Faith

by John Love

  For six hours they had bombarded Her monotonously through the Belt. It seemed like six days. She had not succeeded in hitting back, though the constant use of Her flickerfields would be draining Her more than the constant beam-firings were draining the Charles Manson. Her counterattacks had been irregular, and were dwindling.

  Cyr fired the beams again. Target Reached, said the screen headup. The weapons core predicted where She would go for cover, ignoring the evasive manoeuvres, and aimed the beams accordingly. As usual, the prediction was correct, and as usual Her flickerfields held; just. She made cover again, a small unclassified asteroid this time, and the weapons core started counting off another five minutes. The headup display dimmed. Kaang brought the ship to rest, still exactly at maximum beam range, and Cyr resumed grooming her nails. It was not a theatrical gesture; there was little else to do. Their tactics had been successful, but grindingly repetitive.

  Most asteroid belts were sparse and meagre, but this one was huge, and it teemed. Horus 4 had created it by destroying two, maybe three, giant planets, leaving the Belt crowded with surrealist shapes and quivering with gravity. Its outer rim areas, where they were stalking Her, consisted mainly of smaller and more irregular asteroids, hanging in space at contradictory angles, like rock formations growing out of nothing. Parallax made some of them look so close they were about to collide. Gravity in the Belt was a latticework of forces, near and distant, small and large. The asteroids exerted it on each other, and had it exerted on them by Horus 4 and Horus 5 and the sun Horus. They moved in whole or partial orbits, balancing and counterbalancing each other like one of Foord’s brass clockwork mechanisms.

  Smaller asteroids crowded the rim areas of the Belt. Larger asteroids, the largest as big as small planets, crowded the middle. There were so many asteroids that only those about the size of a city, or larger, had classification numbers. Even then, there were hundreds of thousands; and ten times as many unclassified.

  Five minutes later the weapons core instructed the computers which served it to configure themselves to Attack, SemiManual. A warning harmonic warbled politely through the Bridge. Headup displays and target simulations were superimposed on the Bridge screen. Cyr fired once (Target Destroyed) and twice more (Target Reached) as She started running and Kaang parallelled Her movements. Cyr was about to resume grooming her nails, but this time there was a slight break in the usual pattern. The warning harmonic sounded again, louder.

  “Counterattack coming,” Joser said. “She’s charging down our throats, like She did with the Cromwell.”

  “That’s the second time in two hours,” Cyr said, with a trace of irritation.

  But it was now only a matter of standard procedure. It was dealt with routinely, as on the previous occasion; Foord’s preparations included an array of counters to the Cromwell Manoeuvre. By the time Cyr finished complaining, it was over. The Charles Manson’s weapons had refocussed on Her without difficulty as She rushed towards them; Kaang had matched Her course and speed, but in reverse, to maintain beam range; She had slowed, realising the manoeuvre was compromised, and Cyr had beaten Her off with a succession of beam-firings. Her flickerfields held and She retreated deeper into the Belt, to find fresh cover. Kaang moved them slowly forward, maintaining range. The weapons core started counting another five minutes.

  “I wonder,” Kaang said, to nobody in particular, “why Her fields aren’t energy absorbent, like those on that missile?”

  “The missile was unmanned,” Joser said. “Maybe energy-absorbent fields are harmful to living things.”

  “Are you assuming,” Cyr asked, “that there are living things on that ship?”

  “Are you assuming,” Smithson asked, “that it’s a ship?”

  “I hardly think,” Foord murmured, “we have time for metaphysics.”

  “Yes we do, Commander,” Cyr said. “If it goes on like this, we do. I’ll start on my toenails next.”

  Almost unnoticed, one of the ship’s other sentience cores updated the navigation files by deleting various numbered asteroids from the Belt. It was a thoughtful and necessary exercise; the Charles Manson had already rewritten the map of a substantial part of the Belt’s outer rim, and would probably continue to do so. Proper and accurate records had to be kept.

