The Engineer ReConditioned

by Neal Asher

  “The thrake…”

  “The thrakai feed on the Orbonnai. They always have done.”

  With more certainty he said, “That does not make it right.”

  Carmen smiled with nasty relish. “You know, we picked up on you by the stream when you first saw this orboni. What did you think you saw there?”

  Mark straightened up. “I saw a reasoning creature taking the first steps toward tool using.”

  “And this attitude? An attitude of worship?”

  Mark nodded, less sure. He glanced around at the man and noticed for the first time that he was clothed in the workmanlike gear of an agent from Earth Central. He was not sure if the man’s expression was one of sympathy or contempt. He turned back to Carmen and saw she now held a small surgical shear.

  “I suppose you saw that this orboni’s God was the thrake—a monster. I wonder what it saw?”

  She stooped to the orboni and sliced off the top of its skull. A writhing ball of flatworms spilled out. “In the end it saw nothing at all. It was blind.” She prodded at the worms with the toe of her boot. “You know what I saw at the stream? I saw an animal with a brain so badly damaged it had lost the use of its normal instinctive abilities. When it fell to its knees, it did so, not to worship, but because its inner ear was full of parasites and it kept losing its sense of balance. Look at them. Look at them, Mark Christian.”

  Mark stared at the writhing mass of worms as they broke apart and began to die on the bluish dirt.

  Carmen continued, relentlessly. “Tell me, did your God that made the lion and the lamb make the worms that eat them from the inside out?”

  “I have faith.”

  At that point the monitor stepped between them and stared down with clinical detachment at the opened skull of the orboni.

  “I presume,” he said, “that the thrake has its place in this parasite’s life cycle.”

  Carmen looked to him. “Yes, the thrake shits their eggs. The parasite goes from there to the water and into the nautiloids. The Orbonnai ingest them and become so riddled they’re easy prey.”

  As she finished the anger drained out of her.

  “Are the thrakai damaged in any way by these parasites?” asked the monitor.

  Carmen shook her head. “It’s difficult to tell. The life-cycle is so interlinked that you cannot make—”

  They are ignoring me.

  “—an easy assessment based on—”

  Suddenly angry, Mark interrupted. “Do you think you’ve won? Do you think that somehow you have proven to me that the Orbonnai are not pre-ascension! I will return to Carth and report my findings. Those skulls…On the basis of them, a mission will be sent here for the…”

  He trailed off when he noticed they were not listening to him. They were looking past him into the scrub. He turned and saw the thrake he had shot at, standing no more than ten yards away.

  “My God! Shoot it! Drive it away!”

  He turned and saw the monitor and Carmen looking at each other.

  Carmen said, “We can’t have that…a mission here.”

  The monitor nodded. “It won’t happen.” He turned to Mark. “You will not be returning to Carth. You will be coming with me to Earth Central to answer to the charge of attempted unlawful killing.”

  “What?…Who?”

  The monitor pointed at the thrake. “You attempted to kill a grade three sentience. That is a serious offence.”

  Carmen said, “The Thrakai were the ones you should have been studying for your spurious proofs. They’re the ones that build those mounds of skulls. Perhaps they worship the Orbonnai. Members of the prehistoric societies of Earth used to worship the animals they ate.”

  They turned from him then to watch the thrake. It started to move in, slowly, like an animal stalking its prey. Mark could see it had its many joined arms opened out ready to grab any of them that tried to escape. He started to back away, but the monitor’s hand came down on his shoulder with the finality of a guillotine.

  “There’s no need for panic,” the monitor said to him, then to Carmen, “What should we do now?”

  “Back away slowly, towards the raft. It only wants the orboni. They’ve tried human flesh before, and found it distasteful.”

  Mark wanted to shout out how wrong she was as they moved away from the body of Paul. He wanted to run, but the hand on his shoulder seemed to suck the will out of him. It was all he could do to keep his legs moving. Soon, the three of them were backed up against the raft and the thrake had reached the corpse. Mark watched in horror as it severed Paul’s head, then continued to advance on them, with the head held in its lower appendages.

