Engineman - Eric Brown [114]
Instead she passed out.
Chapter Nineteen
Mirren stood with Bobby in the engine-room, an arm around his brother's shoulders. He had showered and changed and felt refreshed, though aware of his bruised and battered body. He was experiencing also a return of the Heine's symptoms: hot sweats, nausea and bone-aching weariness. He had left his medication back at the apartment, though his concern was cancelled out by the thought of the flux. Right now, he told himself, he would gladly die in four years just to be able to mind-push again.
Beyond the triangular viewscreen, the technicians were making final preparations for the phase-out. The irony of the situation was not lost on Mirren. The techs, with their head-mikes and monitors, going about their business in the hallowed chambers of Notre-Dame, were the subjects in a frieze signifying the triumph of science over superstition. He acknowledged another paradox inherent in the situation: that the event towards which the scientists were working would itself be transformed into superstition by credulous believers like his brother and Dan.
Behind them, the engine-room was in the semi-darkness that Enginemen found conducive to their pre-flux preparations. Even a materialist like Mirren had to admit that a darkened room was requisite to proper contemplation of the task at hand. Other Enginemen, believers and Disciples, went in for a long and complex series of rituals, involving prayers, mantras and incense: the engine-rooms on some of the 'ship's he'd pushed were like Eastern shrines and temples. He was pleased to see that this chamber was wholly functional. Alpha-numerics sequenced along the flank of the flux-tank, a tubular silver catafalque on a raised stage against the bulkhead. Beside it was the co-pilot's auxiliary command web, a cat's-cradle slung between a horseshoe console. Black, padded foam-forms and couches gave the engineroom the appearance of an exclusive, hi-tech bar.
Mirren rubbed the back of his neck, hoping to ease the pulsating ache at the base of his skull. He had tried to ignore it for the past thirty minutes, but he knew what it meant.
Dan and Miguelino, the Gamma Engineman who would be the co-pilot on this mission, rode the downchute and stepped into the engineroom. Miguelino moved to his web and strapped himself in. Dan joined them before the viewscreen.
"Ready, Ralph?"
Mirren nodded. Earlier, he'd drawn first push in the tank, Bobby the second and Dan the third.
In the cathedral, the techs monitoring their consoles turned and regarded the smallship. The pilot up in the nose-cone radioed to the co-pilot that phase-out was imminent. As Mirren watched, Hunter stepped forward from a group of scientists, his halved face bright in the wash of light from the 'ship. He raised his arm in a salute of farewell. Mirren and Dan returned the gesture.
"We're phasing," Bobby murmured. "We're phasing, I can feel it!"
As he spoke, the Sublime phased out. A low-pitched hum filled the air. Seen from within the 'ship, it was the outside world which seemed to undergo the vanishing process. Reality flickered with ever-increasing frequency: the tableau of Hunter and the technicians in the nave alternated with the cobalt light of the continuum, the effect stroboscopic in the final stages before full integration was achieved. Then the scene inside the cathedral vanished finally and all that could be seen was the deep blue of the nada-continuum, shot through with opalescent streaks which flowed like streamers.
Dan withdrew the slide-bed from the flux-tank. The low humming cut out, and the resulting silence was eerie, as if the surrounding continuum soaked up every sound. Mirren experienced a feeling of familiar euphoria as he sat on the padded slide-bed and underwent the process of entankment he had dreamed about for so long. He removed his jacket and touched a command on his occipital-console, opening the dozen sockets of the spar which spanned his shoulders. Dan pulled the first input lead from within the tank, then the next, and jacked them in. They