Faith

by John Love

  “Smithson.”

  “Commander?”

  “Let’s suppose She did plant the idea. But not to win the engagement. Only to plant the idea that She’d planted the idea.”

  “You think so?”

  “I only said Perhaps.”

  “You didn’t say Perhaps, Commander.”

  “Yes I did, at Joser’s funeral. Remember? But I intended it for now.”

  Self-indulgent, Foord thought again; but the tone, dry and lazy and circling, made it a counterpoint. What they were about to do needed a counterpoint.

  They had plenty of time to complete the final preparation of the missiles, and had done most of it already; but they still triple-checked them. Since the missiles would be launched inert, there was very little pre-launch priming to be done. Nevertheless they did it, then did it again, and again; especially the lenses and nosecones.

  The preparations continued, lazily but thoroughly, and so did the word-construct they were building together. They each added a part, as the impulse moved them. They liked it for its intricacy. It was quiet and nuanced and understated. It felt like it belonged on the Charles Manson, just as Foord himself belonged there. It was almost like building a replica of Foord, something subtle and complex which they admired but didn’t fully understand.

  “Cryptic or Enigmatic,” Cyr mused. She turned to Smithson, and smiled engagingly. “What do you think?”

  “Perhaps both, perhaps neither. How about Unreadable?”

  “Like the Book of Srahr?” Foord immediately wished he hadn’t said that, but Thahl didn’t respond.

  Their mood started to change. The word-construct had grown over-intricate. Like Her pyramid in the Belt, they left it behind them. Its time had passed, and something else was beginning.

  4

  “She’s disappeared, Commander,” Thahl said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?” Kaang said. ”Where’s She gone?”

  “He didn’t say Gone, he said Disappeared.” And don’t, thought Foord, ask if there’s a difference.

  “Is there a…”

  “She’s cut Her drives, Commander,” Thahl said. “She’s shrouded, so we can only track Her by drive emissions. And She’s cut them. All of them.”

  “Is there a…” Kaang began again, then “Oh. I see.”

  “I think it might be working, Commander,” Thahl said. “She’s slowing. I think it means She’s coming for us before heading for Sakhra.”

  “It’s really beginning,” Foord said softly. “We’ve passed the first If. You know what to do next.”

  The next part had been calculated, but it could not be allowed to look that way. Making it not look that way was part of the calculation.

  •

  Like water dripping in an empty building, something moved inside Her.

  She was approaching the Charles Manson, slowly and apparently with caution. She was still shrouded.

  Whatever She was, She existed physically. There was an inside and an outside. Inside was a crew, or something else not yet imaginable, which studied them. It moved, and reached for a conclusion.

  •

  Faith’s last known position was 15-10-16 approximately. She was approaching Horus 4 from the direction of the Belt and Horus 5; the Charles Manson was on Horus 4’s opposite side, beyond which lay the Gulf, Sakhra, the inner planets, and the sun Horus. She was still coasting and slowing, all drives cut, otherwise they’d have reacquired Her position from drive emissions, and a series of alarms and screen headups, now dead, would come to life all over the Bridge; but they could estimate where She was from Her probable rate of slowing.

  The Bridge screen, unasked, superimposed a schematic showing Her last known and present estimated position. Relative to the Charles Manson, She was somewhere below the horizon of Horus 4. When She came for them, either visible or shrouded, She would at some point rise above the horizon like another sun, but in opposition to the sun Horus; perhaps where a moon should be, except that Horus 4 had no moons. It had destroyed them all.

  Foord became aware of a faint background noise on the Bridge: a rustling, like a woman moving inside a ballgown. Thahl and Cyr had also noticed it.

  “Gravity on the hull,” Smithson said. “Horus 4. It’ll increase.”

  It did. And She continued to come closer.

  She studied them.

  They were well aware of Her superiority over Commonwealth ships, even Outsiders, in the areas of scanners and communications. She had a large repertoire of techniques and devices which were normally undetectable, although on the Bridge they could sometimes sense when She was using them; it was a difference in the quality of Her silence. Cyr was usually quickest to sense it.

  “Yes” she told Foord. “I feel it too. She’s looking at us.”

  The noise from outside changed, from rustling to rasping.

  She studied them. Given that She’d changed course, cut drives and was heading towards them, this was hardly surprising; but they needed the confirmation, to get them past the next series of Ifs. They’d planned it meticulously, but it still depended on the Ifs. Not only the obvious ones they’d all recited, but the more subtle and troubling ones.

  If She believed they were planning a move of some kind.

  If She believed they intended to use Horus 4 somehow as a part of their move.

  (And if that was how Her thought-processes worked, in linear paths like theirs.)

  If She believed that they’d hurriedly brought their plan forward when She cut drives and they could no longer track Her.

  And most of all, if She acted then as they would have acted, and came closeup to finish them. If She did that, it would not only help them, it would diminish Her. They’d know there was at least one part of Her that was like them, among all the other parts that weren’t.

