Engineman - Eric Brown [2]
"I know where we'll get a good view."
They approached a crescent of abandoned mansions overlooking the 'port. The buildings were three centuries old, ornate and foursquare. Alien creepers shrouded their facades, bearing blood-red orchid-like blooms and other spectacular flowers.
Macready screwed round in his seat. "You said you were Mirren?" He paused. "Surely not Bob Mirren?"
Mirren stiffened, as if liquid nitrogen had replaced his spinal fluid. "I'm Ralph," he said. "Bobby's my brother."
"I knew Max Thorn," Macready said. "Second man to go down with the Syndrome."
Mirren said nothing. He hoped Macready would drop the subject. The silence stretched in the darkness, and as if Macready had sensed Mirren's distress, he said, "I'm sorry."
Mirren cut the thrust and the flier settled on the flat rooftop of a central mansion. He climbed out and helped Macready down. The old man was weak with an infirmity that could not be wholly the result of his advanced years.
Mirren pulled an old chesterfield from beneath a polythene awning and positioned it at the edge of the roof, where the roots of an extraterrestrial vine gripped the edge like clinging fingers. He assisted Macready to the thick, sprung cushion and sat down beside him.
Macready whistled in appreciation. "Fernandez!" he said, invoking the name of the physicist who'd discovered the nada-continuum.
They had a grandstand view of that area of the 'port directly beneath the rearing interface. Down below, giant container-hovercraft and juggernauts approached the hazy membrane of the 'face and were processed through, their shapes giving off sparkling coronas of ball-lightening. Instantly they were light years away, trundling across the tarmac of the distant colony planet.
Mirren fumbled with the cap on the scotch, took a slug and passed the bottle to Macready.
He came up here when there was no other way to vent his rage. He'd drink his scotch and hurl the empty bottle and curse the invention which had ended his affair with the numinous flux.
The interface did its job with disdainful ease and precision, opening portals to worlds separated by light years so that they were connected for periods of up to six hours. Goods could be driven - driven - from world to world. Alien planets no longer had mystique; the stars had lost their romance. Space travel was a thing of the past, and so were Enginemen.
Mirren spent a lot of time on the rooftop of the Rivoli mansions. He'd watch the bright points of familiar constellations wheel over the interface; Sagittarius, Virgo, Orion... He'd relived his time among the stars, his travels from one colony world to the next. For ten years all he'd lived for was his stint in the tank every twelve days, when his pineal bloomed and he pushed a 'ship through the realm which underlay the physical universe. The time spent in the tank, the sensation of the flux, had been a thing of wonder, which had left him blitzed for hours after de-tanking and craving more. Many of his colleagues held the belief that in flux they were finally conjoined with the One, Nirvana, Afterlife. Mirren held a more materialistic rationale for what he'd experienced. He considered it nothing more than a psychological side-effect of having the logic-matrix of a bigship plugged into his brain. He might have felt at one with the nada-continuum through which he pushed the 'ship, but there was no actual concrete proof that the continuum was anything more than the null-space its founder Pedro Fernandez had christened it. Nevertheless, Mirren had lived for the ecstasy of the flux, and even nowadays the wonder of it was a tantalising memory on the edge of his consciousness - like a moving passage of music which resisted recollection, but at others flooded him with a hint of transcendence, and the sadness of knowing that he would never again experience such joy... Always he would leave the rooftop before dawn in tears, garage the grab-flier at the 'port, pick up his own vehicle and head home to his darkened rooms. Like all Enginemen, everywhere, Mirren abhorred the