Faith

1

Horus 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.

“The Charles Manson. Still dead?” He meant its communications.

“Yes, Director.”

“Alright. Keep hailing it.”

Like Foord, he was large and black-bearded and came from a heavy-gravity planet; but his bulk was not conditioned muscle, as was Foord’s, and he lacked Foord’s tidiness and grooming—a lack which had been apparent during the events preceding Foord’s liftoff, and again during the incident with Copeland’s ship. Nothing had happened since to improve either his appearance or his demeanour. The outbreaks of violence were mostly in the lowlands, and were neither large-scale nor orchestrated. But, like all lowlands politics, they were difficult to read; and troubling. Swann and Sulhu unknowingly shared the same private expression—Sakhran humans—to describe the Commonwealth settlers who colonised the lowlands.

Grid 9 was now empty. Swann had walked through it a couple of times, as listlessly as Sulhu walked the empty wings of Hrissihr. A few days ago, those who had gathered there (civilian and military) milled around for some time after the Charles Manson’s departure. Some of them slaughtered the six chimaera. Later, when they heard Boussaid had died, they set fire to the landchariot and threw the Sakhran driver’s body into it. In the side window, unseen, the web curled and died.

Swann had tried personally to drag the Sakhran’s body clear of the burning landchariot, sustaining burns to his hands and face. That was the first of only three times that he had left the Command Centre in the last few days. The second was to receive Rikkard Blent’s descendant (was it great-great-great-grandson? Swann couldn’t remember and didn’t care) from the Sakhrans who returned him, unharmed but still bellicose, from Hrissihr. His name was actually Blent-Gundarssen: the Blent family name had sunk and resurfaced, through generations of bedsheets.

Swann asked them to convey to Sulhu his thanks, his promise that the man would be prosecuted, and his regret at the death of the Sakhran driver. All this had been acknowledged with polite inclinations of Sakhran heads, while above them the last few ships of Horus Fleet rose to join the cordon. Swann had to shout to be heard.

The third time he left the Command Centre was to tell Boussaid’s family, personally, what had happened. There could have been a fourth time, when Copeland was shuttled down to Blentport to face arrest and trial, but Swann had sent others.

“Charles Manson still dead?”

“Yes, Director…Director, we’ll tell you if anything comes in.”

“I know you will. But you don’t think anything will come, do you?”

“No, Director. Foord cut communications deliberately.”

Swann looked at the cordon on one of the many screens in the Command Centre. It was a classic formation. Battleships and cruisers formed the outer ring. Destroyers and interceptors inside, ready to engage Her closeup if She got through the larger ships. Everything was deployed logically and sensibly, facing out towards the Belt and the Gulf and outer planets from where She would come if Foord didn’t stop Her. All of them, of course, had been ordered to stay in formation, no matter what happened with Foord.

It was the largest fleet in any of the Commonwealth’s twenty-nine systems, except for the Earth fleet. Swann wondered if it would be enough. If it wasn’t, and if She ignored the evacuation and launched a catastrophic attack on Sakhra’s now almost undefended Bowl areas then a handful of people on Sakhra, Swann among them, would be personally responsible. He accepted that. He was fiercely, but intelligently, loyal to the Commonwealth.

Swann’s planet, like Foord’s, had been authoritarian and corporatist, but unlike Foord he had come to the Commonwealth in the ordinary way, through the regular armed forces and not the Department. Like Foord, however, he had found that planets like his were only a minority. Most of the Commonwealth was a lot better. On balance, he told himself with his usual clumsiness, far more about it was right than was wrong. Even when it did something wrong, such as the law about removal of poison glands from Sakhrans in the lowlands, plenty of its citizens—himself included—were ready to stand up and campaign.

There were other banks of screens in the Command Centre, to which Swann had been increasingly drawn over the last few days. They depicted events at Horus 5, the Belt, and—now—Horus 4. They were not actual views but simulations, because of the distances involved and the cessation of transmissions from Foord. Some would be accurate, others based on the best guesses of Swann’s mission analysts.

At Horus 5 She had outthought Foord, as Swann expected; but something had happened in the Belt, coinciding with Foord’s cutting of communications. There had been a burst on photon drive through asteroids, an apparent collision with one large asteroid, an apparent hit by one of Her missiles, but the Charles Manson was still there. Then, it had left the Belt and headed for Horus 4, and after a pause She had followed. But was She chasing Foord, or making for Sakhra?

Foord was obviously planning some sort of action involving Horus 4. Everyone knew about Horus 4; if you got too close, it killed you. So did She, but She was more dangerous because She killed by choice and motive. Or maybe not. Maybe She was like Horus 4, and had no choice or motive. Maybe She was just made like that. There was a thought.

Swann looked again at the careful pattern of the cordon; it’s everything we have, he thought, and again wondered if it would be enough. He had found the Charles Manson and Foord and his crew to be quite alien, outside everything he understood and valued. But She was different by magnitudes. She made the Charles Manson seem like something it could never, ever be: One Of Us. One Of Ours.

3

They continued their approach to Horus 4, cautious and ever-slowing.

Gradually, their perception of Her had changed. In the Belt they had become the first of Her opponents ever to gain any advantage over Her, and that removed some of Her mystery. So too did Foord’s remark about Instrument Of Ourselves. They knew he had calculated it—he calculated everything—but it was compelling, and it changed how they saw Her.

And what completed the change was when Foord told them how he intended to use his two missiles. When he finished, there was a long silence.

“That’s very clever,” Smithson said, at first grudgingly; then, as he walked around it and looked at it from all angles, he added what was, for him, the ultimate accolade. “I wish I’d thought of that.”

