Engineman (49 page)

I had been sure that if I could soak a few crystals with this fire-terror, it would last long enough so that people might gain an appreciable insight into what I had gone through.

So the next time I'd awoken with the inferno raging inside my head, I was ready. I'd jacked the leads into my skull-sockets - the same I had used as an Engineman to achieve the state of flux - wound the wires around my arm and attached the fingerclips. I could have simply held the crystals, but I wanted to gain the maximum effect. When the nightmare began I fumbled for the racked crystals beside my mattress and played a firestorm arpeggio across the faceted surface.

The result was not what I had expected; instead of impressing my terror on the crystals, I had unknowingly fused them into one big diamond slab. Not only that, but when I experimented with these transformed crystals later in the day I found that the emotions I discharged - my love for Ana, as ever - remained locked indelibly into the structure of the gems.

I had worked at the technique of bringing about the nightmare at will, and
The Wreck Of The John Marston
was my first effort. Christianna Santesson had snapped it up and signed me on practically seconds after first experiencing it. According to her, I was made.

Now I fused the largest console I'd ever done and began transferring emotions and images. I recreated the atmosphere of the flight before the tragedy, the camaraderie that existed between the crew members. Further on in the crystal I would introduce the accident as a burst of stunning horror. To begin with, I committed to crystal the times I had made weightless love to Ana, relived again the sensation of her sturdy little body entwined with mine in the astro-nacelle. Ana was a Gujarati engineer with a shaven head and bandy legs covered with tropical ulcers the shape of bite marks. We had met when she was assigned to the
John Marston
, and we had been lovers for two years before that last flight.

The sun was going down behind distant towerpiles when I realised that I'd gone as far as I could for this session. I was drained and emotionally exhausted. I had worked all day without thought of food and drink; the task had sustained me. I took an acid short from the cooler, dragged myself across to the foamform mattress and collapsed. I was drifting into sleep - and into certain dreams of Ana - when the call came through.

I crawled to the screen and opened communications. The picture showed a large studio with a figure diminished in the perspective. Lin Chakra stood with her back to the screen and turned when it chimed. "So there you are. You took so long I thought you must be out."

"I very rarely go out," I told her.

"No?" She walked towards the screen and peered through at me, her expression as stern and unsmiling as ever. "Well, how about tonight? Remember what we arranged yesterday? I'd like to show you some work I'm doing."

I considered. I had enjoyed the novelty of her company yesterday, and talking to her had proved an inspiration. "I'd like that," I said. She gave me directions and I told her I'd be over in thirty minutes.

I rode the moving boulevard to the end of the line and took a flyer the rest of the way. The pilot dropped me by the plasma barrier that covered the radioactive sector, and I paid him and stepped through the gelatinous membrane.

The difference between this sector and the rest of the city struck me immediately, and impressed itself on every sense. The air was thick and humid and the quality of light almost magical. The sun was setting through the far side of the dome, transmitting prismatic rainbows across the streets and buildings, many of them in a state of ruin softened by the mutated vegetation that had proliferated here since the meltdown. I walked along the avenue towards the intersection where Lin Chakra lived. The roar of the rest of the city was excluded here, but from within the sector a street band could be heard, their music keeping to the hectic tempo of a Geiger counter. There was an air of peace and timelessness about the deserted streets, and it seemed to me the perfect place for the artist to reside, amid the equal influences of beauty and destruction.

"Dan...!" The cry came from high above. I craned my neck and saw Lin Chakra waving at me from a balcony halfway up a towering obelisk.

I counted the windows and took the upchute to her level.

"In here," she called from one of the many white-walled rooms that comprised the floor she had entirely to herself. I walked through three spacious rooms, each containing holograms like a gallery, before I found her. She was pouring wine by the balcony. She turned as I entered. "I'm glad you could make it," she said.

I murmured something and stood on the balcony and admired the view, to give me something to do while I tried to surmount the pain I felt at meeting her again.

She seemed a different person from the woman of last night, and more like Ana. She wore a short yellow smock, and her thin bare legs were pocked with the tight purple splotches of healed tropical ulcers.

As she invited me to follow her, I realised that she wasn't well. Her hands shook, and her breath came in ragged, painful spasms.

We moved from room to room, the contents of each charting Lin's development from small beginnings through her apprentice work to her more recent and accomplished holograms. She had two main phases behind her: the dozen pieces she produced from the age of fifteen to eighteen, and a triptych called
Love
, which she brought out from the age of eighteen to twenty. These had deservedly earned her world recognition. She had done nothing for more than a year now, and the critics and public alike were eager for the next phase of her work to be released.

She took me into her workroom overlooking the arching membrane of the outer dome. The contents of the room were scattered; hologram frames and benches in disarray, indicating the artist in the throes of production. Three completed holograms stood against the wall, and others in various stages of completion occupied benches or were piled on the floor.

"These three are finished and okay. The others-" She indicated those on the floor with a sweep of her hand. "I think I'll scrap them and release these three later this year."

I stared into the three-dimensional glass sculptures. The imprisoned images were grotesque and disturbing, grim forebodings and prophesies of darkness. I was horrified, without really knowing why. "Dying," I whispered.

Lin Chakra nodded. "Of course. The ultimate mystery. What better subject for the artist who has done everything else?"

I moved to the next hologram. This one was more graphic; inside great baubles and bubbles of glass I made out the shrunken image of Lin herself, her small body contorted in angles of pain and suffering. "You?"

"I contracted leukaemia six months ago," she said. "The medics give me another three."

"And when you've finished you'll go for a cure..." I began.

She averted her gaze, stared at the floor.

