Engineman

by Eric Brown

  He moved carefully down interminable corridors. Had he been less apprehensive about what might be wrong with him, and about meeting Caroline again after so long, he might have enjoyed the strange sensation of seeing one thing and hearing another. It was like watching a film with the wrong sound-track.

  He found the door marked ‘Dr Da Silva’, knocked and stepped inside. Caroline was the first person he saw in the room. For a second he wondered how the flux had managed to lure him away from her, but only for a second. She was very attractive, with the calm elliptical face of a ballerina, the same graceful poise. She was caring and intelligent, too—but the very fact of her physicality bespoke to Thorn of the manifest impermanence of all things physical. The flux promised, and delivered, periods of blissful disembodiment.

  Only then did Thorn notice the other occupants of the room. He recognised the two men behind the desk. One was his medic at the Line, and the other his commanding officer. Their very presence here suggested that all was not well. The way they regarded him, with direct stares devoid of emotion, confirmed this.

  A combination of drink, shock and fear eased Thorn into unconsciousness.

  * * * *

  He awoke in bed in a white room. To his right a glass door gave onto a balcony, and all he could see beyond was the bright blue sky. On the opposite wall was a rectangular screen, opaque to him but transparent to observers in the next room.

  Electrodes covered his head and chest.

  He could hear the drone of the flier’s turbos as it carried him towards the hospital. He sat up and called out what he hoped was: Caroline!...Carrie!

  He sank back, frustrated. He watched an hour tick by on the wall-clock, listening to the flier descend and his own footsteps as the Thorn-of-one-hour-ago approached the hospital. He wondered if he was being watched through the one-way window. He felt caged.

  He looked through the glass door and stared into the sky. In the distance he could see a bigship climb on a steep gradient. He heard himself open the surgery door, and Caroline’s voice. “Ah...Max.”

  Then—unexpectedly, though he should have been aware of its coming—silence. This was the period during which he was unconscious. He glanced back at the sky, but the bigship had phased out and was no longer visible.

  Thorn tried not to think about his future.

  * * * *

  Caroline arrived thirty minutes later. She carried a sketch pad and a stylus. She sat on a plastic chair beside the bed, the pad on her lap. She tried to cover her concern with smiles, but Thorn was aware of tears recently shed, the evidence of smudged make-up. He had seen it many times before.

  How long will I be in here? he asked.

  Caroline chewed her lower lip, avoiding his eyes. She began to speak, then stopped herself. Instead, she wrote on the sketch pad and held up the finished product:

  A week or two, Max. We want to run a few tests.

  Thorn smiled to himself. What exactly is this Black’s Syndrome? he asked, with what he hoped was the right degree of malicious sarcasm.

  He was pleased with Caroline’s shocked expression.

  How do you know it’s Black’s? she scribbled.

  You mentioned it over the vidscreen, Thorn told her. I didn’t hear it until I was coming here... What is it, Carrie?

  She paused, then began writing. Thorn read the words upside down: Black—an Engineman on the Taurus Line out of Varanasi. After fifty shifts he developed acute sensory time-lapse. It’s a one-in-a-thousand malady, Max. We don’t know exactly what causes it, but we suspect it’s a malfunction in the tank leads that retards interneuron activity.

  She paused, then held up the message.

  Thorn nodded. I’ve read it. So...?

  She turned to a blank page, stylus poised.

  How long did he last? Thorn asked, bitterly. When did the poor bastard die?

  Quickly she wrote: He’s still alive, Max.

  Thorn was surprised, relieved. If the present condition was the extent of Black’s Syndrome, then what was to prevent him fluxing again?

  He wondered at Caroline’s tears. If his disease was only this minor, then why all the emotion?

  Then he thought he understood.

  When can I leave, Carrie? When can I get back to the flux?

  He was watching the pad, waiting for a reply. When he looked up he saw that she was crying, openly this time.

  He laughed. You thought you had me, didn’t you? Discharged from the Line, your own little invalid to look after and pamper. You can’t stand the thought that I’ll recover and flux again, can you?

  Despite her tears she was scribbling, covering page after page with rapid, oversized scrawl.

  When she came to the end she stabbed a vicious period, ripped the pages out and flung them at him. She ran from the room, skittling a chair on the way. Thorn watched her, a sudden sense of guilt excavating a hollow in his chest.

  His gaze dropped to the crumpled pages. He picked them up and read:

  Acute sensory time-lapse. Not just hearing. Everything. In a few days your taste and smell will go the same way. Then your vision. You’ll be left only with the sensation of touch in the ‘present’. Everything else will be lapsed...

  It went like this for a few more pages, the handwriting becoming more and more erratic. Most of it reiterated the few known facts and Caroline’s observations of Black’s decline. On the last page she had simply written: I loved you, Max.

