The Unreasoning Mask (30 page)

 

 

He paused, breathing heavily. Though he was getting ahead of his story,
he had given his audience something concrete and terrible to think about.
They might not be so willing to disbelieve him.

 

 

"It . . . the glyfa . . . told me that all sentients sooner or later
develop their science to the point where they invent the alaraf drive or
its equivalent, unless they destroy themselves first with atomic war.
They never, or seldom, anyway, understand just what the alaraf-driven
vessels do or how they travel such immense distances in such a short time.
We Terrans certainly didn't. We had theories about where the ships went
when they jumped. The most accepted was that the ships somehow bent space
so that a star a million light-years away was, briefly, very much closer.
Or that there were flaws or anomalies in the space-time structure which
permitted an alaraf ship to penetrate those. The theory stated that
normal distance was that which the distribution of matter in space had
accustomed us to. But that these flaws or fissures were of different
arrangements of space-matter, and the different arrangement also made
for differences in distances.

 

 

"As you know, these theories weren't even that. They were speculations,
means for describing what is still the undescribable.

 

 

"A third speculation, one not taken seriously at all, was that the alaraf
drive somehow made the ships leap from one universe through the
walls
of another. That speculation was based on the fact that a ship on its
outward journey never appeared in a known section of Earth's universe.

 

 

"Another speculation was that the alaraf drive was really a sort of
time travel drive. On the outward journey, the ship went ahead in time
or backwards. It didn't matter which. In any event, the ship stayed in
one place, but the cosmic bodies moved on, leaving the ship floating in
space and in a space unrecognizable because millions or even billions
of stars had passed by. One way or the other. The return journey was
accomplished by reversing time, as it were, and the ship got back to
Earth at an approximate time corresponding to the amount of time she
had been away from Earth."

 

 

Ramstan stopped to get a drink of water.

 

 

"The glyfa assured me that the speculation about the alaraf ships penetrating
the walls of the universes was indeed correct.

 

 

"There is not one universe but many. The human body contains trillions
of cells. So does the Pluriverse. Each universe is a cell in its body.

 

 

"I was wrong when I stole the glyfa, though it was with its full permission
and expressed wish. Not just wrong. I was a criminal. I was betraying my
duty as captain of ship and as a Terran. But I believed then and still
believe that I was following a higher duty. I was convinced that the glyfa
was right and that I was doing what had to be done if I were to . . .
save . . . the world. The Pluriverse."

 

 

Many on Earth had believed that it was their mission to save the world.
Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Zoroaster, Luther, a hundred Popes,
Knox, Buddha, Joseph Smith, Eddy, a few thousand of greats and well-known
among the billions who'd lived on Earth, and how many thousands of insane?
What made him different from the others?

 

 

His predecessors had acted only on fantasy.
He
knew from experience,
from fact, what be was talking about.

 

 

Or did be? He could not really be sure.

 

 

But what he knew was not gotten from any stone or golden tablets or an
angel appearing to announce that he was God's chosen prophet to reveal
anew what had been said before many times and would be said again,
though in somewhat different forms and situations.

 

 

"I wish I could say that I took the glyfa because it had hypnotized me,
and thus I couldn't help myself. It did not hypnotize me, though its
evocation of the
Miraj
in me enormously influenced me. The glyfa told
me that it did expand my minuscule inclination to steal it. Turned a
flashing impulse into a steady determination. That may be true. If I'd
been completely without that desire, the glyfa could not have affected
me thus at all."

 

 

Who among you would not have had that desire? he thought. But he did not
voice the thought. To do so would make him seem to be pleading. And Ramstan
did not plead.

 

 

"Whatever the reasons for my taking the g(yfa, and I believed and still
believe that I had one reason to override everything that told me not to
take it, I did."

 

 

Nuoli, unable to obey any longer his order not to interrupt, said,
"Why didn't you tell us what you'd done as soon as you returned to ship
with the glyfa? Why were you so secretive?"

 

 

"Don't ask me questions until I've finished! But . . . I was getting to that.
Isn't it obvious that I would've been arrested at once, Benagur would have
made sure of that, and the glyfa returned to the Tenolt? Would you have
believed me then? No, not until the bolg appeared would you have put any
credence in me. As it is . . ."

 

 

He told them of the voice in the Kalafalan tavern warning him of the bolg.
He told them of seeing on the monitor screen the figure in his quarters
and the figure which had appeared on the Webn planet when he and Benagur
were quarreling.

 

 

"As I found out when I visited the Vwoordha, these were images projected
by one of the three. They were projected -- beamed? -- from a very long
distance. Not just from a distant planet in another galaxy, though that
would be staggering enough. No, they were projected from another universe.

 

 

"I don't know how it was done. Shiyai, the Vwoordha, told me that she rode
the waves of the thoughts of God. Doubtless, that's a poetic analogy
and so, meaningless. Or perhaps not. For all I know, the images were
not objective projections but stimulations of my brain resulting in
subjective phenomena that I thought were objective.

 

 

"But I suspect that the glyfa was used, though unwillingly, as a target
and a focus for whatever powers the Vwoordha use to project these images."

 

 

"You have guessed it," the glyfa said, using Ramstan's mother's voice now.

 

 

It sounded sullen.

 

 

"I think that's so because the glyfa is also a tool. It was not created
primarily as a beamer for the images of the Vwoordha, but it can be used
for this. I'll get to its primary purpose in a few minutes.

 

 

"The glyfa could probably have enlightened me on many puzzling things,
but, for reasons it won't reveal, it refused. Perhaps it was hoping that
I'd not meet the Vwoordha. In fact, I'm almost sure of that, though nothing
seems sure in this vast blackness I've been living in. However, it knew
what the ritual-chant of the Webnite, Wassruss, meant. And what the true
powers are of the three sigils that Wassruss gave me."

