“Not so far, Commander.”
Foord passed to Joser, on Thahl’s left. Joser was of average build, with suspiciously pleasant and open features. He reminded Foord of the priests at the orphanage.
“Could there have been an emergence?”
“She has emerged undetected in other systems, Commander, but our scanners are more sensitive. On balance, I think not.”
“Thank you.”
“Also, the amount of energy released by a ship emerging from MT Drive at the periphery of a solar system is so large that…”
“Yes, thank you.” Foord’s gaze continued round the circle of consoles to the next one, opposite him.
“The weapons array,” Cyr said, “will work satisfactorily. If,” she shot a glance at Joser, “we can locate Her. We may already have failed to do that.”
“The signature of a ship emerging from MT Drive into the solar system would be so large that…”
“That you would have detected Her. But you aren’t sure,” Cyr said, quite unreasonably.
Foord raised an eyebrow.
“Status reports,” he quietly informed the air just above their heads, “should be confined to facts unless I ask for opinions, and should be addressed to me.”
Tension subsided abruptly. The ship’s environment was cramped and potentially explosive and Foord kept everything, especially personal interaction, low-key. Conversation was by undercurrents, nuances and inflexions, by things left unsaid. A raised eyebrow on the Charles Manson was equivalent to a raised fist anywhere else.
Cyr tossed her dark hair and smiled, formally. “You’re right, Commander. For my part I apologise.” She thrust up three manicured fingers, waited just long enough to make it a gesture, and counted off. “One, long-range weapons array. Two, medium-range. Three, closeup weapons, including the two missiles built to your specification. I listed them all together because the report is the same: they all tested perfect after the refit.”
Foord thanked her elegant fist, still raised, and added “Take special care of those two missiles.”
•
“It was unnecessary,” Foord had said quietly to Cyr, fifty minutes earlier as he strode along the cramped main corridor of his ship towards the Bridge. “I know how accurate you can be with a handgun, or any weapon. You could have wounded him. There was no need.”
Ten minutes later, she reported to his study.
“You wanted to see me, Commander.”
“Come in. Close the door, please.” She did so, and remained standing.
Outsider crew members were allowed individual leeway over uniform. Cyr’s was a dark blue tunic with a box-pleated skirt, over a white long-sleeved shirt. She had several others like it, all personally and expensively tailored for her. She wore it because she knew it aroused Foord. It made him remember the uniforms of the girls at the orphanage, one of whom he had raped.
“You know why you’re here.” Foord did not make it a question, and she did not give it an answer. She merely stared back at him.
Foord often wondered how much of her was human. Certainly the outside—that was almost more than human—but inside she could seem full of poison. She was disturbingly beautiful. Her face, like that of a classical statue depicting something like Justice or Liberty, was too perfect to be alive. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders; it was black, with hints of violet iridescence like birds’ plumage or (which Foord thought more appropriate) beetles’ wing-cases. Her lipstick and manicured nails were also, today, dark blue; other days they might be maroon or dark grey or purple or black, to match her other tailored tunics.
Despite her intelligence and beauty, Foord found her cold and predatory and often disgusting.
“Why did you kill him?”
“He was about to kill you.”
“You could have wounded him.”
“I couldn’t be sure he’d drop his gun.”
“Why did you kill him?”
“Because I wanted to.”
Foord locked eyes with her, then looked down at his desk, where he had placed a heavy hardwood ruler, nearly three feet long. It was a souvenir; the priests at the orphanage had used it on him, often, and he was minded to use it on Cyr. She saw him eyeing it and knew what he intended. It would be totally against regulations, even the deliberately ambiguous Department regulations written for Outsiders, but Foord’s authority was such that Cyr would have accepted it.
He wanted to do it, more than anything except destroy Faith, and he infuriated himself by finally deciding not to. He knew she would have accepted it, but not to atone for the life she had taken so unnecessarily. She did not perform acts of atonement.
“Why did you kill him?” he repeated.
“Because I wanted to,” she repeated; and added, as a thought she did not speak, To make sure you lived.
“I thought this would be pointless. Just go.”
She held his gaze for a moment; then turned to leave, the pleats of her skirt fanning out.
•
Foord thanked Cyr’s elegant fist, still raised, added “Take special care of those two missiles,” and passed to the console on her left.
“The MT Drive has been shut down since we used it to make the Jump to Horus system,” announced Smithson. “All the others are…”
“Is it operational if needed?”
“Of course it is. But if you’re thinking of using the MT Drive inside a solar system…”
“Just give me an itemised report on the Drives, please. Do you understand?”
Smithson bristled, not an easy accomplishment for someone so moist, and snapped “Yes, Commander, I understand. Itemised.” He shifted in his strengthened chair, extruded a limb from his stomach and held it aloft in a ghastly and deliberate imitation of Cyr, and began counting. “One, Photon Drive. Two, Ion Drive. Three, Magnetic Drive. Four, Manoeuvre Drive. Five, Six, Seven, Fusion Drive, Fusion Power Core, Backup Power Core.” His auxiliary limb extended and retracted a digit as each item was counted, and in a further imitation of Cyr he added “I listed them all together because the report is the same: they all tested perfect after the refit.”
“Thank you,” Foord said, with genuine enjoyment. On the Charles Manson, conversations were often coldly venomous; even on a good day, they could be as distant as conversations between Sakhrans. But, unlike Sakhrans, those on his ship were somehow more than the sum of their individual selves, and that was what gave him enjoyment.
Like an invisible clockhand the initiative moved on round the Bridge; and juddered to a premature halt, on Foord’s right.
“Kaang?”
She was absorbed in some task or other, and did not hear him. He watched her for a moment, thinking how ordinary she seemed: slightly pudgy, with a pasty complexion and medium-length fair hair cut in an uninteresting bob. She did not look remotely like someone who, at her one particular task, was so gifted that Genius was an inadequate term; although, it was fair to say, in every other respect she was almost worthless to him.
“Kaang, I’d like your status report, please.”
“I’m sorry, Commander. We’re fifty-nine minutes out of Sakhra. I’m holding us on photon drive at thirty percent, as instructed. We’re crossing the Gulf and heading for the outer planet, Horus 5. Detailed positions are on the screen.”
“Thank you.” Foord reclined his chair. “No further orders.”
Thirty percent of maximum speed on photon drive was still enough to produce relativistic effects. Stars burned fitfully at the edge of darkness, like Sakhrans’ autumn fires. Without the automatic compensating filters and rectilinear adjustments of the Bridge screen, infrared radiation would start to become visible, red light would shift to green, green to violet, and violet to invisible ultraviolet. And the cold stars ahead and behind would crowd into an ever-narrowing sector, becoming finally a corridor to and from infinity. But none of that happened, because the ship compensated for it, and compensated for its compensations, until the screen gave them a workable visual analogue: a necessary lie. It did this quietly and unnoticed and without needing instructions. The Charles Manson was nine percent sentient; no other Commonwealth ship was more than five percent.