Faith

by John Love

  Foord went away somewhere on his own. They all did. And a few miles and a universe away, She noticed; and waited for them.

  •

  The Charles Manson, Thahl told himself, had simple lines which were visibly curved or straight; Hers were neither. The Charles Manson had a simple, recognisable geometry with an inside and outside, ending at the outside; Her geometry was different. She began at the outside.

  Thahl tracked the line from the needlepoint tip of the nose to the broad stern end of the delta. He imagined that line extending forward millions of miles, perhaps to Sakhra, and knew it would deviate by less than a millimetre; but he could see it, a fifteen-hundred-foot straightness which was part of a cosmic curvature. He imagined each line of Her shape extended in a cat’s-cradle millions of miles in all directions, beyond Horus system and out into the galaxy, until they all began to curve. Faith was just the visible part, hanging at their centre. That was what She had brought with Her.

  Is this, he thought, what Srahr saw three hundred years ago? I’m the first of us (no, the second) to see Her since him. And what happened to us will happen to the Commonwealth, unless we destroy Her. My father believes Foord might be able to do that. So do I, now.

  Smithson recalled Copeland, seeing Her at Anubis and whispering Face of God; the recordings captured it, the last thing he ever said. And Ansah at her trial (Smithson had read the transcripts) describing the moment when She unshrouded: a shape not unlike an Outsider, but on Her it’s different, as if She’s only the visible part of something larger. She moves like a living thing and looks like a part of empty space, a small part made solid and visible. And the rest looming around Her, unseen. He understood now what Ansah meant by The Rest: everything else She had brought with Her out of the shroud.

  I’m not ready for this, he thought. You don’t see it on the recordings. It’ll affect us more than ordinary crews, because we’re more imaginative, and more self-indulgent. More dangerous, and more vulnerable. How had Ansah stayed functional when she saw this? Because, he thought sourly, she was trying to lose those ridiculous Isis ships, and she had no time for what we’re indulging in now (he had looked round the Bridge and seen it on their faces, as surely as they would see it on his).

  Smithson had read all the transcripts and knew Ansah’s trial was an injustice; but none of that mattered, now.

  “She cruised the cities, random and motiveless, beautiful and brilliant.” Cyr recalled the the phrase from her trial; unlike Isis, trials on Old Earth were adversarial, not inquisitorial, and tended to produce such rhetoric. The prosecuting counsel was a small stout man whose sonorous diction was oddly out of keeping with his appearance; a man given to flights of verbosity, but also incisive and clever.

  His phrase had always troubled her, and now she knew why. Cyr remembered the faces of her family as he said it; the trial had turned them into people who no longer recognised her, but now Cyr recognised herself. If you took The Cities out of that phrase, his description of me is a description of Her.

  Maybe Foord really meant it when he said Instrument of Ourselves. Maybe She’s what we would be, if we didn’t have the Department looming behind us.

  Kaang thought, What’s Her pilot like, has She got a pilot like me? I don’t think so, I’d have felt it when She unshrouded, ships have a body language. That’s a shame, I’d like to find someone like me one day.

  Then, unaware of the thoughts of the others on the Bridge, she shrugged and turned back to her instruments.

  It’s like seeing a new primary colour, Foord told himself, or finding a new prime number. Her shape didn’t belong here, it belonged outside ordinary perception and geometry. Outside, inside; straightness, curvature. Orders of magnitude. She looks like us, but She’s a universe of things we aren’t.

  He watched Her on the screen and thought, Do you know why you’re doing this? Or are you like Cyr, are you following a compulsion which you tell yourself is free choice? Are you doing this because it’s how you were made? If you are, who made you?

  Later, when they returned from wherever they had separately gone, She was waiting. She knew the effect Her unshrouding had on opponents. Normally She would not have waited for them to recover, but this opponent was different.

  5

  Foord was breathing heavily. There was a ringing in his ears. He had an erection, and tasted brine in his mouth and along the sides of his tongue. He gestured at the screen.

