The Steam-Driven Boy Page 7

  Then one of the Machines came and stuck something in his mouth, and everybody else wanted one and somebody was screaming and more Machines came and …

  The coded message came to MEDCENTRAL. The last five abnormals had been cured, and all physical and, mental functions reduced to the norm. All pertinent data on them were switched over to UTERINE SUPPLY, which clocked them in at 400 hours G.M.T., day 1, year 1989. MEDCENTRAL agreed on the time-check, then switched itself off.

  A REPORT ON THE MIGRATIONS OF EDUCATIONAL MATERIALS

  As Edward Sankey stepped from his limousine, he involuntarily glanced up. The sky was a flat, glazed blue, empty of clouds. The corner of his eye caught movement: a ragged line of specks. Birds? He did not wish to look directly at them to find out. Lowering the black brim of his homburg against them, Sankey moved on into the courthouse.

  Preston, the other committee member, was already at his table, laying out batches of documents like a game of solitaire. These would be new depositions from witnesses of the alleged migrations. Preston seemed to be sorting them by some intricate system of his own.

  ‘You look as if you had a rough night, Ed,’ he murmured. ‘Hope you’re ready to hear our last witnesses today. I think we can wrap up the report by Thursday afternoon and get a long weekend out of this.’

  ‘I – something happened last night, Harry.’ Sankey dropped into a chair and unfastened the top button of his overcoat with gloved fingers. ‘I – I think I saw something myself. And not only that, I –’

  ‘Haven’t got time to go into it now, old sport. We’ve got fifty witnesses out there to interview, and all these statements to read. Try to pull yourself together for now, and you can tell me all about it at lunch.’

  Sankey tried to take his partner’s advice. Yet all through the morning, even as he listened to testimony, he found his thoughts filled with the events of last night.

  He was sitting in the reading nook, a warmer, cozier room than his library. At midnight Sankey found himself dozing over a lukewarm cup of chocolate and the report, in execrable police English, of one Patrolman H. L. Weems:

  ‘We received a call from the protection agency who handles the Waxman Collection of manuscripts. They reported a broken window. We proceeded to the scene. We arrived at 10.45. No other doors or windows were open. The broken glass lay outside, like the window was broken outwards. There was a book found lying in the grass. Subsequently we found no other book missing. The book was damaged by broken glass. It was a copy of The Nürnburg Chronicle, a rare book and one of the first printed books.’

  Suddenly Edward caught his breath. The sound – if a sound there had been – seemed to come from the library. Marian, he supposed, looking for a sleep-inducing novel.

  The final witnesses were government experts. Bates of the Wildlife Commission was a small, balding man with clownish tufts of hair over his ears and circumflex eyebrows that made him seem utterly astonished by everything he saw.

  ‘As this chart shows, the migrations are not just southward, but towards a specific point in the Brazilian jungle. The density of migrants increases proportionately as one approaches this point. We have asked the Air Force to overfly this area and report, but it seems conventional planes were unable to get through. The air is literally filled with – ah – migrants.’

  ‘What about high-altitude reconnaissance planes?’ Preston asked, his voice hoarse from the week’s strain.

  ‘They have flown over and photographed the area extensively, but the photographs show nothing of special import.’

  The thumping began again. Sankey frowned, looking at a report of dubious significance:

  ‘Librarian Emma Thwart, 51, reports an unknown assailant hurled a large dictionary at her from behind. The accompanying photos are of Miss Thwart’s shoulder bruises. If … ’

  There was a crash of glass, and Sankey came to his feet. Moving almost automatically to the closet, he selected a golf club and crept to the library door. He turned out the light behind him, slipped an arm inside the door and switched on the library light. In one movement, he kicked the door back and ducked.

  There was no one in the room. One pane high in the French windows had been broken, but they appeared to be still locked. Four or five bound volumes of early quarterlies were missing from one end of the shelf, he noticed, including the first volumes of Dial and Transition. They would be costly to replace, he thought, glancing around.

  Something struck him in the back of the head, hard. He fell, recalling for no reason the photos of Miss Thwart’s bruises.

