The Unreasoning Mask

by Philip José Farmer

  On Ramstan's right was Lieutenant-Commodore (acting full commodore) Jimmy Tenno. On his left was Commander Erica Hannay. Five meters before them, the IC panel curved up to a height of 2.8 meters. Thirteen black-lined circles, extending from the deck to the ceiling, filled the panel. A CO and WO sat before one.

  "All secure?" Ramstan said.

  An octagonal in the lower left-hand part of the circle directly before him flashed yellow-yellow-yellow.

  "Drive ready?"

  Two tiny arrows flashed, one green-green-green and one scarlet-scarlet-scarlet.

  "Alaraf drive on," Ramstan said.

  The green light ceased pulsing.

  "Activate Reverse Jump Number One -- RJN 1."

  There was no motion, nothing to indicate that the vessel had left Kalafala behind at a distance of googolplex parsecs and perhaps at a distance of googolplex millennia.

  The scarlet light ceased.

  "EV and coordinates."

  The circle became black, and Ramstan was looking into space. Stars flamed white, red, orange, green, blue, yellow, violet. A spiral galaxy, seen from "above," was a dying albino octopus that had been wounded by a shotgun loaded with jewels.

  The scanners traveled across the circle, and the octopus drifted out of view on the right side. More stars, a giant red sun, not more than three light-years away, traveled across a nebula bright as a movie screen. The upper edges of the gas cloud formed the ragged silhouette of a crouching and grinning wolf.

  Ramstan did not need the pulsing yellow letters that appeared near the bottom of the circle to know where he was. There had never been any doubt anyway.

  "EV off. M-GD, Walisk window," Ramstan said.

  The view faded. The scarlet arrow came to life, pulsed, and would continue to pulse until Ramstan ordered it to stop.

  Ramstan looked to both sides and caught a few officers looking at him expectantly. He frowned, causing them to look straight ahead. All in the bridge, everybody in ship, in fact, obviously hoped to hear an explanation for their sudden departure. He did not have to give one, and he would just as soon not. If they were not informed, however, they would resent it, and good morale would boil away. He would have to tell them something. Fortunately, Branwen Davis and Toyce had given him enough to shape a half-truth.

  He sat brooding while the silence in the bridge stretched like a wire between two winches. There would be no breaking point because no one would dare to ask him when he would give the order to resume normal operations. Nor would any voice the question clogging their throats and making some cough nervously.

  Suddenly, he stood up. Erica Hannay sighed. Tenno, his dark-brown face oily with sweat, grinned, showing block-like white teeth. Chief Warrant Officer Vilkas, at the far left, began coughing violently.

  Ramstan waited until Vilkas had regained control. He said, loudly, "All posts stand by for an announcement."

  His voice boomed out from the panel, was booming out throughout the ship. Three clangs of a bell and a short whistle followed.

  "You're all wondering why I issued the Burning Troy," he said. He had turned by then and was looking at the officers. Most just continued to stare at him, but a few nodded.

  "Before I tell you why I ordered the ship to leave Kalafala, I must remind you of one thing. That is, we are primarily a scientific survey expedition. Though al-Buraq is a ship of the line, we use our weapons only in self-defense. And then only when no other action is open to us. As you all know, I have been ordered to avoid military conflict even if honor is involved.

  "Until today, we have confronted no sentients with overt hostile intentions. But the sudden appearance of the Tolt ship, her unorthodox approach, using Kalafala as a shield to avoid our detection equipment, a maneuver which required enormous energy, and her recklessness in flying in at treetop level and literally dropping into the spaceport, are strange actions."

  Ramstan knew what they were thinking. Why then did you not call a Burning Troy immediately? Why did you go to your quarters at the hotel instead? And what about our precipitate departure from Tolt?

  "Though the actions of the Tenolt were suspicious," he said, "I did not believe that they implied attack. If they had wished to attack us, they could have caught us wide open, unprepared, when they appeared at the port. Yet they made not the slightest move toward us. I judged that the Tenolt intended no overtly hostile moves.

  "On the other hand, it was evident that they were up to something. I have no idea what that is. But it might derive from the incident which took place during our brief stay on Tolt."

  That widened the eyes of those on the bridge.

  "As you know, Benagur, Maija Nuoli, and I were the only personnel invited by the Tolt religious authorities to the anuglyfa ceremonies. That the captain and the second-in-command would be invited was expected, but it was a mystery why other officers were skipped and a lieutenant invited. I made some delicate inquiries of the Tolt high priest -- I had to be sure not to offend any religious prejudices -- and he replied that the glyfa itself had asked that we three be honored. Our rank had nothing to do with it. He would add nothing further except that we three must have the required sensitivity . I asked him what that meant, but he did not answer.