 

 

He stopped to drink more water. Another curious thought flashed.
His discourse was a ritual, comparable to the Christian Mass, and the water
was the wine. The wafers of bread? Not his or anyone's flesh but his spirit.
He was eating crow, eating his pride and his self-image, tearing them into
bits and devouring them while the . . . worshipers? . . . no . . . witnesses
to the sacrifice and the eucharist . . . watched him, a crowd of unbelievers
who had to be made into believers.

 

 

In some ways, there was not much difference between eating the flesh
of the god and eating crow. Except that it was the god, the fallen god,
himself, who ate the crow.

 

 

"Throughout these events, I've felt as if I were being manipulated.
Sometimes gently, sometimes not so subtly, I was being nudged and pushed
here and there. But the glyfa was urging me in one direction and the
Vwoordha in another. In a sense, the Vwoordha won because I came to
their home. In another, they lost."

 

 

What is the price?

 

 

Ramstan told his audience that he had asked the Vwoordha what he must pay
for their help. They had replied that he must give them the glyfa. He had
refused, though to do so he had had to draw up all his courage and hurl
it at them like a ball. If he had failed to strike them out, he would have
been done for. These three were awe-inspiring, and he was afraid of them.
(His audience did not know how much it cost him to admit that. Or perhaps
it did know.) Though he could see no machines responsible for their
great powers, he knew that they must have them. The walls of their house
could be double and be packed inside with a solid-state or liquid-state
technology superior to that of any sentients he had encountered. They took
the credit for making the glyfa, and they might not be lying. According
to what they claimed, they had once had the ability to burn out a star
while making it, but they no longer had the tools to do it nor could
they, at this time, duplicate the feat. Besides, another glyfa would be
just as self-conscious as the first, hence, a self-governing entity, and
would probably turn out to be just as selfish and contrary as this one.

 

 

The Vwoordha might not be as rich in power as they once were, but what
they still had scared him.

 

 

Nevertheless, he had said no to them. He did not know what they would do
then; he felt that they could destroy al-Buraq if they wished to. They
certainly seemed wrathful enough to do it.

 

 

After they had cooled down or seemed to, Shiyai had said, "You are very
stubborn, Ramstan. We've offered you a partnership, you, an ephemera. You
would be our equal, that is, as equal as possible for you. And you would
be immortal, as near immortal as is possible. Also, it is your duty to
join us and to earn that equality by delivering the glyfa to us. But
you are as stupid, selfish, arrogant, and blind as the glyfa. And you
have limits, just as it has, though they are different limits."

 

 

Ramstan had thought that they, too, were bounded, otherwise they would
have forced him to hand over the glyfa. He did not say so, however.

 

 

Grrindah had vented her nerve-clawing laughter and said, "Very well.
Since you bargain with us, though you do not know how wrong you are to
do that, we will lower our price. The gifts of Wassruss will do."

 

 

Again, Ramstan rolled up his courage and pitched it at them.

 

 

The Webn had given him the three sigils and had said that he could pass
them on only after he had used them. It would not be right to sell them.

 

 

"Right?" black-eyed Wopolsa had said. "What do you know of right?"

 

 

"Perhaps nothing -- from your viewpoint," Ramstan had said. "Nevertheless,
I will not part with them."

 

 

"Then you will get nothing from us," green-eyed Shiyai said.

 

 

Blue-eyed Grrindah laughed, and she said, "You have stolen the glyfa
and betrayed your people and wrecked your life and career and will die
soon. All in vain."

 

 

"I don't think so," Ramstan had said.

 

 

They had struck out twice. Or was it he who had done so?

 

 

"You want the glyfa. You want the three gifts," he said. "These were to be
the price I must pay for your information or whatever you would have given
me in return. But I have already paid your price many times over. You and
the glyfa caused me to, as you say, steal it and betray my people and
wreck my career and perhaps bring on my death soon. You three and that
other, the glyfa."

 

 

All three laughed, and Grrindah said, "He thinks that the other is
the glyfa!"

 

 

"Still," Shiyai said, "there is much justice in what he says."

 

 

"Dear sisters," Wopolsa said, "what is justice?"

 

 

"A word," Grrindah said. "Another word is truth."

 

 

"Don't laugh," Ramstan said. "I am getting tired of your mockery."

 

 

They did not laugh with their mouths, though the eyes of Grrindah and
Shiyai laughed. Wopolsa's eyes looked as if they were and had always
been empty of laughter. They contained only black space and dying stars
and a hint of something terrifying beyond the space.

 

 

He was, he told his crew, uncertain whether the three creatures in the well
were the pets of the Vwoordha or the Vwoordha were projections of the
well-dwellers. Or, possibly, the house-dwellers were solid flesh but were
still the pets of the well-dwellers.

 

 

It seemed to him, though, that the shimmering being did not belong to any
of the universes he had been in. Rather, it did not seem to be native to
any of the planets that ship had set down on. It was his theory that an
alaraf-drive vessel starting from a planet of a G0-type star, such as Sol,
such as all they had been to, could travel only to the planetary system of
a G0 star. None of the alaraf ships they knew had ever been to the "bell"
of any but a star like Earth's sun. Apparently, the type of star from which
a ship originally departed determined the type to which it could go.

 

 

If, say, sentient life could evolve on a planet of a giant red star or a
white dwarf or, who knew, even a planet or a "dead" sun revolving around
a galaxy, then it would develop an alaraf drive. But its ship would be
confined to "cracks," "flaws," predetermined channels, call them what
you would, that would take her to a "bell" of a red star or a white dwarf
or whatever.