The Steam-Driven Boy Read online

  If the dining-room did not actually withhold food from him, it did its best to take away his appetite. At various times, it had painted itself bilious yellow, played loud and raucous music and flashed portraits of naked fat people upon its walls. Each day it had some new trick to play, and each day, Wattleigh outwitted it.

  Now he girded on his academic gown and entered the dining-room, prepared for baffle. Today, he saw, the room was upholstered in green velvet and lit by a gold chandelier. The dining table was heavy, solid oak, unfinished. There was not a particle of food upon it.

  Instead there was a blonde, comely woman.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, jumping down from the table. ‘Are you Professor David Wattleigh? I’m Helena Hershee, from New York. I got your name through FRIENDS, and I just had to look you up.’

  ‘I – how do you do?’ he stammered. By way of answer, she unzipped her dress.

  MED 19 approved what followed as tending to weaken that harmful delusion, ‘Delphinia’. MED 8 projected a year of treatment, and found the resultant weight loss could add as much as 12 years to patient Wattleigh’s life.

  After Helena had gone to sleep, the Professor played a few games with the Ideal Chessplayer. Wattleigh had once belonged to a chess club, and he did not want to lose touch with the game entirely. And one did get rusty. He was amazed at how many times the Ideal Chessplayer had to actually cheat to let him win.

  But win he did, game after game, and the Ideal Chessplayer each time would wag its plastic head from side to side and chuckle, ‘Well, you really got me that time, Wattleigh. Care for another?’

  ‘No,’ said Wattleigh, finally disgusted. Obediently the machine folded its board into its chest and rolled off somewhere.

  Wattleigh sat at his desk and started a letter to Delphinia.

  ‘My Darling Delphinia,’ scratched his old steel pen on the fine, laid paper. ‘Today a thought occurred to me while I was bathing at Brighton. I have often told you, and as often complained of the behaviour of my servant, M –. It, for I cannot bring myself to call it “him” or “she”, has been most distressing about my writing to you, even to the point of blunting my pens and hiding my paper. I have not discharged it for this disgraceful show, for I am bound to it – yes, bound to it by a strange and terrible secret fate that makes me doubt at times which is master and which, man. It reminds one of several old comedies, in which, man and master having changed roles, and maid and mistress likewise, they meet. I mean, of course, in the works of –’

  Here the letter proper ended, for the professor could think of no name to fit. After writing, and lining out, ‘Dickens, Dryden, Dostoyevsky, Racine, Rousseau, Camus,’ and a dozen more, his inkwell ran dry. He knew it would be no use to inquire after more ink, for the Machine was dead set against this letter –

  Looking out the window, he saw a bright pink-and-yellow striped ambulance. So, the doctor next door was going off to zombie-land, was he? Or, correctly, to the Hospital for the Asocial. In the East, they called them ‘Mussulmen’; here, ‘zombies’, but it all came to the same thing: the living dead, who needed no elaborate houses, games, ink. They needed only intravenous nourishment, and little of that. The drapes drew themselves, so Wattleigh knew the doctor was being carried out then. He finished his interrupted thought.

  – and in any case, he was wholly dissatisfied with this letter. He had not mentioned Helena, luncheon, his resuscitator which growled at him, and so much more. Volumes more, if only he had the ink to write, if only his memory would not fail him when he sat down to write, if only –

  James stood with his elbow on the marble mantlepiece of Marya’s apartment, surveying the other guests and sizing them up. There was a farmer from Minnesota, incredibly dull, who claimed to have once been an engineer, but who hardly knew what a slide rule was. There was Marya in the company of some muscular young man James disliked at sight, an ex-mathematician named Dewes or Clewes. Marya was about to play chess with a slightly plump Californian, while his girl, a pretty little blonde thing called Helena Hershee, stood by to kibitz.

  ‘I’m practically a champion,’ explained Wattleigh, setting up the pieces. ‘So perhaps I ought to give you a rook or two.’

  ‘If you like,’ said Marya. ‘I haven’t played in years. About all I remember is the Fool’s Mate.’

  James drifted over to Helena’s side and watched the game.

  ‘I’m James Fairchild,’ he said, and added almost defiantly, ‘M.D.’

  Helena’s lips, too bright with lipstick, parted. ‘I’ve heard of you,’ she murmured. ‘You’re the aggressive Dr Fairchild who runs through friends so fast, aren’t you?’