  Thorn smoothed the pages across his lap. He called for Caroline again and again, but if she heard she ignored him. He wanted to apologise, ask what might happen to him. He tried to envisage the sensation of having all his senses time-lapsed save for that of touch, but the task was beyond his powers of perception.

  He lay back and closed his eyes. Later he was startled by the sound of his voice, his cruel questions. He heard Caroline’s breathless sobs, the squeak of the stylus, a murmured, “I loved you...” to accompany the written assurance. He heard her run crying from the room, the chair tumble, the door slam shut.

  Then all he could hear was the sound of his breathing, the muffled, routine noises of the hospital. For the first time in hours the sounds he heard were synchronised with what he could see.

  He slept.

  * * * *

  On the morning of his third day in hospital, Thorn’s senses of taste and smell went the way of his hearing. This further time-lapse dashed any hope he might have had that Caroline’s diagnosis had been mistaken.

  He had not seen Caroline since her hurried departure on the first day. He had been examined and tested by medical staff who went about their business in silence, as if they were aware of his outburst at Caroline and were censoring him for it. On the third morning in hospital, a nurse brought him his breakfast.

  He began eating, and soon realised that he could neither taste nor smell the bacon and eggs, or the coffee, black and no doubt strong.

  He finished his meal. He watched the nurse return and remove the tray, sank back and waited.

  Two hours later he heard the sound of the trolley being rolled in, the rattle of knife and fork. Seconds later the taste of bacon, then egg yolk, filled his mouth. He inhaled the aroma of the coffee, tasted it on his tongue. He closed his eyes and savoured the sensation. It was the only pleasurable effect of this strange malaise so far.

  Then he sat up as something struck him. Two hours!... The delay between eating the food and tasting it had been two hours! Likewise the sound of the nurse’s arrival.

  If his hearing, taste and smell became delayed at the rate of two hours every three days—then what would it be like in a week, say, or a month or a year?

  And what of his eyesight? How would he cope with seeing something that had occurred hours, days, even weeks ago? He resolved to find out what had happened to Black, how he was coping. He sat up and called for Caroline.

  * * * *

  She did not show herself for another three days.

  Thorn was attended by an efficient platoon of medics. Th
ey seemed to rush through their duties around him with a casual indifference as if he had ceased to exist, or as if they assumed that his senses had retarded to such an extent that he existed alone in a bubble of isolation. On more than one occasion he had asked whether he could be cured, how much worse it might become, what had happened to Black? But they used the fact that he could not immediately hear them as an excuse to ignore him, avoiding not only his words but his eyes.

  On the morning of his sixth day in hospital, he awoke to silence and ate his tasteless breakfast. The sound of his waking, of the hospital coming to life around him, the taste of his breakfast—all these things would come to him later. He wondered if he could time it so that he tasted his breakfast at the same time as he ate his lunch?

  He waited, and it was four hours later when he tasted toast and marmalade, heard the sounds of his breathing as he awoke.

  Later, a nurse removed the electrodes from his head and chest. She opened the door to the balcony and held up a card which read:

  Would you like to go out for some air?

  Thorn waited until the nurse had left, shrugged into a dressing gown and stepped onto the balcony. He sat down on a chair in the sunlight and stared across the bay, then up into the sky. There was no sign of starship activity today.

  He realised that, despite the seriousness of his condition, he still hoped to flux again. Surely the state of his senses would have no detrimental effect on his ability to mind-push? He had already decided that when his condition deteriorated to such an extent that he could no longer function without help, which must surely happen when his sight became effected, he would volunteer for a long-shift. He could push a boat to one of the Rim Worlds, spend a week of ecstasy in flux. It would probably kill him, but the prospect of such rapture and a painless end was preferable to the life he could expect here on Earth.

  Caroline appeared on the edge of his vision. She placed a chair next to his and sat down beside him, the sketch pad on her lap. She seemed fresh-and composed, the episode of the other day forgotten.

  He said, I’ve been wanting to apologise for what I said, Carrie. I had hoped you’d visit me before now. And he cursed himself for making even his apology sound like an accusation.

  Caroline wrote: I’ve been with Black.

  Thorn was suddenly aware of his own heartbeat. How is he?

  She wrote: Only his sense of touch is now in the ‘present’. All his other senses are time-lapsed by nearly a day.

  How’s he coping?

  She paused, then wrote: Not very well. He was never very stable. He’s showing signs of psychosis. But you’re much stronger, Max-

  He interrupted: What happens when his sense of touch retards?

  Caroline shrugged. Thorn read: It hasn’t happened yet. It’s difficult to say. In a way, if it does occur, it will be easier for him as all his senses will be synchronised in the ‘past’. But he’ll be unable to mix with people, socialise. How could he? Their presence would be delayed subjectively by hours, days. There would be no way for him to relate...

  He could still flux, Thorn said.

  Caroline looked away. Tears appeared in her eyes. Then she scribbled something on the pad:

  Is the flux all you think about?

