by Eric Brown
So I’d get high at the end of a shift, ride the boulevard and slip into the tributaries. On the prowl, drifting...
I was a familiar face down the lighted darktime quarter. I’d be given rat-and-sparrow kebabs by the Chinese food-stall owners who wanted to fatten me up. The touts, they left me alone after the first few weeks when I declined to buy. They hawked everything from themselves to pure slash, from spare parts for illicit surgery to the Goodbye Express itself—Pineal-z. The drug from the third planet of star Aldebaran that’d give you the trip of a lifetime and total you in the process. It freaked me, that hit. Onetime monthsback I was drinking shorts in a seedy slouch and through the wall I probed a jaded businessman who’d had his fill of everything and wanted out. He’d paid a cool half million for the pleasure of ending his life, and he went with an extravaganza. Subjectivewise he lived another eighty years and his pineal bloomed to show him the evolution of his kind. I tripped along with him until he died, then I staggered back to my pad. I was zonked for three days following, and for another week hallucinated Pithecanthropus and Neanderthal Man dancing the light fantastic on the boulevard. Only later did I get vague flashbacks, memories of the vast, impenetrable blackness that swallowed the oldster when the drug blew his head. It frightened me at first, this intangible nothingness I could neither experience nor understand. In time, a month maybe, I managed to push it away somewhere, forget.
Then I was back drifting again, seeking.
I’d black my connected-minds symbol and probe, discarding heads by the thousand one after the other as they each displayed the same flawed formulas. Some heads were better than others, but even the better ones were tainted with greed and selfishness and hate. And then there were the really bad ones, the heads that struck me at a distance with their freight of evil, that stood out in a crowd like cancer cells in lymph gland.
Then there were the shielded minds, in which anything might be lurking.
I found Joe Gomez in a bar called the Yin-Yang.
It’s an underground dive with a street level entrance washed in the flutter of a defective fluorescent. Three figures were standing in the silver sometimes-light that night, and something about them caught my attention. They wore the fashionable greys of rich businessmen, and their minds were shielded. They were discussing something among themselves in a tone which suggested they had no wish to be overheard. And one of the guys had o-o tattooed on his cheek.
Now what the hell were three uptown executives doing whispering outside a slum bar at four o’clock in the morning? As sure as Allah is Allah not transacting business, I reasoned.
But I was wrong. They were.
I got close and listened in on their whispers. At the same time I became aware of an emanation from the subterranean Yin-Yang. The two connected. Casualwise, I slipped past the three execs and, once out of sight, jumped the steps two by two. The emanation was the sweet music of violin over din. My quest was almost over.
But not quite. I had to get him out, first.
The bar was a slouch. Felled junkies littered the various levels of the padded floor. I found the barman and asked him if the place had another entrance, and he indicated west.
Then I looked around and probed.
The guy with the harmonious brainvibes sat against the far wall, drinking beer. He wore the blue one-piece of an off-duty spacer, and I read with surprise that he was an Engineman. He was good-looking too in a dark, Spanish kind of way.
I glanced at the entrance. There was no sign of the executives. They were no doubt still debating whether this was the guy they intended to scrape. Obviously their telepath was a few grades below me; I knew immediately that the spacer was prime material for what they had in mind.
I projected an aura of authority and crossed the slouch. “Joe Gomez?”
He looked up, startled; surprised at being paged by a not-so-good-looking black girl. I realised that the telepath outside would be getting all this, too. So I slipped my shield from my tunic and palmed it onto his coverall. Then I grabbed his arm and blitzed him with a burst of life-or-death urgency.
As we hurried to the far door and up the steps I caught the tantalizing whiff of flux on his body. Then we were outside and swamped in the collective odours of a dozen ethnic fastfoods. “This way.”
I ran him up the alley and under an arch, then down a parallel thruway and up an overpass. Crowds got in the way and we barged through, making good progress. Years of drifting had superimposed a routemap of the quarter on my cortex. The execs would be floundering now, cursing their lost opportunity. I’d grabbed the golden goose and I could hardly believe my luck. To be on the safe side I took him across the boulevard and up a towerpile into a cheap Mexican restaurant I used when I was eating.
Outside, the city extended in a never-ending, jewelled stretch. The million coruscating points of light might have indicated as many foci of evil that night—but we were away from it all up here and I had Joe Gomez. I could hardly control my shaking.
Then it came to me how close he’d been to annihilation, and I broke down. “You stupid, stupid bastard,” I cried.
“Look, Sita—that’s your name, isn’t it?” He was bemused and embarrassed. He’d caught bits of me as I rushed him out, and he knew he owed me. “Who were those guys?”
“Who? Just your funeral directors, is who.” My tears were tears of relief now. “They were pirates in the scrape-tape industry. I overheard them before I got your vibes.”
“So? I could have been a star.”
“Yeah, a dead star, kid. Not many ways you can be killed nowadays, but they would’ve killed you dead.”
