Faith

by John Love

  “Whatever it does, will also be a lie.”

  “Commander, you seem…”

  “No. This is me talking, Cyr. Not Her.”

  “That could be Her talking.”

  “No. She doesn’t do possession, She does events and predicts our reactions.” Because, he was beginning to suspect, but didn’t dare say, She knows us and has always known us.

  •

  At one hundred and fifty thousand feet, the image stopped filling the screen. For the first time they could see the whole of it receding, just as if it was a real object, but that only made it stranger.

  They had expected that when they could see its boundaries, when they could see the whole of it floating against the backdrop of the Gulf, the lie of its magnitude would give way to what it really was: just a ship, like them. But the silver extrusion blurred its edges and made it look like an oil-smear on a wet pavement. It turned the distance between them into an imagined alleyway, smelling of rain and urine.

  Kaang turned the Charles Manson in its own length and brought it to rest, facing Her.

  “Thank you, Kaang. Cyr, particle beams, please.”

  They stabbed out. Foord imagined them as a wind blowing through the wet alleyway, making rubbish stir on the ground, and posters flap against walls like bats nailed there by one wing. All of this was a lie: particle beams were near-instantaneous, and while Foord’s imaginings were still forming, the beams had already impacted Her starboard side. She did not use Her flickerfields.

  The silver extrusion turned the bruise-colour of the beams, then flared white. It swirled away from Her hull, cleanly and easily, as if it had never been more than a cloak someone had thrown over Her which She was now throwing back. As it swirled away from Her, it used the beams’ energy to re-order itself, and became something else. A replica of Her, done in gradations of grey.

  “Full-size,” Foord said to Cyr. “Yours was less than quarter-size.” She shot him a venomous glance.

  The replica moved slowly towards them, leaving the original behind it. Like the original, it was sideways-on to them, presenting its starboard side. It stopped. Foord motioned Cyr to hold fire.

  In front of it, between them, light grey and dark grey shadows of tractor beams—Hers, and theirs—fought each other to stalemate, forming a tangled mass from which, one by one, they removed themselves and were gone. Pallid grey washes of harmonic-gun light played up and down the length of its hull. Grey shadow-lines of lasers peppered it, and were turned back as some of its hull-scales became pewter-grey mirrors. Pale Fire Opals branched in a giant Y above it, swarmed down to enter the two great craters on its unseen port side, and were gone.

  More harmonic-gun fire. Light moved inside the replica, an unnameable shade of grey. A line of its windows exploded. From the replica burst a replica of the silver extrusion from which the replica was made. It became a landscape, then a planet’s face. It was a lie, telling a replica of a lie. Pages of light and darkness chased each other across its surface, networks of lines grew over it and diminished, and then it rushed towards them, filling the screen. The shadows of its surface details grew larger. The moment before it hit them one of the grey seas, which had been a lake and before that an exploded window, opened to swallow them.

  The replica passed over, under and around them, raking their hull. The Bridge screen switched to a rear view showing it swirling away, dissipating back to what it had always been: almost nothing. Thahl reinstated the Bridge screen headups, and they said it was insubstantial and incapable of analysis. Smithson relayed damage reports one by one: superficial striations on the hull, to add to those they already carried. She should have continued to infinity, Foord thought: one replica makes another, which makes another.

  Ahead of them, She remained at a hundred and fifty thousand feet. Nothing of the silver extrusion was left on Her. The Bridge screen, before anyone instructed it, focussed on the line of exploded windows.Their edges were jagged where the explosions had torn out a few surrounding hull-plates, but in each one, set deeper inside than the dark glass had been, was an opaque surface the same dark shade as the patterns spreading over Her. It looked as if they’d been boarded up from inside.

  “Particle beams, please, Cyr.”

  This time there was no illusion of a dripping alleyway. The beams reached Her immediately, and immediately She deployed Her flickerfields. They held, and continued to hold, with no detectable weakening, as the beams fired again and again. She even returned fire with Her own beams, just once. It was no more than a gesture, and the Charles Manson’s flickerfields held it easily; but the gesture stayed, hanging between them. Maybe, thought Foord sourly, it was only a replica of a gesture.

