Faith

by John Love

  Cyr caught his expression as it raced across his face.

  “Are you scared She might not buy it, Commander?”

  “Not scared. Unsure.”

  “Don’t be. She’ll buy it. Then, you can be unsure.”

  “What made you say that?”

  “The future isn’t fixed. Least of all for you, Commander.”

  Foord glanced at her curiously, started to reply, then forgot her. The temperature plummeted. Cold light was flooding back into the Bridge, Smithson was bellowing I Told You So, and the empty figure was starting to fill. The light went everywhere, and the figure drew substance out of it; then shape; then surface textures, and skin colour, and posture. And lastly, identity.

  When it finally stood before them, slender and graceful and slight of build, it surprised none of them.

  •

  Thahl’s replica did not blink in the light—Sakhrans rarely blinked—and it did not look round the Bridge to find the one it came for. Apart from a brief glance at Foord, it paid no attention to anyone except Thahl. It was not Thahl’s exact double; perhaps slightly older, though signs of aging were difficult to gauge in Sakhrans.

  “Well,” Thahl said.

  “Well,” said the replica.

  “Why did She leave me to last?”

  “Because,” said the replica, “the others were more interesting.”

  “Yes, of course. No secrets about me.” Thahl’s face and voice, like those of the replica, were expressionless; Sakhran humour was as quiet as Ember humour was cruel.

  “Me neither,” agreed the replica. “I have nothing to reveal.”

  On the Bridge screen, the stalemate of beams and flickerfields continued. Cyr had no intention of firing the beams on full power yet—it would be too early, and too obvious—but Foord still watched her closely.

  “Or almost nothing,” added the replica. “There’s your mission.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, it turned out satisfactorily. Three years ago—three years ago for me—the Charles Manson pursued Her through the Gulf to Sakhra, and finally destroyed Her one-to-one in front of Horus Fleet.”

  “Yes, that would be satisfactory,” Thahl agreed. “And there’s nothing else you have to tell us?”

  “No, nothing,” agreed the replica.

  Foord still watched Cyr; she still fired the beams on reduced power, and made no move yet to go to full power.

  “Or almost nothing. There’s Foord.”

  “Foord?”

  “Foord left me—sorry, left you—on Sakhra while he returned to Earth and enjoyed the glory. But on Sakhra we knew what Srahr had written. We knew what Faith was, and we knew She would always come again. There will always be more Faiths.”

  For some reason, the replica paused.

  “Was there any more,” Thahl prompted, “about Foord?”

  The replica seemed embarrassed; unusual for a Sakhran, even a replica. When it next spoke, its voice was different. Almost apologetic.

  “Foord could never stop thinking about Her. Finally he returned to Sakhra, and read the Book. Then he wrote one of his own, which in deference to us he called the Second Book of Srahr, and he did to the Commonwealth what Srahr did to us. When they read what She was they turned away from each other, like we did. Something went from their lives, and they never got it back.”

  Cyr fired the beams on full power. The future consumed another millionth of itself, and exploded all the way back to Sakhra.

  9

  Something unexpected had happened in the Gulf, and Swann was about to feel its first ripples.

  When the Charles Manson lifted off from Sakhra, and the strange civil disturbances began, Swann had retreated to his Command Centre at Blentport. Like a dying pharaoh, he had ordered that his staff be buried there with him. Through the days following, it had been full of their noise and movement and smell, and the mounting layers of their detritus. They had grown hot and dirty and tired together, struggling to read things which were unreadable: the disturbances on Sakhra, and the events in the Gulf.

  The Command Centre had once been spacious, symmetrical and well-ordered; now it was crowded, not only with people but with chaotic piecemeal additions. The space between its orderly rows of consoles was filled with other consoles. It was walled and even ceilinged with screens, most of them—like the consoles—commandeered from other parts of Blentport. The screens were wide-angle and high-definition, paper-thin so they could be stuck like posters over any spare flat surface. Some of them showed the final stages of Horus Fleet’s deployment round Sakhra, now almost complete, and all the others—except one—showed the civil disturbances.

  Sakhra was not being engulfed by some mass uprising—neither Sakhrans nor Sakhran humans did their politics like that—but it was being prodded, here and there, by outbreaks of unease. Swann rubbed his forehead, feeling grit and sweat in his fingers. He was hot and dirty and tired from trying to read unreadable things. The disturbances were bad enough, but the events in the Gulf were worse.

  There was one screen in the Command centre, the largest, which showed no images, only binary readouts and schematics and text headups, their windows crowding untidily over each other like a miniature of all the other screens on all the other walls. This was where Swann’s analysts tried to piece together the engagement in the Gulf. All through the days of Swann’s confinement it had been adding and subtracting information, as the analysts did sweep after sweep of their limited and partial data sources, updating them in sequence. The updates moved round the screen like an invisible clock hand, rippling the words and figures as it rearranged them. Each sweep took about a minute; then after thirty seconds the next one began, and the next, as unnoticed as the rise and fall of breathing.

