Engineman Part 31

He felt something constrict his throat. He nodded. "I'd like nothing better, Carrie."

"Oh, Ralph, Ralph..."

He looked up at her, fearing her reb.u.t.tal. "What?"

To his surprise, he saw that she was weeping. "Ralph, Susan arrived in Paris last night. She wants to see you. Let's... let's go see her together, okay? Now. She's at the Plaza."

His stomach turned. His daughter... how would he ever find the words to excuse his abandonment?

"Does she hate me, Carrie?"

She smiled. "Of course not. I explained what happened... what demons were driving you. She'll be delighted she has you back."

"For however long, before the Heine's..." he began.

She took both his hands in hers. "Eight years? That's a long time, Ralph. We can make the most of them, okay?"

They stood together and embraced, and some nameless emotion, which he hadn't experienced in years, swelled in his chest.

Carrie said, glancing at her watch, "Come on, let's pick up Susan and go for dinner."

As they made for the exit, Mirren said, "Carrie... I don't think I ever thanked you for saving my life."

She laughed. "Don't mentioned it, Engineman."

Hand in hand, they left the Blue Shift bar and stepped out into the balmy Paris night.

Epilogue.

Dan Leferve sat on the patio of the bar and gazed out across Orly s.p.a.ceport. Night had fallen over Paris, but the port was illuminated by dozens of starships phasing-in, phasing-out, or just sitting on the tarmac. It was a sight that never failed to stir something deep within him. He drank his beer and watched a bigship of the Canterbury Line prepare for phase-out: its dorsal lights came on, then flashed like emergency beacons. The streamlined, shark-like 'ship flickered from existence in silence. Within a minute another 'ship appeared in the vacated berth as if by magic, displaced air blowing across the s.p.a.ceport and lapping over the drinkers on the patio.

Not for the first time that evening, Dan glanced at the towering arrowhead of the fastship The Sublime Ascension The Sublime Ascension. Behind its multiple viewscreens he could see the small, dark silhouettes of the crew as the 'ship prepared for phase-out in less than - he glanced at his watch - thirty minutes.

His heart skipped as he watched two white-uniformed officers climb the steps to the patio and approach him. "Alpha Leferve, if you're ready..." The officer's tone was deferential.

"If I can have just five more minutes." Dan glanced across to the door of the bar. "I'm expecting a friend."

The first officer said, "Of course. By all means." They left the patio and Dan exhaled a sigh of relief.

He returned his attention to the activity on the tarmac.

Fifteen years ago the Interface Organisations across the Expansion had, one by one, closed down the portals and ceased operation. Within two years the free Expansion had rid itself of the interfaces. The Rim sector of the galaxy, however, run by the Danzig Organisation, had been another matter entirely.

It had taken a further year of intense guerrilla activity, spearheaded by Hirst Hunter and the Disciples, to destroy every last interface and bring the Organisation to its knees.

Only then was the continued safety of the nada nada-continuum a.s.sured.

After the close-downs, the Lines had resumed business and gradually expanded. They were as busy now, if not more so, than even at the time of their hey-day twenty-five years ago. Bigships and smallships, pushed by Alphas, Betas and Gammas, const.i.tuted seventy-five percent of the star traffic, and fastships made up the remainder. They were, as their name suggested, super-fast star vessels pushed by Omegas - human Effectuators.

To become a human Effectuator - to hover on the cusp of the nada nada-continuum and push 'ships at fantastic speeds from star to star - was the ultimate goal of all Enginemen and Enginewomen. Not many were chosen, not many were suitable, which made the accolade of becoming an Effectuator all the greater.

Human Effectuators lasted for a maximum of three years in the comatose state required to push fastships through the continuum. Then, inevitably, they slipped finally from the physical realm and merged with the One.

Dan savoured his beer and considered what he was leaving.

Six months after his return to Earth from the Reach, he had sold his Agency and signed up with the newly re-formed Canterbury Line. For the next fourteen years he had pushed bigships from Earth to the Core, for that long he had known again the ecstasy of the flux, and between stints in the tank enjoyed the camaraderie of his team.

Every time he'd returned to Earth, he made a point of looking up Ralph Mirren and Caroline. Ralph had enjoyed his last few years with his ex-wife - ten years, not the forcast eight - and succ.u.mbed peacefully to Heine's five year ago.

A year ago, Dan had applied to become an Effectuator - six hours of flux every ten days was just not enough - and after a series of thorough medicals and performance a.s.sessments, he was accepted.

