Engineman - Eric Brown [196]
I'm tearful when I leave the hive and ride across town.
After I heard about Joe's death I began drifting again.
I got back on the 'gum and stopped eating and hit the darktime quarter. When I wasn't working I got high and drifted without sleep for nights, probing, seeking... It was impossible, of course. What I was seeking I had found and lost, and there could be no substitutes, however good. There were no more Joes, and it was no good telling myself that there had to be. It was too soon after his death and I was still too close to him to accept anyone else.
Then I got it into my head that Joe was still alive. I thought I could feel his brainvibes in the air, as if he existed somewhere in the world and was trying to get through to me. I concentrated and struggled to contact him, to prove to myself that he was still alive. Crazy, I know...
But I was right.
It was a month after the accident and I spent more and more time tripping on acid shorts and trying to forget. I reckoned that if maybe I could lose my identity, then the pain wouldn't be so bad.
Joe called a couple of nights later.
I was laid out on my bunk, coming down after a week of crazy, crazy nights drifting and tripping. My head was alive with vivid nightmares and Joe played a starring role.
When his face appeared on the vidscreen I knew it was a hallucination. "Sita!" it shouted. "It's me - Joe!"
I giggled. "I know you're dead, Joe. You died Out-there. You can't kid me."
"Sita..." His arms were braced on either side of the screen, and his head hung close. It looked like Joe, but there was something wrong with the geometry of the features. They were too clean-cut and perfect to be Joe's, even though they resembled his. Some effect of the acid, obviously...
"Sita, please - listen!" He was near to tears. "I know I died a fluxdeath. But they got me out in time. They saved me. They put me back together in a Soma-Sim and-"
"Where are you?" But I didn't believe. I was still hallucinating. Joe was dead, and what I saw on the screen was a phantom of my imagination.
"That's why I called. I need your help. I'm at the city sub-orb station. I just got in. I need your help..." He looked over the screen, then behind him. When he stared at me again I saw that he was swaying, holding the set for support.
I crawled across the bunk and sat on the edge. I could not bring myself to believe, however much I wanted to. If I rested all my hope on what turned out to be cruel illusion...
"Joe... What's wrong, Joe?"
"They're after me, Sita. The pirates. They almost had me. I got away. Please... come and get me." He grinned then, a wry quirk of the lips I knew so well and loved. "I can't move. They hit me and I can't move. I managed to get this far..."
I staggered around the room and collected my clothes. I struggled into the bare minimum required for decency and dropped to the street. I hailed a flier, gave the destination and collapsed in the back seat. I knew there'd be no Joe when I got there; already our dialogue was becoming dreamlike. It was too much to hope that I could save him a second time...
At the station I told the flier to wait and stumbled into the crowded foyer. I wasn't wearing my ferronniere and the absence of brainhowl was a relief. The call-booths were ranked at the far end beside a Somalian fast-food joint. I pushed through the crowd and collapsed against the first crystal pod. The caller inside gestured me away. I staggered from booth to booth, my desperation increasing when each one turned out to be empty. With three to go and still no sign of Joe I gave up and went berserk. I crashed against them one after the other, flailing at the doors with my fists. The last door remained stubbornly shut, as if pinned by a weight on the inside. I peered over the privacy screen and my heart went nova. Joe had slipped to the floor with his cyber-legs folded beneath him at crazy angles. He grinned when he saw me and reached out his arms...