The Unreasoning Mask

by Philip José Farmer

  "She's holding her own -- I think. How would I know? I don't know anything about the physiology -- or anatomy, either -- of an aquatic sentient from Webn. Hell, what's her blood pressure supposed to be? And what's her blood type? You should see the vanadium and magnesium content. Enough to make you drop dead on the spot if it were in your bloodstream. I'm exaggerating, of course, but it would make you sick."

  The Webnite was exactly 3.2 meters long, and covered by a sealy chocolate-brown fur. The flippers extended straight out from her body and made up one-third of her length. The belly was huge, though she was not pregnant. The breasts were pendulous and small in proportion to the size of the body. The arms were long; the hands, very broad and flat; the fingers, webbed to the first joint. The head was humanoid. Her eyes were deeply sunk and, at the moment, covered by a transparent inner lid.

  "The lids are far enough away from the eyeballs to form a sort of goggle," Toyce said.

  She also reported that the Webnite's nostrils could be closed tightly. She had no external ears, and this added to the weirdness of her appearance.

  "See, she has a pouch -- much like a kangaroo's," Toyce said. "She may be of a species that's regressed, anatomically speaking, gone back to the sea. But a reversion to marsupialism? Doesn't seem likely."

  She forced her hand into the tight opening, looked startled, and withdrew it. She opened her fist.

  The three flat objects were no longer than Toyce's thumb and seemed to be greenish soapy stones. One formed a circle; the second, a square; the third, a triangle. All had circular holes about three centimeters wide in their centers.

  "What the hell?" Toyce said.

  "Put them back," Ramstan said. "They're her personal property. Notify me as soon as she regains consciousness -- if she does."

  Al-Buraq moved into a landing orbit for Walisk. Toyce reported that the labtech computer was making artificial blood for the Webnite, and transfusion should be started in several hours. She had uttered a number of words even though unconscious. Toyce had never heard the language before. But hadn't Pegasus been on Webn? Might not Branwen Davis know some Webnian?

  Ramstan called sickbay. Davis said that she could carry on a limited conversation in Webnian.

  "I doubt we'll be getting into science or philosophy," Ramstan said. "Stand by."

  Her green eyes widened, and it was not until after her image faded that he realized why. She had been hurt by his sarcasm. He cursed himself and then wondered why he had spoken so. Was it a defense of some sort? Why did he need a defense?

  He did not have long to think about that nor would he, he realized later, have done so even if he had had time. His attention was needed for something much more pressing than delving into his psyche. Al-Buraq was close enough to the planet Walisk for visual, thermal, radioactive, and raser observations. The entire planet, from pole to pole, was under black clouds which were mainly carbon-derived smoke.

  The smoke came from vast fires raging over thousands of large areas.

  "My God!" Nuoli said. "What could have caused that?"

  It was not from atomic warfare. The radioactive readings testified to that.

  The chief geologist reported detection of an unusual number of active volcanoes on both sea and land.

  "Twenty-four thousand. The dust from them alone is enough to cover the planet for many years. By the time the dust settles, most if not all the plant life will have died. As for the life that depended upon the plants . . ."

  The chief meteorologist reported atmospheric disturbances that could not be explained by the flrestorms and volcanoes.

  "Something has pulled the atmosphere up into space in the recent past. There are too many traces of atmospheric gases above the normal upper boundary. And there's a phenomenon I've never heard of before. I don't know what caused it, but there's a -- how shall I put it? -- an oscillatory humping of the air. As if it's still reverberating, reacting to a tidal effect. Let me call you back on that. I'm just giving you my first impressions. I need more data and more time to put them into the computers."

  A little while later, the chief geologist reported again.

  "Something has made Walisk a hotbed of earthquakes. We're detecting thousands of temblors on land and the sea bottoms. I'd estimate that there are fifty thousand macroseisms occurring at this moment. They're all equal to or exceeding 12 on the Neo-Mercalli scale.

  "Also, it's evident that colossal tidal waves have inundated the coastal areas and still haven't subsided. These can't be accounted for only by the seismic activity, immense though these are. Walisk has no moon, as you know, sir, but I'd say that the quakes and the tidal waves and the atmospheric tides could have been caused if, say, Walisk did have a moon the mass of Earth's and it suddenly changed its orbit to one not very far above the exosphere. Anywhere between 10,000 and 50,000 kilometers above the planet's surface. Of course, that's only a fantasy speculation. I won't be bound by that statement."

  "Of course not, Doctor," Ramstan said. "Thank you."

  Al-Buraq orbited Walisk in a descending spiral, repeatedly crossing all of the four continents, each having approximately the surface area of Africa though not its shape. The readings indicated that the smoke and volcanic dust were so thick that little if any multicellular life survived. Ramstan doubted that much had survived the quakes, tidal waves, and firestorms before the clouds began spreading over the planet.