  Marya’s eyes came up from the game. Seemingly her eyes had no pupils, and James guessed she was full of Ritalin. ‘James is not in the least aggressive,’ she said. ‘But he gets mad when you won’t let him psychoanalyse you.’

  ‘Don’t disturb the game,’ said Wattleigh. He put both elbows on the table in an attitude of concentration.

  Helena had not heard Marya’s remark. She had turned to watch the muscular mathematician lecture Lloyd.

  ‘Hell yes. The Machines got to do all the bearing and raising of children. Otherwise, we’d have a population explosion, you get me? I mean, we’d run out of food –’

  ‘You really pick ’em, Marya,’ said James. He gestured at the young man. ‘Whatever became of that “writer”? Porter, was it? Christ, I can still hear him saying, “exist, man”!’ James snorted.

  Marya’s head came up once more, and tears stood in her pupilless eyes. ‘Porter went to the hospital. He’s a Mussulman, now,’ she said brightly. ‘I wish I could feel something for him, but They won’t let me.’

  ‘– it’s like Malthus’s law, or somebody’s law. Animals grow faster than vegetables,’ the mathematician went on, speaking to the farmer.

  ‘Checkmate,’ said Marya, and bounced to her feet. ‘James, have you a Sngarsmoke? Chocolate?’

  He produced a bright orange cigar. ‘Only Bitter Orange, I’m afraid. Ask the Machine.’

  ‘I’m afraid to ask it for anything, today,’ she said. ‘It keeps drugging me – James, Porter was put away a month ago, and I haven’t been able to paint since. Do you think I’m crazy? The Machine thinks so.’

  ‘The Machine,’ he said, tearing off the end of the cigar with his teeth, ‘is always right.’

  Seeing Helena had wandered away to sit on Marya’s Chinese sofa, he excused himself with a nod and followed.

  Wattleigh still sat brooding over the Fool’s Mate. ‘I don’t understand. I just can’t understand,’ he said.

  ‘– it’s like the Hare and the Tortoise,’ boomed the mathematician. Lloyd nodded solemnly. ‘The slow one can’t ever catch up, see?’

  Lloyd spoke. ‘Well, you got a point. You got a point. Only I thought the slow one was the winner.’

  ‘Oh.’ Dewes (or Clewes) lapsed into thoughtful silence.

  Marya wandered about the room, touching faces as if she were a blind person looking for someone she knew.

  ‘But I don’t understand!’ said Wattleigh.

  ‘I do,’ James mumbled about the cigar. The bittersweet smoke was thick as liquid in his mouth. He understood, all right. He looked at them, one by one: An er-mathematician having trouble with the difference between arithmetic and geometry; an ex-engineer, ditto; a painter not allowed to paint, not even to feel; a former chess ‘champion’ who could not play. And that left Helena Hershee, mistress to poor, dumb Wattleigh.

  ‘Before the Machines –?’ he began.

  ‘– I was a judge,’ she said, running her fingertips over the back of his neck provocatively. ‘And you? What kind of doctor were you?’

  1988 A.D.

  ‘It was during the second world war,’ Jim Fairchild said. He lay on his back on the long, tiger-striped sofa, with a copy of HOT ROD KOMIKS over his eyes.

  ‘I thought it only started in the sixties,’ said Marya.

  ‘Yeah, but the name, “Mussulman” – that s
tarted in the Nazi death camps. There were some people in them who couldn’t – you know – get with it. They stopped eating and seeing and hearing. Everybody called them “Mussulmen”, because they seemed like Moslems, mystic … ’

  His voice trailed off, for he was thinking of the second world war. The good old days, when a man made his own rules. No Machines to tell you what to do.

  He had been living with Marya for several months, now. She was his girl, just as the other Marya, in HOT ROD KOMIKS, was the girl of the other Jim, Jim (Hell-On-Wheels) White. It was a funny thing about Komiks. They were real life, and at the same time, they were better than life.

  Marya – his Marya – was no intellectual. She didn’t like to read and think, like Jim, but that was o.k., because men were supposed to do all the reading and thinking and fighting and killing. Marya sat in a lavender bucket seat in the corner, drawing with her crayons. Easing his lanky, lean body up off the sofa, Jim walked around behind her and looked at the sketch.

  ‘Her nose is crooked,’ he said.

  ‘That doesn’t matter, silly. This is a fashion design. It’s only the dress that counts.’

