The Celestial Steam Locomotive (The Song of Earth) (9 page)

Marilyn wore a simple white dress with an ordinary pearl necklace, a plain diamond tiara in her blonde hair. She was as beautiful as any woman there.
 

Aglow with happiness, she climbed the white marble steps, and the scarlet-

uniformed doorman threw the door open with a flourish.
 

“Marilyn!” he announced to the crowded ballroom.
 

The music paused, people clapped; then the dance resumed. A dark man, tall and broad, stepped up to Marilyn. “Would you like to dance?” he asked. He was a Burt. He was wonderful, thought Marilyn. They danced, and it couldn’t have been better, not even if she’d smallwished the whole thing herself.
 

A tiny voice said within her:
He isn’t the one.
 

But he is, he is
, thought Marilyn.
 

The music ceased. Burt wanted to take her out on the terrace, but she demurred and made for the ladies’ room. She had a suspicion that her lipstick might be slightly smudged. And she wanted to look at herself again. The ladies’ room was crowded, but she managed to find a place in front of a long mirror. She dabbed at her lips while others jostled about.
 

The image in the mirror applied mascara.
 

Startled, she looked around, then laughed. She had mistaken her neighbor’s reflection for her own. She tended to her appearance, then went back to the ballroom. Another Burt asked her to dance. She noticed that Burts and Marilyns were very popular this season, which was comforting. It was good to be among her own kind of people. She half-remembered being lonely, once.
 

The tiny voice whispered:
He’s not the one, either!
 

Burt swirled her about the floor and it was marvelous. Everything was marvelous. The music paused and the doorman bawled “Marilyn!” and that was marvelous too—the more the merrier, birds of a feather. The domed ceiling was decorated like a birthday cake, hung with glittering revolving spheres. Every so often a shower of vivid balloons descended and Marilyn used her sharp heel to pop them.
 

She danced all night.
 

The next day she lay about on the grounds in the sun with Burt and danced all the next night. It was difficult to imagine anything better than this. The band was perfect, indefatigable, all dressed in crimson and gold, blowing gold trumpets, silver saxophones. Then the band paused...
 

It was the funniest thing; people often laughed about it afterward. There was silence while this comic little man came in among the dancers. He was bald and short and fat, and his clothes hung about him like broken wings. He walked around peering into peoples’ faces, moving on, peering. He looked dirty, he stank and he was totally incongruous in this company. That was what was so funny, the incongruity. Everybody laughed and laughed.
 

The little man peered into Marilyn’s face, and she recoiled a little because there was something desperate in his eyes that wasn’t funny at all. She laughed loudly to make him go away and to drown out that irritating small voice inside, which was spoiling her fun. He performed for a little while longer, making them all laugh, then he made for the door and they never saw him again. The band struck up and Burt whirled Marilyn along in his strong arms, smiling at her with even white teeth.
 

“Oooooh, look!” somebody cried.
 

Blue rain was falling through the ceiling, slanting among the dancers in a sparkling azure mist. The Dream People exclaimed in delight. It was so pretty, and nobody was getting wet.
 

The Rainbow was malfunctioning in other ways, too. Recently the images had been sporadically washed over with an unpleasant green color, and the movements of the Dream People had become jerky, occasionally freezing for a few seconds.
 

“Somewhere in there,” said Juni grimly, “is a girl who knows how to operate the special effects. You’d better find her soon, Zozula. It’ll take ages to train someone else, and heaven knows what damage will have been done by then. We must keep Reality within reasonable bounds, otherwise the Dream People will begin to believe a spiral moon is the norm. And how does that fit them for normal life Outside?”
 

The other Cuidadors had retired for the night, all except Zozula, haggard and grief-stricken, sitting at the console and searching endlessly, filling the Rainbow Room with battling dragons, hurricanes, floating islands, Bale Wolves, convivial scenes in spacebars, lovemaking in zero gravity. Everything became green again, quite suddenly, as though the sight of all this artificial pleasure made the organic constituents of the Rainbow feel nauseated.
 

