Engineman (48 page)

In my palm the crystal warmed, communicating. The millions of semi-sentient, empathic organisms gave out their record of Lin Chakra's stored emotion message. The alien stones were sold on Earth as curiosities, novel gee-gaws for entertainment and communication. No-one before had thought of using the crystals as a means of artistic expression. Once invested in a crystal, an emotion or thought lasted only a matter of minutes, and as artists created for posterity the crystals had been overlooked as a potential medium.

Then, quite by accident, I had come across the method by which to change the nature of the crystals so that they could store emotions or thoughts forever. Hence my sudden popularity.

A guest, fancying his chances, parted the curtain and stepped on to the balcony. He returned immediately. "She's gone."

I moved unnoticed from the bar and slipped into the adjacent room. Lin Chakra was waiting for me on the balcony. She had leapt across, and now sat on the rail hugging her shins. I paused by the shimmer-stream curtain. "Hey..."

"I have a fabulous sense of balance," she reassured me.

"I get vertigo just thinking about the drop," I admitted.

"An ex-Engineman shouldn't be afraid of heights," she mocked, jumping down and leaning against the rail.

Behind me, pressure on the communicating door made it rattle.

She glanced at me.

"I locked it," I said. "As you instructed. What do you want?"

"I really meant what I said about your crystal. I like it."

"It's crude," I said. "Honest in what it portrays, but incompetently executed. A kid with six months' practice could do better."

"You'll improve as you master the form," she told me.

I would have smiled, but that was impossible.

"A lot of people would give both arms to know how you fuse those crystals," she said now. "Do you think you can keep it to yourself forever?"

I shrugged. "Maybe I can," I said, and tried not to laugh at my sick secret.

Lin Chakra nodded, considering. "In that case, would you contemplate selling a crystal console already fused, so that other artists might create something?"

"So that's why you're here tonight. You want a crystal?"

"I came," she said, "to see your crystal. But-"

"Forget it," I snapped. "I don't sell them."

"Don't you think that's rather selfish?"

I laughed, though the sound came out as a strangled splutter. "I like that! I'm the one who discovered the process, after all. Aren't I entitled to be just a little selfish?"

She frowned to herself, turned and stared into the night sky, at the stars spread above the lighted towerpiles. A long silence came between us. "Which one?" she asked at last.

I stood beside her and found the Pole star, then charted galactic clockwise until I came to the blue-shift glimmer of star Radnor 66. A couple of degrees to the right was Radnor B, where the accident had happened. The star no longer existed, and the light we saw tonight was a lie in time, the ghost of the sun before it went nova. In fifty years it would flare and die, reminding the people of Earth of the time when a smallship from the Canterbury Line was incinerated, with the loss of all aboard but one.

I pointed out the star.

She gazed up in silence, and as I watched her I was reminded again of her frailty. I wanted suddenly to question the wisdom of her living in the radioactive sector. She seemed so fragile that even something as innocuous as influenza might kill her; but that was ridiculous. No-one died nowadays from flu, or cancer. The freaks in the penthouse were merely exhibitionists; as soon as their pet cancers showed the first signs of turning nasty they would be excised, their owners given a clean bill of health. And anyway, Lin Chakra seemed cancer free.

Her request interrupted my thoughts. "Tell me about the accident," she said.

I stared at her. "Wasn't the crystal enough?"

"I haven't experienced everything," she said shrewdly. "And I want to hear the way you tell it."

"For any particular reason?"

"Oh... let's just say that I want to clarify a point."

So I gave her the full story.

It had been a regular long haul from star Canopus to Sigma Draconis, carrying supplies for the small colony on Sigma D IV. The
John Marston
had a crew of ten; three Enginemen, two pilots, and five service mechanics, the regular complement for a smallship like ours. After the slowburn out of Canopus we phased into the
nada
-continuum with one of my colleagues in the flux-tank. We were due for a three-month furlough at the end of the run, and perhaps that was what gave the voyage its air of light-heartedness. We were in good spirits and had no cause for concern - certainly we could not foresee the disaster ahead. When one of the pilots pointed out that we could save five days, and add them to our furlough, if we jumped the flight-path and cut through a sector of space closed to all traffic, we put it to the vote. Five of us voted for the jump, four were against the proposition, and one mechanic abstained.

The prohibited sector was the size of Sol system, with an unstable star at its centre ready to go off like a time-bomb. The star had been like this for centuries though, and I thought that the chances of it going nova just as we were passing through were negligible... if I thought about it at all. So we changed course and I took the place of the Engineman who had pushed us so far - the only reason I survived the accident. I was jacked-up, laid out and fed into the tank. The last thing I remembered was the sight of the variable sun just outside the viewscreen, burning like a furnace.

I didn't even say goodbye to Ana. But how was I to know?

"When I regained consciousness I found myself in the burns bath of a hospital on Mars. Three months had passed since the supernova."

Lin frowned. "But if you didn't actually experience the nova, how were you able to...?"

"Hear me out. I'm getting to that."

The star had blown just as the
John Marston
was lighting out of the danger zone; any closer and the boat would have been cindered. As it turned out, the ship was destroyed with the death of all aboard - or so it was thought at the time. The salvage vessel sent into the area reported that only fragments of wreckage remained, and that one of these fragments was the engineroom. It was duly hauled in, and the salvage team was amazed - and horrified - to find that I had survived.

