Faith

by John Love

  “As soon as we’ve tracked him for a reasonable distance.”

  “Of course,” Swann said, magnanimously. He was visibly more relaxed; his face had the equivalent of a spring in its step. Foord’s manner, on the other hand, was precisely the same as before. “But when you’ve tracked him I want you to go, Commander! Do you hear?”

  “What will happen to him, Director?”

  “You know perfectly well what will happen to him.”

  “And his crew?”

  “That’s another matter. But for Captain Copeland, it’s all over.”

  “Copeland?”

  “Yes. It was his brother at Anubis.”

  •

  “If you can’t stop Her,” Swann had said to Foord, as the Charles Manson was making ready to re-engage photon drive and head through the Gulf towards Horus 5, “then She’ll have to get past Horus Fleet to reach Sakhra. If the Fleet can’t stop Her, neither will Sakhra’s normal defences, but by then the evacuation will have progressed and if She ever reaches here She’ll find military areas full of civilians and most of the movable defences gone to the highlands. If everything else fails I’ll gamble on Her not attacking civilian targets.”

  Foord had not answered.

  “And don’t give me any of your silences, Foord, not after what your people did here! My family have been evacuated too. They’re taking the same risk as everyone else. I was born here, and so were my parents and my children, and I’ll defend it any way I see fit.”

  Foord had not meant his silence to imply disapproval. Insofar as the evacuation interested him at all, which was not very much now that he’d left Sakhra, he could see it made some sense; Thahl had persuaded him of that. His silence was merely a suggestion that they both had other things they should be doing.

  “We’re just about to move off, Director. Was there anything else?”

  “We need you to stop Her, Foord; but…”

  “But you think the cure is worse than the disease?”

  “Your ship isn’t a cure. It’s another disease.”

  Foord had blinked a couple of times at the empty patch on the screen, where Swann had cut the connection, and then returned his attention to the Bridge.

  “Joser, please keep a continuous check on Her position and confirm every ten minutes. Kaang, please take us out of here, heading 99-98-96, on photon drive at thirty percent rising to ninety percent.”

  The conversation with Swann had taken place forty minutes earlier. The Charles Manson was now about one-quarter of the way through the Gulf, holding at ninety percent photon speed. The Bridge screen had cut in with filters and compensators at twenty percent to adjust for relativistic distortion of the starfield, and at seventy percent had blanked out entirely and substituted a simulation which showed Horus 5 in outline, and beyond it, at 99-98-96 and unmoving, a white dot which represented Her. It seemed very faint on the screen, like the last living thing in a wasteland; or the first, of millions.

  At regular intervals Joser would murmur “Position of Faith is still 99-98-96 and holding. No detectable movement or activity on any waveband,” and Foord would acknowledge politely. That, and the muted voices of the others as they made regular status reports or conducted routine conversations with other parts of the ship, was the only human noise on the Bridge. When the Charles Manson went to battle stations, there were changes of degree which were barely perceptible; relationships were a little more carefully delineated, Foord was a little more courteous and attentive to detail, and noise and light were a little more subdued.

  Foord was starting to feel distaste at what he’d done, as if he’d been pulling wings off flies; Swann was only trying to protect his people. He took a sip from the tumbler of inhibitor fluid put out by his chairarm dispenser. It was half-full, exactly as he left it since the encounter with the Sable, and when he replaced it it slid down into the chairarm, was replenished, and slid up again. It was a tall tumbler, filled almost to the brim, but no vibration disturbed the surface of the liquid. Had it done so Foord would have been quite disoriented. For generations, it had been an established convention that space travel was dull: empty of events, and almost devoid of distance.

  It was empty of events because events could be anticipated by the ship, and either avoided, evaded, compensated or filtered, before or while they happened; so that at ninety percent photon speed the ship enabled gravity, light, elapsed time and sensory perception to function inside it exactly as if it was at rest.