  Five minutes later the weapons core instructed the computers which served it to configure themselves to Attack, SemiManual. A warning harmonic warbled politely through the Bridge. Headup displays and target simulations were superimposed on the Bridge screen. Her cover was AL-4091, a mid-sized asteroid whose destruction took two beam-firings. She broke and ran, again deeper into the Belt, and Cyr reached Her with four shots before She found cover. Kaang took the Charles Manson forward sufficiently to maintain beam range.

  The second phase of the engagement had now lasted six and a half hours. Foord called a short break for status reports; they were duly made and he duly listened, though they revealed nothing more than the quietly satisfactory situation of which he was already well aware.

  “Thank you,” he murmured. “No further orders.”

  He nodded to Cyr, and the weapons core started counting another five minutes. Allowing for the taking of status reports, it was eight minutes elapsed time when the core instructed the computers which served it to configure themselves to Attack, SemiManual. The break in the rhythm was noticeable, like a delayed heartbeat, but the iterative cycle easily reimposed its pattern. The warning harmonic warbled politely, and the headup displays and target simulations reappeared on the Bridge screen. Her cover was AK-5004, another mid-sized asteroid whose destruction took two firings. She broke and ran, still going deeper, and Cyr reached Her with five shots before She found fresh cover. Kaang parallelled Her movements, maintained beam range, and brought them to rest again. Another five-minute count began.

  “Cyr.”

  “Commander?”

  “If we were Her, how much more of this could we take before the use of our flickerfields started to drain us?”

  “Fifty hours before actual danger, but noticeable impairment after thirty.”

  “Smithson, can we assume…”

  “If She’s a ship like us, and not something else, Her flickerfields are likely to drain Her at a similar rate. Say impairment after thirty hours. But we’ll bore Her to death in ten.”

  And that, thought Foord comfortably, would be just as acceptable. He had entered the second phase strangely unaffected by the near-disaster of the first, yet he entered it with the most ordinary and commonplace of strategies: careful, dogged, monotonous, unvarying attrition. After nearly seven hours the advantage it yielded was still only slight; but it was measurable, like a pile of shopkeeper’s pennies. And it was growing, in penny pieces. There had been no sudden realisation that they were the first opponents ever to gain any advantage over Her; like the advantage itself, the realisation came gradually and without drama.

  Ironically, the institutional processes to which Foord had been subjected, the learning of conventional methods before being allowed unconventional ones, had often been useful to him. At Horus 5, he had wanted to open with a flourish of the unexpected. In the Belt, he had decided to open with conventional, mind-numbing routine. A free-form battle in the Belt would have played to Her advantages, whereas this monotonous attrition played to one of his—the superior range of their particle beams. And it was working. Even if Her flickerfields didn’t drain Her, She still couldn’t break out of the stalking pattern they had locked on Her; and if they did drain Her, and the pattern could be held for long enough, She would be impaired, perhaps fatally.

  “Communication, Commander,” Thahl said.

  “I thought I told you we’re accepting no…”

  “I think you should accept this one, Commander.”

  Thahl pointed at the antiquated microphone which stood incongruously on Foord’s console. Its red Incoming light was glowing. Such microphones were the Department’s standard means of communication. They were voice only—the Department did
not do visuals—and carried a dedicated MT channel from Earth; they were not as antiquated as they looked.

  “Department of Administrative Affairs to Foord, Charles Manson. Acknowledge, please.”

  Foord saw Joser stiffen; then irritated himself by wondering, Did I see it because I was looking for it?

  “This is Foord. Identify yourself, please.”

  “Clerical Officer Lok, Office of Miscellaneous Vehicles, Department of Administrative Affairs. The Department is sorry to trouble you, Commander; this is a routine procedural matter only. If it’s not convenient…”

  “Hold for validations, please.”

  Foord glanced at Thahl and Joser, who began checking—Thahl for the source of the signal, Joser for its distinctive embedded signature and its voice pattern. These were three of the validations: the fourth was vocabulary and forms of address.