Cyr murmured “So do I” and Foord glanced at her sharply, maybe suspecting she’d already figured it out; or maybe she read too much into his glance. Foord’s ability, like the garment Cyr wore, produced a remarkable effect on those around him; he could glide among them, like she did, as if unaware of it. The difference was that with Cyr it was just a garment, something she’d paid to find out about, and paid again to have made for her. With him, it was more: everything he was.

So they realised now that She could actually be defeated. And as they moved closer to the planet whose unique properties would make it one of their weapons, so the planet—because of its unique properties—became less interesting.

Even Foord grew tired of looking at Horus 4, though he was careful not to appear so. They had seen the wonders of Horus 5 and the Belt. They had crossed the Gulf between the inner and outer planets on their way to engage Her, and might—depending on what happened here—have to cross it again. But Horus 4 was different. Looking at it was as dull as looking at a door—duller, because at least someone might go in or out. It was like looking at a photograph of a door.

And yet Horus 4 was one of the weapons which would destroy Her. The other one was Foord’s pair of missiles. Foord wished he had made Blentport build him more than just two, but that would have been difficult given the circumstances there. And if they worked, two would be plenty; one would be enough. Not for the first time, Foord found himself wondering how and when he had thought of them. Smithson had been watching him.

“When I asked you before, Commander, you said you didn’t know. You said it was like you always had it.”

“What?”

“The idea about those missiles.”

“Well, I still don’t know. I can’t remember the exact moment.”

“That’s also what you said before, Commander… Ever thought that perhaps She planted the idea?”

Foord looked up sharply. He had been about to give Smithson a Smithsonian reply, then noticed the angularity of posture which, for Smithson, denoted humour.

It was infectious.

“Why ever,” Cyr wondered, “would She do that?”

Smithson shrugged, approximately. “Because She’s Enigmatic?”

“Perhaps,” Foord ventured, “Cryptic is a better word.”

Kaang had been following the conversation from face to face with some puzzlement. “What’s the difference, Commander?”

“Do you mean, what’s the difference because we’re going to destroy Her anyway, or what’s the difference between Cryptic and Enigmatic?”

“Yes, Commander. I mean, yes, I meant what’s the difference between Cryptic and Enigmatic.”

“There isn’t any difference,” Cyr said.

“Yes there is,” Thahl said, “but it’s hidden.”

Lazily, the irony fed on itself, chewing backwards and forwards while they worked on Her destruction. The approach to Horus 4 continued, slower and slower.

Slower and slower. Cautious, and more cautious. There was a point on their approach to Horus 4 when they would be captured by its gravity. Long before then, they would stop and make their final arrangements: the arrangements whose idea, like the design of his two missiles, seemed to be something Foord had always known. “And Faith?” he asked Thahl.

“She’s left the Belt, Commander, and is heading for Horus 4. Her position is approximately 15-10-16.”

“Approximately?”

“She’s still shrouded, and Her drive emissions are faint. She’s on low ion speed, about nine percent, and the gravity distorts our scanners.”

“Oh, of course,” Foord said. He added “Still Enigmatic, then.”

“Don’t you mean Cryptic, Commander?”

“I thought you said the difference between them was hidden.”

“It’s only hidden if you try to find it, Commander.”

Foord inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement, and the conversation chewed and savoured itself a little more.

“Commander,” Thahl said, a few minutes later, “I still recommend caution. She might simply be heading for Sakhra, not pursuing us. She could just pass us by. Like…”

“Like we did to Her at the Belt. I know. But…”

But Foord knew. He had his growing instincts about Her, and his mounting pile of penny pieces of knowledge. Unless She really had planted it all, She would come for them before making for Sakhra. He knew.

“What’s Her ETA, Thahl? Approximately?”

“At least three hours at Her current speed, Commander.”

“Good. Then we have plenty of time. Let’s get it done.”

•

The orbit around Horus 4 was the simpler part. The missiles would be a bit more complicated.

They had calculated the orbit they would need. It would be a pronounced elliptical orbit. At the two opposing high points they would be able, with momentum plus bursts of ion drive, to break free of Horus 4’s gravity. But for the rest of the orbit they would be genuinely trapped, unable to do anything except move along its elliptical path. That was essential, if She wasn’t to pass them by. They had to be genuinely trapped. And Faith, approaching them, had to know it.

But that was the easier part; they had calculated all of it. All they had to do was continue their ever-slowing approach to Horus 4 and wait until they reached the critical point of commitment. Then, when they knew She was coming for them and not heading past them for Sakhra, they would inject themselves into the orbit. They would do it suddenly, making it look like an overreaction to Her approach. They had planned it carefully, and practised it repeatedly; but when they really did it, they would be committing themselves to the gravity of Horus 4. Nothing was worth that, except the chance to defeat Her.

“Commander,” Cyr murmured, “I know what the difference is.”

“Difference?”

“Between Cryptic and Enigmatic.”

“Well?”

“I’ll leave it unspoken.”

The more complicated part was the preparation and launch of the two missiles. It was more complicated only because the missiles were what shaped everything else. If they didn’t work, She would pass by unhindered to visit Sakhra, and the Charles Manson would go down to visit Horus 4.

But they would work. Nothing Enigmatic about them. They were simple, relatively small, and—most important of all—inert. They would be released quietly before the Charles Manson entered its orbit, at a point (calculated) which would put them in orbits parallel to the Charles Manson’s but further from Horus 4, where they would not be trapped.

They were almost nothing but drives and warheads. Their warheads, cramming every inch of their limited size, were charges of E91, the most concentrated conventional explosive ever made. It did exactly what it said on the packet, and, over a small area, did it with nuclear intensity; but unlike a nuclear device, it was inert and undetectable until the moment of its explosion. Their drives were high-intensity particle motors, giving huge initial acceleration but only over a short range. Each missile had in its nosecone a lense and low-power microcomputer, programmed to recognise only Faith, from whatever angle they saw Her. They would project nothing and transmit nothing; and receive nothing, except Her image.

