Engineman - Eric Brown [96]
"I was surprised that you agreed to meet me, Ralph."
Mirren shrugged. He could hardly tell her that he had been as surprised as her. He'd felt guilty about Bobby at the time, which probably explained it.
"You were so bloody distant yesterday-"
"What did you expect? You turn up after twenty years, breeze in..."
"You acted as if I was about to shoot you for walking out."
He grunted a laugh. "I wouldn't have blamed you." He told himself not to be so self-piteous.
She took another sip of lager, quirked her lips at its bitterness. "By the way, what did that off-worlder want yesterday?"
The question took him by surprise. "Oh... he was an old colleague from the Line. He looked me up for old time's sake."
"With two bodyguards?" She sounded sceptical.
"He's a big name in banking now. He's guarded all the time."
Caroline looked at him. He recalled what she'd said yesterday about being able to detect lies. She obviously decided not to press the issue. "Hey, I'm famished. Shall we eat?"
They press-selected their orders from the panel in the table-top, and seconds later the food issued from a slot in the wall just as meals had aboard the 'ships all those years ago. It even came in compartmentalised trays, producing in Mirren the comfortable feeling of nostalgia and anticipation. Unlike the food at the Gastrodome, this was cheap. To Mirren's surprise it was also good.
As Caroline finished her starter, she said, "By the way, I remembered those photos of Susan I told you about."
Mirren smiled. He'd rather she hadn't. He wondered if she was intentionally trying to make him feel guilty.
She took a stack of a dozen pix from the pocket of her jacket and slid them across to him. He pushed his plate away, went through the snaps one by one.
They showed an anonymous, tall, tanned and blonde Australian girl in her early twenties, smiling in all the shots: in one she was wearing the uniform of the KVO Martian division, in another a ski-suit, Another pix showed her on a beach with someone who was, presumably, her boyfriend.
Mirren recalled the baby he'd left in Sydney.
He tried to feel something, some vestige of the love he must once have felt, or failing that some paternal feelings - but he felt nothing, he admitted; not even guilt.
He returned the pictures to Caroline, who had been watching him closely. "You don't want to keep one?"
He tried to seem enthusiastic as he selected a picture: Susan, skiing on Mars.
"I heard from her last night, Ralph. She's visiting me in just over a month. She asked if I was in contact with you."
Mirren could not help but feel that Susan would be bitterly disappointed when she finally met him. "A month? That's great. We'll go out somewhere together."
Caroline smiled unsurely, pushed her plate to one side. "Ralph, I lied yesterday when I said I didn't come to Paris intending to look you up."
Mirren felt something heavy plummet within him. Please, he wanted to tell her, don't let me hurt you again.
He avoided her gaze.
She went on, "After my husband died... I got to thinking about us. We never gave it a chance - you never gave it a chance. I decided to come here and see what you were doing. Look, I don't mean I necessarily want us to get back together, but..." She shook her head.
There was a long silence.
"You're not the man I married, Ralph. You've changed a lot, lost something. That might have been the flux... I believe what you told me yesterday, about the flux. I know you aren't to blame. The very fact that you've had no-one since leaving..."
Mirren picked though his meal. He didn't want her sympathy, her spurious attention on the rebound from her dead irrigation scientist.
"What do you feel about it?"
He looked up. "About what?"
"What do you think?" She sounded exasperated. "Us!"
Carrie, he wanted to tell her, I'm dying and I've been promised the chance to flux again... Instead he just shook his head, folding and refolding his napkin