Earth this time, Girl?” asked Zozula, more anxiously than he’d intended.
 

“I don’t belong in there anymore. Dream Earth is no substitute for the real world. The sooner we can get those people out of there, the better.” She went on to describe her success in persuading the Dream People to show some common sense.
 

The Triad compared notes, ate and drank. And at some point Zozula had to say, “Eloise died, of course. You knew that?”
 

“I’d guessed as much.”
 

“I wondered if the Mole really understood. It must have been a shock to him.”
 

“He took it very well,” said the Girl with a small, private smile.
 

It happened later that day, and it happened without warning.
 

Selena and Juni had joined them, the former a little more cheerful, now that the failure of last year’s breeding program was behind her and the new season had started. With the Mole now safely in the Rainbow and the Girl at the console, she was optimistic.
 

“Now, perhaps, we can start getting some help from the computer,” she said.
 

And the Rainbow chose that moment to go crazy.
 

It had been brooding for centuries in its mild electronic way. It had observed a certain tribe of neotenites in the delta, but for a long time it had done nothing because no real threat had developed.
 

The Song of Earth relates that it was the death of Lergs that triggered the Rainbow, because this resulted in Trevis’s joining the gestalt on the mud flats. The gestalt’s potential immediately increased a hundredfold, and there was no limit to the knowledge they could amass. They began to impinge on the Greataway. Some minstrels suppose they could have turned the whole Universe into their own private Dream Earth, but that is perhaps too fanciful. Nevertheless the foreboding of Trevis was very real:
Then we will be destroyed, because someone more powerful than us will want it that way...
 

The Rainbow decided the time had come.
 

The walls of the Rainbow Room resonated like a sounding board.
 

“What was that?” Zozula cried.
 

Manuel found the Girl in his arms and held her as she trembled. Other Cuidadors arrived at a run, followed by a train of valets, trolleys, suckers, waiters and other robots, out of control and running to the Rainbow. Chutes began to spew food and drink, while the Cuidadors gazed in awe at the show the Rainbow was putting on. The entire chamber, a kilometer long and half a kilometer high, was ablaze with color, dancing and crackling around the humans—solid color that seemed to press on the eyes in the same way that
 

the sounds, deep and vibrant, pressed on the ears. More people arrived: engineers and astronomers and dietitians, nurses and administrators, edging into the Rainbow Room with fear in their eyes.
 

“Is this the end?” whispered Juni.
 

As the panic spread into the far reaches of the Dome, there was a sudden flash, searing the eyes of the watchers like a bolt of lightning. All the robots froze where they stood.
 

When Manuel was able to see again, a young man was standing tensely in the room, all alone where previously the colors had rioted. The sounds became muted. The young man looked around but didn’t appear to see them; it was as though he were blind.
 

The Girl shouted, “Caradoc!”
 

The young man was trembling violently. He shouted, his voice thin in the vastness of the room. “I will try—”
 

Then he was gone for an instant and it had become clear that it was not fear that caused him to shake, but strain and tension.
He is fighting the Rainbow,
guessed Zozula.
Who is he?
 

Caradoc was back. “If you can hear me, listen!” he shouted. “I will try to force a visual... please understand you must... no other way...”
 

He disappeared. The Rainbow Room darkened, as though a thunderstorm were coming. The people murmured with apprehension.
 

A monstrous image of Brutus appeared in the center of the room.
 

Someone screamed. Zozula heard Juni shout, “The Specialists have rebelled!”
 

The figure of Brutus was terrifying, squatting gigantically before them, towering over them, beady little eyes shifting this way and that as he hunched over a piece of wood. A vast knife flashed as Brutus whittled, chips flying like spears toward the Cuidadors.
 

“The Rainbow’s trying to tell us something,” Zozula said to Juni.
 

“It’s telling us Brutus is doing something terribly wrong! And that doesn’t surprise me, either. Where is he?”
 

“Down in his quarters, I suppose. Come on!”
 

They pushed through a knot of Cuidadors and, followed by Selena, Manuel and the Girl, took an express elevator, dropping through endless levels in a two-kilometer descent to the lower areas.
 

Brutus’s quarters were empty.
 

“Think!” said Zozula. “The background to that image. Where was it?” The lights were flickering and there was an electrical smell in the air.
 

“It was dark. I couldn’t tell.”