  The screen flickered as the latest sweep was completed; then attempted to turn itself inside out as it tried, and failed, to correlate what it had been fed. It went blank, then relit showing only gibberish. It started its next sweep. The invisible clock hand moved round it, casting shadows as it rearranged words and symbols and figures, but it was still meaningless.

  To one side of the big screen was the old-fashioned floor-standing microphone—five feet tall with a weighted circular base—which Swann had swept to one side after his last troubling conversation with the Department. The weighted circular base had kept it from falling over.

  It started to buzz, and its monitor light flashed Attention Now.

  “Clerical Officer Oban, Office of Miscellaneous Vehicles, Department of Administrative Affairs. The Department is extremely sorry to trouble you, Director; this is a routine procedural matter only. If it’s not convenient…..”

  “Yes, yes, I know you’re real, cut the foreplay.”

  “There’s been a development.”

  “I can see that. What does it mean?”

  “Foord has had a success. A major success.”

  •

  Whatever else they were, the inhabitants of Faith were sentient. They were not in immediate danger from the chaos Foord had brought them—they had never had, or needed, the capacity to feel personal danger—but neither could they ignore it. They reflected.

  Nothing else in the universe was quite like them. They were invincible, but not immortal. They had always known what they were made for. For other sentient beings this might have been revealed by one unusual individual, who might have written a Book which would change their lives, but not for them: they had always known. It was part of the balance of the universe, part of its clockwork, that they were invincible. If they weren’t, the universe was wrong.

  •

  “Foord has had a success. A major success.”

  “Good! How major?”

  “He’s damaged Her again, more seriously than the first time…We think the balance has started to shift. We think he’s winning.”

  “There’s something in your voice. What’s wrong?”

  The microphone stayed silent. As Swann watched it, it seemed—without moving—to acquire its ow
n body language, reflecting the uncertainty he heard in its silence.

  Behind the microphone, the big screen completed another update sweep. The invisible clockhand again moved over the words and figures and diagrams, and Swann’s staff milled around it. They shouted things at him, but the silence from the microphone drowned them out.

  When the voice next spoke, it seemed different, and Swann was bewildered when he realised why. The voice actually sounded embarrassed.

  “You see, there’s been a development.”

  “I know. You told me. Foord’s winning.”

  “No; it’s us. We’re not unanimous any more.”

  “About what?” Make it be about something physical, or something operational, Swann prayed silently to the microphone. Not something unreadable.

  “Some of us think we might not have fully appreciated something.”

  And Swann knew then that something was wrong. That something enormous was enormously wrong. If the voice had been merely frightened, he could have been frightened with it; that was normal when you encountered operational setbacks, and you could be frightened and still have a chance of putting them right. But the voice was embarrassed. You only sounded embarrassed when there was something you couldn’t put right.

  “And what is it,” he asked carefully, “that you Might Not have Fully Appreciated?”

  “Foord. We know what might happen if he loses. But if he wins, it might be worse.”

  “What?”

  “If he loses, it might threaten the Commonwealth. But if he wins, it might threaten more than the Commonwealth.”

  “What can be more than the Commonwealth?”

  “Everything.”

  •

  It was part of the balance of the universe, part of its clockwork, that they were invincible. They did the work of gods, without being gods themselves. No single one of them was significantly more intelligent than Foord, or Smithson, or Thahl, or Cyr. But they were made differently. Nothing else in the universe had ever been made like them.

  They would never encounter any opponent who wasn’t already part of them. The motives and memories, hopes and fears, history and future of every opponent they had met or would ever meet, were contained in them at an unplumbable depth: in the curved and recurved space between the unique particles which made them, in interstices where no other physical laws reached. All of it was there to be drawn on when they met their next opponent and the next and the next, into eternity or for as long as the universe lasted. They didn’t know why they did it, or who made them, but how they did it was a function of how they were made.

  For an almost geological time they had faced opponents, singly and in multitudes. No opponent’s abilities could ever be unknown to them. No opponent’s ship could ever outfight or outperform theirs. And no opponent had ever done to them what this one had done.

  •

  “Everything.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Remember when you demanded we send the other Outsiders to the Gulf? We even thought of doing it, but now it’s impossible. You’re on your own. So are we. Everyone’s going to be on his own.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You don’t listen. Listen. Keep Horus Fleet in a defensive cordon, like we told you. Those two ships are still far away, but they’re coming. They’ll cross the Gulf and arrive at Sakhra, locked in combat, or in whatever else they’re doing to each other. Pray that neither of them wins. Pray that they keep fighting for another year, or ten years, or a thousand.”

  •

  No opponent had ever done to them what this one had done. They still had superiority, because of their unique ship and their own uniqueness, but now for the first time they felt a stir of unease. Not for themselves—they had never had, or needed, the capacity to feel personal danger—but for the balance, the clockwork, they served. If that was wrong, everything was wrong.

  They still had superiority. Foord had done something unexpected, but they could still do other things, beyond even Foord’s abilities. They reflected.

  10

  “Something went from their lives,” said Thahl’s replica, “and they never got it back.”

