Read Online The Celestial Steam Locomotive (The Song of Earth) by Michael G. Coney - Free Book Online Page A

forever smallwishing himself here, there and everywhere. The Girl lived with the constant fear that one day she would lose touch with Burt altogether. It had almost happened once, when Burt had been John and had Bigwished without her knowledge. It had taken her months of searching in the Andes, the Pacific, Nairobi, Nice, Pompeii and sundry planets before she’d finally found him in a later sector of history sitting with the Three Madmen of Munich and flinging Hate Bombs into the Greataway. Fortunately, the acts of the Dream People, though extravagant, have little effect on the real world—otherwise The Song of Earth would have had a different ending. Somehow the Girl had recognized her man even then, and just for one night, they had loved.  
    “You are beautiful,” said a golden-haired youth softly, taking her hand and leading her down by the pool where a seven-headed monster thrashed and spat fire and clouds of steam arose. It was frightening, and was intended to be so, because many Dream People found fear an appetizer—which is how the Locomotive came into being.  
    The golden youth whose name, he said, was Hermes, laid her down on a soft couch and made tender love. She found she was watching the mists swirling about the far-off ceiling, wondering how high it was and what kept it all from falling down, and what Burt was doing right now... She became aware that Hermes had finished. Although they were still coupled, he had rolled his chest away from her and lay with eyes closed, face set in a childish pout. She wondered how long the Pleasurers of the Love Palace lasted before they tired of the endless empty lovemaking and Bigwished themselves into Annes and Edwards. She wondered how long Hermes would last. She watched his dissatisfied face. It shimmered...  
    Horrified, she disengaged herself roughly and stood. Hermes—or whatever he was becoming—rolled off the couch with a thud, out of sight on the other side.  
    The Girl fled. She ran past satyrs and muses, naiads and graces. She ran past pools and fountains, stairways and doorways and finally collapsed before a great pit from which flames rose high, too breathless to run farther, lacking the psy to smallwish herself elsewhere.  
    She found a stone seat and dragged herself onto it, gasping for breath. She considered for a while Hermes’ incredible rudeness in Bigwishing at such a time—then decided he wasn’t worth the bother. Was this the love the Oracle had referred to? She watched the pit, wondering what its purpose could be. It was thirty meters in diameter, and the walls, wherever they were not hidden by flames, were smooth and glossy. The flames burst upward with a great roaring like the roar of a dragon, rising fifty meters or more to a place where they were cut off abruptly—as though, having reached this height, they were no longer needed. There was no smoke. As the Girl watched the flames, drawing strength from their fearsome energy, a face appeared before her.  
    The goddess Eulalie had come.  
    Afterward the Girl was never able to say exactly whether Eulalie had appeared out of the flames or materialized before them. Whichever it was, the Girl immediately knew Eulalie for a goddess. She just appeared , the way a person would expect a goddess to appear.  
    “What can I do for you, my dear?” asked the beautiful woman.  
    The Dream Girl’s mouth was still hanging open. She closed it and gulped. “What do you mean?”  
    “You can have anything you want.”  
    Now, the gossip of the Dream People abounds with the sightings of gods. And almost inevitably, the gods of this gossip come making big promises; just as inevitably, there is a catch.  
    “What’s the catch?” asked the Girl suspiciously.  
    Eulalie smiled. Only a Girl-who-was-Herself would ask such a question. “Don’t be alarmed. I’d like you to wear this cap, that’s all. For a week you must put it on every night before you go to sleep. At the end of the week I’ll