Neal Asher - The Engineer Reconditioned

“You are Lumi,” he had said, and in that moment the machines had faded away around him and his eyes had turned from red to a quite normal hazel.

“I am,” Lumi managed.

The Owner pointed to mountains in the restricted zone. “Up there are the fossils you seek. You will not find them anywhere else on this planet.”

Was he being taunted, Lumi wondered.

“You may study them at your leisure.” The Owner stared at him very directly. “I place no restrictions on you in this matter because I know you to be responsible.”

Lumi felt sick with excitement and fear. He gestured at the fence. “I cannot… ”

“It will not harm you. I have instructed the fence here not to harm you. You may pass through.” Lumi could not do it. All his upbringing, all the social conditioning, the hundreds of years of tradition… He was terrified. The Owner saw this in an instant, took hold of his arm with a hand as cold as ice, and marched him between the silver posts. On the other side of the fence Lumi had fallen to his knees and been sick on the sand.

“You may pass through this section of fence for the rest of your natural life. You may study the fossils and nautiloids and whatever else you may find here of interest to you.” Lumi had gazed up into eyes returned to red, the weird machinery back.

“Why… have you allowed me this?” he managed.

“Because I can,” the Owner had said, a strange smile on his face.

“What was he like?” Lumi said in reply to Brown’s question. “My meeting with him has been detailed time and time again, much has been spouted about how human the Owner is when he disconnects himself from his machines. I think that is exactly the case. He isn’t human. He probably ceased to be human thousands of years ago. You know what I felt most strongly about that meeting? It was that only a fragment of him communicated with me, the largest fragment permissible.”

“What do you mean?”

Lumi shook his head. “A man does not discuss philosophy with a microbe.”

“You think the gap that wide.”

Lumi pointed at the nautiloids. “He let me study those. Only in the last few years have I come to a conclusion about them, that conclusion recently backed up by evidence from the fossil beds. They are native to this planet, as are creatures like the blade beetles, but they were extinct before the Owner got here. This was a dead world. He populated it with life forms from Earth and then resurrected some of the old life forms. He must have got the information from their fossils somehow. I also think he created the Proctors, and that they are not machines as is often thought, but highly sophisticated living creatures. I think that in these things we see only a hint of his power.”

“Do you think he is a god?”

“As near as makes no difference to us. Think of the war. Our ancestors came here in an escape craft from a ship capable of destroying planets and which itself had been destroyed. The Owner allowed them to settle… it’s an old story… but think about some other facts: This world was in the war zone yet nothing touched it, nothing came into the system unless the Owner allowed it. The two warring factions of the human race had no power here whatsoever.”

“Then, what power does Cromwell have?”

“He could get us all killed. With high tech weapons he is sure to try to destroy Proctors. It might be that he could become just enough of an irritant to get himself flattened.”

“A good thing, surely?”

“One microbe or the whole Petri dish. The laws are for a reason. We are here on sufferance. The population stricture should have told you enough. The people killed when the population tops two billion are not the idiots who can’t control their gonads and there is no enforced birth-control or sterilisation unless we do it. The Owner’s message in this should be evident: We keep our own house in order. I have a horrible feeling, no, I am certain, that if Cromwell starts killing Proctors then the Proctors will start killing back, and they won’t stop.”

Bradebus the tracker was the most irascible old man Lumi had ever known. He was also reputedly the best tracker known and had often helped the Constabulary find criminals who had fled into the wilder.

“Who you after then?” the old man asked, scratching at a ragged mess of a beard. Brown looked to Lumi then said, “Cromwell.”

“Ah! Got something on the bastard then?”

“You could say that. He’s gone into the wilder with many of his people. We want to catch up with them as soon as possible.”

“Who’s going?”

“Myself, Chief Scientist Lumi here, and fifteen constables.”

“When did he go?”

“This morning.”

Bradebus stared at Lumi calculatingly then gulped down the rest of his glass of whisky. The barman waddled forward and immediately refilled the glass.

“We want to leave as soon as possible,” said Lumi.

Bradebus took a gulp from his glass and grinned. “Oh, we’ll catch up all right. Can’t say we’ll take him by surprise though, not with fifteen clod-hoppers along.”

“The men are ready now,” said Brown to Lumi.

Bradebus said, “You know more or less what direction he took?”

“Yes,” said Brown.

“You go along then. I’ll catch you directly.”

“This is important, Bradebus,” said Brown.

“It always is,” said the tracker, turning his back on them.

The edge of the wilder was marked by a line of black metal posts. On one side of this line were arable fields and lands for livestock, on the other side the deep woodland that was the wilder itself. The bus drew to a halt in a circular parking area, in which the road terminated, and Lumi and the constables disembarked. The men and women were all in field kit and carried an assortment of weapons. Lumi was in his hiking gear and carried no weapons. Brown was quick to remark on this.

“Sir, I would feel better if you carried this,” he said, and handed over a pistol belt. Lumi drew the weapon and inspected it. It was a ten-bore revolver with eight chambers. A weapon you only needed to hit a man with once. Lumi considered rejecting it then changed his mind. Such an act might have been admirable in some circles, but here and now it would have been foolish. He strapped the weapon on and observed the constables unloading more powerful armament.

“What’s that?”

“Missile launcher,” said Brown. “If he gets to the ship and takes it up…” Brown did not need to elaborate. “Okay, let’s go,” he said to his men. And they walked between the black posts into the wood. This close to the perimeter there were many well-trodden paths. They moved at a slow pace following the main track Cromwell’s group had reportedly followed. By evening they had not left that track, and stopped at a well-used camp site.

“We’ll wait here for him,” said Lumi, and went to set up his tent. Before retiring he ate a meal with the ten men and five women under Brown’s command, drank tea, and listened to Brown briefing them. They had known nothing of their mission prior to entering the wilder.

The night sounds kept Lumi awake for some time and in the full dark he heard the arrival of Bradebus announced by the guards. He slid out of his sleeping bag and after pulling on some clothing went out to see the man. The night was lit by the second and third moons; one a pitted and dented thing that was called the Old Man, the other a mirror-bright sphere that had acquired no name. It was simply called the Third Moon.

The tracker was dressed in clothing made from animal skins and wore a long coat of bear fur. He carried a short hunting carbine, a knife nearer the size of a machete, and two pistols holstered at his belt. He was squatted by the remains of the fire when Lumi saw him.