The Engineer ReConditioned

by Neal Asher

  “Is that a good idea? They might turn off.”

  Bradebus studied him estimatingly. “They’re out here after something. If it was close I’d have known about it by now. Must be in the deep wilder. They’ll stay on the main track.” He continued staring at Lumi, waiting.

  Lumi nodded and returned to his tent. He was not yet ready to tell the tracker what this was all about. Morning was yet to make its presence felt when Brown called outside Lumi’s tent then went on to rouse his constables. Lumi swore, stuck his head out into the darkness, then checked the luminous dial of his watch. An hour until sunrise. When they set out the foliage above had become distinguishable from the sky, and it was just possible not to walk into the trees when Bradebus led them off the track. They had travelled for an hour more before the birds started singing, and travelled for three more hours before stopping to remove rations from their packs to eat while they walked. Lumi noticed that Bradebus watched this with amusement, then wandered on chewing at a piece of jerky that smelt suspect, and washing this down with gulps from his hip flask. At midday Lumi went up to walk beside him.

  “Ready to tell me what it’s all about?” asked the tracker, his words only slightly slurred.

  “A spaceship has landed in the wilder. Cromwell has the pilot. We think he is after weapons.” Bradebus nodded. “Lot of Proctor activity around here lately.” Lumi did not know what to make of that.

  Shortly after this they rejoined the the main track and the tracker pointed at the signs of a large groups passing that way. “Gained about two hours on them,” he said.

  Lumi wondered if it would be enough. Another day’s march and they would be getting into the deep wilder. They camped part way into the night, when they were all too tired to make good time, and when blade beetles started to be attracted to the lamps they carried. One man required stitches in his upper arm before he could go to his tent.

  Lumi woke and did not know why. Had there been a sound? With utmost caution he pulled the revolver from its holster and slid out of his tent into the night.

  “Everything all right?” he asked the guard.

  The woman glanced at him then looked back out into the darkness. “The tracker went out there a moment ago. Don’t know what he’s up to,” she said.

  “Which direction?”

  The woman pointed.

  “I’ll just go and take a look.”

  Lumi walked out into the wood as the woman muttered something about ‘shitting in the trees’. Yes, that could be the reason the old man had gone out, but Lumi found he entertained suspicions about the old man. Might he be in the employ of Cromwell? Might he be leading them astray? Ahead of him he heard the rustle of leaves. He moved towards it, saw a flicker of blue light, moved towards that. As he drew closer the light grew brighter. There was an area of blue light, a huge shape moving about in it. A hand caught him by the shoulder and a hand closed over his mouth.

  “Shush now,” said Bradebus, and took his hand away.

  “Proctor,” said Lumi as the huge shape became recogniseable.

  “Oh yes, lots of them here. Lots of them.”

  There was something strange in his voice. Lumi watched Bradebus in confusion as the old man turned away and headed back towards the camp. Then the scientist glanced back at the light as it faded, before following the old man in. Had Bradebus come out here because he had heard a Proctor? Or had there been a more sinister reason? Lumi shivered in the night.

  The next day of travel was marked only by the advent of their seeing a Proctor striding through the woodland far to one side. Otherwise it was exhausting and uneventful. Lumi quickly ate the food prepared for him and drank his tea before crawling into his tent and the comfort of his sleeping bag. In the dark before dawn they set out into more rugged country where deciduous trees gave way to conifers and patches of stone revealed sky above and a glimpse of distant mountains. There was a track of sorts that Bradebus led them from without a word of explanation. Lumi felt too tired to question, or to reassure Brown, but did have the energy to follow when Brown hurried to catch up with the tracker and demand an explanation.

  “You’ll see,” said Bradebus, and hurried them on. Soon he brought them to the edge of the pines and a flat area of stone. Beyond the stone was nothing but purpled by distance mountains and sky. He waved them forward and walked to the edge. Lumi stood at his shoulder and looked down into the forest a thousand metres below. It was an awesome sight. Bradebus pointed.

