Engineman

by Eric Brown

  Hunter asked, “Where did you get it?”

  Quiberon hesitated, decided to co-operate. “The Larsen factory. I had contacts when it closed down.”

  “How good is it? In what state of repair?”

  “I’ve never had a bit of trouble. It’s mechanically perfect.”

  Miguelino looked up at Hunter, a plea in his eyes.

  “Set it up for a Beta,” Hunter said. “Thirty minutes,”

  Quiberon fell to the task like a man reprieved from a death sentence—which perhaps he considered he was. KVO officials would have impounded the tank and arrested its owner: they certainly would not have demanded flux time for an accompanying Engineman.

  The dwarf danced around the tank on his flashing silver legs, programming the computer, adjusting its leads. Finally he hauled open the half-metre thick hatch and withdrew the slide-bed. In a daze of anticipation Miguelino unzipped his silversuit, shrugged it from his shoulders and sat on the slide. Quiberon jacked the leads into his occipital console, and as each jack clunked home the Engineman slipped further from this reality. Quiberon and Sassoon laid him out on the bed and pushed him into the tank. The dwarf dogged the hatch and sequenced the monitoring computer.

  A faint blue glow showed behind the observation plate in the hatch. Sassoon crouched beside the computer screen embedded in its flank, assessing the tank’s performance, reliability and general running condition.

  Hunter sat on a low stone shelf reserved for a coffin and waited. Quiberon watched both men nervously, his gaze darting from Hunter to Sassoon and back again. At last he summoned the nerve to say, “You’re not KVO officials, are you? You won’t turn me in?”

  Sassoon was scribbling figures into a note-book.

  Hunter decided to keep Quiberon sweating. “You’ve been hawking the flux for what... ten years? You must have made a small fortune by now, Monsieur Quiberon.”

  “I provide a service. I keep Enginemen sane.”

  “How much do you charge for thirty minutes?”

  “Five hundred credits, no more.”

  Hunter pursed his lips. Quite reasonable, if the dwarf was to be believed. He took his wallet from his jacket and counted out five one hundred credit notes. He held them out to Quiberon.

  “Here you are. I always pay for what I take.”

  Quiberon smiled with nervous relief. “No, please. Keep it. This one’s on me.”

  “I said, I pay for what I take.” Hunter dropped the credits on the stone slab between them. Quiberon was shaking too much to reach out and take the notes.

  “Look,” he said, his voice quivering, “if you aren’t the KVO, who are you? What do you want?”

  Hunter glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes had elapsed from the time Miguelino had entered the tank. He looked across at Sassoon. “Well, Mr Sassoon?”

  His aide looked up, smiled. “I don’t believe it. It’s very near perfect. Ninety-five percent efficiency, no obvious mechanical deficiencies...”

  “So it would appear that this is the one?”

  “I’m sure it is, sir.”

  Hunter returned his attention to Quiberon. “Do you know what the penalty is for hawking flux-time, Monsieur Quiberon?”

  The dwarf looked sick. “The bullet,” he whispered.

  “Tell me, do you believe in an afterlife?”

  The dwarf shook his head.

  “A word of advice—do so.”

  Quiberon stammered, “You can’t turn me in! You’ve bought flux time! You can’t-”

  “My advice was general, Monsieur Quiberon, a recommendation to prepare your mind for the time perhaps years hence when you do eventually cast off this cruel illusion.”

  Hunter saw Sassoon glance up at him, then look away quickly, half-smiling at his boss’s sick sense of humour.

  “You must live in constant fear of being found out,” Hunter said. “Constant fear of the bullet.”

  Quiberon swallowed. “I’ve always been careful. I’ve taken precautions, never taken risks. How... how did you find out?”

  “I have my contacts,” Hunter said. Kelly, his man on the Rim, had used Quiberon’s services eight or nine years ago, back when the dwarf had had his tank installed in the sewer system below St Denis. It had not been difficult to locate Quiberon. Kelly had provided a detailed facial description, and there were few dwarfs as ugly as Quiberon.

  “How would you like me to relieve you of the burden of worrying yourself about being discovered and facing the firing squad?”

  “You can’t take it-!”

  “What do you make in a year, Monsieur Quiberon? Let’s see... eight Enginemen every, what, two weeks? At five hundred each that’s more than eight thousand credits per anum. That’s quite a yearly salary, Monsieur Quiberon. Now listen carefully. I want to make you an offer. I’m taking the tank, whether you like it or not, but as I said earlier, I’m prepared to pay for what I take. I’m offering you twenty thousand credits for the tank. If you refuse, the authorities get to know pretty damned quickly, and you’re a dead man. If you accept, you can retire to Sumatra and live like a king.” Hunter paused. “What do you say, Monsieur Quiberon?”

  Quiberon was shaking his head. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  Hunter was in the process of counting out twenty thousand credits in five hundred credit notes. He looked up. “No joke, Monsieur Quiberon. Here is the money. Please check it to ensure I haven’t underpaid you.” He dropped it onto the stone slab.

