The Unreasoning Mask (16 page)

 

 

Or it might be that the Raushghols had defined their terminology for alaraf
travel to Wassruss when she was on their ship. Then, on al-Buraq, she had,
Ramstan knew, been told briefly by Davis the Terran theory and terminology
of alaral travel. And she had substituted the word "bell" for whatever
had been in the chant taught her.

 

 

The speculation about language did not matter. What did was that he believed
that he had been given directions which were somewhat vague but still could
get him to the destination -- whatever that was. He would try to get there
because he might find an answer to the question of the bolg. And perhaps to
other questions.

 

 

He went up to the bridge. He did not have to explain why they were
going to Kalafala, but he said, "Lieutenant Davis was left there, and,
if Pegasus has not been destroyed, she will come there to pick Davis
up. We'll stay on Kalafala for a little while."

 

 

Al-Buraq had been in the Kalafalan bell only three minutes when the
tec-op reported another spaceship a thousand kilometers distant. She
was oyster-shell-shaped.

 

 

"Popacapyu," the operator said.

 

 

Five hours after al-Buraq had landed on the Kalafalan port, the Tolt
vessel set down. Ramstan wondered why she had landed here but not on
Webn. And why had no Tolt left her yet, though it was protocol for her
commander to report immediately to the control tower authority?

 

 

An hour passed. Then the ports of the Tolt ship opened, and about fifty
Tenolt came out. The captain headed for the tower with some officers. The
others went to the tavern. Ramstan waited until he saw the captain return
to his ship. In the meantime, at least half of the original group had
also come back to the Popacapyu. Another group then left the vessel for
the tavern. Apparently, their captain was giving them a limited shore
leave, time for just a few drinks.

 

 

Tenno said, "Sir, do you plan to give shore leave?"

 

 

That depends," Ramstan said, and he did not say on what.

 

 

A half hour passed. Then two jeeps flew from the Tolt ship and headed
toward the hotel. The commander sat in one.

 

 

Ramstan relaxed somewhat. He said, "It looks as II they're going to be
here a while."

 

 

He told Tenno that there would be a limited and strictly regulated shore
leave. Groups of forty could go out one at a time, the second group to
leave after the first had returned, at the end of thirty minutes, and so on.
They were not to go to the tavern or the hotel, but they could have a few
drinks at the port bar. They should be ready to return to ship immediately
if a recall occurred.

 

 

"Do you expect trouble?" Tenno said.

 

 

"Not really. But I want my crew closer to their ship than the Tenolt
will be to theirs."

 

 

He left it up to Tenno to decide who would be among the shore-leave parties,
and he went to his quarters. He took the glyfa from the safe, and,
rubbing it as if he were Aladdin trying to summon the djinn from the lamp,
asked it to talk to him.

 

 

Silence.

 

 

Ramstan bit his lower lip. Damn the thing!

 

 

He paced back and forth for an hour, stopping every fifteen minutes
to call the bridge and get a report on the Tenolt. The captain of the
Popacapyu was still at the hotel. The second Tenolt group had returned
to their ship, and a third had gone out. The only ones armed were those
in the jeeps accompanying the captain.

 

 

Ramstan paced again, then stopped. Frowning, he started toward the bulkhead
area, holding the electron-microscope. Something had been bothering him,
nibbling mice at the periphery of his mind. Only now did he realize what
it was. The lighting was less bright than it should have been.

 

 

He called the bridge. "Tenno, is there anything wrong. . . ? I mean,
any indications of a power malfunction, for instance?"

 

 

"Not that we've noticed here, sir. But I'll call the engineers. May I ask
why you ask?"

 

 

"Just check."

 

 

He could not bring Indra to his quarters to look for a malfunction in the
neural system. Troubleshooting might lead Indra to the safe. If Indra was
then forbidden to open it, he would get suspicious.

 

 

He spoke to the glyfa. "For the sake of Allah, what happened here? Tell me!
You must know if someone's been here!"

 

 

He could hear only his rasping breath.

 

 

There was one thing to check before he used the microscope. He told
al-Buraq to run off the monitor. A screen glowed immediately, though
not as brightly as it was supposed to. He groaned. No video! Somebody
had erased it! And he shouldn't have been able to do so!

 

 

He started again towards the bulkhead in which the microscope was. But he
whirled, went to the table on which the glyfa was, and turned the a-g units
on its ends to zero power. He gripped the egg and lifted it easily.

 

 

His cry rang out.

 

 

"It's a fake!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

... 15 ...

 

 

The lighting dimmed and was gone.

 

 

He called the bridge. No reply.

 

 

Feeling along the bulkhead, he located the slight protuberance that indicated
the cabinet holding the flashlights. But his order to ship to open it up
was not obeyed.

 

 

He swore again, and he called out the order to make an exit for him.
Again, no response.

 

 

Someone had entered and then arranged for the malfunction, perhaps
through an anesthetic or a controlled-rate drug. Or the drug might have
been injected first and the person had entered. He or she . . . or it
. . . might also have mixed a hypnotic with the anesthetic. Or perhaps
there had been no drug, but the sabotager had somehow hypnotized al-Buraq.

 

 

No time for speculation now. He should get the pseudo-glyfa back into
the safe. The bulkhead wouldn't close now, but he would have it ready
to be closed.

 

 

He put the egg into the bag, and he groped to the opposite bulkhead and
felt around until he located the hole. When the egg was in the hole, he
walked slowly, his hands out, back to the table. He gripped its edges
as if he could squeeze photons from it. The darkness seemed to have
smothered all the light in the world. The air moved slowly over his
sweating face and hands. He could hear only the blood rushing through
him and the singing of silence.

