Engineman

by Eric Brown

  “He mentioned he was from Fairweather, in the Drift.”

  Dan was nodding. “That’d figure. On some of the worlds in the Drift the settlers are born with viral epidermal infections.”

  “He said little about himself, other than that he’d trained and failed as an Engineman in his younger days. He told me he regretted the closure of the Lines.

  He knew a bit about our team—he’d read Mubarak’s book.”

  “Have you contacted the others?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’ll do it.” He pulled a handset from his breast pocket, got through to his secretary and asked her to contact Fekete, Elliott and Olafson.

  He handed the pix back to Mirren. “Have you any idea how much these guy’s charge for just an hour in a tank?”

  “I dread to think.”

  “I heard rumours it’s a thousand an hour.”

  Mirren whistled. A thousand credits was what he was paid for two month’s work at Orly.

  Dan’s handset buzzed. A small voice said, “No reply from Elliott and Olafson, Dan. But I did reach Fekete. He’s on line now. I’ll put him through.”

  The wallscreen flared. The three-dimensional screen gave the impression that Caspar Fekete was in the room with them. He was seated in a gold chair—more like a throne—in a plush lounge illuminated by a chandelier. He wore a zebra-striped djellaba, and his face suggested that the rest of him was running to fat: his cheeks on either side of his flattened nose were full, almost cherubic.

  He leaned forward, peering. “Dan, is that Ralph you have with you? My word, this is a surprise. Long time no see, Ralph! I trust you are keeping well, sir?”

  Mirren suspected that the honorific was sarcastic. He smiled. “Surviving, Cas. I thought you’d be rid of that thing by now.” He indicated Fekete’s occipital console, bulky beneath the shoulders of his djellaba.

  “Get rid of it! Why, it comes in useful from time to time!”

  “You still trying to record what’s inside your muddled brain-box?” Dan said.

  Fekete laughed. “Right you are, sir. When you possess something worthwhile, hang onto it, is my motto. You know I was always proud of what I had up top, gentlemen. To what do I owe this unprecedented pleasure?”

  Dan said, “How would you like to flux again, Cas?”

  “I might have known, you old believer! How many times do I have to tell this guy?” He winked at Mirren. “For me the flux means zero.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Dan said. “You don’t ever get the slightest, just the tiniest desire to flux again?”

  “If I do,” Fekete said, “I go and take a cold shower until the feeling passes. But what’s all this about the flux? Have you two come by a tank, perchance?”

  “Ralph was approached by a guy this morning, asked him if he missed the flux.”

  Fekete was nodding. “Sounds like a pusher.”

  “He was an off-worlder, name of Hirst Hunter. He wanted to meet the team-”

  Fekete held up a restraining hand. “Stop there. Did you say Hirst Hunter?”

  “That’s right. You know him?”

  “I know of him, if he’s the same gentleman. Is he by any chance handicapped by an extreme facial growth?”

  Mirren displayed the pix. “This him?”

  Fekete squinted. “I think it is, Ralph. You say he’s a flux-pusher?” He sounded doubtful.

  “I thought so.”

  Fekete shook his head. “Sounds highly unlikely. I mean, what would a fellow like Hunter be doing pushing flux like some cheap street hustler?”

  “Who is he?” Dan asked.

  “He was—and still might be—a trouble-shooter for the Danzig Organisation-”

  Mirren interrupted, “The Rim sector interface company?”

  “The very same—the Organisation responsible for the military take-over of a hundred or more erstwhile free planets over the past twenty years,” Fekete said. “Hirst Hunter was in the news ten, fifteen years ago — accused of organising terrorist strikes against the last of the bigship Lines on the edge of the Expansion. It was never proven, but his name was linked to a number of other dirty tricks campaigns around the Rim.”

  “So he works for one of the companies who put us out of business?” Dan said.

  “Do you recall the attack on a smallship on Emerald ten years ago? Three spacers were killed and the Danzig Organisation was implicated.”

  “I remember something about it,” Mirren said.

  “Well, Hunter was reportedly behind that, too.”

  “But what the hell would a Danzig high-up be doing selling flux-time?” Dan said.

  “I think you’ll find that he isn’t,” Fekete said. “You say he wanted to see us?”

  “I arranged to meet him at the Gastrodome at midnight.”

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like to come along,” Fekete said, “and see what Monsieur Hunter is up to.”

  “We’ll meet you on the corner of Gastrodome boulevard and fifth in... say fifteen minutes?”

  Fekete inclined his head. “I’ll see you then, gentlemen.”

  He cut the connection.

  Dan indicated the wall-clock. “We’d better get moving.”

  They took Mirren’s flier and mach’d low over the rooftops, passing in and out of lighted districts where the city still functioned. The vast, hemispherical dome which covered the centre of Paris appeared before them, dominating the skyline. The dazzling bauble protected ancient buildings and monuments—many of them moved from their original sites—from the elements and the street-gangs alike.

