Faith (26 page)

Ironically, the institutional processes to which Foord had been subjected, the learning of conventional methods before being allowed unconventional ones, had often been useful to him. At Horus 5, he had wanted to open with a flourish of the unexpected. In the Belt, he had decided to open with conventional, mind-numbing routine. A free-form battle in the Belt would have played to Her advantages, whereas this monotonous attrition played to one of his—the superior range of their particle beams. And it was working. Even if Her flickerfields didn’t drain Her, She still couldn’t break out of the stalking pattern they had locked on Her; and if they did drain Her, and the pattern could be held for long enough, She would be impaired, perhaps fatally.

“Communication, Commander,” Thahl said.

“I thought I told you we’re accepting no…”

“I think you should accept this one, Commander.”

Thahl pointed at the antiquated microphone which stood incongruously on Foord’s console. Its red Incoming light was glowing. Such microphones were the Department’s standard means of communication. They were voice only—the Department did not do visuals—and carried a dedicated MT channel from Earth; they were not as antiquated as they looked.

“Department of Administrative Affairs to Foord,
Charles Manson
. Acknowledge, please.”

Foord saw Joser stiffen; then irritated himself by wondering, Did I see it because I was looking for it?

“This is Foord. Identify yourself, please.”

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

“Hold for validations, please.”

Foord glanced at Thahl and Joser, who began checking—Thahl for the source of the signal, Joser for its distinctive embedded signature and its voice pattern. These were three of the validations: the fourth was vocabulary and forms of address.

So far, the fourth appeared to check. In the unlanguage in which the Commonwealth clothed its private parts, the Department dealt with many Affairs, none of them Administrative; it never felt sorrow, or anything else, for those it troubled; the Office of Miscellaneous Vehicles was the Department’s Outsider section; Clerical Officers had more power than generals; and routine procedural matters, were not.

“Commander,” Lok said, “I have a message from the Department. Will you hurry the validations, please?”

“Joser? Thahl?”

”I’m rechecking the voice analysis, Commander,” Joser said.

“
Re
checking?”

“It doesn’t completely match Lok’s pattern.”

“Commander, it’s a fake!” Thahl said. “It’s from Her.”

“Cyr, fire before She breaks cover!”

Cyr, swearing loudly, was already doing so. She overrode the five-minute count. A warning harmonic warbled politely through the Bridge. Headup displays and target simulations were superimposed on the Bridge screen, but

“Too late, Commander, She’s gone. Out of range. Heading into the Belt on ion drive, high acceleration.”

Foord swore, more softly and less obscenely than Cyr, then subsided. It had only taken Her a second to divert them, but now She might as well have been hours gone.

“Commander,” Kaang said, “I can get Her back in range if we move now.”

“No, not this time. There’s no need.”

“I’m sorry, Commander….
No Need
?”

Foord glanced at her, surprised. Kaang never questioned tactics; part of their understanding was that she was
only
a pilot.

“She isn’t running, Kaang, so we don’t need to catch Her. She’ll wait.”

“Commander,” Cyr said, “with respect, I think you should reconsider.”

“What’s Her speed and course, Joser?”

“It’s on the screen, Commander. She’s going into the Belt at sixty percent, but the speed’s dropping.”

“Take us forward on Her course, please, Kaang.
Thirty
percent.” He turned to Cyr. “You’re right, we can’t just sit here. But we won’t have to chase Her. Now She’s out of range, She’ll wait.”

Like Foord, the Bridge swore softly to itself and subsided.

Kaang quietly engaged ion drive and took them deeper into the Belt. Foord turned an icy gaze on the microphone, whose Incoming light still glowed.

“You can go now” he told it.

There was no reply. The light stayed on.

“I said, You can go now. You aren’t real.”

“Neither are you. Neither is the Department. Neither is the Commonwealth.”

2

Both ships possessed a similar array of drives, and a similar performance in each of them. When they entered the Belt, Kaang had cleverly feinted and doublebluffed Her into range of their beams, but that wasn’t going to happen again. In fact, quite the opposite: the second part of their engagement in the Belt was a reversal of the first.