  "And so we three were conducted with an honor guard into the holy of holies, a large room constructed of ivory and lacking ornamentation or paint. The only furniture was an altar in the middle of the room, a nine-cornered block of solid ivory high as my waist -- it was taken from the tooth of an extinct beast -- and on the altar was a diamond. It was twice as big as my head, and on top of it was the glyfa. This looked like an egg shape carved out of ivory. It was white and between 14 and 15 centimeters long. Tzatlats, the high priest, said that it was so heavy that four men could not lift it.

  "Tzatlats told us that the glyfa had been dug out of the earth some ten thousand years before, that it had been the god of the stone-age tribe that found it and was now the god of the whole planet. The glyfa had fallen from the skies long before the Tenolt had evolved into sapiency. It was older than the universe; it had survived the birth and death of many universes.

  "We found it difficult to believe that a species as highly developed scientifically as Earth's could worship an idol. We thought that we must have misunderstood Tzatlats. It must be that the glyfa was a symbol of the creator, just as a crucifix or a statue of Vishnu are only symbols. But no. Tzatlats said that this was the god, not a symbol nor an embodiment but the god itself. And it ruled the planet. Tolt was a true theocracy.

  "We stood in a corner and watched a ritual which was not explained to us and which I won't describe, since it is available in a report. The ceremony was interrupted when Commodore Benagur suddenly fell to the floor. Though he seemed to be unconscious, he struggled when I picked him up to take him to the ship. Two priests helped me carry him out, and he was still struggling violently while we did so."

  The bridge personnel were uneasy, no doubt wondering why he was describing what was well-known.

  "The commodore was examined, but no evidence was found that he had suffered some kind of epileptic seizure. He himself reported that he had been overwhelmed by a white light, a light that should have blinded him but did not. After what seemed like hours, but which I can testify were only a few seconds, he began to see something in the center of the whiteness. This was not clear, but he had an impression of a huge blue eye. It became larger, and, as it grew, he felt an increasing heat. Not all over his body, but inside his head, seemingly concentrated in a tiny spot. When the heat suddenly became unbearable, he felt as if he were falling into a bottomless well.

  "Nuoli later reported experiencing subjective phenomena, too. But these differed in intensity and kind from the commodore's. She could detect pulsations, variations in air pressure, and then the pulsations became visible as multicolored square waves. They disappeared simultaneously with the commodore's collapse."

  At the time, Ramstan had reported that he had neither seen or heard or felt anything describ
able as unusual subjective phenomena. Only Benagur had questioned that report. Benagur had accused him of lying after Ramstan had ordered ship to leave Tolt. Ramstan had continued to deny experiencing anything unusual. He had also said that Benagur was still obviously unfit for duty and that he would remain on sick list until he had proved otherwise. Benagur had stormed out of Ramstan's quarters. But there was nothing he could do about it. Ramstan had not reported this incident nor had Benagur, as far as Ramstan knew, said anything about it to anybody.

  An hour after returning to ship, Ramstan had left it. He had, of course, told Tenno, now second-in-command, that he was leaving, but he had not said why. He had walked unchallenged out of the port, down the long street that led to the temple, walked past the guards, who obviously were not aware that he was present, and half an hour later had again boarded ship. Five minutes later, al-Buraq had taken off.

  "I was convinced that the glyfa was dangerous," Ramstan said after a few seconds of silence. "Despite which, under other circumstances, our scientists would have been directed to study it. As far as I know, it's unique. But when I went back to the temple to discuss what had happened with the high priest, I was told that we were no longer welcome on Tolt. The priest made no threats. He just said that the glyfa wished us gone."

  Ramstan assumed that the officers were wondering why he had not logged the conversation. However, none dared voice the question. He proceeded to tell them what had happened in the hotel. He omitted his conversation with Commodore Benagur.

  "There is no proof that the masked people were Tenolt, but there are no other suspects. I have no idea at all why the Tenolt have followed us here or why they should have made an attempt to anesthetize me. Doctor Toyce's report of the breakdown of the Tolt sailor in the tavern suggests that something horrible has happened to their planet. Obviously, they don't want to tell us what it is. I don't know why.

  "However, the disappearance of Pegasus is the number-one priority now. For all I know, that might be tied in with the Tenolt's strange actions. In any event, we are backtracking with the hope of finding Pegasus."

  He paused and said, "Or some trace of it."

  A long silence, punctuated by pale faces, followed. Tenno was the first to crack it.

  "Captain, will we run away every time a Tolt ship appears?"

  Ramstan did not like being questioned, but he said, "We're a scientific mission. And we must at all costs -- almost all -- avoid anything which might lead to war."

  He scanned the faces. "All right. Normal operation."

