Faith (50 page)

“You see? You
see
?” Smithson shouted, adding unnecessarily “
That’s
what you should have done!”

“Again, Cyr. Keep firing them.”

Cyr did so, again and again, imagining her finger was not pressing a firing-button but digging into one of Smithson’s eyes. Always, always, he was right, and always, always, she could never forgive him for it.

Her flickerfields still held the beams, but each time Cyr fired, the figure on the Bridge weakened in definition. It threw its arms up around its head. If they had been able to see its face properly, it might have been screaming. The vapour which made up its outline started to disperse, as if blown by a wind. It was fading, and finally faded to nothing, but the white light which had brought it, and out of which it had formed, still filled the Bridge. The debris still swirled fitfully across the floor. Their breath still frosted in front of their faces. They still felt cold.

Her stern drives fell dark and did not refire, and She came to a halt. The
Charles Manson
halted with Her, and Cyr continued stabbing out the particle beams. Her flickerfields—coloured a distinctive neon purple, unlike those of any other ship—were getting paler and thinner. When they deployed you could still see through them to the silver of Her hull underneath, and the screen headups showed that their power was dropping, and that She was deploying them nanoseconds later. With every firing, the beams were getting closer to penetrating the fields; to actually hitting Her.

“She’s weakening,” Cyr said.

“No She isn’t,” Smithson snapped. “Her
fields
are weakening, because She’s diverting their power.” He looked across the Bridge. “Into
that.
”

The figure had returned to the Bridge, but it was fainter than before. It faded almost to nothing, reappeared, then faded again.

“Soon She’ll be defenceless,” Cyr hissed, “and the beams will reach Her.”

All through the engagement their particle beams had been the only weapon which consistently outmatched Her. They pushed and probed through Her fields, a little closer to Her with each firing.

She had put everything into what She was trying to project, but it was not enough. Although the white light still filled the Bridge, the figure failed to re-form out of it, and the beams were still reaching for Her. Eventually She gave up, and routed power back to Her drives and flickerfields. Her stern drives stuttered and refired and She began moving through the Gulf at thirty percent—Kaang matched Her speed and course—and Her fields redeployed. Cyr continued firing, but Her fields held firm now. The white light drained from the Bridge. So did the figure which had tried to form.

Stalemate again.

The Bridge returned to its normal subdued lighting. The screen displayed the latest analyses of what She had attempted, but they added nothing new. What had entered the Bridge—Entered The Bridge, Foord read aloud, in outrage—was an electromagnetic signal which acquired physical substance. It was unreadable. Almost certainly, announced Smithson sonorously and unnecessarily, another example of Her superior use of MT physics.

“And that’s it?”

“Of course not,” Smithson snapped. “Commander, whatever She wanted to say to us, She still wants to say it. She
endangered
Herself to say it. She won’t give up.”

“And how will She not give up?”

“She didn’t have enough power to put that thing on the Bridge
and
fight our beams. So…”

“So She’ll find more power. And you know where She’ll find it, don’t you?”

Unusually, Smithson said nothing.

“You’re always right,” Foord told him, almost as an aside while motioning Thahl to divert power back to their signal-blocking, “but you’re not always right at the right time. Thahl! That figure will be back again, and this time it will…”

The crater in Her midsection started to glow, not with the cold white light but with the unnameable colour, the colour which hid inside the normal spectrum. In whatever universe it came from it might be familiar and everyday, perhaps the colour of sky or grass. In this one it was many words, all beginning with Un.

There was an explosion in the midsection crater. She rolled with it, presenting Her undamaged underside and starboard and dorsal surfaces, and then, as She completed the roll, Her port side again with the midsection crater facing them. Headups crowded the Bridge screen, telling them what they expected and could already see. The midsection crater was two percent larger but exactly the same shape, lit with the colour which burnt steadily and patiently inside it.

