The Steam-Driven Boy Read online

  ‘But how can you change history?’ asked Emil, mystified.

  ‘It’s simple semantics: The word is the thing – at least after the thing ceases to be. Alter a word in the future and you alter the thing it once stood for. Let me show you.’

  The boy opened his volume to a page and pointed. ‘Now here, I altered the name “Sam Franklin” to “John Franklin”, for example. But if in the future, someone came along and changed it to – say – “Ben”, why he’d be Ben, don’t you see?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right, look here, then.’ Julius turned to a map of the United States. There was the familiar pink lozenge that was Kiowa, and just above it, the green hourglass of Minnehaha – but the names were wrong! ‘Kiowa’ missed its ‘K’, and ‘Minnehaha’ read ‘Minnesota’! And the name at the bottom of the page, following ‘The United States of’ was not ‘Columbia’ but some unpronounceable Latin name! The map was wrong, it had been printed wrong!

  ‘Last week,’ said the boy, ‘I made these changes in ink Now this week they are part of the original book.’

  ‘But how can that be?’

  Julius frowned. ‘I think the past must influence the future, too,’ he said. ‘But the influence is slower. My theory is really quite a simple one, but I couldn’t possibly explain it to you, not all of it. Why, you don’t even understand e = mc3, for Pete’s sake.’

  ‘I understand one thing,’ said Emil, leaping up. ‘I know that I killed poor Morbes! I am a murderer!’

  ‘Don’t take it so hard,’ said the boy. ‘You wouldn’t have, if it weren’t for me. In fact, the only reason you’re a time-traveller is because I wrote the whole thing in the margin near your name.’

  ‘My name?’ Emil was electrified at this reminder of his fame. ‘My name … Won’t you have a cookie?’

  ‘Thanks.’ The two of them munched Widow Hart’s cookies and discussed the theory once more, until Emil was sure he understood. He was not so sure he liked being at the mercy of the future, but when one considered it, it was no worse than being at the mercy of the past. One survived.

  When the last cookie was gone, Emil rose and took his leave. He strolled back to the museum and paid his admission. After a few moments, he was able to seize an opportunity when the guard was not looking and leap upon his time engine. He pedalled furiously backward to 1878, and what a glorious feeling mounted in his breast as he gazed once more on the homely feature of John Franklin.

  ‘I am healthy, wealthy and wise – or shall be shortly,’ Emil told himself. ‘My rival is gone – I don’t even remember his name – and I am to be famous!’

  After changing to his Sunday clothes, he picked a nosegay of his Mom’s flowers and set off toward the Peed house.

  Mr Peed was seated in the porch swing, industriously polishing his pipe against his nose.

  ‘Halo, young Hart,’ he called out. ‘What brings you out this evening, all dressed up like that?’

  ‘I –’ Emil began, then realized he did not know the answer. Why had he come to see Mr and Mrs Peed?

  ‘Flowers for your wife,’ he decided aloud. ‘From Mom’s garden.’

  ‘Whose wife?’ asked Peed, leaning forward to accept the nosegay. ‘I ain’t married, son. I –’

  Peed’s outstretched hand grew transparent. Then Peed, porch and house vanished with a click.

  It was a nightmare! Emil hurried home to check on his Mom. There was no telling who might click out of existence next!

  He was reassured by the sight of her frail old figure tottering into his shop with a tray.

  ‘Here, let me take that,’ he said, and accepted the tray from her careworn hands.

  ‘Lemonade and cookies – for me? Gee, you’re good, Mom!’ He bent and kissed her white hair. With a beatific smile, the old lady tottered back to her kitchen, whence came the smell of fresh baking. Fearfully, Emil watched until she was out of sight.

  He cornered Julius in the library and demanded an explanation.

  ‘Of what?’ asked the youngster. ‘An explanation of what?’

  ‘I’m not sure, but I think the Peeds had a daughter, and I think I was in love with her. Now she’s gone, and they’re gone – have you been eating again?’

  ‘You did it yourself, pal. When you crossed out the reference to Fenton what’s-his-name, you also destroyed the only existing reference to the girl, Maud. She was his wife. You got any more cookies?’

