"Ralph..." Tenderly, Bobby swept his hand through the hair on the side of Mirren's head, staring into his face so that tomorrow he could look upon him.

"I wish there was something I could do to make you feel better, Ralph."

Mirren wiped his tears. The very act of telling Bobby of his fear, of communicating his anguish, had had the strange effect of muting it, making it manageable.

Mirren smiled into his brother's unseeing eyes. "Talking to you has helped a lot, Bobby," he said.

They held each other for long minutes.

At last, Mirren signed, You don't fear death? You don't fear death?

Bobby shook his head. "No, I don't. I believe - no, I know know, that another life, another existence, awaits us. I wish I could somehow let you experience my certainty..."

Mirren recalled what Dan had made him promise that morning. He signed, But what if death came tomorrow, next week? Don't you need time to prepare yourself? But what if death came tomorrow, next week? Don't you need time to prepare yourself?

Bobby smiled. "I am prepared, Ralph. I've been prepared for the past ten years."

Then, Mirren almost told Bobby about Hunter's promise of the flux, but he stopped himself. For all his acceptance of his brother's belief, he could not bring himself to allow Bobby to throw away his life. He knew that it would be what Bobby wanted, and he felt guilty denying him his chance to flux - but his own stubborn inability to believe, or rather his own belief that this this was the only reality - just would not let him tell Bobby about Hunter and the mission. was the only reality - just would not let him tell Bobby about Hunter and the mission.

"Ralph... come and see me more often, okay? It's not always easy for me to find you." He smiled. "We should talk more. We've a lot to catch up on."

Mirren nodded, despite the futility of the gesture. He signed, We'll do that, Bobby. I'm going to get some sleep now. I'm tired. We'll do that, Bobby. I'm going to get some sleep now. I'm tired.

"You sure you're okay? You don't need anything?"

I'm fine. I just need some rest.

He squeezed Bobby's hand, stood and walked wearily to the door. He watched Bobby as he leaned over the armchair and picked up one of his Braille books. For all the limitation of his circ.u.mscribed world, Bobby was free as he'd never known anyone to be. As he left the room he felt an odd mixture of delight for his brother, and an inescapable envy of such certainty.

He went to the kitchen and pulled an ice-cold beer from the cooler. He opened the bottle, sat down and absently ma.s.saged the back of his neck. He'd been half aware of the pulsing headache for the past few hours.

He was finishing the beer when the vid-screen chimed. Carrying the bottle, he moved to the lounge and turned on the screen. He heard his own recorded voice say, "I'm either out or busy right now. If you'd like to leave a message..."

The screen flared and Mirren saw Caroline, her lips twisted in a characteristically exaggerated frown. On impulse, without really knowing why, he reached out and accepted the call.

Caroline blinked. "Oh, there you are. I was just about to cut off. You know how I hate talking to myself." She smiled out at him. "But you've probably forgotten that by now..."

Mirren sat down. "No, actually, I do remember. You didn't like talking to yourself, or to me when I wasn't listening..."

"And you did a lot of that, Ralph. Especially-" She stopped herself.

Mirren said, "How can I help?"

"I called to see if you were doing anything tonight. I thought... I wondered if you might like to go out for a meal?"

His first impulse was to think of an excuse. He stopped himself. Caroline had, after all, gone to the trouble of calling him. The least he could do was to be civil.

"Sure, why not-"

Carrie stared. "You're sure? You really mean it?"

"I'm sure I'm sure. I'd like a meal. I need to go out."

"Fine. How about the Blue Shift? Around eight?"

"Fine I'll see you there."

Caroline smiled again, cut the connection.

Immediately, Mirren wondered if the only reason he had agreed to seeing her tonight was that he knew he would be fluxing again very soon? There was no danger of emotional involvement because soon there would be the greater attraction of the flux...?