His tan disappeared and he looked sick. “But I thought the industry was legal? I’ve seen personatapes on sale in the marts-”
His naivety amazed me. “The personatape side of the thing is legal. They makes tapes of the famous, or how they think the famous might have been. But these pirates make personatapes of real people by squeezing fools like you dry. You’re so good you gave me raptures, and they wanted that.” And I was already wanting to snatch my shield away from him, wanting more...
He stared at his drink. He didn’t seem very convinced.
“Listen, kid. You know what they’d’ve done to you if I hadn’t happened along? They’d’ve killed you and taken your corpse to their workshop. They can scrape stiffs, and they’re easier to handle—don’t struggle. Then these guys, these pirates... they’d open your skull and go in deep and scrape the cerebellum, leaving your nervous system wrung out and fucked up. They’d get more than just emotions, they’d get everything. They’d rob you of your very self just to make a few fast creds, and then dump your body. And there’d be nothing no rep-surgeon could do to put you back together. You’d be dead. The only place you’d exist is on tape and as a ghost in the heads of non-telepaths who want the sensation of experiencing other states of being without having the operation.”
I took a long drink then, angry with him. “And keep that shield. I want you to stay alive. Consider it a present.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“For chrissake!” I exploded. “Where the hell do you usually drop? Don’t you know what a shield is for?”
“I work a line out of Lhasa, Kathmandu, Qorakpur... They’re quiet cities. I never really needed a shield there. This is my first time here...” He avoided my eyes and gazed out at the city.
“Yeah, well—think on next time. This isn’t no third world dive. This is for real. Mean City Central where you have to think to survive.”
He nodded, sipped his drink.
I cooled. “Where you from, Joe?”
“Seville, Europe. You?”
“Chittagong, what was onetime Bangladesh. China now.”
His gaze lingered on my tattoo. Then he saw the face on the back of my hand. “Your husband?”
I laughed. “Hey, Mr Innocent—you never seen one of these before?” I waved my hand around theatrically. “This guy’s my boss. He owns me. I’m indentured to him for anoth
er ten years.”
“I never realised...”
“No, well you wouldn’t, would you?” I glared at him, bitter. Then I smiled. I had to remind myself that I had a Mr-Nice-Guy here, who was naive-for-real and wasn’t playing me along.
I sighed, gave him history. “My parents sold me when I was four. They were poor and they needed the Rupees. I was one of six kids, and a girl, so I guess they didn’t miss me... I checked out psi-positive when I was five and had the operation. I had no say in the matter, they just cut me and hey-presto I had the curse of ability. I was taken by an Agency, trained, and sold to Gassner when I was six. I’ve been reading for small cred, ‘gum and a bed in a slum dwelling for nine years now.”
Joe Gomez was shocked. “Can’t you... I mean,” he shrugged. “Get out?”
“Like I said, in ten years when my indenture runs its course. This makes sure I don’t do anything stupid.” I held up the miniature of Gassner, his face stilled now; it’d come to life when he contacted me. “With this he knows where I am at all times. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
We rapped for ages, ordered tostadas, drank. Beneath the jive-assed, streetwise exterior I was like a little girl on her first date. I was trembling, and my voice cracked falsetto with excitement.
Joe Gomez... He was short, dark, around twenty. He had a strong, handsome face, but his eyes were evasive and shy. It was what lived behind those eyes that I was interested in, though... He was pure, and I needed pure. I wanted to get into him, become one. I was nothing special to look at, but I was sure that if I let him take a look inside my head, gave him the experience... But at the same time I was scared shitless I might frighten him away.
We watched the dawn spread behind distant towerpiles.
My heart was hammering when I said tentatively, “Where you staying, Joe?”
“I just got in. I haven’t fixed a place yet. Maybe you know somewhere?”
“I...” There was something in my mouth, preventing words. “You can always stay at my place. It’s not much, but...” Sweet Allah, my eyes were brimming again.
“I don’t know...”
“Give me the shield,” I said.
“I get it. If I don’t come with you, you want your present back, right?” He sounded hurt.
“Balls. I might be other things but I’m no cheat. I want to show you something.”
He passed me the shield, a silver oval a little smaller then a joint case, and I put it out of range on a nearby table. His goodness swamped me, and I swooned in the glow. I pushed myself at him, invaded him, showed him what it was like to have someone inside his head... Then we staggered from the towerpile and rode the boulevard to the slums.
Joe was on a three-week furlough, and we spent every day together. We were inseparable, cute lovers like you see on the boulevard Sunday afternoons. The girl from Chittagong and the boy from Seville... I got better quick, saned-up and began enjoying life. I stopped drifting and phased out the ‘gum. I didn’t need them, now. Joe was my kick, and I overdosed.
