Engineman (60 page)

I took a long drink then, angry with him. "And keep that shield. I want you to stay alive. Consider it a present."

"Thanks," he said.

"For chrissake!" I exploded. "Where the hell do you usually drop? Don't you know what a shield is for?"

"I work a line out of Lhasa, Kathmandu, Gorakpur... They're quiet cities. I never really needed a shield there. This is my first time here..." He avoided my eyes and gazed out at the city.

"Yeah, well - think on next time. This isn't no third world dive. This is for real. Mean City Central where you have to think to survive."

He nodded, sipped his drink.

I cooled. "Where you from, Joe?"

"Seville, Europe. You?"

"Chittagong, what was onetime Bangladesh. China now."

His gaze lingered on my tattoo. Then he saw the face on the back of my hand. "Your husband?"

I laughed. "Hey, Mr Innocent - you never seen one of these before?" I waved my hand around theatrically. "This guy's my boss. He
owns
me. I'm indentured to him for another ten years."

"I never realised..."

"No, well you wouldn't, would you?" I glared at him, bitter. Then I smiled. I had to remind myself that I had a Mr-Nice-Guy here, who was naive-for-real and wasn't playing me along.

I sighed, gave him history. "My parents sold me when I was four. They were poor and they needed the Rupees. I was one of six kids, and a girl, so I guess they didn't miss me... I checked out psi-positive when I was five and had the operation. I had no say in the matter, they just cut me and hey-presto I had the curse of
ability
. I was taken by an Agency, trained, and sold to Gassner when I was six. I've been reading for small cred, 'gum and a bed in a slum dwelling for nine years now."

Joe Gomez was shocked. "Can't you... I mean," he shrugged. "Get out?"

"Like I said, in ten years when my indenture runs its course. This makes sure I don't do anything stupid." I held up the miniature of Gassner, his face stilled now; it'd come to life when he contacted me. "With this he knows where I am at all times. There's nothing I can do about it."

We rapped for ages, ordered tostadas, drank. Beneath the jive-assed, streetwise exterior I was like a little girl on her first date. I was trembling, and my voice cracked falsetto with excitement.

Joe Gomez... He was short, dark, around twenty. He had a strong, handsome face, but his eyes were evasive and shy. It was what lived behind those eyes that I was interested in, though... He was pure, and I needed
pure
. I wanted to get into him, become one. I was nothing special to look at, but I was sure that if I let him take a look inside my head, gave him the experience... But at the same time I was scared shitless I might frighten him away.

We watched the dawn spread behind distant towerpiles.

My heart was hammering when I said tentatively, "Where you staying, Joe?"

"I just got in. I haven't fixed a place yet. Maybe you know somewhere?"

"I..." There was something in my mouth, preventing words. "You can always stay at my place. It's not much, but..." Sweet Allah, my eyes were brimming again.

"I don't know..."

"Give me the shield," I said.

"I get it. If I don't come with you, you want your present back, right?" He sounded hurt.

"Balls. I might be other things but I'm no cheat. I want to show you something."

He passed me the shield, a silver oval a little smaller then a joint case, and I put it out of range on a nearby table. His goodness swamped me, and I swooned in the glow. I pushed myself at him, invaded him, showed him what it was like to have someone inside his head... Then we staggered from the towerpile and rode the boulevard to the slums.

Joe was on a three-week furlough, and we spent every day together. We were inseparable, cute lovers like you see on the boulevard Sunday afternoons. The girl from Chittagong and the boy from Seville... I got better quick, saned-up and began enjoying life. I stopped drifting and phased out the 'gum. I didn't need them, now. Joe was my kick, and I overdosed.

We explored the city together. I saw life through his eyes, and what I saw was good. We tried personatapes. He'd be an Elizabethan dandy for a day, and I'd be Bo Ventura, latest hologram movie queen. Once we even sexed as Sir Richard Burton and Queen Victoria, just for the hell of it. We made straight love often, and sometimes we'd exchange bodies; I'd become him and he'd become me. I'd move into him, pushing into his central nervous system and transferring him to mine. I'd experiment with the novelty of a male body, in control of slabs of muscle new to me, and Joe would thrill to the sensation of vagina and breasts. At climax we'd be unable to hold on any longer and the rapture of returning, our disembodied personas twanging back to base, left us wiped out for hours.

