Faith

by John Love

  •

  Elizabeth Kaang stood blinking in the cold light, her breath frosting in front of her face. She looked round the Bridge at them, one by one, and found Kaang. Their eyes locked.

  “What’s missing?” Kaang asked.

  “Nothing, I think,” said Elizabeth Kaang. “I’m just the same as you.”

  To the others on the Bridge, she was: blonde, plumpish, a pale complexion verging on pastiness, and pleasant but unremarkable features.

  “I’m sorry,” Kaang said, “but something’s missing.”

  “Oh, that. Over there,” Elizabeth Kaang pointed at the Bridge screen, where Faith hung in silent counterpoint to their mundane conversation, “they said you’d spot it immediately. To me it doesn’t feel any different. It was never in me to begin with.”

  “Over there. Who are they?”

  “I don’t know. They wouldn’t let me remember.”

  “What do they look like?”

  “I don’t know. They wouldn’t let me remember. Look, I’m nothing, really. What they told me to say will only take a few moments, less time than the others, and then I’ll go. …This ship has only two things which can outperform them. The first is its particle beams, which are stronger than theirs, but that’s only tactical.”

  “And the second,” Kaang said, “must be me.”

  “Yes. Over there they have nothing, living or otherwise, to match you. You know that yourself. You’re nothing really—I can say that, you see, because I’m the same as you—except for what you do as pilot. Even genius doesn’t describe it. Genius comes once in a lifetime, but what you have may never be repeated. You’ve always had it, and you’ve never had to work at it, and you don’t know what it is. Neither does the Commonwealth.”

  Kaang glanced down at her console to check; Thahl had rerouted her Pilot’s functions through to himself. “Nobody,” she said, “has any idea what it is.”

  “They do, over there,” said Elizabeth Kaang.

  “No! I don’t believe you!” Kaang’s voice shook. “I don’t believe you, you’re lying.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Elizabeth Kaang, “but they told me exactly what it is and how it works. Of course I didn’t understand, and anyway they wouldn’t let me remember.”

  “No! You’re lying!”

  “They made me without it, to show that if it ever leaves you, the rest of you will be unchanged.”

  “You can’t prove any of that!”

  “The first thing you said to me is ‘What’s Missing?’”

  “You still can’t prove it. You’re lying!”

  “Look, I said I won’t take as long as the others, and I’m almost finished. You have a gift that you don’t understand and didn’t ask for. You’re on an Outsider ship with a crew of outsiders, and it even sets you apart from them. They need you because of what you can do, but you’re not anything like them, not in any way. You’re a different kind of outsider. You’ve never done bad things. You wouldn’t know how to decide to do bad things.” She smiled, almost apologetically, and her features started to sink into the substance of the figure.

  The last thing she said, sounding further and further away, was “I asked them over there, if they understood your gift, could they copy it and make others like you? They answered me, but they wouldn’t.”

  “Let.”

  “Me remember.”

  “I’m alright, Commander,” Kaang told Foord, for the second time. “There was nothing there I didn’t already know…Thahl, can you route my Pilot’s functions back to me? Thank you.”

  “Kaang, She didn’t intend any of us to come through this unaffected. She took damage, just to put that thing into the Bridge. So please, go and rest.”

  “Because I’m nothing really? Because except for what I do as your pilot, I’m the weakest one here?”

  Foord paused. “Yes.”

  “I’m glad you answered plainly, Commander. If you’d said anything except Yes, even Yes But, you’d have been lying.”

  Foord did not reply.

  “But I can’t rest, Commander. If She really does understand what I have, I need to be here. If She really can make others like me, She’ll come after us.”

  “She doesn’t, and She can’t,” said the figure on the Bridge. “She was lying.”

  •

  The empty figure had become a seven-foot column, approximately humanoid. It was grey and glistening, and its eyes were startlingly large and intelligent; warm, and golden.

  “She was lying,” it repeated.