He left the lounge. On the way to his room, he paused and tossed the empty beer bottle towards the waste-chute in the kitchen. It sailed through the air, and in that fraction of a second his vision fractured. He flashbacked- He was aboard the Perseus Bound Perseus Bound as the 'ship phased prematurely from the as the 'ship phased prematurely from the nada nada-continuum, hit the turbulent upper atmosphere of Hennessy's Reach and began to break up. The ugly double note of the emergency klaxon screamed through the corridors and lounges - a heart-stopping noise every s.p.a.cer prayed they would never hear. In the engineroom, Mirren and Leferve hauled Elliott from the flux-tank, strapped her into her pod and secured themselves. Mirren felt the safety harness grip him as his weight shifted with the pitch of the 'ship. He closed his eyes. The bigship rolled onto its side, wracked by a bone-shaking vibration as it tore through the planet's atmosphere. He had never before been aboard a 'ship which, designed for continuum flight, had phased-in early and attempted to ride a gravity well - and as he lay in his pod, every muscle in his body clenched in fear and apprehension, he was aware of the bigship's disintegration. Screams of tortured metal filled the engineroom and m.u.f.fled explosions communicated themselves through the superstructure as they plummeted towards the planet's surface. Mirren imagined the great auxiliary engines and exterior observation bays coming away and spinning off in the slipstream.

"It's coming apart at the seams!" someone cried. "We don't stand a chance!"

"Be quiet, Elliott," Fekete commanded with impeccable calm. "I actually think the pilot's doing an amazing job. Does anyone know his name?"

"Kaminski," Olafson said through gritted teeth.

"Then Kaminski should be awarded a medal for holding on so long - posthumous, of course."

"Fekete," Mirren yelled. "Just shut it!"

The chaos was accentuated by an electrical fault. The lights dimmed and flickered in synchronicity with a series of explosions which bucked the 'ship throughout its length.

Mirren thought that Leferve, laid out beside him, was humming; no - the continuous, low note was a religious chant. Elliott began gibbering again. Mirren warned her to shut it, or face the consequence of physical violence; which prompted the wry observation from Fekete that he hoped he would be around to watch the fight.

It came to Mirren in an inspired moment of calm reflection that, after all, this was not so bad a way to die: there was a certain irony in the fact that this would have been his and his teams' last flight anyway. He'd often dreaded, since learning that the Canterbury Line was closing down, the prospect of life without the flux. Now his fear was academic.

The Perseus Bound Perseus Bound hit something - it could only be the ground - and broke up in a series of impacts. He heard multiple explosions, and flaring, actinic bursts of fire seared his exposed flesh. Before he could conceive of being incinerated he was knocked out by a shock wave. hit something - it could only be the ground - and broke up in a series of impacts. He heard multiple explosions, and flaring, actinic bursts of fire seared his exposed flesh. Before he could conceive of being incinerated he was knocked out by a shock wave.

When he came to his senses he was amazed to find himself still in one piece and strapped into his pod.

More amazing still was the absolute calm.

The other pods, arranged around the systems-column like petals, seemed to be intact too. The engine-room had been sheered clean in half, affording a view of the jungle and the main body of the 'ship some distance away. The Perseus Perseus lay broken-backed in the pit of its own ploughing, ablaze and further torn apart by secondary explosions. The vegetation on either side not destroyed by the crashlanding was alight and burning like an avenue of torches. lay broken-backed in the pit of its own ploughing, ablaze and further torn apart by secondary explosions. The vegetation on either side not destroyed by the crashlanding was alight and burning like an avenue of torches.

Mirren experienced ten seconds of inertia, during which he could do nothing other than marvel that he was still alive. Then he rapidly unfastened himself from the harness. "Dan? Caspar?"

"Well, I must admit this is a surprise," Fekete commented.

Dan was still chanting his mantra.

Elliott and Olafson replied that they were okay.

Mirren pushed himself from the pod and staggered to the jagged edge of what once had been the deck. The engine-room was lodged on a jackstraw arrangement of fallen tree trunks. The heat from the burning wreckage swept over him in a wave. Overhead, unfamiliar constellations burned in an indigo sky.

He returned to the systems-column. From a storage unit he retrieved the distress beacon and emergency supplies and crouched beside the opening. Using the tree trunks as an impromptu stairway, he made his way down to the jungle floor, stood and surveyed the remains of the bigship. At intervals between the larger chunks of wreckage, small parcels of blackened carca.s.ses, some with their extremities still glowing, smoked in the humid night air. The clearing was filled with the stink of cooking flesh. Mirren made a cursory tour of inspection through the red hot wreckage, looking for survivors but knowing that the chances of finding any were remote. He recalled the sight of the hundreds of civilian pa.s.sengers boarding the 'ship from the terminal on Xyre, and the faces of the dead returned to him.

He entered the details of the crashlanding and the number of survivors into the distress beacon, then launched it into the alien sky. He watched it trail a long, fiery parabolic wake, until it was just another star overhead.

