The Engineer ReConditioned Part 20

"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 s.h.i.+p 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...o...b..ted 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 Bradebus 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 att.i.tude. 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, amba.s.sador 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 amba.s.sador. 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 s.h.i.+p. 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.

"This ... is possible," said the Proctor, David.

"How?"

"We have been one with the mind of the Owner for millennia. In the last fifty years the contact has been broken and we have gained independent existence. This is why we are here. We want to see and know more than this world. We want to do more than enforce the Owner's law."

"You have what you seek," said Bradebus to Manx Evitel. She looked abruptly surprised at this, then regarded the Proctor calculatingly.

"You have not been in contact with the Owner for some time then?"

The Proctor shook its head.

"Has anyone seen the Owner since?" She glanced at Lumi and Bradebus. Lumi realised he must be the last to have seen him.

"Twenty years ago I saw him," he said.

Evitel nodded and turned back to the Proctor. "What use might you be to us should we transport you from this place?"

The Proctor said, "The Owner called them the Snark-kind in reference to a poem by one Lewis Carrol. He traded with them and observed their civilisation for two hundred years. Every one of us knows what he learnt about them. We were one with the Owner's mind."

Evitel abruptly got up and faced her s.h.i.+p. "s.h.i.+p, open," she said.

In the side of the great cylinder a slot of light appeared, and with eerie silence a segment of metal folded down, straightened out, became a ramp. Lumi stood and glanced back towards the camp where he could hear shouting. Suddenly there was gunfire. Lumi and Bradebus began running in that direction. More gunfire. A figure ahead, crouching, something across its shoulder. A spear of light.

"s.h.i.+t!" said Bradebus, both he and Lumi hitting the ground. There was an explosion behind them. In the light of the flame Lumi saw the girl Keela with the missile launcher across her shoulder. He drew his pistol, fired twice. She staggered and fell.

The Proctor David lay on the ground, flickers of blue light on his skin. His side was open to expose something like organs and something like electronics. Evitel stood to one side. A s.h.i.+mmer winked out around her. All along, a personal force s.h.i.+eld, Cromwell could not have harmed her. The Proctors began standing, something like a growl of anger coming from them.

"How the h.e.l.l did she get hold of that?!" Lumi shouted at Brown as he reached Keela and turned her over onto her back, his pistol in her face.

"She knocked out Lambert. We didn't think she ... she is a third child ... "

Enough, thought Lumi, there was never any getting away from the stigma.

Brown stared in terror at the Proctors, they were moving now, all their fields flicking on. Lumi watched them too, not knowing how to stop what he felt sure was to come. A Proctor had been killed, the first ever.

"Tell them to stop," he said to Evitel.

"Wait!" she shouted. The Proctors ignored her.

"Hold," said Bradebus. He was crouched down by the corpse of David. All the Proctors froze then turned in his direction. Lumi saw the man's rough clothing fade, become a black body suit, piped and padded and linked to half-seen machines, saw his appearance change. The Owner. He touched David. He and the Proctor flickered out of existence. There was a crack as air rushed to fill the s.p.a.ce. The remaining Proctors turned towards the s.h.i.+p and slowly began to mount the ramp. More of them came out of the woods.

Twilight, birds beginning to sing, immediate warmth in the forest. The Proctors were all aboard, but for one called Mark. He and Evitel sat by a fire with Lumi and Brown. The other constables were taking the prisoners, the wounded, and the dead, back to the town.

"We are one with his mind again," said Mark.

"What is he doing?" asked Lumi.

"He has repaired David."

"What are his intentions?" asked Evitel.

"You may ask him."

The Owner came out of the forest with David walking behind him. He said, "It was my intention that the Proctors go with you. They have my knowledge and they have wisdom." He squatted by the fire, the machines gone, his eyes normal. He grinned at Lumi. "I had intended not to show myself, but, six thousand years of wisdom and knowledge is too much to lose." He looked towards David and nodded. Mark rose, the two Proctors walked towards Evitel's s.h.i.+p.

"Why the subterfuge?" asked Lumi.

"Because I wanted it," was the reply.

"I would have preferred you to come," said Evitel.

"For that there will be no need. My Proctors will be sufficient to the Snark-kind." He looked at Lumi and Brown, then pointed out beyond the lake. In the sky they saw falling lights like a meteor shower. "This place has remained closed for too long. Here my constructors will build a s.p.a.ceport and this world will join with the human Polity. All my laws will no longer apply. There is much room in s.p.a.ce. I leave this place in trust." He stood.

"Where will you be?" asked Evitel.

"Around," said the Owner.

The ash of the fire gusted as air replaced him. The third moon, like a polished metal ball, rose in the twilight sky, made a right angled turn far above them, receded into dark. Lumi felt the tug of the huge ma.s.s moving away, heard waves breaking on the lake sh.o.r.e, squinted at the sudden flare of a star drive igniting.

