Faith (35 page)

And she remained very wealthy; the Department supplied her with lawyers to fight her family’s attempts to disinherit her. Her family could afford the very best lawyers, but the Department’s were better.

Most of the others on Foord’s ship had done things by compulsion. She absolutely
knew
this wasn’t the case with her. For her it was always by choice: free, rational, conscious choice. And because she realised she wasn’t the same as the others, she treated them warily, even though many had abilities she respected. She regarded Smithson as foul and pompous but very clever, with an intuition which was irritatingly accurate; Kaang as uninteresting except for her almost supernatural ability as a pilot; Thahl as competent but enigmatic; and Joser, before he had the good taste to die, as someone whose scheming far exceeded his talent.

Foord had some of all these features, but not enough of any to unbalance or skew his performance; the best and worst of them, but mostly the best. Cyr could not deny that she had feelings for him, but they were bleak and grudging. They could hardly be anything else, given what each of them were. She often teased herself with the irony; they might almost be viable partners, if it wasn’t for everything they were.

She gave herself a project: to find out what he had done to make the Department come for him, as it had come for her.

She had the wealth and resources to uncover his story. She embarked on the project as carefully and obsessively as Foord himself might have done, and eventually she found it; all of it. His parents and the orphanage and the rape and the priests he’d killed. Even the bit where he had later told the Department that he wished he’d known a Sakhran who could teach him how to kill more priests, more efficiently. She smiled. I wish you’d known
me
back then, I’d have taught you; and I’d have taught you how to enjoy
it.

—You realise what this is? Mr. Gattuso, the proprietor of her favourite couture house, asked her when she described what she wanted. —Yes, she said, I know exactly what it is. Please make it for me. —I don’t, Mr. Gattuso said, want to annoy one of my best customers, but I have to ask, Are you sure? If you wear this, it may produce An Effect. —I’m aware of that, she said. Now please make it for me. You know how I want it tailored. It must hang
just so….

And it did produce an effect, one which amazed her. She had no idea that a mere garment could have such an extraordinary effect on grown men, but she quickly adjusted and learnt how to use it. She found it very satisfactory; she could glide among them acting as if she was unaware of it.

Prior to meeting Mr. Gattuso, she had completed her research and knew exactly what she wanted. She found the designs for the orphanage uniforms, and described them to him with her usual precision: box pleats on the front and back of the skirt and bodice, a fabric belt and belt-loops, buttons on the shoulders, and so on. Going into such details, so obsessively, was like entering Foord’s private universe. She found herself following the paths of his obsessions as tortuously as she followed the cramped burrows of his ship.

Cyr suddenly let out a laugh of delight. It startled her deputy, Nemec, who’d been lurking in a corner of the weapons bay, quietly ogling her.

She understood it. Suddenly, and instantly, and all of it. Not even Smithson had seen
this.
Cyr only saw it because she had an instinct for weapons and how they were used, but now she knew it all, exactly how Foord would use them.
You clever bastard,
she thought. She’d seen what Foord had specified: what was inside the nose cones, what kinds of charges were packed in the distended bodies, what kinds of drives they had and the range over which they’d operate, and—most important—how fucking
simple
they were.
You clever, brilliant bastard, she thought. If only

•

So the
Charles Manson
nosed its way carefully through the Belt, towards Faith. Its MT Drive was shut down. Its port manoeuvre drives were impaired. Its hull was plastered with shit, and carried a series of jagged open wounds round its rear ventral and dorsal areas where the wavefront had caught it. It resembled Cyr after a night’s cruising: normally immaculate, but now with her makeup smeared and her perfectly-tailored clothes locally disarranged.

The
Charles Manson
retained at least ninety percent of its former perfection. The damage to the hull looked superficial; but it went deeper, and it was not damage. Like those inhabiting it, it had changed; perhaps for better or worse, but certainly for good.