  “There,” he said.

  There it was, lying on the shores of a lake, a silver cylinder amongst trees that only reached up to half its diameter.

  “One would think a vantage point like this would be watched,” said Brown, glancing around.

  “It is,” said Bradebus. “Cromwell’s people have been watching us for some time now.” He turned to Brown. “I said we would come as no surprise to him.”

  Brown snorted in annoyance and walked away.

  “How many people does Cromwell have with him would you say?” asked Lumi.

  “Ten came with him, including the one from the ship—she has strange shoes—and about here I would reckon another ten.”

  “We will have to be very careful then.”

  “They won’t be as well armed, nor very well trained.”

  They came across the first of them an hour later.

  Keela squatted down in front of the woman and handed her a bowl of soup. It was accepted graciously and the woman sipped at it while Keela tested the chain attaching her to the tree.

  “He’ll torture you,” said Keela.

  “Yes, I imagine he will.”

  “Why don’t you just let him in? If there are no weapons as you say…”

  “I am not amenable to coercion.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Keela, settling down on the pine needles. “Why are you here?” The woman looked up from her soup and observed Keela with disconcerting eyes. “It is strange, is it not, that you ask me this now?”

  “Well?”

  “I am an ambassador from the human federation. I have come here to seek the wisdom if not the assistance of the Owner.”

  “Why?”

  “He is ten thousand years old. From who else would I seek wisdom?”

  “He doesn’t exist,” said Keela.

  The woman smiled and continued to sip her soup. Chagrined, Keela rose to her feet and stomped away.

  “Anything?” Cromwell asked her.

  “She just doesn’t make sense.”

  “Then we’ll have to force her to make sense.”

  Cromwell gazed speculatively at the glowing point of his cigarette.

  They heard the crack of the shot simultaneous with the smack of the bullet against flesh. A constable staggered to one side, fell from the narrow path, and tumbled down the heather-tufted slope. Lumi had a glimpse of jetting blood, a raw exposure of flesh the size of a cooking apple.

  “Down!” came the belated cry. Constables ran for cover behind the boulders at the base of the cliff as another shot range out and smashed splinters from rock. Lumi found himself behind a boulder with Bradebus and watched him take aim with his hunting carbine. He looked into the woodland below and could see nothing. The carbine went off with a satisfying explosion.

  “Got the bugger.”

  Immediately Bradebus was up and running down the slope. It all happened too quickly for Lumi. He followed after with the dazed constables and swearing Brown.

  The man lay dead behind a splintered pine tree. Bradebus had shot him through the tree. The mangled bullet and wood splinters had made quite a mess. Lumi looked at the tracker questioningly. The man held out a handful of bullets. Lumi picked one up and inspected it: pointed steel tip, large caseless charge, enough to shoot a man through a tree, but of no use otherwise. There were no animals large enough to justify such bullets. How was it that they had come into this lowly tracker’s possession?

  “Spread out now, and move with caution. Lambert, you stay back,” said Bro
wn. Lambert was the one who carried the missile launcher. Before they moved off Brown went to confirm the fallen man was dead. Lumi went with him. Half his head was gone, somewhere on the slope above. They moved cautiously. Shots soon rang out again. The sound of bullets cracking through tree branches. A curtailed scream. Lumi saw the tracker running, his knife drawn and bloody. He was grinning. He looked like he was having fun. Two constables stayed back after that exchange, one to tend to the leg wound of the other. Nearby lay the corpses of two anonymous men and a woman, their blood draining into the pine needles. The second exchange was more intense, then abruptly ceased when Cromwell’s people withdrew.

  “What the fuck!” said Brown.

  Lumi saw he was looking to one side. Two Proctors were striding through the trees towards the ship. There was another out to the other side of them.

  “How many, I wonder?” said Bradebus in a whimsical voice.

