Engineman (65 page)

Seconds later the 'ship phased into the
nada
-continuum.

The 'ship pitched, knocking me off my feet. I fell against a bulkhead, striking my head. I was out for only a matter of minutes, and when I came to my senses we were no longer flying through the
nada
-continuum.

I stared through the forward viewscreen and made out the concrete expanse of a penitentiary exercise yard. We were there for less than ten seconds. I heard the hatch wheeze open, and Stephanie's cries as a prisoner ran towards the ship and scrambled aboard. Laser bolts ricocheted from the concrete and hissed across the skin of the 'ship. Then the hatch slammed shut the 'ship slipped again from this reality.

I giggled like a lunatic. If only my younger self, the kid who'd haunted the Orly star terminal just to get a glimpse of phasing starships, could see me now: stowaway on the craziest jailbreak of all time.

Three minutes became as many hours; time elasticated - then snapped back to normal as we re-emerged in the real world of the red-and-white striped marquee on the lawn of the riverbank mansion.

Through the viewscreen I could see Claude, waiting for me in his flier.

I ran.

The Etteridge clone and the escapee were in each others' arms when I reached the bridge; they had time to look round and register surprise and shock before I raised my pistol and fired, sending them sprawling stunned across the deck.

I stood over the woman, smiling at the future she represented...

When I delivered Stephanie Etteridge, Lassolini would take from me the DNA which in four years, when cloned, would be a fully grown nineteen year-old replica of myself - with the difference that whereas now my body was a ninety percent mass of slurred flesh and scars, my new cloned body would be pristine, unflawed, and maybe even beautiful.

While Etteridge and her lover twitched on the deck, their motor neurone systems in temporary dysfunction, I untanked Dan. I hauled out the slide-bed, pulled the jacks from his occipital implant and helped him upright.

Of course, Lassolini had said nothing about what he intended to do with his ex-wife - and at the time I had hardly considered it, my mind full of the thought that in four years I would be whole again, an attractive human being, and the shame and regret would be a thing of the past.

Now I thought of Stephanie Etteridge in the clutches of Lassolini. I imagined her dismembered corpse providing the sick surgeon with his final cathartic tableau, a sadistic arrangement of her parts exhibited beneath the chandeliers of the ballroom in the ultimate act of revenge.

Etteridge crawled across the deck to the man she had saved. She clung to him, and all I could do was stare as the tears coursed down my cheeks.

What some people will do for love...

I pulled Dan away from the tank. He was dazed and physically blitzed from his union with the infinite, his gaze still focused on some ineffable vision granted him in the
nada
-continuum.

"Phuong...?"

"Come on!" I cried, taking his weight as he stumbled legless across the bridge. I kicked open the hatch and we staggered from the smallship and out of the marquee. I had to be away from there, and fast, before I changed my mind.

Claude helped Dan into the flier. "I thought you said we were taking the woman?" he said.

"I'm leaving her!" I sobbed. "Just let's get out of here."

I sat beside Dan on the back seat and closed my eyes as the burners caught and we lifted from the lawn. We banked over the Seine and Dan fell against me, his body warm and flux-spiced from the tank.

As we sped across Paris, I thought of Etteridge and her lover - and the fact that she would never realise the fate she had been spared. I wished them happiness, and gained a vicarious joy I often experience when considering people more fortunate than myself.

I assisted Dan into the darkened office and laid him out on the chesterfield. Then I sat on the edge of the cushion and stared at the tape on the desk, set up two hours ago to record my last farewell.

I picked up the microphone, switched it on and began in a whisper. "I've enjoyed working for you, Dan. We've had some good times. But I'm getting tired of Paris. I need to see more of the world. They say Brazil's got a lot going for it. I might even take a look at Luna or Mars. They're always wanting colonists..." And I stopped there and thought about wiping it and just walking out. Even nothing seemed better than this bland goodbye.

Then Dan cried out and his arm snared my waist. I looked into his eyes and read his need, his fear after his confrontation with the infinite. And something more...

His lips moved in a whisper, and although I was unable to make out the words, I thought I knew what he wanted.

I reached out and wiped the tape, then lay on the chesterfield beside Dan and listened to his breathing and the spring rain falling in the boulevard outside.

//Elegy Perpetuum

It began one warm evening on the cantilevered, clover-leaf patio of the Oasis bar.

There were perhaps a dozen of us seated around the circular onyx table - fellow artists, agents and critics, enjoying wine and pleasant conversation. Beneath the polite chatter, however, there was the tacit understanding that this was the overture to the inevitable clash of opinions, not to say egos, of the two most distinguished artists present.

The artists' domes, hanging from great arching scimitar supports, glowed with the pale lustre of opals in the quick Saharan twilight. The oasis itself caught the sunset and turned it into a million coruscating scales, like silver lamé made liquid.

This was my first stay at Sapphire Oasis, and I was still somewhat out of my depth. I feared being seen as an artist of little originality, who had gained admittance to the exclusive colony through the patronage of the celebrated Primitivist, Ralph Standish. I did not want to be known as an imitator - though admittedly my early work did show his influence - a novice riding on the coat-tails of genius.

I sat next to the white-haired, leonine figure of Standish, one of the last of the old romantics. As if to dissociate himself totally from the Modernists, he affected the aspect of a Bohemian artist of old. He wore a shirt splashed with oils, though he rarely worked in that medium, and the beret by which he was known.

Seated across from him was Perry Bartholomew.

The Modernist - he struck me more as a businessman than an artist - was suave in an impeccably cut grey suit. He lounged in his seat and twirled the stem of his wine glass. He seemed always to wear an expression of rather superior amusement, as if he found everything that everyone said fallacious but not worth his effort to correct.