  ‘You mean I’d have lost her in any case?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ With his mouth full of the widow’s cookies, the boy explained. Destroying Maud had destroyed her parents, their parents, and so on, back to the time when some relative was famous enough to have appeared in The Universal Synopsis. It was difficult for Emil to follow, for not only did the boy speak with his mouth full, but neither he nor Emil could clearly remember who it was they were discussing. As Julius said, it was all very mythical – or perhaps he said mystical.

  At last, Emil was brought to understand he had lost the only girl he’d ever loved. His grief was superb.

  He knew it was all his own fault. If only he had not wanted to glimpse the golden towers and battlements of the future! If only he had been content! His sin was pride, pride that goeth before (or, according to Julius, cometh after) a great fall.

  What had she been like, this girl he’d lost? He had some faint reminiscence of her lovely eyes being hazel – or else her hair – or was it her name? In despair, he put his head on his arms and wept unashamedly.

  ‘Here, read this,’ said Julius Doppler. ‘It’ll cheer you up.’

  It was the volume HART – HARUSPEX, and in it, Emil read:

  ‘Hart, Emil (1860-?), inventor of the time engine and only successful time traveller. Leaving 1878 he journeyed into 1937, where, in a public library, he met Julius Doppler (q.v.), who explained to him the famed “Doppler Effect” – the influence of the future upon the past. After several blunders, Hart finally read his own story in The Universal Synopsis (q.v.), and realized as he did so that, had he read it earlier, he might have avoided making a costly mistake, the deletion of some probably mythical woman from history. As he realized all this, Hart is reported to have said, “Thunderation! Why didn’t I think of this before?”’

  ‘Thunderation!’ said Emil, smiting his forehead. ‘Why didn’t I think of this before?’

  He referred not to his past mistakes, however, but to his successes yet to come. Borrowing the pen from Julius, who had just changed the peafowl to a chicken, Emil wrote in the margin the following:

  ‘Nonplussed, the stout-hearted inventor re-created his girl, Hazel Peid, from memory, adding her to his life story. After a brief courtship, they married. The plucky Hart went on to become healthy, wealthy and wise.’

  After a moment of thought, he added:

  ‘And nothing anyone writes here in the future will ever make it otherwise.’

  Then, giving Julius the last cookie, he departed.

  She was there in his shop, the lovely Hazel Peid of the hazel hair and eyes – just as he remembered her. Going upon one knee, and tossing back his unruly lock, Emil said, ‘Miss Peid, will you be my wife?’

  ‘Oh yes!’ she exclaimed, clapping her small, well-formed hands together.

  ‘This calls for a celebration,’ said Mom, tottering in with a tray. ‘Won’t you have some lemonade and cookies?’

  Emil and his fiancée embraced, while above them the rheumy eyes of Ben Franklin seemed to smile a blessing.

  SECRET IDENTITY

  My Indian valet, Oxbox, brought me a mint copy of Ô, the rare Dadaist book by Jean-Claude Odeon, long out of print.

  ‘This is an unexpected treat, I can assure you,’ I said, opening it to page forty-seven. I happened to know that, although the entire book consists of the letter ‘ô’ repeated fifty-one times to the line, twenty-nine lines to the page, for four hundred fifty-three pages, genuine copies possessed a certain typesetter’s error. Sure enough, the third vowel on page forty-seven had no accent circonf
lexe.

  ‘This single error,’ I explained to Oxbow, ‘means the difference between one of the rarest books in existence and a cheap fake worth but a few dollars. This book is genuine.’ I tore out page forty-seven and ate it, washing it down with Guardia Civil, a liqueur distilled from Ovaltine. ‘But who could have sent it, Oxbow?’

  ‘I do not know, boss-wallah,’ he said. ‘It come by special messenger few minutes ago, in plain wrapper.’

  I snapped my fingers. ‘I’ll bet it was Margo!’

  ‘That right, kimo sabe. I never think of that.’ My valet scratched his head with bewilderment. Then, divining my wish, he fetched me a telephone on which to call my friend and ‘companion’, the lovely Margo, and ask for a date.

  ‘Aw gee,’ she said. ‘I was just gonna wash my hair.’

  But I would not be put off. ‘Margo, you lovely, lovely creature,’ I breathed into her receiver.

  Before we arrived at the party, Rose Garland, that still-young Gold Star mother, said: ‘Think of it, Brad! Six million Jews!’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Brad, her still-handsome husband, smiled tolerantly. ‘You forget that, with all their reputation for efficiency, the Germans were notorious bookkeepers.’

