“You see? It’s getting better. You’re adding details. Building internal consistencies.” Foord stood up and gazed round the Bridge. His gaze was almost feverish, but it had something almost like certainty. Kaang saw each of them, herself included, try but fail to hold it.
“All the explanations, even the wrong ones—even that last one of mine, which is the most wrong—tell us the same thing. Even the explanations we haven’t thought of yet, when we think of them, will tell us the same thing.”
Abruptly, he turned and walked back to where Kaang sat at her console. As before, he went around the walls rather than directly, kicking debris as he went, and when he reached Kaang he towered over her.
“Let’s recap. A renegade who hates the Commonwealth, and strikes at us because we’re its most dangerous instrument. A resistance force from the I2Js who hate the Commonwealth, and strike at us because we’re its most dangerous instrument. Something made by the Commonwealth, because the Commonwealth hates us and strikes at us because we’re its most dangerous instrument. Something from another civilisation, the first ever to threaten the Commonwealth; and it strikes at us because we’re its most dangerous instrument. You see where this takes us?”
Kaang felt the base of her neck aching as she stared up at him, trying to read what was in his face.
“We’re alone. Trust nothing. Trust nobody. We’re all we’ve got.”
He glanced at the screen. The comm was still working, and none of the figures on the hull had moved. And Kaang, who didn’t yet understand his meaning but had started to sense it from his voice, felt her scalp tingling.
“This is why I don’t care who or what She is. I never have and never will. We’re an Outsider, one of only nine, and we’re alone. The Commonwealth created Outsiders as its ultimate weapon. It kept them outside normal command structures. It named them after killers and loners. It crewed them with killers and loners, people unable to fit normal social structures, but too brilliant and too valuable to discard.
“And when they came into those nine ships they brought only their abilities, and nothing else. No shared culture and no friendship. They were alone together. The other eight are still like that, but we’ve encountered Her and it’s made us different. And this is why we can destroy Her. Because we know what we are.”
On the screen, in the distance, there was a brief and silent flare. The required standard period had elapsed and Joser’s coffin ignited, returning him to the set of possibilities he had always been. Perhaps.
“We’re going after Her. We’ll repair the structural damage and drives; but the surface damage, stays as it is. The shit over the hull, stays as it is. The Bridge, stays as it is. We, stay as we are. We’ll taste and smell each other. This is what we are.
“Joser won’t be replaced on the Bridge; we’ll share his duties. And when we next face Her, it won’t be for Joser, or the Commonwealth, or friendship or professional pride, it’ll be because of what She made us. She was right: everything outside this ship is an illusion, and it hates us. Or She was lying, and everything outside this ship is real; and it still hates us. We’re all we have, and outside this tin can we can trust nothing and nobody. We’re all there is. Nothing else exists. That, out there, is painted scenery.
“We’re no longer an Instrument of the Commonwealth. We’re an Instrument of Ourselves.”
9
For once, thought Smithson, Kaang was ahead of everyone. She had sensed Foord’s meaning before anyone else—even before he, Smithson, sensed it. He saw that shudder, that frisson, go through her before Foord said Instrument of Ourselves. Afterwards he saw it go through everyone on the Bridge, and everyone outside on the hull, and he’d felt it go through himself; his long grey body, with its almost random construction, visibly rippled. Nobody cheered—this was, after all, still the Charles Manson—but Foord’s words had an impact. They had gone everywhere.
When Foord finished, most of them just nodded briefly—to themselves rather than to each other, because again this was still the Charles Manson—and resumed work. Smithson too. Oh yes, he’d said to himself, I can buy some of that. Fuck everyone except us. Fuck the universe. Painted scenery. And, he thought sourly as he looked out from the Bridge at the stars, not even very well painted. Those stars look alive but most of them, by the time their light reaches us, are dead or dying. They look alive but they’re dead. Trust nothing.
The Charles Manson nosed its way carefully through the Belt, towards Faith. Her current position was unchanged, and had been for some time, even while Her third missile chased them. She was on the inner edge of the Belt, at the asteroid CQ-504. She could have moved off ahead of them, out of the Belt and deeper into Horus system, and they could not have stopped Her, as She was out of beam range. But She didn’t move off. It was curious, thought Smithson. She seemed to be building some kind of structure there.
Cyr too was considering what Foord said. She took each word, held it up and examined it from every angle: port, starboard, ventral, dorsal, front, rear. She particularly liked Instrument of Ourselves. It resonated. He made it sound spontaneous, but she knew he was too careful, and too clever, to say it without calculation. But it had a resonance. Now, we know what we are.
Cyr didn’t like the bit about being able to smell and taste each other. She understood the symbolism perfectly; but she liked to be immaculate. To be anything less than immaculate was a high price to pay—for her, almost the ultimate price—but she weighed it carefully and decided it would be worth it. And she could already smell and taste Foord.
The Charles Manson nosed its way carefully through the Belt, towards Faith and the asteroid CQ-504. It was curious, Cyr thought to herself. She was apparently building some kind of structure there.
Kaang kept remembering The Shudder. Having felt instinctively what Foord said, she tried again and again to analyse it literally, the way Cyr and Smithson and Thahl would do; and failed. It didn’t matter. She knew that what Foord said would change them all. It meant a shift in some previously immovable balance. And more specifically, it meant that she would be needed. She didn’t understand where her extraordinary skills came from, but they would be needed and she was back in time to provide them, so that was alright. She missed Joser, though.
The Charles Manson nosed its way carefully through the Belt, towards Faith. It was curious, Kaang thought. She was apparently building some kind of structure on CQ-504. She had shrouded it against their probes, but they intended to know more about it by the time they reached Her.
Since Foord spoke, Thahl had been thinking about the Book of Srahr, and how one day—if they survived this—Foord would return to Sakhra and would be permitted to read it. And then a pattern would be completed, a long slow pattern three centuries old.
Thahl made himself turn to specifics. The Charles Manson was the most formidable ship in the Commonwealth; and what Foord said made it more so. Even She, when they next engaged Her, wouldn’t know that. She would expect them to act like an Instrument of the Commonwealth, which they no longer were. Foord was right. Now we can beat Her, because now we know what we are. An Instrument “—of Ourselves,” Foord repeated, as the Charles Manson nosed its way carefully through the Belt. “And we have to make it irreversible. So…” He picked up the incongruous microphone on his console, the one with a channel to the Department, dashed it on the floor of the Bridge and ground it with his heel. He drew a breath. “Thahl, please close down ALL external comm channels.”