  Cyr fired the particle beams on full power. They tore through Faith’s underpowered fields and hit Her, twice. She killed Her main drives, killed the signal She was putting into the Bridge, killed all the other things She had primed for later, and threw everything into Her fields, but by then Cyr—who was firing manually and continuously—had hit Her again, and again, and again: five times before Her fields, too late, reached full power.

  Smithson’s idea had worked; his ideas always worked. But this one would go on working, long past the point where it gave them what they wanted.

  On the Bridge screen they saw Cyr’s five shots raking along Her flank between the midsection and stern craters, vaporising Her hull plates and leaving five parallel clawmarks; then Her fields reached full power, turning opaque and almost solid when Cyr’s beams touched them, and not even the Bridge screen could see through them. No further shots penetrated.

  When She killed the signal She was putting into the Bridge, She killed Thahl’s replica with it. It was swept to one side as if by a wind, dividing into particles which further divided into light, and then into nothing. The replica died abruptly and without ceremony, like a real Sakhran, and left nothing behind it.

  The white light of Her signal disappeared, plunging the Bridge into the darkness of normal light. The cold went away, and their breath no longer frosted in front of their faces. Foord motioned Cyr to stop firing; Her fields cleared, and the Bridge screen showed what had happened beneath them.

  There should have been at least one new crater, or even five new craters, gushing liquid silver and glowing with a nameless colour and throwing out pieces of wreckage which grew five miniature clawmarks and burnt away to nothing. Instead there were only five dark parallel lines, which the beams had scored along Her flank between the two craters; they looked like lines ruled on a very long sheet of writing paper. The Bridge screen did measurements and patched in a closeup: each line was nearly nine hundred feet long and less than a foot wide, the width of a few of Her thumbnail hull plates. The beams had scored out the plates as they raked along Her flank, uncovering the dark pewter of Her second hull layer, gleaming and undamaged.

  “Surface only,” Foord hissed at Smithson. “The beams were supposed to be the only thing, apart from her”—he gestured at Kaang, but continued to glare at Smithson—“which gave us an edge!”

  “She said that, Commander,” Kaang said. “Or rather, my replica did.”

  Foord ignored her, and turned to Cyr. “Craters. Where are the craters?”

  “Commander,” Thahl said, “our probes are detecting something inside Her.”

  “Our probes have never detected anything inside Her!”

  “This is the first time.”

  •

  It was a movement, slow and vast like something oceanic.The Bridge screen patched in some data, but it was gibberish; it said the movement had occurred nine thousand miles inside Her. The probes lost it and found it again, nearer the surface. Now it was only three thousand miles inside.

  “What is it, Thahl?”

  “You can see the readouts, Commander. I don’t know.”

  “What have we started?” Foord whispered to Smithson, and to Thahl “Why isn’t it showing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The midsection and stern craters flared like before with the nameless colour. But this time they flared only fitfully, and when the Bridge screen went to patch in closeups of them, Foord for once overruled it—“Leave it. That’s nothing. Go there”—and ordered it back to the five clawmarks on Her flank. Immediately the light from the craters died, as if She had heard or anticipated him.

  The Bridge screen tracked along the clawmarks.

  “There.”

  At a spot three hundred feet from the edge of the midsection crater, something was rippling Her flank; pushing up f
rom underneath and moving Her hull plates, like Foord had sometimes seen the smaller muscles in Thahl’s forearms moving the diamond-shaped scales of his skin. The screen patched in a closeup.

  The movement covered an area no larger than the page of a book, fitting easily between two of the clawmarks; it made a slight bulge in the hull plates. The microscopic distance between the edge of each plate and its neighbours increased fractionally, showing a thin line of pewter underneath—Her second hull layer, uncovered like the clawmarks had uncovered it, but on a much smaller scale. Without being ordered, the screen panned out.

  There was another one, a hundred feet away; then a third, then dozens, always between the parallel clawmarks, and only deep enough to uncover, beneath the edges of the plates as they moved apart, the dark pewter of the second hull layer. Now there were hundreds. Because they appeared only between the parallel lines along Her flank, they started to look like writing—an effect heightened by their regularity, because they always followed the outlines of the hull plates. The screen went to closeup again.

  The lines made by the gentle parting of the hull plates, which from a distance had looked like lines of cursive writing, were almost granular when seen closeup; like ink under a magnifying glass, sinking into the weave of parchment. The screen went closer still, becoming almost a microscope. It concentrated on just two plates. Their edges, where they had gently eased apart to reveal the dark layer underneath, were like torn paper, with trailing filaments waving microscopic goodbyes to each other as they moved fractionally apart. The screen held the magnification for a few seconds, then panned out again.

  Now there were thousands of them. The localised ripplings in Her flank were starting to join and become a concerted outward bulge along nine hundred feet. The fine cursive lines were visible again from a distance; that, and the fact that they all continued to stay within the lines of the clawmarks, made the suggestion of writing irresistible. They almost formed the shapes of recognisable letters: letters arranged in words, words in sentences, with an underlying grammar. Foord had to fight a temptation to try and read it.