And every so often the images shifted, showing quick flashes of Reality: the interior of the Dome, the jungle, the ocean. Bits of the past were plucked from real history: a primitive execution. Happentracks of the Ifalong were displayed in a frightening nova. As though the Rainbow—that Earth-girdling, linked, organic-mechanical-electronic repository of human knowledge and intelligence—were going crazy.
 

“I have to find her,” whispered Zozula to himself. “Eulalie said... Eulalie...” He pressed his lips together.
 

Juni’s voice came from behind, startling him. “Much more of this and the mind of every blubber will be wiped clean. And then where would we be?”
 

“Somebody will have to go in through the Do-Portal,” said Zozula.
 

“Go in and do what?”
 

“There are... creatures in there. Half-human, half-Rainbow. They may know what the trouble is. We can ask them, at least. I’m not getting anywhere with this console.”
 

“Well,
I’m
not going in there.”
 

A door opened and Brutus appeared, effortlessly wheeling a big metal container hung about with life-support systems. As if this were a signal, a huge replica of him appeared in the middle of the Rainbow Room, peering this way and that from under heavy brows while he worked with strong and nimble fingers, whittling a stick. An angry red wash swilled over this scene from another happentrack. The real Brutus stopped in his tracks, watching the scene with alarm.
 

“Maybe we should send Brutus in there,” said Zozula. “The Rainbow seems to have some kind of empathy with him.”
 

“Not Brutus. Not a Specialist,” said Juni.
 

“Why not?” He looked at her in surprise.
 

“It’s not... appropriate.”
 

“Well, he’s Selena’s assistant, after all. She says he has an amazing ability with programs that she herself had found unintelligible.”
 

The Rainbow suddenly tolled, a deep bell-like reverberation. There was a gibber of accelerated sound. The Brutus-image was dancing about like a performing animal. “Who else can we send in?” shouted Zozula above the din. “Do you want us to call a meeting of Cuidadors and discuss it? You know what
that
means.”
 

“Zo—I don’t care what else you do, but you can’t use a Specialist for this job. Not this particular job, you understand me?”
 

“No, I don’t.”
 

Juni made a small gesture of impatience, glancing at Brutus, who had drawn closer, mesmerized by his own image. She said quietly, “The blubbers are True Humans, Zo. Or they will be, once we get the genetic program sorted out. Their minds, their thoughts in the Rainbow—they’re True Human minds.”
 

“I know that, for God’s sake.”
 

“Well, do I have to spell it out for you? I’m not letting any Specialist get in behind there and have the chance to meddle around with the lives and minds of ten thousand True Humans!”
 

“But Brutus? He’s just a gorilla-man.”
 

“Exactly!”
 

“You’re talking nonsense, Juni.”
 

“No. You’re living in a world just as unreal as the blubbers’ dreams, that’s the truth of it! Listen to me, Zo. The Specialists envy us and resent us. We clothe them, we feed them, we command them—at one time we
made
them. They may seem subservient, they may obey us, but always remember that some of them were bred with qualities that made them almost... superhuman. Remember Captain Spring!”
 

Zozula laughed outright. “Captain Spring is just a legend!”
 

“She was real, and in many ways she was better than True Humans. The resentment of the Specialists has been building for millennia, Zo. Don’t you understand, they hate us! And you want to turn Brutus loose among thousands of helpless True Humans? He’d wipe out the whole lot! He’d erase them!”
 

She stormed out and Zozula stared after her in dismay. She was quite capable of routing the Cuidadors out of bed and calling for a vote of no confidence. He turned to Brutus.
 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Her tongue runs away with her sometimes.”
 

Brutus’s deep eyes were unfathomable. In his low, slow voice he said, “Just tell me to go through the Do-Portal and I’ll do it.”
 

Zozula was silent.
 

The Brutus-image disappeared, to be replaced by something equally strange. The red wash had faded and the distant ceiling of the room had become a pale blue.
 

