Engineman (45 page)

A quarter of the hangar was partitioned and fitted out as a hospitality lounge, with a bar, foam-forms and classical music discreetly playing. The dignitaries stood in conversation with his aides, drinking champagne and casting occasional glances through the gap in the screens to the business end of the hangar.

Hunter squared his shoulders and crossed the carpeted lounge. He greeted Jose Delgardo with genuine warmth, and the KVO director introduced him to the Premier of Malaysia, R.C. Subramanaman, Johan Weiner, and the three heads of the interface organisations, two women and a man whose companies ran operations in the Core.

He raised his champagne. "You have no idea how pleased I am to see you all here today. I thank you for your attendance, and assure you that you will not be disappointed. Today is the culmination of many years of hard and dangerous work on behalf of my team."

"I hope you realise what a sacrifice we're making to spend the entire day here, Mr Hunter?" This was Johan Weiner, the corpulent UC representative.

Hunter smiled, disguising his dislike of the disgruntled Austrian. "I realise and appreciate your efforts, I assure you. As I said, you will not be disappointed."

"When is the 'ship due in?" Jose Delgardo asked.

"It should materialise very soon. We have rooms available for your comfort, and a restaurant."

Several of his guests looked at their watches, Weiner especially making a show of his displeasure. Hunter finished his champagne. "Perhaps, ladies and gentlemen, if you would come this way... I have one or two things to show you which I think you will find of interest."

He escorted them up a flight of steps to a gallery overlooking the main chamber of the hangar. He gave them a run-down on the technical history of the operation, the assembly of the smallship and the recruitment of the technicians and crew. It was, he had to admit to himself, a fascinating story. The dignitaries listened with interest.

As he brought the rehearsed speech to a close, Subramanaman asked, "But how did you become involved with the aliens, Mr Hunter? And what exactly is the nature of this... communion we are due to experience?"

"As to the first part of the question, that is a long story which I'd like to tell you later, perhaps over a meal. As to the nature of the communion... if you would care to follow me."

They passed from the gallery through a door into a narrow corridor connecting the hangar to the adjacent geodesic. Hunter led them onto a circular gallery high up in the dome. They stared down at the strange monument or sculpture picked out in the spotlights.

One of the Core interface directors whistled. "What on earth is it?"

"Not on
earth
," Hunter smiled. "The original is on the planet of Hennessy's Reach. This is merely a facsimile of the Lho Effectuators' communion chamber." He had commissioned a firm of masons to construct the chamber, less to make the Lho feel at home than to impress the visiting dignitaries.

A great central column rose to the apex of the dome, its length fluted and engraved with arcane alien symbols. At the foot of the column, a dozen stone slabs radiated like spokes. In the illumination of the spotlights, the entire effect was suitably other-worldly.

For the next thirty minutes Hunter gave a short history of the Lho, and then told the dignitaries what little he knew about the Effectuators and the nature of the communion. What he could expound upon in more detail was his own experience in the original chamber almost six years ago, an experience both joyous and terrifying that would live with him forever.

They returned to the lounge in contemplative silence.

"The thing is," Johan Weiner said when their glasses had been refilled, "how can we be certain that our experience of heaven in the communion will be genuine, and not a drug-induced hallucination?"

Hunter was shaking his head. "It isn't heaven," he said. "It cannot be defined as any of the many afterlives described by the organised religions. They all have it wrong-"

"Even the Disciples?" Weiner snapped.

"Many of the Disciples have experienced whereof they speak, so of all the so-called organised religions, they have come the closest to getting it right. Having said that, many of their rituals are merely the trappings of a human-based belief system and have no relevance to what follows this existence. The afterlife experienced in the
nada
-continuum is not a heaven or a hell or a purgatory - it is another realm which exists as a state of positive energy-"

"You still haven't answered my question," Weiner went on doggedly. "How do we know that what you experienced was anything more than a hallucination?"

Hunter paused. He looked around the assembled VIPs. They were waiting for his reply. "I know what I experienced, Herr Weiner. I know that I experienced a state of positive energy, and that that energy was under threat of annihilation. I know that the annihilation I perceived in the continuum was the most soul-destroying and terrifying force I have ever had the displeasure of witnessing... I'm sorry - I can't explain it any better than that, and of course there is nothing I can say to convince you of the truth. Only your own experience of communion will do that."

The dignitaries shifted uncomfortably, exchanging glances.

The Director of one of the Core interface companies said, "Do you realise what you are asking us to do in closing down the entire interface industry, Mr Hunter?" She stared at him accusingly.

He returned her stare. "Perfectly, Ms de Souza," he said. "I am asking you to preserve the realm of existence which follows this one."

Weiner grunted a laugh. "An ecological clean-up of afterlife, you mean?"

"If you wish to put it like that, Herr Weiner, then yes, exactly that."

Weiner muttered into his drink.

De Souza said, "The closure of the interfaces would ruin the economies of so many planets around the Expansion that untold numbers of lives would be at risk."

Hunter restrained himself from saying that human lives mattered little beside the continued existence of the
nada
-continuum. He began, "There are ways of avoiding-"

"I don't think you understand that some planets in my sector rely on the interfaces for their very existence. Dozens of colony planets would be bankrupted by such closures as you envisage-"

"I was about to say that there are ways of avoiding immediate financial catastrophes on the more far-flung worlds. We would not merely cut them off willy-nilly, in fact the closures would be phased out over a number of years, with UC subsidies going to those planets more drastically affected."

Weiner interrupted, "Fine words, Hunter. You don't belong to the UC. You don't have to put your hands on those 'subsidies'."