  “My God…do something!”

  Suddenly Carmen was walking forwards, her arms spread wide, like the thrake’s. Soon she was standing before it, below it. It paused over her like a wall of scrap-iron about to fall, then slowly it stooped, placed the head at her feet, then turned and moved away. In a moment it had picked up the rest of the corpse and was loping for the horizon. Carmen stooped down and picked up the head.

  “Souvenir?” she asked Mark.

  He stared at her, feeling sick. She tossed the head back on the ground.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said, tiredly.

  The monitor’s hand did not leave Mark’s shoulder as they boarded the raft.

  ABOUT “PROCTORS”

  Recently, Lavie Tidhar, a reviewer on Dusksite, managed to obtain a copy of The Engineer (Tanjen), and at the launch party for Tor UK said to me he really liked the “Owner” stories and felt them to contain material for plenty of books. He is absolutely right, and if I can just drag over a few more versions of myself from parallel universes I can get on and write that stuff, and rewrite the four fantasy books and the contemporary novel, produce large collections of Mason’s Rats stories, write the next Heliothane/Umbrathane book, produce many more short stories, start pushing the TV scripts, and write more of them… Of course, what I really need is the capability of a ten-thousand-year-old immortal with godlike powers and vast intelligence and wisdom. I wouldn’t mind the spaceship too.

  PROCTORS

  Mr Coti pulled his rain cape closer about his shoulders and looked nervously out from under his barley-bowl hat. Cloud occluded the light of the moons. The rain was coming down in sheets and, having turned the street into a quagmire, was now turning it into a stream. This was good for Coti’s work, since as a board-cutter in the wilderness, he was much in demand at this time of the year, but the cutting of boards was the last thing on his mind at that moment. It was imperative he got to Chief Scientist Lumi before they found him. This was his only insurance of survival: once he had imparted his news, Cromwell would leave him alone. Cromwell would not dare to go up against C S Lumi. Coti halted at the corner of Blue Street, the boards creaky and slippery underneath him, and for a moment thought he might be able to reach his destination without mishap—Lumi’s house was only a street away—then he saw the caped figures lurking in a side alley and darted back for cover. Few options now remained to him. He could either make a run for Lumi’s house while making as much noise as possible and attracting all the attention he could, but the probable result of this would be a dart in the back, or he could sneak there, using what cover he could, but he reckoned every access would be covered. He decided his best option was neither of these. He would hide until morning and try to get to Lumi when he came out. Cromwell’s people always preferred the cover of darkness for their nefarious doings. Hugging a wall Coti stepped off the boardwalk and crept back down the alley he had been about to leave. Back that way he had spotted a suitable woodpile he could hide in, but before he reached it, a girl stepped out of a shadowed doorway.

  The girl was young and innocent looking and Coti thought she might just live here and have nothing to do with Cromwell. When she grinned and said, “Mr Coti,” he knew otherwise. Two bulky figures followed her out of the doorway and stepped past her to grab him. Coti pulled his board cutter and switched it on. It
hummed in the rain, inset lights flickering from red to green and back again. He swung it at his nearest assailant, who screamed and fell back as a board-thick slice of flesh and bone peeled from his shoulder. The second man dropkicked Coti in the chest. The cutter flew from his grip and landed sizzling in the mud. In a moment, the man had Coti on his knees with his arm wrenched up around his back. The girl stepped forward, pulling something from under her rain cape while the first man staggered to the wall to lean against it moaning while he clutched his half-severed arm.

  “Hurt the fucker! Hurt him!” said that one.

  She knocked away Coti’s hat, grabbed his hair, and pulled his head back. Coti awaited the cut that would open his throat, but it never came.

  “You know what a blade beetle is?” she asked him.

