Faith (8 page)

He recounted his mission briefing from the Department. It was an irritating document, overwritten and portentous (the Department always knew more than it let on, or thought it did) and ultimately of no use to him.
Everyone wants to know what She is and where She comes from. Me, I’m interested only in what She’s done.
I’ve studied what She’s done, and I know how to defeat Her.

“Thahl.”

“Commander?”

“Lay in a course for Blentport on Sakhra, please.”

PART FOUR

1

I
t was a late autumn afternoon, and the sun Horus bled through a bandage of clouds. He arrived alone, cramped and tired after the journey. Foord was disappointed, but not surprised, when they didn’t come out to meet him.

Almost before he stepped out, the Sakhran landchariot which brought him clattered back towards the lowlands, its driver hissing and flaying the team. He looked up at Hrissihr and saw the great black disc daubed over one of its buttresses. A srahr: he remembered reading about it in his mission briefing from the Department.

The srahr (unlike the name of the historical figure, it is not written with a capital S) is recurrent in Sakhran culture. It is the silent letter in their alphabet, and the symbol of zero and infinity in their mathematics. In their past legends it is the mark of apocalypse, and in their present legends the mark of the unidentified ship, which for reasons of their own they call Faith. This ship came once before, over three hundred years ago, and they know it will soon return. You are not the only visitor they are expecting.

He gave the black disc a cursory glance, aware that they would be watching for his reaction. Then he turned his attention elsewhere around the massive hillcastle, noting details with the habitual precision of a warship commander. The wind swore down at him and he tasted two distinct liquids, one from his watering eyes and the other from his running nose.

Hrissihr rose before him like the fist of a subterranean arm. He counted off one minute, concluded the Sakhrans would not be coming out, and walked into the main courtyard. Several doors led off it, each one—he knew from his briefings—the entrance to a separate Sakhran apartment. Hrissihr looked like the castle of some single absolute ruler, but it wasn’t; it was the home of many Sakhran families, although, being Sakhrans, they stayed behind their own doors and rarely met socially. Tonight was to be an exception, with a dinner in the little-used Main Hall to mark his arrival.

The walls of the courtyard were hung with iron braziers, some containing fires which spat as he passed them, others empty beneath old soot-smears, recording the departure of Sakhran families to the Commonwealth lowlands, or to other hillcastles higher and further away. In the wind from the Irsirrha Hills, dead leaves rushed across the flagstones and clamoured against the shut doors. He picked up one; it was dark grey-green, its veins dry and spatulate. He tossed it away and the wind snatched it.

Sulhu chose that moment to appear.

“Commander Foord! You’re very welcome.”

Together they walked across the courtyard, Foord treading the dead leaves noisily and the Sakhran avoiding them gracefully. A few doors opened, and other Sakhrans peered warily from their apartments at Foord; either he was carrying some disease, or was the disease. Sulhu, though, treated him warmly, as if they’d known each other for years and this wasn’t the first time they had ever met. He took Foord’s arm and looked up at him as they walked, smiling a dark red mouthful of pointed teeth and chattering in perfect if rather sibilant Commonwealth.

“Your journey here wasn’t too tiring, I hope? I’ve been looking forward to this meeting. My son Thahl has told me all about you. I’m delighted that you could come up here and visit us while your ship is on Sakhra. Come in, come in….”

•

“You haven’t seemed completely at ease tonight, Commander Foord. I hope the food wasn’t to blame.”

“The food was fine, thank you. The fact is, I rarely get invited anywhere twice. I don’t make a very good guest.”

“Yes, my son Thahl says you call it Social Awkwardness. Then there’s also the long journey, and Director Swann’s opposition to your visit here. My invitation was well-meant, but perhaps not well-judged.”

“It was both, and very much appreciated. Also, my visit here is a useful reminder to the Director that I don’t take orders from him.” Swann was Director of Horus Fleet—regular military—and found having an Outsider at Blentport deeply insulting.

The silence lengthened. Sulhu’s eyes were unwavering behind the occasional horizontal flicker of their secondary lids. His ophidian face, usually rather immobile, seemed to crawl under the play of firelight.