The missiles would float like fragments of Horus 4, dark and dead, and too inert—Foord hoped—to be noticed by Her as She approached. She would realise that apart from the two high points of the elliptical orbit, the Charles Manson was genuinely trapped; it could still fight, but could not move out of its orbital path. It would be fatally hampered. She would choose somewhere midway between the two high points for Her attack. She wouldn’t have to destroy the Charles Manson, just damage it enough to make it unable to break free at the high points. Then, She could pass on to Sakhra while Horus 4’s gravity did the rest; or She could stay and watch, and then pass on to Sakhra. Either way it would be decisive, and at decisive points in any engagement She always unshrouded. That was where Foord’s two missiles came in.

“Cyr, if you know what the difference is, you can’t say that you’ll leave it unspoken. You can’t use speech to announce that you’re leaving something unspoken.”

“If I didn’t say I was leaving it unspoken, Commander, nobody would know about it.”

“Exactly.”

This word-construct was getting more and more self-indulgent, thought Foord, but its whimsicality somehow worked: considering what they intended to do, it seemed oddly right. They could each murmur their additions to it while they worked towards creating Her destruction.

The lenses in the nosecones of the missiles would be shortsighted, almost squinting. And they would not be sending, only receiving. They were no more than automatic cameras: operating on low power, absolutely conventional, and programmed to recognise Faith’s image from any angle the moment She came in their sight. She would obviously approach slowly and cautiously, drawn by the Charles Manson, this strange opponent who’d got more out of Her than any other; drawn by the Charles Manson’s predicament, but never becoming anything less than cautious.

The missiles would not be in any way controlled by, or in communication with, the Charles Manson. There would be nothing, no signal or emission, for Her to detect. Almost every part of them would be inert. When the cameras recognised Her, which they would only do over short range, the missiles would activate. They would—Foord hoped—be almost point-blank and would reach Her too quickly even for Her flickerfields.

This was the idea which Foord had always seemed to have in him. It depended on a lot of Ifs: if She didn’t pass them by, if She didn’t detect the missiles, if the missiles worked, if She came close enough, if She unshrouded. And, of course, if they’d calculated Horus 4’s gravity correctly. It was simple, and might be decisive; high-risk, but dependent on low-tech devices. It was the kind of thing nobody had ever offered Her before: a threat. If it succeeded, then Faith, if not destroyed, would be damaged; too damaged—Foord hoped—to prevent the Charles Manson from reaching the high point of its orbit, breaking free, and finishing Her. That was likely to be, as Smithson had said, the point where Some Of Us Will Die. But nobody before them had gained any advantage over Her, and here they were, realistically working towards defeating Her. And even, along the way, snatching some self-indulgent wordplay while they worked.

“Smithson.”

“Commander?”

“Let’s suppose She did plant the idea. But not to win the engagement. Only to plant the idea that She’d planted the idea.”

“You think so?”

“I only said Perhaps.”

“You didn’t say Perhaps, Commander.”

“Yes I did, at Joser’s funeral. Remember? But I intended it for now.”

Self-indulgent, Foord thought again; but the tone, dry and lazy and circling, made it a counterpoint. What they were about to do needed a counterpoint.

They had plenty of time to complete the final preparation of the missiles, and had done most of it already; but they still triple-checked them. Since the missiles would be launched inert, there was very little pre-launch priming to be done. Nevertheless they did it, then did it again, and again; especially the lenses and nosecones.

The preparations continued, lazily but thoroughly, and so did the word-construct they were building together. They each added a part, as the impulse moved them. They liked it for its intricacy. It was quiet and nuanced and understated. It felt like it belonged on the Charles Manson, just as Foord himself belonged there. It was almost like building a replica of Foord, something subtle and complex which they admired but didn’t fully understand.

“Cryptic or Enigmatic,” Cyr mused. She turned to Smithson, and smiled engagingly. “What do you think?”

“Perhaps both, perhaps neither. How about Unreadable?”

“Like the Book of Srahr?” Foord immediately wished he hadn’t said that, but Thahl didn’t respond.

Their mood started to change. The word-construct had grown over-intricate. Like Her pyramid in the Belt, they left it behind them. Its time had passed, and something else was beginning.

4

“She’s disappeared, Commander,” Thahl said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Where?” Kaang said. ”Where’s She gone?”

“He didn’t say Gone, he said Disappeared.” And don’t, thought Foord, ask if there’s a difference.

“Is there a…”

“She’s cut Her drives, Commander,” Thahl said. “She’s shrouded, so we can only track Her by drive emissions. And She’s cut them. All of them.”

“Is there a…” Kaang began again, then “Oh. I see.”

“I think it might be working, Commander,” Thahl said. “She’s slowing. I think it means She’s coming for us before heading for Sakhra.”

“It’s really beginning,” Foord said softly. “We’ve passed the first If. You know what to do next.”

The next part had been calculated, but it could not be allowed to look that way. Making it not look that way was part of the calculation.

•

Like water dripping in an empty building, something moved inside Her.

She was approaching the Charles Manson, slowly and apparently with caution. She was still shrouded.

Whatever She was, She existed physically. There was an inside and an outside. Inside was a crew, or something else not yet imaginable, which studied them. It moved, and reached for a conclusion.

•

Faith’s last known position was 15-10-16 approximately. She was approaching Horus 4 from the direction of the Belt and Horus 5; the Charles Manson was on Horus 4’s opposite side, beyond which lay the Gulf, Sakhra, the inner planets, and the sun Horus. She was still coasting and slowing, all drives cut, otherwise they’d have reacquired Her position from drive emissions, and a series of alarms and screen headups, now dead, would come to life all over the Bridge; but they could estimate where She was from Her probable rate of slowing.

