Engineman by Eric Brown Read Free Book Online Page 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