The others had unstrapped themselves and climbed down. Fekete was picking through the debris with what looked like disdain, his natural arrogance shaken and reduced to a fastidious appraisal of the fate which had befallen them. Dan joined Mirren and stared at the wreckage. Olafson sat on a nearby log and ma.s.saged her shoulder. Some distance away, Elliott wept and vomited.

"Dan, go get the navigator. Let's find out where the h.e.l.l we are."

"What do you think happened, boss?" Fekete asked. Mirren always thought he detected a note of insubordination in Fekete's use of the honorific.

"We crashed," he replied.

"What an appropriate way of ending our time as E-men," Fekete went on. "I for one will certainly never forget it."

"Fekete," Mirren warned. "Just shut it, okay? This tour of duty isn't over yet, and until it is you're still under my command - got that?" He stared at the Nigerian until Fekete turned away.

Then, the vision became distant, began to fade- He was back in the hallway of his apartment. The beer bottle completed its flight towards the wastechute and rattled through the swing lid.

He moved to his room and sat on the edge of the bed, fumbled three sleeping pills into the palm of his hand, and washed them down with a tumblerful of stale water.

He remained sitting for a long while, going over the events of the day. He considered the promise of the flux, and tried to persuade himself that four years was a long time, really.

Chapter Fifteen.

Twenty-four hours ago Bobby had turned his armchair to face the window, then sat and stared straight ahead - seeing not the night-time scene of Paris, but the Network Francais nine o'clock doc.u.mentary about Mars which he had 'watched' on the vid-screen the day before. Now, as nine o'clock approached, he turned his chair and settled himself before the window, and seconds later his time-lapsed vision swung to show him yesterday evening's twilight descend on the city. His physical circ.u.mstances and visual vector were synchronised. He stared out across the roof-tops, south towards the bright blue light of the interface at Orly, the scene interrupted momentarily by his fraction-of-a-second blinks of a day ago. He reached out and touched the window sill, felt the ripple-effect of the ill-applied paint beneath his fingertips. It was a strange sensation still, after all these years, to be able to see something, actually touch it, feel its detail with his fingers while his vision corroborated that detail, but be unable to see his hand, his fingers: it was as if his physical reality had been edited out of existence, as if he were already halfway towards absorption into the nada nada-continuum.

He sat back in his seat and stared at the delayed scene his senses were relaying to him, the opposite buildings and the skyline beneath the indigo night. He thought about Ralph, and their conversation that morning. He experienced a pang of intense sadness for his brother. More than anything he wanted to find some way to convince Ralph of the truth, of the fact of continued existence after this one. He recalled a period about five years ago when Ralph had seem particularly down; Bobby had made enquiries through his contacts in the Church - the communications laborious and complex because of his condition - and tried to hire flux-time from a pusher for his brother. His contacts had come up with nothing, and Bobby had consoled himself with the fact that Ralph had pushed bigships for ten years, experienced the rapture of the flux, without succ.u.mbing to belief, so who was to say that the experience of the flux now would be any different?

Bobby considered trying again. Even if it didn't bring about the desired belief in his brother, it might make his day to day life worth living, help take his mind off the fact of his illness.

Yesterday at this time, Bobby had closed his eyes, antic.i.p.ating that his future self would have had quite enough of the scene beyond the window. He had been right. He felt relief at the advent of darkness. In one hour he would go to bed and sleep, as he did every evening at ten-thirty. In the meantime he emptied his mind, abandoned his thoughts, memories, anxieties - allowed his concern for Ralph to slip from his consciousness with the reminder that, in essence, nothing of this realm mattered, that it was just a pa.s.sing show, that emotions were no more than the excess baggage of the ego. Having done this, he concentrated even harder on washing from his mind the actual thought that nothing mattered. Eventually he bordered on a trance-state, and gradually he attained the peace of mind he had achieved during his last shift in the flux-tank. He felt the joyous unburdened essence of the continuum around him, though without quite the intensity or the rapture he would have had experienced when fluxing. What he felt now was a second best, but a state nevertheless for which he was profoundly grateful.

On the edge of his consciousness he could hear - no, feel, think, somehow sense sense, the calling... the desire of the intelligence, which he had intuited in his last flux, for him to conjoin with the sublime, the infinite continuum.

For an eternal moment, Bobby hovered between this reality and the next.

Quite suddenly he was pitched from his trance. One second he had awareness of the nada nada-continuum, and the next that contact was broken. At first he was disoriented; this had never happened before. Normally he found it difficult to maintain the level of concentration needed to remain in the trance-state, and usually returned to himself slowly to find that an hour or more had elapsed in what seemed like seconds.

