Read The Celestial Steam Locomotive (The Song of Earth) for Free Online Page A

on the ground again, gently, and the tears fell from her face onto her mother’s. “This is my fault. I should never have brought the dik-dik home. It was injured and I should have left it out there to die, because that’s the way of life on Earth, and there’s nothing wrong with that.” She ran for the Healing Stone, but returned too late.  
    Wuhan twitched once, appeared to be trying to move her left hand, then sighed and was still forever.  
    And something entered Shantun, possessing her, firming her resolve. “A Dedo must have bonds with none but Starquin himself, and my mother has paid for her transgression—and mine, too, perhaps. Now I see the Logic and I will transgress no more.” She untied the dik-dik and it limped away. She walked over to the Rock and touched it experimentally for the very first time.  
    The Rock was cold and dark and quiet.  
    “I dedicate the rest of my life to this Rock and to you, Starquin,” said Shantun formally. That is the story of Shantun the Accursed, she who brought shame on the Rock Women for all time, for she was an evil woman, and a wretched one, because she paid heed to human ways. She neglected the Duty, questioned the Unity of Purpose and denied the Logic—and she was responsible for the death of a Dedo, her mother. As a result, her name is held in everlasting contempt by the Rock Women, for she failed to heed the calling of the Rock.  
    The Rock had flickered and humans had traveled the Greataway without the knowledge of Starquin. It could have been anyone, any insignificant trader with a cargo of harmless goods, stealing a ride.  
    But it was not just anyone...  
    It was the Three Madmen of Munich. When humans discovered the Greataway, they traveled it by means of a process they called the Outer Think, which was distinct from the Inner Think, a longevity process. They had begun to spread, and other peoples had begun to take notice. One such people—who have never been seen with human eyes—lived on a world known simply as the Red Planet.  
    The progress of Mankind had annoyed the people of the Red Planet, who moved in with a frightful Weapon that capitalized on Mankind’s greatest fear.  
    Earth threw up her defenses in the year 93,763 Cyclic, almost 50,000 years before Manuel met Belinda. Earth sent up the Hate Bombs.  
    The Hate Bombs were areas of insane psy that spanned the happentracks of each Greataway path. They were not tangible. They were essentially a bloated human emotion, the quintessence of murderous insanity, held in place and sustained by the mysterious force lines of the Greataway.  
    They were planted by three devils specially cloned from ancient genetic material. The virulence of the Hate Bombs made it impossible for any living being to traverse that area of the Greataway. It effectively sealed off Earth from the attacks of the Red Planet. It also sealed her off from her own colonies.  
    More disastrously, the Hate Bombs trapped Starquin in a terribly small area just a few light years across, in the vicinity of the Solar System.  
    Starquin raged.  
    It became the Purpose of the Dedos to influence events on Earth toward the eventual removal of the Hate Bombs and the release of Starquin, the great Five-in-One.  
    Scanning the Ifalong, the Dedos saw a way to accomplish this. It was a tenuous thread of events stretching into the distant future that depended on the coming together of three people, who would thereafter be celebrated in The Song of Earth as the Triad.  
    One of those people was Manuel.  
    Another was an old Cuidador named Zozula.  
    And the third was a girl with many names, and no name.  
     
     
     

 
The Coming of the Mole
     
    He cannot hear, he cannot see, he cannot speak his name. His mind is filled with greatness but his heart is filled with pain.  
    —The Song of Earth  
     
    Zozula didn’t know that he was destined to become a household name in millennia to come. Although he’d never heard of the