Faith (53 page)

The screen flickered as the latest sweep was completed; then attempted to turn itself inside out as it tried, and failed, to correlate what it had been fed. It went blank, then relit showing only gibberish. It started its next sweep. The invisible clock hand moved round it, casting shadows as it rearranged words and symbols and figures, but it was still meaningless.

To one side of the big screen was the old-fashioned floor-standing microphone—five feet tall with a weighted circular base—which Swann had swept to one side after his last troubling conversation with the Department. The weighted circular base had kept it from falling over.

It started to buzz, and its monitor light flashed Attention Now.

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

“Yes, yes, I know you’re real, cut the foreplay.”

“There’s been a development.”

“I can see that. What does it mean?”

“Foord has had a success. A major success.”

•

Whatever else they were, the inhabitants of Faith were sentient. They were not in immediate danger from the chaos Foord had brought them—they had never had, or needed, the capacity to feel personal danger—but neither could they ignore it. They reflected.

Nothing else in the universe was quite like them. They were invincible, but not immortal. They had always known what they were made for. For other sentient beings this might have been revealed by one unusual individual, who might have written a Book which would change their lives, but not for them: they had always known. It was part of the balance of the universe, part of its clockwork, that they were invincible. If they weren’t, the universe was wrong.

•

“Foord has had a success. A major success.”

“Good! How major?”

“He’s damaged Her again, more seriously than the first time…We think the balance has started to shift. We think he’s winning.”

“There’s something in your voice. What’s wrong?”

The microphone stayed silent. As Swann watched it, it seemed—without moving—to acquire its own body language, reflecting the uncertainty he heard in its silence.

Behind the microphone, the big screen completed another update sweep. The invisible clockhand again moved over the words and figures and diagrams, and Swann’s staff milled around it. They shouted things at him, but the silence from the microphone drowned them out.

When the voice next spoke, it seemed different, and Swann was bewildered when he realised why. The voice actually sounded embarrassed.

“You see, there’s been a development.”

“I
know.
You told me. Foord’s winning.”

“No; it’s us. We’re not unanimous any more.”

“About what?” Make it be about something physical, or something operational, Swann prayed silently to the microphone. Not something unreadable.

“Some of us think we might not have fully appreciated something.”

And Swann knew then that something was wrong. That something enormous was enormously wrong. If the voice had been merely frightened, he could have been frightened with it; that was normal when you encountered operational setbacks, and you could be frightened and still have a chance of putting them right. But the voice was
embarrassed.
You only sounded embarrassed when there was something you couldn’t put right.

“And what is it,” he asked carefully, “that you Might Not have Fully Appreciated?”

“Foord. We know what might happen if he loses. But if he wins, it might be worse.”

“What?”

“If he loses, it might threaten the Commonwealth. But if he wins, it might threaten more than the Commonwealth.”

“What can be more than the Commonwealth?”

“Everything.”

•

It was part of the balance of the universe, part of its clockwork, that they were invincible. They did the work of gods, without being gods themselves. No single one of them was significantly more intelligent than Foord, or Smithson, or Thahl, or Cyr. But they were made differently. Nothing else in the universe had ever been made like them.

They would never encounter any opponent who wasn’t already part of them. The motives and memories, hopes and fears, history and future of every opponent they had met or would ever meet, were contained in them at an unplumbable depth: in the curved and recurved space between the unique particles which made them, in interstices where no other physical laws reached. All of it was there to be drawn on when they met their next opponent and the next and the next, into eternity or for as long as the universe lasted. They didn’t know why they did it, or who made them, but how they did it was a function of how they were made.

For an almost geological time they had faced opponents, singly and in multitudes. No opponent’s abilities could ever be unknown to them. No opponent’s ship could ever outfight or outperform theirs. And no opponent had ever done to them what this one had done.

•

“Everything.”