  Again Foord had the beginnings of an erection and the taste of vomit along the sides of his tongue. He still carried the compulsion to destroy Her, and the ambivalence that went with it. He wondered if the compulsion came from him and the ambivalence from Her, but he knew the truth was worse: the ambivalence was his too.

  All of this made it a bad time for Cyr to say what she said next.

  “‘Insubstantial and incapable of analysis.’ It wasn’t real. We’re still here.”

  His glance at her was as venomous as the one she had given him.

  “Why is She still here?”

  “Because you haven’t done what I suggested, Commander. We should go for Her port side.” She returned his glance; they shared, not body fluids, but venom.

  “Kaang.”

  “Commander?”

  “Take us closeup again. Same distance as before, but this time on Her port side. And Kaang.”

  “Yes, Commander?”

  “This will be difficult. She doesn’t want us there.”

  Faith crawled through the Gulf at thirty percent ion speed. The crippled gait, a mixture of roll and pitch produced by Her impaired drives flowing over the wreckage of the stern crater, was asymmetric and repetitive. Her hull was covered in the swirling watered-silk patterns, dark against the silver of the hull plates. It was like the darkness of the Gulf was bleeding into Her.

  A hundred and fifty thousand feet away, Cyr watched Her on the Bridge screen and considered the dark swirling patterns, and how they lessened Her; Foord’s two missiles had changed everything. Made Her fight for Her life. But we haven’t seen a hundredth of what She’ll do to live. It’ll get strange.

  Kaang also looked at the patterns. Like an airless version of oxidation, she thought, and forgot them.

  The Bridge screen panned back, and back. Faith became invisible against the immensity of the Gulf. Ahead of Her were the inner planets, Sakhra and Horus 1 and 2. They were so far away they showed only as specks, scarcely more visible than Faith, and indistinguishable from the backdrop of stars. Only Horus itself was bigger than the other stars, and not by much.

  A sound like doors slamming in a corridor ran up and down the ship. It was the locking of seat harnesses, for everyone except Kaang; hers would come later. She glanced across at Thahl and noticed that he had extended the claws of one hand and was tapping them absently on the rim of his console, tap-tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap-tap-tap. The sequence was irregular but, when Thahl repeated it, became part of a larger regularity; the same rhythm as the sequence of Her rolling motions, which Thahl was echoing as he watched Her on the screen. Repetition: the watered-silk patterns spreading over Her had of course been analysed for repetition, but none was found. Perhaps if there was another one of Her, or another million, the end of the sequence would be seen and it would start to repeat. That was as near, and as far, as they could get to the meaning of what was happening to Her.

  Kaang watched the screen for a few moments more. Her face was expressionless.

  She locked her seat harness, and wrenched the Charles Manson to port. The starboard manoeuvre drives erupted as she pushed them directly from zero to overload, and she augmented them by vectoring the main drives. The Charles Manson whipped sideways and diagonally, and flung them down a straight line which would end sixteen
hundred feet on Her port side. The move was too quick for the gravity compensators, and everything loose on the Bridge exploded into midair. The ship strained and shrieked as loudly as it had at Horus 4, but there it was only fighting one force; Kaang was throwing forces at it from all directions. By the time the debris on the Bridge had landed, but before it bounced, they had almost reached the point on Her port side for which Kaang had aimed; but She rolled with the move, and still presented Her starboard side to them. Kaang did not decelerate but flew past Her, turned at fifty thousand feet and executed the same move, with the same result. She executed it again, turning the Charles Manson at twenty thousand feet this time, standing it almost vertically on its nose and plunging it under Her, to come up again on Her starboard side because Faith, again, had rolled with Kaang’s move. Kaang turned immediately and headed back, apparently on a ramming course; at nine hundred feet she wrenched the Charles Manson above Her, but again Faith rolled and presented Her starboard side. Kaang had expected this and fired the ventral manoeuvre drives, then vectored the main drives to augment them. It looked like the Charles Manson had hit an invisible wall. It stood for an instant on its stern, then pitched backwards over Her, aiming again for a point sixteen hundred feet on Her port side. This time it was closer, but still Faith rolled with the move and kept Her starboard facing them. When Kaang saw it had failed she did not decelerate or turn but continued until they were eighty thousand feet from Her, and still facing Her starboard side. Kaang brought them to rest, and glanced around the Bridge.

