Engineman - Eric Brown [178]
He jacked the leads into his occipital computer and bled images and sensations of the Hanumati run into the monitor. I edited it, strung together the highlights, then interfaced and downloaded the synthesis into my occipital. As always, the analogue didn't include the experience of fluxing - that was impossible, something only Enginemen could get in situ - but the rest of the analogue was pure high-powered wonder. The data detonated my synapses in a series of explosions until my cerebellum nova'd.
I couldn't recall leaving. I staggered through the nighttime streets in a daze. When I made it to my room I collapsed in my cot, blasted. I was on a high for twenty-four hours, then came down slow on waves of self-pity and regret.
Orly spaceport...
It took me back. As a kid I'd watched wide-eyed, fingers hooked through the diamond mesh, as the Bigships trundled home from interstellar runs. And I'd dreamed...
It was a long time to wait for a dream to come true. But, as this dream was likely to be a nightmare, perhaps that was just as well.
Jo had the fence pre-cut, and we crawled through quick, the snipped wire clawing at our clothing. Once inside Jo clank-stomped, stiff-legged, towards a parked mini-roller, and I limped after her. We climbed aboard, Jo took the controls and we jolted off across the lighted tarmac. We passed through the inner fence under the bored gaze of a security guard, who waved us through when Jo flashed her old authorisation pass. We trundled towards a hangar and Jo brought us to a halt outside.
She was about to climb down when I caught her arm. "Jo - I don't think-"
She glared at me. "You can't back out now, Abe! You promised-"
So I swallowed my protest and climbed down after her.
She ran clumsily to the vast, sliding doors, plugged a lead into her implant and jacked into the lock's computer socket. She closed her eyes, summoning codes, and the door clicked and rolled open a metre. We slipped inside.
"The Pride of Baghdad," Jo told me, playing a flashlight over the squat bulk of an old Smallship. "Ex-Iraqi space fleet. They sold it to Europe for scrap, but there's one more run in the old tub yet."
We climbed a welded ladder and Jo used her lead again on the hatch. It sprang open and the interior of the Baghdad lit up, exuding the aroma of stale sweat and flux.
We dropped into the engineroom.
"You know how to pilot this crate?" I asked, delaying the inevitable.
"I worked on the Baghdad last job," she told me. "I shunted her across the 'port once or twice. I know how to pilot her. I got everything measured down to the last centimetre." She looked at me. "What you waiting for, Abe?" She had discarded her wig along the way and, bald, she looked thinner and more vulnerable than ever.
I paused by the sen-dep tank that I had experienced only in the memories of other men. I lifted the hatch and stared at the slide-bed, the complication of leads.
"Abe...?"
In a whisper: "I'm not an Engineman, Jo."
She stared at me. "What?"
"I've never fluxed before, Jo. I can't do it."
Her expression was more than just horrified. She seemed to die before me, to age. She slumped, a hand going to the tank for support.
Her voice trembled with the imminence of tears. "But... but I jacked into your performance, Abe. I could feel your need to flux."
"The performance was just that, Jo. A performance. I used analogues, cerebral recollections from real Enginemen and spacers. My need to flux was just a futile yearning to do what I'd never done, but had always wanted to do."
Jo just shook her head. "Abe...?"
"I was turned down by the Rousseau Line when I was twenty-one," I said. "So I took up cabaret. It was the only way I could experience starflight, convince people that I'd once been a spacer... Sometimes I even managed to convince myself that I'd been up there."
"Can't you do it just this once, Abe?" She was in tears. "Just for me?"
I stared at the tank. "That's one thing I never experienced," I said, more to myself than to Jo. "Even in analogue. The actual experience of flux can't be reproduced. Enginemen say