  Two ship's days passed. Ramstan was in his quarters, considering taking the glyfa out for another effort to get it to talk, when a whistle sounded. Ramstan spoke the code word which activated a two-way communication. Tenno's clark-brown, slant-eyed face appeared on a screen.

  "Captain, we've just rasered some debris at 45,000 kilometers. It might be from a spaceship."

  "I'll be right up," Ramstan said.

  He felt cold and sick. Could it be what was left of Pegasus?

  ... 8 ...

  When Al-Buraq caught up with the debris, she was 600,000 kilometers from the planet Walisk. The pieces of the ship were spreading over a wide area, though going in the same general direction. What attracted Ramstan's attention most was a globe with a diameter of 14 meters. Ship matched pace and path with those of the globe to catch up with it. Meanwhile, other debris had been identified as of Raushghol origin. This was done chiefly through furniture torn loose from the deck in the explosion which had rent the ship. Only the Raushghol, in the Terrans' experience, had three diamond-shaped holes in the backs of all their chairs and sofas.

  A screen showed the sphere as a slowly rotating object with a surface of black-and-white squares. Al-Buraq had transmitted signals of its own -- perhaps unintelligible to the receiver -- informing whoever was in the globe, if there was anybody, that help was coming. No acknowledgment had been received.

  Al-Buraq jockeyed around, matched, opened a port, swallowed the globe easily and softly, and closed the port. Air hissed into the chamber, which held the globe in a depression fitting the lower third. Antibacterial and antiviral gases mixed with the air for five minutes, then a spray of weak acid washed the globe, followed by high-pressure sprays of liquid helium and then boiling hot water. A few minutes later, crewmembers in spacesuits entered, Toyce among them.

  Toyce said, "Never saw anything like this before, sir. I can't find any exterior mechanism to open it up for us. If there's a shet in there, the shet will have to open it."

  Shet was the Terrish nongender, singular and plural, definite and indefinite third-person indicator, a combination of she/he/it from English. An alaraf-drive ship, however, was referred to as shet-fim , fim being the female indicator.

  "Can we cut into it?"

  "Won't know until we try, sir."

  "It's not likely, but it might contain explosive gas," Ramstan said. "Everybody out. Let a yeoshet cut it."

  The crew walked through the port into ship; a moment later, a wheeled robot passed through. The port was shut, but the robot waited until ship had built up armor-plated layers to enclose the chamber. When Task Completed was flashed on the screen, the CPO directing the party gave the command. A laser beam shot out from the tip of one of the robot's arms, and a thin slice of the equator of the globe fell off.

  "I'll be damned!" Ramstan said. "Water!"

  It spurted out, then the pressure inside quickly eased off, and it flowed down the side for a few seconds before trickling out.

  "Cut out a hole at the equator," Ramstan said.

  This was done quickly. More water poured out, but the flow ceased within thirty seconds. The robot moved forward and extended an arm with a tiny TV camera at its end through the hole. Light flared. The lower half of the globe's interior was filled with water, darkened with what looked like blood. In the center floated a dark, shapeless thing.

  The sentientologist said, "It's a native of Webn. A seal-centaur. I've never seen one in the flesh before, but I've seen Walisk photos of one. The globe would be the Webnite's self-contained cabin while it's being transported in the ship. It can also be used for a lifeboat. And it evidently has. I've heard that . . ."

  Toyce stopped. Like Ramstan, she'd been watching the globe on the screen and so was also taken by surprise. But her reaction came from forgetfulness, whereas Ramstan's came from novelty.

  The globe drooped, collapsed, ran together, poured over the being in the center, and broke away from it with a pop like bubble gum. Bloodied water cascaded over the deck, and the globe had disappeared. The body sprawled in the center of blackened wetness.

  "The Raushghols told me that a Webn sphere dissolves in its own water once it's been broken open by force. Believe it or not, that's what they said. The stuff it's made from is supposedly woven by a giant half-sentient sea creature, and . . ."

  "How can a thing be half-sentient?" Ramstan said.

  "I'm just quoting the Raushghol."

  A party rolled the 227-kilogram body onto an a-g sled. The sled rose into the air, and one man directed it toward sickbay. Ramstan watched its progress down the corridors and into the ward. Toyce supervised the three physicians delegated to treat the Webnite. Ten minutes later, she reported.

  "Something small but hard and sharp passed entirely through her body," she said. "It must have been going at such a speed it passed through the sphere, too. A tiny meteorite? Anyway, the sphere must have closed up within microseconds after being pentrated on both sides. Otherwise, the air and the water would have boiled off."

  "Is she dying?" Ramstan said.

  Toyce looked again at the oscilloscopes registering the overall state of health of the finned and armed mass lying on its back in a shallow basin on a broad temporary table.