The Bridge screen, unasked, superimposed a schematic showing Her last known and present estimated position. Relative to the Charles Manson, She was somewhere below the horizon of Horus 4. When She came for them, either visible or shrouded, She would at some point rise above the horizon like another sun, but in opposition to the sun Horus; perhaps where a moon should be, except that Horus 4 had no moons. It had destroyed them all.

Foord became aware of a faint background noise on the Bridge: a rustling, like a woman moving inside a ballgown. Thahl and Cyr had also noticed it.

“Gravity on the hull,” Smithson said. “Horus 4. It’ll increase.”

It did. And She continued to come closer.

She studied them.

They were well aware of Her superiority over Commonwealth ships, even Outsiders, in the areas of scanners and communications. She had a large repertoire of techniques and devices which were normally undetectable, although on the Bridge they could sometimes sense when She was using them; it was a difference in the quality of Her silence. Cyr was usually quickest to sense it.

“Yes” she told Foord. “I feel it too. She’s looking at us.”

The noise from outside changed, from rustling to rasping.

She studied them. Given that She’d changed course, cut drives and was heading towards them, this was hardly surprising; but they needed the confirmation, to get them past the next series of Ifs. They’d planned it meticulously, but it still depended on the Ifs. Not only the obvious ones they’d all recited, but the more subtle and troubling ones.

If She believed they were planning a move of some kind.

If She believed they intended to use Horus 4 somehow as a part of their move.

(And if that was how Her thought-processes worked, in linear paths like theirs.)

If She believed that they’d hurriedly brought their plan forward when She cut drives and they could no longer track Her.

And most of all, if She acted then as they would have acted, and came closeup to finish them. If She did that, it would not only help them, it would diminish Her. They’d know there was at least one part of Her that was like them, among all the other parts that weren’t.

•

The Charles Manson’s ion drive flared twice and took them in a wide elliptical orbit round Horus 4, but the orbit had been entered too hurriedly. There was something wrong about it, and something inside Her noticed.

The Charles Manson shuddered as the ion drive took it and whirled it towards Horus 4. The bits of debris on the Bridge, untouched by the compensator Foord had deliberately left unrepaired, moved in response, gearing down the ship’s larger movements to small rodent scurryings across the floor.

Nobody spoke, so they never knew that they were all thinking the same thing at the same time: they had left the Bridge, and themselves, untidied since the Belt as Foord asked, and were beginning to notice the mess and smell. It was in their nature, perhaps learnt from Foord, to notice things like that at times like this.

Foord looked around the Bridge, and nodded. The weapons core gave instructions to one of the sub-computers serving it, which checked for time and place, and started a countdown. At the calculated point the two missiles were released; not fired or launched, but dropped. It was done without ceremony or comment and done while the Charles Manson was still moving, like an animal defecating while walking. The Charles Manson continued on its way. Behind it the missiles just floated, like two turds.

A little later, Foord again looked around the Bridge and nodded. Again a sub-computer, this time one instructed by the navigation core, checked for time and place and started a countdown. Again the Charles Manson shuddered as another ion burst whirled it closer to Horus 4. Both bursts had been calculated, repeatedly. This one was not significantly different to the earlier one, and produced a similar flurry of rollings and slidings from the bits of debris strewn over the floor; but this was the one which finally trapped them in orbit around Horus 4. Kill them all, Foord had said. All your reactions.

The torsion-sound from outside became almost continuous. The gravitational stress on the hull during orbit had of course been part of their calculations, but the sound hadn’t. They were used to the ship filtering and compensating everything before it intruded upon them, but this time it couldn’t. The sound increased as the planet reached into them.

The two missiles were in orbits parallel to that of the Charles Manson, but further out from Horus 4 and not yet trapped by its gravity. Their orbits were the product of the Charles Manson’s motion when they were dropped, and would decay soon as they were not travelling under power. Apart from the low-powered and shortsighted lenses peering through the transparent nosecones, they were inert. They would remain inert until She appeared. And if She didn’t, or if She did and they didn’t work, they’d overtake the Charles Manson on its way down to Horus 4.

And down was where Horus 4 now was. The realignment was complete, although they were still a massive distance away and saw it as a complete sphere; a giant autistic face, empty of expression. Unlike other planets, it wasn’t cloud-cover that made it look out of focus, but something its gravity did to light and space. And perhaps also to time.

Foord looked through the Bridge screen at the same segment of Horus 4’s horizon as that which the missiles were scanning. He wanted to watch Her rise over that horizon, unshrouded, so he could see Her destroyed before anyone knew what She was or where She came from. Thahl looked out at the same horizon; he too wanted Her destroyed, for reasons which at that time would have been incomprehensible, even to Foord. Cyr hoped the missiles would damage but not destroy Her, so she could finish Her while She was wounded. And Smithson, watching Foord trying to tempt Her closer, was reminded of his ancestors on the plains of Emberra: how they would tempt and trick those hunting them to come closer so they could tear them to pieces, and how the outcome of those combats was that one species of herbivores evolved to dominance while several species of carnivores and omnivores didn’t.

None of them spoke, so another moment passed in which, unknowingly, they all shared similar thoughts. Except Kaang, who was busy deliberately making them a prisoner of Horus 4.