  Lights sequenced along the flank of the flux-tank. Sassoon opened the hatch and pulled out the slide-bed. Hunter helped him withdraw the jacks from Miguelino’s occipital console. While he was doing this he noticed the dwarf quickly snatch the money and rifle through it.

  They swung Miguelino into a sitting position on the slide-bed. He was in a daze, the usual look of loss in his eyes extinguished by communion with the ultimate.

  “Good work in locating the tank, Mr Miguelino,” Hunter said, making a circle with his thumb and forefinger before the Engineman’s face. “This is the one.”

  Miguelino was in no fit state to respond.

  Sassoon said, “I’ll make the arrangements for shipment immediately.”

  Hunter was aware of the hard pressure of exultation in his chest. “This means it won’t be long now, Mr Sassoon. We’re on our way.”

  Quiberon was still counting the notes when Hunter left the crypt and walked back through the graveyard.

  Rossilini had the Mercedes waiting by the gates. Hunter slipped into the back seat and the roadster started up and swept him north through the derelict suburbs. He watched the dark buildings slide by, thinking only of the time when the mission would be over and he could concentrate as much effort on righting the affairs of his personal life.

  As they approached the mortuary, Rossilini’s communicator buzzed. He spoke in hushed tones, then turned to Hunter. “It’s base, sir. Delgardo of the KVO in Kuala Lumpur is wanting to speak to you. He says it’s urgent.”

  “Excellent,” Hunter said. “Tell them to put him through to my room. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

  When they reached the warehouse building, Hunter took the elevator to the top floor. He hurried through the main chamber and entered his room, closing the door behind him. He activated the wall-screen and it flooded the previously darkened room with light. The picture resolved, showing a thin, silver-haired man in his seventies seated behind a desk.

  Hunter manoeuvred an armchair in front of the wall-screen and sat down. “Jose. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  Delgardo smiled. “I’ve been trying to contact you for hours, Hirst.”

  “I have a security network filtering and checking on all calls. Secrecy is of the utmost importance.”

  “Is it possible to ask where you are?”

  “I’m sorry. If my opponents were to find out... This is a secure link, Jose, but even so...”

  Delgardo gestured. “Not to worry. It’s great to hear from you again. It’s been a long time.”


  “Years,” Hunter said, aware that they were both beating around the proverbial bush. “Too many years.”

  Jose Delgardo was something of a paradox: head of one of the Organisations responsible for putting the bigship Lines out of business, he was nevertheless a believer, a Disciple. He had trained to become an Engineman, and even pushed briefly as a Gamma before ill-health had forced his early retirement. Hunter had known and liked him when both men worked for the Hartmann Company on Mars in the early days of interface development. He had been the obvious person to approach about this matter.

  Hunter cleared his throat. “I take it you’ve considered my communiqué?”

  Delgardo sat up, equatorial sunlight falling about him through the window-wall of his office. “I must admit, Hirst, that my first reaction to this-” he tapped a sheaf of print-outs before him on the desk “- was that I found it hard to believe.”

  “And your second reaction?”

  The Director of the Keilor-Vincicoff Organisation pursed his lips, considering. “Frankly, my second reaction was still one of disbelief.”

  “But the consequences, if we ignore it...” Hunter began.

  Delgardo made a sound that was part sigh, part laughter. “You don’t for a minute expect me to order the closure of all the ‘faces, just like that?” He snapped his fingers.

  Hunter was ready with a reply. “Not immediately, no. The shutdown could be phased in over a number of years.”

  “But my investors-” Delgardo began.

  Hunter laughed. “You don’t sound like a very good Disciple.”

  Delgardo smiled ruefully. “Five years in this job is enough to corrupt the best.”

  Hunter leaned forward in his armchair. “We’ve given this a lot of thought, Jose. Please hear me out. The obvious course of action is for the KVO to reinvest in the shipping Lines. Don’t you hold the legal right of tender on many of the main routes? If you began putting capital into ship-building right now, then there’s no reason why in two, three years you wouldn’t be running a vastly profitable Line.”

  Delgardo leafed through the report, unconvinced.

  Hunter was less nervous now than he had been before speaking to the Director for the first time in years. At least he was giving Hunter a hearing.

  “Okay,” Delgardo said at last, “just supposing all this is true, supposing I, the heads of the other interface concerns, and the United Colonies agree that we should shut down the network—you don’t think for a second that the Danzig Organisation would meekly agree and quietly close down their operations?”

  Delgardo turned to a keyboard on his desk and tapped in a command. The entire window-wall behind rim darkened, then showed an overview of the galaxy. It focused in on the Rim quarter controlled by the Danzig Organisation.

  The Danzig planets flashed orange.

  Delgardo said, “They own nearly two hundred planets in this quadrant, and they all have interfaces. Plus they have links to junction planets all around the Expansion. They aren’t likely to give it up that easily — especially if we have the jump on them as regards the bigships.”

  Hunter smiled in complete agreement. This perhaps would be the hardest part of his communication with the Director. “We realise this—and realise also that we might have to neutralise the Danzig Organisation by force-”

  “But their militia is second to none! Look what they did to put the rebellion down on Xiang last year.”

