The Unreasoning Mask

by Philip José Farmer

  "You must listen to me!" the voice of his mother cried. "You know what is at stake!"

  Ramstan said, "I decided to put off my decision for a while. I refused to give the glyfa or the three gifts of Wassruss to the Vwoordha. For now, anyway. I did have to pay a price, however. It was only fair; they had given me information that I . . . we . . . desperately need.

  "So, I promised the Vwoordha that when they needed me, I would come to them. Take them aboard ship or do whatever else they required, if I could do it without endangering ship and crew. Though under certain conditions I might have to do that.

  "It's possible that we might be able to dispose of the bolg and so not have to deal with the Vwoordha or do what the glyfa wants. We can use the glyfa for the purpose for which it was intended. It may refuse to cooperate, but it is in our hands, and there must be means to make it do what we want."

  "Ungrateful monster!" the voice of his mother said. "You'd do this to me!"

  Ramstan sipped some water. He said, "Now is the time for you to decide. I won't make any speech about how vital it is that you let me keep on being your captain. You must know that by now. Whether or not you believe me, I don't know. But if you reject me, you cause all, and I mean all in the universal sense, to be lost. Doomed."

  He said a code word. A chair flowed up from the deck. He sat down.

  Nuoli cried, "I believe him!"

  Tenno said, "I don't know what . . . whom . . . to believe."

  "Vote!" Ramstan said loudly. "Now! We don't have time for long conferences and discussions! Nor, for that matter, for short ones!"

  He roared from the chair, screaming and holding his oars. He could not hear his own voice, and his hands were no protection. The whistling overrode everything else.

  ... 27 ...

  The glyfa's voice came through the noise as his mother's. It sounded as if it came from afar, from some wildly retreating and advancing horizon, louder, then softer.

  "The bolg is too close for you to outrun it. You can do only one thing. Escape. Use the first of Wassruss's gifts."

  Ramstan only understood the glyfa peripherally. His hindbrain, the animal heritage from which his subconscious exerted influence, told him to run. But he had, automatically, thrust his mental probings into his cells, and they, too, told him to run. That was the adverse effect of the generally beneficial result of being able to locate and analyze the physical health of each cell in the body. Now, without thinking about it, he contacted the cells, all three trillion, and got an overall impression of their reaction to this situation.

  Run!

  If his rational mind had been in command, he might have done otherwise. But, perhaps, he might not have.

  The glyfa, who had no born or built-in unconscious, said the same thing.

  "Use the shengorth , Ramstan!"

  He stood still, and the inability to make physical movements was reflected in his mental movements. Right or left? Up or down? Forward or backward? Or any movement in between or among?

  "Take me with you?" the glyfa said in the voice of Ramstan's mother. "You must have your hands on me before you put the sigil in your mouth. Or touch me closely. As close as fetus to mother or infant lips to the nipple."

  Ramstan gave an animal cry expressing his rage, rage from helplessness and from his ignorance, which made him even more helpless.

  "You fool!" the glyfa said in the voice of Ramstan's father. "There is only one thing you can do, now that you've done this. Get out! Use the shengorth! But you must take me with you. Otherwise, you're done for!"

  "And so are you," Rmnstan said.

  "Is that a consolation?"

  Suddenly, the whistling, the "entrance noise," was gone. Ramstan was relieved greatly by this, but he still felt panic.

  Ship could not use her alaraf drive to get to another universe until she was near enough to the planet Shabbkorng to be within its "bell." Even if she could make the jump, she'd be quickly tracked by the bolg. Unless . . . unless the bolg would be diverted by the life on Shabbkorng and stop there to massacre it. That was an almost unbearable thought -- almost -- there were seven billion people there, yet al-Buraq could attack the bolg after it had spent all its missiles. That is, al-Buraq could do so if the bolg did not retain a supply of missiles for emergencies while recharging.

  But al-Buraq could not stay in this universe while waiting for the bolg to empty itself. It might attack ship first.

  A screen had been displaying a green circle, the Popacapyu. Suddenly, the circle became a white balloon. The whiteness and the expansion lasted perhaps a second and then became a swarm of many very small pale dots.

  Ramstan cried out, "Allah!"

  Tenno cried out in Japanese, then said, in Terrish, "I take refuge in the Buddha."

  The tec-op crossed himself, muttered something in Polish, then said, "Sir, the Popacapyu was struck by missiles from the bolg. Her power supply must have exploded."

  Another screen displayed the area where the bolg was; a tiny orange circle was in its center. Flashing orange numbers showed that the thing was moving at a rate of velocity and acceleration that would make it visible on the screen within three hours. Before then, however, its missiles would blow al-Buraq apart.