They had built something which wasn’t real, but had all the internal consistencies and inconsistencies of something which was. They’d built a detailed narrative of how they’d acted hurriedly; not in panic, just hurriedly. As a further detail they flared their manoeuvre drives and reversed their ion drive, deliberately a few nanoseconds after it would do no good. Then—because the initial hurriedness would have been understandable, but panic would have been inconsistent with their reputation, and therefore unconvincing—they cut all drives and went with the orbit, conserving energy until the orbit’s high point where they could escape Horus 4’s gravity; and they powered up their closeup weapons and checked their flickerfields, consistent with a calm and rational reaction.

It looked convincing, even to them.

The hull continued to make torsion sounds. They were genuinely trapped, and genuinely frightened.

•

The two missiles were beginning to diverge from each other and from the Charles Manson, but only to a degree which had been calculated. The lenses in their nosecones swept the same area of Horus 4’s horizon as did Foord and the others back on the Charles Manson, but without any accompanying thoughts. They were simultaneously focussed and shortsighted. Apart from the lenses, the missiles were inert. Their drives and warheads were dead, and they had no communication with the Charles Manson and no knowledge or memory of its existence. They were beyond its contact or control; instruments of themselves.

They had no life, and would have none until She appeared. Then, their life would flare and die. It would begin and end almost simultaneously, with the performance of a very specific task.

They seemed ill-equipped for it. They were small and quite primitive. Against Her many and mysterious abilities, they were like a pair of claw-hammers. And where they floated, they were at the focus of another If: If they managed to stay unnoticed by Her. Because if, at any time, She did notice them…

•

“Nine hours to the high point,” Kaang reported.

A long, dead time. The engagement had congealed around Horus 4, producing a minor planetary system. Horus 4 now had a new, silver, artificial moon orbiting it, one which it might later destroy like the others, and that moon itself had two smaller moons, dark and inert; and there was another moon, even more unreadable than Horus 4, which would soon rise above the planet’s horizon. Until it did, the new planetary system was almost stable; quiet and balanced and Newtonian.

Foord was beginning to wonder, idly, if he’d rather see the missiles damage Her than destroy Her—it would open Her up, you could learn things about Her—when, like a polite tap on his shoulder, every alarm on the Bridge started murmuring discreetly, and Thahl said “Object approaching, Commander. Look at the screen, please.”

Foord wondered then whether She too had a sense of irony. For what rose over the horizon of Horus 4 was not Her, but a small silvery object. A pyramid.

On the Bridge screen, local magnification showed it tumbling end over end, but in a slower and somewhat more stately way than the pink cone She had sent them in the Belt. It was much smaller than the pyramid at CQ-504, in fact only about the size of a small lifeboat. It was featureless, and appeared to have no drive emissions, but it was headed in their direction.

“The dimensions along its base and sides have exactly the same proportions as the one in the Belt,” Thahl said.

Foord nodded, unsurprised. “Anything else?”

“Our probes get only surface readings, like the one in the Belt. If we trace back along its trajectory we get to 11-15-13, where we think it was launched. That’s also where we estimate She would be, at Her present rate of slowing.”

They paused, and studied it. Thahl’s expression was unreadable. Smithson snorted and muttered something about Cylinders, Ovoids, Pink Cones, and Now Fucking Pyramids. Cyr laughed unpleasantly, a laugh that Foord knew and didn’t like; it made her ugly.

“Ignore it again?” Smithson ventured.

“Yes,” Foord said, “ignore it. And we know what it’s going to do next, don’t we?”

It passed them by, exactly as they had done to its larger relative back in the Belt, and with exactly the same precision. It described a careful semicircle around them, so careful that at any given point it was the same distance from them. Then it plunged down into the face of Horus 4. It flared briefly, not from atmospheric friction—Horus 4 had no atmosphere; that too had been destroyed by gravity—but from the friction of being compressed down to nothing, to not even a smear. That was the last they saw and heard from Her of pyramids.

“So what was that about, Thahl?”

“Perhaps She was telling you something, Commander.”

“Kaang, how long to the high point of the orbit?”

“Seven hours, Commander.”

“Thank you…Telling me something, Thahl?”

“About how we ignored the pyramid at the Belt.”

“And what do you think She was telling you, Thahl?”

“Commander?”

“You’re the only one on board”—he’d been about to say The only one of Us, but caught himself just in time—“who might know what She is.”

The Bridge was already silent, otherwise it would have fallen silent then. Thahl paused a long time before replying.

“I know what Srahr said She is, Commander.”

“And what Srahr said She is, would it…”

“Affect this mission? No. And if it—”

“If it did, you’d tell me?”

“Of course I’d tell you, Commander. Why are you asking all this now?”

“You’re a Sakhran, but you’re also First Officer. Deputy Commander of my ship. Which comes first?”

“The ship does, Commander.”

“Which ship?”

“This one, Commander. You know I meant this one.” Thahl was not angry, but reproachful.

What made me suddenly ask him all that? thought Foord. Then the alarms started murmuring, differently this time. Different alarms for different events. Monitor displays, dark since She cut Her drives, lit up again. Foord whirled round to look at the Bridge screen

“She’s here, Commander,” Kaang said softly

and saw Her.

•

Slowly, and apparently with caution, She rose over the horizon of Horus 4

Her position, said the Bridge screen, was 8-7-12; close to where they expected, far enough from Horus 4 to avoid its gravity, and not yet close enough to be seen by the missiles. The Bridge screen, unasked, shuffled filters and switched to local magnification. She was a slender silver delta like the Charles Manson, but the proportions differed; Her length was about eight percent less than theirs, and Her maximum width, at the stern, about eleven percent less. Her surface had interlocking hull-plates, like theirs but smaller; the size of scales on Sakhran skin. The contours of Her hull were covered in small ports and slitted windows and apertures, but there was no light or movement behind any of them.

They had seen images of Her before, on recordings. They knew Her dimensions, knew what She would look like from every angle, and knew Her shape would be like theirs. But all that was before they had actually seen Her. None of it mattered, now.