  ‘Notoriously bad, you mean?’

  ‘Ah, who can say what is bad?’

  The garbage under Mrs Onager’s sink grew, slightly.

  Rose was reading, and Brad was watching her read. He had already finished the ‘Gordimer’ trilogy, by P. B. X. Thomson: Gordimer’s Chance, Gordimer’s Fate and Gordimer’s Folly. Now he waited for guests with whom to discuss them. They might also discuss novel, a novel by Horace Mattrick, the guest of honour. Mattrick had not yet arrived. Fenster Doybridge had not even been invited.

  On the kitchen floor, Gene said no to Eileen.

  Many years earlier, when I had lived in Greenwich Village and worn oxford shoes, my Hispano-Suiza had inadvertently been ticketed for overparking.

  Gene got up and went out to a Civil Defence meeting. Tad crept in and took his place.

  ‘Why is it they call you “Tad”?’ Eileen asked.

  My Hispano-Suiza was now at the garage, having a special type of bazooka mounted under the bonnet. Wrapping a white silk scarf about my throat, I squeezed through a panel at the back of my medicine chest and climbed to the roof. My Nieuport was there, already throbbing with life.

  ‘Keep an eye on things, Oxbow,’ I shouted over the throaty roar of her engine. ‘I may not be back until morning.’

  ‘Can do, sahib!’

  ‘And don’t forget to feed Black Phantom, my wonder dog.’

  ‘Roger, baas! Later.’ He saluted smartly.

  I lifted the Nieuport’s nose starward, and then, levelling out, kicked her around in the direction of Margo’s penthouse.

  It was back in Greenwich Village I’d met Sunspot – and of course his girl, Waverly, who was naturally bald, and favoured suedehair bathing caps.

  With the autopilot on, I used my superior powers of concentration to read, in quick succession:

  Your Earning Power, by M. Bartleby.

  Colitis, by Duane Gardens, M.D.

  A Treasury of Fire Myths. O. Dawson Lotts, ed.

  Speaking of Those Darned Kids, by Pete Lamb.

  Lesbians Unaware, by Duane Gardens, M.D.

  Raising and Training the Apache Indian, by D. Gardens.

  Peering over the side, I beheld a short dark man observing me through binoculars, but thought nothing of it at the time. I felt in no immediate danger from the ground, having fortified my plane with one of my earlier inventions, bullet-proof air.

  I found a note on Margo’s door: ‘Have gone to Paris for a few things. Have not been abducted.’ Not abducted? It seemed oddly worded to me. Could this be a case of protesting too much? Margo certainly did know her Shakespeare. Or could this be a trap of some kind? I determined to follow her, after a few drinks.

  Gene, whom I ten knew as Jean-Claude, had defended me at the trial. The Hispano-Suiza, the ticket, and the entire section of street were brought in as exhibits.

  At the Hotel Odeon, the U.S. Army Poets’ Convention was having a reading, so I stopped there for my drink. A fat boy named Pfc Lyle was just reading the end of his epic Japaniad. I tried to make my way through the crowd to have a word with him in private, but found my path blocked by a giant specialist.

  ‘Go to!’ he cried, breaking a beer-bottle. Using a trick I’d learned in the Orient, I applied pressure to the base of his thumb until he was unconscious. The crowd of rude soldiers parted to let me pass.

  I found Pfc Lyle alone at a table, weeping and drinking. Another infantryman had taken the platform to read a poem called ‘Ingredients’.

  ‘Hello. Pfc,’ I said. Lyle looked up.

  ‘You!’

  Meanwhile, at a party for Vance Raglan, someone – possibly Doybridge – was speaking: ‘A book, or else a film. Yes, I think it was called … or is it the record I’m thinking of?’

  Vance Raglan was a sculptor in glue. Eileen thought of the Orient, of her Buick dealer, of Thomas Hardy’s latest novel. She thought of throwing a ‘Famous Mac’ party. To Tad, she said, ‘Goodbye, Tad, or whatever you cali yourself now. I’m off to Hong Kong.’

  She shook hands with Doybridge – a mistake.