They had executed a photon burst through the Belt; had burrowed into and out of a planet-sized asteroid; had turned away from the Commonwealth and Sakhra; and were still there, more formidable than before. Instrument Of Ourselves and Trust Nothing were powerful phrases. Eventually they found their way back to the Department, where they were noted.

•

They began their final approach to CQ-504. Faith was no longer there. Having made sure they were approaching the asteroid, She had moved away, still in the Belt but beyond the reach of their beams. They slowed, and stopped. Foord ordered local magnification of CQ-504, and for the first time they saw the structure She had built.

A silver pyramid.

CQ-504 was a smallish asteroid at the inner edge of the Belt. It was grey, lumpy and asymmetrical. The silver pyramid nestled in the folds of its lower hemisphere, pointing out and down. It might have been the first sign of an outbreak of some regular, geometrical infection.

They probed it. Apart from the surface, which read as an unremarkable mix of metallic alloys and ceramics, they got nothing.

“Commander,” Thahl said, “I don’t know what this means, but the length of each side of its base is one thousand, six hundred and twelve feet. The exact length of our hull.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

They probed it again. Nothing. They probed the asteroid underneath it, and again got nothing: no excavations, tunnels or buried devices.

A short silence followed.

“What is it?” asked Foord.

“It’s the thing,” Smithson said, “She’s put there to make you ask, What is it.”

Another short silence. Foord ordered further probes on the pyramid (nothing), the asteroid (nothing) and Faith (still shrouded, position unchanged, out of range). An inconclusive start to their new incarnation as an Instrument Of Themselves.

“Cyr, has She done anything like this before?”

“No, Commander.”

“Nothing like this, in any records of Her previous engagements?”

“No, Commander. Nothing remotely like this.”

“Are you ready to fire on the pyramid?”

“Yes, Commander.”

“And do you have any idea what will happen if you do?”

“No, Commander.”

“Neither do I. But we know it will be something enigmatic; something cryptic and unreadable; don’t we?”

“Yes, Commander.”

“So we know what to do next, don’t we?”

They went around it.

Maintaining exact range, now that Kaang was back, the
Charles Manson
turned in its own length at forty-five degrees and headed out of the Belt. In doing so it described a perfect semicircular path around, and to the left of, CQ-504, the pyramid, and—beyond them—the still-shrouded Faith. All three, when the semicircle was completed, were at the same distance from the
Charles Manson
as before; but this time, astern.

They headed out of the Belt and into Horus system, in the direction of Horus 4 and, ultimately, Sakhra. Whatever the pyramid would have done, had they fired on it, remained a mystery; one which they chose to ignore.

Foord glanced at the rear section of the Bridge screen, and smiled faintly. Let Her chase us now, he thought. She beat us at Horus 5, we got a draw here, and now comes Horus 4. And there, I know how to defeat Her.

PART SEVEN

1

H
orus 4 had none of the roiling colours or tectonics of Horus 5. It was dull grey, with a giant flat face; massive and impassive, like a crouching sumo wrestler. They approached it slowly, and with infinite care.

Gravity had long ago struck it dumb and flat and featureless. Gravity even distorted the edges of its light, so that on the Bridge screen it appeared blurred and out of focus. On and under its surface were untold heavy-element riches, but they were unreachable. Horus 4 was the most massive planetary body in the known galaxy, and nothing living or mechanical would ever be able to stand on its surface. It was like the true landscape of Hell: not the flaming flamboyance of Horus 5, but flat unending monotony.

When the Sakhrans moved aside for the Commonwealth (which they did without resisting, and almost without noticing) the Commonwealth took stock of its new member. Sakhra had plenty of living space and minerals and raw materials, and that alone made it invaluable, but there was more. Although the inner planets were negligible, there was an abundance of heavy elements in the Belt and Horus 5.

And there was yet more: Horus 4 had more natural riches than the rest of the system put together. The Commonwealth set out to explore it. And then came the realisation.