Perhaps it was only another millionth of what She had taken into Herself—including their five simulations, and their spiders and hull-plates, as well as pieces of Her—but She was consuming it, and turning it into power which partly fed Her flickerfields, partly Her drives, but mostly this projection of white light into the Bridge which, this time, trampled down their defences and solidified into the figure standing in front of them. Not a simulation in silver and grey but a real figure, with real flesh tones, blinking in the light of the Bridge as it looked round at each of them, its breath frosting in front of its face like theirs.

•

Aaron Foord stood in the middle of the Bridge, blinking. He was about thirteen, dark-eyed and quiet. He wore the orphanage uniform, a white shirt and dark blue trousers. He felt cold.

He looked at Foord.

“Are you what I became?”

“Are you what I grew out of?”

Aaron Foord again gazed round at the others, and stopped at Cyr. “You’re a bit old to be wearing
that,
” he said, “but it looks good on you. You’re really beautiful.”

He turned back to Foord, and asked “Who are these people with you?”

“Weren’t you told, before you were sent here?”

“No.”

“They’re like me,” Foord said.

“The ones who sent me, the ones in that ship over there…”

“We call it Faith. Or Her.”

“…seem to know you.”

“What do they look like?”

“They wouldn’t let me remember.… You don’t know anything about them, do you?”

“No.”

“Later you will.”

“I must admit,” Foord said, “you’re even more convincing than the figures in the crater. But you’re still made by Her.”

“What do you mean, figures in the crater? I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re not me. You’re not even yourself.
She
made you, you’re a simulation of me when I was younger.”

“What did you mean, figures in the crater?”

“How do you think you got here from the orphanage? Why do you think you’re here?”

“I don’t know. They wouldn’t let me remember.”

“You’re not me. You’re not even yourself.
She
made you, and when you’ve spoken to me, and said whatever She told you to, She’ll unmake you. Your life exists only between being made and unmade, and it’s short and pointless.”

“And
you’re
not
me
. How much do you remember about me?”

“I remember nothing about
you
because you’ve only just been made and soon you’ll be unmade. About
me
, I remember.”

“No you don’t. Maybe that’s why I’m here, to tell you what you’ve forgotten.”

(“Ghost of Christmas Past,” Cyr whispered.)

“Ah,” Foord said. “This is it. We’ve been circling around it, but you’re right, this is why you’re here. To tell me how I went into the orphanage and turned away from people and made my life tight and tidy and made myself unreachable and became Commander of a ship full of loners and outsiders like me, and I’m the loneliest and furthest outside of all of them. Because all the other circles of Hell get hotter and hotter, but the final circle is cold and quiet and sterile, like me. Is that what She sent you here to tell me?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re done. She’ll take you away from here and unmake you. Your life has been short and pointless.”

“Cold and quiet and sterile…”

“What?”

“Cold. Quiet. Sterile. If you’re what I became, it has been short and pointless.”

Foord did not reply.

The next time Aaron Foord spoke, it was to someone else.

“I want you to take me away from here, please. I want you to unmake me.”

Foord began “I shouldn’t…”

Aaron Foord’s figure stood there, but Aaron Foord was gone from inside it. Something moved across its surface: a swirl of silver, from its head down to its feet, washing away his features and colours and shape.

“I shouldn’t…” Foord tried again. “I shouldn’t have said that to him. But he...”

“He’s gone, Commander,” Thahl said. “Let it go.” He reached out to put a hand on Foord’s shoulder. They both drew back; he had not retracted his claws.

“I’m sorry,” they both said, each for several different reasons.

The figure remained in the middle of the Bridge, blank and unmoving. It changed its shape and posture, growing slimmer, and standing at an awkward angle. Features pushed out from inside it, reached its surface, and stabilised. Colours and flesh tones followed. It had a new inhabitant.

•

Susanna Cyr stood in the middle of the Bridge. She did not blink, and as for feeling cold, she always felt cold. She was over ninety. She looked round at them one by one, until she found Cyr.

“Are you what I grew out of?”

“Are you what I became?” Cyr answered.

“Yes, exactly right, this is what you became. Look at it.”

