by John Love
Her screen image slowly receded, but She had left them something on the Bridge: a silence. It settled among them like another crew member.
It was one of the Charles Manson’s old silences, teeming with things unsaid. The reason for it, they all tried to persuade themselves, was Foord’s injunction: Kill your reactions. Kill them all. It fitted well, and each of them—including Foord himself—tried to take refuge in it, in the enormity of what they’d done. But it wasn’t real. There was no enormity. That was, literally, too large a word. What they had done felt smaller and dirtier.
It felt like it should never have happened. As if they were a gang of rapists, standing around after their victim had crawled away.
Later, the silence She left with them began to die.
“What have we done?” Kaang said.
“What we intended,” Cyr said.
“It felt wrong. Like it shouldn’t have happened.”
“Because nobody’s done it before.”
“And it’s trapped us,” Thahl said. “After this, we have to go on and destroy Her.”
“Or kill Her,” Smithson said. “It’s like She really is a living thing.”
“No,” Cyr said. “A ship, like us.”
“You saw those bits of wreckage.”
“Like us.”
“But what they did—”
“No!” Cyr snapped. “A ship. Like us.”
“Whatever She is,” Foord said, “I don’t want to know. I never have. I’m afraid of what we’d find.”
“Is that why the Department said don’t communicate with Her? Do they know what She is?”
“I don’t know, Cyr.” Foord glanced at Thahl, who for once would not meet his gaze. “But I’m afraid not to destroy Her.”
There was a pause. A piece of the silence broke off, like one of the pieces of Her wreckage, and began to die in the same way as the main silence.
PART EIGHT
1
They reached the high point of their orbit around Horus 4, broke free without difficulty, and entered the Gulf. Later they got the first images of Her on the Bridge screen, crawling brokenly ahead of them. The two great craters on Her port side, midsection and stern, were still pulsing in the same unnameable colour, like chemical fires in a derelict building. Radiating out from them, and spreading over Her hull, were dark lines in swirling watered-silk patterns.
The Bridge screen patched in closeups. Her hull plates, the size of thumbnails, were diamond-shaped and bounded by submicroscopic hairlines which both joined and separated them. The dark swirling lines cut across these boundaries, and (from earlier time-lapse closeups) were spreading like a skin infection. Further from the craters they grew paler, their colour finally merging into the silver of Her hull.
Apart from the craters and the spreading dark lines, She showed nothing. No light or movement behind the windows and ports and apertures which punctuated Her hull, and no emissions other than the damaged main drive.
“A ship, like us,” Cyr said.
“Not like us,” Smithson said.
“Substructures,” Cyr said. “Windows. Ports. Drives. Even hull plates.”
“Not like us,” Smithson repeated.
“Something was in there once,” Kaang said. “I don’t think it’s there any more.”
Foord looked at her curiously.
“Body language, Commander. You can usually tell.”
“Cyr: particle beams, please.”
“I thought you wanted it closeup, Commander.”
“That’s all finished. Just destroy Her.”
The beams stabbed out. Her flickerfields deployed, and held them.
“It seems…” Cyr began.
“Again,” said Foord. And “Again.”
Again the flickerfields held. Other than that, She did not respond.
“You were right,” he told Cyr. “It does seem.”
“So we go closeup?”
“Yes…Kaang, slow approach, please. On Her port side.”
The Charles Manson’s manoeuvre drives fountained, and they shifted to port; theirs, and Hers. They were still at long range, behind and above Her. They had chosen Her port side because of the craters.
Her starboard manoeuvre drives fountained, and She shifted to port—Hers, and theirs. Like a clock-face where She was at the centre and they were at the periphery, She had only to move a fraction of the distance they did to keep Her port side turned away. Other than that, She did not respond. She was dark and inert on all wavebands, and continued to crawl brokenly ahead of them.
Cyr said “It seems that She doesn’t want us there.”
“Again, Kaang,” Foord said.
Again Her manoeuvre drives fountained to match them.
“Again,” Foord said.
And again.
“Fine. Kaang, make it starboard.”
Their port manoeuvre drives fountained, and they commenced a slow approach to Her starboard side. She did not respond.
•
The Bridge screen stopped shuffling and magnifying Her image; as they drew closer it enlarged naturally. Something did seem to have gone out of Her, and left only an empty container. No longer light made solid, or the junction of lines stretching to infinity.
They had cut their speed to a couple of percentage points above Hers. Their approach was so gradual that Foord was almost taken by surprise when Thahl stopped reading out spherical co-ordinates, and was replaced by Kaang reading actual closing distances.
“Fifteen thousand feet. No response.”
There was a dorsal ridge running the length of Her slender delta hull, from the needlepoint tip of the nose to the flat, wide main drive outlets at the stern—both of these extremities, like much in between, resembled corresponding features on the Charles Manson—and it divided Her damaged and undamaged sides. The damaged port side faced away from them and was hidden, but even the undamaged starboard side had been somehow lessened. It was no longer even half of perfection or half of infinity, if that was mathematically possible. It was half of a lessened whole.
“Twelve thousand feet. No response.”
