The Steam-Driven Boy by John Sladek Page A

they are doing, killing themselves like lemmings. I’ve been around books all my life, and I think I’m qualified to say I understand them.’
    Sedley of the N.A.S.A. explained how books flew, but was reluctant to assign a meaning to their flight. ‘The way we figure it, they convert some small part of their mass into energy, In some way we don’t understand yet. Then they just – well, just flap their covers.
    ‘Anything flat can fly, that part is easy. But as for
why
they fly, I’d hate to guess. Maybe Russia could answer that question quicker than I can. I say no more.’
    Marian was watching the migrations on television when Sankeyreached home that evening.
    ‘Telephone books over Florida,’ she said gaily. ‘Millions of them, darling.’
    He glanced at the large, slow-flapping, graceful creatures for only a moment before going directly up to bed. Later he would get up to try dealing with the final batch of reports, he promised himself.
    The ache in the back of his head was worse when he awoke late in the evening. Though Sankey tried to examine reports in the reading nook, his vision was blurred with pain, and he could not ignore the thumping sounds from the library.
    Marian looked in to say good-night.
    ‘If you want a book, dear,’ he said carefully, ‘you’d better let me get it for you. The library really isn’t safe tonight.’
    ‘Oh, goodness no!’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t think of letting you go in there again for any reason! Anyway, I’m getting to sleep early tonight, I hope. Big doings in town tomorrow.’
    ‘Eh? What’s that?’
    ‘They say there’s a really huge flock passing over the city at noon.’
    Sankey and Preston worked on the draft of their report for only two hours. At 11.30 they were out on the courthouse roof with binoculars. A dark cloud front along the horizon was, Preston claimed, the forefront of the flock. Sankey trained his binoculars downwards, on the crowds.
    ‘There certainly is a holiday atmosphere down there,’ he observed. ‘It’s as if they were waiting for a parade.’ He realized even as he said it that he, too, felt that way. Unaccountably, the air had a savour of expected joy for him. He examined his bubbly feelings and questioned them. How ridiculous! What did he come out to see? He ought to go inside and work – but he kept his seat on the parapet.
    Below him, traffic was stalled for miles in every direction, and pedestrians had spilled out into the street. Many drivers had given up, switched off their engines and climbed upon their car roofs to watch. Here and there were people with books under their arms; they would probably release them to see if they joined the flock. Hawkers moved up and down, dispensing cheap paperbacks from cartons.
    ‘Here they come!’ Harry Preston cried, leaping up. The cloud had advanced, and now Sankey could see the individual particles of which it was made. Through binoculars he could just make out the shapes of the leaders, which were now flapping steadily. They rose in an heroic effort to pull the flock up enough to clear the city. These were strong, heavy, cloth-bound ledgers and reference works, and the books rising behind them, he guessed by their wedge formations, would be encyclopedias. There were perhaps ten thousand sets, perhaps a million, he could not guess. A court-house window smashed somewhere below; a set of law references rose in a lazy spiral, beating their strong, hard covers.
    Myriads of volumes of all types came on then, grouped now by colour, now by age. He noted one giant hymnal, its parchment leaves openingdownward to expose square, black single notes, each larger than a human hand. It was accompanied by a host of tiny old psalters or books of hours, he could not be sure which, hovering like ministering cherubim. Immediately behind them were serried ranks of textbooks in grey covers, flapping their pictureless, colourless leaves in unison. Old medical books with brilliant plates flew over, their