Engineman (6 page)

A year later they had married - a declining institution in the latter half of the century, but Caroline's parents were Catholic, and although Mirren was atheist he'd not objected to the ceremony.

Mirren had joined the Canterbury Line as an Alpha Engineman six months later, and a year after that, with no explanation to Caroline and without being able to explain his motivations even to himself, he had kissed his wife and daughter good-bye and never returned. He'd set up home in Paris, made sure Caroline was financially secure with monthly cheques, and from that day until her call a month ago had never set eyes on her.

He had returned unread the dozens of letters she'd sent him care of the Canterbury Line over the first couple of years.

He tried to find in himself some scintilla of conscience for what he had done, but he felt nothing other than a distant regret that, but for circumstances which in retrospect seemed inevitable, it could all have been so different.

He tried to speak now. His mouth was dry, making words impossible. He took a swallow of lager. "How are you, Carrie?" The cliché was so obvious he thought she might laugh.

Instead she smiled. "I'm fine. You know, working hard..." She was either a very fine actress, hiding her hurt, or the years had worked to heal her wounds. "You?"

He shrugged. "Okay. I have regular work, an apartment." He could look objectively at the situation and see that she would be quite justified in hating him. "What a coincidence this is..."

She shook her head. "I've been looking for you. I'm here on business."

She pulled the front of her jacket open and looked down as she fingered through papers in an inside pocket. Her frown of concentration, her pursed lips, brought back memories. A characteristic of hers had been to exaggerate her facial expressions; she had a theatrical mask for happy and sad and the many grades of sentiment in between, all manner of quirks and tics to express her feelings. He had found it very becoming, years ago.

He wondered if by 'business' she meant legal business, a demand for more payment. "You came all the way to Paris looking for me...?" he began.

She looked up, frowning. "I'm in Paris because I wanted to work in Europe for the experience, and I'm working here because Orly wanted a top security executive."

She pulled something from her pocket and looked at it.

"A guy came to the 'port this morning, looking for you. Recognise?"

She pushed a photograph across the table-top. Mirren picked it up. It was a head and shoulders shot of a man around sixty, with a distinguished mane of silver hair and a tanned face - or rather, half a tanned face. The right side, from his hair-line to his chin, right around to his ear, was covered with a scaled, crimson growth like half a mask.

Mirren was reminded of
The Phantom of the Opera
.

He hook his head. "What did he want?"

"He approached my second-in-command, asking for you. He was referred to me. He had a security clearance from KVO. I thought it best to get a pix and see if you recognised him. He said he'll be back at eight this morning, if you want to meet him."

"Never seen him before in my life. He didn't say what he wanted?"

Caroline bit her bottom lip, shook her head.

Mirren tapped the picture. "What's that?"

With one finger she turned the pix to face her. "I don't know. It's even more striking in the flesh. I guessed he's an off-worlder. He spoke with a very correct accent, like a Brit from a hundred years ago. And he had a couple of tough-looking bodyguards with him."

For the past ten years, Mirren had kept pretty much to himself, hardly going out and shunning personal contact. He wondered if he'd met the off-worlder years ago, on one of the planets he'd taken leave on. But surely he'd recognise someone so disfigured?

"He didn't give his name?"

"He called himself Jaeger. But it wasn't his real name."

Mirren looked up. "How do you know?"

She smiled. "I'm trained in things like that. I know when someone's lying."

Uneasy, he picked up the pix. "Mind if I keep it?"

"Be my guest."

He wondered, for a fleeting second, if the picture was nothing more than an excuse to talk to him, the opening gambit in her scheme to pay him back for what he had done all those years ago.

It was a possibility, but then Caroline had never been a person to bear grudges. Of course, she could have changed a lot in twenty years.

He looked across at her. "Can I get you a drink?"

"Mmm, please. That'd be nice. A lager."

Mirren signalled to the bar for two more lagers, wishing that he'd made some excuse, got up and left, returned home to him room and his safe, insulated solitude.

The drinks arrived and Caroline lifted her stein with both hands and peered at him over the rim.

He asked, "Do you mind if I ask you a question?"

"Of course not..."

"What do you want?"

She lowered her glass, frowning. "What do you mean?"

"It's too much of a coincidence that you wanted to work in Europe and just happened to find yourself in Paris, and just happened to take a posting here..."

Caroline pouted, regarding her hands laid flat on the table between them. She looked up. "I came to Paris because I honestly wanted the experience. When I got here... I must admit that I thought about you. When the chance came up to work here - I suppose I could have turned it down, but I wanted to see you, to catch up."

He smiled bitterly. "To see what a mess I've made of things?"

Her gaze hit his like a clash of swords. "No! I didn't come here to score points." Her stare faltered, dropped, rather than take in his bedraggled appearance. "What happened back then, happened. I'm not angry."

He caught his reflection in the tinted viewscreen. He was three day's unshaven and ten year's balding, the little hair he did possess wild and uncombed. His hands were stained with grease, his fingernails rimmed black. Added to which, no doubt, he stank.

He pushed his glass around the table, making a comet's tail of condensation on the plastic surface. "So... what have you been doing with yourself?"

"I started my own security service in Sydney. It went okay, but I didn't like the admin. side of it. I sold at a profit and got back to grass roots. Worked on Mars for ten years, came back here. Australia for a year - then the opportunity came up to work in Europe. So I thought, why not?"

"You never remarried?"