  Coti managed to scream just before the blade went into his guts. He retched and choked at the feel of it cutting into him, the feel of it still there. The girl held up an empty handle before his face and when the man released him, Coti fell face down in the mud, clutching at the full wound in his belly. Why did they have to do it like that? They didn’t have to do it like that. The pain and horror of the knife wound in his guts were redoubled with a blade that remained inside, and began to make a nest there. C S Lumi had been working in his laboratory since dawn when his doorbell chimed. It was not that he was by nature an early riser, but that the privilege he had been granted brought with it a deep feeling of responsibility. He saved the information he had been collating, from his notescreen to his house computer, took a long contemplative look at the nautiloids feeding in their tank, then took off his lab coat and headed for the door. The Chief Constable stood waiting for him.

  “Sorry to bother you so early, sir, but there has been a killing.” Lumi studied the constable’s leather uniform and thought how closely it made him resemble a Proctor. He thought how one day he might write a paper on the psychological effects of this.

  “No bother, Brown, come in.”

  Chief Constable Brown removed his leather helmet, wiped his feet on the door mat, and stepped into the hall to stand almost at attention. Lumi had no authority over the police, nor any position in local politics, but having been granted privilege by the Owner, he was looked upon with respect and deferred to by all.

  “Was it anyone I know?” he asked.

  “Unfortunately, yes, it was Coti, the board cutter.”

  Lumi looked around in surprise as he pulled on his jacket. “Why would anyone want to kill him? Where did this happen, and how?”

  “It happened very close to here, in the alley leading to the wood yard.” Brown paused, obviously uncomfortable. “We think he was killed with a blade-beetle.”

  “Cromwell,” said Lumi, his expression grim.

  “There is, of course, no proof of this. We are questioning his people, but they will all alibi each other.” Lumi snorted and picked up the bag containing his study kit. “Let’s go and have a look then.” Out on the boardwalk he gazed up at the clear sky, then down at the pools in the street. What a night for dying, and to die in such a way…Brown headed down the boardwalk to the street bridge, beyond which Lumi could see a crowd around a taped-off area. In the centre of this area lay a muddy shape. It had been done in the alley. Coti must have managed to crawl that far before the beetle reached a vital organ or he had collapsed from blood loss.

  The crowd parted before Lumi then closed behind him as he ducked under the tape and squatted by the corpse. Coti was on his back, his face in death relaxed into a kind of idiocy that belied the agony he must have suffered. Lumi opened his kit, pulled on a pair of surgical gloves, then removed a long set of tongs and a reinforced plastic bag. He parted the wound with his fingers and pushed the tongs up the path of lacerated organs into the chest cavity. There was movement there and he closed the tongs on something hard and slick, and withdrew it from the body.

  “Oh my god,” said someone in the crowd, turning and rapidly staggering away. The blade beetle was the length of a hand and shaped like an almond. Its legs were flat paddles and the edges of these and its wing cases, as Lumi well knew, were sharper than broken glass. It was an adult, he saw; there would be eggs in the body.

  “We won’t learn much from this,” he said, inserting the feebly moving beetle into the bag and sealing it in.

  “Check his clothing and so-forth then bring him over for autopsy. He’ll have to be burnt right after.” He glanced around at the Chief Constable, who was looking on white-faced, then he stood. “Let’s see where he was killed.”

  Brown led Lumi down the alley, following the trail Coti had left, dragging himself through the mud. Grooves with red puddles in them.

  “Stop.”

  Brown looked around at Lumi in surprise.

  Lumi tilted his head. “Do you hear it?”

  The Chief Constable listened as well. “Something humming?”

  “There,” said Lumi, pointing down into the mud. He stooped down and removed his tongs again, delved into the mud for a moment, then came up with a metal cylinder with flashing lights on it. He clicked a switch and the lights went out.

  “That’s a board cutter,” the constable told him.

  “I am aware of that. What it would be nice to know is if it has cut something.” Brown smiled.

  “Evidence, hard physical evidence,” he said, then, as he hurried back out of the alley, “I’ll get my men.” When he returned, Lumi was scraping mortar from between the bricks of one wall and placing it in a bag.

  “They tried to wash it off, but it soaked into the mortar. One of them was badly injured. Probably had something cut right off—there’s a fragment of bone here. Find someone badly injured and I’ll do a genetic cross-match, then you’ll likely have your killer, or be very close to him.”

