Engineman - Eric Brown [35]
He was the only time-lapsed man to have survived. There had been five beside himself in the last couple of years before the closure of the bigship Lines. The first two Enginemen, Black and Thorn, had died after just a few days of hospitalisation and observation. The following three had lasted months. All five had drifted irrevocably into comatose states, and then passed from this existence to the next.
But Bobby Mirren had survived.
He recalled his final shift in the flux-tank as if it were yesterday. It would have been his last push anyway, even if he had not succumbed to Black's Syndrome. The Javelin Line had been bought out by an interface organisation, and portals were to replace bigships in the sector of the Expansion served by his Line. He, along with every other Engineman, had been at first incredulous and outraged at the news that the 'ships were being phased out, and then when the fact and its implications sank in, psychologically devastated. Enginemen lived for the flux; it was what made their lives worthwhile, a contact with the infinite that nothing - no amount of worship, prayer or study - could replace. Bobby had gone into the tank for the last time hoping that he would die a flux-death, so as to be spared the years of terrible deprivation. In the event, he almost got his wish.
It was a haul like any other, a three day push from Earth to Reqa-el-Sharif along the spiral arm. He had jacked-in and laid on the slide-bed with the usual reverence that the ritual called for, but with a sense of poignancy also that this time would be the last. He had slipped into a trance as he entered the tank, suddenly aware of the vast, numinous infinity of the nada-continuum, and his part in it; a tiny, insignificant speck of life. He wanted nothing more then than to cross the cusp all the way and become one with the sublime.
Then - and he had been sure that some part of him experienced it at the time, sure that it was not a retrospective illusion - he was conscious of a presence within his mind, a crawling, probing heat that seemed to be investigating the many layers that made up his being. He felt areas of his brain closing down, becoming stagnant - and he received the distinct impression that he was being stripped down to his essence, his basic animal self, before being accepted more fully than ever before into the continuum. He was dimly aware of a consciousness at work within him, a guiding intelligence behind what was happening, which was benign and had only his well-being at heart.
On the very edge of his awareness he heard the intelligence, calling to him...
Then with a sudden, terrible wrench, he was ejected from the flux-tank. He felt his body being manhandled from the slide-bed, the medics giving him a thorough examination - but all he could see was darkness, and all he could hear was the quiet humming that accompanied the process of en-tankment... He had read about Black's Syndrome, and he knew then that he was its sixth victim.
Bobby had spent almost a year in a private medical institute in New York, his senses lapsing by a few minutes each day, until the time they ceased their drift and halted at almost twenty-four hours. He had been quite prepared for death - he had after all experienced the wondrous realm that followed - but, a month after his senses had stabilised, he was told by the medics that he had survived, could lead an almost normal life, and part of him had been disappointed at the news, cheated at the thought of being unable to follow the other sufferers of the Syndrome to a better place.
He had tried to find out what, medically, neurologically, had happened to him - but the medics, although they blustered, had no real idea. They talked of malfunctions in the tank-leads which had affected certain areas of the brain, and gave Bobby