  This is very important, thought Lumi. As far as he knew the Proctors only enforced those few of the Owner’s laws. There were two thousand of them, one for every million human beings on this, the Owner’s world. Seeing them together was an event rare enough to be recorded. The last time Proctors had been seen together had been forty-three years before, just two of them, and the observer of this rare occurrence had said they seemed almost embarrassed about the matter and had quickly parted. Three Proctors here, in this small area of trees, how many more were there in the vicinity?

  The ship and the lake became visible through the trees. Brown scanned the area through compact binoculars.

  “They’re dug in around the ship behind log barricades. The camp is clear. Can’t tell how many of them there are. There’s a woman chained to a tree between us and them.” He scanned to one side, then with his expression dumb-founded he handed the binoculars to Lumi and pointed. Lumi brought the lenses to his eyes.

  Proctors.

  They were on the lake shore, moving through the trees. As he watched, one walked up out of the water of the lake as if it had just walked across the bottom, which might well have been the case. What were they here for? They seemed to be doing little more than waiting and watching; leaning on their staffs and gazing into the distance like old-Earth Masai. The parallel was perhaps not the best. Are we their cattle?

  Lumi wondered. Just then Cromwell’s people opened fire and Brown slammed him down to eat pine needles. The constables fired back with their automatic weapons until Brown yelled at them to stop.

  “The woman! You’ll hit the woman!”

  Lumi looked out to her. She was sat in a position of meditation, not trying to bury herself as would be expected. All the firing ceased.

  “Surrender and we won’t kill her!” came Cromwell’s shout.

  “He doesn’t want to kill her anyway, she hasn’t let him in her ship,” said Bradebus. How do you know that? Lumi had no time to ask the question. The tracker fired twice. There was a yell of surprise. He turned to Brown.

  “You don’t have to shoot low to get them. That Cromwell isn’t the best tactician. Just shoot at the hull of the ship above them and the ricochets will do the rest.”

  Brown looked where indicated and grinned, then his grin faded.

  “The woman,” he said.

  “I would say that problem is about to be solved,” said the tracker. The Proctor came striding in from the side and positioned itself between the woman and Cromwell’s people. It drove its staff into the ground then reached down to take hold of the chain. It was a thick chain. The Proctor snapped it like a cord of plasticene. Cromwell stood up then. He was yelling something as he depressed the trigger of his weapon and emptied its clip. The Proctor’s field flared blue about it and no shots reached the woman as it led her away with a huge leathery hand on her shoulder. It kept itself between her and Cromwell all the time. Cromwell should have remembered the outfall from his factory. It seemed he was not thinking straight, because after he had emptied one clip he remained standing while he fumbled for another. The woman was out of the way. The constables remembered many crimes, many slights, dead friends. How many bullets hit him at once is moot. It would have been difficult to count the holes in what remained.

  “Cease firing!” Brown shouted, once Cromwell had disappeared out of sight. From Cromwell’s people entrenched below the ship there was no more firing once the constables lowered their weapons. The sounds of argument could be heard, then a weapon was tossed out in front of the stacked logs and a man rose slowly to his feet with his hands in the air. Someone was yelling at him and he was ignoring that yelling. He stepped out from cover with his hands up.

  “Brave fellow,” said Bradebus as he watched the man walk across the no-man’s land between. Twenty feet from the constables the man halted.

  “I surrender myself,” said the man. He looked scared but determined.

  “Come behind here and lay face down on the ground,” said Brown. When the man had done this Brown searched him and cuffed him. “How many of the others will give themselves up?” he asked.

  “Most of them,” the man replied. “Cromwell was all that kept us.”

  “Loyalty?” asked Brown.

  “Fear, for ourselves and our families.”

  Brown raised a sardonic eyebrow at that but did not refute it. “What about the rest?”

  “A few who have reason to hate Proctors, only them.”

  Shortly after this more weapons were tossed out and another five men and two women approached to give themselves up.

  “How many more?” asked Brown.

  “Keela is there, her and two of Cromwell’s closest.”