  Two of the continents were on the equatorial line. Their interiors were masses of firestorms so bright that they could be seen through the clouds. Here and there were darker areas which the scientists said were the results of heavy rains. The fires had been put out there, but the bordering regions were so hot that the moisture would quickly be dried up and the vegetation reignited.

  "There were vast rain forests there," Toyce said. "Much like those in Africa and southeast Asia before they were cleared and became deserts."

  Ramstan decided to investigate at close range one of the continents in the southern hemisphere. It had a great interior desert but had been heavily populated on the coastlines. Though the fires were still raging along the shores, extending sometimes to 300 kilometers into the interior, there were temporarily extinguished areas. The clouds had moved in from outlying areas, carried by the very strong winds, but spacesuited personnel could fly in jeeps a few meters above the still-quaking ground.

  Al-Buraq poised above an area where rain was falling heavily. The stony desert was only 10 kilometers to the north, but ruins of buildings indicated that the region directly beneath ship had once been thickly populated. Not that there were many objects detectible by the probers. Most of the wooden materials and trees and bushes had been burned entirely and their ashes swept away by the winds and rains. If there were any bones left of the sentient and animal inhabitants, they could not be detected by the probers.

  The chief meteorologist reported again.

  "The winds have a velocity of 150 kilometers per hour. They're mild, though, compared to the winds in the northern area."

  Ramstan knew this because he could read the indicators on the tec-op panels. He thanked the scientist, anyway. What interested him was the detection by the fine-discriminator probers of thousands of golfball-shaped and -sized objects on the ground or half-buried in the mud. He ordered that the investigators in the jeeps secure some of these. Then, impatient, he commanded al-Buraq to get close enough to the surface to extend a suction pseudopod and bring in some specimens immediately.

  While waiting, he ordered a launch sent to the northern shoreline to determine if there were similar objects there. "And if you find them, proceed to the continent above this in the northern hemisphere and look for them there."

  Al-Buraq headed into the wind at 5 kph. It was not easy for her to scoop in the spheres. The ground was subject to shock after shock, many strong enough to toss the spheres a meter into the air. A few times, fissures opened, and the spheres fell into them. Al-Buraq did not try to obtain these. If she had inserted her pseudopod into the fissu
re, she might have been trapped if the fissure closed.

  At another order, ship brought in some pieces of what had been stone columns and some twisted and dented steel beams.

  The chemicophysical laboratory reported that there were many smaller spheres in the mud which had been carried in. These had a diameter of three millimeters.

  Al-Buraq continued sampling, and she began to trace a spiral path over a twenty-square-kilometer area.

  The launch left ship with two pilots and six scientists aboard. It shot northward at 300 kph, its probers scanning the area for 100 kilometers on both sides.

  The laboratory chief reported again.

  "The larger spheres have a diameter of four centimeters. Each weighs one kilogram. Each has a shell of nickel-iron five millimeters thick. That's estimated, since the shell has been partially melted and some of the nickel-iron has evaporated. Burned off. The core is some black, unknown substance, though it looks like metal. It can't be X-rayed. It's unaffected by the strongest acid. It won't bend or break under a pressure of 500,000 tons per square millimeter, and that's the greatest force we have. It won't melt at 100,000 K. It resists the most powerful laser -- so far, anyway.

  "The smaller spheres are of the same substance or seem to be. They only lack the nickel-iron shell of the larger. They've been subjected to the same tests with the same results."

  Wendell Tong shook his head. "I've never seen or heard of anything like it."

  The screen split into three sections, and the heads of the chief geologist and the chief astrophysicist appeared by Tong's.

  "We've been listening in," the geologist said. "May I ask a question?"

  Ramstan gave his permission. However, the question was not directed at him but at Tong.

  "You say that the nickel-iron shells were partially melted. I doubt that the firestorm could account for that. Wouldn't you say that the melting could only have come from great velocity through the atmosphere? That these spheres are, in effect, meteorites of some sort?"

  Tong nodded. "Yes, I'd say so. I'm not competent . . ."

  "It's a matter of common sense, of logic," the geologist said. "Only . . . damn! . . . whoever heard of meteorites like this?"

  Ramstan said, "The hot nickel-iron shells could have started the worldwide fires, right?"

  "That's the only explanation we have at the moment."

  Two days later, al-Buraq left, the jeeps having returned the day before. The launch was over the northern continent now and sending in reports. Al-Buraq proceeded to the western coast of the southern-hemisphere continent, spiraled over a hundred-square- kilometer area, then flew to one of the continents in the equatorial region. Another launch was sent to the third continent. After a six-day sampling of the second continent, al-Buraq plunged into the ocean and spiraled over the bottom. When she emerged five days later, she went to the fourth continent. At the end of the sampling there, she was joined by the two launches.

