Engineman (8 page)

He recalled who he had been back then, what he had been, a team-commander with authority and confidence...

Hunter was smiling at him with an expression that seemed cognisant, in its compassion, of his distress. "Wasn't this the 'ship where you first commanded the Engine-team you were to be with till the end?"

Mirren stared at the off-worlder. "How do you know so much? This 'ship, my team...?"

"I've read Mubarak's memoirs,
E-man Blues
. It's all in there. Have you read it?"

"Started it. Couldn't read much. I found it too painful." He'd worked with Mubarak in the early days on the
Martian Epiphany
. His memoirs had become a bestseller around the time the Lines were folding.

"He painted a glowing portrait of you, Mr Mirren. A fine Engineman - strong, capable, respected by your fellow E-men, a pusher destined to go on and lead your own team, which of course you did. You were also one of the few Enginemen not to be associated with the Disciples. A disbeliever."

Mirren said, more to himself than to Hunter, "Mubarak was a rabid Disciple. We were equally scathing about each other's views, but we didn't let our differences get in the way of our work."

"He has nothing but praise for the team you commanded aboard this 'ship and the
Perseus
."

"They were the best," Mirren stated simply. The thought of his team, the events they had lived through, tortured him.

Hunter strolled the length of the lounge beneath the arc of the viewscreen. Down below was an avenue, and across it more ranked starships. He gazed through, silent, as if contemplating his next question.

"Are you in contact with any of your team, Mr Mirren?"

The question took him by surprise. "One or two... The others..." He shrugged. "I suppose we've drifted apart."

The truth was that he had hardly kept in contact with even the one or two he claimed. Dan Leferve, his second-in-command back then and closest colleague, he had last seen five years ago. Leferve ran an investigation Agency in Bondy, and he was religious - and it seemed to Mirren that they no longer had anything in common. Which was really just an excuse for his inertia and apathy.

He'd last seen Caspar Fekete seven years ago, before the Nigerian became a big noise in the bio-computer industry. For all his agreement with Fekete's atheism, he had found the man arrogant and opinionated. The other two, the Enginewomen Christiana Olafson and Jan Elliott, he hadn't seen since their discharge from the Line. He'd heard that Olafson was living in Hamburg, but he had no idea, or real interest, in what she was doing there. As for Elliott, she had taken the news of the closure of the Line far worse than the others, and though no Engineman or Enginewoman found life easy after the shutdown, he expected that Elliott had found it harder than most.

Mirren turned to Hunter. "Why do you ask?"

"Curiosity, Mr Mirren," Hunter said, as if that adequately answered his question. Before Mirren could press him, the off-worlder went on, "You couldn't tell me, by any chance, how the various members of your team have been affected by the closure of the Lines? I mean, specifically, how they have fared without the flux?"

"How the hell do you think they've been affected? I know for a fact that Elliott, Olafson and Leferve were devastated-"

"And Fekete?"

"Fekete, too - for all his bluster about not needing the flux. I mean, he never resigned before the closures."

"And yourself, Mr Mirren?"

He guessed, then, what Mirren was about: the bodyguards, Hunter's questions, his spurious interest in the Enginemen and the Lines. Mirren had heard that there were people like Hunter at work in the city.

He turned on the off-worlder. "Of course I was affected! You don't for a minute think it's something you can get over in months?"

Hunter gestured placatingly. "I thought perhaps due to your lack of belief you might have rationalised your craving."

Mirren laughed bitterly. "It's a biological thing, Hunter - or rather a neurological craving. Like a drug. And I can't do a thing to prevent it." He stared at Hunter, hating him for playing him along like this. "If anything, it's even worse because I don't believe. I don't live with the certainty that when I die I'll be gathered up safely into the afterlife."

"I'm sorry, Mr Mirren. I didn't mean to upset you."

"Just what do you want, Hunter?"

The off-worlder regarded him, as if contemplating how much to divulge. "If you meet me at the Gastrodome at midnight tonight, then perhaps we could continue this discussion. Do you think you might contact those members of your team living in Paris and bring them along?"

Mirren's mouth was suddenly dry. "Leferve and Fekete, maybe. I don't know about Elliott."

"Bring as many of them as possible, and then we can get down to business."

Mirren felt the words catch in his throat. "What business?"

Hunter waved. "We can discuss that tonight, in more convivial surroundings." He signalled through the viewscreen, and a black Mercedes roadster advanced slowly along the avenue and came to a sedate halt before the lounge.

Hunter turned to Mirren and held out his hand. After a moment's hesitation, Mirren took it. "I have very much enjoyed our conversation, Mr Mirren. I look forward to seeing you tonight."

"I'll contact Leferve and Fekete," Mirren heard himself say above the pounding of his heart.

"Excellent." Hunter made to leave the lounge. "Oh, just one more thing, Mr Mirren. How is your brother keeping these days?"

"Bobby's fine." He was guarded. After all the press coverage his brother's condition had received nine years ago, Mirren was suspicious when it came to strangers asking about him.

"He's coping with his predicament?"

"He's managing."

"Good, Mr Mirren. I'm pleased to hear that. Now, if you will excuse me..."

Hunter ducked through the hatch. A minute later he appeared in the avenue. One of the bodyguards jumped from the roadster and opened a rear door. Holding the front of his jacket together, Hunter slipped inside. The Mercedes accelerated down the avenue of bigships.

Mirren remained in the lounge, considering what little the off-worlder had actually told him. Then he made his way outside and walked down the avenue between two rows of rusting salvage vessels. He got his bearings from the control tower of the terminal building rising behind the bigships, and headed west.