“Alright, Commander. You’ve had an evening of small talk over dinner with my neighbours. Let’s not continue it. Can we talk freely? You’re off the record here, you know.”

Most Sakhrans were natural linguists, but Foord found Sulhu’s near-fluency disconcerting; it made him sound like he understood humans as well as he understood their language.

“You mean, Talk Freely about what I’m doing here?”

“Everyone knows what you’re doing here, Commander. Me especially. My son Thahl gave me an outline of your orders.”

His son Thahl sat deferentially silent and to one side, partly hidden in shadow. The dinner to welcome Foord had finished and the rest of those who attended—only a minority of those living at Hrissihr—had gone back to their apartments across the courtyard, or across other courtyards, and closed their doors behind them. Their empty chairs remained in a crescent round the dwindling fire. There had been much about the dinner—soft low light, murmured conversations, carefully judged understatement—which reminded Foord of the
Charles Manson
.

Foord turned and glared pointedly at Thahl, who showed no obvious embarrassment. The slender Sakhran darkwood chair on which Foord sat, although much stronger than it looked, still creaked under his weight.

“As well as being your son, Thahl is an officer on my ship. Those orders are confidential. Or were.”

“I said Outline, Commander, not details. Everyone knows them in outline. And in any case, Commonwealth law recognises no secrets within a Sakhran family.”

Since Sakhrans reproduced asexually once or twice in a lifetime, the father-son bond was strong; it was the only bond which was, since all the others had weakened over the last three hundred years. Hillcastles like Hrissihr provided the minimum for life, housing families of two, or sometimes three, who ate together only rarely. Fathers died, sons grew into almost the same identity, and reproduced; then died, and their sons grew into almost the same identity, and reproduced; then died. Sakhran society was conservative and minimal.

Foord knew all that from his long association with Thahl, but the detailed point about Commonwealth law had been covered in his briefing, and he should have remembered it.

“Of course,” he said hastily, and to both of them. “My apologies.”

Sulhu nodded, deadpan. “You’re not a very good guest. I won’t be inviting any more Socially Awkward people here.”

The evening wore on, and still Foord stayed talking. Despite his misgivings, and with all the issues looming in the background, he found himself enjoying it: Thahl’s father was good company. Thahl himself hardly said a word, having clearly decided to leave them to each other.

“I was watching you, of course, when you saw the srahr,” Sulhu said. “Later I watched you examine a dead leaf. Both are getting numerous. We’re well provisioned here for our winter, but are your people provisioned for theirs?”

“What makes you ask that?”

“I listen to Commonwealth broadcasts, Commander. I read Commonwealth journals. They all refer to Faith as a distant thunder. They hint that whole systems, including this one, may be battened down if She comes. I’m old and diseased and will soon die, so few things worry me; but that does.”

Tall narrow windows were scored down one wall of the Hall, like clawmarks. Foord stood up, stretched, and strode over to gaze out of one of them, his heels clacking on the flagstones. He was tall and powerfully built, dark-haired and bearded, a fourth-generation native of one of the Commonwealth’s heavy-gravity planets. He exuded a musky odour, like a lion. People meeting him for the first time found his quietness and reticence so at odds with his appearance as to be unnatural, almost threatening.

“Why does it worry you?”

The Sakhran laughed drily. “Because they’ve sent
you
here. The prospect of being anywhere nearby when you find Her is not appealing.”

“But you’re old and diseased and will soon die.”

Sulhu inclined his head, in the way of acknowledging a hit. Foord thought,
It must be all this time around Thahl. I’m beginning to learn irony.

“Well,” Sulhu said, “there’s also the fact that my son will be on your ship.”

“No. There’s something else that worries you. Something you haven’t told me.” It amounted to calling his host a liar, so Foord spoke carefully. “But I think you will, when you’ve worked out how to say it.”

He continued to gaze through the leaded glass where the cold blaze of Blentport and its surrounding cities was spread out far below, prominences flaring now and then as ships landed for refit or lifted off to join the cordon around Sakhra. Under the huge Sakhran night, the spaceport seemed both mighty and vulnerable; like a beached whale, its size made it weak.