For ninety minutes, She danced in front of them exactly beyond the reach of their beams, countering even the attempts of Kaang to get Her back in range. She did sideslices and curlicues, rolls and tumbles and even the occasional somersault; She hopped behind asteroids which were just outside beam range, breaking out and running for cover just before they came within range. They still couldn’t see Her—She hadn’t yet decided it was time to unshroud—but they tracked Her path, including the dancing manoeuvres, easily enough through Her drive emissions, as of course She wanted them to. It was deadpan and sly, like a Sakhran might mock a human.

“Bring us to rest, please, Kaang,” Foord said, ninety minutes later. He gazed around the Bridge. “If
Kaang
can’t get Her back in range, we need something else.”

Kaang carefully refrained from comment, as did Thahl, but the silence of the others was more pointed. He repeated wearily
She’ll wait, She’s not running, we don’t have to chase Her.
He knew that for certain; one by one, he was adding pieces to the huge clockwork he had designed to engage Her. But he was still shivering from what She had done, how She’d faked a Department call but hadn’t even bothered, apparently, to fake it properly. What if She decided next time to fake it properly?

He needed time, to see if they were affected as badly as he was. To draw out their reactions. But his first attempt was ill-judged.

“She
spoke
to us in that call,” he said. “She’s never spoken before.”

“She didn’t speak,” Joser said. “It wasn’t Her voice. It was a fake, and not even a very good one.”

“It was good enough,” Smithson said sourly.

Foord tried again.

“She spoke,” he insisted. “She said we aren’t real.”

“Why didn’t She fake it better?” Joser was almost plaintive.

“It was good enough,” Smithson repeated. “It got Her out of range.”

“She should have faked it better.”

“Perhaps,” Cyr said to Joser, spitefully, “it really
was
the Department.”

“But the voice patterns and signature…”

“They could have been testing you. They’re at least as clever as She is.”

“It said we aren’t real.”

“Then it must have been the Department. Call them back.”

Good, thought Foord. Smithson and Cyr seem unimpaired. Kaang doesn’t count, not in this. Joser is suspect, but always was. So that leaves

“Thahl,” he said. “This was the first time anyone’s got an advantage over Her, and it disappeared because She distracted us...”

“Yes, Commander.”

“…but maybe She
let
us get an advantage, so She could show us how easily She could make it disappear.”

Thahl looked up sharply at him. “Do you really believe that, Commander?”

“Of course not!” he said, a little too loudly.

There was a silence. Feeling a need to fill it, Foord rushed on.

“Thahl, how did She know the vocabulary and forms of address? Is She able to monitor the Department’s MT channel to us? Because if She is…”

“No, Commander, it’s more likely She monitored the Department’s calls to Director Swann. Sakhra’s a communications beacon at the moment. We could probably monitor it ourselves.”

“Yes, that must be it.”

“I said More Likely, Commander. We can’t be certain.”

Foord didn’t reply.
Is he
, thought Thahl,
waiting for me to make a suggestion, or is he faking? He can be irritating, sometimes
.

“Commander, you already decided to kill normal communications. I suggest you kill the Department’s MT channel. It’s as useless as the MT Drive, and for the same reason:
She
got into it.”

“If we kill that channel, we’re alone. And another part of us goes down.”

“You wanted to be alone when we faced Her. You insisted on it. And as for another part going down…”

As for another part going down, Foord completed what Thahl did not need to say, this is an Outsider. Each of its parts, and each of
us
, has no perception of needing each other. A Sakhran would know that better than anyone. We can go through each phase of this engagement having limbs lopped off one by one, and still the mouth will bite.

“Yes, you’re right,” Foord said eventually. “Kill the Department’s channel.”

Thahl and Foord briefly made eye contact across the Bridge. Foord was thinking
I’m not only unsure how much he’s faking, I’m unsure how much I’m faking.
Thahl was thinking the same thing.

“Joser, what’s Her situation?”

