A Different Flesh (15 page)

“How about that, Prem?” Stephenson put in, nudging him in the ribs. “Only way you'd get Caesar and Hannibal moving that fast'd be to drop 'em off a roof.”

Prem Chand grunted. He thought of the stationmaster's boasts about how much he could cut back his operation. The elephant driver smiled sardonically at Trevithick's naivete. Everything would be the same, would it?

“Thirty miles an hour is a marvelous speed, Richard; it is most marvelous indeed. But that is unloaded, I take it. What can your steam engine”—he
would not
call it the Iron Elephant, not even for politeness' sake—“do pulling a load of, say, fifty tons?”

“Tell him, Mr. Trevithick.” This time the engine handler was the recipient of Stephenson's conspiratorial elbow.

He did not seem to notice. The gleam in his eyes turned inward as he calculated. At last he said, “That is a great deal of weight. Does your team really pull so much?” For the first time, his voice held a trace of doubt.

“They can, yes,” Prem Chand said proudly.

“Truth to tell, I have to wonder if the machinery could stand it. But I think we should be able to do something on the order of three miles an hour, not counting stops for water or for any breakdowns that might happen.”

“Three miles an hour? Is that all?” George Stephenson sounded more betrayed than disappointed.

“If that.” Trevithick looked amused. “Now you see why I tend to put more stress on the engine's top speed.”

Prem Chand, though, was still impressed, and worried. His beloved elephants were faster, but they were only flesh and blood. They had to rest, where the steam engine could go on and on and on. And yet, he thought, if I can show everyone how the elephants outdo this stinking contraption—

“Richard, load your train up, and I will load mine, and I will race you from here to Carthage.”

“A race, eh?” Trevithick's bright eyes glowed. “How far is this Carthage place from here?”

“Fifty-three miles, a tiny bit south of west. The railroad ends soon after it.”

“Hmm.” Prem Chand watched the engine handler go into that near-trance of concentration again. When he emerged from it, he gave the elephant driver a respectful look. “That will be a very close thing, Prem. You know how embarrassing—and I mean financially as well as in the sense of a blow to my pride—it would be for me to lose?”

Prem Chand returned a bland shrug. “You've come all this way from Plymouth, Richard, to show off your iron-mongery. How embarrassing would it be for word to get out that you refused a challenge from your competition?”

Trevithick laughed out loud. “You misunderstand me. I have no intention of refusing. When shall we start?”

“Tomorrow morning?”

“What?” George Stephenson let out a howl. “You're eastbound for Cairo tomorrow morning, Prem! What about your precious schedule?”

“Well, what about it? If this steam engine comes in and replaces Caesar and Hannibal, then I will have to do as you suggested before and find other work, so it will not matter if the company fires me. But if elephants are better than machinery, the company should know that too. They will thank me more for finding that out than they will be angry with me for being late. And besides, George, why should you worry? Don't you own the town hotel?”

Stephenson suddenly looked crafty. “Well, yes, now that you mention it, I do.”

“Here is a man who thinks of everything,” Trevithick said admiringly. “I wonder if I ought to race against you after all—no, my friend, only a joke. But tomorrow morning will be too soon. We will have to load up waggons so both our trains carry equal weight.… George, you live here, unlike either Prem or myself. Can you hire some sims from the locals to help the ones at the station here with that work?”

“Reckon so.” Stephenson gave Trevithick a sidelong glance. “So long as I ain't payin' for it, that is.”

Prem Chand gulped; he was never going to be rich on an elephant driver's salary. But Trevithick said, “I'll cover it, never fear. What I don't make up on bets will come back in the long run through the ballyhoo this race will cause.”

“Whatever you say. All I know is, you can't put no ballyhoo in the bank. Them folks are partial to gold.”

“Who isn't?” Trevithick chuckled.

Prem Chand went back to the other side of the station to stop the unloading of his train—the less that came off, the less that would have to be put back tomorrow. The straw boss who oversaw Stephenson's gang of sims looked at him as if he were crazy. “First you was screaming nobody was doing anything, now you're screaming on account of they are. Can't you make up your fool mind?”

“Truly I am sorry, Mr. Dubois.” Prem Chand had always thought the straw boss more capable than Stephenson, and treated him accordingly.