ABOUT "THE OWNER"

There's not much to add about this story. It's another 'Owner' one in its distinct future history, but has no history itself (i.e. wasn't published anywhere but in The Engineer collection). I reckon I've got about four or five future histories going now, and probably will start more of them. Looking at the ongoing creation of the 'runcible universe' I wonder how many writers love or feel trapped by their speculative creations, or both.

THE OWNER.

There is a place where stands an ancient pillar. It is taller than a man, just, and wider. It is a plain cylinder without plinth or capital and is made of grey corrosion-free metal. Its surface is intagliated with strange runes, or circuit diagrams, and it stands upon sand in a bleak place where few have heard of Ozymandias. It is real, absolutely and solidly real, as if its location has formed around it - an accretion of reality. Standing on the sand by this pillar is a swordsman. He is just in its shadow; all dark fabric and iron, and seemingly part of that shadow. Such fancy he would perhaps allow a smile, knowing a permanence greater than that of the grey metal.

They were tired of running, tired of forever being on guard, and tired of the fear, but there was only one alternative. Cheydar knew this and it churned him up inside. Sometimes he felt a hopelessness so strong he just wanted to stop, to sit down and wait for the end, but he hadn't, not yet. The Code would not allow him suicide without permission.

When he saw him, the man seated on a boulder out on the flats, watching them, Cheydar thought, Here is another killer come for the Cariphe's reward. And, as he waved his two sons to his side and moved out from the campfire he wondered if he might die this day. The boys s.p.a.ced themselves and pumped full the gas cylinders of their air guns. Cheydar was weary, loath to kill yet again, frightened he might not be able to. Behind him Suen held her daughter close and looked on. Suen, wife of Tarrin, to whom he and his family were sworn service of life. All this for her and the girl now. He knew that sometimes she d.a.m.ned the loyalty that kept him and his kin with her, only sometimes, without it there was only that one alternative.

The man was motionless. It seemed as if he might have sat there all night watching their camp. When he finally moved, when he finally came down from his rock, it was at the precise moment the sun gnawed a red-hot lump out of the horizon. Cheydar felt his throat clench: The Daybreak Warrior. Then he d.a.m.ned himself for a fool and the bitterness inside threatened to overwhelm him. He was too old for such fairy tales. If only Tarrin had been as wise.

"He looks a handy one this," he said.

It was the way the man had come down from the boulder: lithe, strong. That had been a four metre drop and he had taken it as if it was nothing and was strolling towards them with the loose-limbed gait of a trained fighter ... killer.

"Not handy enough to outrun an iron dart," said Eric, Cheydar's eldest.

If only that were so, but the three would not fire at this man unless he attacked. Honour would not permit murder. They must wait until he had come close and offered challenge, and gained the opportunity to kill them one at a time. Cheydar had taken on two challengers and killed them both. Would he be able to kill this one? A bitter part of himself observed that dying first he would at least not get to see his sons die. He observed the approaching killer and s.h.i.+vered. The killer was a hard-faced man with cropped blond hair. His age was indeterminate. His stature short but heavily muscled. His clothing was dramatically black and leaning towards leather. Over his leather tunic he wore chain mail. Sticking up above his shoulders were the pommels of two swords. There were knives at his belt, in his boot, probably elsewhere. Three metres from the Cheydar and his sons he halted and squatted.

"Who are you and what do you want?" Cheydar demanded.

The man looked past Cheydar and directly at Suen. "They burned your husband on the frame," he stated matter-of-factly.

"Have a care," said Cheydar, and glanced around at Suen. Would she ever get over it? Would she ever look as if she wanted to live? She had bribed the Jack-o-the-frame to use green wood so Tarrin would have a quick and relatively pain-free death from smoke inhalation. He had taken her money and still used c.o.ke and dry wood. Tarrin had screamed for a very long time. Now Suen was outlawed for attempting to bribe an official of the Cariphe. She winced and turned her face away, hugged her daughter to her. Her daughter flicked a long suffering look at Cheydar's son David, and carefully tried to extricate herself. The stranger turned his attention from Suen to Cheydar.

"He nearly got you, didn't he? You're getting too tired."

Cheydar suddenly felt cold. This was the thought that had been occupying him for days. The last killer had nearly got through his guard, nearly gutted him. This man must have seen, must have been watching.

"Who are you?" Cheydar asked yet again.

"Call me Dagon. I have come to join you."

Cheydar felt that tightness in his throat yet again. Dagon. The name of the Daybreak Warrior. He did not need this kind of thing, not now, not when he was weak enough to hope, weak enough to believe.

"Why should we allow you into our company? Why should we trust you?"