Engineman - Eric Brown [5]
As Mirren watched, a suicide prepared his exit. He came in from the south, slung horizontal beneath the triangular wing of a power glider. Arc-lights dazzled off the propeller and the silver struts. There was about the suicides an element of the innovative that had less to do with the theatrical than the practical: suicides had to find new ways to evade the guards and fry themselves.
The drunken Macready, with his bottle of cognac and desire for oblivion, would have tried to dodge the guards and leap into the 'face in an act as humble as it was ill-planned. Mirren had saved the oldster, if temporarily: if Macready wished to end his life, then sooner or later he would succeed.
Macready had seen the glider. The oldster was leaning forward in the chesterfield, his attention fixed on the small, emerald triangle as it banked over the mansion and dived for the 'port. He wore an expression of fascination, as if he knew he would not make the 'face tonight and was vicariously sharing the pilot's final approach.
The glider arrowed towards the interface and slammed into the screen. Contact was brief and blinding. For a fraction of a second the outline of the glider and its spread-eagled pilot remained etched in silver on the blue screen, then dissolved and vanished. Mirren fancied he could hear the suicide's scream, diminishing, and smell his roasted corpse on the night air. He was at once appalled by the wanton forfeit of life, and awe-struck. He marvelled at the faith of the suicide, his certainty that absorption into the nada-continuum was the reward for so spectacular and beauteous an incineration.
Beside him on the chesterfield, Macready attempted to climb to his feet. Mirren restrained him, and the old man was too insensate with drink to resist.
"Let me go, damn you!" He slumped back into the cushions, exhausted.
"You'd never make it down there," Mirren said. "And even if you did, you wouldn't get past the guards-"
"Then I'll die trying!"
Mirren gripped the stringy, tattooed bicep. "Why?" he asked. "Why not just jump off the damned building and have done!"
Macready tipped back his head and cried at the stars. "When I was discharged I... I swore to myself that an interface death was the only way-" He struggled to stand again, but was too weak and fell back, crying. "Life's hell, Mirren. If only you could feel the pain."
"Damn you - and you think I don't miss the flux, too?"
The oldster cackled. "I mean I'm ill, Mirren. I'm dying."
Mirren stared at him.
Macready went on, "It's a terminal condition, Mirren. There's no cure. No cure at all. Only..." His head fell back, as if the fight had drained from him, and his breath came in ragged spasms.
Mirren averted his eyes, aware of the slow thump of his heartbeat.
Down on the tarmac, the guards were clearing up what remained of the kamikaze pilot and his glider - a few charred spars, scraps of clothing, larger chunks of what might have been charcoaled flesh. They disposed of the remains with little ceremony, scooping them up in the shovel of a tractor.
In the quiet aftermath of the spectacular suicide, Mirren found himself saying, "I was married before I became an Engineman. I had a child, a daughter in Australia. I thought I loved them both... Then I signed on the Canterbury Line, experienced the flux. When I came back - you know how it is. Nothing's the same. I lived only for the flux..." He wondered whether to add that his wife had come looking for him recently, but decided that the oldster wouldn't want to hear about his problems.
He glanced at Macready. He tried to remember the last time he'd spoken to someone about his life before the flux.
Macready sat unmoving. His head rested against the back of the chesterfield and his mouth hung open. Mirren reached out and touched the withered