The Steam-Driven Boy by Sladek John

Author:Sladek, John [Sladek, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science fiction
ISBN: 9780575110618
Publisher: Hachette Littlehampton
Published: 2011-09-28T20:00:00+00:00

1937 A.D.!

Picture, if you will, an inventor, working in his bicycle shop in 1878. His long hair occasionally falls in his eyes; he shakes it aside impatiently, flexes sinewy arms against the pull of a wrench, biting his lip with preoccupation. Now and then he may pause to sip some of the cool lemonade his widowed Mom has brought to him, sip and glance up at the picture of Sam Franklin on the whitewashed plank wall. Early to bed and early to rise … he thinks. A penny saved is a penny earned. His serious brows knit, as he ferrets the last bit of truth from these proverbs.

Such an inventor was Emil Hart. He and his mother shared a small cottage exactly in the centre of the state of Kiowa. Their modest home was otherwise undistinguished except for a heavy mortgage, which the good widow hoped to reduce. Toward that end she knitted clever antimacmillans (lacy affairs designed to protect the tops of sofas and chairs from a then-popular hair grease called MacMillan’s) and sold peafowl eggs. Emil augmented this meagre income by repairing bicycles and selling the FRIDAY EVENING POST (founded by Sam Franklin). Yet he knew fate intended for him a greater calling – inventor of the Time Engine!

One day Fenton Morbes, the town bully, stopped by. Seeing the great engine spread over the entire shop, he whistled with amazement.

‘What’cher doing?’ he asked.

‘I’m only filing a bit of isinglass,’ said Emil, shaking the hair from his eyes. He had no time to waste speaking to Morbes.

‘I mean, what’cher building?’ Morbes removed his bicycle clips and tossed them carelessly into a corner. They were made of costly aluminium, for he was rich.

Emil sighed. ‘I’m building a temporal extrapolator,’ he said. ‘It will enable me to go into the future.’

The bully guffawed. ‘Stuff!’ he said. ‘Nobody kin go into the future!’

With a knowing smile, Emil bent over his work. After fitting the piece of isinglass into a gear of peculiar shape, he set about attaching a pair of wires to a telegraph key.

Morbes flushed red about the nostrils of his broad, saddle-like nose. He was not used to being ignored. ‘Stuff!’ he exclaimed once more. ‘Even if it works, this here engine won’t bring in enough to feed your peafowls, let alone pay the mortgage when my Paw comes around to foreclose.’

‘Foreclose!’ said the young inventor, growing pale.

‘Yep. You’d better have a hundred dollars ready by next Monday,’ said Morbes with a grin. ‘Tell you what. If you’ll wash my bicycle, I’ll give you a whole dollar. Get it spanking clean now, for I’m to go on a picnic today, with Miss Maud Peed.’

At this news, Emil grew even paler, and staggered back as tough he’d been stuck.

‘Oh, I know you been kinda sweet on her,’ smirked the bully. ‘But she ain’t got no time for a crazy feller what putters around his bicycle shop with time engines. Hah!’

No time for him! As the colour continued to ebb from Emil’s

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