Then one day towards the end of his furlough Joe pulled me out of bed and dressed me in my black skinsuit like a kid. We boarded a flier and mach'd uptown. "Where to?" I asked, sleepy 'gainst his shoulder.

"I'm a spacer-" he said, which I'd figured already. He was an Engineman, a fluxer whose shift was three months in a tank pushing a Satori Line bigship through the
nada
-continuum. "And I want to show you something."

We decanted atop the Satori Line towerpile that housed the space museum, and entered a triangular portal flanked by company militia. The chamber inside corresponded to the shape of the portal, a steel grey wedge, and we were the only visitors that day. By the entrance was the holographic sculpture of a man, vaguely familiar; the scientist who discovered the
nada
-continuum and opened the way for the starships.

Through Joe I had experienced everything that he'd experienced. His past was mine, his every sensation a shared event. I'd travelled with him to Timbuktu - and as far as Epsilon Indi. But there was one experience of his that defied my comprehension. When he entered the flux-tank of a bigship I could not go with him; I had no idea what it was to flux. Joe knew, of course, but he was unable to describe the sensation. He likened it to a mystical experience, but when I pressed him he could draw no real analogues. To flux was an experience of the soul, he said, and not of the mind - which was perhaps why I floundered.

We walked down the ringing aisle of the space museum. At the far end, on the plinth and cordoned by a low-powered laser-guard, was a trapezoid of blackness framed in a stasis-brace. What we had here, according to the inscription, was a harnessed chunk of the
nada
-continuum.

It did nothing to impress a sleepy Bangladeshi, until she saw the expression on the face of her lover. Gomez was a goner; even transfer-sex had failed to wipe him like this. "Joe...?"

He came to his senses and glanced over his shoulder at the entrance. Then he vaulted over the laser-guard and lifted me quickly after him. "This is it, Sita. Take a look."

After a time the blackness became more than just an absence of light. It swirled and eddied in a mystical vortex like obsidian made fluid. I too became mesmerised, drawn towards a fathomless secret never to be revealed.

"What is it?" I asked, stupidly. I leaned forward. Joe held me back. He warned me that the interface could decapitate me as neat as any guillotine.

"It's the essence of nothing, Sita. That which underpins everything. It's Heaven and Nirvana and Enlightenment. The ultimate Zen state..."

His voice became inaudible, and then he said, "I've been there..." And I recalled something - the ineffable blackness I'd scanned a while back. My mind reached out for something just beyond its grasp, a mental spectre as elusive as the wind... Then the spell was broken.

Joe laughed, pulled himself away and smiled at me. He jumped back over the laser-guard and plucked me out. We held each other then, and merged. His period of furlough was coming to an end. Soon he would be leaving me, drawn away to another rendezvous with the
nada
-continuum. I should have been jealous, perhaps. But instead I was grateful to whatever it was that made him...
himself
.

Hand in hand we ran through the chamber like kids.

Allah, those three weeks...

They had to end, and they did.

And it happened that Joe died a fluxdeath pushing his boat through the Out-there beyond star Groombridge. That which had nourished him kicked back and killed him, with just three days to go before he came home to me.

I quit Gassner's and drop to the boulevard, my head full of Becky Kennedy and her loving parents. As I leave the towerpile a shadow latches on to me and tails, keeping a safe distance. I ride the boulevard to the coast.

Carnival town is a lighted parabola delineating the black bite of the bay. I choose myself a quiet jetty away from the sonic vibes and photon strobes, fold myself into the lotus position and wait.

