Эрик Браун: Starship Fall

He looked up when we entered and nodded at my beer. “Good idea, sir.” He moved to a cooler in the corner of the room. “Maddie?”

“I don’t want to feel left out,” she said. “How’s it coming on?”

Matt passed her a beer and we sat on folding chairs in the middle of the studio. I looked around. Other than stacked crystal boards, old canvases and the odd unfinished sculpture, there was nothing on show to indicate his latest project.

“Almost finished, and I think it’s okay. Should be ready in a few days.” He looked at me. “I’m having a private viewing here in a couple of weeks, if you’d like to come along.”

“Try keeping me away,” I said. “What are you working on?” He was notoriously reticent about work-in-progress, as if to talk about his work might dissipate the creative impetus.

“Seeing as how it’s almost done…” He leaned over and tapped a few keys on the com-pad. “I wanted to get away from what I’ve doing lately◦– the emotion crystals. I felt I’d done enough in that medium for the time being. I was getting stale–”

“That’s not what that New York critic said about your last exhibition,” Maddie put in.

Matt snorted. “What do critics know? Anyway, I thought I’d try something completely different.”

In the air at the far end of the dome, I saw two figures materialise. They were naked, though abstract; that is, it was impossible to identify the man and woman: they stood as representative, perhaps, of the human race.

“We live in a cynical age, David. Perhaps we always have. In the past, my art has been an attempt to counter that cynicism. After all, nihilism’s an easy get out◦– it’s far harder to be constructively positive about the human condition, but I try.”

As I watched, the figures reached out towards each other, came together and merged; they became one, and then something odd happened. They seemed to explode into a million shards of light, which hung in a nimbus and slowly expanded to fill the far end of the dome in a scintillating sphere.

“I wanted to say something about what I have with Maddie,” Matt explained. “I wanted somehow to capture and encapsulate the feeling we call love.”

“It’s… beautiful,” I said.

“It’s not just visual.” Matt smiled and gestured. “Go ahead, walk into it.”

I looked at him questioningly, but he just urged me on. Beside him, Maddie nursed her beer and smiled.

I did as instructed, left my seat and strode towards the radiant globe. I paused before it, wondering what species of art this might be, and what I might experience when I stepped into the light.

I took a breath and advanced.

How to describe the sensations that overtook me then? I was bombarded with emotions◦– the experience was akin to Matt’s crystals, though much more powerful. It was as if I had taken a drug which allowed me to access all the euphoria, all the love, I had ever felt for everyone throughout my life. I moved around in the light like a sleepwalker, my head filled with the joyous wonder of life and love…

Then I passed through the other side of the globe, and instead of coming crashing back down to mundane reality, the upbeat feelings of unity and positivism remained with me.

I walked around the sphere, marvelling, and returned to where Matt and Maddie were sitting, watching me closely.

“Well?” Matt said.

I shook my head, still in a daze. “How the hell did you do it, Matt?”

He smiled. “Trade secret, David. It’s not too different in principle to my crystals, though I employ nano-tech instead of alien stones.”

“It’s remarkable. It’ll be a hit.” I smiled at my friends, as they sat side by side and held hands, and I think a part of me envied them the love that had gone into Matt’s creating this, his latest masterpiece.

“There’ll be about a dozen spheres when I’ve finished,” he went on, “all representative of different kinds of love. I’m still tweaking two or three of them.”

“I can’t wait for the private viewing,” I said.

Maddie’s com bleeped, and she stood and moved away to answer the call.

“Well,” Matt said, “I’m delighted you liked it.”

“Liked?” I said. “I loved it!”

Matt laughed, and looked across at Maddie. He frowned. Maddie was speaking hurriedly into her com, looking worried.

She cut the connection and hurried over to us. She looked from Matt to me, her face white.

“That was Hawk,” she said.

My heart jumped. “What?” I said.

“He asked if we could come over. It’s Kee. He said she’s disappeared, and he fears for her safety.”

We climbed aboard Matt’s ground-effect vehicle and tore off down the coast to Hawk’s starship junkyard three kays out of Magenta.

“What do you mean, Kee’s vanished and he fears for her safety?” I asked, leaning forward between the front seats as I tried to make sense of Hawk’s communiqué.

Maddie bit her lip. “That was all he said. Kee’s gone. And he was afraid something might have happened to her. He said come over, then cut the connection.”

She looked at her wrist-com, stabbed Hawk’s code, and shook her head. “He’s not answering, damn it.”

Five minutes later we turned and hovered through the archway bearing the legend: HAWKSWORTH & CO. constructed from scrap metal. Hawk’s place never failed to stir in me a heady rush of emotion. I was transported back in time to my youth in Canada, when I spent long weekends staring through the perimeter fence at the starships landing and taking off from Vancouver spaceport.

Hawk’s yard was filled with reminders of my childhood, star-faring vessels from the dozen Lines that went out of business thirty years ago with the advent of the Telemass process, ships as small as two-person exploration vessels right up to bulky, lumbering cargo vessels; they bore the livery of their respective owners, faded now with the years.

Hawk was waiting for us on the balcony of the starship which doubled as his office and living quarters. He was leaning against the rail, looking down, a beer gripped in his right fist.

We jumped from the car and hurried up the steps.

Hawk is a big man, six-five, and broad across the shoulders. His pilot’s augmentations add to his stature: the cerebral implant spans his shoulders like a yoke, and the spinal jacks he had fitted a few years ago give him a severe, ramrod posture.

I would have said that he was the happiest person I knew, leaving aside the love-birds Matt and Maddie. He had a wonderful if odd woman in Kee, a member of the native alien Ashentay race, and a couple of times a year he took a starship full of tourists through the portal of the Yall’s golden column on a jaunt across the galaxy.

But he was not the world’s happiest man today.

“What the hell’s going on, Hawk?” I said as we reached the balcony.

He glared at his beer, and something in his eyes indicated that it was not his first of the day.

Maddie embraced him. “Kee…?” she whispered.

He gestured with his bottle to the ship’s entrance behind him. “Help yourself to beers,” he said.

Matt said, “This is hardly the time to drink◦– what’s happening?”

Hawk pushed himself away from the rail and strode into the ship. “Come in.”

We followed him through the cramped coms-room he used as an office and into the lounge, an amphitheatre that had once been the ship’s bridge. The sunken sofas were strewn with clothing◦– Kee’s flimsy wraps and leggings.

Hawk strode around the lounge to the sliding doors and walked onto the long balcony which overlooked the yard. He indicated a table on the balcony.

There was a note on the table, covered with large, childish hand-writing. Maddie picked it up, looking to Hawk for permission to read it. He nodded.