He was aware of a deep, barely containable excitement within him. Five years ago, Mirren had heard rumours that there were shady entrepreneurs at work in Paris who had somehow managed to obtain, against the law and at great risk, the flux-tanks of starships. They had contacted Enginemen and Enginewomen and offered them stints in the tanks at exorbitant prices - prices which, because Enginemen were so desperate for the flux, they would gladly pay. Mirren had made enquiries, toured the city, made contacts with members of the Paris underworld he would rather have had no business with. He'd found that, yes, there were such dealers in France, but that their services were over-subscribed, that Enginemen who were receiving flux-time were paying way over the odds to have more stints than were absolutely necessary. He'd heard other rumours to account for the unavailability of the service: that either the dealers had been caught by the authorities, or had emigrated off-planet with their earnings, and even that a group of Enginemen had killed a dealer and kept the tank for their own use.

At least it had given his life a purpose for a couple of months.

But if Hunter was a flux-pusher then why would he come touting for trade to him, Mirren, a menial flier pilot with an income that hardly kept up the payment on his apartment? And why the interest in the other members of his team? There were hundreds of Enginemen in Paris willing to part with hard-earned creds for the luxury of experiencing the flux again...

But, then, what else could the off-worlder be hinting at? What else could explain his interest in how his team was coping without the flux?

If Hunter was indeed a pusher, then Mirren didn't know whether to despise him as an opportunist - a low-life entrepreneur peddling a quick fix at an exorbitant price to those too weak to resist - or a saviour.

Even the mere thought that he might - just
might
- one day flux again was enough to lift his spirits immeasurably.

He reached his flier in the lot beside the terminal building, climbed in and engaged the vertical thrusters. He banked away from the spaceport, headed north and followed the sinuous curves of the tropical-green Seine as it meandered east through the city. Down below the suburbs rolled by, quiet in the morning sun.

Ten minutes later he eased the two tonne weight of the flier down onto the landing stage of the apartment block, climbed wearily out and took the clanking downchute to his rooms on the top floor. He switched on the hall light, adjusted the dimmer. The first door on the left was ajar; a recording of a Tibetan mantra seeped out. Mirren paused, considering whether to enter. He decided against it, fetched a beer from the kitchen and collapsed on a battered foam-form in the shuttered, darkened lounge. The only light, a comforting orange glow, issued from a long tank on the mantelshelf: within it, the miniaturised sun of Antares rose over a panorama of sand and a silver-domed city. The floor was littered with cushions, discs and old papers. Mirren lodged his feet on the coffee table and drank his beer. He took the pix of Hunter from inside his jacket and stared at the terrible yin-yang of his face, considering what the off-worlder might be selling... He reached for the cord attached to the vidscreen and was lowering it on its angle-poise boom from the ceiling when the base of his skull seemed to explode and a fiery irritation shot up his extended arm. The periphery of his vision shattered, and he could make out only a circular patch of clarity straight ahead, like a bullet hole in glass.

He was about to undergo an attack - his headache all morning had warned him, and he should have been ready for it - but he knew that there was nothing he could have done to prepare himself for the wrenching dislocation.

Hunter's photograph slipped from his fingers. He flashbacked-

And found himself once again aboard the
Perseus Bound
.

He was sitting on the slide-bed of the flux-tank, arms stanchioned beside him, head bent forward so that Dan Leferve could adjust his occipital console. He felt a sense of anticipation that he was about to flux, and at the same time a terrible pre-emptive sense of loss that this would be his last push.

Christiana Olafson sprawled in the lounger before the viewscreen which looked out upon the
nada
-continuum, blitzed from her stint in the tank. Jan Elliott, the pale, ginger-haired Irish Enginewoman stood watching his en-tankment, biting her lip worriedly. She'd spent the entire voyage so far in the engine-room, as if unable on her last flight to tear herself away from the centre of operations. Caspar Fekete, outwardly blasé about the whole issue of the closedown, stood beside the tank and called out the sequencing countdown to Dan.

Mirren felt the jacks slip into his skull one by one.

"
Grant him smooth union,"
Elliott was babbling, "
With the majesty of the Sublime, the Infinite
." Although he allowed the believers in his team to conduct religious rituals before their own en-tankment, he forbade such nonsense before he fluxed.

Despite the distant feeling creeping over him, he lifted a warning finger. "Shut it, Elliott, okay?"

She looked away, her words faltering.

The final jack slipped home.

Fekete slapped him on the back. "Have a good mind-trip, sir!" He pulled a face at Elliott.

Mirren lay on the bed as it entered the tank, glad to be leaving behind the petty banter of his team. Darkness enclosed him. He heard nothing. Within seconds he was no longer aware of his body. His last sense of all, the awareness of himself, his identity, would remain with him, but reduced, modulated, like the feeble consciousness of some primal animal.

He had the sensation of hovering on the edge of some infinite vastness, a pool of immanence which would bathe him in glory. Then, in the second that he fluxed, he was one with the vastness, and his soul, or rather his mind, was flooded with rapture.

What was happening to him had two explanations, one religious and the other secular. If the Disciples were to be believed, then his soul was briefly conjoined with the ultimate reality, the source of all things, which underpinned the everyday, physical world. It was this union, or rather being wrenched from it, that brought about the Enginemen's sense of craving, the desire for reunion... The secular, scientific explanation, which Mirren subscribed to, was that upon neurological union with null-space, or the
nada
-continuum, the only part of the human brain able to function in such a void, the pineal gland, bloomed and activated and produced the power to push the bigship through the medium which underpinned reality. As simple as that - even though scientists were still theorising over the precise cause of the effect. There was no evidence of an afterlife, Mirren maintained, no souls departed or those awaiting birth, just the wondrous mind-trip produced by the excitation of one's pineal gland, and the subsequent craving was the effect of denial.