  A descend imperative flashed on the windscreen from a traffic control tower, and Mirren followed a channel of laser vectors which stitched the night like tracer. They swooped to street level and idled behind a line of other vehicles, fliers, roadsters and coaches, waiting to be admitted into the central precinct. At the checkpoint, an archway in the wall of the dome, Mirren proffered his identity card to a bored gendarme who barely glanced at it and waved them through. He hovered slowly along the streets—air flight was prohibited within the dome—past ancient buildings and parks. It was a part of Paris he’d had no reason to visit in years, and the grandeur of the architecture, unspoilt by the depredations of alien vegetation, reminded him of the time when Paris was a city of both influence and culture. Hordes of tourists from Oceania and South America strolled along the avenues, admiring the genteel beauty of a bygone age. Later, by contrast, they would slum it in the safer sectors of the ghettos and experience what the city had become.

  Mirren steered his flier along the wide boulevards towards their rendezvous with Fekete.

  * * * *

  Chapter Eight

  Birdsong and the scent of Hennessian honeysuckle...

  Ella was in her bedroom at her father’s villa, in the luxurious Falls district of Zambique City. Soon her minder would tap on the door and tell her that breakfast was ready, and after breakfast Ella would excuse herself and slip out. With luck, she would not see her father today, would not have to suffer that stern uncompromising scrutiny which seemed critical of her very existence. Since his posting to the Reach he had spent much of his time at his apartment in the city, leaving her minder in charge. Ella found the arrangement to her liking and did not complain. She was fourteen, and the long weeks of her summer holiday stretched ahead like years.

  She heard voices, men’s voices, outside the room. She opened her eyes, and the illusion of her lucid dream was shattered. Paris, her years as a struggling artist, and Eddie—images came rushing in to fill her mind. She relived Eddie’s suicide and her flight to the Reach, the old woman and the Disciples. Her last recollection was of the cold, bitter coffee they had made her drink on the boat last night, quickly followed by her fight against unconsciousness.

  She was in a rough stone-walled bedroom. Open shutters overlooked a steep hillside and the distant coastline. Birdsong and honeysuckle brought back poignant memories. She struggled upright, lethargic with the effect of the drug.

&n
bsp; Her bag lay on the floor beneath the window. Its contents had been removed and placed neatly on a rough timber table. No sooner had she noticed this invasion of privacy than she realised that her silversuit was open, the zipper pulled down to her crotch. She pulled it quickly to her throat, as if her nakedness were still under scrutiny. A slow, hopeless resentment burned within her.

  She stood shakily, found her moccasins beside the bed. She moved to the door and lifted the latch. A little girl with big eyes and a mass of black curls sat on a chair across the corridor. As soon as Ella showed herself, the girl jumped down and ran into the next room. She was barefoot and wore a dirty smock open down the back to reveal the dimples at the base of her spine.

  “Mama!” Ella heard her cry. “The senorita is awake!”

  The girl was clinging to her mother’s legs, staring out from behind the folds of her skirt, when Ella entered the room.

  The three Disciples sat around a table, their conversation suspended as they regarded Ella.

  “I hope you bastards enjoyed yourselves last night,” she said.

  The elder of the three men—the one-armed man who had checked Ella’s tattoo in the hotel last night — gestured with his fork to the dark-haired woman, now holding the girl on her hip. “Conchita searched you. It was a precaution we felt we had to take, under the circumstances.”

  His tone was apologetic. Ella judged him to be in his sixties, a big European with a grey crew-cut and the far-away, longing, lost look of all ex-Enginemen in his eyes. His left arm was missing from the shoulder, the inside-out sleeve tucked back into his shirt.

  Ella waved a hand in a don’t-mind-me gesture to excuse her accusation, then walked past the men to the door. The smell of cooking from the kitchen reminded her that she hadn’t eaten for more than a day.

  She stepped outside. The building was exceptionally crude, brick-built and roofed with terracotta tiles. It stood in the foothills of the mountain range that ran the length of the continent parallel to the coastline. Ella made out the spaceport perhaps twenty kilometres to the north, the deactivated interface at this angle no more than an oblique lozenge, like a sapphire on a ring held at arm’s length.

  In a cleared, sandy area before the building, an old motorbike stood on a spread tarpaulin. Its engine-casing had been removed, and components laid out in neat rows next to a tool-box. Ella knelt beside the bike, inspecting the damage.

  She returned inside.

  “Whose bike is it?” Ella asked the one-armed Engineman.

  “Mine—or rather it was until this happened.” He indicated his shoulder. “Please, take a seat... Do you ride?”

  “I’ve had a bike since I was eighteen.” She sat across from him, the two others on her left and right. Conchita placed a bowl of rice in the centre of the table, beside a pot of coffee.

  “Max Klien,” the grey-haired E-man said, offering his hand. Ella shook it. “This is Emilio Rodriguez-” He gestured to the Disciple on Ella’s right, a short, balding man in his fifties—not an ex-Engineman — who smiled briefly while ladling rice onto his plate. “And Dave Jerassi...” The Disciple on Ella’s left was in his forties, blonde and well-muscled, whose good looks were marred by the expression in his eyes of incommunicable loss. He nodded, smiling nervously.