They watched Her in a silence which grew around and between them, neither joining nor separating them. This time, they knew they shared the same thought. She’s brought more than just Herself to face us here, She’s brought a universe.

Foord went away somewhere on his own. They all did. And a few miles and a universe away, She noticed; and waited for them.

•

The Charles Manson, Thahl told himself, had simple lines which were visibly curved or straight; Hers were neither. The Charles Manson had a simple, recognisable geometry with an inside and outside, ending at the outside; Her geometry was different. She began at the outside.

Thahl tracked the line from the needlepoint tip of the nose to the broad stern end of the delta. He imagined that line extending forward millions of miles, perhaps to Sakhra, and knew it would deviate by less than a millimetre; but he could see it, a fifteen-hundred-foot straightness which was part of a cosmic curvature. He imagined each line of Her shape extended in a cat’s-cradle millions of miles in all directions, beyond Horus system and out into the galaxy, until they all began to curve. Faith was just the visible part, hanging at their centre. That was what She had brought with Her.

Is this, he thought, what Srahr saw three hundred years ago? I’m the first of us (no, the second) to see Her since him. And what happened to us will happen to the Commonwealth, unless we destroy Her. My father believes Foord might be able to do that. So do I, now.

Smithson recalled Copeland, seeing Her at Anubis and whispering Face of God; the recordings captured it, the last thing he ever said. And Ansah at her trial (Smithson had read the transcripts) describing the moment when She unshrouded: a shape not unlike an Outsider, but on Her it’s different, as if She’s only the visible part of something larger. She moves like a living thing and looks like a part of empty space, a small part made solid and visible. And the rest looming around Her, unseen. He understood now what Ansah meant by The Rest: everything else She had brought with Her out of the shroud.

I’m not ready for this, he thought. You don’t see it on the recordings. It’ll affect us more than ordinary crews, because we’re more imaginative, and more self-indulgent. More dangerous, and more vulnerable. How had Ansah stayed functional when she saw this? Because, he thought sourly, she was trying to lose those ridiculous Isis ships, and she had no time for what we’re indulging in now (he had looked round the Bridge and seen it on their faces, as surely as they would see it on his).

Smithson had read all the transcripts and knew Ansah’s trial was an injustice; but none of that mattered, now.

“She cruised the cities, random and motiveless, beautiful and brilliant.” Cyr recalled the the phrase from her trial; unlike Isis, trials on Old Earth were adversarial, not inquisitorial, and tended to produce such rhetoric. The prosecuting counsel was a small stout man whose sonorous diction was oddly out of keeping with his appearance; a man given to flights of verbosity, but also incisive and clever.

His phrase had always troubled her, and now she knew why. Cyr remembered the faces of her family as he said it; the trial had turned them into people who no longer recognised her, but now Cyr recognised herself. If you took The Cities out of that phrase, his description of me is a description of Her.

Maybe Foord really meant it when he said Instrument of Ourselves. Maybe She’s what we would be, if we didn’t have the Department looming behind us.

Kaang thought, What’s Her pilot like, has She got a pilot like me? I don’t think so, I’d have felt it when She unshrouded, ships have a body language. That’s a shame, I’d like to find someone like me one day.

Then, unaware of the thoughts of the others on the Bridge, she shrugged and turned back to her instruments.

It’s like seeing a new primary colour, Foord told himself, or finding a new prime number. Her shape didn’t belong here, it belonged outside ordinary perception and geometry. Outside, inside; straightness, curvature. Orders of magnitude. She looks like us, but She’s a universe of things we aren’t.

He watched Her on the screen and thought, Do you know why you’re doing this? Or are you like Cyr, are you following a compulsion which you tell yourself is free choice? Are you doing this because it’s how you were made? If you are, who made you?

Later, when they returned from wherever they had separately gone, She was waiting. She knew the effect Her unshrouding had on opponents. Normally She would not have waited for them to recover, but this opponent was different.

5

Foord was breathing heavily. There was a ringing in his ears. He had an erection, and tasted brine in his mouth and along the sides of his tongue. He gestured at the screen.

“Her position…” Thahl began. He paused, partly because he needed to and partly to help Foord compose himself. “Her position is 8-7-12, Commander. She’s matching our speed and maintaining an exact distance.”

“Within range?” Cyr asked, before Foord could speak.

“No. She’s outside closeup range.”

“She’ll come closer.” Cyr moistened her lips. “We’re going to hurt Her.”

The two ships were directly facing. They watched each other. There was a particular quality to their watching, like the first meeting of two people who would share the rest of their lives together.

“Has She seen the missiles?” Smithson asked, minutes or hours later.

“I don’t think so,” Thahl said, “and I know they haven’t seen Her.”

“Of course they haven’t!” Smithson snapped. “She’s not close enough.”

“She has to come closer,” Foord said.

“She will,” Cyr said.

“She might,” Thahl said. “If it doesn’t look like we want Her to.”

There were a couple of curious glances at Thahl, but only a couple. Most of them couldn’t take their eyes off the Bridge screen.

Foord’s erection wouldn’t go. He studied the others’ faces, trying to see if they were similarly affected. Normally you could tell; there was a certain fixedness of expression which characterised people nursing an unwanted arousal. But two of them were nonhuman, and one of those was asexual, and the light on the Bridge was too subdued to be certain of the others, so he gave up. He preferred looking at Her anyway.

She hung there, like light turned solid. I had no idea, Foord thought, that She’d be like this. I’ll remember this for the rest of my life. How long is the rest of my life?

“How long since we saw Her, Thahl?”

“Nearly three hours, Commander.”

“What? Are you sure?”

Thahl ignored that.