This time the transition was abrupt and wrenching.

Something touched his shoulder, and he realised that an earlier touch was what had interrupted his meditation. He felt something on his arm - the touch of a hand, firm but not rough.

Yesterday at this time he had still had his eyes shut. He was still in darkness, for which he was grateful. More hands held him, and he imagined the sensory confusion he would have suffered if his delayed vision had relayed to him an empty room.

The hands were trying to ease him from his chair.

No! he shouted, unable to hear himself. he shouted, unable to hear himself. What do you want? What do you want?

Not for ten years had he experienced the touch of another human being other than that of his brother. Now he felt the touch of hands on his shoulders and arms. The sudden intimacy of the unexpected a.s.sault filled him with an overwhelming fear.

No!

He struggled; still in darkness, he twisted and writhed. Strong arms clamped his arms and legs, and he felt a disconcerting buoyancy as he was hoisted from his chair and carried through the air.

Bobby screamed in silence.

His yesterday-self had chosen that moment to open his eyes, rise from his chair and walk towards the door. Bobby felt sick with the resulting disorientation. In real-time he was being borne from the room, kicking and struggling, by perhaps four or five men - judging from the restraining holds on his arms and legs - while his vision relayed to him his sedate walk through the hall to the bathroom as he had prepared for bed last night.

He could feel himself being carried along in a hurry, his abductors turning from his room, then moving from the hall into the elevator: with a flailing right hand he struck the plastic interior of the lift cage. The forward motion stopped, but the hold on him was still as strong. He gave up his struggle and felt a belly-lurching sensation as the lift dropped. Visually, he was watching his toothbrush rise to his mouth, and a second later he tasted the sour tang of the mint toothpaste. He had closed his eyes yesterday while doing this, and now he experienced a blessed period of darkness accompanied by the sound of his electric toothbrush and running water.

The lift hit bottom and he was carried out. He could feel the bounce of footsteps, the rush of warm air against his skin as he was taken into the street. He hoped that a pa.s.ser-by might see what was happening, raise the alarm - or better still that a pa.s.sing cop patrol might apprehend his abductors. But he knew the chances were slim. Few citizens would be out after dark, and cops rarely patrolled this district.

He was lowered to the ground, stood on his feet. Powerful hands ensured he could not move, then forced him forward. A hand on his head pushed him down and someone lifted first his right leg and then his left. He sat down, feeling the cushioned interior of a vehicle. Evidently he was on the back seat, as he could feel the solid bulk of people on either side of him. He was strapped in. Hands still held his arms.

He was shaking with terror. He tried to concentrate, to rid his mind of the knowledge of what was happening. He told himself that it did not matter, that, even if they intended to kill him, then all he would have to withstand would be the pain - a small price to pay for admittance into the continuum.

He felt an intense yearning for his brother, the desire to hold Ralph and tell him that he was okay, that, whatever happened to him, he should not worry.

The vehicle rose, lurched and tipped its pa.s.sengers to the right, then sped off through the night. They were taking him somewhere in a flier.

"What are you doing with me?" he asked. He was aware that his words would sound slurred, that even Ralph had difficulty sometimes in making out what he said.

He felt a breath on his cheek - as someone shouted at him? Didn't they even know about his condition?

"Who are you?" he asked.

At that moment, his vision returned. He was leaving the bathroom, crossing the hall, returning to his room. He tried to recall what he had done last night, if he had gone straight to bed, in which case he would soon have the consolation of darkness again.

He watched as his hands undressed himself, carefully folded his silversuit and laid it on the chair next to his bed. He reached out, found the bed-side lamp, and switched it off. Darkness descended, the only illumination the moonlight falling through the window. His vision swung as he climbed into bed, laid back and stared at the ceiling. Yesterday at this time he had been watching and listening to a news bulletin from the night before.

Then he closed his eyes, and now he was encapsulated in total darkness.

"Where are you taking me?"

Someone took his right hand. He felt a finger trace patterns on his palm. So used was he to Ralph's sign-language that it was some time before he understood the form of this communication. He had been expecting something more complex, not the rudimentary sketching of letters on his palm.

He missed the first part of the message. Then, N-O-T-W-O-R-R-Y.

A pause.

W-E-A-R-E-F-R-I-E-N-D-S.

Another pause.

N-O-H-A-R-M-Y-O-U.