Engineman - Eric Brown [157]
The first step in the production of a crystal, even before the choice of subject matter, was the preparation of the thousand or so individual gems. I arranged the console on my workbench and set about the fusion process. I had chanced upon the method to do this almost by accident a few months earlier. Like most people, I had kept crystals and toyed with them occasionally. I found that the stronger the emotion infused into a crystal, the longer it remained. Superficial emotions or simple messages were gone in seconds; but love and hate lingered for long minutes... Now, from time to time, the remains of the computer that linked with my cortex gave me nightmares, blinding images of the nova chasing the ship. And the sheer terror that these nightmares produced in me...
I had been sure that if I could soak a few crystals with this fire-terror, it would last long enough so that people might gain an appreciable insight into what I had gone through.
So the next time I'd awoken with the inferno raging inside my head, I was ready. I'd jacked the leads into my skull-sockets - the same I had used as an Engineman to achieve the state of flux - wound the wires around my arm and attached the fingerclips. I could have simply held the crystals, but I wanted to gain the maximum effect. When the nightmare began I fumbled for the racked crystals beside my mattress and played a firestorm arpeggio across the faceted surface.
The result was not what I had expected; instead of impressing my terror on the crystals, I had unknowingly fused them into one big diamond slab. Not only that, but when I experimented with these transformed crystals later in the day I found that the emotions I discharged - my love for Ana, as ever - remained locked indelibly into the structure of the gems.
I had worked at the technique of bringing about the nightmare at will, and The Wreck Of The John Marston was my first effort. Christianna Santesson had snapped it up and signed me on practically seconds after first experiencing it. According to her, I was made.
Now I fused the largest console I'd ever done and began transferring emotions and images. I recreated the atmosphere of the flight before the tragedy, the camaraderie that existed between the crew members. Further on in the crystal I would introduce the accident as a burst of stunning horror. To begin with, I committed to crystal the times I had made weightless love to Ana, relived again the sensation of her sturdy little body entwined with mine in the astro-nacelle. Ana was a Gujarati engineer with a shaven head and bandy legs covered with tropical ulcers the shape of bite marks. We had met when she was assigned to the John Marston, and we had been lovers for two years before that last flight.
The sun was going down behind distant towerpiles when I realised that I'd gone as far as I could for this session. I was drained and emotionally exhausted. I had worked all day without thought of food and drink; the task had sustained me. I took an acid short from the cooler, dragged myself across to the foamform mattress and collapsed. I was drifting into sleep - and into certain dreams of Ana - when the call came through.
I crawled to the screen and opened communications. The picture showed a large studio with a figure diminished in the perspective. Lin Chakra stood with her back to the screen and turned when it chimed. "So there you are. You took so long I thought you must be out."
"I very rarely go out," I told her.
"No?" She walked towards the screen and peered through at me, her expression as stern and unsmiling as ever. "Well, how about tonight? Remember what we arranged yesterday? I'd like to show you some work I'm doing."
I considered. I had enjoyed the novelty of her company yesterday, and talking to her had proved an inspiration. "I'd like that," I said. She gave me directions and I told her I'd be over in thirty minutes.
I rode the moving boulevard to