by Eric Brown
Mirren glanced from the off-worlder to the vista of superannuated starships spread before him. “Jaeger?”
The off-worlder turned to Mirren and held out his hand. Warily, Mirren shook it. “Jaeger is my little conceit, Mr Mirren. My nom de plume. The name is Hunter, Hirst Hunter. I’m delighted to make your acquaintance.”
Hunter was a head taller and half as broad again as Mirren. Despite his impressive size, he emanated an aura of casual amiability. He could have passed on Earth for a well-preserved sixty, though living conditions and life expectancy varied so widely on the many planets of the Expansion that he might have been anything from fifty to a hundred standard years old.
The crimson disfigurement covered the left half of his face. On the photograph Mirren had thought it a birthmark, but now he saw that the pustulant mass, raised perhaps a centimetre from the skin, resembled more closely an outgrowth of mould or lichen. His left eye was closed and crusted over, and the side of his mouth was drawn shut and pulled down in a permanent scowl. The remainder of his face was bronzed and smiling, as if bequeathed the humanity so lacking in the ravaged hemisphere.
He was gazing out over the starships, a sad smile on his halved face. He gestured at the graveyard. “I find the sight achingly beautiful. Don’t you agree, Mr Mirren?”
“Despite what it represents... yes, I do.”
Hunter pointed over the domes, spires and pinnacles of the gathered starships. “Do you see the Boeing cruiser; the ‘ship with its navigation bay removed? It was an exploration vessel for the Valkyrie Line, oh... ninety years ago. It surveyed the habitable planets of Kernan’s Drift. I was thrilled to come across it today. My homeplanet is Fairweather, the first world it made landfall on in the Drift.”
Mirren smiled. Oddly, he felt comfortable in the company of the stranger.
“And now,” Hunter said, “they explore new worlds by sending unmanned drones through portals. No romance, no adventure...”
“But cheaper,” Mirren said. “More profit for the organisations.”
Hunter was sadly shaking his head. “I could weep when I consider the advent of the interfaces, Mr Mirren, and that is no exaggeration.”
Mirren glanced at the off-worlder. He was not augmented, but he could have had his console removed.
“Did you push?” he ventured.
Hunter turned to regard Mirren. The crazed, cracked surface of his facial growth was suppurating in the sunlight. “Me? Unfortunately not, Mr Mirren. When I was young I studied to be an Engineman, I wanted nothing more than to push a starship, but I never made the grade. Of course, I could have worked in space, but the thought of working alongside bona fide Enginemen would only have served to remind me of my failure.”
“You should consider yourself lucky,” Mirren said, then stopped himself before he became too self-piteous.
Hunter smiled. “I have something to show you which I think you will find of interest. Please, this way.”
Hunter ducked through the hatch and tapped quickly down the spiral stairway. Mirren followed, not for the first time wondering what the off-worlder wanted with him.
They emerged into the fierce sunlight of the new day and walked down the lane side by side. Hunter gestured and they turned right, down an avenue flanked by nothing else but dismembered observation domes and astro-nacelles. Here, the alien plant-life had run riot, shoots and spores finding their way into the accidental glasshouses of the nacelles and domes and blooming in colourful abundance.
Hunter touched Mirren’s elbow and indicated to the left. They passed down a wide avenue, then halted before the carcass of a bigship sliced lengthwise, its gaping cross-section cavernous. They climbed a staircase and Hunter, led the way along a cat-walk spanning the length of the ‘ship above a dense tangle of brambles. They passed through a bulkhead and came into a vast astrodome, humid in the sunlight and home to a hundred varieties of beautiful alien blooms. Their scent filled the air, thick as honey.
They crossed the circular floor to the exit hatch and strode down a corridor, Mirren’s curiosity increasing by the second. Hunter pushed open a swing door and stepped through, and Mirren followed. They were in the crew’s lounge—a long, comfortably-appointed relaxation area which obtruded through the skin of the ‘ship. Hunter strolled up to the vast, concave viewscreen and looked down the length of the bigship. Mirren stopped on the threshold and stared at the great rococo name-plate affixed to the curving flank of the ‘ship.
Hunter lifted the mobile half of his mouth. “The Martian Epiphany, Mr Mirren. The ‘ship you pushed for five years, two of them as team-captain, before your transfer to the Perseus Bound, if I am not mistaken.”
Mirren crossed the lounge. The air was cloyingly humid, making him feel dizzy. He took in the low, plush loungers, the sunken bunkers in black leather. He was taken back in time fifteen years. Between stints in the tank and hours sleeping in his cabin, he would come down here and stare out at the cobalt-blue magnificence of the nada-continuum, shot through with streamers of milky luminescence like streaks in marble which believing Enginemen claimed were the souls of the dead and departed. How many hours had he spent here, gazing out in dazed wonder?
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 d
o 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 dock, 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 6f 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 flig
ht 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.