It was Cyr’s moment and she basked in it, though not to the extent of forgetting her beam-firing. Seventy-two shots, said the screen headup display. Seventy-three.
Foord’s gaze flicked from the screen to Cyr; then to Joser, where it rested for a moment; then back to the screen. He stayed silent.
“…very fast and manoeuvrable,” Cyr was explaining to the Bridge in an it-was-nothing-really drawl, punctuated with glances at Foord, “but they had no flickerfields. They weren’t a new type of missile, just one of Her known types, but stripped down for speed—probably nothing but drives, warheads and guidance. They had no defences.”
“Like that kid you shot at Blentport.”
Seventy-eight, said the headup display. Cyr’s beam-firings did not waver, even after Foord’s remark. Seventy-nine.
Even Smithson gasped at what Foord had said. The Bridge fell silent, then the silence died down into uproar. Foord stopped it with a glance.
“Thahl, this is an emergency. Get us out of here, now!”
The manoeuvre drives fountained. The Charles Manson began to turn away—from Faith, who had seemed at its mercy, and from the nuzzling wreckage of Her missiles—and ran.
“Why?” Cyr demanded. “You ordered Her missiles destroyed and I destroyed them!”
“Two of them.” Foord laid the words down in front of her, like small corpses. “Ask Joser about the third.”
“Third?” Cyr screamed at Joser, then “Oh no.” She had seen Joser’s face.
“There’s no third missile,” Joser said with quiet precision.
“No,” Cyr kept saying, not to Joser but to herself. “No.”
“If there’s a third missile,” Joser said with quiet precision “the scanners will detect it.”
Thahl took the ion drive to ninety percent, almost as smoothly as Kaang. An hour seemed to pass.
“The scanners won’t detect it,” Joser said with quiet precision. He had just bitten completely through his lower lip. “Not this. This is the one She intended for us.”
Foord glanced at the headup display—now, at last, Cyr had stopped firing the particle beams; the count was eighty—and turned back to Joser.
“See,” he said. “What’s been done to us.”
He might have been talking to Joser about Faith, or to the rest of the Bridge about Joser. Both, suddenly, made sense.
They ran. At ninety percent ion drive Thahl took the Charles Manson back into the Belt, surrendering in seconds the ground they had won in penny pieces over hours, rolling and swerving at random because they might still evade whatever pursued them; they might have entire minutes left.
Foord looked at Joser. “I want you to relinquish scanners. Please hand them to Smithson.”
“The one She intended for us.”
Joser’s console went dark. He hadn’t relinquished —probably hadn’t heard —but Thahl did it for him, routing the scanners through to Smithson. Later, thought Foord, I’ll get him removed. But not now. Definitely not now.
“While Thahl is pilot,” Foord asked Smithson, “can you do scanners as well as drives?”
“Running out of people.”
“Can you do scanners as well as drives?”
“Of course I can, Commander. I can also take in your laundry, if you wish.”
“Two out of three will be enough.”
“Then forget the scanners and I’ll take in your laundry.”
“The one She intended for us.”
“Thahl,” began Foord, “could you…”
“Use photon drive? If you order it, Commander. But…”
“But you’re not Kaang.” At least, thought Foord, we still finish each other’s sentences.
Faith remained at rest, while they digested what She had done to them and tried to run from it. But what She had done was already inside them, ahead of Her missile. It concerned Joser.
•
They ran for ninety seconds, and were still alive. The Bridge screen showed the Belt corkscrewing around them. Thahl showed no obvious signs of stress, but he never did.
“Nothing yet,” Smithson said.
“The one She intended for us.” Joser was repeating the phrase as regularly as Cyr had repeated her beam-firings; and with the same accuracy. As far as they could, they ignored him.
Had She, thought Foord, somehow possessed Joser’s mind? That was the obvious explanation, but Foord knew it was wrong. The truth was more subtle, and much worse: not possessed it, predicted it. But so precisely that mere possession was unnecessary.
“Something out there,” Smithson said. “An echo. No, it’s gone. But the signature was unusual. It’s big.”
“The one She intended for us.”
“Stop saying that,” Cyr said.
“Leave him, he can’t hear you,” Smithson said.
“And anyway,” Foord added, “it’s all he’ll ever say.”
This was the first real event of the engagement; all the others had been fakes, fought in different languages. In their language Her attacks had been real, and had only just been beaten off by the abilities of Smithson, then Kaang, then Cyr. In Her language there had only ever been one attack, as gradual and patient as erosion, and She had directed it—all of it—at Joser.
“There, another echo!” Smithson shouted.
“The one…”
“Gone again. But it’s big.”
“…She intended for us.”
“I’d like him to stop saying that,” Cyr said.
The ship shuddered as it ploughed through some asteroid debris. Thahl quickly righted it.
Foord glanced at the screen. The speed was impossible. The Belt whipped past them, boiling, and flung bits of itself at them like antibodies. He knew Thahl couldn’t sustain this, but said nothing yet.
Merely being run ragged by an opponent’s superiority would not have done this to Joser. What She had used on him over all those hours was more than just technical superiority. His failure was not the cause of his collapse, only a symptom. He was finished long before then.
“More echoes,” Smithson said. “I think I can pinpoint it, though…”
She might have killed Joser there and then just by telling him what She was, but that wasn’t how She worked. Not by telepathy, and not by possession. The truth was more subtle, and much worse. She arranged the events he experienced; and then, because She knew him and knew all of them, She predicted, to the second, how he would react. She used events to make him believe, gradually, that he wasn’t as bad as the others believed him to be, or as he feared himself to be; She did it piece by piece, letting him see things on his inadequate scanners which She could easily have concealed. Then, when he’d started despite himself to believe, even to the point where he could exchange banter with Cyr, She dashed him by making him miss things he should easily have spotted, even on his inadequate scanners; and She predicted, down to the last second, when this would prove insupportable to him.
By the time Her third missile was launched, he was already finished.
“I need the missile’s position,” Foord said, a minute later. They were still alive.
“You can’t have it,” Smithson said.
“What?”
“It’s shrouded, so I’m only getting random echoes. You’ll get the position when I can trust our scanners.”
“Recall Kaang, Commander,” Cyr whispered.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Kaang’s not fit. There isn’t time.”
“There already isn’t time. Look at the screen. How long can Thahl keep doing this?”