Authors: John Love
“Commander,” Thahl said, “we’re now within twice the maximum distance at which She’s been known to monitor communications. You asked to be notified.”
“Thank you. From now until further notice, no external communication will be made or accepted without my prior authority. Please inform Sakhra; and then close their channels.”
It seemed everyone wanted to know about Faith: who She was, where She came from, and why She was doing this. Foord, however, was genuinely indifferent. All that concerned him was that She was an opponent—the only one, apart from another Outsider, who might match him. Others were working on Her identity and motives, and if anyone found anything they’d tell him. With a kind of cold irony which was almost Sakhran, he looked forward to destroying Her
before
anyone could find out who She was.
Almost everyone who served or commanded on an Outsider did so because, for various reasons, they would be unacceptable on an ordinary ship. Foord rarely thought about why he would have been unacceptable; but it might have been his reluctance to believe in things. He considered that other people, particularly those who gave him his orders, believed far too much in their own existence and in that of the universe. Human senses, unaided, could perceive the universe across a range of 10
-4
to 10
+4
. Optical and mechanical devices increased the range: 10
-10
to 10
+10
. Electronics made it 10
-25
to 10
+25
, and the knowledge of which the
Charles Manson
was perhaps the last product made it 10
-50
to 10
+50
. Upon the perception gained at each stage a body of knowledge was constructed, and upon that construction grew further constructions—philosophical, political, cultural, social. There was the clockwork of Newton, then the relative chaos of Einstein, though Einstein only wanted harmony; then the smaller and deeper chaos of quantum uncertainty, and then back to a post-Newtonian clockwork. Beyond that was a deeper and vaster level of chaos, not yet quite visible; by the time it was, people would no longer be travelling in things like the
Charles Manson
.
Each stage proved its predecessor an illusion, and waited to be proved an illusion by its successor. But they all continued to be part of the same accretion over time; because, Foord thought, they all shared the quality of illusion. In the universe which was currently believed to exist, Foord served current institutions by applying current knowledge and techniques to the orders he was given, but the difference between Foord and those who gave him his orders was that they believed it had a meaning, whereas he knew it did. But only in terms of itself.
•
Eighty minutes later, the
Charles Manson
passed uneventfully out of the Gulf and crossed the orbital path of Horus 4, giving the planet a wide berth as Foord had stipulated. Kaang commenced deceleration for entry into the Belt. As photon drive subsided to seventy percent and below, the simulation disappeared from the Bridge screen and was replaced by a real visual, overlaid by rectilinear filters and compensators to correct for spectral shift; and these overlays themselves dwindled and disappeared as the photon drive subsided to twenty percent and below.
“Switching to ion drive” said Kaang.
“Position of Faith is still 99-98-96 and holding,” Joser said, not needing to raise his voice above the faint velvet thud which, together with a brief play of lights from Kaang’s console and a grunt of something which might have been approval from Smithson, was the only indication that a switch of drives had occurred.
“And no detectable movement or activity on any waveband,” Joser added.
“Ion drive engaged,” Kaang said. “Ninety percent and falling.”
“Thank you,” Foord said. “Joser, from now on I’d like those positional checks every five minutes. Smithson, Cyr, I’ll be requesting your status reports when we complete deceleration, so please have them ready. Oh, and Joser, one other thing…”
•
The
Charles Manson
entered the Belt on ion drive at exactly thirty percent, and slid through it unhurriedly and without incident. Status reports were given quietly and received politely, while the ship picked its way between bodies ranging in size from large boulders to small planets. It stolidly maintained its own up and down as asteroids rolled and turned around it; the surfaces of the bigger ones loomed on the encircling Bridge screen, sometimes below them like floors pocked with craters, sometimes to either side like walls veined with crevasses, sometimes above them like ceilings from which mountain ranges hung inverted. Foord stole a glance at Kaang, and thought,
We may have to come back through the Belt a lot faster than this. And with less leisure for observation
.