  Mr Tone of the Library of Congress was speaking.

  ‘We seem to have a correlation between the migrants and the rate of book usage – a negative correlation, I might add,’ he said in a pompous voice. ‘We thus find that the rare book collections are hardest hit. It is no surprise to learn that the “remaindered” shelves of bookstores are being picked clean.’ He handed out Mimeographed sheets of statistics.

  ‘But isn’t it a fact, Mr Tone, that the rate of migrations has actually increased? And wouldn’t this imply that more books of all types are disappearing?’

  Tone licked papery lips with a pale tongue. ‘Yes. And in fact, the books now disappearing are progressively more well-used types. According to our latest estimates, the entire book output of the world will be gone by’ – he checked a notebook – ‘by the twenty-second of this month.’

  ‘That’s Friday, isn’t it?’ asked Preston.

  ‘Yes, I believe so.’

  ‘Right. We’ll put it into the record as Friday, the twenty-second of April.’

  Sankey felt he had not been unconscious for more than a few seconds, yet the entire shelf of quarterlies was now missing. Re staggered to his feet, the useless mashie still gripped in his fist, and looked about for his assailant.

  There was a noise down behind the desk, as of a bird beating its broken wing against the floor. He yanked the desk back and raised the iron.

  Volume I of Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire flopped back and forth, fanning its leaves madly. The binding was broken and torn – no doubt from smashing his window or knocking him down! So this was what had helped the quarterlies escape! Sankey tried to think of his blood pressure, but suddenly all his thought was concentrated in the fingers that held the golf club. Savagely he whipped it down at the fluttering thing on the floor, again and again, watching its thrashing cover pulp and shred …

  The witnesses, amateur and expert, had strong views on the causes of the migrations. While many of the amateurs gave supernatural explanations or referred to rats leaving a sinking ship, the deformation professional was clearly no less responsible for many distorted opinions. A psychologist insisted that cold war hysteria and the stress of modern living were producing mass hallucinations; people were unknowingly destroying or hiding books, he said.

  A meteorologist tried to relate the migrations to atmospheric disturbances caused by sunspot activity. Even when his ‘peculiar wind’ theory was proven inadequate, he clung to it childishly.

  Bates of the Wildlife Commission hazarded a guess that the books were trying to return to a state of nature. ‘It makes sense,’ he insisted. ‘They came from trees. Who knows but what they’ve been conscious, if only on some chemical level, of their origins? They’ve been longing to return to the jungle, and now they are doing it.’

  Mr Tone wondered if books felt unloved and rejected.

  ‘These educational materials,’ he said. ‘They stand there, week after week, unread. How would you feel? You’d commit suicide. And that is just what they are doing, killing themselves like lemmings. I’ve been around books all my life, and I think I’m qualified to say I understand them.’

  Sedley of the N.A.S.A. explained how books flew, but was reluctant to assign a meaning to their flight. ‘The way we figure it, they convert some small part of their mass into energy, In some way we don’t understand yet. Then they just – well, just flap their covers.

  ‘Anything flat c
an fly, that part is easy. But as for why they fly, I’d hate to guess. Maybe Russia could answer that question quicker than I can. I say no more.’

  Marian was watching the migrations on television when Sankey reached home that evening.

  ‘Telephone books over Florida,’ she said gaily. ‘Millions of them, darling.’

  He glanced at the large, slow-flapping, graceful creatures for only a moment before going directly up to bed. Later he would get up to try dealing with the final batch of reports, he promised himself.

  The ache in the back of his head was worse when he awoke late in the evening. Though Sankey tried to examine reports in the reading nook, his vision was blurred with pain, and he could not ignore the thumping sounds from the library.

  Marian looked in to say good-night.

  ‘If you want a book, dear,’ he said carefully, ‘you’d better let me get it for you. The library really isn’t safe tonight.’

  ‘Oh, goodness no!’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t think of letting you go in there again for any reason! Anyway, I’m getting to sleep early tonight, I hope. Big doings in town tomorrow.’