  The results of the investigation were both puzzling and mind-numbing.

  The spheres were undoubtedly of meteoritic origin or, it would be more accurate to say, they had been launched at high velocity from outside the atmosphere. Both the large and small spheres had been found embedded in trees that had not entirely burned and even in stones and steel beams. They were everywhere from pole to pole. Whatever had shot them had covered the planet by making many orbital sweeps and by missing neither land nor sea.

  Walisk was slightly larger than Earth though of less density. Its surface area was approximately 518,000,000 square kilometers. Estimates based on the samplings indicated that approximately one of the larger spheres and twenty of the smaller had struck every square meter. Or they had been intended to do so, but atmospheric and oceanic variations in density and current had resulted in variations in the number of meteorites or missiles per square meter.

  "Five hundred and eighteen billion of the large spheres," Tenno had whispered when he heard the report. "Ten trillion, three hundred and sixty billion of the smaller."

  Each of the smaller weighed 50 grams. Twenty together weighed 1,000 grams or one kilogram. This suggested that the large spheres had hollow centers.

  The total mass of the missiles was an estimated 1,026,000,000,000 kilograms.

  "No spaceship would be large enough or have power enough to deliver and launch such a mass. She'd have to be as large as . . . what? . . . the Earth? Larger? Let's get a computer readout."

  "An object with that mass and coming so close to Walisk would cause cataclysmic earthquakes and tidal waves," Ramstan said. "But . . . you're right, Tenno. It couldn't be a spaceship or even a fleet. Unconceivable. Anyway, if the thing or things were directed by Intelligence . . . what sentient would use such inefficient means as the spheres to kill life? Neutron bombs would be far superior. What good would this destruction be for war-makers? Unless they were so vicious that they wanted only total destruction. I can't believe that."

  "The bolg kills all but one. God is sick. Unbreakable flames fall from the black sky. . . All die. Where to go?"

  ... 9 ...

  Al-Buraq was in orbit over Walisk and awaiting orders from Ramstan for the next destination. He was wondering where this would be when he got a call from Doctor Hu.

  "The Webnite is well enough to talk for a while. She wants to talk to you. Lieutenant Davis will interpret."

  Ramstan thanked her and said that he would be in the sickbay as soon as he could get there.

  "Does that mean right away, sir?" she said.

  "Of course!" Ramstan said. "What the hell did you think I meant?"

  Hu's face became rigid, but she said nothing. Ramstan regretted having blazed out at her. His nerves were crawling like a mess of worms. He had to get better control of himself. Walisk . . . the glyfa's continued refusal to answer him. . . . the Tenolt . . . everything. . . . They were conspiring to crush him.

  He walked out of his quarters shaking his head. Conspiring was not the correct word. It sounded as if he were becoming paranoiac.

  He concentrated on the Webnite. She might be able to tell him something of what had happened, though if she had been in the self-contained chamber when the Raushghol ship was attacked, she might know very little. It was luck that Davis was aboard, since she was the only one who could speak Webnian. Al-Buraq had not been to Webn but Pegasus had. During her six-month stay there, Davis, as a marine biologist, had been in intimate contact with some of the native scientists and had taken the opportunity to master as much of the language as she could. She also knew the coordinates for navigation to Webn, or at least had enough data so that al-Buraq's astrogators could extrapolate the rest needed. In fact, if it were not for Davis, there would have been no way to get to Webn except by going to Raushghol and getting the data from its alaraf navy.

  The Webnite and Davis were in the same sickbay. The Earth-woman was there for two reasons. One, to interpret if the Webnite should recover enough to talk. Two, she still had a fever, the cause of which was unknown. She had been probed by machines and had conducted a self-probing, but the fever continued to keep her body temperature above normal. Hu had told Ramstan that she suspected the fever was psychosomatic. It did not seem to be infectious or contagious, and there was no valid reason to isolate her. That had been determined within three hours after she had entered al-Buraq.

  Ramstan entered the sickbay. The Webnite was floating in a large plastic tank. A technician-nurse, Hu, and Toyce were also there. Branwen sat in a chair by the tank. Her left hand was enfolded in the huge webbed hand of the Webnite. The creature watched Ramstan with large, soft, dark eyes.

  "We're ready to record," Hu said. "But I'll be watching to make sure she doesn't tire herself out."

  Ramstan bowed to the creature, hoping that she would understand that it was a gesture of respect. Davis spoke to her in a language with many sibilants and stops. She then said, "I explained what your bowing meant."