  “And what business,” Smithson said, “have you here?”

  The rest of their conversation was conducted in Smithson’s own language, a series of scratches and chirps made by the rubbing together of chitinous surfaces in the neck, amplified through the throat and modulated by the mouth: a language of almost electronic speed and intensity, evolved by Smithson’s ancestors when they were herds of plains planteaters who needed to develop a more sophisticated social organisation than the packs of impressively-organised carnivores and omnivores who hunted them. That, and their physical strength, and their development of the most efficient digestive system in the galaxy for extracting energy from plant matter—it worked subatomically, and meant they didn’t have to spend all their time grazing, but could develop intellectually—let them turn evolution upside down and become the dominant lifeform.

  Foord could not understand, afterwards, why the conversation was conducted in Smithson’s language. Initially he suspected it contained things She didn’t want them to hear. But in fact, as they found out later when the Bridge screen played back the recordings with translations added, it covered matters of which they were already well aware.

  The simulation began by reciting Smithson’s original name, the one he’d had in his youth. This was a polysyllabic word the length of several paragraphs, enumerating his youthful achievements, both physical and intellectual. The word of his name was a mechanism which grew as he grew, some parts taken away and larger parts added, to show what he was and point to what he would become—how he might grow into his expanding future. And then, abruptly, it ended.

  The simulation paused—it had only taken a few seconds, but the translation would last several minutes—and then recited Smithson’s present name, the one which would never grow any further, because now he had no future. It followed the polysyllabic structure of his earlier name, and ended with two syllables which the Commonwealth had humanised to their nearest pronounceable equivalent: Smithson.

  Smithson was where his present name ended. After it, no further additions would ever be made. It was an Ember slang expression, most closely translated as Septic Knob.

  Children and accomplishments were of overriding importance to Smithson’s people. They needed both, in massive amounts, for the strength and intelligence to beat off several predator species, any one of which would normally have become Emberra’s dominant lifeform. Males and females alike piled up their accomplishments, used by the outstanding ones as bargaining-chips in their drive to create, at the expense of lower achievers, more descendants to strengthen an already rapidly-strengthening gene pool. This compulsion, to achieve to procreate to achieve, was fundamental to the social organisation the Embers had developed on the plains. It pervaded all their institutions. They were an impossibility: dynamic, aspirational herbivores.

  And Smithson, even among the other high achievers, was pre-eminent. His position on Emberra was almost that of Srahr on Sakhra. But it had all ended when he was diagnosed as a carrier of the incurable disease known colloquially—Ember humour was always cruel—as Septic Knob. As a carrier he would not suffer its horrific degenerative effects, which spread out from the sexual organs to engulf the body and mind; but his children would. So he killed them, and then—because, he said bitterly, they would have become vegetables anyway, and he was a vegetarian—he ate their remains, hoping he would become infected; but carriers were immune. So he turned away from his people and his accomplishments—irrelevant now, beca
use no more females would ever mate with him—and was recruited by the Department.

  “And is that,” Smithson said, reverting to Commonwealth, “all you came here to say? Everyone here knows it already.”

  The simulation laughed. “It bought some time. For Her to make more like Kaang.”

  “Only about one minute of their time,” said Smithson. “And She can’t make more like Kaang, that was a lie.”

  “Of course it was. That’s why I’m here. To tell you a lie about it being a lie.”

  “Oh, go fuck yourself.”

  “You tried that, too. Remember? You still couldn’t get infected.”

  •

  Later, Foord remembered to check the figure on the Bridge. It was empty and unmoving. Smithson’s dimensions and features had drained out of it; what remained was smaller, roughly humanoid, but blank.

  “Getting ready for me, Commander,” Thahl said.

  “Why did She leave you to last?”

  “We’re in beam range, Commander,” Kaang said.

  “Thank you. Hold this position. Cyr, start firing, please.”

