by Eric Brown
A low red light burned in one corner, illuminating a sparsely furnished room: a bed, an armchair and vid-screen; shelves full of music discs and many images of Buddha. The walls were draped with tankas and depictions of scenes from the Bardo Thodol. It was more like a far eastern shrine or temple than a bedroom in Paris.
Mirren knelt before his brother and tapped his moccasin—their pre-arranged signal—then took Bobby’s thin hand.
Bobby smiled. “I thought you would come,” he said, his words protracted. He would hear them for the first time in a little under twenty-four hours.
He had moved his head, was staring over Mirren’s right shoulder. “Were you in the hall earlier?”
With the forefinger of his right hand, Mirren traced a symbol on his brother’s palm: Yes-
“Then why didn’t you-?”
Mirren felt a constriction in his throat. He adjusted himself so that he was sitting cross-legged on the rug, and so that coincidentally his face was out of Bobby’s line of sight. He hesitated, then signed: Sorry.
“You should have let me know it was you, Ralph,” Bobby admonished.
You know how it is. He was glad, then, that he had to sign to make himself understood: he felt sure that he would have been unable to speak.
Bobby twisted off a wry grin. “Too busy even to make the effort to communicate, Ralph?”
You know that’s not true! The exclamation mark was a vicious stab of his forefinger in the middle of the open palm. Mirren moved his head back into his brother’s line of sight, so that tomorrow Bobby would be able to see his anguish.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,” Bobby said. “Anyway, how’s work?”
It’s work. I shouldn’t complain. He was aware of how clichéd the dialogue was, like that of two strangers—which, he had to admit, they almost were.
He looked down at Bobby’s hand in his, his brother’s thin fingers, the bitten nails. He was gripping Bobby’s hand with unnecessary firmness.
“Ralph...?” Bobby’s voice was gentle. “What’s wrong?”
Mirren didn’t respond, other than to hold his brother’s hand all the tighter. He realised that he was crying, tears running down his cheeks.
“There’s so much I want to tell you, Bobby.” He stopped himself. This was the coward’s way of unburdening himself—to confess all now, leave Bobby to hear everything tomorrow.
“Ralph, please... What is it?”
Mirren signed on Bobby’s palm, We haven’t spoken in a long time.
Bobby shook his head. “No, we haven’t.”
I mean, really spoken—about what matters.
It was a while before Bobby said, “Ralph?”
Mirren stared at his brother’s cupped palm, considering his words. Is your meditation going well?
Bobby gave a quick grimace. He was always reluctant to discuss his belief with Mirren. “You know...”
No, I don’t! He cuffed his eyes dry, trying to find the right phrase to ask Bobby how he meditated.
Tell me!
“Well...”
Tell me how you meditated, Bobby—the emphasis made by extra pressure. What do you experience when meditating?
Bobby stared into space, seeing whatever his eyes had looked at yesterday. How difficult it must be for him, Mirren thought—to have only the sense of touch with which to understand this situation.
“That’s difficult, Ralph. I mean, how would you tell a blind man how you see? I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to...” He hesitated, shrugged. “I relax, empty my mind, let everything just drift away, forget myself. I concentrate on nothing. Then... then I’m in contact with the continuum, Ralph. It’s almost as if I’m fluxing again, though with not quite the same rapture-”
But how is that possible?
“I honestly don’t know. I think it has something to do with what happened to me, what happened ten years ago in the tank...” He stopped, there.
Go on.
Bobby hesitated, then said, “I haven’t spoken about this to anyone... that last time in the tank—it was different. I felt as though what was happening to me—what happened to leave me like this—was somehow intended by someone or something out there, in the continuum. I know that sounds hard to believe, but that’s what I felt at the time. I heard a... a calling, almost, a kind of... I don’t know—a telepathic beckoning.” He paused, his face animated as he considered what had happened to him. “Now, when I meditate, I experience the calling again. It’s the most wondrous feeling in existence, Ralph.”
Mirren shook his head. He signed, Why didn’t you tell me before?
“Ralph...” Bobby looked pained. “How could I have told you what ecstasy I experienced through my belief?”
You could have told me! Mirren signed. I wouldn’t have ridiculed you!
Bobby released a sigh. Mirren saw sadness etched in the lines of his face. “The reason I didn’t tell you, Ralph, wasn’t because I feared your scepticism-”
Then why?
“How could I have told you what rapture awaited, what wonder I was in contact with, when everyday you went through hell craving the flux, unable to believe...” Bobby’s expression was blank, staring.
Carefully, Mirren signed, I wish I could believe, Bobby. More than anything I wish I could believe. I sometimes think that there was something wrong with me.
“Ralph, Ralph...” His slurred words were freighted with compassion. “Please, listen to me. You might not believe now, but you will when the time comes to unite with the infinite—and that is all that matters. It isn’t like the simplistic, barbaric belief system of the Christians and the other cults; belief isn’t a prerequisite for salvation. This life is merely a stage through which we pass on to something greater. I know these words will mean nothing to you now, but they’re all I can say.”