  Brown flicked on the com unit on his belt and turned it to public address.

  “Will you die?” he asked the hold-outs. He signalled to his constables to be ready. “Where you are we can bounce bullets off that ship until you are all dead. Is this the end you want?” A silence drew as taut as as a garrotte. Eventually three weapons were tossed out and three people stood: Keela and the two men. They walked over to be cuffed with the rest. The night sky was black and moonless, unusually, in that three moons orbited the Owner’s planet. The forest was lit by camp-fires and weird blue glows like the flash of glow worms from where the Proctors waited. Brown, Bradebus, and Lumi shared the glow of a fire, steaming mugs of tea, and bread rolls filled with steaks from a deer Bradebus had shot and wild onions he had collected.

  “We must find out why she came here, and what interest the Proctors have in her,” said Lumi.

  “And how do you suggest we go about that?” asked Brown, a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

  “Why not go and ask?” said Bradebus, and the other two looked at him as if he had suggested eating blade beetles. “Well, why not?”

  Lumi and Brown looked at each other. It was Lumi who replied. “For one, they would not answer, for two, we might end up dead.”

  “She would answer, and what rules have you broken that might bring their anger down on you?” Bradebus stood up. “Come on, let’s go see them.”

  Lumi and Brown stood up staring in amazement at each other as Bradebus strode off towards the Proctors. Lumi hesitated for a moment, then quickly followed.

  “I have the prisoners, my men…” said Brown, not inclined to follow. Lumi waved him back and continued on. Brown sat back down and poured himself more tea. He did not want to say anything about all the leaders being killed.

  The Proctors were seated around under the trees all facing in one direction. Lumi and Bradebus walked between them and soon came in sight of a campfire, and Proctors beyond that facing inward. The woman was by the fire eating something that had been cooking over it. The rise and fall of speech could be heard. Three Proctors sat around the fire with her, their staffs driven into the ground behind them.

  “…fourteen star systems and the new gates are opening more all the time,” they heard, followed by the grating voice of one of the Proctors.

  “So much to learn, to see. This must be the time.”

  By then Lumi and Brad
ebus had reached the fire. The woman looked up at them cautiously. The Proctor that had been speaking turned its head in their direction and watched them approach. Lumi was the first to speak.

  “Are you uninjured?” he asked the woman.

  She nodded. He continued. “I am Chief Scientist Lumi and my companion is the tracker Bradebus…by what name should we address you?”

  The woman smiled. “At last someone with a civilised attitude. No one has yet asked me my name. The man Cromwell considered me a means to an end, though it turned out it was his own. These Proctors speak beyond names.” She stood up. “I am Manx Evitel, ambassador from Earth.” She held out a greasy hand, which Lumi took.

  “Names have importance to us,” said the Proctor, and Lumi looked at it in startlement. “All of us have names. We are one but we name ourselves singly, but what purpose identification to us?”

  “What is your name, then?” asked Lumi, as he moved in and squatted by the fire. Bradebus came with him, his mouth closed and his expression alert.

  “I am called David,” said the Proctor.

  “Why…why are you here, David?” asked Lumi.

  “Here is opportunity,” said the Proctor.

  Lumi left it, it sounded cryptic enough to be an avoidance, and he had no wish to push Proctors. He turned back to the woman, who had seated herself again.

  “Why are you here then?”

  She smiled again. “I am here as an ambassador. The wars have been over for many centuries now and the human federation grows faster than some of us can cope with. I have come here to seek the Owner, we need his wisdom, his great knowledge. He travelled the galaxy millennia ago in his great ship. There are things he will know.”

  “It’s more than that,” said Bradebus.

  She looked at him. “Yes, it is more. Our expansion has brought us to the edge of an alien civilisation. It is vast and they are…difficult to understand, yet, from what we have learnt in our few encounters, they know about the Owner. He has been there. There will be things he knows…There is so much he knows.”

  “Some believe the Owner is dead,” said Lumi.