Engineman - Eric Brown [175]
And my act?
How many of the crowd who freaked out on Jo's act came to mine? Their diametric content would suggest none, but I hoped some people needed antidote.
I'd start simple. I'd give them the experience of an Engineman emerging from the flux; the elusive ghost of rapture that haunted his mind; the drone of auxiliary burners; the knowledge that we were lighting into the Nilakantha Stardrift on a mission of rescue. Then I'd hold this sensory input under and come in with the voice-over: "Fifty years ago I mind-pushed bigships for the Canterbury Line..."
I'd take them at hyper-c through the nada-continuum, coming out places they'd only dreamed about or seen in travel brochures. Black holes were a favourite, and I took them on a tour of a giant nicknamed Kolkata, courting disaster on the hazardous event horizon, the bigship a surfer on the math of Einstein-Fernandez physics. Then I'd sling the 'ship at a blistering tangent off across uncharted space, on the trail of new and more wondrous adventure... The main theme was always wonder - the hint of Nirvana that every Engineman experiences in the flux.
My customers left satisfied, uplifted.
Then one night after her performance Jo was stretchered off comatose, and I didn't know whether to feel relief that at last she had died, or sadness at the passing of someone I had hardly known. Later the manager told me that Jo was fine, she'd recover. Would I fill in for her this week? And I said yes, relieved that I might have the opportunity to get to know her, after all, and hating myself because of that.
We're quark-harvesting a long, long way from Earth. I step from the flux-tank, as we are coasting now. I look through the viewscreen, behold the sweeping sickle sponsons reaping fiery quarks. The 'aft scene is even more spectacular, a panoramic miracle. The converted energy is fired from the bigship in blinding c-velocity bolts, streaking away on a multi-billion light year bend that describes the inner curve of the universe. And I'm moved almost to tears, along with my audience, though for different reasons.
For a long time after the performance I sat yogi-fashion. The crowd cheered and applauded, then moved back to the bar or out into the night. And I was ashamed, like a preacher who has convinced his congregation but does not himself believe.
Technicians dismantled the rig, unplugged me and wound in the leads. A few tourists tried to get to me, to say how much they'd enjoyed the performance. They were stopped by the heavies, who knew how low I felt after my act.
The club never closed, but trade hit a low around four in the morning. I was still there then, in the darkness of the stage, thinking back and regretting the events of all those years ago, the pretence of the present. A few junkies slouched at the bar, getting their fix jugularwise.
As I sat, a kid crawled from a cushioned bunker between the bar and the stage. She headed my way on all fours, galumphing over cushions and the wraparound membranes in the floor. I assumed she was a fan who wanted to rap about how it was to flux on the bigships.
She climbed aboard the stage and sat before me cross-legged, like a mirror-image of myself. She had long black hair, too luxuriant for a kid her age, too sensual.
"I loved your performance," she said in a husky voice which, like her hair, belonged to a thirty year-old.
She had a triangular, coffee-brown face and large green eyes. She should have been a nice-looking kid, but there was some disunity in the planes of her cheeks which made her almost ugly.
"Hey," I said, weary. "Go home, kid. Get some sleep."
A flash of emerald anger. "I said I liked your show."
"And I said-"
"Abe," she smiled, serious.