“I don’t—”

“Remember when you demanded we send the other Outsiders to the Gulf? We even thought of doing it, but now it’s impossible. You’re on your own. So are we. Everyone’s going to be on his own.”

“I don’t—”

“You don’t listen.
Listen.
Keep Horus Fleet in a defensive cordon, like we told you. Those two ships are still far away, but they’re coming. They’ll cross the Gulf and arrive at Sakhra, locked in combat, or in whatever else they’re doing to each other. Pray that neither of them wins. Pray that they keep fighting for another year, or ten years, or a thousand.”

•

No opponent had ever done to them what this one had done. They still had superiority, because of their unique ship and their own uniqueness, but now for the first time they felt a stir of unease. Not for themselves—they had never had, or needed, the capacity to feel personal danger—but for the balance, the clockwork, they served. If that was wrong, everything was wrong.

They still had superiority. Foord had done something unexpected, but they could still do other things, beyond even Foord’s abilities. They reflected.

10

“Something went from their lives,” said Thahl’s replica, “and they never got it back.”

Cyr fired the particle beams on full power. They tore through Faith’s underpowered fields and hit Her, twice. She killed Her main drives, killed the signal She was putting into the Bridge, killed all the other things She had primed for later, and threw everything into Her fields, but by then Cyr—who was firing manually and continuously—had hit Her again, and again, and again: five times before Her fields, too late, reached full power.

Smithson’s idea had worked; his ideas always worked. But this one would go on working, long past the point where it gave them what they wanted.

On the Bridge screen they saw Cyr’s five shots raking along Her flank between the midsection and stern craters, vaporising Her hull plates and leaving five parallel clawmarks; then Her fields reached full power, turning opaque and almost solid when Cyr’s beams touched them, and not even the Bridge screen could see through them. No further shots penetrated.

When She killed the signal She was putting into the Bridge, She killed Thahl’s replica with it. It was swept to one side as if by a wind, dividing into particles which further divided into light, and then into nothing. The replica died abruptly and without ceremony, like a real Sakhran, and left nothing behind it.

The white light of Her signal disappeared, plunging the Bridge into the darkness of normal light. The cold went away, and their breath no longer frosted in front of their faces. Foord motioned Cyr to stop firing; Her fields cleared, and the Bridge screen showed what had happened beneath them.

There should have been at least one new crater, or even five new craters, gushing liquid silver and glowing with a nameless colour and throwing out pieces of wreckage which grew five miniature clawmarks and burnt away to nothing. Instead there were only five dark parallel lines, which the beams had scored along Her flank between the two craters; they looked like lines ruled on a very long sheet of writing paper. The Bridge screen did measurements and patched in a closeup: each line was nearly nine hundred feet long and less than a foot wide, the width of a few of Her thumbnail hull plates. The beams had scored out the plates as they raked along Her flank, uncovering the dark pewter of Her second hull layer, gleaming and undamaged.

“Surface only,” Foord hissed at Smithson. “The beams were supposed to be the only thing, apart from
her”
—he gestured at Kaang, but continued to glare at Smithson—“which gave us an edge!”

“She
said that, Commander,” Kaang said. “Or rather, my replica did.”

Foord ignored her, and turned to Cyr. “Craters. Where are the craters?”

“Commander,” Thahl said, “our probes are detecting something inside Her.”

“Our probes have never detected anything inside Her!”

“This is the first time.”

•

It was a movement, slow and vast like something oceanic.The Bridge screen patched in some data, but it was gibberish; it said the movement had occurred nine thousand miles inside Her. The probes lost it and found it again, nearer the surface. Now it was only three thousand miles inside.

“What is it, Thahl?”

“You can see the readouts, Commander. I don’t know.”

“What have we started?” Foord whispered to Smithson, and to Thahl “Why isn’t it showing?”

“I don’t know.”

The midsection and stern craters flared like before with the nameless colour. But this time they flared only fitfully, and when the Bridge screen went to patch in closeups of them, Foord for once overruled it—“Leave it. That’s nothing. Go
there”—
and ordered it back to the five clawmarks on Her flank. Immediately the light from the craters died, as if She had heard or anticipated him.

