Engineman - Eric Brown [1]
"Stay clear and allow me on my way!" He was obviously terrified. There was something at once pathetic about the plea, and yet dignified.
Mirren held out a hand and stepped forward.
"You can't stop me!" the old man called, swinging the bottle in a crazy sweep.
Hard on the realisation that he was dealing with flesh and blood, and not ectoplasm, Mirren assumed that the man was an old drunk who had wandered onto the spaceport by mistake. Then it came to him that, a drunk though the oldster might be, he once had been something more - and that his presence on the 'field was intentional. He recognised the look of bewildered abandonment in the oldster's eyes, heightened by the wild grey hair and straggling beard. His physical enfeeblement spoke of a similar state of mental disorientation. Mirren looked for and found the bulky spar of an occipital console spanning the oldster's shoulders beneath his silversuit like a miniaturised yoke.
"No closer! Leave me be!" He swayed, swinging the bottle in his fist. It slipped from his fingers and shattered at his feet. A dark stain spread across the tarmac and the reek of cognac rose in the hot night air.
"Mirren. An Alpha with the Canterbury Line on the Martian Epiphany for five years. Then five on the Perseus Bound. Take it easy, I'm on your side."
The old Engineman looked up from the broken bottle. Something in his gaze softened. "An Alpha with the Canterbury Line?" Their eyes met, and more was communicated in the silence than either man could possibly have spoken.
"Macready," the oldster whispered. "Beta. Javelin Line. Twenty years on the Pride of Idaho."
Their hands locked in a shake. Mirren felt as if he were crushing the fragile bones of a small bird.
He noticed, tattooed on the crepe-textured skin of Macready's right bicep, the infinity symbol of the Church of the Disciples of the Nada-Continuum. Aware of what the old Engineman had planned to do here tonight, Mirren felt both awe and horror at his certainty, his faith.
It was as if Macready had read his thoughts. "You can't stop me," he said softly. "I've thought long and hard about it. I have my reasons. I'm old, and ill. Now, if you'd kindly let me by."
Mirren indicated the alien landscape through the distant interface. The 'face stood as high as a towerblock and twice as long, braced in an arc-lighted girder frame. The juxtaposition of a daylight scene set against the backdrop of the Paris night was like something from a surreal work of art.
"It's activated, Macready. You'd end up on that world - even if you managed to evade security. And one planet is much like any other without the flux."
"If you'd not come after me-"
"You still wouldn't have made it in time."
"When does it close again?"
Mirren shrugged. "One hour, two. Whenever they're through with the deliveries." He stepped past Macready, opened the hatch of his flier and pulled out a half litre of scotch from the dash.
"I've almost finished here. We could sit and watch the transfer...?"
"And when it's finished, I can go on my way?"
"How can I stop you?" Mirren asked. In an hour or two, Macready would be in no fit state to go anywhere.
As he helped the frail old man into the passenger seat, Mirren asked himself what right he had to deny the ex-Engineman his destiny. Macready had faith - which was more than he had - and all he wanted was a return to the One.
Mirren engaged the up-thrusters. He banked away from the containers, sped across the 'field and collected the last unit. It hung from the magnet on the base of his vehicle, projecting fore and aft, fully three times as long as the flier. Mirren returned to the stack, dropped the last container and mach'd away on a parabolic course around the periphery of the 'port.
"Where we going?"