Faith (11 page)

“Are you a local resident, sir?”

“No. Do you want to see my papers?”

“Are you going to the lowlands, sir?”

“Yes. My papers?”

“Not necessary, sir, if you’re going to the lowlands.”

The soldier paused as a couple of freighters roared overhead, on their way down to Blentport. The sky—a grey inverted bowl shot with high trailing clouds, like the roof of a giant mouth streaked with mucus—had again started to be full of them, like it was last night.

“Are you sure you don’t need to see my papers?”

“Yes, sir, as long as you’re going to the lowlands.” He was already losing what little interest he had in Foord. “Safe journey.”

Across the road, on the side leading up into the highlands, where they had seen a stream of landchariots and military vehicles, but no civilian traffic, there was not merely one soldier but nine or ten, all heavily armed, and a large armoured sixwheel. Both its gun turrets were pointing down the road in the direction of traffic
from
the lowlands, but that may have been coincidence.

Foord’s wristcom buzzed. He snapped it open.

“This is me,” Smithson said. “Is that you?”

“Smithson, where is Cyr? Why hasn’t she called?”

“She’s still with Swann. And it’s forty minutes since
you
said
you’d
call in thirty minutes.”

“I know, we were delayed… The traffic is getting heavier, but we’re still aiming to be back in about two hours.”

On Foord’s wristcom, either a toilet flushed or Smithson laughed. “I don’t think so, Commander. It’ll get worse as you get closer. You wouldn’t believe what it’s like now, down here.”

“Is the refit still on target?”

“Yes, be done in three hours. I’ve got total priority. At least nine ships, including three Class 097s, are stuck down here and can’t join the cordon, because of me,” he said proudly. “It’s going well. But whether we leave in three hours, or wait twelve for a post-mortem on that alehouse brawl, is Cyr’s problem. And yours.”

“
Post-mortem?
”

“Nobody’s dead, Commander, it was just an expression.”

An expression, thought Foord, which he had used deliberately. “Smithson, if we’re ready to leave in three hours we’ll leave! Do you understand?”

Smithson hated being asked Do You Understand; he took it as a personal insult, a fact of which Foord was aware. “Call Cyr, please,” he went on quickly, “and tell her I want the details of that incident. And she’s
not
to hand our people over to Swann. And even if Horus doesn’t set tonight, two things are certain: we leave when the refit is done, and we leave with
all
our crew.”

Foord felt like adding another Do You Understand, but decided it would be ill-judged. He snapped the wristcom shut.

•

At Pindar the evacuation really started to show itself. Foord looked out of the landchariot as it turned a bend into the main street, and swore.

Coming here from the highlands was like jumping from air into treacle. Pindar was the last Commonwealth settlement he had passed on his way up to Hrissihr yesterday, and the first on their way down today: a small market town with a longish narrow main street lined with houses and shops and civic buildings, all slightly uncared-for and all built on the same modest scale. It would have taken a direct bombing better than it was taking the evacuation.

They were embedded in traffic. Most of it was town vehicles, with a few trucks and offroaders from neighbouring farms, some of which had passed them on the way down, sounding their horns. They were not sounding their horns now. Pindar was gridlocked but eerily quiet.

Military groundcars were positioned at intervals along the main street, turning it into a one-way through road to the lowlands. The traffic was like a stream of food passing down a long mouth, with the groundcars as inward-pointing teeth.

It looked like much of Pindar was already evacuated. The main street resembled a table-top onto which the contents of buildings had been emptied like the contents of pockets. For collection later, Foord thought, as though the urgency dwindled once
people
were put on the road, and pointed in the unvarying direction of the lowlands.

Thahl was right. And this, thought Foord, must be happening all the way around the rim of the Bowl. Here, though the crowding was heavy, it was still rather small-scale, just one modest town in the foothills; the entire population of the foothills wasn’t that large, but if
this
was happening here, it was the tip of something far larger. And something quite desperate.

They can never do it,
Foord kept thinking.
There isn’t time. They can’t turn the lowlands into an undefended civilian area!

They could, and they were; not completely, but perhaps just enough.