The dark lines were apparently spreading over both sides of Her hull, uninterrupted by the dorsal ridge. None of them gave any readings when probed. They wrote patterns on, and over, and around, all Her other features: windows, portals, manoevre drive outlets, weapons apertures. All were dark and silent, like the outside of a deserted building. Something really had gone from Her.
“Eight thousand feet. No response.”
Once Foord had found an injured turtle, dragging itself across a beach. Its face was expressionless. Great birds wheeled above it waiting to pluck out its entrails and eyes, but the turtle wanted only to make one step follow another; to cross the beach to the sea, dragging its injuries with it. The way She crawled across the Gulf towards Sakhra made Her both lesser and greater than before. Lesser, because She was crippled and had lost whatever animated Her. Greater, because She was crippled and had lost whatever animated Her, and still crawled.
Foord caught himself thinking that they’d seen Her just once when She was perfect, when She unshrouded. No one would ever see Her like that again.
“Six thousand feet. No response. Commander, it’s like we don’t exist for Her.”
They were at the distance where, on more routine occasions, they would be commencing docking procedures. She filled the Bridge screen now, both horizontally (with the entire length of Her undamaged starboard side) and vertically (with Her wounded up/down rolling motion). The surface features of Her hull, some similar to theirs but others unguessable, were sharply detailed—no clearer than when the Bridge screen had patched in local magnifications, but now they were closer to Her than they’d ever been, and genuine closeness somehow let you see better.
“Four thousand feet, Commander,” Kaang said. “Still no response.”
Foord glanced at Cyr.
“For what you want to do, Commander, it needs to be closer.”
�
�Kaang, take us to one thousand, six hundred and twelve feet.”
“Commander?”
“The length of our hull and the measurement of Her pyramid…Is that close enough, Cyr?”
“It’s exactly close enough, Commander. Do you think She’ll notice?”
“The distance? Yes, but I don’t care either way. The gesture is for us, not Her.”
“One thousand, six hundred and twelve feet,” Kaang said, “and holding. She’s made no response.”
“Thank you, Kaang.” He turned to Cyr. “Well?”
“Tractor beams first, Commander, as we discussed. Then, everything else.”
Tractor beams were what you used on a beaten opponent, merely to hold him in place while you tore him to pieces with other closeup weapons. They were the birds’ claws, before the beaks went in.
“Agreed. Deploy tractor beams, please.”
Then She made Her response, and it erupted in their faces.
2
She had found a conclusion. She woke and fought for Her life, desperately and passionately.
Tractor beams were invisible on normal wavelengths, so the Bridge screen displayed them in glowing red: fat red lines, moving slowly, heavy with torsion. When Foord gave the order, Cyr did not send just one or two. She launched them in a swarm, from points along the entire length of their hull, aimed at points along the entire length of Hers. They extended slowly out from the Charles Manson across the sixteen hundred feet in a classic Hands formation of groups of five, each group with two leading and three trailing: fat red sausage fingers, feeling for Her in fives.
They never reached Her. She put out a swarm of Her own, one of Hers for each of theirs, in the same Hands formation—they also showed red until the Bridge screen adjusted, and displayed them as pale blue—but they never reached the Charles Manson, because She never meant them to.
They watched unbelievingly as the Bridge screen showed each of Her beams hitting each of theirs headon, halfway across the sixteen hundred feet. The two colours bled into each other. It was like an injured fighter suddenly recovering to throw punches, not at his opponent but at his opponent’s punches. And each one was accurate.
Foord swore. When he’d started to think She had no more mysteries left, he’d found at least two: desperation and passion. There was also the unfailing accuracy, but he already knew about that.
It continued. Seen unaided, there was nothing but sixteen hundred feet of empty space between them. Seen on the Bridge screen there was a moving diagram of two sets of beams: a tangle of two sets of motives, one to destroy, one to survive. The two formations of fat fingers met and interlocked in a multiple handshake, red and blue and purple. Where two opposing beams met, they subdivided into branches—always one of Hers for one of theirs, and Hers always accurate—and where branches met they subdivided into tendrils, tendrils into threads, threads into veins, vanishing into complexity; like their motives.
The initial exchanges—their beams attacking, Hers defending—were replayed in denser concentrations, inside the tangle of the thing which grew between the two ships. As the tangle got denser, the red/blue/purple colours bled deeper into each other and were shot through with further subdivisions: violet and mauve, lilac and pink, burgundy and cobalt.
The original formation of their beams had been deliberately conventional. Cyr swept a hand over her console and randomised it. The red fingers extending from the Charles Manson swirled like seaweed in a sudden current, then ceased to be groups of five and attacked in an undefined swarm. Faith randomised the pattern of Her own beams to mirror theirs, again one for one and again unfailingly accurate.
Foord thought, Could we have done that? And where’s She getting Her power?
He watched Cyr, who had stayed cool and resourceful throughout, as she launched another swarm, this time of inceptor beams. Inceptors were high-power tractor beams, ten times fatter and stronger. Cyr had had enough of complexity and tangling. She had decided simply to punch the inceptors through the thing between them and get a direct hold on Her.
