The Reproductive System by John Sladek

Author:John Sladek [Sladek, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780575110571
Publisher: Gollancz; Orion Publishing Group
Published: 1968-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIII

WONDER JOURNEY

‘Rudis indigestaque moles’

OVID

As the car picked up speed the conversation within slowed, until, by the time they were flying into the outskirts of the deserted city, the five had grown strangely silent.

The car swerved, slowed, bumped down steel rollers into an unlit tunnel. Cal felt it buffeted by blasts of steam and water; he could smell the suds. There was the scream of saws on steel, and the dead blackness popped and flashed with livid gleams. By their uncanny light, Cal saw he was alone. The four others, the car, everything familiar was gone but the third of the seat to which he was still safety-strapped, which moved forward on invisible tracks to some rendezvous of its own.

He crashed through double doors into a room full of blood-red light, full of well-dressed mute figures. Mannikins, he thought with relief. In the corners, naked mute limbs in charnel heaps. The upper half of a dummy, weakly upright, slid down an inclined oily countertop, cracking the wall with its face and falling back. A bell sounded distantly. Sprinklers drizzled on the non-existent fire, while delicate water-wheels revolved beneath them. In the atrosanguinous shadow, the dummy’s smashed face and nose-hole received the rain.

* * *

Brian Gallopini found himself inexplicably alone, as the seat to which he was fastened moved into dry yellow sunlight. Light blazed white-red on his retina; he squinted at the globes. Artificial suns? No, goldfish bowls, fishbowls of gold lofted on levers to the sun, a sun-offering. The goldfish floated belly-up.

* * *

Cats crawled along upper shelves, going from nowhere to nowhere. A few of them wore gold or silver watches strapped about their middles. One paused, near enough for her to read the watch. It was wrong. Daisy saw the date change from 7 to 8 with a click. The cat gave a tiny scream and moved faster. It was only then Daisy noticed it was pulling a little pie tin full of machine parts.

* * *

Dipterous toy helicopters roamed the room, weaving fine copper wire in peculiar, meaningless patterns. Jack yawned.

* * *

Every can seemed to have rusted enough to admit a few bacteria. The buildup of gas was terrific, as Harry gladly demonstrated. He plunged his knife into a can that exploded black juice over his hand. He laughed.

‘Sauerkraut!’ he said. ‘Rotten sauerkraut!’

Cal did not laugh. ‘It’s odd. Most of the stock is gone, and the rest is rotten. In only a few days. Mysterious. Is there anything left?’

Harry laughed again. ‘Nothing to write home about,’ he said, plunging his knife into another can. It squittered black and grey curds.

Later Cal would see how the system incorporated these exploding cans into a sort of ‘internal combustion’ engine, using an old auto cylinder block, reloading eight cans after every revolution. But just now he was watching the shopping carts.

* * *

Ferriferous were the stately wheels of the sumptuous ‘ironclad’, or locomotive, which stood upon rails of ferric metals, burnished bright. It looked powerful, and appearances, in this case, were not deceiving, for it fairly chuffed with impatience to be off.

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