  “Sir!”

  The shout came from the constable probing the mud at the end of the alley. Lumi looked down there and saw the crowd hurriedly dispersing.

  “What is it, Walker?” asked Brown.

  Walker did not reply. He hurriedly stepped back to the wall of the alley and stared out into the street. Suddenly a huge figure loomed there; eight feet tall and leathery skinned, long robes, a staff, a face visored with leathery skin, no eyes apparent, a grim slit of a mouth. A Proctor.

  “Oh shit,” said Brown.

  The Proctor strode down the alley, its staff punching holes in the mud. It halted when it was looming over them, regarding them with the featureless thrust of its head.

  “Death,” it said, its voice flat and barren of anything human. Lumi stood up and sealed the plastic bag he had been filling.

  “We are investigating it,” he said.

  “Lumi,” said the Proctor, then abruptly turned away and strode out of the alley.

  “What the hell?” said Brown.

  “I don’t know.”

  “But they never take an interest in local law.”

  “I said I don’t know.”

  Lumi gazed after the retreating Proctor. They enforced the laws of the Owner: No one to enter the restricted zones, no building in or corruption of the wilder zones, no more taken from them by a human than a human can carry without mechanical aid, and of course, the population stricture. It was this last that inspired terror of the Proctors. The population was set at two billion and must never go above that number. Whenever it did the Proctors turned killer. It did not matter who died just so long as the population number was brought down again. This was why it was law that every man and woman must be sterilized after engendering only two children. To flout this law was punishable by death. In Lumi’s opinion this was the right way of going about things. On Earth no such laws had been in existence, and the horror of what had resulted was still remembered.

  Cromwell tapped a cigarette against its box and inserted it in his mouth. A quick pull on it had it burning and he blew a stream of smoke from his nostrils. The guard watched him warily out of the corner of his eye, his rifle braced before him and his stance rigid. Cromwell stood looki
ng thoughtfully at the door. He flicked ash on the ground and took another drag. This was difficult. People not co-operating with him was one matter, but this one…she hardly seemed to be aware of his presence. It was as if she considered him of no importance whatsoever. She would have to be made aware. He nodded to the guard.

  “Open the door,” he said.

  The guard removed a key from his pocket and did as instructed. Cromwell entered the cell and stood inspecting his prisoner as the guard closed the door behind him. She was an attractive blond-haired woman in a single skin-tight coverall. She sat in a lotus position in the centre of the cold concrete floor.

  “You have had time to consider my proposal,” said Cromwell.

  The woman glanced up at him and nodded absently.

  “Will you give me access to your ship?”

  She shook her head.

  “Perhaps I am not making myself clear. Perhaps you actually think you have choices in this matter. Well, in a way you do…you see, there are drugs I can use, some nasty little insects that are local to this area, pain, endless amounts of pain.”

  The woman met his stare directly. Her expression showed an analytical curiosity now. “What do you want from my ship?”

  Cromwell stared at her for a moment, took another drag on his cigarette.

  “High tech weaponry,” he said at last.

  “There is none,” she told him.

  “Unfortunately I do not believe you. You can of course prove me wrong by allowing me access.”

  “I think not,” said the woman.

  Cromwell grinned nastily. She was not a very good liar. There were weapons aboard her ship, weapons probably powerful enough to deal with Proctors. Cromwell’s grin turned to a sneer when he thought about that. Damned Proctors. The Owner was a myth kept alive by idiots like the Chief Scientist. Only the Proctors with their stupid arbitrary restrictions were real. He winced when he thought about the money he had outlaid on the sluice from his paper mill. The sluice had led into a river in the wilder and there had been no interference until the day of the first outflow. A Proctor had walked out of the wilder and methodically smashed the sluice to pieces. Cromwell ordered his men to fire on it, but only two dared to do so. They had been brave men. He was generous in compensating their families. These thoughts in mind he stepped forward and grabbed hold of the woman’s hair.