Read The Celestial Steam Locomotive (The Song of Earth) Online
Authors: Michael G. Coney
Like the Vision that Eloise had planted in the Mole’s mind.
The Girl summoned up images of Dream Earth. She allowed her fat fingers to pass over the console, scanning here, scanning there, finally holding the image of a young couple, the man darkly handsome, the girl fair and very beautiful.
They sat on the banks of a quiet stream, holding hands, saying nothing. The birds sang from the trees and a fawn stepped down to the far bank and began to lap at the water. Occasionally a fish would rise, sending ripples over the surface. It might have been that the lovers were watching these fish slipping through the deep water under the bank. But in fact they were watching their own reflections, which were a source of constant delight to the young man.
No, in real life they weren’t much, but in the Mole’s dreams they were Caradoc and Eloise, a prince and his princess.
And so the Triad accomplished the first part of their Purpose, and Shenshi saw this and was satisfied. They had come together, knitting happentracks into a single yarn that would stretch unbroken into the Ifalong, encompassing Manuel’s search for Belinda, the battle with the Bale Wolves, the removal of the Hate Bombs and the release of Starquin from the Ten Thousand Years’ Incarceration.
So—
Zozula was reassuring the Cuidadors that Dream Earth was at last under control and the Rainbow functioning as it should.
The Girl was watching Caradoc and Eloise, smiling to herself, thinking of Manuel.
And that young man strode sturdily into the Ifalong and a meeting with Wise Ana, the mystery woman of Pu’este.
If any of them had known where their present happentrack would lead them, they would have turned around and tried to retrace their steps and in some way—any way—forced the future into a different pattern. Because the perils they had faced already were nothing, compared with the nightmares awaiting them in the Ifalong.
And yet, such is the nature of Time that there were many happentracks on which the Triad ceased to exist as such at this point—on which Zozula lived uneventfully as an elderly Cuidador, never venturing from the Dome again; on which the Girl spent her days at the console, so wrapped up in her work that her body ceased to trouble her; on which Manuel sighed and gave up on his dream of Belinda and took a willing village girl into his shack on the beach and lived happily ever after.
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Cat Carina
The Celestial Steam Locomotive
For Sally Coney with 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 © Michael G. Coney 1983
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 2011 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 12645 9
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.