“Still heading into the Belt, Commander. Forty percent ion speed and dropping. Position 12-16-14.”

Foord was silent for a minute. Then he smiled.

“Take us
back
out of the Belt, please, Kaang.”

“Commander?”

“Back the way we came. Ion drive, five percent.” He looked round the Bridge. “Yes, I know. But I want to see what She does about it.”

He looked across at Thahl and mouthed,
Nothing is simple.

Foord and Thahl were perhaps the only two people on the
Charles Manson
who shared anything like trust, but just then they were both unsure.

Thahl looked back across the Bridge at Foord and mouthed,
Nothing is real.

The manoeuvre drives fountained. Kaang turned the ship in its own length and commenced a slow, elegant departure towards the rim of the Belt, back in the direction of Horus 5.

A few minutes passed.

“She’s still moving into the Belt, Commander,” Joser said. “Position 14-17-15. But She’s slowing. Like you said,” he added, hopefully.

“Not quite like I said. I’d have expected Her to stop by now. I wonder if we should increase speed? No, let’s not over-embellish...”

Another few minutes passed. The asteroids grew perceptibly smaller and sparser, but the
Charles Manson
still picked its way through them with the same unhurried delicacy. At only five percent, it would be a long time before they left the Belt; not that they expected to.

“She’s cut Her drives at last, Commander,” Joser said eventually. “But She’s at rest, not following.”

“Joser, watch Her position,” Foord said. “I think She’s going to…”

Foord studied the white dot on the screen showing Her current position. Still just out of range, of course. It wasn’t that She’d stopped—She didn’t need to stop in order to launch weapons—but he had a feeling this would be something unusual.

“Commander, She’s launched something. It’s not shrouded. I’ll have a visual soon.”

•

It was a cone-shaped object, tumbling towards them end over end; about thirty feet long by twenty feet wide at its base, said the Bridge screen. It offered no resistance to probes, and the probes showed it to be quite empty. It was not travelling under power (though outlets at its base indicated pulse motors) and there were no guidance or homing signals, so the screen concluded it must be on a preset course. As if to confirm this, it fired its motors briefly on-off to avoid a cloud of asteroid debris, then resumed its course towards them.

And, although the screen did not add any comment about this feature, its colour was pink; bright, nursery pink.

Comical and conical
, Foord thought;
still pisstaking
.

“Stay at rest for now, please,” he said. “Joser, the screen says there are no guidance signals.”

“That’s right, Commander: no guidance or homing signals. And ETA is ninety-nine seconds.”

“So no guidance, and apparently—if we believe the probes—nothing inside it. So what’s it there for? What’s it mean?”

A section of the Bridge screen became locally magnified. The usual series of schematics was generated, unasked, by the screen: ventral, dorsal, side, front and rear. They added nothing not already visible.

“Cyr: lasers, please. I want to see inside it.”

A single laser stabbed out, one of the ship’s shortrange crystal lasers. It hit, and a section of the cone sheared off. Inside was as pink as outside; it really
did
seem empty. It still came on, tumbling end over end, but now more erratically.

“ETA fifty-nine seconds, Commander.”

“Again, please, Cyr.”

Two more shots, two more bits sliced off the cone, two more views of an apparently empty and featureless interior.

Still plenty of time
, Foord thought,
to destroy it
. So what’s it going to do to confound us at the last moment? He told Kaang to move them to port a few hundred feet and bring them to rest, which she did. The cone fired its motors, on-off, as it had done to avoid the cloud of debris, changing course so it still came at them, still tumbling end over end.

“ETA forty-five seconds, Commander.”

“Cyr, finish it, please. Lasers.”

If anything’s going to happen it will be now, thought Foord. But it didn’t. The cone exploded, not very spectacularly, and was reduced to pink dust which drifted away to add itself to the map of the Belt which Foord had been so assiduously rewriting.

Foord took a sip of inhibitor fluid—the tumbler had remained undisturbed on his chairarm during the recent flurry of activity—and settled back in his chair. He let out a long breath.