Faith (56 page)

The first part of what I write can be easily proved, because the orders of magnitude demonstrate it. They’re well known. Our galaxy’s magnitude relative to the universe is quite negligible, perhaps no more than the magnitude of an atom, and we’re only minor parts of the minor parts of that atom. We really are, in physical terms, almost nothing. And we can’t see the whole universe because it’s too big. Our encounter with Faith was only a momentary ripple in the lesser regions of one of its lesser galaxies.

The next part can’t be objectively proved, but it’s what I finally saw as the engagement ended, and it fits all the observed data. When it comes to observed data, nobody since Srahr has observed Her more than me.

•

We fought Her through a solar system, and piece by piece I got to know Her, one new thing after another, though I never put all the pieces together until the very end.
Her abilities
are the key. Her abilities explain not only how, but why; they’re everything She is.

Her abilities meant that She knew all Her opponents, past and present and future. That She knew them before they existed, and after She defeated them. That they were always part of Her and always would be.

Her abilities meant that no system She attacked would ever defeat Her, and that every system She attacked would, after She left, sink into chaos or decline.

Her abilities meant that She knew everything we were, all our motives and memories. She could put it all into silver replicas of us that were better than the originals, and then make us kill them. We recovered from that, but only just.

Her abilities meant that She could send a second generation of replicas into the Bridge,
my
Bridge; replicas of what we were or might become, all misleading and all true. We never entirely recovered from that, though we did go on fighting Her somehow.

Her abilities meant that She could influence us by creating events to which She knew, exactly, how we’d react. She did it so accurately that mere telepathy, or possession, wasn’t necessary. At times She seemed to know our thoughts before we did, but what She really knew was
us
.

Her abilities meant that She could confuse and block our scanners and probes, letting them detect only what She wanted them to detect, and leaving them otherwise useless.

Her abilities meant that She could change the building-blocks of matter, could create and re-create Her spiders and our replicas from silver liquid and white light; that She could take parts of Herself, and parts of us She’d collected, and convert them to energy to go on fighting even after the damage we’d done should have destroyed Her.

Her abilities meant that She could control the basic laws of conversion of matter to energy, slow them down thousands of times to a steady state, and diffuse them through Herself. Rewrite the laws in Her own language.

Her abilities meant that She could make a universe, apparently just for tactical reasons, and use its few minutes of life to move us and Herself through the Gulf to Sakhra.

Her abilities enabled Her to outfight, outmanoeuvre, outthink and outperform every opponent She ever met or would ever meet: the next opponent and the next and the next, into eternity or for as long as the universe lasts.

Her abilities were exactly what She would need if She was the universe’s own, official, designated antibody. I notice I’ve lapsed into the past tense. She
is
the universe’s own, official, designated antibody, and will be for eternity or for as long as the universe lasts.

•

I realized what She was just before the end of the engagement, when everything ended for me…. No, I shouldn’t say that, it’s what Smithson used to call self-indulgent. What ended was important to me personally, but it doesn’t belong here. I’ll start again.

I realised what She was just before the end of the engagement. The only way Srahr could explain his conclusion, and the only way I can explain mine after fighting Her across a solar system, is that the orders of magnitude were not made for inanimate objects; they were made for living cells in a living body, for galaxies in a universe.

The universe is a living thing, perhaps the final or even the only living thing. The only question is whether it’s also sentient; a question to which I’ll return presently.

I don’t have the tone for this. The proper tone should be apocalyptic, or at least revelatory, but I’m incapable of either. I’ve learnt to see things differently now, and all I see are multiple levels of irony; the result of being around Sakhrans for too long. So our galaxy is only a cell in a living body too large to see, and the body organises and defends and preserves itself, either consciously or blindly, against disease. Disease is an imbalance in one part of a body, something spreading too fast. Civilisations which spread across solar systems become diseases; they threaten an imbalance, so
She
visits them and leaves them in regression or chaos. Our engagement with Her, into which we poured everything we had, was only a momentary spasm in some minor organ, not even noticed unless the body is sentient; a question to which I’ll return presently.

•

So She’s the universe’s perfect, invincible instrument, yet we damaged Her so badly that She couldn’t go on to Sakhra. Does that mean we proved Her inadequate? Does
that
mean there will be another generation of antibodies to replace Her, even more beautiful and brilliant than She is?

The universe made Her, but did it make Her consciously, or blindly? Could something like
Her
really be made blindly? Just reflexively secreted? Perhaps: antibodies and enzymes and secretions are made blindly, but if you see them as pieces of functional design, they’re as beautiful and brilliant as She is.

And whatever made the universe which made Her, was
that
acting consciously, or blindly? How high up the orders of magnitude do you have to go before you get to the final sentience? Maybe you never do. Maybe it’s neverending. Or maybe there isn’t a final sentience. Maybe sentience is the inferior quality, and doesn’t have a higher ultimate version but belongs lower down. Maybe the final nature of the final living thing is nonsentience.

We don’t see evidence of sentience in the universe, or even nonsentience, or indeed anything at all, but we wouldn’t. The universe is too big. We don’t see it all, or even a meaningful part of it. Orders of magnitude: the fraction we see is incomparably vast and we’re incomparably small. Almost nothing.

