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.”
•