The Unreasoning Mask (21 page)

 

 

They went abruptly from brightness and a not-quite-comfortable warmth
into an illumination like that just before dusk. The temperature was
another degree lower.

 

 

The animal, bird, and insect population here was more numerous and much
noisier than the aerial life above the tree. The creatures did not have
to go down to the ground to drink water. It oozed from the branches where
the thick bark formed shallow crevices and collected into little pools
and springs.

 

 

Here and there, the sunlight broke through and fell on hairy, scaled,
feathered, or chitinous things. It also was reflected from the huge leaves,
some of which curled upward and contained rainwater.

 

 

Ramstan ordered the launch to stop long enough for a
yeoshet
to pull loose
three leaves for specimens.

 

 

"The glittering stuff can't be mica," he said. "It would make the leaves
too heavy."

 

 

The upper transparent part of the rowboat-shaped launch closed down,
and it went on with its passengers protected from attack by the
sometimes aggressive actions of the citizens of the tree. Most of these
consisted of fruit hurled or excrement dropped by monkeyish creatures
or kamikaze-divebombings by squadrons of insects. Several times, Ramstan
had to order the de-icing liquid released over the upper-sheet shell to
kill the cloud of insects obscuring the pilot's vision.

 

 

When the launch dropped 600 meters, it was no longer among such thick masses
of insects. There were plenty at this level, but they did not gather on the
upper part very heavily.

 

 

Though the buzz and screech were less, the darkness and cold increased.
On reaching the twentieth branch-level down, Ramstan had the lights turned
on. It was still possible to see objects without them, but easier with them.

 

 

At ten more levels down, the air temperature stabilized. The launch people
were quite comfortable, since the vehicle was air-conditioned, but the
exterior heat was not quite enough to be comfortable. It was at this level
that Ramstan noticed that many of the leaves were turned at different angles.
And as the launch sank, the illumination became more, not less.

 

 

Nuoli said, "It's a system to reflect sunlight down."

 

 

Here they first saw the seemingly parasitic plants sprouting from the trunk
and branches. These were of three kinds: toadstool-shaped, cone-shaped,
and seven-pointed star-shaped on long drooping stalks. All glowed
with a light, each having a will-o'-the-wisp brightness, but the total
illumination was that of just-after-dusk. The eyes of some animal, bird,
and insect life glowed as if reflecting light from a campfire. Since
there was not enough light for this, Nuoli speculated that the eyes
had their own source of illumination. The winking of these, she said,
reminded her of the glowings from Terran fireflies.

 

 

"Some sort of cold light activated by electrochemical means."

 

 

Though he'd seen many strange things since his first landing on a non-Terran
planet, Ramstan thought that this phenomenon was among the strangest.
It also seemed unexplainable -- at least, for the moment. Fireflies excited
their photonic-emitting tails as sexual signals. Did these creatures flash
their eyes off and on for the same reason? If they did, the flashing must
leave them temporarily blinded.

 

 

He thought, Perhaps the light shed by so many of the things and events
I've encountered recently, especially the glyfa, should be illuminating.
But it's blinded me.

 

 

Another curious thought strayed or swooped across the field of his mind.

 

 

What if these creatures were in league with, or controlled by, the entities
he guessed were at the base of this tree? What if their eye-flashings
were signals, biological Morse, to the entities that his imagination had
visioned as waiting for him; the signals telling the shadowy things at
the base that an object bearing passengers from a far distance and time
was approaching, and what the passengers looked like?

 

 

He failed to discern a pattern in the flashings. They seemed to be
just so much "noise." What seemed to him randomness might, however,
be intelligence to someone else.

 

 

The launch dropped down at the rate of ten kilometers an hour in a vertical
zigzag around the branches. The photon-emitting growths increased until
branch and trunk seemed to be encrusted with strangely cut jewels. Unlike
Terran trees, the horizontal branches at the lower levels became shorter
and more slender. Nevertheless, the flying-buttress supports were thicker
and extended further out. This, Ramstan supposed, was because the luciferian
plants were so many that they heavily weighed down the branches.

 

 

The birds and beasts became less numerous with every lower level,
but the insects were larger. Some rather huge species, rat-sized,
had transparent flesh, through which glowed the plants they had eaten.
Their thumbnail-sized droppings also shone, though with a lesser light.
These monsters were not true insects. Terran insects could not grow so large.
Being lungless and depending on spiracles as air-inlets, their size was
limited. A mutant Terran insect as large as a rat would die because oxygen
would not flow into the inner parts of its body.

 

 

One species of the larger insects had a long slightly downward-curved
proboscis and a rod growing from the back of the head. The length of
this was equal to the length of the creature's body, and at its end
was a ball which glowed. This reminded Ramstan of certain fish of the
Earth's oceanic abysses. They used the light at the ends of their rods
to lure other fish close enough to be caught and eaten.

 

 

Another creature was a basketball-sized, balloon-shaped arachnid which
floated in the air and traveled from place to place, usually branch
to leaf or vice versa, by shooting out a sticky thread for anchor and
then pulling itself in by the thread. It also jetted out the thread to
entangle smaller insects and so draw the prey to its mouth, which was
surrounded by six tiny, clawed arms which unceasingly moved except when
they seized the living food.

 

 

The launch sank deeper. It passed a snakelike thing which was at least
12 meters long. Its six-sided head bore four long curving horns; its eyes
were huge and four-sided; its tongue was froglike, speeding out to catch
insects or the very small, emerald-green lizardoids and, once, a tiny snake.

 

 

"The zoologists would go ape here," Nuoli said.