I had lost interest in the conversation - two critics were airing their views on the forthcoming contest. I turned my attention to the spectacular oval, perhaps a kilometre in length, formed by the illuminated domes. I was wondering whether I might slip away unnoticed, before Ralph and Bartholomew began their inevitable sniping, when for the first time that night the latter spoke up.

He cleared his throat, and this seemed to be taken by all present as a signal for silence. "In my experience," Bartholomew said, "contests and competitions to ascertain the merit of works of art can never be successful. Great art cannot be judged by consensus. Are you submitting anything, Standish?"

Ralph looked up, surprised that Bartholomew was addressing him. He suppressed a belch and stared into his tumbler of whisky. "I can't. I'm ineligible. I'm on the contest's organising committee."

"Ah..." Bartholomew said. "So you are responsible?" His eyes twinkled.

Ralph appeared irritated. "The Sapphire Oasis Summer Contest is a long-standing event, Perry. I see nothing wrong in friendly competition. The publicity will help everyone. Anyway, if you're so against the idea, why have you submitted a piece?"

The crowd around the table, swelled now by a party that had drifted up from the lawns below, watched the two men with the hushed anticipation of spectators at a duel.

"Why not?" Bartholomew asked. "Although I disagree in principle with the idea of the contest, I see no reason why I should not benefit by winning it."

Ralph laughed. "Your optimism amazes me, sir."

Bartholomew inclined his head in gracious acknowledgement.

The resident physician, a man called Roberts, asked the artist if he would be willing to discuss his latest creation.

"By all means," Bartholomew said. "It is perhaps my finest accomplishment, and has also the distinction of being totally original in form." Just when he was becoming interesting, if pompous, he damned himself by continuing, "It should make me millions - which might just satisfy the demands of my wife."

There was a round of polite laughter.

Ralph exchanged a glance with me and shook his head, despairing.

Perry Bartholomew's separation from his wife, also an artist of international repute, had made big news a couple of years ago. Their ten year marriage had been a constant feature in the gossip columns, fraught as it was with acrimony and recriminations before the final split. He had, it was reported, taken it badly - even an arch-cynic like Bartholomew had a heart which could be hurt - unless it was his ego that had suffered. For a year he had lived as a recluse, emerging only when he moved to the Oasis for an extended period of work.

Tonight Bartholomew looked far from well. He was a handsome man in his early fifties, with a tanned face and dark hair greying fashionably at the temples - but now he looked drawn, his dark eyes tired.

Someone asked, "You said, 'totally original in form'?" in a tone of incredulity which prompted a sharp response.

"Of course!" Bartholomew stared at the woman. "I am aware that this is a bold claim to make, but it is nevertheless true, as you will learn when I exhibit the piece. I have utilised a prototype continuum-frame to harness an electro-analogue of my psyche."

There was an instant babble of comment. A critic said, "Can we have that again?" and scribbled it down when Bartholomew patiently repeated himself.

"But what exactly is it?" someone asked.

Bartholomew held up both hands. "You will find out tomorrow. I assure you that its originality of form will be more than matched by its content."

Roberts, from where he was leaning against the balustrade, asked, "I take it that this is an example of a work of art which you would contend is worth a human life?" He smiled to himself with the knowledge of what he was doing.

Bartholomew calculated his response. He was aware that all eyes were on him, aware that his reply would re-open the old argument between him and Ralph Standish - which was exactly what the onlookers were anticipating.

Bartholomew gave the slightest of nods. "Yes, Doctor. In my opinion my latest piece is of sufficient merit to be worth the sacrifice."

Ralph Standish frowned into his whisky, his lips pursed grimly. Bartholomew had made a similar declaration in the pages of a respected arts journal a couple of years ago, and Ralph had responded with a series of angry letters.

I willed him not to reply now, convinced that he would only be playing Bartholomew's childish game if he did so. But all eyes were on him, and he could not let the comment pass.

"Your views sicken me, Perry - but you know that. We've had this out many times before. I see no need to cover old ground."

"But why ever not, my friend? Surely you are able to defend your corner, or perhaps you fear losing the argument?"

Ralph made a sound that was part laugh, part grunt of indignation. "Losing it? I thought I'd won it years ago!"

Bartholomew smiled. "You merely stated your case with precision and eloquence, if I may say so. But you signally failed to convince me. Therefore you cannot claim victory."

Ralph was shaking his head. "What will it take to convince you that your philosophy is morally objectionable?"

"My dear Ralph, I might ask you the very same question." Perry Bartholomew smiled. He was enjoying himself. "So far as I am concerned, I occupy the moral high ground-"

"I cannot accept that art is more important that humanity," Ralph began.

"You," Bartholomew cut in, "are a traitor to your art."

"And you, a traitor to humanity."

"Ralph, Ralph," Bartholomew laughed, condescending. "I consider my view the height of humanity. I merely contend that a supreme work of art, which will bring insight and enlightenment to generations, is worth the life of some peasant in Asia or wherever. What was that old moral dilemma? 'Would you wish dead one Chinaman if by doing so you would gain unlimited wealth?' Well, in this case the unlimited wealth is in the form of a work of art for all humanity to appreciate in perpetuity."

Ralph was shaking his head. "I disagree," he said. "But why don't we throw the question open? What do you think? Anyone? Richard?"

I cleared my throat, nervous. I looked across at Bartholomew. "I side with Ralph," I said. "I also think your example of 'one Asian peasant' is spurious and misleading."

Bartholomew threw back his head and laughed. "Oh, you do, do you? But what should I expect from one of Ralph's disciples?"