  It’s my life, Carrie. The only reason I exist.

  She shook her head, frustrated by this clumsy means of communication. She wrote out two pages of neat script and passed them to him.

  I could understand your infatuation with the flux if you thought the experience had religious significance; that you were in touch with an afterlife. But you don’t even believe that! To you it’s just a drug, a mental fix. You’re a flux-junky, Max. When you left me you were running away from something you couldn’t handle emotionally because you’d never had to in the past. For most of your life, Max, the flux has provided you with a substitute for human emotion, both the giving of it and the taking. And look where it’s got you!

  Thorn sat without speaking. Some part of him -some distant buried, human part—was stunned by the truth of her insight.

  You just feel sorry for yourself because you didn’t get me, he said weakly, trying to defend himself.

  Caroline just stared at him. She shook her head. With deliberation she wrote one line. She stood up and tore off the top sheet, handed it to him and left the balcony.

  I’m not sorry for myself, Max. I’m sorry for you.

  * * * *

  Thorn pushed the meeting with Caroline to the back of his mind. In the days that followed he dwelled on the hope that he might one day be able to flux again. If his sense of touch did retard, then, as Caroline had suggested, all his senses would he synchronised and his condition made considerably easier. He might not be able to socialise, but that would be no great loss. His only desire was to rejoin the Line.

  On his ninth morning in hospital, Thorn opened his eyes and saw nothing but darkness. He called for the lights to be switched on, but instead someone spoon-fed him breakfast. He was unable to tell if it was Caroline who fed him; he could neither see, hear, or even smell the person. He asked who it was, but the only response—the only one possible in the circumstances—was a gentle hand on his arm. After his first breakfast in absolute darkness he lay back and waited.

  His sensory delay had expanded to six hours now, and it was that long before the darkness lifted and he was able to see the sunlight slanting into the room. He had the disconcerting experience of lying flat on his back while his gaze of six hours ago lifted as the Thorn-of-this-morning sat up and prepared for breakfast. In his vision the nurse positioned his tray and fed him bacon and eggs. Thorn felt that he could reach out and touch the woman. He tried, and of course his hand encountered nothing.

  He had no control over the direction of his gaze; his unseeing eyes of that morning had wandered, and he found himself trying to bring his errant vision back to the nurse, when all he saw was the far wall. His vision was interrupted by frequent, fraction-of-a-second blanks, when he had blinked, and longer stretches of total blackness when he had closed his eyes. The only benefit of this visual delay was that now his sight and hearing, taste and smell were synchronised. He saw the nurse lift a forkful of egg to his mouth, heard the sound of his chewing and tasted the food. The only thing missing was the egg itself; his mouth was empty.

  “There we are,” the nurse said, proffering him a last corner of toast. He wanted to tell her to stop treating him like a child, but that was the big disadvantage of his present condition: what he experienced now had happened six hours ago. The nurse would be elsewhere, the bacon and egg digested, the sounds and aromas dissolved into the ether.

  Over the next few days he remained awake into the early hours, watching the happenings of the previous day. At four in the morning, then six, darkness would descend, and Thorn would settle down to sleep. Around noon he would wake, spend several hours in darkness, then watch the sun rise eight hours late. If the delay between occurrence and perception continued to increase by two hours every three days, as it was doing, then Thorn foresaw a time when he would be spending more time in darkness than in light.

  He would be able to cope. There had been many a long period in the past, between shifts, when he had locked himself in his darkened apartment, with drink and fleeting memories of flux.

  * * * *

  After almost two weeks in hospital Thorn began to weaken. He passed through periods of physical nausea and mental confusion. He hallucinated once that he was fluxing again, this time without the usual euphoria of the union.

  The day following this hallucination he awoke early and felt the warmth of sunlight on his skin. Eight hours later he was aware of the sun coming up over the sea. He would have liked to watch it, but his eyes of eight hours ago were fixed on the foot of his bed. The frequency of his ‘waking’ blinks gave the scene the aspect of an ancient, flickering movie. At least it wasn’t silent: he could hear the hospital waking around him, the distant crescendo of a starship’s burners.

  Later, after som
eone had spoon-fed him a tasteless lunch, he felt a soft hand on his arm. He moved his head, as if by doing so he might see who it was. But all he saw was the same old far wall of eight hours ago; all he heard was his own breathing. He recalled the touch of the other nurse, but that had been light, platonic, reassuring him like a child that everything was alright. There was nothing platonic about this touch. As he lay there, helpless, whoever it was pulled back the sheets and divested him of hospital garb. He shouted out in silence, tried to fend her off—‘her’ because his flailing arm caught the softness of a breast. But he could not see the woman and he was unable to prevent the ludicrous rape. He felt a warm, soft weight straddle him, her breasts loose against his chest, and the sensation was what he imagined it might be like to be taken by a succubus.