Mirren could not stop his tears. He gripped Bobby’s hand.
“Ralph?”
Tentatively, Mirren reached out and hugged his brother. Bobby stiffened, almost reluctant at first, then he too put his arms around his brother’s shoulders. It was a release Mirren could never have imagined himself either needing or accepting. He knelt on the carpet, hugged his brother to him and cried onto his shoulder, as if this way he could shed all his fear and anguish, or at least share it. For perhaps five minutes they remained like this, Bobby patting his back, murmuring soothing words.
Mirren pulled away, found Bobby’s hand. He signed, I have Heine’s disease, Bobby.
His brother slowly shook his head. “Ralph... I’m sorry.”
Bobby reached out, then, like a blind man, found Mirren’s face with his fingers and cupped his cheek in the palm of his hand, soothing him.
It isn’t contagious. I can’t pass it on.
Bobby merely shook his head.
The medic gave me about four, five years. I... He stopped there, unable to go on. He choked back a sob, glad that Bobby could not hear or see him.
He gathered himself, and with determination signed, I’m frightened. I realise that even the life I’ve lived for the past ten years is preferable to no life at all.
“Ralph...” Tenderly, Bobby swept his hand through the hair on the side of Mirren’s head, staring into his face so that tomorrow he could look upon him.
“I wish there was something I could do to make you feel better, Ralph.”
Mirren wiped his tears. The very act of telling Bobby of his fear, of communicating his anguish, had had the strange effect of muting it, making it manageable.
Mirren smiled into his brother’s unseeing eyes. “Talking to you has helped a lot, Bobby,” he said.
They held each other for long minutes.
At last, Mirren signed, You don’t fear death?
Bobby shook his head. “No, I don’t. I believe—no, I know, that another life, another existence, awaits us. I wish I could somehow let you experience my certainty...”
Mirren recalled what Dan had made him promise that morning. He signed, But what if death came tomorrow, next week
? Don’t you need time to prepare yourself?
Bobby smiled. “I am prepared, Ralph. I’ve been prepared for the past ten years.”
Then, Mirren almost told Bobby about Hunter’s promise of the flux, but he stopped himself. For all his acceptance of his brother’s belief, he could not bring himself to allow Bobby to throw away his life. He knew that it would be what Bobby wanted, and he felt guilty denying him his chance to flux—but his own stubborn inability to believe, or rather his own belief that this was the only reality—just would not let him tell Bobby about Hunter and the mission.
“Ralph... come and see me more often, okay? It’s not always easy for me to find you.” He smiled. “We should talk more. We’ve a lot to catch up on.”
Mirren nodded, despite the futility of the gesture. He signed, We’ll do that, Bobby. I’m going to get some sleep now. I’m tired.
“You sure you’re okay? You don’t need anything?”
I’m fine. I just need some rest.
He squeezed Bobby’s hand, stood and walked wearily to the door. He watched Bobby as he leaned over the armchair and picked up one of his Braille books. For all the limitation of his circumscribed world, Bobby was free as he’d never known anyone to be. As he left the room he felt an odd mixture of delight for his brother, and an inescapable envy of such certainty.
He went to the kitchen and pulled an ice-cold beer from the cooler. He opened the bottle, sat down and absently massaged the back of his neck. He’d been half aware of the pulsing headache for the past few hours.
He was finishing the beer when the vid-screen chimed. Carrying the bottle, he moved to the lounge and turned on the screen. He heard his own recorded voice say, “I’m either out or busy right now. If you’d like to leave a message...”
The screen flared and Mirren saw Caroline, her lips twisted in a characteristically exaggerated frown. On impulse, without really knowing why, he reached out and accepted the call.
Caroline blinked. “Oh, there you are. I was just about to cut off. You know how I hate talking to myself.” She smiled out at him. “But you’ve probably forgotten that by now...”
Mirren sat down. “No, actually, I do remember. You didn’t like talking to yourself, or to me when I wasn’t listening...”
“And you did a lot of that, Ralph. Especially-” She stopped herself.
Mirren said, “How can I help?”
“I called to see if you were doing anything tonight. I thought... I wondered if you might like to go out for a meal?”
His first impulse was to think of an excuse. He stopped himself. Caroline had, after all, gone to the trouble of calling him. The least he could do was to be civil.
“Sure, why not-”
Carrie stared. “You’re sure? You really mean it?”
“I’m sure I’m sure. I’d like a meal. I need to go out.”
“Fine. How about the Blue Shift? Around eight?”
“Fine I’ll see you there.”
Caroline smiled again, cut the connection.
Immediately, Mirren wondered if the only reason he had agreed to seeing her tonight was that he knew he would be fluxing again very soon? There was no danger of emotional involvement because soon there would be the greater attraction of the flux...?