  Ramstan said, "Tenno, what's the computation on ship reaching the jump area before she's in the bolg's missile-range?"

  "If we make it, we'll do so with about a minute's grace. Perhaps."

  Ramstan put his hand in his jacket pocket.

  "That's the right decision," his mother's voice said. "But hold me to your chest before you put the shengorth in your mouth. If you don't, you leave me behind."

  Ramstan's fingers moved the disk and the square aside and closed on the triangle. It felt slippery and warm. After taking it out of his pocket, he went to the glyfa, adjusted the a-g units on its two ends, and picked it up in one hand. It slipped out and struck the deck. His hand trembling he leaned down and got a good grip on the egg-shape. It only weighed ten grams now, but the power in the batteries of the a-g units would quickly be used up at this adjustment.

  Then, as if someone had possessed him, he went to the bulkhead on which hung his prayer rug. He had no rational reason to do so; he had not used it since he had entered the academy. Nuoli, when she had been his lover, had mocked him once, asking why he, an atheist, kept it. It was, she had said, his security blanket. That had angered him. But now, pressed by his fear, he took the rug from the bulkhead with the hand holding the shengorth . The triangle slipped from his fingers to the deck. He left it there for a moment while he wrapped the glyfa in the rug. Then he picked up the triangular stone and held it to his open lips.

  A vision of Branwen in the launch flashed through his mind. She would be even more terrified than the others because she was alone.

  "Wait! Wait!" someone screamed at him.

  It was his own voice, not uttered through his mouth but from his mind.

  "The crew . . . the crew!"

  He shouted, or thought he shouted, since he could not hear his own words, at al-Buraq. He gave her orders to release Benagur and to obey him until he, Ramstan, returned.

  He put the shengorth in his mouth with his right hand, his left holding the ends of the rug, his left arm curved to push rug and glyfa against his chest.

  Despite the impediment caused by the stone in his mouth, he began to recite the Light-Verse from the Qu'ran. "God is the light of the Heavens and of the Earth . . ."

  The stone seemed to swell. It grew between his right teeth and the inside of his cheek. It choked off the words, but when he put a finger in his mouth to extract it before it broke his flesh, he found that it was the same size as when he had put it in.

  The transition seemed as swift as a light.

  His eyes blinked, the lids sweeping down and up. As they went down, he saw his quarters. As they went up, he saw an unfamiliar room. There was no sense of movement. Around him was silence. The air seemed dead, heavy, and stale, but within a few seconds it began moving, and it be
came fresh.

  He became aware that he had wet his pants.

  He dropped the rug and its burden. It thunked softly on a very thick white carpet with a pattern of connected pale-red diamond-shapes with pale-red edges and light-blue interiors.

  As he started to remove the shengorth from his mouth, his mother's voice said, "First, reset the a-g units. If the power goes, you'll never be able to lift me."

  After unrolling the rug, he said the code word which would cause the power to the a-g units to be cut off.

  The room was large and oblong and had an arched entrance at each side. The ceiling was level and pale blue. The walls were off-white. Wooden-framed paintings hung on them, some depicting landscapes which would not have been out of place on Earth. But the portraits displayed sentients with hairy, triangular faces and large, domed heads. The eyes looked catlike.

  He became aware that the light was shadowless, seemingly without source yet everywhere.

  He turned, and he started. Two meters away was a pyramid resting on its base. It was twice his height and made of some shimmering gray metal.

  "That's the magnet, the poie which drew you here," his father's voice said. "Fortunately, no one was standing near it when you appeared. Otherwise, both of you would have been burned to ashes."

  "Why couldn't the builders have put in safeguards?"

  "I don't know. They couldn't. Anyway, anything that has advantages always has disadvantages. That's the inscrutable economy of the Pluriverse."

  "I know that," Ramstan said angrily.

  "It doesn't hurt to remind you."

  The glyja had switched to the voice of Habib ibn-Ali O'Riley, Ramstan's chemistry professor in elementary school. Ramstan was too busy to ask it why it had changed. It probably would not have explained, anyway.

  "What is this place?" he said.

  "A refuge for the user of the shengorth , I suppose. The little I know is what the Vwoordha told me. It's set up so that it can support sixty sentients of your size for many years. It may be located in another universe, since the people who made the sigils could communicate with people in other universes. I think they used the same means that the Vwoordha did. Thus, they avoided causing carcinoma in the Pluriverse. After the receiving stations were set up, the people used the sigils to travel, though not often."

