Engineman by Eric Brown Read Free Book Online

the Jet Propulsion labs in Sydney. She'd worked there one day a week, on release from the college of the Australian Internal Security bureau. Until then he'd thought that love at first sight was nothing more than a concept dreamed up in retrospect by incurable romantics, but when he first saw Caroline in the student canteen he'd experienced an inexplicable surge of desire to possess and protect - which years later he rationalised cynically as the tyranny of biology to gain its own ends.
    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