He was finishing his beer and contemplating making his way across to The Sublime Ascension The Sublime Ascension, when the door of the bar swung open. Dan stood, arms wide, and Ella hurried across the room and hugged him.

She stood back. "Why this late, Dan?"

He shrugged. "I didn't want the goodbyes to drag on."

He smiled down at her. She'd grown a lot since the first time he'd met her, fifteen years ago - not so much in size as in spirit. She had never become the great artist she'd wanted to be, though she still painted. Over the years she had worked with her father to bring aid and succour to the planets liberated from the tyrannical regime of the Danzig Organisation.

"How's Hirst?" Dan asked.

"He's well. I keep telling him that at his age he really ought to think about retiring, but you know my father."

"He's still working for the UC?"

"He never stops. Oh, he send his regards, by the way."

"Say hi when you see him." Dan noticed the officers on the tarmac, signalling to him. "That's the call. You can come as far as the 'ship."

They left the patio and strolled across the tarmac. Last night he'd thrown a farewell party for his friends in Paris. Ella had attended, but he had wanted to say goodbye to her alone.

They stood in the shadow of the fastship. Ella said, "I'll miss you, Dan..."

"I'm going to a better thing," he reminded her.

"Yeah, I know. I'm just being selfish, that's all."

They paused before the ramp that sloped to the brightly illuminated interior of the 'ship. He embraced Ella for the last time.

"Look after yourself, Ella. Work hard."

She stared up at him, tears in her eyes. "h.e.l.l, why are farewells always so d.a.m.ned difficult?"

"Hey, this isn't a farewell. We'll meet again, okay?"

Ella laughed. "Don't forget to greet me when I arrive in the continuum," she said. "I'll be a... oh - a red and silver yin-yang comet trailing fire, okay?"

Dan said, "I won't forget."

He walked up and into the 'ship, following the officers. On the threshold he paused and waved down at Ella. She gave a small wave in return as the ramp slowly lifted. Then Dan entered the main chamber of The Sublime Ascension The Sublime Ascension, ready at last for the ultimate rendezvous with the glory of the nada nada-continuum.

The Engineman Stories The Girl Who Died for Art and Lived The Phoenix Experiment Big Trouble Upstairs The Star of Epsilon The Time-Lapsed Man The Pineal Zen Equation The Art of Acceptance Elegy Perpetuum

//The Girl Who Died for Art and Lived I knew Lin Chakra, the famous hologram artist, for two brief days in spring. Our acquaintance changed my life.

I first met her at the party held by my agent to celebrate the exhibition of my crystal, The Wreck of the John Marston The Wreck of the John Marston. The venue was Christianna Santesson's penthouse suite in the safe sector of the city. The event was pure glitter and overkill; big-name critics, artists in other fields, government officials and foreign amba.s.sadors occupied the floor in urbane groups. With The Wreck The Wreck I had, according to those in the know, initiated a new art form. Certainly I had done something that no-one else had been able to do before. I had, according to those in the know, initiated a new art form. Certainly I had done something that no-one else had been able to do before.

The crystal stood angled on a plinth at the far end of the long room, a fused rectangular slab coruscating like diamond. Earlier, there had been a queue to experience the work of Santesson's latest find. And, when the guests had actually laid hands on the crystal, they were staggered. The critics were pretty impressed, too - and that pleased me. I wanted to communicate my experience of the supernova to as many people as possible, allow them to live the last flight of the John Marston John Marston. Critical acclaim didn't always guarantee popular success, but I was sure that the originality of my art would catch the imagination of the world.

This was the first social gathering I'd attended since the accident, and I was uneasy without Ana.

As the party wore on, I eased my way to the bar and drank a succession of acid shorts. With diminishing clarity I watched the guests circulate, and tried to keep a low profile. This wasn't too difficult. The press-release had been brief and to the point. I was described as the sole survivor of an incredible starship burnout, but Santesson's publicity manager had failed to mention the fact that I had no face. Now there was a clique of artists here from the radioactive sector of the city who had taken over the select towerpiles deserted since the meltdown. These people wore fashion-accessory cancers, externalised and exhibited with the same panache as others might parade pet pythons or parakeets. One woman was nigrescent with total melanoma, another had cultivated multiple tumours of the thyroid like muscatel grapes on the vine. I spotted one artist almost as ugly as myself, his face eaten away by some virulent strain of radioactive herpes. They were known in art circles as the Strontium Nihilists, and tonight I was taken as just another freakish member of their band. The observant guest might have wondered, though, at the steel socket console that followed the contour of my dented cranium, or the remains of the occipital computer that had melted and fused with my collarbone.