Dubois only grunted in disgust, then turned and shouted to the dozen sims that were unloading sacks of grain from the waggons. He gave hand signals to back his oral instructions. Sims could follow human speech, but had trouble imitating it. They much preferred to use gestures, and many overseers gave orders both ways, taking no chances on being misunderstood.

That care paid off now. One of the sims gaped in disbelief at the overseer. Its long, chinless jaw fell open to reveal yellow teeth bigger and stouter than any man's. It ran a hand over what would have been a human's forehead, but was in the sim only a smooth slope behind bony brow-ridges.

Back
, it signed, adding the little gesture that turned the word to a question. Prem Chand usually had some trouble following hand-talk, but the sim made the sign so emphatic—the way a man might shout an objection—that he understood it with ease.

Back
, Dubois signed firmly.
Put bags back
.

The sim scratched its hairy cheek, let out a wordless hoot of protest. It signed,
Bad. Very bad. Work all gone
. From its point of view, Prem Chand supposed it had a point. But under Dubois's uncompromising eye, it and its comrades began putting the produce back aboard the train.

“What are they doing, Prem?” Paul Tilak demanded. “That should go in the warehouses here—look at the bill of lading. And why were they so slow getting here in the first place? Where was everyone, and why is everyone so excited?”

Very much the same set of questions, Prem Chand thought wryly, that he had thrown at George Stephenson. They had the same answer, too: “Steam engine.”

“Damnation!” Tilak shouted, so loudly that Hannibal let out an alarmed snort and swung its shaggy head to see what was wrong with its driver. “It is all right, really it is,” Tilak reassured him. The elephant snorted again, doubtfully, but subsided.

“These accursed engines will be the ruination of us,” Tilak said.

“I hope not.”

“Of course they will.” Tilak was gloomier by nature than Prem Chand. He noticed Dubois's gang of sims again. “What
are
they doing, Prem?”

Prem Chand told him. Tilak's jaw dropped. He frowned. “I do not know if we can beat this Trevithick, Prem, if his machine performs as he says it will.”

“He does not know if he can beat us, either, which makes for a fair trial. Cheer up, Paul. Even if we lose, how are we worse off? What will happen? The company will buy engines, just as it would without any race at all. But if we win, perhaps they will not.”

Tilak looked unconvinced. Before the argument could go further, the passenger who had bothered Prem Chand from the coach window now grabbed him by the arm. “See here, sir! Do I understand you to mean that this train will not proceed to Cairo, but rather is returning to Carthage?”

“I am afraid that is correct, sir.” As gently as he could, Prem Chand shook free of the man's grasp. “I am so very sorry for any inconvenience this may—”

“Inconvenience?” the man exclaimed. His face was almost as red as his waistcoat. “Do you know, sir, that I stand to lose out on a very profitable investment opportunity if I am delayed here?”

That was too much for Prem Chand. The deference that was part of his railroading persona went by the board. He stuck his face an inch from the passenger's nose and bellowed, “God damn you to hell, do you know that I stand to lose out on a job I have loved for twenty-five years and that my father and grandfather held before me? I piss on your investment opportunity, and for a copper sester I'd black your eye, too!”

Tilak quickly stepped between them before they could start a fight. The passenger stamped away, still yelling threats.

Prem Chand looked toward his beloved elephants. The ostlers had set out big wooden tubs of water for them. “Derr!” he shouted to Caesar: “Splash!” He thrust out his arm, pointing to the obnoxious fellow with whom he'd been quarreling.

Caesar snorted up a big trunkful of water and let it go in a sudden shower—that drenched Prem Chand. Tilak and Dubois got wet too, and hopped back swearing. The fellow the elephant driver had intended to soak got off unscathed.

“It has been that kind of day,” Prem Chand sighed. “Fetch me a towel, please, someone.”

Instead of starting the next morning, as Prem Chand had proposed, the race did not begin until three days later. Part of the delay was from loading waggons so that the elephants and the steam engine would pull about the same amount of weight. The rest came from dickering over conditions.

Since the flesh-and-blood elephants were ready at once, while the Iron Elephant had to build up steam, Trevithick wanted Prem Chand not to start until the engine could move. This the elephant driver indignantly refused, on the grounds that the start-up delay was an inherent part of the mechanical device's function. Public opinion in Springfield backed him, and Trevithick gave way.

