Engineman

by Eric Brown

  For the next three months, before her fifteenth birthday, she paid no attention to her instructors and failed her exams. Her father had once mentioned, at a dinner party held for senior executives in the Organisation, that Ella was a bright pupil who might one day work for the Danzig Colonial Administration.

  She’d show him...

  The day after her fifteenth birthday, Ella walked from the dormitory of her college and, with savings scraped together over the years, booked her passage through the interface network to Earth.

  She attended a third-rate art college in Paris, sold her paintings in the streets. Then she met Eddie, and joined the Church and converted. The day after her conversion, she communicated with her father for the first time in three years. She sent him a photograph. It showed Eddie in his radiation silvers, standing stoically, holding a beer and staring into the camera, Ella was behind him, without clothes, arms’ around his neck and a leg twisted around his thigh. Her chin was hooked over his shoulder and she was laughing. Displayed prominently on her forearm was the infinity symbol tattoo of the Disciples.

  Ella picked up a flat stone and skimmed it across the surface of the lagoon.

  She was, she knew, only delaying the inevitable meeting. She checked her watch. It was seven o’clock. The curfew began in one hour. She could make her way down to the villa now, or spend the night here at the lagoon, but she didn’t want to do that. The place was full of too many memories, too many reminders of the girl she’d been, a fourteen-year-old full of naivety, hope and ambition. She wondered what that girl might have to say to the woman she was now, who wanted more than anything to make peace with her father.

  She left the lagoon. She decided to leave the bike where it was in the bushes and walk down the track. At the first bend, her father’s house came into sight — a split-level ranch-style villa, its central section raised above the wings. She wondered if the Organisation had the house under observation. They had no way of connecting her to the sabotage of the interface, but she had evaded their surveillance last night... That set her to wondering why they had allowed her onto the Reach. Was it that her father had pulled strings to facilitate her entry?

  And that, of course, begged the question of why her father had summoned her. “I’ve seen the light, Ella. I need to see you-”

  She paused at the top of the path that descended though her father’s cacti garden. He’d seen the light... It came to Ella that he had found out that the Organisation was responsible for the genocide of the Lho-Dharvo. He’d seen the light, seen the evil at the heart of the Organisation, and wanted absolution from the daughter he had so mistreated over the years...

  Or perhaps, she told herself, I’m trying to convince myself that he knew nothing of the origins of the plague in the first place.

  She descended through the cacti garden, which in her childhood she had considered so symbolic of her father: dry, prickly, and menacing.

  Her heart pounding, she walked up the timber steps to the front door. Hesitantly, she pushed the call-bell and waited. The seconds seemed to last forever. How should I greet him, she wondered? Just breeze in shit-tough, or stand here smiling at him like Daddy’s little girl returned?

  Minutes passed, and she reached up hesitantly and touched the sensor pad. Ten years ago it had been programmed to accept her palm-print... and now the door swung slowly open. She stepped inside, crossed the hall and paused outside her father’s study.

  The door was open, and she glanced into the room.

  The painting... her painting. Conversion.

  As if in a daze, she moved into the room and crossed to the painting.

  She experienced once again the sense of transcendence that had overwhelmed her in the cave of the Lho and, again, three years later when she had converted in the Church at Montparnasse. The oil showed a woman in rapture, laid out naked, being transported through an effulgent starscape by shadowy bearers who. might have been aliens or cowled Disciples.

  On the wall below it was the photograph of Eddie and herself she had sent her father on her conversion.

  As if she needed any further proof she saw, across the room on his desk, a leather-bound volume of the Book of The Lho.

  Ella stared at the painting again, and wept.

  The realisation of the danger she was in came too late.

  She heard the flier, the crunch of boots on gravel, and only then did she begin to feel afraid.

  A voice, amplified through a loud-speaker: “Ella Hunter—come out with your hands in the air!”

  She looked through the window. Armed militia stood between the cacti in the front garden. She slipped from the study, moved to the back of the house. Was it too much to hope that the militia would not have the back garden covered? There was a bolt-hole in the igneous rock beside the lagoon. If she could reach it, lose them, make her way up the track to where her bike was hidden...

  She opened the door and slipped out.

  A dozen militia-men trained rifles on her. She heard movement in the villa behind her.

  “Put your hands in the air,” said one of the guards in a slow, bored drawl, “and get the fuck down here now!”

  Ella raised her hands and walked calmly down the steps to where the militia waited on the racquet-ball court. The only hope she had was to make them think she would come without a struggle.

  Then she made a run for it towards the lagoon.

  The first bullet hit her in the thigh, the second in her shoulder. She fell, screaming—hardly able to believe they’d shot her. A phalanx of legs came into view, blurred through tears of pain. She tried to climb to her knees. Something solid slammed into the back of her head. She hit the ground, face first. A small voice told her that the only way to oppose them was with defiance. She knelt, attempted to climb to her feet. Another blow cracked the base of her skull, almost knocking her senseless. She collapsed again and moaned. Someone swung a boot and kicked her in the face. She felt her jaw crack, tasted blood. More kicks from the crazed militia registered like starbursts in her head. She wondered how much more pain she could take before she passed out.

