The Reproductive System (Gollancz SF Library) by John Sladek Page B

lucky they had it.
    Railroading was new and wonderful to Woody, though he pretended to hate it as much as everyone else seemed to do. He was already picking up railroad jargon, such as the differences between boxes, gons, reefers and flats, but he had much to learn. One thing which continued to surprise him was that he did not
    have to steer the engine. It seemed almost to guide itself, in some way he could hot yet fathom, around even the sharpest curves. The railroad was a wonderful invention, he certainly had to admit.
    The Nevada Southern was the only railroad he could find still running steam locomotives. Woody would not run any other kind. He loved the heat, the hiss of steam.
    ‘That’s right,’ he put into conversation. ‘Anyone is crazy to go railroading.’ The others nodded.
    ‘I’m gonna get out,’ said Fats. ‘I got a brother in the feed grain business, I’m gonna go in with him. Feed grain, that’s where the real money is.’
    ‘I laud that,’ said Woody solemnly. ‘The fratricidal bond.’ The beer had cooled him off and made him feel clear-headed. Earlier, in Altoona, he had suffered an hallucination, no doubt from the heat. A classic wish-fulfilment dream, it had been—a woman he had once known, in another state, seemed to board his train at Altoona. He had even waved at the hallucination, but, being only an hallucination, it had not waved back.
    He finished his beer, drew on his gauntlets, and strode to the door. And stopped.
    Mac, the fireman stood on the platform, utterly dazed. Fats and the conductor were hopping and sprinting across the tracks towards the train.
    The train was moving. It was moving and accelerating, with the throttle wide open.
    But the throttle could not be wide open. There was no one in the cab to open it. There was no one to fire the boiler. For all practical purposes, the cab was empty.
    Roaring and chattering, slipping, the engine, the coal tender and the single passenger car moved out. The hallucinatory woman seemed to be still aboard.
    Fats puffed to a halt. The conductor made a try for the tail end of the car, missed, and fell. He rolled clear as the last wheels nipped by.
    A mirage? Mass hypnosis?
    Woody dipped the steel pen in ink and scratched upon the form.
    ‘ NAME : Elwood Trivian, Ph.D. TITLE : Engineer. ITEM LOST : One train. DESCRIBE THE CIRCUMSTANCES : Apparently the train was stolen, by a—’ he lined out ‘a’ and wrote, ‘by what seemed to be a small, grey tin tackle box.’

COINCIDENCE
     
    ‘Men that hazard all
Do it in hope of fair advantages.’
    S HAKESPEARE
     
     
    The young man at the end of the bar was not wearing Western clothes. Had he worn no clothes at all he could not have appeared more conspicuus, at least in
The El Cantina Bar
in Goodtime, Nevada. The
El
, as the regulars called it, catered to the brightly-clad guests of three dude ranches. There were the ovoid, unhappy women of the Merry Widow Rancho (awaiting divorces); the unhappy, ovoid men of the Triple-Tumblebug Ranch (awaiting divorces); and the querulous, dozing old people, of no particular sex, from the Golden Sunset Retirement Ranch (awaiting death). Amid their orchids, turquoises and clarets, all the hues of a painted sunset, Cal’s rumpled grey suit and dirty-white lab coat stood out like a bird-dropping.
    Hitchhiking towards California, he had made it this far before sun, sand, wind, shimmering pavement and truck smoke had driven him indoors.
    ‘Another one?’ asked the bartender, poising his bottle. His name, stitched in violet letters over the pocket of his carnelian shirt, was
Slim
. His unlabelled customer nodded solemnly.
    ‘I will have another. And pour yourself another, too, Slim.’
    ‘Why, thank you, Carl. Your health.’
    ‘It’s
Cal
. Say, Slim, tell me, who are all those people along the wall?’
    Slim explained about ‘retirement ranches’. ‘They come in now and then for a little fun, with their attendants.’ He indicated a group of