 

 

Ramstan did not comment. He was wandering what kind of sentients would
choose to live here. Wassruss's chant had implied that at least three made
this continent their dwelling place. But the chant was very old, and those
mentioned in it might have moved away or died. For no rational reason,
he believed that this was not true, that the three would be here.
Which could mean that they had an incredibly long lifespan. Incredibly?
Yes, to someone who did not know the glyfa.

 

 

Abruptly, the launch entered a zone which seemed to be lifeless. Of course,
there was life; the tree was not dead. But there were no insects, birds,
or animals. And a sense of timelessness stole through Ramstan. There
was time -- as measured by the launch's chronometer, by the beatings of
his heart, by the motion of machine and people. Nevertheless, Ramstan
felt that time had died or at least had slowed down so much that it was
in suspended motion or was sleeping. He felt somewhat disorientated,
slightly dizzy, and vaguely and weakly panicky.

 

 

He ordered that the upper covering be opened and that no one speak or make
any noise. For same reason, he was strongly compelled to
listen
.

 

 

Listen to what? For what?

 

 

Not knowing made him crackle with the static electricity of panic as if
giant but impalpable fingers were rubbing his dry nerves.

 

 

The others, though they said nothing, rolled their eyes as if they, too,
sniffed danger in the wind. But there was no wind except for the almost
imperceptible movement of air made by the passage of the launch.

 

 

Ramstan looked upward, though he did not think that there was any peril
-- at this moment -- from above. The sun and sky were blocked out by
the branches and the leaves. They were dead, buried under vegetation.
A strange thought.

 

 

As dead as time itself.

 

 

Yet, if the chant told of true things and beings, the death of time or
of its near-dead heartbeat meant life for those who waited for him.

 

 

Waited? How could they know that he was coming?

 

 

Perhaps the glyfa had told them.

 

 

But the glyfa was silent and would not speak to him now.

 

 

When the upper part of the launch had been opened the first time, Ramstan
had smelled a faint stench, not altogether unpleasant, of decaying plants
and animal excrement. Something in it reminded him of rotting toadstools,
though he did not think that he had ever smelled these before. The air
had also been very dry or had seemed to be so. He was not certain,
since he was beginning to distrust his senses. Now the odors were
gone, though the lack did not make the air seem healthy. Indeed, it
was like that of a tomb in which only the dust of corpses remained and
all corruption was over. But the tomb should have been as dry as the
mouth of a man lost in a desert and without water for three days. Yet,
the humidity had suddenly risen. As the launch plunged soundlessly into
the timeless zone, the water content increased. Ramstan suddenly felt
that the moisture was stealthily increasing and, without warning, they
would pass from a watery air into airless water. His throat closed up.

 

 

It was as if the planet itself had begun sweating. Drops rolled down his
forehead and into his eyes, saltless water which, when licked, gave him
the sensation that his tongue was betraying him. Despite the wetness,
however, he smelled nothing dank or rotting. The crowded growths on
the tree shone even more brightly; their cold illumination seemed to
have stopped death and decay. Or to have slowed it, since there was no
stopping these universal basics. Another strange thought.

 

 

He started, and he hated himself for this unwilling signal of his nervousness.
He glared at Nuoli for having put her hand on his arm.

 

 

Was that touch the intimation of death? Touch. Death. Another strange
thought. Strange? No thoughts were strange, but the unfamiliar or not
easily available to his conscious would seem so.

 

 

Touching.

 

 

"There's something down there. It looks like a big hole," the tec-op said.
"It's between two roots. Roots of this tree, I mean."

 

 

Ramstan checked on the report. The screen showed a shadowy equilateral
triangle, and the readout indicated that it was 64 meters long on each
side. Another readout showed that it contained a clear liquid. The bottom
of the well, probably stone, was 64 meters from the surface.

 

 

The launch sank unchecked by any order from Ramstan, passed tremendous
wrinkled tree-trunk bark almost covered by the glowing growths, and,
after what seemed like a long time, though Ramstan still was seized by
a sense of timelessness -- curious paradox, but were not all paradoxes
curious? -- the launch was at the edge of the well nearest the tree.

 

 

There was no lining of the well, no coping, only bare earth around the air
and the water. The three sides plunged straight down and were smooth as mud
pressed by a trowel.

 

 

The launch moved out, its undersurface lights filling the well like honey.

 

 

There were three creatures moving through or on the surface of the well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

... 19 ...

 

 

"It isn't water," the tec-op said. He pointed at the column of numbers
by the side of the screen. He said, "See, sir. It's a liquid, but it's
heavier than water. Specific gravity is 1.6. Just a second, sir. There.
The spectrographic analysis.
Jesús!
Nothing like it in the comparison
bank!"

 

 

Nuoli, who'd been looking over the side of the launch, spoke. "One of
them is hopping over the surface of . . . whatever it is."

 

 

Ramstan told the pilot to take the vehicle down to ten meters above the well.
Meanwhile, the tec-op had been scanning on all sides for the "old house"
which Wassruss had mentioned. He could not find it, but the building
might be on the other side of one of the immense swellings at the base
of the trunk. These, which plunged into the ground to become roots,
were wider in diameter than ten subway tunnels put together.

 

 

The face looking up at him, the grinning face of the hopper, startled
and repulsed him. It was humanoid but far more triangular than any Homo
sapiens'. The hairless, deeply seamed, and leathery upper part of the
skull projected so far over the face that it could have been substituted
for an umbrella. A wide, blue vein passed over the central part; it pulsed
sluggishly as if it were filled not with blood but with a growing colony
of microbes or some yeasty organisms.

 

 

The overhanging forehead ended abruptly; the division between it and the face
was right-angled. The face seemed to be something attached with adhesive to
the bottom of the dome. The two eyes were deep, deep and dark blue. They
were also huge, apparently one and a half times the size of Ramstan's,
though he could not be sure. The tec-op's screen indicated that the
creature was three meters tall.