  ‘Well, how come she’s got yellow hair? People don’t have yellow hair.’

  ‘Helena Hershee has.’

  ‘No she hasn’t!’

  ‘She has so?’

  ‘No, it ain’t yellow, it’s – it ain’t yellow.’

  Then they both paused, because Muzik was playing their favourite song. Each had a favourite of his own – Jim’s was ‘Blap’, and Marya’s was ‘Yes I Know I Rilly Care For You’ – but they had one favourite together. Called ‘Kustomized Tragedy’. It was one of the songs in which the Muzik imitated their voices, singing close harmony:

  Jim Guntz had a neat little kustom job,

  And Marya was his girl.

  They loved each other with a love so true

  The truest in the worl’.

  But Jim weren’t allowed to drive his lair,

  And Marya could not see;

  Kust’mized Traju-dee-ee-ee.

  The song went on to articulate how Jim Gunn wanted more than anything in the worl’ to buy an eye operation for his girl, who wished to admire his kustom kar. So he drove to a store and held it up, but someone recognized his kar. The police shot him, but:

  He kissed his Marya one last time;

  The policeman shot her, too.

  But she said, ‘I can see your kustom, Jim!

  It’s pretty gold and bloo!’

  He smiled and died embracing her,

  Happy that she could see.

  Kust’mized Traju—dee.

  Of course, in real life, Marya could see very well, Jim had no kar, and there were no policemen. But it was true for them, nevertheless. In some sense they could not express, they felt their love was a tragedy.

  Knowing Jim felt lonesome and bloo, Marya walked over and kissed his ear. She lay down beside him, and at once they were asleep.

  MEDCENTRAL’S audit showed a population of 250 million in NORTHAMER, stabilized. Other than a few incubator failures, and one vatt of accidentally-infected embryos, progress was as predicted, with birth and death rates equal. The norm had shifted once more toward the asocial, and UTERINE CONTROL showed 90.2% adult admission at both major hospitals.

  Trenchant abnormals were being regressed through adolescence, there being no other completely satisfactory method of normalizing them without shock therapy, with its attendant contraindications.

  Lloyd pulled his pocket watch from the bib of his plaid overalls. The hands of Chicken Licken pointed straight up, meaning there was just time to fetch the mail before Farm Kartoons on TV. On impulse, Lloyd popped the watch into his mouth and chewed. It was delicious, but it gave him little pleasure. Everything was too easy, too soft. He wanted exciting things to happen to him, like the time on Farm Kartoons when Black Angus tried to kill the hero, Lloyd White by breaking up his Machine, and Lloyd White had stabbed him with a pitchfork syringe and sent him off to the hospital.

  Mechanical Joe, knowing it was time to fetch the mail, came running out of the house. He wagged his tail and whined impatiently. It didn’t make any difference that he wasn’t a real dog, Lloyd thought as they strolled toward the mailbox. Joe still liked it when you scratched his ears. You could tell, just by the look in his eyes. He was livelier and a lot more fun than the first Joe.

  Lloyd paused a moment, remembering how sad he’d been when Joe died. It was a pleasantly melancholy thought, but now mechanical Joe was dancing around him and barking anxiously. They continued.

  The mailbox was chock-full of mail. There was a new komik, called LLOYD FARMER AND JOE, and a whole big box of new toys.

  Yet later, when Lloyd had read the komik and watched Farm Kartoon and played awhile with his building set, he still felt somehow heavy, depressed. It was no good being alone all the time, he decided. Maybe he should go to New York and see Jim and Marya. Maybe the Machines there were different, not so bossy.

  For the first time, another, stranger thought came to him. Maybe he should go live in New York.

  ‘DEAR DELPHINIA,’ Dave printed. ‘THIS IS GOING TO BE MY LAST LETTER TO YOU, AS I DONT LOVE YOU ANY MORE. I KNOW NOW WHAT HAS BEEN MAKING ME FEEL BAD, AND IT IS YOU. YOU ARE REALLY MY MASHINE, ARENT YOU HA HA I’LL BET YOU DIDNT THINK I NEW.

  ‘NOW I LOVE HELENA MORE THAN YOU AND WE ARE GOING AWAY TO NEW YORK AND SEE LOTS OF FRIENDS AND GO TO LOTS OF PARTYS AND HAVE LOTS OF FUN AND I DONT CARE IF I DONT SEE YOU NO MORE.