"Ten years ago I met a wonderful man. He worked on the Martian irrigation programme, which was why I left Earth to live there. We married, had nine good years-" She stopped.

"You separated?"

She shook her head, didn't look up. "He was killed in the Olympus sub-orb accident just over a year ago."

"I'm sorry." It was a reflexive response.

"Are you? You never knew him."

"I mean, I'm sorry for you. I can't imagine..."

She took a long drink, something in her haste telling him that she regretted her last statement. She smiled brightly. "Anyway, what about you?"

He waited a good ten seconds, wondering what to tell her. "I pushed for the Line after leaving Australia, and then the Line was closed down. For the past ten years I've worked here." There, simple and brutal; two sentences that comprehensively summed up his last twenty years.

She hesitated. "You never found anyone else?"

Mirren shook his head.

She dropped her gaze. "I realise things weren't perfect between us, Ralph. We had our differences. But we just never talked. Then you walked out, didn't say a word."

"It was a bastard of a thing to do."

"Oh, so you realise that now?"

"I realised it then, objectively."

"But why didn't you say anything? Why didn't we talk?"

"What could I have said? You wouldn't have understood."

"Thank you. Thanks for giving me the chance!"

"Caroline, I just couldn't bring myself to care. That's being perfectly honest."

"But why? What happened to us? At first everything was so good... I don't understand, Ralph. What happened?"

He looked across at her. He could see that beneath her calm, trained exterior, she was shaken.

He let the silence lengthen, then said softly, "When I got back after that first flux... all I wanted was to return to the 'ship, experience the flux. Nothing else mattered." He couldn't bring himself to feel anything for anyone - Caroline, his daughter Susan, or his father. "I never once visited my father after I graduated."

"I know. He never forgave you. He died twelve years ago."

Mirren said, "I heard."

"I went to his funeral. Your absence was noticed."

Mirren regarded his lager. Some part of him wanted to feel guilty, to regret the actions of his past. But he knew that anyone, in his position back then, would have been unable to act any differently.

He lifted his shoulders in a protracted shrug. "I felt nothing, nothing at all for anyone or anything accept the flux."

"That's an excuse!"

"No, that's the reason. You experience the flux, and nothing is ever the same. People don't matter-"

"All Engineman weren't affected like that," Caroline countered.

"No, not all. But many were. I was one of them. I didn't have any choice in the matter. There was nothing I could do about it. It was like a drug."

"Would you have had it any other way?"

He thought about that. He shook his head. "No, not at the time. I was hooked... Later I realised what had happened, but by then it was too late."

"What? Ten years ago, when the Lines closed down?" She wore an expression of exaggerated horror. "But you could have come back, got in touch."

Mirren almost laughed. "You don't understand. By then it was too late. Just because I couldn't flux again, it didn't mean that the desire diminished. I couldn't just cure myself like that!"

"But what about now? Surely..."

"Even now, Carrie. Even now I'd give anything to flux again. What happened ten years ago..." It was an indication of his despair that he could only become emotional about the closure of the Lines.

A silence came between them. He saw the compassion in her eyes, and her pity merely mocked, unwittingly, his inability to respond to it.

Outside, beyond the viewscreen, the interface had activated. The bright cobalt portal flickered and, hesitantly, like the image on a defective vid-screen, the scene of some far planet's spaceport appeared, backed by a dwarf star binary system in a magenta sky and fringed by alien trees. A convoy of trucks and coaches waited to cross to Earth, along with a queue of patient foot-passengers.

Caroline was turning her glass between her palms. She whispered, "What was it like, Ralph? The flux?"

He smiled. "Indescribable. The sense of union, the joy, the incredible feeling of well-being... it was a hundred times greater than the effect of any terrestrial drug. It wiped me out, left me wanting more, looking forward to nothing but the next push. Was it any wonder I couldn't respond to anyone, to feel emotions? Nothing mattered. This reality simply didn't matter."

She looked up at him and smiled. As if to salvage some consolation from the wreckage of his life, she said, "Well, at least you have the next reality to look forward to, Ralph. The afterlife."

Her smile faltered when she saw his reaction. "What...?"

He said, "I don't believe. I can't bring myself to accept that what I - what all Enginemen - experienced in flux was anything more than just a psychological phenomenon existing up here-" he tapped his head "-and nowhere else."

She stared at him. "You don't belong to the Church?"

"Of course not. Unfortunately I've never been able to stomach blind faith. The concept of afterlife that a lot of Enginemen believe in is exactly what they wanted to believe. How can something that so perfectly fits the bill for what follows death have any basis in fact?"

She was shaking her head. "I don't know. I don't believe myself, remember?"

"And all those school fees your parents paid to have you convent educated..."

She smiled at him and shrugged. They lapsed into silence. Mirren felt incredibly weary and his head throbbed. He thought of the darkness of his room, the oblivion of sleep.

Across the tarmac, the first of the foot-passengers passed through the interface, walking from one world to the next, crossing light years, without so much as breaking their stride. He cursed the Organisation that developed the interface technology.

He drained his beer. He hoped Caroline would take it as a signal that their conversation was at an end.

She did. She pushed her glass, still half full, to one side and glanced at the digital watch melded into the fabric of her cuff. "I really should be getting back to work, Ralph. It's been nice seeing you again."

He made an effort and smiled.

She rose, paused, fingertips on the edge of the table. "You haven't asked about Susan," she said.