Engineman - Eric Brown [14]
She raced around Paris at breakneck speed, as if tempting fate to take her where it had taken Eddie. The wind in her face, she circled the Eiffel tower, phantasmagorically adorned, tore across the traffic island and through the Arc De Triomph, then accelerated down the Champs-Elysées. Beside the majestic silver dome which covered the tourist quarter of central Paris, she came to a halt. She sat astraddle the stilled engine of her Suzuki, aware of the bike ticking beneath her in the quiet morning air, aware of the pain in her chest, and the fact that she was still alive.
By the time she arrived back at her apartment, dawn was touching the eastern horizon, and she knew what she was going to do.
From beneath the mattress in her bedroom she took the photograph of her father, and the disc he had sent. She dropped the photo on the bed without looking at it, and played the disc.
"I have seen the light, Ella. I need to see-"
The rest was music. Three weeks ago, on receiving and playing the disc, the sound of his voice had caused her so much pain that she had stopped the disc instantly and recorded over the rest of the message.
He had seen the light...? By which, did he mean that he realised and acknowledged all the mistakes of his past?
Surely not...
She dropped the disc on top of the picture, obscuring his face. She changed, found one of Eddie's silversuits. As she pulled it on, the material shrank, nestled around her thin body. She considered the irony of wearing an E-man's silversuit where she was going. She packed a bag and pocketed her savings. She looked around the bedroom, at her work bearing silent testimony to her lack of success. As she stood on the threshold, she was tempted to leave the bedroom door unlocked, let fate take away her past. But something, some deep and abiding belief in her ability, made her turn the key in the lock.
She turned at a sound from the hall window. Sabine was crouching on the sill, watching her. "You leaving, Ella?"
"Going out to the Rim, Sabby," she told the urchin. "Going to look up my father."
The kid glanced around. "Where's Eddie?"
Ella smiled through her tears. "Eddie's gone. He won't be coming back."
"So you want me to look after the place, make sure the bastards don't trash your work?"
Ella dug in her pocket for loose creds. "Sure, Sabby. You do that."
Then she made her way to an Agency and arranged passage to the Reach.
Chapter Three
Dawn was a uniform grey pallor above the eastern horizon as Mirren garaged the grab-flier and walked across the tarmac to the circular bar annexe of the terminal building. It was Thursday morning, the start of his three day break, and he always made a habit of calling into the bar for a couple of beers to celebrate. He was feeling dead on his feet and even more depressed than usual. He could not shake from his mind the death of Macready yesterday, or the suicide of the Engineman who'd flown his flier straight into the interface a couple of hours ago.
He pushed through the swing doors and entered the bar. The room was furnished with cheap moulded tables and chairs, fitted originally to cater for the hordes of vacationing civilians who had visited Earth in the days when the port catered for bigships. Since the installation of the KV interface, however, and the downgrading of the 'port to the status of commercial/industrial, the only patrons of the bar were site workers: security guards, engineers and fliers. The plastic furnishings of the circular room had been sprayed matt black, as if in mourning, and the lighting turned low. The funereal atmosphere of the bar suited its function as the place