Engineman - Eric Brown [193]
Joe Gomez was shocked. "Can't you... I mean," he shrugged. "Get out?"
"Like I said, in ten years when my indenture runs its course. This makes sure I don't do anything stupid." I held up the miniature of Gassner, his face stilled now; it'd come to life when he contacted me. "With this he knows where I am at all times. There's nothing I can do about it."
We rapped for ages, ordered tostadas, drank. Beneath the jive-assed, streetwise exterior I was like a little girl on her first date. I was trembling, and my voice cracked falsetto with excitement.
Joe Gomez... He was short, dark, around twenty. He had a strong, handsome face, but his eyes were evasive and shy. It was what lived behind those eyes that I was interested in, though... He was pure, and I needed pure. I wanted to get into him, become one. I was nothing special to look at, but I was sure that if I let him take a look inside my head, gave him the experience... But at the same time I was scared shitless I might frighten him away.
We watched the dawn spread behind distant towerpiles.
My heart was hammering when I said tentatively, "Where you staying, Joe?"
"I just got in. I haven't fixed a place yet. Maybe you know somewhere?"
"I..." There was something in my mouth, preventing words. "You can always stay at my place. It's not much, but..." Sweet Allah, my eyes were brimming again.
"I don't know..."
"Give me the shield," I said.
"I get it. If I don't come with you, you want your present back, right?" He sounded hurt.
"Balls. I might be other things but I'm no cheat. I want to show you something."
He passed me the shield, a silver oval a little smaller then a joint case, and I put it out of range on a nearby table. His goodness swamped me, and I swooned in the glow. I pushed myself at him, invaded him, showed him what it was like to have someone inside his head... Then we staggered from the towerpile and rode the boulevard to the slums.
Joe was on a three-week furlough, and we spent every day together. We were inseparable, cute lovers like you see on the boulevard Sunday afternoons. The girl from Chittagong and the boy from Seville... I got better quick, saned-up and began enjoying life. I stopped drifting and phased out the 'gum. I didn't need them, now. Joe was my kick, and I overdosed.
We explored the city together. I saw life through his eyes, and what I saw was good. We tried personatapes. He'd be an Elizabethan dandy for a day, and I'd be Bo Ventura, latest hologram movie queen. Once we even sexed as Sir Richard Burton and Queen Victoria, just for the hell of it. We made straight love often, and sometimes we'd exchange bodies; I'd become him and he'd become me. I'd move into him, pushing into his central nervous system and transferring him to mine. I'd experiment with the novelty of a male body, in control of slabs of muscle new to me, and Joe would thrill to the sensation of vagina and breasts. At climax we'd be unable to hold on any longer and the rapture of returning, our disembodied personas twanging back to base, left us wiped out for hours.
Then one day towards the end of his furlough Joe pulled me out of bed and dressed me in my black skinsuit like a kid. We boarded a flier and mach'd uptown. "Where to?" I asked, sleepy 'gainst his shoulder.
"I'm a spacer-" he said, which I'd figured already. He was an Engineman, a fluxer whose shift was three months in a tank pushing a Satori Line bigship through the nada-continuum. "And I want to show you something."
We decanted atop the Satori Line towerpile that housed the space museum, and entered a triangular portal flanked by company militia. The chamber inside corresponded to the shape of the portal, a steel grey wedge, and we were the only visitors that day. By the entrance was the holographic sculpture of a man, vaguely familiar; the scientist who discovered the nada-continuum and opened the way for the starships.
Through Joe I had experienced everything that he'd experienced. His past was mine, his every sensation a shared event. I'd travelled with him to Timbuktu - and as far