  So far, the fourth appeared to check. In the unlanguage in which the Commonwealth clothed its private parts, the Department dealt with many Affairs, none of them Administrative; it never felt sorrow, or anything else, for those it troubled; the Office of Miscellaneous Vehicles was the Department’s Outsider section; Clerical Officers had more power than generals; and routine procedural matters, were not.

  “Commander,” Lok said, “I have a message from the Department. Will you hurry the validations, please?”

  “Joser? Thahl?”

  ”I’m rechecking the voice analysis, Commander,” Joser said.

  “Rechecking?”

  “It doesn’t completely match Lok’s pattern.”

  “Commander, it’s a fake!” Thahl said. “It’s from Her.”

  “Cyr, fire before She breaks cover!”

  Cyr, swearing loudly, was already doing so. She overrode the five-minute count. A warning harmonic warbled politely through the Bridge. Headup displays and target simulations were superimposed on the Bridge screen, but

  “Too late, Commander, She’s gone. Out of range. Heading into the Belt on ion drive, high acceleration.”

  Foord swore, more softly and less obscenely than Cyr, then subsided. It had only taken Her a second to divert them, but now She might as well have been hours gone.

  “Commander,” Kaang said, “I can get Her back in range if we move now.”

  “No, not this time. There’s no need.”

  “I’m sorry, Commander….No Need?”

  Foord glanced at her, surprised. Kaang never questioned tactics; part of their understanding was that she was only a pilot.

  “She isn’t running, Kaang, so we don’t need to catch Her. She’ll wait.”

  “Commander,” Cyr said, “with respect, I think you should reconsider.”

  “What’s Her speed and course, Joser?”

  “It’s on the screen, Commander. She’s going into the Belt at sixty percent, but the speed’s dropping.”

  “Take us forward on Her course, please, Kaang. Thirty percent.” He turned to Cyr. “You’re right, we can’t just sit here. But we won’t have to chase Her. Now She’s out of range, She’ll wait.”

  Like Foord, the Bridge swore softly to itself and subsided.

  Kaang quietly engaged ion drive and took them deeper into the Belt. Foord turned an icy gaze on the microphone, whose Incoming light still glowed.

  “You can go now” he told it.

  There was no reply. The light stayed on.

  “I said, You can go now. You aren’t real.”

  “Neither are you. Neither is the Department. Neither is the Commonwealth.”

  2

  Both ships possessed a similar array of drives, and a similar performance in each of them. When they entered the Belt, Kaang had cleverly feinted and doublebluffed Her into range of their beams, but that wasn’t going to happen again. In fact, quite the opposite: the second part of their engagement in the Belt was a reversal of the first.

  For ninety minutes, She danced in front of them exactly beyond the reach of their beams, countering even the attempts of Kaang to get Her back in range. She did sideslices and curlicues, rolls and tumbles and even the occasional somersault; She hopped behind asteroids which were just outside beam range, breaking out and running for cover just before they came within range. They still couldn’t see Her—She hadn’t yet decided it was time to unshroud—but they tracked Her path, including the dancing manoeuvres, easily enough through Her drive emissions, as of course She wanted them to. It was deadpan and sly, like a Sakhran might mock a human.

  “Bring us to rest, please, Kaang,” Foord said, ninety minutes later. He gazed around the Bridge. “If Kaang can’t get Her back in range, we need something else.”

  Kaang carefully refrained from comment, as did Thahl, but the silence of the others was more pointed. He repeated wearily She’ll wait, She’s not running, we don’t have to chase Her. He knew that for certain; one by one, he was adding pieces to the huge clockwork he had designed to engage Her. But he was still shivering from what She had done, how She’d faked a Department call but hadn’t even bothered, apparently, to fake it properly. What if She decided next time to fake it properly?

  He needed time, to see if they were affected as badly as he was. To draw out their reactions. But his first attempt was ill-judged.

  “She spoke to us in that call,” he said. “She’s never spoken before.”

  “She didn’t speak,” Joser said. “It wasn’t Her voice. It was a fake, and not even a very good one.”

  “It was good enough,” Smithson said sourly.

  Foord tried again.

  “She spoke,” he insisted. “She said we aren’t real.”