  ‘Sunspot,’ I said, and Pfc began to weep again. I truly felt like weeping with him, but, for various reasons, my tear ducts had been removed. Sunspot! Our old companion, now dead or missing. Sunspot! Who claimed to be a preincarnation of Moondog. Sunspot! Our best friend at obedience school.

  Pfc clutched my sleeve and croaked, ‘Hey, remember how he always used to claim it was him did the whining on the sound track of Lassie Come Home?’

  On the platform, the soldier read, ‘… milk solids, soya meal, gum arabic, dried eggs, powdered yeast, corn starch, dextrose, maltose, monosodium glutamate, artificial flavouring and colouring. Sodium propionate added, to retard spoilage.’

  Amid the wild applause, one radar specialist asked another: ‘I think it lacks something, don’t you?’

  ‘I remember Sunspot,’ I said, my voice husky with remembrance. ‘When I was living in the Village, he’d come over while I was out and leave a little memento in the middle of the floor.

  ‘According to the legend, he was run down by a car he was chasing. Later, sharp operators all over the country began selling plaster replicas of his “little mementos” in novelty stores.

  ‘He never saw a dime of millions they made.’

  Taking my leave, I flew direct to Le Bourget airport at Paris. As I had no passport, the immigration officials tried to stop me, thus forcing me to flash my special identity card. At the sight of it, they waved me through the gate with profuse apologies.

  The garbage beneath Mrs Onager’s sink began to stir.

  I knew exactly where to find Margo. She was at Les Halles, bargaining with a merchant. Margo’s French, as always, was flawed, so the poor man had difficulty understanding what it was she wanted – eggs to wash her hair.

  ‘D’ozene,’ she said, making a sign, ‘pour mes chevaux.’

  Exasperated, the man asked me why Mademoiselle’s horses should require putrid ulcers of the nose.

  When I’d bought eggs for Margo, we flew back to a party for Plastic Man. On the way, we stopped off at the flower market in Barcelona, where I bought a sprig of bloodslipper for her hair.

  ‘Gee tanks.’ She pushed it among the pink curlers, making them look quite festive. We jestingly argued about the relative merits of the French language and the language of flowers.

  In Hong Kong Eileen gave the plague to a number of people. The plague was tularemia, commonly called ‘rabbit fever’.

  ‘Plas’ was playing a game of hide-and-seek with a number of distinguished guests, among them the brilliant arachnologist, Dr Aa, various crowned heads and pretenders, including the Prince J – C –, and Mr Boggs, (Eileen’s Buick dealer). Plas had already concealed himself as a lampshade, a comic book, socks, margarine, w
allpaper and the yellow fog that rubs its back upon the windowpane. Now he was again hidden. Strangely, no one but me seemed to have caught on to the obvious deficiencies in his disguises, viz., he was always red, with black-and-yellow stripes, no matter what his shape.

  I had several drinks and examined Plas’s curious collection of medieval harrows. Tularemia, I recalled, was named after a county in California.

  ‘One-two-three for Mr Boggs’s cummerbund!’ I called out suddenly. Smiling sheepishly, Plastic produced himself. I noticed, however, that his smile was a trifle lop-sided. Indeed, his whole head seemed to flow into fanciful shapes. I signalled Margo to get my scarf and her riding cloak.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, as we hurried away to Mattrick’s party. Dr Aa elected to come with us.

  ‘Plastic was drunk,’ I said harshly. ‘That could have turned into God’s own orgy.’

  ‘Oh, you!’ She seemed piqued but pleased.

  Dr Aa made a suggestion. ‘Why don’t you leave the Nieuport here, and fly over with me in My Gee Bee Racer?’

  We took him up on his kind offer. On the way, he explained to us why he’d left the Famous Mystery Scientists Club.

  ‘It all began when I left my usual work to devote some time to a private investigation of gravity. By fractional distillation of cats, in the presence of your bullet-proof air, I managed to isolate a leadlike substance which is actually repelled by the attraction of earth! The farther it gets away from a planet, the greater is the repulsion.

  ‘At great expense, I constructed a demonstration, but my colleagues were in league against me. “Fakery!” scoffed one. “Madness!” sneered a second. “Mesmerism!” insinuated a third.

  ‘I was forced to return to my old occupation, arachnology. Now I work for the armed forces, classifying spiders “edible” and “inedible”. I am dead.’ He performed an Immelmann turn, by way of demonstration.