The Unreasoning Mask (24 page)

 

 

Ramstan sketched the story of Wassruss, though he felt that they knew it.
Then he said, "I followed the directions in the chant. Now, if you please,
tell me the origin and reason for the chant."

 

 

"You could find that chant in many millions of societies," Shiyai said.
"We originated and instituted it on thousands of planets and it has spread
over millions of years. But, more often than not, it has become distorted
and so useless. However, it has served its purpose. You are here."

 

 

This confused Ramstan and made him more uncertain than before.

 

 

"The same chant existed on Kalafala. But you were not there long enough
to encounter it."

 

 

"You mean," he said, "that this chant was made long ago and far away
just so that I might hear it?"

 

 

"In a sense, yes," Grrindah said. "But there were and are millions
who might have heard it before you did. They would have served us
as well."

 

 

"I don't understand."

 

 

"You and those like you, male and female adults, even some precocious
children, were and are of a type inclined to follow the directions and to
bring with them what we need. Also, because of their peculiar temperament
and magnetism, they cause a focus of certain forces about them."

 

 

"I still don't understand."

 

 

"There is physical and psychic magnetism, though the two spring from
the same source. Perhaps it would be a better analogy to say that
there is physical and psychic gravitation. Just as a certain mass
bends space around it, no matter what the quality or composition of the
mass, so does psychic gravity bend events toward itself. But psychic
magnetism differs from physical magnetism in that it is not the mass
but the quality and proportion of qualities that determine the psychic
gravitational attraction and the kind and quality of events it draws to
itself. Perhaps someday we'll show you the mathematics of this. I doubt
it, though. None of us has time for that."

 

 

Ramstan bit his lip, then said, "Shiyai, it was your voice I heard in
the tavern. And it was surely you whom I glimpsed outside my hotel door
and on the beach on Webn. I . . ."

 

 

"It was also I whom you saw on the tape in your quarters," the green-robed
one said.

 

 

"How? Why is that?" Ramstan said.

 

 

"She rides the thoughts of God," Grrindah said. "Or something like It."

 

 

Grrindah laughed.

 

 

Ramstan was irritated by her cachinnations. How, he wondered, could the
others have endured this rasping habit for so long?

 

 

"Not she but her projected image, though it's not really an image as you
think of such," Shiyai said. "It's a method of mental transportation in one
sense. In another, it's something else. A plucking of certain strings
in the harp of space-time fabric. A music which you hear with certain
of your mental senses, which hearing is transmuted into physical sight
and sound, sometimes, smell and taste and feel, too."

 

 

"Just as an electron may be described as both a wave and a particle,"
Wopolsa said.

 

 

"And something else too," Grrindah said, and she cackled.

 

 

"I would say that Shiyai rides, not the thoughts of God or Whatever,
but Its voice. The vibrations of Its voice, rather," Grrindah said.

 

 

Ramstan was thankful that she did not laugh this time. "We are using
poetry to try to tell you what happens scientifically," Shiyai said.

 

 

"Poetry and science. Never the twain shall meet," Wopolsa said.

 

 

"Not in the Pluriverse we know," Grrindah said. "But there is a realm
where they do."

 

 

She laughed.

 

 

Ramstan thought of when the glyfa had mentioned the Pluriverse. And that
made him wish that the glyfa would speak up within him now. He needed
counsel desperately.

 

 

The animal, Duurowms, had taken the tray out of the chamber. Now
he returned and leaped upward, catching the giant jewel in his hands,
drawing himself up, and coiling himself around the top of the glittering
gem. One dark eye fixed upon Ramstan. Sometime later, glancing up,
Ramstan saw that the eye had closed and that the animal seemed asleep.

 

 

"It takes immense energy and artistry to ride the voice of God without
falling off," Shiyai said. "It is also very dangerous, which is why I do
the riding or the plucking of the harp, and not my sisters. I am the
most energetic and artistic. And, since it is so demanding and perilous,
I seldom ride. That is why you did not hear or see me more often."