  ‘LOVE, AND BEST OF LUCK TO A SWELL KID,

  ‘DAVE W.’

  After an earthquake destroyed 17 million occupants of the western hospital, MEDCENTRAL ordered the rest moved at once to the east. All abnormals not living near the east hospital were also persuaded to evacuate to New York. Persuasion was as follows:

  Gradually, humidity and pressure were increased to .9 discomfort, while subliminally, pictures of New York were flashed on all surfaces around each patient.

  Dave and Helena had come by subway from L.A., and they were tired and cross. The subway trip itself took only two or three hours, but they had spent an additional hour in the taxi to Jim and Marya’s.

  ‘It’s an electric taxi,’ Dave explained,’ and it only goes about a mile an hour. I’ll sure never make that trip again.’

  ‘I’m glad you came,’ said Marya. ‘We’ve been feeling terrible lonesome and bloo.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jim added,’ and I got an idea. We can form a club, see, against the Machines. I got it all figured out. We –’

  ‘Babay, tell them about the zombies – I mean, the Mussulmen,’ said Helena.

  Dave spoke with an excited, wild look about him. ‘Jeez, yeah, they had about a million cars of them on the train, all packed in glass bottles. I wasn’t sure what the hell they were at first, see, so I went up and looked at one. It was a skinny, hairless man, all folded up in a bottle inside another bottle. Weird-looking.’

  In honor of their arrival, the Muzik played the favourite songs of all four: ‘Zonk’, ‘Yes I Know I Rilly Care For You’, ‘Blap’ and ‘That’s My Babay’, while the walls went transparent for a moment, showing a breathtaking view of the gold towers of New York. Lloyd, who spoke to no one, sat in the corner keeping time to the music. He had no favourite song.

  I want to call this the Jim Fairchild Club,’ said Jim. ‘The purpose of this here club is to get rid of the Machines. Kick ’em out!’

  Marya and Dave sat down to a game of chess.

  ‘I know how we can do it, too,’ Jim went on. ‘Here’s my plan: Who put the Machines in, in the first place? The U.S. Government. Well, there ain’t any U.S. government any more. So the Machines are illegal. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ said Helena. Lloyd continued to tap his foot, though no Muzik was playing.

  ‘They’re outlaws,’ said Jim. ‘We oughta kill them!’

  ‘But how?’ asked Helena.

  ‘I ain’t got all the details worked out yet. Give me time. Because you k
now, the Machines done us wrong.’

  ‘How’s that?’ asked Lloyd, as if from far away.

  ‘We all had good jobs, and we were smart. A long time ago. Now we’re all getting dumb. You know?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Helena agreed. She opened a tiny bottle and began painting her toenails.

  ‘I think,’ said Jim, glaring about him, ‘the Machines are trying to make us all into Mussulmen. Any of you want to get stuffed into a bottle? Huh?’

  ‘A bottle inside a bottle,’ Dave corrected, without looking up from his game.

  Jim continued, ‘I think the Machines are drugging us into Mussulmen. Or else they got some kind of ray, maybe, that makes us stupider. An xray, maybe.’

  ‘We gotta do something,’ said Helena, admiring her foot. Marya and Dave began to quarrel about how the pawn moves.

  Lloyd continued to tap his foot, marking time.

  1989 A.D.

  Jimmy had a good idea, but nobody wanted to listen. He remembered once when he was an itsy boy, a egg machine that tooked the eggs out of their shells and putted them into plastic – things. It was funny, the way the machine did that. Jimmy didn’t know why it was so funny, but he laughed and laughed, just thinking about it. Silly, silly, silly eggs.

  Marya had a idea, a real good one. Only she didn’t know how to say it so she got a crayon and drew a great Big! picture of the Machines: Mommy Machine and Daddy Machine and all the little Tiny Tot Machines.

  Loy-Loy was talking. He was building a block house. ‘Now I’m putting the door,’ he said. ‘Now I’m putting the little window. Now the – why is the window littler than the house? I don’t know. This is the chimney and this is the stee-ple and open the door and where’s all the people? I don’t know.’

  Helena had a wooden hammer, and she was driving all the pegs. Bang! Bang! Bang! ‘One, two, three!’ she said. ‘Banga-banga-bang!’

  Davie had the chessmen out, lined up in rows, two by two. He wanted to line them all up three by three, only somehow he couldn’t. It made him mad and he began to cry.