Engineman by Eric Brown Page B

contact with the infinite that nothing - no amount of worship, prayer or study - could replace. Bobby had gone into the tank for the last time hoping that he would die a flux-death, so as to be spared the years of terrible deprivation. In the event, he almost got his wish.
    It was a haul like any other, a three day push from Earth to Reqa-el-Sharif along the spiral arm. He had jacked-in and laid on the slide-bed with the usual reverence that the ritual called for, but with a sense of poignancy also that this time would be the last. He had slipped into a trance as he entered the tank, suddenly aware of the vast, numinous infinity of the nada -continuum, and his part in it; a tiny, insignificant speck of life. He wanted nothing more then than to cross the cusp all the way and become one with the sublime.
    Then - and he had been sure that some part of him experienced it at the time, sure that it was not a retrospective illusion - he was conscious of a presence within his mind, a crawling, probing heat that seemed to be investigating the many layers that made up his being. He felt areas of his brain closing down, becoming stagnant - and he received the distinct impression that he was being stripped down to his essence, his basic animal self, before being accepted more fully than ever before into the continuum. He was dimly aware of a consciousness at work within him, a guiding intelligence behind what was happening, which was benign and had only his well-being at heart.
    On the very edge of his awareness he heard the intelligence, calling to him...
    Then with a sudden, terrible wrench, he was ejected from the flux-tank. He felt his body being manhandled from the slide-bed, the medics giving him a thorough examination - but all he could see was darkness, and all he could hear was the quiet humming that accompanied the process of en-tankment... He had read about Black's Syndrome, and he knew then that he was its sixth victim.
    Bobby had spent almost a year in a private medical institute in New York, his senses lapsing by a few minutes each day, until the time they ceased their drift and halted at almost twenty-four hours. He had been quite prepared for death - he had after all experienced the wondrous realm that followed - but, a month after his senses had stabilised, he was told by the medics that he had survived, could lead an almost normal life, and part of him had been disappointed at the news, cheated at the thought of being unable to follow the other sufferers of the Syndrome to a better place.
    He had tried to find out what, medically, neurologically, had happened to him - but the medics, although they blustered, had no real idea. They talked of malfunctions in the tank-leads which had affected certain areas of the brain, and gave Bobby lectures on complex neurological dysfunctions which meant nothing at all to him.
    The very fact that he had undergone the mysterious transformation and survived convinced him that he had been affected for a reason - this and the fact that ever since his final push he had been blessed with a greater recollection of being united with the infinite. Usually after a push, the fleeting, elusive awareness lasted only hours, but with Bobby it continued, so that even now all he had to do was relax, meditate and concentrate, and he would experience again some measure of the rapture of the union. At these times he could almost hear the calling, a signal from the intelligence that had tried to ease him into the continuum ten years before.
    He had come to Paris, moved into his brother's apartment, and after the sickening, sycophantic attention of the media during which he became a nine day wonder, eliciting pity, proposals of marriage - even death threats from a Muslim sect who considered his claims of contact with a higher force as blasphemous - he had settled down to a quiet life of study.
    Over the years he had read widely of all the various mystical religions on Earth, and several from beyond, but