Ian McDonald - Desolation Road

As soon as the dust of Heart of Lothian’s leavetaking had settled, Genevieve Tenebrae knocked on Marya Quinsana’s door.

“Good morning, Mrs. Tenebrae,” said Marya Quinsana, sharp and professional in green plastic overalls. “Business or pleasure?”

“Business,” said Genevieve Tenebrae. She placed the support jar on the surgery table. “This is the child Heart of Lothian made for me. She didn’t have time to implant it herself, but said you would be able to do it.”

The operation took ten minutes. When tea and caramels were done, Genevieve Tenebrae slipped home to her vain and petty husband. All guilt was gone, excised by Marya Quinsana’s clever instruments. In her skirt pocket rattled a jar of immunosuppressives so that she might not reject the foetus; in her womb she imagined she could feel the stolen child already kicking and flexing. She hoped it would be a girl. She wondered how she was going to tell her husband. His expression would be interesting to see.

Rael Mandella feared his children were growing up to be savages. For three years they had run innocent and ignorant as chickens round and round the tiny town of Desolation Road. It was the only world they knew, wide as all the sky yet so tightly described that a hyperactive threeyear-old could run all the way around it in less than ten minutes. That there was a world and a sky and even a world beyond the sky, all of them full of people and history, never occurred to the twins. The trains that steamed in and out at peculiar intervals came from somewhere and went to somewhere, but thinking about that somewhere made the children edgy and uncomfortable. They liked their world to be small and cosy as a bed quilt. Yet Rael Mandella insisted that they learn about those other worlds. “Education,” this process was called, and it involved the sacrifice of whole mornings which could be so much more profitably utilized listening to Dr. Alimantando, who was nice but not a great communicator, or Mr. Jericho, who knew so much about the world it was frightening, or learning to read from their mother’s beautifully illustrated picture books which told the stories of days when ROTECH and St. Catherine built the world.

Limaal and Taasmin remained enthusiastic savages. They greatly preferred to spend their days making fat Johnny Stalin’s life a misery with mud, water, faeces, and inimitable feats of acrobatic skill on the water-pump gantries. Yet Rael Mandella was adamant that his children would not grow into stoop-backed slaves of the shovel, dull as old boots. They would have the things that he could not. The world would be their toy. He tried to instill the excitement of learning in them, but even Heart of Lothian’s Genetic Education Show had left them cold. Until, that is, the day Adam Black’s Travelling Chautauqua and Educational ’Stravaganza came to town.

The night before the great showman’s arrival the eastern horizon had popped and sparkled silver and gold with fireworks. Desolation Road was left in no doubt that an event of great moment was due to descend upon it. Next morning an unscheduled train drew into Desolation Road’s makeshift station and was waved into a siding by Rajandra Das, unofficial stationmaster. It stood there billowing steam and blaring stirring music from loudspeakers mounted on the locomotive while the people gathered to see what had come now.

“Adam Black’s Travelling Chautauqua and Educational ’Stravaganza,” read Rajandra Das from the brash playbill script painted in red and gold on the rolling stock. He spat in the dust. The music played on. Time passed. The air grew hot. The people grew tired of waiting in the heat. Genevieve Tenebrae almost fainted.

Suddenly there was a simultaneous fanfare and blast of steam that made everybody jump.

“Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the one and only… Adam Black!” bawled a curiously mechanical-sounding voice. Stairs unfolded from the carriages. A tall, thin elegant man stepped forward. He wore a dark longtailed coat, and pants with a real gold stripe. There was a black bootlace tie around his neck, and on his head a huge cartwheel hat. He carried a goldtopped cane and his eyes twinkled like jet. And of course he had a thin pencil-line moustache. Anyone more like an Adam Black it was difficult to imagine. He made sure everyone had taken a good long look at him. Then he shouted. “Ladies and gentlemen, you see before you the ultimate repository of human knowledge: Adam Black’s Travelling Chautauqua and Educational ’Stravaganza. History, art, science, nature, wonders of earth and sky, marvels of science and technology, tales of strange places and faraway lands, where the miraculous is workaday, all are within. See the mighty works of ROTECH at first hand through the Adam Black Patent Opticon; hear Adam Black’s tales of mystery and imagination from the four quarters of the globe; marvel at the latest developments in science and technology; wonder at the train, yes, this very train, which drives itself with a mind of its own; goggle in amazement at the Dumbletonians, half man, half machine; learn of the mysteries of physics, of chemistry, of philosophy, of theology, art and nature: all this can be yours, ladies and gentlemen, this cornucopia of ancient wisdom; yours for only fifty centavos, yes, fifty centavos, or equivalent value in whatever commodity you choose: yes, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, Adam Black presents his Travelling Chautauqua and Educational ’Stravaganza!” The prancing dandy rapped his cane smartly on the side of the red, gold and green carriage and the locomotive blew five steam rings, one inside the other, and played march music at an ear-shattering volume.

Adam Black opened the doors to his wonderland of learning and was almost swept aside as Rael Mandella and his mulish children led the rush to education. The mysteries of physics, chemistry, philosophy, art and nature did not excite Limaal and Taasmin Mandella. They yawned at the Dumbletonians, half man, half machine, they fidgeted in boredom when the computerized train with a mind of its own tried to engage them in conversation, they talked and giggled through Adam Black’s illustrated talk on the natural wonders of the world. But the mighty works of ROTECH, viewed through Adam Black’s Patent Opticon, made their eyes pop.

They sat in a carriage on hard plastic chairs. Limaal found that the chairs squeaked if he rocked back and forward, and this is what he was doing when the room was suddenly plunged into darkness as black as death. Screams came from the back, where the Gallacelli brothers were sitting behind Persis Tatterdemalion. Then a voice said, “Space: the final frontier,” and all of a sudden the carriage was full of drifting sparks of light. The twins tried to catch them and hold them in their hands but the bright motes passed through their fingers. A swirling spiral nebula passed straight through Limaal’s chest. He snatched at it but it had flown out through the back of the carriage. A star detached itself from the glowing galactic web and grew in size and luminosity until it threw definite shadows on the walls of the carriage.

“Our sun,” said Adam Black. “We are approaching our solar system at a simulated speed of twenty thousand times the speed of light. As we enter the system of worlds, we will slow to enable you to view the glories of the planets.” The star was now a distinct sun. Planets waltzed past in a stately procession of orbs and rings. “We are passing the outer worlds; the cloud of comets that envelops our system, there you see distant Nemesis, our sun’s far, faint companion, here is Avernus, here Charon; Poseidon, that is ringed Uranus, and Chronos with its rings also… here is Jove, mightiest of all worlds, if our world, which you see now, beyond the jumble of rocky aster oids, were peeled like an orange and placed on mighty Jove’s surface, it would seem no larger than a fifty centavo piece… this is our world, our home, we shall return to it in one moment, but first we must pay a fleeting visit to shining Aphrodite, and tiny Hermes, closest to the sun, before turning our attention to the Motherworld from which the peoples of our earth sprang.”