She was gaunt, where she had once been slim, and her voice bubbled through mucus. She still wore dark lipstick, but now its colour matched that of the burst veins beneath the stretched skin of her face. Her clothes—an expensive dark linen jacket and skirt—somehow did not hang properly on her.

“Why are you standing at that angle?”

“Arthritis. And incontinence pants.”

“You’re as convincing as the other one,” Cyr said. “Flesh tones, details, everything.”

“What other one?”

“You know that She made you and sent you here, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. What did you mean, Other One?”

A quiet movement to one side made them both look round. Thahl had discreetly re-routed Cyr’s Weapons functions to his own console, just in case.

They turned back, and locked eyes again.

“At least,” Cyr said, “the other one was a copy of someone who did exist, in the past. You’re sixty years in the future. You’re a copy of someone who hasn’t existed yet.”

“This is supposed to be news to me? I already told you that.”

“You didn’t,” Cyr said, “but I figured it out…Were you sent here to talk to me?”

“Oh, I see. Like the Other One. What am I, number two? Three more to go, then. Or four, if She does Joser too.”

“And what would She have told you to say? Something like, There Are Many Possible Futures?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“Oh, you know, that the future isn’t fixed, that it can be altered, that I might not turn into you and get a face like a sanitary towel, but first I have to Change. Everything the Commonwealth pays me to do, everything I do best, everything involving weapons and killing, I have to stop
liking
it. Liking it makes me a loner and an outsider, even on this ship. I have to Change. I might seem beautiful now but inside I’m full of poison, and unless I Change, the inside will push through to the surface. Like it has with you. But I can still Change: I can still turn my life round and find another future…Is
that
what She told you to say?”

“Every word of that,” said Susanna Cyr, “is wrong, including And and The. Your future
is
fixed. You
can’t
change. You
can’t
turn your life around. You
will
become me. And you’re a loner and an outsider because…”

“Because I like it too much?”

“Because nobody will want you. The future is fixed. Nobody will want you: not as a lover, partner, companion, or even friend. You have only colleagues. Most of them, you frighten. The ones you don’t frighten—like these here—you sicken.”

Cyr wanted to look around her, but could not.

“Occasionally,” Susanna Cyr went on, “you think that Foord might want you, as much as you want him, and occasionally he does. He thinks you’re the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen, but also the most sickening he’s ever known. You can make him ejaculate and vomit with equal ease, and in almost equal amounts….Yes, ejaculate. Sometimes in his cabin he thinks of you and masturbates.”

Susanna Cyr paused, and laughed; the same kind of laugh Cyr occasionally did, which made her ugly.

“Always the same Foord. He can never share it, even with you. He’d rather take it with him and go off somewhere on his own. And you know, sometimes he
can’t
ejaculate; that’s when he thinks of what’s between your ears, rather than what’s between your legs.”

Thahl was already moving towards Cyr, but maybe he hesitated; or maybe, for once, even he was not fast enough. She emptied her sidearm into Susanna Cyr’s body. Bits of torn parchment flesh and broken struts of bone and bloodsoaked dark linen erupted from Susanna Cyr’s midriff and chest and shoulders and thighs: real substances, not silver. She doubled over, then straightened. She did not fall, despite her arthritic hip, and the bits blown from her body floated around her in midair, stopped at the moment they left her. She looked like an exploded diagram. She smiled at Cyr.

“Why didn’t you just aim for my face?”

Cyr could not reply, even to shake her head. Thahl’s micromanipulator claws were around her neck, almost but not quite piercing her skin. She dropped the sidearm. Thahl’s claws retracted, and his hands left her.

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” said Susanna Cyr. “I’m done here anyway. I’ll see you in sixty years. The future is fixed. Your life will be long and pointless. I know, I’ve lived it.”

Cyr sank to her knees. Thahl still stood behind her. He reached out to touch her shoulder, but she shrank away, even though his claws were sheathed.

Susanna Cyr’s figure had emptied. As the exploded pieces returned to it, it washed itself clear of her features and identity and posture, and became blank.