From my position at the bar I watched Christianna Santesson as she moved from group to group, playing the perfect host. She was a tall blonde woman in her early sixties with the improved body of a twenty-year-old and a calculating business brain. Her agency had a virtual monopoly of the world's greatest artists, and when I joined her stable Santesson had never lost an opportunity to press me for the secret of the fusion process. She told me that she had people who could produce mega-art on my fused consoles, but I wasn't selling.

I was on my fifth acid short when a white light like the nova I'd survived blinded my one good eye. I raised an arm and called out. Silhouetted in the halogen glare I made out the hulking forms of vid-men toting shoulder cameras. Then I became aware of action beside me. Christianna Santesson was being interviewed. The front-man fired superlatives at the camera, stereotyping Santesson as the Nordic G.o.ddess of the art world and myself as The Man With A Nova In His Head. He moved on to me, and I was blitzed with inane questions to which I gave equally brainless replies. Things like how I wanted the world to understand, and how I did it all for my dead colleagues.

Then the painful glare moved away, leaving the bar in darkness. The vid-men dashed the length of the lounge, the spotlight bouncing like a crazy ball. It appeared that the far entrance was now the focus of attention. The party-goers turned en ma.s.se en ma.s.se and gawped like expectant kids awaiting the arrival of Santa. and gawped like expectant kids awaiting the arrival of Santa.

I thumbed the lachrymose tear-duct of my good eye. "What the h.e.l.l?" I managed. "I could have done without that."

"Daniel," Santesson said, her Scandinavian intonation loading her words with censure. "I had to have them in to record the arrival of Lin Chakra." And she smiled to herself like a satisfied stage-manager.

Seconds later Lin Chakra entered the spotlight, a diminutive figure surrounded by a posse of grotesques. And I experienced a sudden lurch in the pit of my stomach. Chakra hailed from the same subcontinent as a dead girl called Ana Bhandari, and her resemblance to Ana was unbearable. But then every Indian face sent pangs of grief through me.

Chakra lived in the radioactive sector, though she seemed unaffected by cancer, and compared with the hideousness of her hangers-on she emanated a fragile Asian beauty. She wore black tights, a black jacket, and a tricorne pulled low. Her face between the turned-up collar and the prow of her tricorne was an angry, inverted arrowhead as she scowled out at the a.s.sembled guests.

She walked across to my crystal, the cameras tracking her progress. I found it hard to believe that this was being piped live into half the homes on the continent.

She stood on the lower step of the plinth and played her hands over the crystal spread. Visually, it was not impressive, an abstract swirl of colour in the pattern of a vortex; interesting, but nothing more. It was to the touch that the crystals gave out their store of meaning, transforming the object from a colourful display into a work of art. Now, Lin Chakra would be experiencing what I had gone through in the engineroom of the John Marston John Marston.

She took her time, the guests watching her with silent respect, and soaked up the emotions. She lingered over a certain section of the slab, and came back to it again and again to see if the single crystal node still read as true in light of cross-reference with other emotions. She was being diligent in her appreciation of this newcomer's work.

Then she backed respectfully from the plinth, found Santesson and engaged her in quiet conversation. My agent indicated me with a slight inclination of her head; Lin Chakra's frequent glances my way were like sudden injections of adrenalin.

Then she joined me at the bar. She hoisted herself onto a high-stool and crossed her legs at the knees. "I like your crystal," she said in a small voice.

Seen closer to, her resemblance to Ana was less marked. Ana had been beautiful, whereas Lin Chakra was almost ugly. She had risen from the oblivion of a low-caste Calcutta slum, and her origins showed. Her lineage consisted of Harijan lepers, char-wallahs and meningital beggars. Physically she was a patchwork of inherited genetic defects, with a misshapen jaw and pocked cheeks, the concave chest and stoop of a tubercular forebear. But like her compatriots of the radioactive sector, she carried her deformities with pride, the latest recipient in a long line of derelict, hand-me-down DNA. And yet... and yet she wasn't without a certain undeniable charm, a frail attraction that produced in me a surge of the chivalrous and protective instinct that some people call affection.

When she spoke she looked directly at me, using my misplaced remaining eye as the focus of her attention, and not staring at my shoulder as others were wont to do. My injuries were such that some people found it hard to accept that the slurred, incinerated ma.s.s of flesh that sat upon my shoulders had once been a head.

Our conversation came to a close. She slipped a single crystal into my hand and climbed from her stool. She mingled with the crowd, then pushed through the shimmer-stream curtain to the balcony.

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 rea.s.sured 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 ent.i.tled 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.