 

 

"Besides," Grrindah said, "the other was also enticing you here. Though
the other is working against us, it is also working for us. It can't help
it any more than we can help working for and against it."

 

 

Shiyai said, "It's time to quit being coy, sisters. We should tell him
everything."

 

 

"Everything?" Grrundah said, and she laughed.

 

 

"All he should know and a little more."

 

 

Ramstan boiled with eagerness to hear this, but there was also something
he must say.

 

 

"Your pets in the well?" he said.

 

 

The three looked at each other, two smiling widely, Grrindah laughing.

 

 

"He's very perceptive," Shiyai said.

 

 

Then their flesh began melting or seemed to do so. A shimmering wrapped
around them, reddish, blue-streaked waves which hurt his eyes, though
not so much that he could not look directly into them.

 

 

Suddenly, the light and the melting had ceased. Now Shiyai was a beautiful
young woman. Grrindah was a handsome middle-aged woman. Wopolsa had seemed
to be so old that she could not possibly look more ancient. But she did,
and her eyes seemed to have expanded, and Ramstan saw stars in the abysmal
black emptiness. Only for an instant. They made him cold and frightened.

 

 

Shiyai said, "Now you see us in another form. Not because we have changed
form, but because we have allowed other constructs, molds in your mind,
to be filled with us. Yet, in a sense, you are seeing us as we are.
Especially, Wopolsa."

 

 

Ramstan ignored her remarks.

 

 

"The pets?" he said. "Are they really pets? Or are they . . . really you?
And you are the projections? Are they the sentients, the masters?"

 

 

All three laughed uproariously.

 

 

When the last of the echoes had bounced from the far walls, Grrindah said,
"Perhaps the beings in the well are only projections. Which would, of course,
also make us projections of projections. Or perhaps the citizens of the well
have been projections so long that they have become realized as solid beings,
actualizations of the potentialities of matter, fantasies of light that have
transmuted into reality. Though, of course, fantasy is as real as reality,
being engendered by reality and maintained by it. Without matter, there
is no fantasy, though there may be matter without fantasy. Or is it the
other way around or both at the same time?"

 

 

"That's enough," Wopolsa said. "Ask, and you must pay the price. But,
first, we will tell you what the price is. Your questions so far have
been for free."

 

 

"I have many questions," Ramstan said.

 

 

"The price from now on is the same for one or many," Wopolsa said.
"However, first . . ."

 

 

And the three told him much, though not all he needed to know. What he
did hear, however, was more than he liked to hear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

... 21 ...

 

 

If a tack could have feelings and it had been hit directly with a
sledgehammer, it would have felt as Ramstan did. If a rabbit had been
seized by a tiger, it would have felt as Ramstan did.

 

 

Even so, he thought, and the thought was fire though a flicker, even so
there was a difference between him and the tack, between him and the rabbit.
He was a man and, thus, not helpless. He had not been utterly crushed
and ruined by the hammerb1ows of the revelations. He was not paralyzed
with fear forever. He could still fight; the flicker would become a
roaring flame.

 

 

Was that just bravado? No sooner had he told himself that than he had been
hit with another great shock. No. Two more.

 

 

While he was still sitting in the trio's chambers, reeling though sitting,
Nuoli had called through the skinceiver.

 

 

"Captain! You must return to ship! At once!"

 

 

Her voice seemed to come through many layers of wool, to be so muffled
and distant that it was like a voice in a dream.

 

 

"What's the emergency?"

 

 

"I don't know, Captain. Commodore Benagur has ordered it."

 

 

" Benagur?"

 

 

He found it difficult to concentrate upon what she'd said. There was
nothing important outside this room. But he forced himself to give at
least part of his mind to Nuoli.

 

 

"Benagur? He's still in sickbay. What's he doing . . . issuing orders?
Where is . . . what's happened to Tenno?"

