Engineman - Eric Brown [25]
Mirren felt the jacks slip into his skull one by one.
"Grant him smooth union," Elliott was babbling, "With the majesty of the Sublime, the Infinite." Although he allowed the believers in his team to conduct religious rituals before their own en-tankment, he forbade such nonsense before he fluxed.
Despite the distant feeling creeping over him, he lifted a warning finger. "Shut it, Elliott, okay?"
She looked away, her words faltering.
The final jack slipped home.
Fekete slapped him on the back. "Have a good mind-trip, sir!" He pulled a face at Elliott.
Mirren lay on the bed as it entered the tank, glad to be leaving behind the petty banter of his team. Darkness enclosed him. He heard nothing. Within seconds he was no longer aware of his body. His last sense of all, the awareness of himself, his identity, would remain with him, but reduced, modulated, like the feeble consciousness of some primal animal.
He had the sensation of hovering on the edge of some infinite vastness, a pool of immanence which would bathe him in glory. Then, in the second that he fluxed, he was one with the vastness, and his soul, or rather his mind, was flooded with rapture.
What was happening to him had two explanations, one religious and the other secular. If the Disciples were to be believed, then his soul was briefly conjoined with the ultimate reality, the source of all things, which underpinned the everyday, physical world. It was this union, or rather being wrenched from it, that brought about the Enginemen's sense of craving, the desire for reunion... The secular, scientific explanation, which Mirren subscribed to, was that upon neurological union with null-space, or the nada-continuum, the only part of the human brain able to function in such a void, the pineal gland, bloomed and activated and produced the power to push the bigship through the medium which underpinned reality. As simple as that - even though scientists were still theorising over the precise cause of the effect. There was no evidence of an afterlife, Mirren maintained, no souls departed or those awaiting birth, just the wondrous mind-trip produced by the excitation of one's pineal gland, and the subsequent craving was the effect of denial.
For a timeless duration, Mirren fluxed.
Then, one by one, his senses returned. The hatch was cracked and the slide-bed withdrawn, and Mirren emerged into the dazzling, though muted, light of the engine-room. He sat up, dazed, knowing that anything from six to twelve hours had elapsed but unable to believe the fact. Dan unjacked him, and as he did so it came to Mirren in a rush that that had been the very last time he would ever mind-push a starship.
"Ten light years," he thought, "in almost an instant."
Before the tank, Olafson was holding Elliott, who was clearly agitated. She was sobbing in the arms of the taller woman, shaking her head and trying to say something. Mirren looked at Dan, who shrugged. "She can't bear the thought..." he began.
"Elliott!" Mirren snapped. "If you're in no condition to flux, We'll en-tank Olafson and you can go without, understood? We're all in the same situation, so don't think you're a special case. Pull yourself together. Fekete, set the tank. Leferve, jack her. Elliott..." The tone of his voice held a warning.
Sniffing, Elliott nodded. Olafson assisted her to the tank.
Mirren climbed from the slide-bed and made his way unsteadily towards the viewscreen. He collapsed into a lounger and stared out at the cobalt depths of the nada-continuum, and as he did so he heard Dan intoning, "Grant her smooth union/ With the majesty of the Sublime, the Infinite."