  It was almost devoid of distance because distances between stars could be sidestepped by the MT Drive, and distances within solar systems could be eaten up by the ship’s array of lesser drives. Since the development of Matter Transfer, distances between stars had ceased to have much meaning. Most interstellar cultures, like the Commonwealth and the old Sakhran Empire, had developed MT Drive almost by accident. It was still only partially understood. One of its features was that it could not be used within solar systems; to engage it anywhere near bodies of planetary mass would be catastrophic. Distances within solar systems, however, were no more than a minor irritation for ships with photon and ion drive.

  All that, plus the existence of instantaneous communication using principles derived from MT physics, made it possible for a Commonwealth of twenty-nine solar systems to function as if each system was an apartment in the same block, divided only by thin walls and a darkened hall and staircase—darkened, because nobody needed to go out there anymore. The Gulf in Horus system was the nearest anyone would get to the old pre-MT days of space travel, when people travelled physically through the nothingness between stars, instead of sidestepping it as they did now; an MT Jump, and an emergence from it, took the same time whether the distance was one light-year or a hundred.

  “Position of Faith,” Joser said, “is still 99-98-96 and holding. No detectable movement or activity on any waveband.”

  “Thank you,” Foord replied, giving Joser a sidelong glance. Maybe, he thought, Joser would say that Foord had been unreasonable over the Sable; or that Foord had compromised on the Department’s orders. Either way, it’d sound good when whispered back to the Department.

  “You have the ship,” he told Thahl. As he left the Bridge, he turned to Cyr. “I’d like to see you in my study, please. In five minutes.”

  •

  Foord’s study was almost adjacent to the Bridge, a very short walk down an adjoining corridor. When four minutes fifty seconds had elapsed, Cyr walked the short distance, knocked on the door, and waited. When Foord called Enter, she did so, and like last time she closed the door behind her and remained standing.

  Foord was seated at his desk. He looked up at her.

  “I’d like to ask you about Joser.”

  “I know I spoke hastily on the Bridge, Commander, but I meant it.”

  “No, it’s not that. He makes you uneasy, and I’d like to know why. You have permission to speak freely.”

  He spoke as if their previous interview hadn’t happened. She noticed there was no ruler on the desktop.

  She paused, and said “On the Bridge, when he told you It Would Be Murder…”

  “Or tried to, until you shouted him down.”

  “He told me later that he’d only said what any ordinary decent person would have said.”

  “And your point?”

  “Nobody on this ship has any right to be ordinary or decent… I don’t trust him, Commander.”

  “Tell me why.”

  “Three reasons. One, he’s always manoeuvring for position, as if he’s expecting what he does and says to be played to an audience later. Two, his work’s mediocre; he might be acceptable on an ordinary ship, but not on this one. Three, and following from One, I think he’s a Department stooge.”

  “He wouldn’t be the first,” Foord said drily.

  “Do I still have permission to speak freely, Commander?”

  “Of course.”

  “He’s dangerous. Get rid of him, get him off the Bridge, any way you can. Not b
ecause he’s a stooge, we’ve had them before, but because he’s fucking mediocre.”

  Foord was silent for a couple of minutes, thinking.

  “Thank you,” he said eventually. “That’s helpful. I’ll see you back on the Bridge.”

  She turned and walked out, aware that he was watching the seat of her skirt, and the swaying of its pleats.

  •

  Foord yawned, settled back in his chair, closed his eyes and listened again to the muted background noise on the Bridge. It always reminded him of long summer afternoons from his childhood when he would lay alone with eyes closed on a crowded beach, and would listen: to the sea, to the sharp voices of other children, to the lower voices of their parents tossing everyday remarks tiredly back and forth like beachballs, and to the doppler effect of someone running towards him and past him, on the way to someone else. His childhood had been complex and solitary, but not unhappy; at least, not until the darkness came.

