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 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 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.
“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.”