  ‘Eh? What’s that?’

  ‘They say there’s a really huge flock passing over the city at noon.’

  Sankey and Preston worked on the draft of their report for only two hours. At 11.30 they were out on the courthouse roof with binoculars. A dark cloud front along the horizon was, Preston claimed, the forefront of the flock. Sankey trained his binoculars downwards, on the crowds.

  ‘There certainly is a holiday atmosphere down there,’ he observed. ‘It’s as if they were waiting for a parade.’ He realized even as he said it that he, too, felt that way. Unaccountably, the air had a savour of expected joy for him. He examined his bubbly feelings and questioned them. How ridiculous! What did he come out to see? He ought to go inside and work – but he kept his seat on the parapet.

  Below him, traffic was stalled for miles in every direction, and pedestrians had spilled out into the street. Many drivers had given up, switched off their engines and climbed upon their car roofs to watch. Here and there were people with books under their arms; they would probably release them to see if they joined the flock. Hawkers moved up and down, dispensing cheap paperbacks from cartons.

  ‘Here they come!’ Harry Preston cried, leaping up. The cloud had advanced, and now Sankey could see the individual particles of which it was made. Through binoculars he could just make out the shapes of the leaders, which were now flapping steadily. They rose in an heroic effort to pull the flock up enough to clear the city. These were strong, heavy, cloth-bound ledgers and reference works, and the books rising behind them, he guessed by their wedge formations, would be encyclopedias. There were perhaps ten thousand sets, perhaps a million, he could not guess. A court-house window smashed somewhere below; a set of law references rose in a lazy spiral, beating their strong, hard covers.

  Myriads of volumes of all types came on then, grouped now by colour, now by age. He noted one giant hymnal, its parchment leaves opening downward to expose square, black single notes, each larger than a human hand. It was accompanied by a host of tiny old psalters or books of hours, he could not be sure which, hovering like ministering cherubim. Immediately behind them were serried ranks of textbooks in grey covers, flapping their pictureless, colourless leaves in unison. Old medical books with brilliant plates flew over, their leaves sodden, dripping from some recent shower. Close behind these were slim volumes of poetry in green limp leather, blue burlap or brown wrapping paper; Sankey was surprised to find these needed as much effort as the rest to stay aloft. Behind them fluttered beautiful loose-leaf cookbooks and gay picture magazines.

  Here was all of literature, all of philosophy, all modern and ancient sciences, the sum of written thought. Sankey trained his binoculars on nearer titles that flashed by: Pascal’s Pensées in a small indigo volume; Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in olive green; Rembrandt in burnt umber; Training the Collie in white, and a small black pocket Bible. Here were the last living records of civilized man: almanacs, bank-books, address books, diaries, borrowed violet volumes from libraries. They fluttered and twinkled a thousand colours against the dimming sunlight (dimmed, he reminded himself, by other myriads like them): cheap paperback thrillers alongside Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; Voltaire by Aquinas; Rabelais next to Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

  And now the crowds below were holding up their volumes, spread face-down across their forearms, lofting them to the stinging wind. With a great, deep applause of clattering pages, these thousands of books rose to join the flock above.

  ‘Wish we had something to send up,’ Sankey shouted over the noise.

  ‘Chequebooks! How about chequebooks?’

  The two grey-haired men brought out their black chequebooks and solemnly flung them to the breeze. The thin, awkward things soared for a moment uncertainly, then began to flap their leathern wings with great energy.

  ‘There must be something else,’ Preston complained.

  ‘Why not the draft of the report?’

  ‘Why not? Who would want to read it anyhow, now: “A Report on the Migrations of Educational Materials”.’

  They lifted the half-completed draft from Preston’s briefcase and balanced it a moment on the building’s parapet. The spring clip at one side held the pages in a sort of book form, Sankey supposed. It might work.

  ‘After you,’ he said, stepping back.

  Preston opened the batch of paper, lifted it like a shot putter and threw it straight out from the roof. It dipped, flapped shut and fell. Just as Sankey groaned, the bundle opened its wings once more, several floors below them, and began to fly.