  “If the UC acted as one,” Hunter continued, “along with the other interface Organisations, we would overpower them with ease. The only reason they gained such a stranglehold on the Rim is that the UC never squared up to them in the past. They opposed them with petty sanctions which never had any effect.” Hunter gestured. “Besides which, to a large extent the conflict would be fought out by guerrilla hit squads. We need only to destroy their interfaces to render them powerless, after all.” He paused. “Purely as a humanitarian issue, we can’t let them get away with the genocide of the Lho.”

  Delgardo sat in silence for a long minute. “How can I be certain that your claims are fully justified, Hirst? As I said, I personally find it almost too incredible to believe.”

  “I don’t by any means expect your full and immediate support right this minute,” Hunter said. “You have every reason to doubt my story. But I can substantiate it. Just give me time, Jose. Soon, I’ll have proof that everything contained in the report is accurate.”

  Delgardo leafed through the read-out again. He looked up. “How soon?”

  Hunter hesitated, took a risk. “In two, maybe three days. I’m coming to Malaysia then. I’m arranging to meet Earth’s UC representative at the disused airbase at Ipoh. If you could be present, I promise you won’t be wasting your time. Of course I’ll be in touch before then to finalise the arrangement.”

  “Very well, Hirst. I’ll do my best to be there—for old time’s sake. I’ve never known the Hunter of old to stick his neck out so far, if it wasn’t worth the risk of losing it.”

  Hunter smiled. “Thank you. You have no idea how grateful I am, Jose.”

  They chatted for a while longer, before Delgardo excused himself and cut the connection. Hunter sat back in his armchair and released a long breath. Yesterday he had contacted Johan Weiner, the UC representative on Earth, and discussed his report with him. Like Delgardo, Weiner’s response had been guarded—but he had not dismissed Hunter’s claims out of hand, and had agreed to meet Hunter and his team in Malaysia. It was all Hunter could reasonably ask.

  Of course, the meeting at Ipoh would come to nothing if he did not succeed with his plans over the next couple of days.

  Which reminded him...

  He glanced at his watch. It was almost twelve, and time for his dinner engagement with Mirren and the others.

  * * * *

  Chapter Ten

  Mirren and Dan Leferve hurried along the crowded avenue towards the golden bauble of the Gastrodome. Hordes of tourists promenaded, enjoying the clement evening. Within the vast dome which covered central Paris the temperature was controlled: not for these rich visitors the sweltering night heat that suffocated the rest of the city. High overhead, tiny lights on the inner curve of the dome simulated the constellations.

  Caspar Fekete was waiting for them beside a news-fax kiosk. He was impressive in a magenta djellaba, his bulk emphasised by the console, surely augmented since his discharge from the Line, which spanned his shoulders.

  “Ralph, it’s wonderful to see you again.” He took Mirren’s hand in a limp grip, gold bracelets and rings flashing.

  He was conscious of Fekete’s gaze taking in his unkempt appearance: his balding head, his gaunt, unshaven face. They strolled along the avenue.

  Fekete said, “Have you ever been to the Gastrodome, Ralph?”

  Mirren gazed at the dome. “I’ve always thought it a bit up-market.”

  “You’re in for an experience.” Fekete smiled to himself.

  “I’ve been,” Dan said. “Once. Hated the place.”

  The restaurant was the decommissioned astrodome of a bigship—or rather the inflated inner mylar membrane—removed and set down on the banks of the Seine. The dome stood on a circular plinth of marble which served as a staircase, and was surrounded by an exotic display of extraterrestrial flora. Unlike in the outlying districts of the city, where xenobiological specimens flourished without restraint, this garden was designed and tended by a team of the finest off-world horticulturists. Similar gardens had been all the rage eighty or ninety years ago, when the first bigships forged their way to the stars and returned with all manner of botanical wonders. Then it had been a status symbol to own land given over to the trees and flowers of Hakoah or Songkhla. With the arrival of the interfaces, however, and the subsequent invasion of the alien spores, such gardens had become passé. This one, and everything about the Gastrodome, was an intentional exhibition of nostalgia, a harking back to an era when Paris was the centre of the space industry on Earth—a display, thought Mirren, o
f kitsch for the nouveau riche of Oceania who had never experienced Paris and the space-age in its hey-day.

  They mounted the marble steps to one of the triangular entrance hatches. From within drifted the sickly strains of a band playing the hits of twenty years ago. Mirren recognised Continuum Blues, but done with an excess of strings to emphasise the sentiment.

  The maître d’ met them on the threshold. “Gentlemen... a table for three?”

  “We’re meeting a Monsieur Hunter at midnight,” Mirren said.

  “Of course. If you would care to come this way.” The maître d’’ was garbed in the dark blue uniform of a bigship Captain—but there was something overdone, almost pantomime, in the width of the scarlet piping, the chunkiness of the epaulettes and the jutting peak of his cap. His dress, like everything else about the place, was more lampoon than honest imitation.