We explored the city together. I saw life through his eyes, and what I saw was good. We tried personatapes. He’d be an Elizabethan dandy for a day, and I’d be Bo Ventura, latest hologram movie queen. Once we even sexed as Sir Richard Burton and Queen Victoria, just for the hell of it. We made straight love often, and sometimes we’d exchange bodies; I’d become him and he’d become me. I’d move into him, pushing into his central nervous system and transferring him to mine. I’d experiment with the novelty of a male body, in control of slabs of muscle new to me, and Joe would thrill to the sensation of vagina and breasts. At climax we’d be unable to hold on any longer and the rapture of returning, our disembodied personas twanging back to base, left us wiped out for hours.
Then one day towards the end of his furlough Joe pulled me out of bed and dressed me in my black skinsuit like a kid. We boarded a flier and mach’d uptown. “Where to?” I asked, sleepy ‘gainst his shoulder.
“I’m a spacer-” he said, which I’d figured already. He was an Engineman, a fluxer whose shift was three months in a tank pushing a Satori Line bigship through the nada-continuum. “And I want to show you something.”
We decanted atop the Satori Line towerpile that housed the space museum, and entered a triangular portal flanked by company militia. The chamber inside corresponded to the shape of the portal, a steel grey wedge, and we were the only visitors that day. By the entrance was the holographic sculpture of a man, vaguely familiar; the scientist who discovered the nada-continuum and opened the way for the starships.
Through Joe I had experienced everything that he’d experienced. His past was mine, his every sensation a shared event. I’d travelled with him to Timbuktu—and as far as Epsilon Indi. But there was one experience of his that defied my comprehension. When he entered the flux-tank of a bigship I could not go with him; I had no idea what it was to flux. Joe knew, of course, but he was unable to describe the sensation. He likened it to a mystical experience, but when I pressed him he could draw no real analogues. To flux was an experience of the soul, he said, and not of the mind—which was perhaps why I floundered.
We walked down the ringing aisle of the space museum. At the far end, on the plinth and cordoned by a low-powered laser-guard, was a trapezoid of blackness framed in a stasis-brace. What we had here, according to the inscription, was a harnessed chunk of the nada-continuum.
It did nothing to impress a sleepy Bangladeshi, until she saw the expression on the face of her lover. Gomez was a goner; even transfer-sex had failed to wipe him like this. “Joe...?”
He came to his senses and glanced over his shoulder at the entrance. Then he vaulted over the laser-guard and lifted me quickly after him. “This is it, Sita. Take a look.”
After a time the blackness became more than just an absence of light. It swirled and eddied in a mystical vortex like obsidian made fluid. I too became mesmerised, drawn towards a fathomless secret never to be revealed.
“What is it?” I asked, stupidly. I leaned forward. Joe held me back. He warned me that the interface could decapitate me as neat as any guillotine.
“It’s the essence of nothing, Sita. That which underpins everything. It’s Heaven and Nirvana and Enlightenment. The ultimate Zen state...”
His voice became inaudible, and then he said, “I’ve been there...” And I recalled something—the ineffable blackness I’d scanned a while back. My mind reached out for something just beyond its grasp, a mental spectre as elusive as the wind... Then the spell was broken.
Joe laughed, pulled himself away and smiled at me. He jumped back over the laser-guard and plucked me out. We held each other then, and merged. His period of furlough was coming to an end. Soon he would be leaving me, drawn away to another rendezvous with the nada-continuum. I should have been jealous, perhaps. But instead I was grateful to whatever it was that made him... himself.
Hand in hand we ran through the chamber like kids.
Allah, those three weeks...
They had to end, and they did.
And it happened that Joe died a fluxdeath pushing his boat through the Out-there beyond star Groombridge. That which had nourished him kicked back and killed him, with just three days to go before he came home to me.
* * * *
I quit Gassner’s and drop to the boulevard, my head full of Becky Kennedy and her loving parents. As I leave the towerpile a shadow latches on to me and tails, keeping a safe distance. I ride the boulevard to the coast.
Carnival town is a lighted parabola delineating the black bite of the bay. I choose myself a quiet jetty away from the sonic vibes and photon strobes, fold myself into the lotus position and wait.
Overhead, below a million burning stars, bigships drift in noiseless, clamped secure in phosphorescent stasis-grids. Ten kilometres out to sea the spaceport pontoon is a blazing inferno, with a constant flow of starships arriving and departing. Joe blasted out from here on his last trip, and for weeks after his departure the dull thunder o
f the ships, phasing out of this reality, brought tears to my eyes. Back then I came out here often, sat and contemplated the constellations, the stars where Joe might’ve been. He’s back now, but I still like to stare into space and try to figure out just where the accident happened.
A noise along the jetty, the clapping of a sun-warped board, indicates my shadow has arrived. I sense his presence, towering over me. “Spider,” I say. “Sit down. I’ve been expecting you.” And I have—he’s one of the few people I can rely on to help me.
Spider Lo is a first-grade telepath and he works for the biggest Agency in the West. He’s about as thin as me, but twice as tall. He earned enough last year to buy himself a femur-extension, and I was the first to admit he looked really impressive riding the boulevard, especially in a crowd. He’s a Chink, and I should hate him for that, but he’s a gentle guy and we get along fine.