  “Her position…” Thahl began. He paused, partly because he needed to and partly to help Foord compose himself. “Her position is 8-7-12, Commander. She’s matching our speed and maintaining an exact distance.”

  “Within range?” Cyr asked, before Foord could speak.

  “No. She’s outside closeup range.”

  “She’ll come closer.” Cyr moistened her lips. “We’re going to hurt Her.”

  The two ships were directly facing. They watched each other. There was a particular quality to their watching, like the first meeting of two people who would share the rest of their lives together.

  “Has She seen the missiles?” Smithson asked, minutes or hours later.

  “I don’t think so,” Thahl said, “and I know they haven’t seen Her.”

  “Of course they haven’t!” Smithson snapped. “She’s not close enough.”

  “She has to come closer,” Foord said.

  “She will,” Cyr said.

  “She might,” Thahl said. “If it doesn’t look like we want Her to.”

  There were a couple of curious glances at Thahl, but only a couple. Most of them couldn’t take their eyes off the Bridge screen.

  Foord’s erection wouldn’t go. He studied the others’ faces, trying to see if they were similarly affected. Normally you could tell; there was a certain fixedness of expression which characterised people nursing an unwanted arousal. But two of them were nonhuman, and one of those was asexual, and the light on the Bridge was too subdued to be certain of the others, so he gave up. He preferred looking at Her anyway.

  She hung there, like light turned solid. I had no idea, Foord thought, that She’d be like this. I’ll remember this for the rest of my life. How long is the rest of my life?

  “How long since we saw Her, Thahl?”

  “Nearly three hours, Commander.”

  “What? Are you sure?”

  Thahl ignored that.

  What was happening to time? It had seemed to slow down at other points in the engagement, but now it was doing something stranger: sharing itself. It drained out of Faith, and out of the Charles Manson, and into the space between them. Almost as if it was doing an act of courtesy to them, so they could hold this moment together, the moment of their first meeting. Time filled the space between them, setting itself out for them like a gaming table on to which, later, they would lay their cards.

  “How long,” Foord asked, “till we reach…”

  “The first high point? Three hours, Commander,” Thahl said.

  “So we’re about midway, where She’ll probably attack.”

  “If,” Smithson said, “She believes we’re really trapped here, and if She hasn’t seen the missiles.”

  Foord said “She does believe. And She hasn’t seen them.”

  “And She’s coming,” Thahl hissed, suddenly, as alarms murmured. “She’s coming closer. Look at the screen.”

  •

  The two missiles waited to perform their task. When the time came they would sacrifice themselves to perform it, but they would not make the sacrifice knowingly or freely. They would do it because that was how they’d been made.

  They floated in unpowered orbits, behind the Charles Manson and further out from Horus 4, on trajectories which still bore some of the Charles Manson’s imparted motion. The shortsighted lenses in their nosecones tracked back and forth in search of the only shape they’d recognise; but She was still too far away.

  They could see the Charles Manson in front of them, but they didn’t see it. They were not programmed to recog
nise it and not equipped to communicate with it. They didn’t know it had made them and launched them. They didn’t know about any of its sixty-two (previously sixty-three) living inhabitants. They didn’t know it existed.

  They could see the grey flat face of Horus 4, but they didn’t see it. They were not programmed to recognise it and not equipped to feel its gravity. They didn’t know it existed.

  They didn’t even know there were two of them. Each was the centre of its own universe, in which only one other thing existed, the shape they hadn’t seen yet. If they didn’t see Her soon, their orbits would decay and they would go down into the grey flat face they didn’t see, and would die before they attained their very limited life. And if they did see Her and did attain life, it would begin and end almost simultaneously.

  Instruments of Themselves.

  The crude shortrange lenses in their nosecones tracked endlessly back and forth, and still didn’t see Her. Their universe was empty. She had to come closer.