But Prem Chand had to yield in turn on the load the Iron Elephant would have to haul. He wanted the weight of the waggons added on to that of the engine and coal-waggon. Trevithick, though, neatly turned the tables on him, pointing out that the Iron Elephant naturally got lighter as it traveled and consumed its fuel. The coal, he said, should count as part of its initial burden. He won his point.

Most of Springfield was there to see the race begin. The Iron Elephant was on the regular westbound track; Caesar and Hannibal took the track usually reserved for eastbound trains. Trevithick doffed his dapper cap to Prem Chand. The elephant driver returned a curt nod. Trevithick was not a bad sort. If anything, that made matters worse.

The mayor of Springfield cried, “Are all you gentlemen ready?” He held a pistol in the air. It would have taken more pull than a steam engine or a couple of hairy elephants put out to keep His Honor away.

Hearing no objections, he fired the starting gun. Caesar's ears flapped at the report.
“Mall-mall!”
Prem Chand shouted. Behind him, he heard Paul Tilak give Hannibal the same command, and emphasize it with a whack of the elephant goad.

The hairy elephants surged forward as far as their harness would allow. Then, grunting with effort, they lowered their heads, dug in their big round feet, and pulled for all they were worth. Fifty tons of dead weight was a lot even for such powerful beasts to overcome.

From the other track, Prem Chand heard the clatter of coal being shoveled into the Iron Elephant's firebox. He did not look over. He knew his train would get rolling first, and intended to wring every inch out of his advantage.
“Mall-mall!”
he shouted again.

The spectators started to slide out of his field of vision. “We're moving!” he and Tilak shouted in the same breath.
“Mall-mall!”
In his urgency, Prem Chand used the
ankus
on Caesar. The elephant shook his head reproachfully.

Each step Caesar and Hannibal took came more easily than the one before. Horses paralleled the track, as riders came along to watch the race. Prem Chand looked back over his shoulder. The Iron Elephant still had not moved.

“We may do this yet!” he called to Paul Tilak. He hoped so. He had bet as many big silver denaires as he could afford—and perhaps a few more—on the great animal straining beneath him.

“We shall see,” was all Tilak said. As far as Prem Chand knew, he had not made any bets for the elephants. He had not made any against them, either. Had he done so, Prem Chand would have kicked him off Hannibal even if it meant putting an unschooled oxherd aboard the beast. He had already fired one brakeman—he wanted no one with him who had a stake in losing.

Buildings hid the Iron Elephant as Caesar and Hannibal pulled their train round a curve. They had made a good quarter of a mile and were approaching the outskirts of town when Tilak said, “The machine is coming after us.”

Prem Chand looked back again. Sure enough, a plume of steam and smoke was rising above the train station. The elephant driver grunted, sounding very much like Caesar. “Whatever Trevithick does, we are still faster, so long as we are moving. What worries me is that he will go all night.”

“Do you want us to try that?” Tilak asked.

“No,” Prem Chand said regretfully; he had thought long and hard about it. “If we do, Caesar and Hannibal will be worth nothing tomorrow. Even as is, I am not sure they will be able to match today's pace. And I am so afraid they will have to. If Trevithick's engine works as he hopes, we will have to catch him from behind.”

Soon they were out among farms once more. Cows and sheep stared incuriously as the hairy elephants tramped past. Rifle-toting farmers guarded their stock. Even so close to Springfield, sims were a constant nuisance. They might not have the brains of humans, but they were too clever to trap.

Prem Chand decided he was going to get a stiff neck if he kept turning around to look back, but he could not help it. He had to see the Iron Elephant in action. Here it came, with its train behind it. He put a spyglass to his eye for a better view.

He thought it even uglier moving than stationary. Shafts connected to its pistons drove small gears at either side of the back of the engine. Those, in turn, meshed with larger gears in front of them, and the larger gears joined with the ones on the outside of the engine's four wheels. Smoke belched from the stack as the contraption crawled along. Even from close to half a mile away, Prem Chand could hear it chug and wheeze and rattle. It reminded him more of a flatulent iron cockroach than an elephant.