  •

  The Charles Manson’s ion drive flared twice and took them in a wide elliptical orbit round Horus 4, but the orbit had been entered too hurriedly. There was something wrong about it, and something inside Her noticed.

  The Charles Manson shuddered as the ion drive took it and whirled it towards Horus 4. The bits of debris on the Bridge, untouched by the compensator Foord had deliberately left unrepaired, moved in response, gearing down the ship’s larger movements to small rodent scurryings across the floor.

  Nobody spoke, so they never knew that they were all thinking the same thing at the same time: they had left the Bridge, and themselves, untidied since the Belt as Foord asked, and were beginning to notice the mess and smell. It was in their nature, perhaps learnt from Foord, to notice things like that at times like this.

  Foord looked around the Bridge, and nodded. The weapons core gave instructions to one of the sub-computers serving it, which checked for time and place, and started a countdown. At the calculated point the two missiles were released; not fired or launched, but dropped. It was done without ceremony or comment and done while the Charles Manson was still moving, like an animal defecating while walking. The Charles Manson continued on its way. Behind it the missiles just floated, like two turds.

  A little later, Foord again looked around the Bridge and nodded. Again a sub-computer, this time one instructed by the navigation core, checked for time and place and started a countdown. Again the Charles Manson shuddered as another ion burst whirled it closer to Horus 4. Both bursts had been calculated, repeatedly. This one was not significantly different to the earlier one, and produced a similar flurry of rollings and slidings from the bits of debris strewn over the floor; but this was the one which finally trapped them in orbit around Horus 4. Kill them all, Foord had said. All your reactions.

  The torsion-sound from outside became almost continuous. The gravitational stress on the hull during orbit had of course been part of their calculations, but the sound hadn’t. They were used to the ship filtering and compensating everything before it intruded upon them, but this time it couldn’t. The sound increased as the planet reach
ed into them.

  The two missiles were in orbits parallel to that of the Charles Manson, but further out from Horus 4 and not yet trapped by its gravity. Their orbits were the product of the Charles Manson’s motion when they were dropped, and would decay soon as they were not travelling under power. Apart from the low-powered and shortsighted lenses peering through the transparent nosecones, they were inert. They would remain inert until She appeared. And if She didn’t, or if She did and they didn’t work, they’d overtake the Charles Manson on its way down to Horus 4.

  And down was where Horus 4 now was. The realignment was complete, although they were still a massive distance away and saw it as a complete sphere; a giant autistic face, empty of expression. Unlike other planets, it wasn’t cloud-cover that made it look out of focus, but something its gravity did to light and space. And perhaps also to time.

  Foord looked through the Bridge screen at the same segment of Horus 4’s horizon as that which the missiles were scanning. He wanted to watch Her rise over that horizon, unshrouded, so he could see Her destroyed before anyone knew what She was or where She came from. Thahl looked out at the same horizon; he too wanted Her destroyed, for reasons which at that time would have been incomprehensible, even to Foord. Cyr hoped the missiles would damage but not destroy Her, so she could finish Her while She was wounded. And Smithson, watching Foord trying to tempt Her closer, was reminded of his ancestors on the plains of Emberra: how they would tempt and trick those hunting them to come closer so they could tear them to pieces, and how the outcome of those combats was that one species of herbivores evolved to dominance while several species of carnivores and omnivores didn’t.

  None of them spoke, so another moment passed in which, unknowingly, they all shared similar thoughts. Except Kaang, who was busy deliberately making them a prisoner of Horus 4.

  They had built something which wasn’t real, but had all the internal consistencies and inconsistencies of something which was. They’d built a detailed narrative of how they’d acted hurriedly; not in panic, just hurriedly. As a further detail they flared their manoeuvre drives and reversed their ion drive, deliberately a few nanoseconds after it would do no good. Then—because the initial hurriedness would have been understandable, but panic would have been inconsistent with their reputation, and therefore unconvincing—they cut all drives and went with the orbit, conserving energy until the orbit’s high point where they could escape Horus 4’s gravity; and they powered up their closeup weapons and checked their flickerfields, consistent with a calm and rational reaction.

  It looked convincing, even to them.

  The hull continued to make torsion sounds. They were genuinely trapped, and genuinely frightened.

  •

  The two missiles were beginning to diverge from each other and from the Charles Manson, but only to a degree which had been calculated. The lenses in their nosecones swept the same area of Horus 4’s horizon as did Foord and the others back on the Charles Manson, but without any accompanying thoughts. They were simultaneously focussed and shortsighted. Apart from the lenses, the missiles were inert. Their drives and warheads were dead, and they had no communication with the Charles Manson and no knowledge or memory of its existence. They were beyond its contact or control; instruments of themselves.

  They had no life, and would have none until She appeared. Then, their life would flare and die. It would begin and end almost simultaneously, with the performance of a very specific task.