The Bridge screen tracked along the clawmarks.

“There.”

At a spot three hundred feet from the edge of the midsection crater, something was rippling Her flank; pushing up from underneath and moving Her hull plates, like Foord had sometimes seen the smaller muscles in Thahl’s forearms moving the diamond-shaped scales of his skin. The screen patched in a closeup.

The movement covered an area no larger than the page of a book, fitting easily between two of the clawmarks; it made a slight bulge in the hull plates. The microscopic distance between the edge of each plate and its neighbours increased fractionally, showing a thin line of pewter underneath—Her second hull layer, uncovered like the clawmarks had uncovered it, but on a much smaller scale. Without being ordered, the screen panned out.

There was another one, a hundred feet away; then a third, then dozens, always
between
the parallel clawmarks, and only deep enough to uncover, beneath the edges of the plates as they moved apart, the dark pewter of the second hull layer. Now there were hundreds. Because they appeared only between the parallel lines along Her flank, they started to look like writing—an effect heightened by their regularity, because they always followed the outlines of the hull plates. The screen went to closeup again.

The lines made by the gentle parting of the hull plates, which from a distance had looked like lines of cursive writing, were almost granular when seen closeup; like ink under a magnifying glass, sinking into the weave of parchment. The screen went closer still, becoming almost a microscope. It concentrated on just two plates. Their edges, where they had gently eased apart to reveal the dark layer underneath, were like torn paper, with trailing filaments waving microscopic goodbyes to each other as they moved fractionally apart. The screen held the magnification for a few seconds, then panned out again.

Now there were thousands of them. The localised ripplings in Her flank were starting to join and become a concerted outward bulge along nine hundred feet. The fine cursive lines were visible again from a distance; that, and the fact that they all continued to stay within the lines of the clawmarks, made the suggestion of writing irresistible. They almost formed the shapes of recognisable letters: letters arranged in words, words in sentences, with an underlying grammar. Foord had to fight a temptation to try and read it.

Here and there, as the bulging increased, hull plates were gently popping off Her surface, uncovering a small solid blob of the dark pewter layer underneath. The screen patched in closeups of some of the plates: they didn’t develop five miniature clawmarks of their own and burn away to nothing, they just lifted gently off and floated alongside Her. It was gradual, and did not seem threatening. The screen panned out again.

More hull plates were lifting off; dozens, then hundreds, leaving dark solid blobs behind them. Hundreds became thousands. The impression of unreadable writing along Her flank changed; now it looked more like a musical notation, and Foord fought the temptation to read a tune into it. Smithson even started trying to hum it.

Foord glared at him. “Stop that. Tell me what’s wrong.”

Smithson was unabashed. “What do you mean, Wrong?”

“What is She doing?”

“She isn’t, Commander, it’s being done
to
Her. She can’t stop it because She’s diverted Her power to the fields. To keep
us
off Her.”

“Then we should be pleased, and you should be saying I Told You So. We’re not, and you aren’t. So what’s wrong?”

Smithson did not reply.

“What have we started?”

Nine hundred feet of Her flank, between midsection and stern, blew open. There was no explosion. It blew open slowly, layer by layer, as if She was undressing for them.

•

Perhaps She really couldn’t stop it, and could only slow it down; if so, She had slowed it thousands of times. It had the shape of an explosion, but not the speed. Every surface feature on the nine-hundred-foot section of Her flank detached itself and floated gently outwards: silver thumbnail hull plates in hundreds of thousands; lines of windows plugged with darkness; manoevre drive nozzles, scanner outlets, weapons apertures. Most of them floated away complete and undamaged, turning end over end, and when the Bridge screen showed closeups of them there were no miniature echoes of larger damage and no burning away to nothing. They lifted off and came to rest floating alongside Her.