  •

  The Bridge screen displays showed that Her ion drive, which She had been using in reverse to maintain distance, was gradually reducing. She was closing the distance between them, slowly and apparently with caution. And She was still studying them, with the probes they couldn’t block, or detect, or trace back to Her. They could feel it.

  “Everything,” Smithson was saying to Thahl, “comes down to those missiles.” As usual, he was irritating but right. “How are you sure She hasn’t seen them?”

  “If She’d seen them,” Thahl said, “She’d know this is all a simulation and She’d destroy them. They’re inert and defenceless.”

  Smithson grunted, but said nothing for the moment. Thahl reflected on Smithson’s wording: not Are You Sure but How Are You Sure, as if he wanted to avoid giving offence. Unusual for him.

  “What if,” Smithson said suddenly, “She’s already launched missiles of Her own, similar to ours, and they’re waiting for us to come in range?”

  “I’d considered that,” Thahl responded.

  “And?”

  “And I probed the areas around Her. Nothing.”

  “They might have evaded you.”

  “Then She’ll win.”

  Smithson sighed theatrically. Foord said to him “Listen. We’re trapped in this orbit, and She’s coming closer, both of which we planned. If She’s seen our missiles, what do we do differently from what we’re doing now?”

  “Particle beams?”

  “No. We’ve been through that. We both fire our beams, we both use flickerfields, and we both keep our distance. That isn’t what we want. She has to come closer.”

  “Is that what She wants?”

  “Yes. She wants to finish us closeup, and She will if we’re trapped and vulnerable, and we’ve made ourselves trapped and vulnerable. She has to come closer.”

  There were gasps from Cyr and Kaang, but when Foord turned quickly from Smithson to look at the screen, She was still there, unchanged.

  “What happened?”

  “Didn’t you see it, Commander?” Kaang asked.

  “No, I wasn’t watching. Replay it, please.”

  On the screen She flicked, like a visible hand on the end of an invisible arm, whipping sideways and instantly back to its previous position. It was over almost as soon as it began, and everything else was unchanged. The space between them was still closing, but slowly. The Bridge screen returned to real time.

  “Has She ever done that before?”

  “No, Commander. Not on any of the recordings.”

  It was a strange unreadable movement, thought Foord; not done for us but for some purpose of Her own. The way it ended immediately it had begun reminded him of the lifecycles of their two missiles. She has to come closer.

  •

  Minutes passed. Foord still had his erection; and the bitter taste in his mouth and along the sides of his tongue had returned, gradually stronger as She came gradually closer.

  His head throbbed like his penis. His thoughts were slowing down, like an ancient clockwork. Every time one of his thoughts tried to move it tripped a counterweight and generated an equal and opposite thought. No it didn’t. He’d never felt like this before. Yes he had, on the occasions he’d caught himself looking at Cyr, and remembering the orphanage: first an arousal, then something darker, a need to open and penetrate and see underneath. He hadn’t done it with Cyr, but had to with Her. He was afraid not to.

  The Bridge screen reduced its local magnification to keep the same image as She came closer. Her ion drive was still reducing. The ports and windows and apertures remained dark. Probes showed no evidence of Her weapons powering up, and no trace of any missiles like theirs, floating inert nearby; although, as Foord knew, their probes were not effective against Her.

  “I want Her, Thahl. What do I do to bring Her closer?”

  “She’s already closing, Commander.”

  “Not fast enough. What do I do to bring Her closer?”

  “Commander, don’t gamble. Not now. If She thinks we want Her closer…”

  “I do want Her, Thahl…So something opposite. I don’t want Her.”

  The taste along the sides of his tongue. His penis, pumping. Time to lay a card.

  “We’ve changed our minds about fighting Her closeup. Haven’t we.”

  Phrasing the question as a statement gave his voice a downward cadence at the end of the sentence. So did the deadpan recital of their motives, in the way he intended She would interpret them.

  “We’ve seen Her and it’s affected us. Hasn’t it. Now all we want is to keep Her away. Don’t we. So we fire our beams.”

