Engineman - Eric Brown [177]
The diamond burned as bright as any primary, filling the chamber with golden light. It stood on a pedestal, protected by a hexagon of high-powered lasers.
"Do you know its story?" Jo whispered. "They call it the 'Healing Stone'."
Thirty years ago... An expedition to the Lyra in Beta cluster... A bigship made touchdown on a new world, an Earth-norm planet never before explored. The spacers mapped and charted and came up with another world fit for colonisation, and lifted off. And after three days in space the crew came down with a potentially lethal viral infection, and they re-routed and headed to the nearest Terran base with adequate medical facilities to deal with the hundred-plus dying spacers... And the ship hit trouble, crashlanded on Epsilon VII, uncharted and hostile, light years from anywhere and months away from help... So the crew set to work concocting a cure from the resources at hand on the planet... And on the day that a spacer found a giant diamond, the Star of Epsilon, the drugs administered to the dying crew began to take effect... And they pulled through with no casualties... And the spacers, a superstitious lot at the best of times, put it down to the luck of the largest diamond ever discovered.
The Healing Stone.
"Do you believe that?" I asked Jo.
She smiled. "Do you?"
We drank champagne on a patio overlooking the Seine, and Jodie told me of her dream.
"How long have you had it planned?" I asked.
"Oh... well before they paid me off. I knew I was dying, that I had to have the creds."
"Then why the cabaret?"
"I need the feedback, the knowledge that sooner or later all those fuckers are going with me. Of course, if it works..." She smiled at me. "Abe... do you believe in happy endings?"
I just smiled at her, unable to reply.
She finished her champagne. "C'mon. It's time we were getting there..." And as she rose clumsily from the table I noticed that she was shaking with fear and anticipation and pain.
I wanted to tell her, then - I wanted nothing more than to tell her the truth.
I was desperate two months back, before the Paris run.
I contacted my agent. "I need more material! My repertoire's getting stale, all the same old stuff. The competition has everything I've got, and more-"
"I thought you had that black hole original, the Kolkata show?"
I sighed. "I have. It's original now, but how long will that last? How long before someone finds an Engineman willing to sell another event horizon fly-by?"
"So what do you suggest?"
I told him. He said he'd be in touch, and rang off. I spent a tense hour in my room above the club, dreaming of far stars. Then the vid chimed and I dived at it.
"I've found him," he said. "The rest is up to you."
The Engineman emeritus received me in his penthouse suite. A big wall-window overlooked night-time Paris and valuable starscapes adorned the walls.
He wore charisma that scintillated like silver lamé. He was a tall, grizzled African in his early eighties, muscular still despite his age, his years in flux.
"Your agent called. What he proposed I find quite novel. I've never heard of it before."
"It's common," I told him. "The process has been around for years. Space is especially popular now - people need what they've never had."
He poured stiff drinks and we sat on foamforms before the view.
"You pushed a bigship for the Cincinnati Line," I said.
He smiled in recollection. "The bigship Hanumati on ten year runs to the farthest reaches of the Out-there."
"They say the flux is ecstasy," I said.
He chuckled. "Ecstasy? More like Heaven, man..." And he described the sensation as best he could.
Then he stopped and looked at me. "Your agent said you wanted to buy the Hanumati run?"
"I'd like to make an analogue for my show. I'd be able to pay you fifty thousand creds-"
"I don't want your creds!" he snapped. "What do you think creds mean to me?"
"But I couldn't possibly-"
"I'll give you the run," he said. "Or you don't get it at all..."
I had brought along a holdall full of jacks and leads and monitoring equipment.