Overhead, below a million burning stars, bigships drift in noiseless, clamped secure in phosphorescent stasis-grids. Ten kilometres out to sea the spaceport pontoon is a blazing inferno, with a constant flow of starships arriving and departing. Joe blasted out from here on his last trip, and for weeks after his departure the dull thunder of the ships, phasing out of this reality, brought tears to my eyes. Back then I came out here often, sat and contemplated the constellations, the stars where Joe might've been. He's back now, but I still like to stare into space and try to figure out just where the accident happened.

A noise along the jetty, the clapping of a sun-warped board, indicates my shadow has arrived. I sense his presence, towering over me. "Spider," I say. "Sit down. I've been expecting you." And I have - he's one of the few people I can rely on to help me.

Spider Lo is a first-grade telepath and he works for the biggest Agency in the West. He's about as thin as me, but twice as tall. He earned enough last year to buy himself a femur-extension, and I was the first to admit he looked really impressive riding the boulevard, especially in a crowd. He's a Chink, and I should hate him for that, but he's a gentle guy and we get along fine.

"Gassner sent me, Sita."

"That much I figured."

"He told me to make sure you did your stuff. To me, it doesn't look like you're doing that out here."

He hesitates, watching me. "I'll let you into a secret, Sita. Gassner's in big trouble. Business is bad and a few of the bigger Agencies are going for the take-over. They'd buy Gassner out for peanuts and employ him as a nothing button-pusher. As for you - you'd be taken on by whichever Agency buys. You'd be on longer shifts for less pay. You're a second-grader, remember..."

I let him mouth-off. His
secret
is no secret at all. He's telling me nothing I don't already know. I let my lazy posture describe apathy, and stare at the stars.

Spider tries again. "This case is worth two million to Gassner. It would mean solvency for him, and who knows even a rise for you. But you're blowing it."

"And won't Mr Gassner be angry with me," I say.

"Sita... this is the biggest case you've ever had to crack. You don't seem to be trying..."

Languid, I give him a look, long and cool. "Maybe I don't need to try," I say.

"Sita..." His Oriental features pantomime despair.

"I'm serious, Spider. Hasn't it occurred to you that maybe the reason I'm lazing around here is because I've got the case wrapped up?"

His eyes glint with quick respect, then suspicion.

"No shit," I say. "I know where Becky Kennedy's meat is hidden."

"You just this minute left the office, Sita."

I shrug. "How would you like to earn your Agency the two million riding on this case?" I ask him.

He tries a probe. I feel it prickle my head like a mental porcupine in a savage mood. But my shield is up to it.

"You don't have to probe, Spider. I'm honest - I'll tell you. Your Agency can pick up the creds from Kennedy when you find the body and deliver it to the resurrection ward-"

"But Gassner..." Understanding hits him.

"Yeah," I say. "You've got it."

Spider looks at me.

"Why you doing this, Sita? If Gassner folds, you get transferred, and that won't be a picnic for you."

"Listen, Spider. I'm getting out of it altogether. No more probing for this kid after tomorrow."

"You're not-" Alarm in his voice.

I laugh. "No, I'm not. I'm getting out and I want to see Gassner sink..." But there's an easier way than this to tell him.

I take my shield and toss it to him. He catches it, holds it for a second, then throws it back. That's all it takes for him to read what I'm planning. And he reads everything: my love for Joe and the reason I need big money, what I did yesterday and why I did it. He reads what I want him to do, and he slowly nods his head. "Very well, Sita. fine..." We finalise the arrangements, and then slap on it. We sit for a while, watching the starships and chatting, until Spider's handset calls him away on a case. He cranes himself upright and strides off down the jetty like someone on stilts.

I stay put a while. Above the city a hologram projection, like a stage in the sky, is beaming out world news. I watch the pictures but can't be bothered with the sub-titles. Only when the business review comes on do I take an interest. After five minutes the take-over bids are flashed up. Multi-Tec International today made bids for a dozen small-fry - one of them, I learn, Gassner's Investigative Agency. But the bid didn't make it and Gassner is still independent. I smile to myself. By the time I finish with Gassner he'll be wishing he never bought me, all those years ago.