  Cyr had already started. Even before Kaang brought them to rest the beams were stabbing out, and even before they reached Her, Foord had seen something which made him shout in triumph. He had been watching the Bridge screen readouts, and it was clear She had made a mistake.

  She had again diverted only minimal power to Her flickerfields, leaving them almost transparent and deploying them whole nanoseconds late. Cyr’s dark blue beams punched into them and almost through them; but not quite. They dissipated less than fifty feet from Her flank. Foord felt his shoulders drop—that had been their best chance, maybe their only one—but Cyr swore, loudly and sickeningly, and fired again. This time She diverted more power to the fields. They were transluscent now and they deployed earlier, but they were still below strength and the beams again almost penetrated them; and again, dissipated less than fifty feet from Her. Cyr screamed at the image on the Bridge screen, smashed a fist into her console, and fired again, and again. She was firing manually; automatic fire would have preserved intervals for the beams to power up, and Cyr would not tolerate any intervals, even if she overloaded the beams. She said so, out loud, staring wildly round the Bridge where they stared back at her; she explained it to them, in terms, but it came out of her only as a scream. Foord had never heard her scream before, not on the ship.

  Only Kaang and the beams can hurt Her, Cyr explained, and She might already know what’s inside Kaang, so there might only be the beams, and the beams might only work now, when Her fields are underpowered, and Might Might Might the future isn’t fixed and I won’t, not Might but won’t, limp around in incontinence pants at ninety. She explained it to them, in terms, but it came out of her only as a scream, broken by fits of coughing when she tried to draw breath, but couldn’t.

  Foord stared at her and thought, I’ve heard you be many things—spiteful, vicious, even merely unpleasant—but always in packets of words. You always choose words. I’ve never heard you like this. What’s happened to you?

  “Cyr! That’s enough. Go back to automatic, you’ll overload the beams.”

  She couldn’t speak. She shook her head No, and tried to form words, then pointed at the Bridge screen.

  Words came. “Fuck yourself!” she spat. Literally spat; it was dribbling down her chin. Her mouth was like one of Smithson’s orifices.

  “That’s enough. Put the beams on automatic. Now.”

  She was still firing manually. The beams were still punching through the fields to within fifty feet of Her, but no further.

  Cyr broke into more coughing. “Do you realise,” she managed to say, “how close I was?”

  “And put your emotions on automatic too.”

  Cyr glared at him, wiped the spit from her face and flung it in his direction—a gesture he chose to ignore, fortunately for both of them. Then she shrugged, and complied. The beams went back to automatic fire, and it settled into the usual pattern: their beams, and Her fields.

  The beams continued on automatic, and She used their powering-up intervals to divert more power to the fields. As She did so, the cold white light on the Bridge started to diminish, and the unmoving blank figure diminished with it. It went from opaque to transluscent, as Her fields powered up from transluscent to opaque. The beams continued to fire, but got no closer. There was almost a co-operation in the way both ships settled into their usual stalemate.

  This was part of what had incensed Cyr. She locked eyes with Foord.

  “What’s happened to you?” he asked.

  “You wanted Her more than anything,” she told him, “more than you wanted me, and I could have given Her to you, but you wanked it away.”

  Foord had no answer. She’s like my own skin, he thought, even when she sickens me I can never cast her off. He turned to Smithson and asked “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, Commander. All it did was recite my two names. It said nothing you don’t already know.” He performed a deprecatory movement of his upper torso. “The translations will be ready by now. Play them if you wish; we seem to have time.” He gestured towards the Bridge screen, where the stalemate of beams and flickerfields continued.

  Foord wasn’t so sure about having time. The stalemate suited both ships, but only until one of them found how to do something extraordinary. Like, in Her case, duplicating Kaang’s abilities.

  “Kaang, what do you think? Was She lying?”

  “I don’t know, Commander,” she said, unhappily. She never liked these conversations, and Foord usually let her avoid them. But not this time.