They never reached Her. She launched inceptor beams of Her own which met theirs one for one and tangled them like She had tangled their tractor beams, so the result was the same.
Stalemate.
On the Bridge screen, the thing which had grown up between the two ships now filled the sixteen hundred feet. It was bigger than either of them, and almost as complex. Red fingers from their hull, and blue fingers from Hers, poured into it and fed it. It was a living thing which they’d created together and were feeding together. It swelled and pulsed. Colours chased each other across its surfaces.
Cyr swore. So did Foord, and gestured at the thing on the screen. “Kill it, Cyr. Cut the beams.”
“But Her beams—”
“Were intended to stop ours, not to reach us. When ours go, Hers will go.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. But if you’re not, cut them one at a time. Cut one.”
Cyr cut one tractor beam. On the Bridge screen one red finger disappeared, together with its branches and subdivisions, leaving empty tunnels in the body of the thing between them.
Faith immediately cut one of Her beams; a blue finger disappeared, leaving a mirror-image network of empty tunnels.
“You see? Now cut the rest, one by one.”
Cyr did so, and so did Faith, one of Hers for one of theirs. It was like taking veins and arteries out of a body, one at a time. They’d created and fed it together; now they pulled it apart, together.
It proceeded slowly but methodically. We work well together, thought Foord sourly, watching it on the Bridge screen. We almost belong like this, working with each other. Building up something that doesn’t exist unless you see it on a screen, and then dismembering it.
Eventually it was done, and the space between them on the Bridge screen was as empty as it had been in real space. The two ships were still separated by sixteen hundred feet. They still travelled together through the Gulf, side by side, at a matched thirty percent. They regarded each other. Whether She watched them as they watched Her, through eyes and screens, they didn’t know. But they could feel their gaze returned.
“I need your next orders, Commander.”
“Everything, Cyr. Hit Her with everything.” He looked at Thahl, who looked away.
•
A new set of apertures opened along the port side of the Charles Manson’s hull: short-range crystal lasers. They stabbed at Her like horizontal rain. The range was too close for Her flickerfields—or theirs, if She responded—and every one of them hit Her, but spattered off like raindrops. Cyr shrugged, then boosted their strength to maximum. A few of them brought small puffs of surface debris from Her hull, but did not penetrate. Cyr boosted them again, beyond maximum.
For the first time, She attacked. She fired a broadside of low-intensity light beams. Their colour was pale gold.
“Harmonic guns,” Foord muttered. Cyr nodded, apparently unconcerned.
Faith’s harmonic guns were like those of the Charles Manson—multiband harmonic noise generators, running up and down the audible and inaudible scales to disrupt the molecular structure of a ship’s hull. In previous engagements they had torn apart the hulls of at least three Commonwealth cruisers, but the Charles Manson was different: stronger by several magnitudes.
The harmonics were encoded in the light beams, and the light beams, when they hit, released them. They sounded like an organ toccata and fugue overlaid with too much bass, and a choir singing in counterpoint overlaid with too much treble, both sequences of notes deconstructed and put back together at random.
They played—literally—over the Charles Manson’s hull. They set up resonances which rolled through the Bridge and the cramped corridors and living-spaces. They brought noises like those from Horus 4, noises of torsion as the ship’s inner skins were twisted in opposite directions to each other, and to the outer skin. They brought concentric ripples to the surfaces of the drinks in the chairarm dispe
nsers, and stirrings from the rubbish on the floor of the Bridge. They induced nausea and muscle cramps, but nothing more; they were designed to tear ships apart, not their occupants. And they failed, because they weren’t strong enough. They rolled the length of the Charles Manson and back again, then subsided.
Cyr boosted the crystal lasers to danger level, and held them there; they brought more puffs of surface debris from Her hull. Cyr glanced at Foord, smiled briefly, and fired the Charles Manson’s harmonic guns. Their golden beams reached across the sixteen hundred feet and released their encoded notes over Her hull, which was still being hit by the crystal lasers. They couldn’t hear the music of their harmonic guns, but they knew it would resonate inside Her at least as powerfully as Hers had, inside them.
For ten seconds, the time it took to run the sequence of notes up and down Her hull, She didn’t respond. That was enough to suggest She was being damaged; and the crystal lasers were adding to it, persistently and in penny pieces. Cyr powered up the harmonic guns for another broadside.
Her hull blurred and shone, like Her soul was leaking out of it, and at the same time the Charles Manson was hit with a series of small impacts. While they were still trying to understand what had happened, the Bridge screen patched in local magnifications and showed them. At each place where the crystal lasers had been hitting Her, the thumbnail-sized scales of Her hull had silvered over and reshaped themselves into collimating mirrors, raised at angles to reflect back the Charles Manson’s lasers; not just to hit it, but to hit it on the corresponding points of its hull. Again, desperation; again, unfailing accuracy; and again, Foord swore.
Cyr recovered quickly. The reflected lasers were causing only limited surface damage, like they had done to Her, and it was easily remedied; Cyr turned them off. She glanced at Foord and fired a second broadside of harmonic guns. Again they reached Her and played their notes up and down Her hull, and again She didn’t respond. Cyr fired a third broadside.