  He had prepared carefully and thoroughly for what was about to happen, as he always did. He knew how he would destroy Her. He had worked with the ship’s Codex, the aggregation of its nine sentience cores, to extract from the onboard computers every last detail of the structure of Horus system and the known and suspected abilities of Faith. He had then constructed an intricate mechanism of initiatives, responses, failsafes and fallbacks. And now the entire mechanism, like the Charles Manson itself, was under way—as dense as a mountain of lead, as precise as an antique clock movement, and so finely balanced that his will needed only to touch it as lightly as a feather to move it all in a given direction. So he could afford to relax, for now.

  “Commander,” Thahl said, “we’re now within twice the maximum distance at which She’s been known to monitor communications. You asked to be notified.”

  “Thank you. From now until further notice, no external communication will be made or accepted without my prior authority. Please inform Sakhra; and then close their channels.”

  It seemed everyone wanted to know about Faith: who She was, where She came from, and why She was doing this. Foord, however, was genuinely indifferent. All that concerned him was that She was an opponent—the only one, apart from another Outsider, who might match him. Others were working on Her identity and motives, and if anyone found anything they’d tell him. With a kind of cold irony which was almost Sakhran, he looked forward to destroying Her before anyone could find out who She was.

  Almost everyone who served or commanded on an Outsider did so because, for various reasons, they would be unacceptable on an ordinary ship. Foord rarely thought about why he would have been unacceptable; but it might have been his reluctance to believe in things. He considered that other people, particularly those who gave him his orders, believed far too much in their own existence and in that of the universe. Human senses, unaided, could perceive the universe across a range of 10-4 to 10+4. Optical and mechanical devices increased the range: 10-10 to 10+10. Electronics made it 10-25 to 10+25, and the knowledge of which the Charles Manson was perhaps the last product made it 10-50 to 10+50. Upon the perception gained at each stage a body of knowledge was constructed, and upon that construction grew further constructions—philosophical, political, cultural, social. There was the clockwork of Newton, then the relative chaos of Einstein, though Einstein only wanted harmony; then the smaller and deeper chaos of quantum uncertainty, and then back to a post-Newtonian clockwork. Beyond that was a deeper and vaster level of chaos, not yet quite visible; by the time it was, people would no longer be travelling in things like the Charles Manson.

  Each stage proved its predecessor an illusion, and waited to be proved an illusion by its successor. But they all continued to be part of the same accretion over time; because, Foord thought, they all shared the quality of illusion. In the universe which was currently believed to exist, Foord served current institutions by applying current knowledge and techniques to the orders he was given, but the difference between Foord and those who gave him his orders was that they believed it had a meaning, whereas he knew it did. But only in terms of itself.

  •

  Eighty minutes later, the Charles Manson passed uneventfully out of the Gulf and crossed the orbital path of Horus 4, giving the planet a wide berth as Foord had stipulated. Kaang commenced deceleration for entry into the Belt. As photon drive subsided to seventy percent and below, the simulation disappeared from the Bridge screen and was replaced by a real visual, overlaid by rectilinear filters and compensators to correct for spectral shift; and these overlays themselves dwindled and disappeared as the photon drive subsided to twenty percent and below.

  “Switching to ion drive” said Kaang.

  “Position of Faith is still 99-98-96 and holding,” Joser said, not needing to raise his voice above the faint velvet thud which, together with a brief play of lights from Kaang’s console and a grunt of something which might have been approval from Smithson, was the only indication that a switch of drives had occurred.

  “And no detectable movement or activity on any waveband,” Joser added.

  “Ion drive engaged,” Kaang said. “Ninety percent and falling.”