  But more than the pain—more than the agony of bullet wounds and broken bones—what hurt most of all was the sound of their laughter.

  * * * *

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Chagal was an exclusive restaurant on the Left Bank overlooking the river. The scene through the window from Hunter’s table—the central dome and the hydrofoils on the Seine—contrasted with the restaurant’s old-fashioned interior of polished brass, rosewood and potted palms. The waiters wore white and were discreet, and the brandy was the finest he’d tasted in years.

  Hunter felt calm and relaxed for the first time in a long while. When he sent the disc to his daughter a month ago, suggesting she meet him here for dinner today, he wondered later if he had been wise. He might have been too busy while in Paris to keep the engagement, or the Organisation might have been onto him, in which case he would not have dared show himself. In the event, he was neither too busy nor in danger. Circumstances could not have worked out better. Everything was going according to plan, and today he had no other appointments or duties to fulfil. During the night, Sassoon had arranged the transportation and installation of the flux-tank; word was this morning that they had fully integrated the tank with the shipboard logic-matrix and the smallship was almost ready to test-run. As expected, Mirren and Leferve had leapt at the opportunity to push the ‘ship; Elliott and Olafson had yet to be approached as backups, but it would be no major concern if for whatever reasons they, like Caspar Fekete, declined his offer.

  On the wider front, he had heard from the Rim this morning that the resistance was going well. Cells of Enginemen on the Reach had targeted vital Danzig installations, power stations, dams, airports and military bases, and caused maximum damage with a minimum loss of life. Yesterday a suicide squad of Disciples had sabotaged the interface on the Reach, not only putting it out of action temporarily to staunch the military build-up, which w
as the intention, but wrecking the ‘face to the extent that it would be inoperable for up to a month. Hennessy’s Reach was effectively cut off, isolated.

  Thoughts of the Danzig Organisation led him inevitably to consider his past. When he thought back to the time he had loyally served the Organisation, performing tasks well beyond the call of duty on the planets of the Rim and beyond, he was overcome with such a deep-rooted sense of guilt he wondered if even what he was doing now could atone for his misdeeds. Over the years he had tried to rationalise his guilt—but he found that the rationalisation of one’s guilt was as futile a mental exercise as trying to empty one’s head and think about nothing... He told himself that at the time he had believed in what the Organisation stood for, and that any action likely to further the cause was to be embraced as right. To this end he had embraced the undercover campaign of divide and rule, infiltrate and subvert, and brought about the closure of the few bigship Lines whose continued operation after the installation of the interfaces had been subsidised by socialist governments around the Rim. Only once had he resorted to actual terrorist tactics, which had resulted in the deaths of three Enginemen. At the time he had considered it a minor price to pay for the pacification of yet another planet.

  He wondered if he really did believe, back in the years when he worked ceaselessly for the Danzig cause, in everything the Organisation stood for, or was his main concern himself, his own aggrandisement, his promotion within the Danzig corporate structure with all the attendant wealth, prestige and power that such promotion entailed? He suspected that, at the time, Hirst Hunter the high-flying troubleshooting executive would never have admitted to such failings as egotism: he would have quoted Danzig dogma and pointed to the successful regimes on newly-settled Danzig worlds. Only in retrospect could Hunter see that his younger, ambitious self had been blinded by power into seeing only what he wanted to see.

  He was, in short, guilty, as guilty as hell. He would do his best now to atone for his sins, but that would never alter the fact that he had been a shallow, egotistical, power-crazy fool.

  And the main casualty had been his daughter, Ella.

  He glanced at his watch. It was almost six, the time he had suggested on the disc that they should meet. He ordered another brandy, less to savour its quality than to feel its effect. For ten years he had failed to contact his daughter—and for many years before that he had simply failed her, period—and now that the time was fast approaching when they would meet face to face, Hunter felt more than a little apprehensive.

  He wondered how she had changed over the years -hard to imagine she was now a woman of twenty-five. He recalled the photograph she had sent him seven years ago, the one in which she was all over her lover, an Engineman many years her senior. It showed her as tiny as ever, thin and pale, and she had shorn her long black hair. He’d wondered at the time if the photograph was the first step on the road to a reconciliation, or a taunt. He saw it now for what it was—a taunt, an aggressive gesture against everything for which he stood, a statement of Ella’s freedom and new-found independence.

  Would she be more worldly-wise now, cool and sophisticated and—Fernandez, no!—bourgeois? Somehow, he could not imagine it. She would still be the rebel, the tomboy, the anarchic impressionist shunning success for the type of aggressive art she wanted to produce. Yes, that was more like it. He hoped so... He so much longed to see her that the wait was like an ache within him. He had so much to apologise for, so much for which to make up.