  “Why didn’t She fake it better?” Joser was almost plaintive.

  “It was good enough,” Smithson repeated. “It got Her out of range.”

  “She should have faked it better.”

  “Perhaps,” Cyr said to Joser, spitefully, “it really was the Department.”

  “But the voice patterns and signature…”

  “They could have been testing you. They’re at least as clever as She is.”

  “It said we aren’t real.”

  “Then it must have been the Department. Call them back.”

  Good, thought Foord. Smithson and Cyr seem unimpaired. Kaang doesn’t count, not in this. Joser is suspect, but always was. So that leaves

  “Thahl,” he said. “This was the first time anyone’s got an advantage over Her, and it disappeared because She distracted us...”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “…but maybe She let us get an advantage, so She could show us how easily She could make it disappear.”

  Thahl looked up sharply at him. “Do you really believe that, Commander?”

  “Of course not!” he said, a little too loudly.

  There was a silence. Feeling a need to fill it, Foord rushed on.

  “Thahl, how did She know the vocabulary and forms of address? Is She able to monitor the Department’s MT channel to us? Because if She is…”

  “No, Commander, it’s more likely She monitored the Department’s calls to Director Swann. Sakhra’s a communications beacon at the moment. We could probably monitor it ourselves.”

  “Yes, that must be it.”

  “I said More Likely, Commander. We can’t be certain.”

  Foord didn’t reply. Is he, thought Thahl, waiting for me to make a suggestion, or is he faking? He can be irritating, sometimes.

  “Commander, you already decided to kill normal communications. I suggest you kill the Department’s MT channel. It’s as useless as the MT Drive, and for the same reason: She got into it.”

  “If we kill that channel, we’re alone. And another part of us goes down.”

  “You wanted to be alone when we faced Her. You insisted on it. And as for another part going down…”

  As for another part going down, Foord completed what Thahl did not need to say, this is an Outsider. Each of its parts, and each of us, has no perception of needing each other. A Sakhran would know that better than anyone. We can
go through each phase of this engagement having limbs lopped off one by one, and still the mouth will bite.

  “Yes, you’re right,” Foord said eventually. “Kill the Department’s channel.”

  Thahl and Foord briefly made eye contact across the Bridge. Foord was thinking I’m not only unsure how much he’s faking, I’m unsure how much I’m faking. Thahl was thinking the same thing.

  “Joser, what’s Her situation?”

  “Still heading into the Belt, Commander. Forty percent ion speed and dropping. Position 12-16-14.”

  Foord was silent for a minute. Then he smiled.

  “Take us back out of the Belt, please, Kaang.”

  “Commander?”

  “Back the way we came. Ion drive, five percent.” He looked round the Bridge. “Yes, I know. But I want to see what She does about it.”

  He looked across at Thahl and mouthed, Nothing is simple.

  Foord and Thahl were perhaps the only two people on the Charles Manson who shared anything like trust, but just then they were both unsure.

  Thahl looked back across the Bridge at Foord and mouthed, Nothing is real.

  The manoeuvre drives fountained. Kaang turned the ship in its own length and commenced a slow, elegant departure towards the rim of the Belt, back in the direction of Horus 5.

  A few minutes passed.

  “She’s still moving into the Belt, Commander,” Joser said. “Position 14-17-15. But She’s slowing. Like you said,” he added, hopefully.

  “Not quite like I said. I’d have expected Her to stop by now. I wonder if we should increase speed? No, let’s not over-embellish...”

  Another few minutes passed. The asteroids grew perceptibly smaller and sparser, but the Charles Manson still picked its way through them with the same unhurried delicacy. At only five percent, it would be a long time before they left the Belt; not that they expected to.

  “She’s cut Her drives at last, Commander,” Joser said eventually. “But She’s at rest, not following.”

  “Joser, watch Her position,” Foord said. “I think She’s going to…”

  Foord studied the white dot on the screen showing Her current position. Still just out of range, of course. It wasn’t that She’d stopped—She didn’t need to stop in order to launch weapons—but he had a feeling this would be something unusual.