  One by one, minor damage alarms sounded. She ignored them. She glimpsed the expressions of Foord and the others, and ignored them too. She knew it was always going to be unequal; whatever move she made, however complex and spectacular, Faith had only to wait for it and roll with it. Kaang shrugged, and started over again.

  She fired the starboard manoeuvre drives, more gently this time. They fountained, and the Charles Manson moved—very slowly—to port. Kaang made some minor balancing adjustments to the ion drive, so the Charles Manson maintained distance at exactly eighty thousand feet, and began circling Her. On the Bridge screen they saw Her starboard manoeuvre drives fountain briefly, then cut; fountain again, then cut; and repeat the sequence, so that She turned minutely as the Charles Manson circled Her massively, always presenting Her starboard side. It linked them together, as if they were at opposite ends of the minute-hand of a giant clock face, they at the outer rim and She at the centre: a fixed relationship, defined by clockwork. They both knew it was a lie, and when she was ready, Kaang ended it.

  She went straight to a hundred and ten percent ion drive and shot the Charles Manson down the invisible line of the minute hand. At sixteen hundred feet, when everyone expected Kaang to decelerate, she didn’t; she held the impossible speed but poured it into a series of rolls and slides and feints and somersaults which plunged them back seven years, to when she had first piloted the ship. She vectored the main drives to augment the manoeuvre drives, pushed the manoeuvre drives to thirty percent above danger level—two of the outlets burst after ten minutes, a third after fifteen minutes, and she ignored the alarms—and executed all her previous moves over and under and around Faith, but this time within the compass of only sixteen hundred feet, so She had less time to roll with the moves. But She did roll; although Her main drives were impaired Her manoeuvre drives were still operational, and they fountained in changing combinations up and down Her flank as She played them, just as Kaang did. The two ships tempted and toyed with each other as if they were knifeblades in the hands of two invisible but closely-matched opponents. Her pilot, thought Kaang after twenty minutes, is good but he isn’t a freak like me. Why can’t I find another freak like me?

  After twenty-three minutes alarms were sounding throughout the Charles Manson, the minor-damage alarms now joined by the deeper notes of hull-integrity warnings, and Kaang ignored them. This will be difficult, Foord had said, She doesn’t want us there. Kaang neither knew nor cared why. She had no idea what they’d see when she finally got them there, or what they’d do about it; that wasn’t her territory. She blocked out everything except the imperative to pile move upon move until they emerged on Her unseen port side, and as time went on—it was now over thirty minutes—each move was getting them closer, and each of Her rolls was getting a little later. A little closer to too late.

  Kaang poured more and more moves into the compass of sixteen hundred feet. If she’d left a visible trail, it would have looked like the tangle of tractor beams. She knew the balance was shifting but her face remained expressionless. Her hands blurred over the panels of her console, bringing convulsions to the Charles Manson with every touch, but she still seemed unhurried. The alarms and hull-integrity notes and warning headups on the screen were multiplying, and Kaang continued to ignore them. With each move she built her advantage and edged closer to a final outflanking, but with each move something burst or broke or failed. She knew exactly what she was doing to the ship, without needing alarms or headups, and she knew she was getting close to its real limits. She knew, even better than Foord, that the Charles Manson was almost alive and she was almost killing it.

  Kaang sensed what would happen next, just before it happened. Faith stopped firing Her manoevre drives; She had given up.

  Kaang cut the move she had just started and let momentum take them, slowly, in an arc over Faith’s dorsal surfaces, and down, facing Her port side. On the Bridge, and up and down the length of the Charles Manson, seat harnesses burst open with hisses of compressed air. It was like the ship was letting out a breath.