Hunter continued, not allowing his anger at such petty short-sightedness to show. "If the closures were phased in over years, that would give us time to re-establish and improve the bigship Lines and services they provide."

Another Director of a Core organisation said, "You're talking as if the whole business about the continuum being under threat is cut and dried. I think we should begin such fevered speculation only when your theories have been scientifically tested."

Hunter had been fearing such a pragmatic approach. "A scientific investigation of the malaise affecting the
nada
-continuum might take tens of years, decades we do not have if we are to save the realm. We don't even possess the know-how, much less the technical apparatus, to even begin contemplating such investigations."

"You'd rather we believed the hallucinations brought about by a bunch of alien witch-doctors?" Weiner grunted.

Jose Delgardo said, "Our immediate concern, once we have established the veracity of Hirst's claims, would be less how the free expansion might react, but whether the Danzig Organisation would agree to close down their interfaces."

"They wouldn't!" de Souza said, "Which is why we could not afford to shut down our own portals. Can you imagine the scenario if the Danzig Organisation was the only body with unrestricted access to the interfaces? Preposterous!"

Hunter said, "I wouldn't worry yourselves about the Danzig Organisation. The Disciples have contingency measures to deal with them."

"Meaning?" Weiner asked.

"If need be, we would co-ordinate suicide bombing campaigns to rid the Rim of the interfaces. There are only two hundred interfaces in that sector, and we have more than a hundred thousand willing Disciples capable of taking out more than just the Organisation's portals..."

He allowed his gaze to wonder across the staring faces. Weiner took up his challenge. "You don't mean to say that if we refused to co-operate...?"

Hunter stood his ground. "I mean to say, Herr Weiner, that if the free expansion did not see reason and agree to the closures, then the Disciples would be forced to consider extending their bombing campaign. We have the numbers, the will, and the knowledge that we cannot lose the fight..."

A sudden and profound silence hung over the guests.

"Now," Hunter went on, "if you would care to make your way to the other end of the hangar, I think Dr Chang is ready to show you around the phasing in area."

Muttering, the visitors trudged from the hospitality lounge.

Hunter remained behind, relieved that for the time being the pressure was off. In all his years of preparation, he had underestimated how narrow-minded and pragmatic some people would be when faced with such petty considerations as reduced profits. He tried to look at the situation from their point of view - but that was impossible. He had after all experienced the full and terrible magnitude of the annihilation wrought on the continuum. He tried to convince himself that all, in time, would be well: soon, even the doubters would experience, via the communion chamber, the full horrors of what was happening beyond the illusion of this reality.

And, if all else failed, then the might of the Disciples would succeed.

He left the hangar to get a breath of fresh air and to be alone for a few minutes. He strolled across the tarmac, the weight of his daughter's diary making itself felt in his jacket pocket. The uncertainty of Ella's fate was the most agonising factor in all this: if only he knew, even if she were dead, the truth - then he could begin to grieve, to mourn, and then maybe begin to heal himself. But, knowing nothing, he was in a state of limbo, a void of inertia in which he could do nothing to help himself. There was nothing to grasp and hold onto in this realm of ignorance, nothing on which to gain purchase and orient himself.

He was weeping. Quickly, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his good eye. He took out a photograph and stared at it. Ella was standing beside a canvas, her expression severe. The painting showed what might have been a flayed corpse, spread-eagled against a backdrop of stars. In its agony, the painting seemed to communicate to Hunter his daughter's own anguish. She stared from the photograph, accusingly.

He put the picture away and crossed the tarmac to where Sassoon and Rossilini leaned against the Mercedes. They straightened up as he joined them.

"Did you get those paintings into storage, Mr Sassoon?"

Sassoon nodded. "They're in a warehouse in Passy."

"Very good." He had it in mind to start a gallery in his daughter's name: The Ella Marie Hunter Museum of Modern Art. It had a certain ring. It was the least he could do.

"Sir!" A shout from the hangar. A technician stood at the door. "It's the
Sublime
. We're in contact!"

Hunter returned to the hangar, hurried through the lounge and over to the stacked monitors and busy technicians. There was considerable excitement in the air, an almost palpable sense of relief. The techs called to each other across their machinery. The six dignitaries stood off to one side, an aide talking them through the lead up to the phasing-in manoeuvre.

Hunter made his way to where a technician was standing with a pair of headphones held high. Hunter took the earphones. He preferred to stand, so that he could see where the 'ship would soon materialise.

He pressed the 'phones to his ear. "Reading. Hunter here..."

Static in a deafening burst, then: "Miguelino here. sir..." More static broke up the signal.

"Mr Miguelino, good to hear from you. I take it-"

"... mission was successful. We have the Lho, and around forty Enginemen besides-" Static crackled in Hunter's ear. "... bombed the temple, destroying it. We lost three Disciples and two Lho in the attack-"

"But the Effectuators, Mr Miguelino? Did you get the Effectuators?"

More static. "... safe and sound, sir, all six."

"Excellent work, Mr Miguelino. Congratulations."

"One more thing... Bobby Mirren pushed us to the Rim and back in record time. He's totally lapsed now - a human Effectuator, according to his brother."

So
that
was why the Lho were so insistent that Bobby push the 'ship on the mission. He recalled the Lho's secrecy - their fear that, if the truth was discovered, then all Alpha Enginemen would be in mortal danger.

"ETA just five minutes from now, sir-" A storm of static caused Hunter to pull the 'phones away from his ear. When he returned it, Miguelino was saying, "Kelly, sir. He wants to speak to you."