  "For the sake of Allah" Ramstan said. "Here's the means for interuniversal travel without injury to the Pluriverse! Why didn't everybody use it?"

  "One, there are trillions of universes and a googolplex of peopled planets in every one. It would be impossible to contact all planets in all universes. Only a very small number were. Second, the making of sigils costs much in time, materials, and labor. Only a very small number of sigils were made. The Vwoordha said it was a million or so. Third, for some reason even their makers did not know, the sigils could be used by any individual only once."

  "Even so, they could be analyzed and reproduced."

  "They are indestructible, and for that reason unanalyzable."

  Ramstan left the room for the archway to his left. He strode through room after room, oblong, seven-sided, nine-sided, or round, the walls hung with paintings and gold or platinum shields sporting jewels, sculpture here and there, and, in a huge chamber, a library. The books were crystalline balls which spoke or sang as soon as be touched them and which stopped when he withdrew his finger. Some contained moving three-dimensional images. A number seemed to be textbooks; others, entertainment. He did not understand the language, and the weird music grated on him.

  Finally, he came to what seemed to be the end, the outer wall of this place. There was a very thick window in it. He looked through it. The ground was flat and sandy. The atmosphere seemed to be clear air, but presently several fish-shaped creatures swam through the frondy branches of a plant. They were moving swiftly. A short time later, the reason for their haste appeared. It looked more like a stingray than anything, and it traveled by flapping its winglike fins. Its teeth were sharklike.

  Ramstan started towards the other end of the station, but he veered off into what was obviously a toilet. He drank some water and inspected the toilets. There were no urinals. Either it was reserved for females, as such had once been on Earth, or the builders all had to sit down to urinate.

  When he came to the other side of the house, he saw the same kind of scene. Piscines apparently swimming in air, thin fragile plants bending under a current. The light was bright enough, but the sun was not visible.

  On his return, he stopped in a room which was obviously an eating place. He got food and liquid by punching buttons, but after one experiment, he quit. Munching on the hot vegetables from the plate he carried, he returned to the central room.

  "We're under the surface of some kind of sea or lake," he said to himself. "But its liquid is not water."

  "We're probably on a planet which is not reachable from Earth by alaraf drive," Habib's voice said. "It's in a bell connected to the routes which go only to non-G0-type stars systems. You'd probably die at once if you could step outside."

  "Then there's only one way to get out," Ramstan said. "Use the next sigil."

  "Right. But you're safe from the bolg as long as you stay here."

  He thought about finding a place where he could wash and dry his pants. No. He could do that in the next place. He set the plate down on the carpet, then picked it up again, and he took it back to the eating place. After dropping it down a slot, which he supposed was for dirty plates, he went back to the central room. Habib's voice said, "The next person could have taken care of the plate. If there ever is another person."

  Ramstan did not reply. He adjusted the a-g units to lighten the glyfa's weight to ten grams, and picked the thing up in his prayer rug. He put the pengrathon , the square stone, in his mouth. It, too, seemed to swell, and he was suddenly in another house. He turned to see a thin square upright structure of gray metal set in the parquet floor.

  After removing the pengrathon and putting it in his pocket, he set the glyfa down and turned the a-g units off. The paintings and sculptures showed him that Terranlike sentients had built this place. He walked until he found a window. The house was high on a mountain. The sky was blue and cloudless; the sun, near its zenith. The horizon was an estimated 150 kilometers distant. Straight ahead, there was only the vegetationless rocky slope of the mountain and a vast yellow-brownish plain lacking plants and topsoil. Fissures crazed its face.

  Nearby, to his left, was what was remained of a stone statue. The pedestal and body had been shattered and toppled. The head had rolled about 20 meters from the body. Though the head was cracked and its features were eroded, it certainly looked like the Urzints, the photographs of which he had seen on Kalafala.

  He returned to the glyfa and told it what he had seen.

  "I couldn't go outside the first house, and I can't go outside this one. I suppose I could stay in either until I died of old age. But I'd go mad very quickly. Whether or not the next place is a trap, I have to go to it. But what's the use of the sigils if they take you away from one perilous place only to put you in another?"

  The glyfa said, "In a circular universe, who runs away runs toward."

  "To hell with you and your billion-year-old platitudes."

  Ramstan held the egg next to him and put the disk in his mouth.

  ... 28 ...

  Of all the places he might have imagined as the third station, this would not have been in his list of speculations at all. He thought: What is included is an extremely minute fraction of what might be. The excluded is always much larger than the included. Entities deal with exclusions and inclusions, and they can only handle inclusions. Even those are usually too much for them.