  Kaang finally brought them to rest, at a distance of exactly one thousand, six hundred and twelve feet, and they saw.

  4

  The two great craters on Her port side, one amidships and one near the stern, were still there. She hadn’t miraculously repaired them. Around their edges, and in their interior where twisted latticeworks of substructures could still be glimpsed, the craters pulsed with the same unnameable colour. It shifted between all the colours they knew, without becoming any of them.

  The craters went at least fifty feet into Her flank. Nothing poured out of them any more.They were filled with wreckage near Her surface, but the deeper they went the stranger they became. There was a darkness at the back of them which seemed either depthless or infinite: a curtain of something neither gas nor liquid nor solid, with a pattern of whorls like watered silk. It reminded Foord of the patterns on the endpapers of his father’s books.

  The craters pulsed into and out of focus, their apparent depth growing and diminishing as the light inside them shifted. Sometimes they seemed only as deep as they really were. Sometimes they seemed deeper than Her hull was wide, making corridors into somewhere else which was also filled with wreckage, like cameras taking pictures of cameras taking pictures into infinity. Then the light would shift again, and the craters would return to what they really were: something that nobody had ever done to Her before.

  The damage was not only in the craters. Around their edges the fabric of Her outer hull had been torn back so violently that it produced an effect of inversion, as though the two missiles had burst out of Her, not in. The dark swirling patterns covered Her port side more densely than Her starboard, and around the edges of the craters they were darkest and densest of all.

  The damage was massive. But it looked like it had gone beyond damage, and become something else.

  Something about the craters had started to worry Foord. Thahl too, because before Foord could ask him he superimposed on the Bridge screen an earlier image of the craters, when the missiles first hit Her. The ship picked up on Thahl’s request, and added text headups before Thahl asked for them.

  The two craters had grown in area, by about two percent according to the headups; but they remained exactly the same shape as before, down to the smallest indentation, as though the present image was merely a slight magnification of the earlier one. They still looked like pulsing wounds, but wounds didn’t spread so u
niformly. They had the appearance of stability; of balance. Of the achievement of steady state.

  Steady State, thought Foord, and froze as he started to understand.

  “Commander,” Cyr said loudly, “we need your orders.”

  Cold, organised shock hit Foord. It should almost have killed him, but it didn’t; instead it spread through him steadily and uniformly, a replica of what was happening in the craters. He’d just learned, as Thahl promised, something new about Her. Something truly new; and intimate, and obscene.

  She’s eating Herself.

  “Commander!” Cyr was shouting now. “We need your orders!” She turned to Thahl, and whispered “What’s eating him?”

  “No orders,” Foord said quietly. “No questions. Please, listen to me.”

  This, he told them, was how She could go on crawling through the Gulf to Sakhra when the damage they’d done should have destroyed Her. She’d reached a conclusion. For the first time someone had made Her fight for Her life, and She’d fought desperately and passionately; and this was how. This was where Her conclusion led.

  She’d turned the craters into a controlled process of self-digestion, mass to energy.

  He waved away their questions. Maybe where She comes from, he said, this is what every living thing does when it’s wounded: puts its muzzle into the wound and eats, to give the rest of itself, the unwounded part, strength to go crawling on. Maybe whoever built Her put replicas of that reflex into Her, as we put crude analogues of ours into our ships. And No, he said, I don’t have evidence. How could I, when nobody’s ever been able to probe Her? But you’ve seen what’s happened to Her since Horus 4, and I know I’m right.

  Their questions died out.

  Foord remembered a character in one of his father’s books, a minor Dickens character, who kept saying “If I’m wrong I’ll…I’ll eat my head.” The sheer impossibility of it had entranced him; he had pondered it for days. He thought, If She ever reaches Sakhra at this crawling pace, She’ll have eaten Herself entirely and She won’t exist. Yes She will. What’s eaten will still exist, but it will be something quite different…