He left the lounge. On the way to his room, he paused and tossed the empty beer bottle towards the waste-chute in the kitchen. It sailed through the air, and in that fraction of a second his vision fractured. He flashbacked-
* * * *
He was aboard the Perseus Bound as the ‘ship phased prematurely from the nada-continuum, hit the turbulent upper atmosphere of Hennessy’s Reach and began to break up. The ugly double note of the emergency klaxon screamed through the corridors and lounges—a heart-stopping noise every spacer prayed they would never hear. In the engineroom, Mirren and Leferve hauled Elliott from the flux-tank, strapped her into her pod and secured themselves. Mirren felt the safety harness grip him as his weight shifted with the pitch of the ‘ship. He closed his eyes. The bigship rolled onto its side, wracked by a bone-shaking vibration as it tore through the planet’s atmosphere. He had never before been aboard a ‘ship which, designed for continuum flight, had phased-in early and attempted to ride a gravity well—and as he lay in his pod, every muscle in his body clenched in fear and apprehension, he was aware of the bigship’s disintegration. Screams of tortured metal filled the engineroom and muffled explosions communicated themselves through the superstructure as they plummeted towards the planet’s surface. Mirren imagined the great auxiliary engines and exterior observation bays coming away and spinning off in the slipstream.
“It’s coming apart at the seams!” someone cried. “We don’t stand a chance!”
“Be quiet, Elliott,” Fekete commanded with impeccable calm. “I actually think the pilot’s doing an amazing job. Does anyone know his name?”
“Kaminski,” Olafson said through gritted teeth.
“Then Kaminski should be awarded a medal for holding on so long—posthumous, of course.”
“Fekete,” Mirren yelled. “Just shut it!”
The chaos was accentuated by an electrical fault. The lights dimmed and flickered in synchronicity with a series of explosions which bucked the ‘ship throughout its length.
Mirren thought that Leferve, laid out beside him, was humming; no—the continuous, low note was a religious chant. Elliott began gibbering again. Mirren warned her to shut it, or face the consequence of physical violence; which prompted the wry observation from Fekete that he hoped he would be around to watch the fight.
It came to Mirren in an inspired moment of calm reflection that, after all, this was not so bad a way to die: there was a certain irony in the fact that this would have been his and his teams’ last flight anyway. He’d often dreaded, since learning that the Canterbury Line was closing down, the prospect of life without the flux. Now his fear was academic.
The Perseus Bound hit something—it could only be the ground—and broke up in a series of impacts. He heard multiple explosions, and flaring, actinic bursts of fire seared his exposed flesh. Before he could conceive of being incinerated he was knocked out by a shock wave.
When he came to his senses he was amazed to find himself still in one piece and strapped into his pod.
More amazing still was the absolute calm.
The other pods, arranged around the systems-column like petals, seemed to be intact too. The engine-room had been sheered clean in half, affording a view of the jungle and the main body of the ‘ship some distance away. The Perseus lay broken-backed in the pit of its own ploughing, ablaze and further torn apart by secondary explosions. The vegetation on either side not destroyed by the crashlanding was alight and burning like an avenue of torches.
Mirren experienced ten seconds of inertia, during which he could do nothing other than marvel that he was still alive. Then he rapidly unfastened himself from the harness. “Dan? Caspar?”
“Well, I must admit this is a surprise,” Fekete commented.
Dan was still chanting his mantra.
Elliott and Olafson replied that they were okay.
Mirren pushed himself from the pod and staggered to the jagged edge of what once had been the deck. The engine-room was lodged on a jackstraw arrangement of fallen tree trunks. The heat from the burning wreckage swept over him in a wave. Overhead, unfamiliar constellations burned in an indigo sky.
He returned to the systems-column. From a storage unit he retrieved the distress beacon and emergency supplies and crouched beside the opening. Using the tree trunks as an impromptu stairway, he made his way down to the jungle floor, stood and surveyed the remains of the bigship. At intervals between the larger chunks of wreckage, small parcels of blackened carcasses, some with their extremities still glowing, smoked in the humid night air. The clearing was filled with the stink of cooking flesh. Mirren made a cursory tour of inspection through the red hot wreckage, looking for survivors but knowing that the chances of finding any were remote. He r
ecalled the sight of the hundreds of civilian passengers boarding the ‘ship from the terminal on Xyré, and the faces of the dead returned to him.
He entered the details of the crashlanding and the number of survivors into the distress beacon, then launched it into the alien sky. He watched it trail a long, fiery parabolic wake, until it was just another star overhead.
The others had unstrapped themselves and climbed down. Fekete was picking through the debris with what looked like disdain, his natural arrogance shaken and reduced to a fastidious appraisal of the fate which had befallen them. Dan joined Mirren and stared at the wreckage. Olafson sat on a nearby log and massaged her shoulder. Some distance away, Elliott wept and vomited.