Foord opened his wristcom, told it to seek the local broadcasts, and listened.

The broadcasts talked of hotels and commercial buildings in the Bowl being requisitioned. Of camps erected on unused land between lowland cities. Of the mobilisation of hospitals and social services and charities to take the sudden—but, as they described it, temporary—influx of people. Of special comm links to enable those who had relatives in the lowlands to contact them and arrange accommodation (the preferred option). Of detailed arrangements for farms to leave one or two people behind to tend crops and animals.

The broadcasts used as much of the truth as humanly possible, but no more than necessary. They said—it was common knowledge anyway—that
She
may be coming to Horus, and that people in outlying areas were being moved temporarily to the lowland cities where they could be better protected. It was, they repeated, only temporary, until the
Charles Manson
lifted off from Blentport to engage Her.

They didn’t simply have one official broadcast repeating this message. They got existing presenters to insert it in existing programmes, not merely reading a prepared text but speaking around a summary they’d been given, so they could preserve some spontaneity. Even so, Foord heard similar phrases being repeated by different voices. The most common was We Have To GET You, To Where We Can PROTECT You. Once or twice, though, he actually heard the phrase Drawing The Wagons Into A Circle. He suspected the authorities hadn’t fed them that; their plan might be desperate, but they weren’t stupid.

They mentioned that large military detachments were being deployed to the highlands to prevent looting of evacuated properties. They did not mention that they were also moving defence emplacements to the highlands, or creating the impression (hasty and partial, but maybe just enough) that the lowland cities were undefended. Such an impression could not be other than hasty and partial. They could never move
all
the military out of the lowlands, even if they wanted to. What they wanted was to move the most visible garrisons. The fixed defence emplacements around the Bowl and especially around Blentport would remain, but would be visibly undermanned.

Foord left the wristcom on speaker. It scrolled up and down all the lowland frequencies, repeating substantially the same material. Foord and Thahl listened in the landchariot as it moved, at walking pace, through Pindar. The web in the window continued to salivate.

“This is their endgame, Thahl. We haven’t even left to engage Her. She hasn’t even
appeared
in Horus yet. And they’re gambling that if She defeats us and comes to Sakhra, this—
this
, will keep Her from attacking the lowlands!”

The broadcasts continued to murmur out of Foord’s wristcom. We Have To GET You, To Where We Can PROTECT You.

“It may not work, Commander, but it’s all they’ve got. Their ships can’t fight Her because they’ve been told to stay in the defensive cordon, while
we
fight Her. If She comes here, it means She’s destroyed us and destroyed their cordon. They have to have an endgame, even one like this.”

Foord did not answer for a while. Then, “You of all people. I thought you’d be outraged at the military going into the highlands.”

“Commander, the way
they
see it, they’re decoying Her away from the cities. If She comes, those in the highlands know they won’t have a chance against Her.”

We Have To GET You, To Where We Can PROTECT You. Nothing is simple, Foord thought but did not say. He snapped his wristcom shut. Immediately it started buzzing.

“Foord.”

“Cyr, Commander. I’ve just left Director Swann’s offices.”

“And is he still demanding we hand over our people?”

“No, Commander.” She laughed, rather unpleasantly. “He almost disappointed me. Before I could invoke our priority he invoked it for me. Keep them, he said, and just go. He’s desperate to get us off Sakhra.”

“Good. Should I know who did what to who or will it keep?”

“You can guess most of it, Commander. It does happen every time, doesn’t it?”

It was a voice-only channel, but Foord nodded; he knew that Cyr would read the quality of his silence. Outsiders were always treated, especially by regular military forces, like the carriers of a disease. Everyone knew the Department recruited most Outsider crew members from prisons, and psychiatric hospitals, and orphanages; sociopaths and psychopaths who could never work with regular forces. And when one or two of them walked into a bar, or were seen anywhere in public, the results were almost inevitable. Most were not openly aggressive, which made them even more of a provocation; they were loners or depressives who tended to sit in corners, in ones or twos or small groups. On this occasion, two were set upon by four from a Horus Fleet cruiser, also on Blentport for refit.