The asteroids grew smaller and dwindled away to the rear and the last phase of the journey began, the crossing of space between the Belt and Horus 5. Foord called for the adoption of the final stages of battle stations. Bulkheads slid across corridors to seal off the Bridge and the burrows of the ship’s nine other inhabited sections—no more than a ritual gesture, since each section was self-sustaining and its functions could be transferred elsewhere if damaged, and in any case Foord tended to run his ship as if the bulkheads were always there. On the Bridge, and in the sub-centres of each inhabited section, seats configured to full harness. Communications were shut off, except through Foord. The Codex told its sentience cores to tell the onboard computers to ignore everything outside the mission parameters. Finally, the ship switched to a navigational sphere of reference of which it was the centre.
Until further notice, the ship designated itself the centre of the universe.
The caretaker went out into the darkened hallway. He had put a lot of time and care into his preparations, as he always did. He had forgotten the tenants of the twenty-nine apartments who summoned him when they heard footsteps in the hall and on the stairs; it was their business to speculate about the cause and origin of the footsteps, his to make sure they were never heard again.
7
Horus 5 clamoured over all wavelengths. It boiled with upheavals—gravitational, magnetic, ionospheric, volcanic, tectonic—and continued to exist because of them, borrowing and re-borrowing its existence from the accountancy which decreed that creation and destruction must balance each other. The red upper levels of its atmosphere were shot with lightning and swirling with vortexes; at its surface there was enough pressure to liquefy rock, and more heat than had ever filtered down from Horus; and in the purple and ochre of its middle atmosphere it bred new hydrocarbon-based lifeforms to replace the old ones it was destroying. They were strange and beautiful things, tinting the thick atmosphere as they slid through it. It was said they were sentient, and lived in family groups.
Horus 5 would still have clamoured if nobody was there to hear it, but now it had the
Charles Manson
, floating almost at rest just inside its orbit; and something else, perhaps not unlike the
Charles Manson
, floating at absolute rest just outside. The
Charles Manson
was approaching very slowly, on a course which kept the planet between them.
“Status reports, please.”
“Nothing, Commander,” Thahl said. “Sakhra has not attempted to communicate. Neither has Faith.”
“All our probes have been blocked, but otherwise She’s inert,” Joser said. “And shrouded. We’ve detected no probes from Her. Her position is 99-98-96 and—”
“Use the self-centred sphere of reference from now on, please,” Foord said with a trace of impatience.
“I’m sorry, Commander. Her position is 09-07-09 and holding.”
“Proceeding on ion drive at one percent,” Kaang said. “At a range 1.91 from Horus 5.”
“All weapons are at…” Cyr began.
There was a hiss of static from Horus 5. It ceased abruptly, and the Bridge returned to its customary near-silence.
Cyr glanced pointedly at Thahl, and waited.
“I’m sorry, that was an unusually big atmospheric discharge.”
“Are you sure,” Foord asked Thahl, “that’s all it was?”
“Yes, Commander.” Since they were not in private, Thahl did not bristle at the question, except privately. “It coincided with an upper atmospheric prominence on the planet. I’ve adjusted the filters.”
“Thank you. Cyr, please continue.”
“All weapons are at immediate readiness, Commander.”
“All drives,” Smithson said, “are at immediate readiness.”
“Including MT?” Foord asked quickly. “She might head out of the system, not in.”
“Yes, Commander, I know that. I said, All drives.”
Foord glanced up at the Bridge screen, the entire front semicircle of which was taken up by Horus 5. The planet’s upper atmosphere was purple and ochre and, predominantly, dark red; it was heavily filtered but it still bloodwashed the Bridge, almost but not quite matching the shade of the red Battle telltales which glowed politely from each console. Foord had seen many gas giants before, some more spectacular than this one—they were common in the outer reaches of main-sequence systems like Horus—and he was accustomed to being able to gaze directly into their faces for as long as he wanted. With this one, however, he couldn’t quite. He looked away, frowning.