"You can't let it kill you, Lin!" I cried. "You're still young. You have all your life ahead of you. All your art-"

"Listen to me, Dan. I have done everything. I've been everywhere and experienced everything and put it all into holograms and there is nothing else for me to do."

"Can't you simply..." I shrugged. "Retire? Quit holograms if you've said all you can?"

She was slowly shaking her head; sadly, it seemed. "Dan... You don't understand. You're no artist, really. Not a true artist. If you were you'd understand that artists live for what they can put into holograms, or on paper or canvas, whatever. When that comes to an end, their lives are finished. How can I go on when I have nothing more to say?" She stared at me. "Death is the final statement. I want to give the world my death."

"Does Santesson know about this?" I asked.

"I told her, of course. She's an artist, Dan. She understands."

I moved around the studio in a daze. At last I said, "But these holograms aren't your death, Lin. These are your dying."

Her eyes brimmed with tears, and she nodded. "Don't you think I realise that? Why do you think I've scrapped all these?" She flung out her arm at the half-completed holograms scattered about the room. "They're imperfect, Dan. Impressions of dying, that's all. These three are the closest in dying that I've come to death."

I thought of Ana, who had died when she had most wanted to live. Lin's slow suicide was an affront to her memory, and it was this knowledge that burned in me with anger. "You can't do it, Lin."

"You don't understand!"

I'd had my fill of pain and could take no more. I left her standing by the entrance and without a word took the downchute. The music had stopped and I walked quickly through the empty streets towards the safe sector of the city.

For the next couple of days I remained in my studio, drank acid shorts and stared morosely at the crystal I had started but could not finish. My old need to create art from the tragedy of the
John Marston
was overcome by apathy; it was as if what Lin Chakra was doing had reminded me that nothing, not even art, could ease the agony of my being without Ana.

Lin called repeatedly, perhaps in a bid to explain herself, to make me understand. But I always cut the connection the second her face appeared on the screen.

I considered killing myself before my time was due.

A few days after my meeting with Lin I stood before a crystal I'd completed months before. It failed as a work of art, but as a statement of my pain and my love for Ana it was wholly successful. I ran my hand over the crystals, reliving again the experience of being with her; reliving the horror of her absence.

Next to the crystal I had placed a laser-razor...

Christianna Santesson saved my life.

The screen chimed and I ran to it, intending to scream at Lin Chakra that I resented her intrusion. I punched the set into life.

Santesson smiled out at me. "Daniel... How are you?"

"What do you want?" I snapped, venting anger on her.

"Business, Daniel." She chose to ignore my rudeness. "Your crystal is showing very well. I'm delighted with the response of the public. I was wondering... How would you feel about producing a sequel to exhibit beside it?"

Her commercialism sickened me.

I told her that that was out of the question, that in fact I'd stopped working.

She frowned. "That's unfortunate, Daniel," she said; then, with an air of calculation, "I don't suppose you've considered telling me how you produce your crystals, Daniel? After all, you did promise that you would, one day."

I nodded. "One day, yes."

"Then perhaps I could persuade you to sell me one single fused console, instead?" There was a look of animal-like entreaty in her eyes.

I laughed as an idea occurred to me. "Very well, I will. But I want a million credits for it."

To my surprise she smiled. "That sounds reasonable, Daniel. You have yourself a deal. One million credits. I'll pay it into your account as soon as the crystal is delivered."

In a daze I said, "I'll do it right away."

She smiled goodbye and cut the connection.

Later, I wired myself up and arranged a crystal console, induced a nova-nightmare and channelled the firepower into the alien stones. As always it took immense concentration and energy to sustain the power required to fuse an entire console without leaching my emotions into it, and I was exhausted by the time I finished. I sealed the slab in a lead-lined wrap and hired a flyer to take it to Santesson. Then I returned to my studio and sprawled across the foamform. All thoughts of pre-emptive suicide had fled. With the million credits I would offer Lin Chakra the stars, buy her passage aboard a starship to give her that which she had yet to experience. I slept.

I dreamed of Ana. We were making love in the astro-nacelle, our bodies joined at the pelvis and spinning as the stars streaked around the dome. Ana moaned in Hindi as orgasm took her, eyes turned up to show only an ellipse of pearly white. Our occipital computers were tuned to each others' frequency, and our heads resonated with ever-increasing ecstasy. Around our spinning bodies cast-off sweat hung weightless like miniature suns, each droplet catching the light of the genuine suns outside. Then, with a surreal rearrangement of fact common to dreams, the nova blew while I was still with Ana, and burned in my arms, though I remained strangely uninjured. Her flesh shrivelled and her bones exploded, and through our computer link she screamed her hate at me.

The horror pushed me to a shallower level of sleep, though I didn't awake. I tossed and turned fitfully, and then began to dream a second time. Again I was in the astro-nacelle, and again I was making love - but this time not to Ana. I held Lin Chakra to me, distantly aware of this anomalous transposition, and she stared in wonder at the starlight wrapped like streamers around the dome.

It was dark when I awoke. I had slept for almost twenty-four hours. Through the slanting glass roof of the studio, star Radnor B winked at me. I got up feebly and staggered across to the vid-screen. I called Lin Chakra, but she was either out or not answering; the screen remained blank. I paced around for an hour, going through the contents of my dreams. Then I tried to reach her again, and again there was no response. I decided to go to her place with my offer of the stars, dressed and left the studio.

I walked through the deserted streets of the radioactive sector and rode the upchute to her suite. I called her name as I passed through the large white rooms, but there was no reply. The words I had rehearsed were a jumble in my head as the time approached for me to use them. I think I realised that she would refuse my offer, point out quite simply that she could have bought the experience of starflight herself, if she had thought it might afford her new insights. In the event I had no need to make the offer. I entered her room.