 

 

There was a silence. Nuoli must be using a different frequency to talk
to ship. Why?

 

 

She spoke again, her voice tense.

 

 

"Neither Benagur nor Tenno will tell me, sir. They just repeat that you
must return at once."

 

 

The Vwoordha had been silent for some time awaiting his answer.

 

 

He said, "Pardon me. I must call my ship."

 

 

They said nothing.

 

 

He spoke into his skinceiver, but there was no response from al-Buraq.

 

 

He then called Nuoli. "What frequency are you using when you talk to
Benagur?"

 

 

"I'm sorry, sir," she said, "but Commodore Benagur has ordered me not to
divulge that to you."

 

 

The rage thrust deep under the iciness volcanoed out. He shouted,
"Who's in command? Benagur or me?"

 

 

Even the Vwoordha started, and the animal opened its eye. Nuoli hesitated,
then said, "I'm sorry, Captain. You've been relieved of your command."

 

 

"How in Satan's name could that be?"

 

 

"I don't know, sir. Just a minute."

 

 

Ramstan rose unsteadily, his legs numb from sitting cross-legged for so long.

 

 

"I must go now," he said in Urzint.

 

 

Shiyai raised beautiful black eyebrows and said, "Your answer?"

 

 

"That will have to wait."

 

 

Grrindah said, "Someone on your vessel has found the glyfa."

 

 

Ramstan felt the blood drain from him again.

 

 

"How . . . how do you know?"

 

 

"I don't know. But I suspect that that would be the only reason you'd be
deprived of your command. Perhaps the glyfa has guided someone to it so that
it could be found. I do not know why it should, but it plays a deep game."

 

 

"No!" Ramstan cried. "It would have told me that it had been found!"

 

 

"Not if it had a reason not to."

 

 

"Benagur! He must have gotten into my quarters somehow and found it!
But if he did it was with the connivance of someone else! Indra!
Only Indra could have done it!"

 

 

He stopped. He was breathing heavily. Then, almost irrelevantly, it struck
him that the three understood Terrish. Until now, he had assumed that they
did not. But if one of them could ride the thoughts or the voice of
God or whatever it was through the Pluriverse, then one could also
eavesdrop anywhere.

 

 

Wopolsa said, "If you no longer have the glyfa, then you cannot help us.
But the price is still the same."

 

 

He turned and strode out the front door. Down the slope was the launch,
its entire crew looking up at him. Even at this ditance, he could see
the strain on their faces. He spoke into the skinceiver. "Bring the
launch here."

 

 

The vessel had just landed by him, and he was taking the first step up,
when the com-set blared. Benagur was speaking.

 

 

"Nuoli! Return to ship immediately! The Tolt ship has just been detected
in orbit above us! I repeat, return at once! If Ramstan is not aboard,
return anyway! I repeat, return at once at full speed within the limits
of prudence!"

 

 

Nuoli said, "Commodore, Captain Ramstan is aboard. Will leave at once
as ordered!"

 

 

Ramstan thought of jumping off the launch and taking refuge in the house
of the Vwoordha. He could only face disgrace in al-Buraq, and the glyfa
was lost to him. Though the urge was strong, it did not overcome him.
Whatever wrong he had done, he had acted with full knowledge of the
possible consequences and full, though not ready, acceptance of the
punishment if he were caught. Whatever he was, he was not a coward.
If he had been one, he would no longer be.

 

 

In other circumstances the affirmation might have been a temporary relief.
Not now. The Tolt ship was a menace, and his ship was commanded by a
madman. How had Benagur been able to assume command? Why had not Tenno
taken over? Surely, he must know that the commodore was not fit for the
post of captain. Perhaps, the discovery of the glyfa by Benagur had
vindicated him, had convinced Tenno that Ramstan had falsely accused
Benagur of insanity for his own perverted reasons. But Doctor Hu surely
had her doubts about Benagur, and she would not have been hesitant to
voice them.