“Joser, can you increase the screen filtering, please? I still find that light a little livid…Thank you.”
“Range now 1.88 from Horus 5, Commander,” Kaang said. “Do you wish us to come to a halt yet?”
“Not yet, thank you. I’d prefer to be a little closer, say 1.85 or less…Thahl, about that burst of static just now.”
“Yes, Commander, I’ve made the adjustments.”
“Thank you. I just want to be sure that That Planet,” he lounged in his seat against the backdrop of Horus 5 and talked about it as if he was talking about someone at a neighbouring restaurant table, and intending to be overheard, “doesn’t intrude into conversations on the Bridge. That’s all.”
They didn’t balk at his obsessiveness, even now when they were about to engage the strangest opponent they would ever face; in fact, to some extent they shared it.
She was motionless, and inert on all wavelengths. They could easily bend their long-range viewers around the planet, as (presumably) could She; but there was nothing to see, because She was shrouded. She always went shrouded into engagements, only becoming visible later, usually at some point of maximum psychological impact. The shrouding didn’t hide Her drive emissions, so if She moved, She could be tracked; but when She didn’t move, as now, She was invisible.
The Bridge screen had patched in a small insert showing a simulation of the other side of Horus 5, with a white dot marking Her position, and Foord looked at it and thought,
Whatever happens next I’ve won the first point; I knew you’d wait. I would, if I was you
.
“Our range from Horus 5 is now 1.85, Commander,” Kaang said.
“Thank you. Disengage ion drive and bring us to rest, please.”
With an almost insolent lack of haste, and a negligent precision like that of a diner’s fork suspended between mouth and plate during conversation, the
Charles Manson
brought itself to rest relative to Horus 5. The move was accomplished by the disengagement of ion drive—as always, Kaang made it barely perceptible—and a brief fountaining of manoeuvre drives round the front and midsection of the hull.
Soon, thought Foord, it will start. The two of us are already closer to each other than we’ve ever been.
He looked round at Cyr and Smithson. “Commence launch procedures, please.” It was a strangely low-key start to an engagement which, he knew, would either end his life or change it.
From a series of small bays near the ship’s nose, a swarm of slender objects slid out horizontally. From a larger ventral bay a single object, of a much different shape and size, dropped vertically towards the planet.
•
A few days earlier, when the
Charles Manson
had made planetfall at Sakhra, and before he had gone up to Hrissihr, Foord had attended one of Swann’s welcome receptions—as it turned out, the only one he would attend. It was a large-scale event, with figures from lowlands business, media, political and military circles. It was held in a ballroom in one of the exquisite civic buildings which Foord had seen on his way through the Bowl; this one was the Friendship House at Three Bridges, a few miles outside Blentport. Foord was there with his Bridge officers and a few other crew members. Each of them performed as they usually did on such occasions.
Cyr was gliding elegantly among the guests, for the most part ignoring the men (though this was not reciprocated) and making conversation with the women; she could make them feel ugly and untidy just by standing near them, even though she was still wearing her uniform and they were wearing evening gowns. She was well aware of her effect on them, but behaved as if she wasn’t.
Kaang was the centre of a group of Horus Fleet pilots, apologising for herself as always. Every time they were invited to events like this, her reputation went before her. Pilots would introduce themselves, would ask her how she did it, and would leave baffled or resentful, or worse, when they found she couldn’t tell them. It was a gift she had been born with, and didn’t understand. It made her many times better than they would ever be, but with none of their effort. They hated her for that, and also, perversely, for the fact she was not arrogant about it; for the fact that it embarrassed her.
Smithson was pleased to discover that someone had prepared thoroughly enough to have included, just for him, some concentrated vegetable matter; in deference to the elegance of the occasion, it was presented as small solid cakes rather than bowls of slime, but it was palatable. (Cyr told him later that Swann had called her, personally, to check on his dietary needs.)