  They seemed ill-equipped for it. They were small and quite primitive. Against Her many and mysterious abilities, they were like a pair of claw-hammers. And where they floated, they were at the focus of another If: If they managed to stay unnoticed by Her. Because if, at any time, She did notice them…

  •

  “Nine hours to the high point,” Kaang reported.

  A long, dead time. The engagement had congealed around Horus 4, producing a minor planetary system. Horus 4 now had a new, silver, artificial moon orbiting it, one which it might later destroy like the others, and that moon itself had two smaller moons, dark and inert; and there was another moon, even more unreadable than Horus 4, which would soon rise above the planet’s horizon. Until it did, the new planetary system was almost stable; quiet and balanced and Newtonian.

  Foord was beginning to wonder, idly, if he’d rather see the missiles damage Her than destroy Her—it would open Her up, you could learn things about Her—when, like a polite tap on his shoulder, every alarm on the Bridge started murmuring discreetly, and Thahl said “Object approaching, Commander. Look at the screen, please.”

  Foord wondered then whether She too had a sense of irony. For what rose over the horizon of Horus 4 was not Her, but a small silvery object. A pyramid.

  On the Bridge screen, local magnification showed it tumbling end over end, but in a slower and somewhat more stately way than the pink cone She had sent them in the Belt. It was much smaller than the pyramid at CQ-504, in fact only about the size of a small lifeboat. It was featureless, and appeared to have no drive emissions, but it was headed in their direction.

  “The dimensions along its base and sides have exactly the same proportions as the one in the Belt,” Thahl said.

  Foord nodded, unsurprised. “Anything else?”

  “Our probes get only surface readings, like the one in the Belt. If we trace back along its trajectory we get to 11-15-13, where we think it was launched. That’s also where we estimate She would be, at Her present rate of slowing.”

  They paused, and studied it. Thahl’s expression was unreadable. Smithson snorted and muttered something about Cylinders, Ovoids, Pink Cones, and Now Fucking Pyramids. Cyr laughed unpleasantly, a laugh that Foord knew and didn’t like; it made her ugly.

  “Ignore it again?” Smithson ventured.

  “Yes,” Foord said, “ignore it. And we know what it’s going to do next, don’t we?”

  It passed them by, exactly as they had done to its larger relative back in the Belt, and with exactly the same precision. It described a careful semicircle around them, so careful that at any given point it was the same distance from them. Then it plunged down into the face of Horus 4. It flared briefly, not from atmospheric friction—Horus 4 had no atmosphere; that too had been destroyed by gravity—but from the friction of being compressed down to nothing, to not even a smear. That was the last they saw and heard from Her of pyramids.

  “So what was that about, Thahl?”

  “Perhaps She was telling you something, Commander.”

  “Kaang, how long to the high point of the orbit?”

  “Seven hours, Commander.”

  “Thank you…Telling me something, Thahl?”

  “About how we ignored the pyramid at the Belt.”

  “And what do you think She was telling you, Thahl?”

  “Commander?”

  “You’re the only one on board”—he’d been about to say The only one of Us, but caught himself just in time—“who might know what She is.”

  The Bridge was already silent, otherwise it would have fallen silent then. Thahl paused a long time before replying.

  “I know what Srahr said She is, Commander.”

  “And what Srahr said She is, would it…”

  “Affect this mission? No. And if it—”

  “If it did, you’d tell me?”

  “Of course I’d tell you, Commander. Why are you asking all this now?”

  “You’re a Sakhran, but you’re also First Officer. Deputy Commander of my ship. Which comes first?”

  “The ship does, Commander.”

  “Which ship?”

  “This one, Commander. You know I meant this one.” Thahl was not angry, but reproachful.

  What made me suddenly ask him all that? thought Foord. Then the alarms started murmuring, differently this time. Different alarms for different events. Monitor displays, dark since She cut Her drives, lit up again. Foord whirled round to look at the Bridge screen

  “She’s here, Comm
ander,” Kaang said softly

  and saw Her.

  •

  Slowly, and apparently with caution, She rose over the horizon of Horus 4

  Her position, said the Bridge screen, was 8-7-12; close to where they expected, far enough from Horus 4 to avoid its gravity, and not yet close enough to be seen by the missiles. The Bridge screen, unasked, shuffled filters and switched to local magnification. She was a slender silver delta like the Charles Manson, but the proportions differed; Her length was about eight percent less than theirs, and Her maximum width, at the stern, about eleven percent less. Her surface had interlocking hull-plates, like theirs but smaller; the size of scales on Sakhran skin. The contours of Her hull were covered in small ports and slitted windows and apertures, but there was no light or movement behind any of them.

  They had seen images of Her before, on recordings. They knew Her dimensions, knew what She would look like from every angle, and knew Her shape would be like theirs. But all that was before they had actually seen Her. None of it mattered, now.

  They watched Her in a silence which grew around and between them, neither joining nor separating them. This time, they knew they shared the same thought. She’s brought more than just Herself to face us here, She’s brought a universe.