If that was the right word to describe the condition I was in. I bore little resemblance to the human being who had entered the tank. Although the flux-tank had saved my life, the flux had kicked back and channelled a blast of nova straight into my head. My occipital computer had overloaded and melted, forcing my skull out of shape and removing flesh and muscle from my face. I suffered ninety-five percent burns and only the null-grav effect of the tank had saved me from sticking to the side like a roasting joint... I was lucky to be alive, the medics told me more than once. But in my opinion I was far from lucky; I would have gladly died to be free of the terrible guilt. The one thing for which I was thankful was the fact that I could not recall the accident or the death of Ana and my friends. But I should have known...

The dreams began a few weeks later.

My occipital computer had recorded the entire accident, and from time to time what was left of the machine, the still-functioning memory cache that interfaced with my cortex, bled nightmare visions into my sleeping mind. I saw the star go nova and the ship disintegrate and the crew, my friends for years, die instantly. Ana's brief cry of comprehension as the supernova blew would echo in my head forever.

When I'd finished, Lin Chakra gripped the rail and stared down at the ground effect vehicles passing back and forth like luminescent trilobites. "Your pain doesn't come through on the crystal," she said at last.

"It isn't supposed to.
The Wreck
is a statement of fact, a documentary if you like, to show the world what happened. I'm working on other crystals to show the agony caused by the tragic decision... Why? Is that what interests you? The agony?"

She glanced at me, and gave her head that typically Indian jog from side to side that might have meant either yes or no. I never realised that the gesture of a stranger could be so painful. "Partly," she said. "And partly I'm interested in death."

I nodded. That was understandable. In a world where death was a rare occurrence, it had become an even more popular subject of artistic enquiry, an even greater source of inspiration.

"The death of my colleagues was almost instantaneous," I told her. "Mercifully they didn't feel a thing."

"Oh, I'm not talking about their deaths," she said. "It's yours that interests me..."

I was glad then that my face could no longer register expression; she would have seen my shock. I was shocked because my decision to die had been a private one, and I had no idea that I'd allowed it to come through on the crystal. Then I recalled the way she had lingered over a particular node on the console.

"You read it?" I asked her.

"Very slightly. I almost missed it at first, like everyone else. I don't think you meant to show it, but it's there, buried beneath all the other emotions but just about discernible."

I remained silent. I had spoken to no-one about my decision, and the fact that Lin Chakra knew made me uneasy.

Then her question came. "Why?"

I had to think for long minutes before I could begin to explain myself. My decision had been a matter of instinct, a feeling that what I planned to do was somehow right. Now, when I came to explain this need, I feared I was cheating a genuine conviction with a devalued currency of words.

"I want to die because I survived," I told her. "I had no right to survive when the others died. I can't get over the guilt."

"I don't understand." She looked at me, her face serious between the V of her collar. "Maybe you want to end your life because you can't stand to go on as you are?"

Again my face failed to show the emotion I felt - anger, this time. "I resent that! That would make my decision to die a petty thing, self-pity masquerading as heroics. And anyway, I needn't remain like this. The best medics could fix me a new face, almost as good as new, remove the computer. I could live a normal life despite the fact that Ana's cry would be in my head even when it was no longer there... I'm sorry I've failed to justify my decision to you, but to be honest I don't feel that I have to."

"There is one way you can do that..."

"I don't see-" I began. Then I did.

She took a small box from her tunic and flipped open the lid. Inside, a fresh crystal sparkled in the starlight. "Take it," she said. "Concentrate on why you feel you have to die."

"I don't see why I should justify my need to you-"

"Or perhaps you're unable to justify it to yourself."

So I snatched the crystal and gripped it in my fist, hearing again Ana's scream as she passed into oblivion. And again I experienced the gnawing guilt, the aching desire to share her fate. The crystal soaked up the fact that I had had the casting vote on whether or not we should take the short-cut. I had voted for it, and by doing so had sent Ana and my colleagues to their deaths.

Ana had voted against the jump.

When it seemed that I'd wrung moisture from the crystal - my hand dripped with perspiration - I passed it back to Lin Chakra. She held the hexagonal diamond on the flat of her palm, staring at it with large brown eyes.

Without a word she slipped the crystal into her tunic.

"The medics give me another six months if I don't agree to a series of operations," I said. "In that time I should be able to finish quite a few crystals. The last one will be an explanation of why I feel I have to die."

We talked of other things until Chakra said she had to go.

"Some Enginemen," she said, "believe that the
nada
-continuum promises an afterlife."

I tried to laugh. "I'm not a Disciple," I told her. "There is no afterlife, as far as I'm concerned."

She nodded and said, "Why not come over to my studio tomorrow evening? The work I'm doing now might interest you."

With reluctance I accepted the invitation, and a little later we left the balcony. She unlocked the door to the party room, and the glare of the spotlight was on her again. I could hear the front-man yammering questions.

Lin pushed through the crowd. Our first meeting was over.

I arrived back at my slum dwelling at dawn, and from across the studio an empty crystal console beckoned me. I began work immediately, spurred by my conversation with Lin Chakra. By telling her of my intentions I had reminded myself of the short time I had left in which to complete the crystals. In six months I would be dead; until our meeting, that had been almost an abstract notion. The fact was definite now, substantial. I had work to do, for myself and for my dead colleagues, and I had no time to waste.

The first step in the production of a crystal, even before the choice of subject matter, was the preparation of the thousand or so individual gems. I arranged the console on my workbench and set about the fusion process. I had chanced upon the method to do this almost by accident a few months earlier. Like most people, I had kept crystals and toyed with them occasionally. I found that the stronger the emotion infused into a crystal, the longer it remained. Superficial emotions or simple messages were gone in seconds; but love and hate lingered for long minutes... Now, from time to time, the remains of the computer that linked with my cortex gave me nightmares, blinding images of the nova chasing the ship. And the sheer terror that these nightmares produced in me...