“An impressive spaceport,” Sulhu observed. “Much more impressive than anything we had. And yet, do you know how it got its name? When Sakhra became absorbed by, or rather was Invited To Join, the Commonwealth two hundred years ago”—Sulhu’s vocal irony, like all other forms of Sakhran irony, was light and subtle—“we pointed out Srahr’s tomb and asked that no human should ever go there uninvited to read his Book. For no better reason than that, a man named Rikkard Blent did. We caught him before he entered and later returned his still living body to the lowlands. The Commonwealth never actually retaliated, except—rather injudiciously if you ask me—to name Blentport after him.”

Sulhu paused for a moment. When he resumed, the irony had drained from his voice.

“To name its biggest spaceport after a silly man who thought he could come up here and just read the Book of Srahr. Srahr was the greatest of us, Commander. Poet, philosopher, soldier, scientist; and, unfortunately, author. We never recovered from his literary career… Must you go back tomorrow morning, Commander?”

“I think so. The refit has to be completed.”

“If you could stay until the afternoon, I had in mind a hunting trip.”

Foord smiled. “Cyr would have liked that.”

“He’s your Weapons Officer, isn’t he?”

“She.”

“Ah. Tell me about the people on your ship.”

Foord told him.

“But if they’ve done those things, why aren’t they dead? Or in prison?”

“Because they’re too valuable. And I’ve Done Those Things, too.”

“You see, Commander,” Sulhu went on, “There’s something wrong about this mission of yours.” His hands raised themselves from his lap, just enough to silence Foord, and returned to rest. “Let me think about how best to put it to you.”

Not for the first time that evening there was a loud roar as some military transports dipped low over the Irsirrha on their way down to Blentport. Suddenly aware that he was shivering, Foord walked back to stand by the fire.

“Yes,” Sulhu said as the noise from the ships died away, “that’s a good cue. It’s common knowledge—I didn’t get this from my son, it’s in all the broadcasts—that Horus Fleet has been ordered to maintain a defensive cordon around Sakhra, and that if She appears in the system, you’re to go out and engage Her singly, and they’re to stay put.”

“Yes, the Department made a terrible mistake at Isis. They insisted the
Sirhan
should join the regular forces, and not fight Her alone. They don’t want to repeat that mistake here. If anything, they’ve gone to the other extreme.”

“But Horus Fleet is the biggest in the Commonwealth, outside of Earth. Do the people who give you your orders really think the whole Fleet isn’t equal to Her?”

“Maybe they think She isn’t equal to me.”

“I was in Blentport a few days ago and I watched your ship land.” A carnivore’s lightning-bright smile. “I can’t imagine much that would equal it. But here’s my point: what will happen after you destroy Her?”

Foord had some difficulty hiding his surprise. “I can’t say. My orders aren’t specific.”

“No, not what you will do afterwards; what will
happen.
This is a matter which has interested me for a long time.” Thahl, who had been almost silent all evening, shifted uneasily, but Sulhu went on. “Why is the Commonwealth expanding?”

Again, Foord had some difficulty hiding his surprise. “Is that all you were thinking how to say?”

“All?”

“Well. There are obvious reasons: economic, political, military, probably in that order.”

“I hardly think so. Economically the Commonwealth already has an abundance of unused resources, politically its systems are if anything more divided than they were before it acquired them, and militarily it has never encountered an enemy strong enough to justify making itself bigger; though that may change now.”

Foord was beginning to feel tired, and remembered the journey which would be waiting for him the following day.

“Then maybe none of those. Maybe cultural: just sheer curiosity.”

“Better, but it still only explains the process in terms of itself. New systems are acquired because they’re there.” Sulhu’s tone was almost bantering.

“Then,” Foord’s was almost irritated, “since you’ve obviously thought about it, what’s your answer?”

“It’s very strange, Commander. I’ve studied cultures like the Commonwealth. They seem to expand for no good reason, at least none they’re conscious of. Almost as if something external was making them.”

“What made the Sakhran Empire
stop
expanding
three hundred years ago?”