 

 

If all of ship were drugged, obviously malfunctioning, Indra and his
engineers would be troubleshooting furiously. It wouldn't take them long
to find out what was wrong and to fix it.

 

 

Meanwhile, whoever had taken the glyfa would be long gone. He sweated
even more heavily.

 

 

If al-Buraq had been operating fully, the humidity in the quarters would
have been dropped and the air would have gotten cooler.

 

 

"Iblis take this bio-ship!"

 

 

His voice sounded hollow and faraway to him.

 

 

There were many advantages to a biological spaceship, but now the
disadvantages were too obvious. The designers had not thought of saboteurs
or of a crewmember going mad.

 

 

He pounded the table top with his fists, allowing himself a lack of control
he would never have shown anybody under any circumstances he could envision.
Or to himself under different circumstances. But, here in this dark, silent
hollow, he could behave like a baby.

 

 

As his fist struck, he caught a flash of green out of the corner of his
left eye. He jumped back from the table, his hands still balled. Green?
He could see color in this total darkness?

 

 

No. He hadn't really
seen
it. He couldn't have. Not his eyes but his mind
had glimpsed the green.

 

 

Why?

 

 

He thought of the green-clothed man whom he'd identified as al-Khidhr
or Luqman or Elijah or all three as the same, though there was no proof
that the green man was any one of them.

 

 

It was his brain that had originated that slash of color in the blackness
around him. Just as, if he were to bump his head, he might see white or
colored "stars" for a second or two. Explosions of asterisks or comets
caused by nerves firing impulses caused by a too-hard contact with real
things. But he had not struck his head against anything. His fists had
been beating the table, but that couldn't account for the parenthesis
of green. A thin, curving zip of color . . . perhaps not so much a
parenthesis as a scimitar.

 

 

Or the edge of a turban or cloak.

 

 

The edge of the green iris of an eye of a man wearing green?

 

 

He waited. He did not see the flash again. Nevertheless, he had an
overpowering feeling that someone else was in his quarters.

 

 

He bellowed, "Who's there?"

 

 

Silence.

 

 

"Is it you?" he yelled, not knowing whom he meant by
you
.

 

 

He listened and looked, turning his head so he could sweep one hundred
and eighty degrees and then turning his body to take In three hundred
and sixty.

 

 

He thought, or thought he thought, that he saw something very pale green.
But surely that was a ghost of a ghost, a reflection of an image of an image.
Imagination supplying something to back up its reality.

 

 

Something spoke to him.

 

 

His mother's voice? The voice stimulated by the glyfa?

 

 

No. It had to be something he'd wished. It was so far-off, so thin, so . . .

 

 

The darkness began to pale. Then he could make out objects dimly as if he
were deep under water and light was seeping through the surface of the ocean
far above him.

 

 

Abruptly, full brightness swept through the chamber. Tenno's voice came.
"Captain?"

 

 

"Here!" he shouted.

 

 

At the same time, he thought, Where is here?

 

 

The answer, of course, was, where I am.

 

 

"What happened?"

 

 

"We don't know yet, sir," Tenno said. "But Doctor Indra thinks that
someone drugged ship."

 

 

Ramstan said, "Put out an ACRS. I want everybody back in ship in ten
minutes. Check them out as they come in."

 

 

He paused. "Is Commodore Benagur in his quarters?"

 

 

He could have asked al-Buraq directly, but protocol demanded that he go
through the executive officer.

 

 

Tenno must have checked quickly. He said, "Yes, sir, he is."

 

 

Ramstan called Indra. The dark hawkish face was distressed.

 

 

"Yes, it's a drug. It was carried through the circulatory system, and
its point of injection is the bulkhead outside your quarters. The traces
of drug are being analyzed right now."

 

 

How had the drugger learned the code words?

 

 

Perhaps the drug had uninhibited al-Buraq so much that she revealed codes
when the intruder had asked for them. Or perhaps she hadn't done that.
Perhaps the intruder had just overridden the codes with a direct order
to open.

 

 

He made up new code words and gave them to ship. The deck quivered under
him as ship, in a manner of speaking, wagged her tail.

 

 

Ramstan stopped as he headed toward the exit.

 

 

"Allah!"

 

 

The glyfa knew the code words. It had "heard" him speak them many times.
What if it had summoned one of the crew and made him carry it away?
Or, now that he thought of how the Tenolt guards had not seemed to know
he was in the temple, what if a non-Terran had entered and removed the
glyfa with its help?

 

 

He would never know what happened unless he got the glyfa back. And perhaps
not then.

 

 

Why should he worry about the glyfa? He was rid of it. He no longer had
to carry the burden of its presence. As time passed, he would be able
to shed his guilt. There would be times when he would burn with it,
but the pain would lessen. From now on, he could act as the captain of
al-Buraq should. Though he might never entirely forgive himself, he need
not carry out every act with consideration of the glyfa darkening it.

 

 

"Let it go!" he said aloud.

 

 

He had the exit opened, and he stepped out into the passageway.

 

 

Down the right-hand bulkhead of the corridor raced a glowing circle.
It stopped just ahead of him, then reversed its direction and matched
his pace. Tenno's face was solemn as he said, "The ten minutes are up,
sir. Everybody's reported in . . . except one."

 

 

"Who's that?"

 

 

"Lieutenant Branwen Davis, sir."

 

 

Ramstan entered the lift, the circle following him into it and stopping
on the door before him.

 

 

"Have you called her?"

 

 

"Yes, sir. She doesn't answer."

 

 

"Just a moment."

 

 

Ramstan spoke the necessary order, and the circle was bisected, half of it
showing a reduced image of Tenno and the other the face of Indra.