Engineman - Eric Brown [65]
"I take him out about once a month or so - not that he seems bothered one way or the other. I think I do it to salve my conscience."
"Have you ever thought of taking him to the Church?" Dan asked. "He's a believer, isn't he?"
Mirren smiled. "He's not what you'd call an orthodox Disciple, Dan."
For five years before joining the European Javelin Line, Bobby had pushed boats for the Satori Line out of Rangoon. In the countries of the East where the precepts of Buddhism, Zen and Tao had been taken as read for centuries, the discovery of the nada-continuum had come as no surprise; it was the Nirvana accepted by their philosophies for so long. Enginemen were looked upon as the enlightened, those who had attained Buddhahood on Earth, and whose destination after this life was Nirvana or the nada-continuum. Bobby had taken this belief as his own even before he became an Engineman, and then he had discovered the Disciples. Now, as he liked to remind Mirren, he'd transcended all Earthly creeds and religions.
Dan said, "Have you decided what you're going to tell him about Hunter's offer?"
"No. No, I haven't..." Mirren stared at the grounds of his coffee. The anticipation of the push was soured by the familiar guilt he experienced whenever he considered his brother.
Casually, Dan said, "Bobby could always take Caspar's place and push with us, Ralph." He looked up, his stare a challenge.
"You know I couldn't do that."
"It's what Bobby would want."
"Even so... I couldn't allow him to do it. Would you let your brother kill himself just like that?"
"It's not certain that Bobby would die-" Dan began.
"The medics didn't give him a very good chance of surviving another flux. But you haven't answered my question: if you had a brother in Bobby's condition-"
Dan said, "If the circumstances were the same as Bobby's... then yes, of course I'd let him flux."
Mirren smiled. "You're religious. You've got to look at it from my point of view."
Dan laughed at this. "From your point of view! Ralph, you don't know how selfish that sounds. Why don't you look at it from Bobby's point of view?"
Mirren closed his eyes. "I couldn't hold myself responsible if anything happened to him."
"But from Bobby's perspective, and mine, and that of thousands of other Enginemen, you wouldn't be responsible. Can't you accept that?"
As Mirren looked at it, his brother's condition was made worse by the fact that if he were ever to mind-push a 'ship again, the chances were that the effort would kill him. He'd die a flux-death, the death that religious Enginemen considered the ultimate exit, but which he, Mirren, considered just as final and pointless as any other death.
Mirren had always thought that no matter how terrible and restricted his brother's life was, it was an improvement on the oblivion which awaited him upon death.
"Look at it this way," Dan said. "If you asked Bobby whether he wanted to push the 'ship, what do you think he'd say?"
Mirren sighed. "He'd jump at the chance."
"Exactly!" Dan hit the table. "Now, could you honestly live with yourself if you denied Bobby the opportunity to flux with us?"
Mirren closed his eyes. The thought of leaving his brother alone in the apartment, while he went off mind-pushing the smallship...
"But how could I live with myself, Dan, if I sent him to his death?"
"It would be what he wanted," Dan said gently. "Please, when you get back, explain the situation and give him the choice. Promise me."
He told himself that Dan was right. There was really no excuse for not telling Bobby; to deny him the right to make the choice would be indefensible.
He found himself nodding.
"Good." Dan looked at his watch. "Come on, it's time we were going. The Church closes for the day in a couple of hours."
"How much further?" Suddenly, the thought of going to the Church no longer appealed.
"Just around the corner."
Mirren clamped the back of his neck, massaging the ache that had been mounting for the