  He was wondering whether perhaps the Chagal was the right venue in which to meet his daughter—she would probably turn up barefoot, in radiation silvers—when someone entered the restaurant and crossed to his table, but it was not Ella.

  Rossilini cleared his throat. “Excuse me, sir.” He was holding a silver envelope.

  “Yes, Mr Rossilini?” Hunter gestured to the seat opposite.

  “You told me to report when the private operator came up with anything on Christiana Olafson...” Rossilini sat down and laid the envelope on the table before him. Something about his stern expression worried Hunter.

  “What is it?”

  “We received a report and photographs from the operator an hour ago. Olafson’s dead, killed in a flier accident.”

  Hunter imagined the colour draining from his face, or rather from half of it. He tried to remain calm. “When was this, Mr Rossilini?”

  “Two days ago, at seven in the evening, German time.”

  Rossilini slid the envelope across the table. “I’d give the photographs a miss, sir, if you’re thinking of eating.”

  Hunter withdrew the contents of the envelope and skimmed the operator’s report. It detailed Olafson’s movements on the day she died, and included the German police report which stated the cause of the accident as engine failure.

  Hunter looked up. “Send someone to Hamburg to look into the accident, Mr Rossilini.”

  “I’ve already done so, sir.”

  “Good.” Quickly, Hunter leafed through the police photographs taken at the scene of the accident. A microwave pylon had sheared the flier in two. Olafson’s remains were scattered across the flat roof of a nearby building. Bosch, Hunter told himself, returning the photographs to the envelope. Definitely Hieronymus Bosch.

  “Two days ago I had mentioned to no-one that I was considering employing Christiana Olafson on this mission. I had not at the time even decided myself to approach her. There can be no way this accident is connected with us.”

  Rossilini said, “I did consider that, sir. But I thought it best to send someone to Hamburg anyway.”

  “You did right, but I think they’ll find that it was what it looks like; an accident.” Hunter paused, considerably relieved now after his initial fright. “And anyway, if by any chance our enemies were onto us, they’d surely strike at the very heart of our operations, not at the Enginemen and -women we might employ.”

  Rossilini picked up the envelope. “I’ll leave you to it, sir. I hope you enjoy your meal.”

  Hunter smiled. “Thank you, Mr Rossilini. I intend to.”

  He took a mouthful of brandy, the macabre photographs fading from the. forefront of his mind as he reassured himself that the accident was not the work of the Organisation.

  He looked at his watch. It was six-thirty. Ella was late. He would give her another thirty minutes. He ordered a third brandy and sat back, trying to regain the composure he had felt earlier. The little scare with Olafson, though, and Ella’s impunctuality, had served to spoil his optimistic mood.

  Did Ella still, after all these years, hate him as she had so obviously hated him as a teenager, and after what he had said on the disc he had sent her? He had made the recording on the free world of Tyler, and it had proved the hardest speech he’d ever had to make. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d had to re-record it. He told her simply of his conversion. He said that he regretted their differences in the past, and expressed the hope that they might build a meaningful relationship in the future, belated though that was. What he really wanted to tell her—the details of this mission which would surely redeem him in her eyes—he could not entrust to disc. He resolved that although he was sworn to absolute secrecy—even his aides did not know everything—he would make an exception and tell Ella what was happening, when they finally met.

  He waited until seven, and only then decided that she was not going to turn up. He settled his bill and left, deep in thought. After the air-conditioned chill of the restaurant, the night air outside was sultry and cloying. The Mercedes was waiting at the kerb. Sassoon appeared from where he’d been keeping watch on the restaurant and opened the rear door. Hunter ducked into the car. Rossilini glanced at him in the rear-view mirror. “The morgue, sir?”

  “No—take me to Orly. Rue Chabrol.”

  They set off and motored through the rapidly falling twilight. Hunter leaned forward. “Mr Rossilini...”

  “Sir?”

  “Am I correct in thinking that you have a da
ughter?”

  The driver glanced at him in the mirror. “Yes, sir.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Nine, sir.”

  “Have you seen her recently?”

  “No, not for two years.”

  Hunter smiled to himself. “Well, as soon as we’ve finished with this business, Mr Rossilini, I suggest you take yourself off to... Benedict’s world, isn’t it?—and make sure you visit your daughter. Understood?”

  Rossilini exchanged a glance with Sassoon. They probably thought he was going soft in the head. “Understood, sir.”

  “Good, Mr Rossilini. Very good.” Hunter sat back and watched the passing suburbs fall into dereliction and decay the further they drove from central Paris.

  They passed Orly spaceport and turned into the district where Ella lived. They passed down narrow streets between warehouses and storage units owned by the spaceport authorities. Rossilini accelerated over the last kilometre.