Engineman - Eric Brown [200]
"Pineal-z," I tell him, and I open up and let him have the experience I had monthsback when I tripped on Pineal-z and lived.
"It's Pineal-z or me, kid," I tell him. "Enlightenment or love. Take your pick." And I withdraw, close up. I don't want to influence his decision and I don't want to eavesdrop on his infatuation with something I can never hope to understand.
Old Pete? Yeah, he kidded me not. He was someone famous, onetime. He was probably the most famous person in the world. He was Pedro Fernandez yearsback, discoverer of the nada-continuum and opener of the way.
I know for sure now that Old Pete is good, behind that shield of his...
I glance across at Joe. He's staring at the crystals in his hand, weighing the experience he had and lost against whatever I can give him. He drops the crystals back into the valise, looks at me. "We'll sell them when we get to Rio, Sita. Find a cyber-surgeon to fix my leg and get you a new paw."
Enlightenment, or love? Perhaps they're one and the same thing.
Tears fill my eyes as I fly us away from the city and into the sunrise, one-handed.
//The Art of Acceptance
I curled in the window and watched the crowds promenade down the lighted boulevard. It was spring again in Gay Paree and the streets were thronged with young lovers, poets and artists - my least favourite time of year.
Dan sat lotus on the battered, legless chesterfield. Leads fell from the lumbar-socket under his shirt, and a bootleg tantric-tape zipped ersatz kundalini up his spinal column. He'd told me to go home at midnight, but I liked being around him, and anyway I had to be on hand in case the fountain of pleasure hit jackpot and blew the chakra in his cerebellum. I'd told him he was playing Tibetan roulette with his meatball - bootleg tapes had scoured the skulls of many a novice - but Dan just laughed and said he was doing it all for me. Which he was, in a way, but I still didn't like it.
When I got bored I tidied the office, stacked Zen vids, cleared away tankas and Confucian self-improving tracts. Then I wrote mahayanan aphorisms backwards on his forehead, the only part of his face free from beard and hair, and inscribed his arms and palms with that old number, "He who has everything has little, he who has nothing has much," just to show him what I thought of all this transcendental malarky.
I was getting bored again when the building began to shake and flakes of paint snowed from the ceiling. The clanking downchute signalled the approach of a customer.
I yanked the jack from his socket and winced in anticipation of his wrath. He jerked once at the disconnection, then slumped. "Shit, Phuong-"
"Visitor," I said. I prised open his eye and peered in like a horse-doctor. "Jesus, you look wrecked."
He was all hair, blood-shot eyes and bad temper. I pulled him to the desk and sat him in the swivel chair, combing my fingers through his curls and arranging the collar of his sweat-soaked khaki shirt. The adage on his brow accused me, but there was no time to remove it. Footsteps sounded along the corridor. "Pull yourself together, Dan. We need the cash."
I switched on the desk-lamp, made sure my cheongsam was buttoned all the way up, and sat in the shadows beside the door.
She strode in without knocking. I like style - being possessed of none of it myself - and everything, from her entry to the way she crossed her legs and lighted a cigarillo, whispered sophistication.
"Leferve?" she enquired, blowing smoke.
"How can I be of service?" It was his usual line. I was pleased to see that her elegance left him unaffected; he was doing his best to disdain all things physical.
Even so, we needed this commission.
The woman re-lighted her cigarillo and fanned the offending smoke. It crossed my mind that all this was an act.
She was white, but throwback African genes gave her face the exaggerated length and beauty of the Masai. The lasered perfection of her features was familiar, too. I was sure, then, that I'd seen her somewhere before.
"You charge by the hour?"
"Five hundred