  “Thank you,” Foord said. “Joser, from now on I’d like those positional checks every five minutes. Smithson, Cyr, I’ll be requesting your status reports when we complete deceleration, so please have them ready. Oh, and Joser, one other thing…”

  •

  The Charles Manson entered the Belt on ion drive at exactly thirty percent, and slid through it unhurriedly and without incident. Status reports were given quietly and received politely, while the ship picked its way between bodies ranging in size from large boulders to small planets. It stolidly maintained its own up and down as asteroids rolled and turned around it; the surfaces of the bigger ones loomed on the encircling Bridge screen, sometimes below them like floors pocked with craters, sometimes to either side like walls veined with crevasses, sometimes above them like ceilings from which mountain ranges hung inverted. Foord stole a glance at Kaang, and thought, We may have to come back through the Belt a lot faster than this. And with less leisure for observation.

  The asteroids grew smaller and dwindled away to the rear and the last phase of the journey began, the crossing of space between the Belt and Horus 5. Foord called for the adoption of the final stages of battle stations. Bulkheads slid across corridors to seal off the Bridge and the burrows of the ship’s nine other inhabited sections—no more than a ritual gesture, since each section was self-sustaining and its functions could be transferred elsewhere if damaged, and in any case Foord tended to run his ship as if the bulkheads were always there. On the Bridge, and in the sub-centres of each inhabited section, seats configured to full harness. Communications were shut off, except through Foord. The Codex told its sentience cores to tell the onboard computers to ignore everything outside the mission parameters. Finally, the ship switched to a navigational sphere of reference of which it was the centre.

  Until further notice, the ship designated itself the centre of the universe.

  The caretaker went out into the darkened hallway. He had put a lot of time and care into his preparations, as he always did. He had forgotten the tenants of the twenty-nine apartments who summoned him when they heard footsteps in the hall and on the stairs; it was their business to speculate about the cause and origin of the footsteps, his to make sure they were never heard again.

  7

  Horus 5 clamoured over all wavelengths. It boiled with upheavals—gravitational, magnetic, ionospheric, volcanic, tectonic—and continued to exist because of them, borrowing and re-borrowing its existence from the accountancy which decreed that creation and destruction must balance each other. The red upper levels of its atmosphere were shot with lightning and swirling with vortexes; at its surface there was enough pressure to liquefy rock, and more heat than had ever filtered down from Horus; and in the purple and ochre of its middle atmosphere it bred new hydrocarbon-based lifeforms to replace the old ones it was destroying. They were s
trange and beautiful things, tinting the thick atmosphere as they slid through it. It was said they were sentient, and lived in family groups.

  Horus 5 would still have clamoured if nobody was there to hear it, but now it had the Charles Manson, floating almost at rest just inside its orbit; and something else, perhaps not unlike the Charles Manson, floating at absolute rest just outside. The Charles Manson was approaching very slowly, on a course which kept the planet between them.

  “Status reports, please.”

  “Nothing, Commander,” Thahl said. “Sakhra has not attempted to communicate. Neither has Faith.”

  “All our probes have been blocked, but otherwise She’s inert,” Joser said. “And shrouded. We’ve detected no probes from Her. Her position is 99-98-96 and—”

  “Use the self-centred sphere of reference from now on, please,” Foord said with a trace of impatience.

  “I’m sorry, Commander. Her position is 09-07-09 and holding.”

  “Proceeding on ion drive at one percent,” Kaang said. “At a range 1.91 from Horus 5.”

  “All weapons are at…” Cyr began.

  There was a hiss of static from Horus 5. It ceased abruptly, and the Bridge returned to its customary near-silence.

  Cyr glanced pointedly at Thahl, and waited.

  “I’m sorry, that was an unusually big atmospheric discharge.”

  “Are you sure,” Foord asked Thahl, “that’s all it was?”

  “Yes, Commander.” Since they were not in private, Thahl did not bristle at the question, except privately. “It coincided with an upper atmospheric prominence on the planet. I’ve adjusted the filters.”

  “Thank you. Cyr, please continue.”

  “All weapons are at immediate readiness, Commander.”

  “All drives,” Smithson said, “are at immediate readiness.”

  “Including MT?” Foord asked quickly. “She might head out of the system, not in.”