What was happening to time? It had seemed to slow down at other points in the engagement, but now it was doing something stranger: sharing itself. It drained out of Faith, and out of the Charles Manson, and into the space between them. Almost as if it was doing an act of courtesy to them, so they could hold this moment together, the moment of their first meeting. Time filled the space between them, setting itself out for them like a gaming table on to which, later, they would lay their cards.

“How long,” Foord asked, “till we reach…”

“The first high point? Three hours, Commander,” Thahl said.

“So we’re about midway, where She’ll probably attack.”

“If,” Smithson said, “She believes we’re really trapped here, and if She hasn’t seen the missiles.”

Foord said “She does believe. And She hasn’t seen them.”

“And She’s coming,” Thahl hissed, suddenly, as alarms murmured. “She’s coming closer. Look at the screen.”

•

The two missiles waited to perform their task. When the time came they would sacrifice themselves to perform it, but they would not make the sacrifice knowingly or freely. They would do it because that was how they’d been made.

They floated in unpowered orbits, behind the Charles Manson and further out from Horus 4, on trajectories which still bore some of the Charles Manson’s imparted motion. The shortsighted lenses in their nosecones tracked back and forth in search of the only shape they’d recognise; but She was still too far away.

They could see the Charles Manson in front of them, but they didn’t see it. They were not programmed to recognise it and not equipped to communicate with it. They didn’t know it had made them and launched them. They didn’t know about any of its sixty-two (previously sixty-three) living inhabitants. They didn’t know it existed.

They could see the grey flat face of Horus 4, but they didn’t see it. They were not programmed to recognise it and not equipped to feel its gravity. They didn’t know it existed.

They didn’t even know there were two of them. Each was the centre of its own universe, in which only one other thing existed, the shape they hadn’t seen yet. If they didn’t see Her soon, their orbits would decay and they would go down into the grey flat face they didn’t see, and would die before they attained their very limited life. And if they did see Her and did attain life, it would begin and end almost simultaneously.

Instruments of Themselves.

The crude shortrange lenses in their nosecones tracked endlessly back and forth, and still didn’t see Her. Their universe was empty. She had to come closer.

•

The Bridge screen displays showed that Her ion drive, which She had been using in reverse to maintain distance, was gradually reducing. She was closing the distance between them, slowly and apparently with caution. And She was still studying them, with the probes they couldn’t block, or detect, or trace back to Her. They could feel it.

“Everything,” Smithson was saying to Thahl, “comes down to those missiles.” As usual, he was irritating but right. “How are you sure She hasn’t seen them?”

“If She’d seen them,” Thahl said, “She’d know this is all a simulation and She’d destroy them. They’re inert and defenceless.”

Smithson grunted, but said nothing for the moment. Thahl reflected on Smithson’s wording: not Are You Sure but How Are You Sure, as if he wanted to avoid giving offence. Unusual for him.

“What if,” Smithson said suddenly, “She’s already launched missiles of Her own, similar to ours, and they’re waiting for us to come in range?”

“I’d considered that,” Thahl responded.

“And?”

“And I probed the areas around Her. Nothing.”

“They might have evaded you.”

“Then She’ll win.”

Smithson sighed theatrically. Foord said to him “Listen. We’re trapped in this orbit, and She’s coming closer, both of which we planned. If She’s seen our missiles, what do we do differently from what we’re doing now?”

“Particle beams?”

“No. We’ve been through that. We both fire our beams, we both use flickerfields, and we both keep our distance. That isn’t what we want. She has to come closer.”

“Is that what She wants?”

“Yes. She wants to finish us closeup, and She will if we’re trapped and vulnerable, and we’ve made ourselves trapped and vulnerable. She has to come closer.”

There were gasps from Cyr and Kaang, but when Foord turned quickly from Smithson to look at the screen, She was still there, unchanged.

“What happened?”

“Didn’t you see it, Commander?” Kaang asked.

“No, I wasn’t watching. Replay it, please.”

On the screen She flicked, like a visible hand on the end of an invisible arm, whipping sideways and instantly back to its previous position. It was over almost as soon as it began, and everything else was unchanged. The space between them was still closing, but slowly. The Bridge screen returned to real time.

“Has She ever done that before?”

“No, Commander. Not on any of the recordings.”

It was a strange unreadable movement, thought Foord; not done for us but for some purpose of Her own. The way it ended immediately it had begun reminded him of the lifecycles of their two missiles. She has to come closer.

•

Minutes passed. Foord still had his erection; and the bitter taste in his mouth and along the sides of his tongue had returned, gradually stronger as She came gradually closer.

His head throbbed like his penis. His thoughts were slowing down, like an ancient clockwork. Every time one of his thoughts tried to move it tripped a counterweight and generated an equal and opposite thought. No it didn’t. He’d never felt like this before. Yes he had, on the occasions he’d caught himself looking at Cyr, and remembering the orphanage: first an arousal, then something darker, a need to open and penetrate and see underneath. He hadn’t done it with Cyr, but had to with Her. He was afraid not to.

The Bridge screen reduced its local magnification to keep the same image as She came closer. Her ion drive was still reducing. The ports and windows and apertures remained dark. Probes showed no evidence of Her weapons powering up, and no trace of any missiles like theirs, floating inert nearby; although, as Foord knew, their probes were not effective against Her.

“I want Her, Thahl. What do I do to bring Her closer?”

“She’s already closing, Commander.”

“Not fast enough. What do I do to bring Her closer?”

“Commander, don’t gamble. Not now. If She thinks we want Her closer…”

“I do want Her, Thahl…So something opposite. I don’t want Her.”

The taste along the sides of his tongue. His penis, pumping. Time to lay a card.

“We’ve changed our minds about fighting Her closeup. Haven’t we.”