The Commonwealth knew about the extraordinary mass and density of Horus 4, how it had torn to pieces three or more giant planets the size of Horus 5 and left their remains as the Belt. Calculations were made about how Horus 4’s gravity would operate as a function of its mass and density, but the calculations were misguided. Horus 4 was so massive it had some of the properties of a neutron star. Gravity, the strangest form of violence, was not just the product of mass and density, but something which in extremes could spill over into light and even time, and no planet had gravity as extreme as Horus 4. The first Commonwealth ships to attempt an approach were captured by it, long before they expected to be within its reach, and so were the unmanned probes which followed. Horus 4, the Commonwealth concluded, gave nothing back. Its riches were unreachable. It was even more violent and threatening than Horus 5. It was best left alone.

Only some of this was true. It was certainly best left alone, but it was not violent, or even—in the conventional sense—threatening. It was a mass of absences: absence of noise, of colour, of movement, of tectonics, of surface features. Its gravity flattened and silenced everything, made everything absent. It simply existed, and within a certain distance around it all other existence was impossible.

The
Charles Manson
was still far outside that distance. Its approach to Horus 4, cautious and ever-slowing, had so far taken five hours, with at least another three to go. As the planet’s image grew on the Bridge screen, they had quite early grown tired of looking at it, because it gave them nothing to see. They knew all about it, but they knew also that in their lifetimes—even if their lifetimes ran a normal span—nothing of theirs would ever get near its surface. It was strangely uninteresting—literally, massively uninteresting—considering all the things they intended it to do for them.

2

These days, Sulhu often found himself walking listlessly through the corridors of Hrissihr. Every day it got a little colder and, with families leaving for the highland and mountain hillcastles, a little emptier.
She
was coming again, and there were stories of disturbing events in the Bowl, and even here, in the Irsirrha foothills. The other day they had brought him someone called Blent, a rather bellicose and stupid young man. He was a descendant, apparently, of Rikkard Blent (great-great-great-grandson? Sulhu could never quite fathom human lineage) and had been caught trying to do what his ancestor tried, to enter the vault and read the Book of Srahr. Sulhu had him sent back to the lowlands, still alive, but without doing to him what was done to his ancestor two hundred years ago, which would have been pointless; not undeserved, but pointless.

Later the same day, Sulhu stood in front of Hrissihr, wrapping his cloak against the wind and looking up at the huge frontage of the hillcastle just as Foord had done when he first arrived. The srahr, symbol of zero and infinity and symbol of Faith, was still there where someone had daubed it. The black paint was beginning to peel and shred.

She
was coming again, and events were taking place on Sakhra. They were not mass events, because both the Sakhrans and the humans who had settled on Sakhra (the Sakhran humans, Sulhu called them privately) were too enigmatic, too apolitical and fragmented, for mass movements. It was ironic that they had those features in common. Sulhu sometimes amused himself with the thought that one day, Sakhran humans might become human Sakhrans. The simple reversal of adjective and noun would mean a world of difference.

So they were not mass events, just individual episodes. Still, they were troubling. Like the strange gathering on Grid 9 at Blentport, and the manner of the
Charles Manson
’s departure. With his son on board. Sulhu wondered whether he would see his son return to Sakhra, but on other days he also wondered if he’d see
Her
return to Sakhra. There was something about Foord and his ship that made him fear for any opponent they engaged; even this one.

•

Swann felt tired. Not so much physically—he had been on sleep inhibitors for the last few days—but spiritually. There were too many things to deal with, all of them troubling. And the burns on his hands and face, although they’d been treated and would heal, were throbbing persistently.

Blentport was now relatively quiet. All the Grids were empty, all the Horus Fleet ships were refitted and had joined the defensive cordon, and most of the port’s military personnel were evacuated to the highlands. Swann had personally directed this from his Command Centre in the basement of one of the Blentport buildings. When it was complete he had stayed there to observe the long-range scans of the events in the outer regions of Horus system, where the
Charles Manson
was engaging Faith, and to direct responses to the mostly isolated, but disturbing, incidents in the lowlands. He had been there, almost continuously, for days.