If it was sentient we could at least say it was a higher form of us, but I believe it isn’t. I believe it’s not alive enough to know it can ever die. I think its constructs, like Faith, aren’t the work of conscious thought or intelligence, but of blind reflex. They’re secretions. And we’re the sentient and thinking lesser parts of a vast but nonsentient and nonthinking organism.

My ship was nine percent sentient. It died like I always imagined Jeeves would have died, tidily and thoughtfully. And one of the best insults to be found in literature comes from a Jeeves book, from Bertie Wooster’s Aunt Agatha: “There are times, Bertie, when I think you are barely sentient.”

But maybe not an insult. Nonsentience is where everything starts and where everything returns, full circle: the beginning and the end. Our sentience is only a staging-point, in the middle. The last living thing—the final, ultimate living thing—is as unthinking as the first. Irony doesn’t come any bigger, or any more compelling.

•

All my life I’ve lived by nuances and inflexions, things unseen and unsaid. There’s a kind of vertigo in trying to guess their magnitude, because it might be infinite.

It seems years, not days, since I last came to Sakhra.The engagement with Her still hasn’t ended; its effects will come next. Its effects will be like a srahr, seen as a line from its edge or an oval from other angles, but never as a full disc. I never saw or did anything during the engagement with Her which wasn’t the tip of something larger or the opening movement of something unseen.

What She gave us was like a srahr, either zero or infinity. It may make us turn away from each other and regress, or it may make us go into the universe and find out how it works, and if it really is living and really does make its own antibodies. Things like Faith were secreted to neutralise things like the Commonwealth. But this time, they may not.

I always professed indifference to the speculation about what She is. I’m the last person who should have found out, but now I know it as fully and deeply as Srahr himself. Irony, or what?

Maybe the Commonwealth will regress, like Sakhra. Maybe Cyr and I will meet again, the same sets of cells recombining after trillions of generations. The chances against it are infinite, but that means that the chances in its favour are infinite too. Or (another irony) we may just pass by without recognising each other. But that doesn’t belong here. I’ll start again.

Will the Commonwealth regress, like Sakhra? Will we turn away from each other, like Sakhrans? I don’t know. For once, maybe they were wrong. The universe is vaster like this, with a dark majesty; more of a thing of wonder. The Sakhrans regressed when Srahr told them they’d become a disease and the universe had sent an invincible opponent to halt their spread. But Faith wasn’t invincible: we almost defeated Her. She intended to return to Sakhra but couldn’t, because of what
we
did to Her. No other opponent has ever damaged Her like that.

And what does Regress mean? When Srahr told them what She is it made them turn away from each other, though being Sakhrans they never regressed entirely. They didn’t sink into total despair, because they always had their sense of irony as a long-stop. They have a highly developed sense of irony. So do I, now. Unlike Faith, I’ve been to Sakhra twice.

•

I know Sakhrans better than most. They reproduce asexually, but they’re not mere copies; I could never have the kind of relationship with Sulhu that I had with his son. I always knew Thahl was my closest colleague, but it was only in the moments before he died that I realised he was my closest friend. I think he always knew that.

Orders of magnitude. I loved Thahl as much as I loved my mother and father, and almost as much (I realise this now) as I loved Cyr…but Thahl was only a fraction of Srahr. He knew what She was, because he’d read Srahr’s Book. Srahr was the one who
wrote
it. What must he have been like? They all say he was the greatest of all Sakhrans, a combination of poet, philosopher, soldier and scientist. I’m just a warship commander; not even that, any more. But Srahr was also an author, and his people never recovered from his literary career. I may have at least that in common with him.

And even Srahr wasn’t right all the time. He thought She was invincible, and I almost proved She wasn’t. She could only defeat us by replicating our missiles, the ones which damaged Her almost fatally, and that’s almost an admission of
Her
defeat. Or maybe I’m whistling in the dark, the same dark where our Fire Opals and Diamond Clusters and other weapons fell and died.

Almost is such a big word; almost infinite. We almost defeated Her, but in the end my ship was destroyed and half my crew were lost. This makes no sense, Smithson bellowed at me, after Cyr and Thahl died. He was outraged. I wouldn’t have cared if
I
lived or died, but
she
should have lived and
he
should have lived. I ought to put his words in quotes, but they work equally well as they are. They’re my words too.

When I’m finished here, I’ll leave and go back into the Commonwealth on my own; and that leads me to one last piece of self-indulgence, one last shift from the general to the personal. When I leave here it will be without Cyr and without Thahl. I miss them, Thahl for what was and Cyr for what should have been.

I can never see anything in quite the same way as before: an apple, a dust-mote in sunlight, a grain of sand, my own hand in front of my face. I built empty spaces between myself and Cyr, and between myself and Thahl, when they were alive. Now they’re dead, I still see the empty spaces. People die, but the empty spaces between them are immortal.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Love spent most of his working life in the music industry. He was Managing Director of PPL, the world’s largest record industry copyright organisation. He also ran Ocean, a large music venue in Hackney, East London.

He lives just outside London in north-west Kent with his wife and cats (currently two, but they have had as many as six). They have two grown-up children.

Apart from his family, London and cats, his favourite things include books and book collecting, cars and driving, football and Tottenham Hotspur, old movies and music. Science fiction books were among the first he can remember reading, and he thinks they will probably be among the last.

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