Phrasing the question as a statement gave his voice a downward cadence at the end of the sentence. So did the deadpan recital of their motives, in the way he intended She would interpret them.

“We’ve seen Her and it’s affected us. Hasn’t it. Now all we want is to keep Her away. Don’t we. So we fire our beams.”

“That’s what I told you!” Smithson crowed. “It seems hours ago.”

“Commander,” Thahl whispered, “don’t gamble. You don’t need Her to come in faster.”

“Yes, I do.” Before I have time to think what it means to destroy Her. “Fire particle beams, please, Cyr.”

The beams lanced out, twice, across the piece of space that had set itself out between them. It was like they’d violated that space and the unwritten sharing of time. Foord didn’t care. Time was up for the sharing of time.

They watched the beams reach Her and watched Her flickerfields hold them easily. Then She reacted.

“She’s increased Her reverse ion drive,” Thahl said. “She’s moved back. I don’t think it’s worked.”

But it had. There was a brief pause while She hung at a fixed distance from them—as though She had drawn back to examine Her conclusion, one last time—and then the Bridge was full of murmuring alarms and headup displays recalibrating to accommodate what She did next. The Bridge screen needed no more shufflings of filters or local magnifications, because She filled it. She had switched Her ion drive to forward, fifty percent, and was coming straight at them.

The screen showed violet flickerings around Her hull as She powered up Her closeup weapons. That was almost reassuring; it was how they must look to Her, as they powered up theirs. Time to lay another card. Foord glanced at Cyr.

“Fire particle beams again, please.”

The beams lanced out. Again, She held them easily. As She did so, She came within visual range of the two missiles. They saw Her, and began and ended their lives.

From the two points where they floated, they erupted towards Her. Amazingly, as though She had the reflexes of a single living thing, She whirled in Her own length to face them, a move the Charles Manson could never have made; but they were nearly point-blank, and they both slammed into Her, the silent explosions of their impacts following as, nanoseconds too late, Her flickerfields came on.

Both missiles hit Her port side, the first amidships and the second, while She was still rolling from the first, near Her main drives at the stern. She continued to roll, bringing Her port side fully into their view, and they saw it, as if lit by a naked bulb swinging in a cellar: the enormity of what they had done to Her.

Two great craters had been hammered into Her hull, glowing in a colour they couldn’t name. Inside the craters they glimpsed for the first time what lay underneath Her surface, spidery substructures like their own. Bits of Her fountained out of the craters, turning end over end. They came in all shapes and sizes, and some were almost recognisable, like ordinary bits of wreckage from an ordinary ship; but

(Thahl got the Bridge screen to focus on them, and gestured wordlessly at Foord to look)

each piece of wreckage, whether it was a girder or a nut or a bolt—yes, She was made of things like that, as well as other unimaginable things—as soon as it left Her, reproduced in miniature the main damage to Her hull. Each piece, as it was thrown out, developed two craters in its side, and burnt away to nothing in the same unnameable colour as the craters they had hammered into Her.

Each piece, as it burnt away, was replaced by others which did the same, and others after that. The Bridge screen only focussed on the larger ones, but they were all burning away; and they were continuing to pour out of the craters, long after the missiles’ explosions died. Later the Bridge screen would analyse and calibrate every piece of wreckage, individually and exhaustively. It would report its findings upwards to its sentience core, which would report them upwards to the ship’s Codex, which after adding its own comments would report them further upwards to Foord and the others; and they would be no wiser then than they were now, watching it happen.

Thahl switched the Bridge screen back to the main view, where She was still rolling from the two impacts. The edges of the two craters in Her hull were still peeling back, pulsing like cell walls, as She completed the roll and Her port side passed out of their view.

She turned and ran. What was left of Her main drives flared, and She swung away, heading into Horus system and towards Sakhra. There was an oddness about how She moved, an asymmetric rolling produced by the way Her drives flared over the jagged wreckage at Her stern; asymmetric but repeated, the limping of something injured. They wouldn’t be able to follow Her until they reached the high point where they could break free of their orbit, but that hardly mattered. She was hurt, intimately and massively; and She was going into the Gulf between Horus system’s inner and outer planets, where She would have no cover.

Her screen image slowly receded, but She had left them something on the Bridge: a silence. It settled among them like another crew member.

It was one of the Charles Manson’s old silences, teeming with things unsaid. The reason for it, they all tried to persuade themselves, was Foord’s injunction: Kill your reactions. Kill them all. It fitted well, and each of them—including Foord himself—tried to take refuge in it, in the enormity of what they’d done. But it wasn’t real. There was no enormity. That was, literally, too large a word. What they had done felt smaller and dirtier.

It felt like it should never have happened. As if they were a gang of rapists, standing around after their victim had crawled away.

Later, the silence She left with them began to die.

“What have we done?” Kaang said.

“What we intended,” Cyr said.

“It felt wrong. Like it shouldn’t have happened.”

“Because nobody’s done it before.”

“And it’s trapped us,” Thahl said. “After this, we have to go on and destroy Her.”

“Or kill Her,” Smithson said. “It’s like She really is a living thing.”

“No,” Cyr said. “A ship, like us.”

“You saw those bits of wreckage.”

“Like us.”

“But what they did—”

“No!” Cyr snapped. “A ship. Like us.”

“Whatever She is,” Foord said, “I don’t want to know. I never have. I’m afraid of what we’d find.”

“Is that why the Department said don’t communicate with Her? Do they know what She is?”

“I don’t know, Cyr.” Foord glanced at Thahl, who for once would not meet his gaze. “But I’m afraid not to destroy Her.”

There was a pause. A piece of the silence broke off, like one of the pieces of Her wreckage, and began to die in the same way as the main silence.