Engineman - Eric Brown [17]
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."