Engineman - Eric Brown [118]
Dan trolleyed out the slide-bed and Mirren emerged into the blue light of the engine-room. Physically, he might have been withdrawn from the continuum, but mentally he was still suffused with the wonder of the flux: it was as if his circulatory system was filled not with blood but with some effervescent fluid instead - a champagne rush which surged with his heartbeat and filled him with a sublime, light-headed sensation of well-being.
He sat up and Dan unjacked the leads from his occipital console, then assisted him from the slide-bed. He wanted to compare notes with Dan about what Fekete had told him in the tank, discuss the repercussions of what they had learned from the digitalised Nigerian, but he was too blitzed to speak. He knew that this rapturous state of being was what persuaded most Enginemen that they had experienced union with the ultimate, but even now the rationalist in Mirren told him that what he had in fact experienced was no more than a massive over-stimulation of his brain's pleasure cells. Later, the high would ebb away, leaving him to come to terms with mundane reality and craving his next bout of flux.
The Sublime was becalmed in the continuum, awaiting motive power. Pacific blue light flooded the engineroom as Bobby climbed carefully onto the slide-bed. Dan inserted the jacks, murmuring some Disciples' mantra, and Bobby's expression became rapturous.
Mirren took his brother's hand. He was filled with an inexpressible sadness, and at the same time he felt the residue of the wonder of the continuum within him, and he knew he had no right to resent his brother's decision to experience that wonder for himself.
Chapter Twenty
Bobby felt the padded surface of the slide-bed beneath him. Dan Leferve adjusted his occipital console preparatory to inserting the jacks. Ralph took his hand. Good luck, Bobby, he signed.
"Don't fear for me, Ralph," Bobby said. "I want this. More than anything, I want this."
He was seeing the delayed vision of his room, and recalled that he had been thinking about his brother at this time yesterday, about Ralph's illness. Then, as now, he was ambivalent about the fact that Ralph had Heine's; as far as he was concerned, Ralph was bound for a better place, but that was no consolation to Ralph, and Bobby felt for him. He was aware also of what effect this giving of himself to the continuum, and possible death, would be having on his brother.
While Dan readied his console, Bobby looked at a Buddhist tanka on the wall of his room, a cyclic depiction of the cosmos. It was not quite right philosophically, he reflected, but it was perhaps the most appropriate symbol to be taking with him into the flux-tank.
Dan slipped the jacks home one by one, with a care that was almost reverent. Bobby felt their solid, satisfying contact conducted through his skull. For years he had sustained himself with meditation, his tenuous contact with the continuum staving off the craving which affected other Enginemen. Now he was about to achieve total union, and the fact was almost inconceivable.
Gentle hands forced him backwards so that he was lying on the slide-bed. Ralph took his hand, squeezed one last time as the bed drew him into the tank.
He felt the bed beneath him, the padded surface under his fingertips. His vision flittered around the far wall of his room. He could smell the incense burning from the day before. Seconds elapsed. Soon he would be pushing the 'ship through the nada-continuum.
He had expected to wait twenty-four hours before experiencing the wonder of the continuum. He would be in the tank, reliving the day before in his room, and only twenty-four hours later would the experience of the union begin, and flood his senses with an ineffable tide of wonder.
He was reconciling himself to the delay