“Was anybody killed?”

“No, Commander. Our two went immediately back to the ship. I refused to hand them over to Swann, and now he’s given up. The other four were all injured, one of them seriously, but he won’t be permanently scarred or disabled: I checked with the hospital.”

“Alright, Cyr, thank you…No, wait, something’s happening here.”

The traffic jamming the main street of Pindar had been strangely quiet. Now, Foord could hear klaxons and sirens, and soldiers shouting at vehicles to move to one side of the road, further and further to one side until they mounted the pavement. Something huge was coming.

Foord should have realised what it was from the low throb of its engine, or the shape of the shadow it cast, but he didn’t until it was upon them: a tracked lowloader, like those in the clearing earlier, but much larger. There were others behind it. They carried more beam and scanner units, and missiles so tall they towered precariously over Pindar’s buildings, and they moved through the main street in the opposite direction to everything else: in the direction, of course, of the highlands. The lowloader was so long that as it passed the landchariot, and continued and continued to pass, it seemed that its bulk was standing still and they were moving past it. Then it passed by and the illusion ended, but as those behind it followed, each of them equally tall, there was another illusion: that of a city moving through a town.

“What’s that noise, Commander? Are you all right?”

“It’s OK, Cyr, a military convoy is passing through. Stay on, I want to speak again when it’s quieter.”

The lowloaders continued: there were seven of them, followed by groundcars, sixwheels and other vehicles. When they had gone, and their engine-noise had receded, the traffic was ushered back into the centre of the road and continued at walking pace. The sirens stopped. The abnormal quiet returned.

“Cyr.”

“Commander?”

“That convoy gave me an idea. Cyr, I intend to return to the lowlands, and to the ship, in this landchariot. Contact Swann, please. Tell him where we are, and tell him to get a military escort to clear the way for us. Invoke our priority, it seems to work.”

Cyr did not reply immediately.

“Cyr? Do you think that’s pushing him too far?”

“No, Commander.” Foord realised, from the inflexion of her voice, that she had been laughing quietly. “I think he’ll do anything….I’ll call him now. We are heaping insults on him, aren’t we?”

Foord snapped his wristcom shut, and thought,
This is like the running joke in ancient movies, where one person gets repeatedly clobbered
. He thought also,
She never asked why I have to go by landchariot, though she probably thinks it’s self-indulgent.
The fact was, he didn’t really know himself. Instinctively, it just felt fitting. He could have rationalised it by saying it was done out of respect for Thahl, but that wasn’t true. Thahl had already told him, firmly but in private, that he thought the idea was unnecessarily risky as well as a provocation to Swann.

Between Foord’s knees, and across the landchariot’s dim interior, Thahl stayed expressionless and silent, though Foord had known him long enough to know he was amused at the indignities being piled on Swann. Sakhrans’ quiet humour was strangely at odds with their capacity for violence.

Foord looked above Thahl’s head at their driver. He had never seen anyone’s mere neck and shoulders radiate so much repressed anger. The driver had said nothing to Thahl since leaving the clearing, and nothing at all to Foord; his turned back carried far more expression than Thahl’s face.

•

When they finally got out of Pindar the road widened; traffic was heavy but faster. In both directions—toward the lowlands and highlands, the latter now entirely military vehicles—it was an unbroken stream. Cyr called back to report that Swann, although outraged that Foord should enter Blentport by landchariot, had agreed almost gratefully to the suggestion that a military escort would hasten his return and, hence, departure. They would be met, Cyr said, by a specially picked detachment who would escort them at high speed the rest of the way down.

The foothill country opened up and the landchariot clattered on, between fields of dark gold corn stubble where suddenly-empty houses stood alone as if daubed there in anger; fields of waving barley where cloud shadows raced each other across the ground; between fields of naked brown ploughed earth where flocks of white birds, or things like birds, wheeled screaming. And everywhere in the fields were swarms of giant Sakhran butterflies, iridescent violet and purple, looking for the farm animals on whose excrement they fed; they preferred it warm, so they would cluster around anal orifices. The farmers called them Buggerflies.