  “That’s what I told you!” Smithson crowed. “It seems hours ago.”

  “Commander,” Thahl whispered, “don’t gamble. You don’t need Her to come in faster.”

  “Yes, I do.” Before I have time to think what it means to destroy Her. “Fire particle beams, please, Cyr.”

  The beams lanced out, twice, across the piece of space that had set itself out between them. It was like they’d violated that space and the unwritten sharing of time. Foord didn’t care. Time was up for the sharing of time.

  They watched the beams reach Her and watched Her flickerfields hold them easily. Then She reacted.

  “She’s increased Her reverse ion drive,” Thahl said. “She’s moved back. I don’t think it’s worked.”

  But it had. There was a brief pause while She hung at a fixed distance from them—as though She had drawn back to examine Her conclusion, one last time—and then the Bridge was full of murmuring alarms and headup displays recalibrating to accommodate what She did next. The Bridge screen needed no more shufflings of filters or local magnifications, because She filled it. She had switched Her ion drive to forward, fifty percent, and was coming straight at them.

  The screen showed violet flickerings around Her hull as She powered up Her closeup weapons. That was almost reassuring; it was how they must look to Her, as they powered up theirs. Time to lay another card. Foord glanced at Cyr.

  “Fire particle beams again, please.”

  The beams lanced out. Again, She held them easily. As She did so, She came within visual range of the two missiles. They saw Her, and began and ended their lives.

  From the two points where they floated, they erupted towards Her. Amazingly, as though She had the reflexes of a single living thing, She whirled in Her own length to face them, a move the Charles Manson could never have made; but they were nearly point-blank, and they both slammed into Her, the silent explosions of their impacts following as, nanoseconds too late, Her flickerfields came on.

  Both missiles hit Her port side, the first amidships and the second, while She was still rolling from the first, near Her main drives at the stern. She continued to roll, bringing Her port side fully into their view, and they saw it, as if lit by a naked bulb swinging in a cellar: the enormity of what they had done to Her.

  Two great craters had been hammered into Her hull, glowing in a colour the
y couldn’t name. Inside the craters they glimpsed for the first time what lay underneath Her surface, spidery substructures like their own. Bits of Her fountained out of the craters, turning end over end. They came in all shapes and sizes, and some were almost recognisable, like ordinary bits of wreckage from an ordinary ship; but

  (Thahl got the Bridge screen to focus on them, and gestured wordlessly at Foord to look)

  each piece of wreckage, whether it was a girder or a nut or a bolt—yes, She was made of things like that, as well as other unimaginable things—as soon as it left Her, reproduced in miniature the main damage to Her hull. Each piece, as it was thrown out, developed two craters in its side, and burnt away to nothing in the same unnameable colour as the craters they had hammered into Her.

  Each piece, as it burnt away, was replaced by others which did the same, and others after that. The Bridge screen only focussed on the larger ones, but they were all burning away; and they were continuing to pour out of the craters, long after the missiles’ explosions died. Later the Bridge screen would analyse and calibrate every piece of wreckage, individually and exhaustively. It would report its findings upwards to its sentience core, which would report them upwards to the ship’s Codex, which after adding its own comments would report them further upwards to Foord and the others; and they would be no wiser then than they were now, watching it happen.

  Thahl switched the Bridge screen back to the main view, where She was still rolling from the two impacts. The edges of the two craters in Her hull were still peeling back, pulsing like cell walls, as She completed the roll and Her port side passed out of their view.

  She turned and ran. What was left of Her main drives flared, and She swung away, heading into Horus system and towards Sakhra. There was an oddness about how She moved, an asymmetric rolling produced by the way Her drives flared over the jagged wreckage at Her stern; asymmetric but repeated, the limping of something injured. They wouldn’t be able to follow Her until they reached the high point where they could break free of their orbit, but that hardly mattered. She was hurt, intimately and massively; and She was going into the Gulf between Horus system’s inner and outer planets, where She would have no cover.