  “Dave and I pushed nearly twenty years for the Shappiro Line,” Max said. “We were at college together in Berlin before that. Emilio is a native of the Reach, and a good Disciple.”

  Rodriguez laughed. “Converts are often the most devout followers in any religion, Ms Fernandez. I might not have pushed, but in my dreams... You know what I mean?”

  Ella smiled. “Enginemen have experienced the ultimate. Because we haven’t, we need a greater faith.” She thought of Eddie and felt a sudden emptiness within her. “In my dreams, too,” she said.

  She scooped rice and fried eggs onto her plate, then poured herself a mug of steaming coffee. She was aware of the three men exchanging glances as she bent to her food. She felt as though she was being considered, assessed, that any slip she might make would reveal her as a spy.

  They ate in silence for two minutes, then Ella said, “I hope you don’t think that I’m anything other than a Disciple, gentlemen?”

  Rodriguez and Jerassi shifted uncomfortably, glanced at Klien. Max drew something from the chest pocket of his shirt, passed it across to Ella. It was her identity card. “You seem to be who you claim,” he said.

  “Thanks.” Ella took the card. “I was never in any doubt.”

  Rodriguez stopped eating. “If you’d been through what we’ve been through over the past few weeks, Ms Fernandez-”

  Max silenced him with a glance. “If you don’t mind my asking, Ella, why did you become a Disciple? Isn’t every day that a non-Spacer civilian converts.” He poured himself a coffee, watching her.

  She shrugged. How could she tell them the truth without giving away the fact of her privileged past?

  “When I was living in Paris seven, eight years ago I met this guy, an Engineman—Eddie Schwartz. He pushed for the Chantilly Line. Ever heard of him?” She glanced around the table. They shook their heads. “He was a lot older than me, but we got on well. I guess we both needed someone. He was a Disciple, of course, and in the early days he attended the services a lot.”

  Max said, “But only in the early days?”

  Ella stared at a forkful of rice, smeared with egg yolk. “Later, he claimed he didn’t need the Church. So he stopped going.”

  “There comes a time when all the ritual is no longer a replacement for what we’ve lost, just a painful, nagging reminder.” Max smiled at her, then asked gently, as if he knew, “What happened to him, Ella?”

  She looked up from her food. “A couple of days ago... he just left in his flier and drove straight smack bang into the fucking interface at Orly. There was nothing I could do.”

  “He’s in a better place now, Ella,” Max murmured.

  “Yeah,” Ella wanted to say, “but look where I am.” Instead she shrugged. “Like I was saying, I started going to services with him, and they kind of made sense... Perhaps I needed something to believe in at that time. They had counsellors, welfare workers.”

  Jerassi looked up. “Paris, you say? The converted smallship, Montparnasse?”

  Ella stared at him, to show that she knew what he was doing. “Yeah, the one on the Rue Renoir—all night services, all day counselling sessions. Guy called D’Alamassi runs it. You been there?”

  Jerassi smiled. “About twelve years ago, when it was just starting up. D’Alamassi was in charge then, too.”

  Ella pushed her empty plate away, feeling as though she’d scored a point.

  Max rocked his chair back so that it rested against the wall. He regarded Ella. “So, Eddie unites with the ultimate and you decide to come to the Reach. But why here? Hadn’t you heard the rumours about the Organisation persecuting E-men and Disciples?”

  She shook her head. “There’s nothing on the news on Earth. I didn’t hear any rumours. When I got to A-Long-Way-From-Home, someone there said the Danzig planets were restricting the movement of E-women, E-men and Disciples, but that’s all.”

  “Why did you want to come here in the first place?” Max asked.

  Ella had hoped they might have forgotten that question. “I lived on the Reach for a few years when I was younger. When Eddie died... it just seemed the right thing to do.” She stared from one Disciple to the next, defying them to disbelieve her. Rodriguez was bent low over a second helping of rice, watching Max. Jerassi, the quiet, shy one, stared at his plate without meeting her gaze.

  “I take it you were with your parents when you lived here?” Max asked.

  “My father. My mother died when I was two. Father worked for a Terran engineering company,” she went on, staring at Max, challenging him to call her a liar. “We moved around a lot when I was young. I liked the Reach. I always wanted to come back.”

  Max stared at her, as if considering his next line of interro
gation. “For the past few months,” he began, “every E-man and -woman, every Disciple, trying to enter Danzig territory, has either been turned back or arrested. Those suspected of supporting insurrection in the past have been ‘arrested and placed in military custody’—a euphemism, I assure you, for executed. For two months, Hennessy’s Reach has been, effectively, a closed planet. Only Danzig Officials can come and go as they wish. Then yesterday you suddenly turn up. You sail through all the checks and enter the Reach as if it were a fun park... You must admit that it does look more than a little suspicious.”

  Ella thought back to Carey’s Sanctuary, and the interest the official had taken on finding out the name of her father.