  It climbed fast, a magnificent patch of white against the dark cloud. Through the binoculars Sankey watched it join its brethren and turn itself toward the south. It was soon out of sight.

  THE SINGULAR VISITOR FROM NOT-YET

  WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE SUBSEQUENT

  LAMENTABLE DECLINE OF DR LEMUEL JONES

  To Jeremy Botford, Esq.

  Aug. 10, 1772

  Dear Jerry,

  It was with mixt feelings that I returned to London after all these years. The city is more splendid and horrid than ever; it is a sort of great Press, into which every kind of person has been tumbled, without the least regard for whether or not he is choaked with the stench of his neighbours.

  For my part, the only retreat offering succour from the noxious Crowd’s putrefaction is the coffee house. Of course I refer to Crutchwood’s in Clovebelly Lane, which you may fondly remember. It still affords an entertaining company, and I was surprized to remark several of our old number about the fire yet. Augustus Strathnaver has grown quite stout and dropsical, but his Wit is lean and ready as ever. Dick Blackadder is still soliciting subscriptions for his translations of Ovid: he is still soliciting in vain: and he is still of good chear about it. I learned that poor Oliver Colquhoun, who never could get his play tried in Drury Lane, is dead.

  But I was attended by the greatest astonishment when I apprehended a gross figure in a snuff-coloured coat seated next the fire with its back to the company.

  The figure turned to regard me, presenting its great warthog’s face. When its mouth opened, ’twas like the splitting of a steamed pudding. ‘So! [it said] I see you have not yet learnt your lesson, Timothy Scunthe, but must needs be taught more manners! Do you not know better than to interrupt a man while he is meditating?’

  It was indeed our old friend, cantankerous as ever. I shall never forget the tixnc I spilled mulled wine upon him – indeed, he shall never let me forget it, though it happened close on eleven years ago!

  I stayed to see the evening out with Jones and his circle, to which there are no few additions. The good Doctor is thicker of limb, now, with a propensity (he says) to gout; though I perceive no shortening of his breath. He disposed last evening of two Philosophy Students (They were arguing about the Soul, I believe. I could not follow them), a Schoolmaster, a Grub Street writer,
and a poor inoffensive solicitor who wandered in for a cup of tea and did not stay to see it cooled. In short, Dr Jones is himself: Witty, Splenetic and Eminently Sensible. I was keenly reminded of the days when we young dogs were used to teaze him, and he to muzzle us properly. Remember the fun we had with the visitor from ‘the Future’, and how the good Doctor shewed him for the merry Andrew he was? I can never forget it, as I hope you cannot forget

  Your affectionate

  Timothy Scunthe

  To Sir Timothy Scunthe, Bart.

  Aug. 25

  Dear Tim,

  I am glad you have not forgotten the Incident of the man from ‘Not-Yet’, for I have begun assembling some paltry Reminiscences and would greatly appreciate the help of your keen memory. While I believe I recall the Incident perfectly, much Muck has covered it in ten years’ time, and I would rather have your version of the story, too.

  Eternally gratefull, I remain, Dear Tim,

  Your affectionate

  Jer. Botford

  To Jeremy Botford, Esq.

  Sept. 5

  Dear Jerry,

  Your memory is doubtless better than mine, but I have made some Notations of that curious Incident, which, in the interests of your book, I hereby place at your disposal:

  It was a December evening in 1762, and our usual circle, dominated by Dr Jones, was gathered in the gaming room at Crutchwood’s. Pauceford, the proprietor, seemed to be having an argument with some man in the front doorway, and the room grew quite chill.

  ‘Damme, sir,’ Jones roared out. ‘Are you determined to give us all the Ague? Bring the gentleman in.’

  Pauceford led in a thin, splindle-shanked fellow, oddly dressed. I recall he wore his hair natural and shockingly short, and that his breeches reached to his ankles.

  Jones’ snuffbox clattered to the floor. ‘Good God!’ he cried. ‘What manner of Whig is this?’