There was a city of tall pink buildings with lofty walkways between and wheeled vehicles below. People of True Human appearance walked about. There was a spaceport, and a broad river that looked familiar...
 

Zozula sighed. This was not Dream Earth, but it was no more real. It was a historical scene, probably. He guessed it to have been around the Age of Resurgence—the 80th millennium. Checking his guess, he requested a date. The Rainbow told him: 143,624 Cyclic.
 

That was the present day!
 

The angle of vision changed as though the observer had stepped back, and now the surrounding landscape could be seen. Zozula grunted. He had recognized the delta north of the Dome—in fact, as he watched, the Dome itself came into view, along with the village of Pu’este, looking as it did now.
 

Was this real, or was the Rainbow creating anachronisms? Storing the information away in his mind, Zozula requested Dream Earth.
 

A clear image appeared. In a ballroom there was a party, people laughing, dancing and drinking, and blue rain falling.
 

Zozula passed a hand over his brow and attributed a momentary dizziness to simple exhaustion. It had been a long time since he’d slept, and the memory of Eulalie was still strong, so that in his tiredness he kept getting little hallucinations, seeing her face suddenly or hearing her speak a fragment of a sentence. So when he heard the soft voice behind him—“Zozula”—he swung round with a sudden wild, irrational hope.
 

But it was an old woman dressed in a black cloak.
 

“How did you get in here?”
 

“It’s of no importance.” Her eyes were pitiless and Zozula suddenly shivered. There was total calculation and knowledge in the way she looked at him—and there was no sympathy. “I believe you seek a girl who is lost in your machine.”
 

“How do you know that?”
 

“I know everything, Zozula.” She stepped forward and stood beside him, and it seemed as if she brought a cold wind with her. She placed a hand on the console and the colors of the Rainbow faded. One face appeared: that of a young blonde woman, smiling, looking up. Then the background filled in: a shower of balloons, a crowd of people jumping up and down, batting the balloons to one another and spilling drinks. Now sounds of laughter came, and delighted screams and sharp reports as the balloons burst.
 

“She,” said Shenshi. “She is the one.”
 

“No,” said Zozula. “That’s a Marilyn. The girl we’re looking for is Herself. And I’d be glad if you didn’t interfere with—”
 

“She is the one. You may reincorporate her. She is the girl who will be called Elizabeth in time to come. She has been chosen by a chance of happentracks, as have you. You, she and a young man named Manuel will form the Triad. You will remove the Hate Bombs and free Starquin from his Ten Thousand Years’ Incarceration.”
 

Gazing into her face, hypnotized, Zozula said, “I... don’t know...”
 

“Follow your happentrack, Zozula.” The dark eyes seemed to contain Universal knowledge. Shenshi looked at him steadily for a moment, then left.
 

Zozula blinked. Something momentous had just happened, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember quite what it was. There was an image of a girl in the Rainbow Room, a beautiful girl with fair hair. Obviously she was the girl Eulalie had trained. Leaning forward, he stroked the tactile surfaces in an ancient pattern, his fingers fumbling because he’d never issued this particular instruction before. Like a child learning to write, he murmured to himself:
 

Reincorporate...
 

Zozula opened an ancient panel stiff with dust and noted the position of a winking blue light. Then he took an elevator to the appropriate level. His heart was pounding. He summoned two Specialists to his side—raccoonwomen, dedicated nurses—and asked them to make up a stretcher. They followed him as the walkway bore them past endless shelves of barely living beings. The smell was indescribable: a sweet, deathly stink of antiseptic and human wastes. Here and there nurses scurried, watching viewscreens, making minute adjustments to valves and drips, sponging down their fleshy patients.
 

I wonder what the nurses think of them
, Zozula speculated. He stole a glance at the raccoon-girls riding the walkway with him, neat and pretty with bright eyes, ready smiles, trim figures... And he thought of Brutus, tirelessly working to reproduce the True Human form, without success.
We count them as our inferiors
, thought Zozula,
yet they spend their lives working to preserve the helpless and mindless remains of the True Human race. Can’t Juni see that counts for something?