  “Try. I need your opinion.”

  “You once told me that if the Commonwealth ever understood what I have, and if they could copy it and put it into others, they’d kill me to get it. Remember?”

  “Maybe the Department rather than the Commonwealth, but I remember” said Foord, shifting his gaze between Kaang and the screen, where something had caught his attention.

  “They tried everything to understand it, and they never could. Neither could I.”

  “Yes. And so?” While she spoke, Foord stole more glances at the screen. Something there was wrong.

  “So I don’t know if She was lying.”

  “Oh. I see.” Foord would normally have been exasperated, but something else had distracted him. When he realised what it was he went to shout Cyr’s name, but before he could do so, Kaang continued.

  “We went through this when I joined you, Commander. I’m only your pilot. Please don’t ask me about other things.”

  “Right, I won’t…Cyr!”

  More of the white light drained from the Bridge, and the empty figure in front of them started to fade. The reason was that She had diverted more power to Her flickerfields, and the reason for that was that Cyr had killed the automatic override on the beams and was again firing manually. On the Bridge screen they were stabbing at Her almost continuously. The fields too were almost continuous, a thick purple cloud roiling around Her; She looked like something bleeding underwater. Cyr’s continuous fire was still punching almost through the fields, despite their extra power; the purple cloud was being pulled this way and that by the dark blue shafts Cyr was throwing into it, from different directions and angles.

  Cyr had become quiet, as abruptly as she had become incoherent. Now she was playing her firing-panels coldly and without apparent haste, the way Kaang would pilot the ship; taking the beams almost but not quite to overload, the way Kaang would take the ship almost but not quite to destruction.

  “Cyr!”

  “No, Commander, I’ve almost got Her, I can give you what you want.”

  “Go back to automatic, Cyr. That’s an order.”

  “Commander,” Smithson said, “let her go on firing manually. I have an idea.” He spoke briefly into his comm, and nodded. “Yes, we can do it. Commander, let her go on firing manually.”

  “Smithson, what—”

  “No time.” Smith
son’s gaze swept the Bridge. “Brace for an emergency. This will seem worse than it is.”

  But there was only a near-quietness, punctuated by the ship’s murmurings to itself and the low rhythmic pulse of the particle beams. In the dwindling light the blank figure was barely visible. It stood among them like a dead tree in a copse of living ones, with evening falling.

  There was a dull faraway explosion in the Charles Manson’s midsection, in the area of the particle beam generators. The alarms sounded, and the Bridge screen patched in a view of the starboard midsection, where some hull plates had been blown away. The ship lurched, but Kaang immediately righted it. Repair synthetics were already scuttling over the hull.

  “It’s nothing, Commander,” Smithson said, over the shouts and alarms, “it’s a fake. Best we could do at short notice, but She might buy it. Damage is minor.”

  “Damage?”

  “Cyr,” Smithson continued, “cut the beams’ power by twelve point five percent.”

  “What?”

  Foord said “Cyr, I see what he wants. Do it now. Don’t disobey me again.”

  Cyr did it, and started to understand.

  “Twelve point five percent,” Smithson intoned smugly, “is consistent with a blowout of one beam generator. You overloaded the beams. Remember?”

  “You mean,” Cyr said, “that if She thinks a generator’s blown, She might…”

  “Might cut the power to Her fields and divert it back here, yes. So if that thing over there comes back to life and starts talking to us, you get your shot. You can fire your beams on full power.”

  Cyr laughed, softly. “You clever bastard.”

  The near-silence was still punctuated by the ship’s murmurings to itself and the low rhythmic pulse of the particle beams; the beams were on automatic and firing on reduced power, and the thick purple flickerfields held them easily. The empty figure standing among them was almost nothing, a bruise on the surface of the air. A minute hung, quivering, and dropped. Foord felt something like vertigo, as if the floor had turned to glass and cracks were racing across it; he suddenly saw how much might hang on the next few moments.