The Unreasoning Mask

by Philip José Farmer

  Despite his smile, he felt ice sinking through him from the top of his head toward his toes. It was, in a sense, lust. And he had no idea why he should have been seized with it. Nor how Benagur had stumbled over and on that description. Perhaps. . . Benagur himself had felt the lust.

  Benagur said, "The glyfa must have made you lust for it!"

  "It's just an artifact," Ramstan said. "Are you saying it's alive? A true god? A living idol? Who's crazy, Benagur? You or me?"

  "I felt something there!" Benagur cried. "I felt a vast, an overwhelming evil! I knew where it came from! It came from the glyfa! And, yes, I'll admit it, Ramstan, since I am only human and so subject to temptation! I was tempted to succumb to the evil! But it was God who saved me, who showed me the ineffable Good, His true Nature! He stepped in, and He gave me a glimpse of Him, of His face, and so saved me!"

  Perhaps we're both insane, Ramstan thought.

  It was then that he got the first faint thought that he and Benagur might not be standing on the seashore of the world of Webn. Not in reality. They just thought they were there. They seemed to be there. Where were they, in actuality?

  He got a flash of where they might be, and he just as quickly rejected the image.

  He shook his head and then rolled it as if he were trying to dislodge some thing clinging to it, a giant louse, perhaps. Some filthy and blood-sucking thing.

  "We have nothing more to say to each other," Ramstan said. "Not here, anyway."

  He strode off though he was not sure that he should turn his back on Benagur. The man was no coward, far from it, but he might be overcome by his fury and jump on his captain from behind. Ramstan refused to look behind him. He did not wish Benagur to think that he feared him.

  After cutting through a forest which covered the neck of the peninsula like a ruff, he came onto the seashore again. Half a kilometer inland, mighty al-Buraq stretched out across a clearing.

  Chief Engineer Indra, nude, was sitting on a floating chair in the sun. On an extended arm of the chair was a half-full bottle of Kalafalan wine. In his hands was a book, a square plate half a meter wide and a centimeter thick. Ramstan paused behind Indra to read the phonemic-character words appearing and disappearing swiftly one by one. Indra did not have to move his eyes from side to side or down. It was The Maltese Falcon, a classical twentieth-century American novel translated into Terrish.

  Indra felt Ramstan's body between him and the sun. He touched a control on the side of the book, and the text stopped moving. He twisted around; his teeth shone whitely in his dark face.

  "Captain! I was hoping I'd catch you."

  Ramstan came around the chair.

  "Why?"

  Indra stood up, the book held between two fingers.

  "You'll remember that I told you some time ago that ship was growing a new circuit."

  "Yes."

  "I've just determined what it is."

  Ramstan said, "I know what it is. It's an affection circuit. One that has an affection configuration, anyway."

  "You know!"

  "I'm not a bioengineer, but I know more about ship than anyone else."

  Indra said, "How do you feel about it? I mean . . . do you respond to its affection with your affection? With love?"

  "To be loved isn't always the same as to love," Ramstan said stonily. "We don't have time for experiments. There's that . . ." He pointed at the sky. "I don't want to worry about ship getting hysterical or panicky if she thinks I'm in danger."

  "She's not a dog," Indra said, "though she may have developed some doglike attitudes. I could find out just what effect the affection configuration has on her gestalt. But it'll take time."

  Ramstan said, "Excise the circuit."

  Indra frowned and bit his lip.

  "That's an order, not a suggestion. Operate now !"

  "Aye, aye, sir!" Indra said. He snapped a salute and stalked off. Ramstan watched him for a minute, then started toward the vessel. He stopped when he saw Branwen Davis. She was so beautiful that his heart seemed to ache.

  He hailed her and then asked her about her health, though he'd seen the medical report on her that morning.

  "I feel fine," she said. "The fever has gone as suddenly as it came, and the doctors don't know where it came from, what caused it, or where it went."

  "Let's hope it doesn't return," he said. He paused, balled up what little courage he had, and used it all up in one sentence.

  "Would you care to dine in my cabin tonight?"

  She smiled, but she said, "No, but thank you for the honor, sir."

  He was shocked. He had not really expected her to turn him down. No woman ever had.

  Though he'd thought his face was expressionless, he must have shown something somehow. She said, "I'm sorry. I don't mean to offend you, Captain. But I've talked to some women . . ."

  "What does that matter? You're not one of them. You're different."

  "They all said that they were in love with you and that you were in love with them. At least, you told them you were. But after a while, a short while, they said, you became very cold and then downright nasty."

  "I was never nasty!" he said. "They lied!"

  If she had been anyone else, he would not have deigned to discuss the matter. He despised himself for humbling himself like this.

  "All of them?" she said. "Well, I won't argue. Anyway," she touched his arm with a finger and held it there, "I'm not rejecting you, you know. I'm just rejecting your invitation to dinner. I'm not ready to go to bed with you, and I may never be. But I don't dislike you."

  "You don't like me, either," he said. He was astonished; someone else must have said that.

  "Some people are very warm and, so, likeable," Branwen said. "You're not warm."

  "I'm the captain of ship," he said.

  "And so proud and lonely," she said, and she laughed. "No, you've got it the wrong way. You'd be aloof and lonely if you were the cabin boy. Captain Irion was a very good commander, but still there was something about her that made people love her." She paused.

  "You're angry," she said. She withdrew her finger from his arm and he had a flash of image, a wound made by the finger, now closing up, the blood evaporating, and ice forming over the scar.

  "Yes, I am," he said. "But not at you. Other things . . ."

  He almost believed that he was not lying.

  "I'll see you," he said, and strode away.

  Ramstan went to his quarters and called the bridge. Overlieutenant Ozma Garrick responded.

  "I want Commodore Benagur arrested. He is to be put in his cabin, not the brig, and he is to stay there until Doctor Hu has examined him. Notify me as soon as he's quartered."

  Garrick looked as if she'd like to ask him the reason for the order, but she didn't, of course. Ramstan then called Indra.

  "Have you started yet on the circuit?"

  "I haven't started operating."

  "The order is canceled. Hold yourself ready to resume operating, though."

  The Hindu smiled but said nothing.

  Ramstan was glad that Indra had not questioned him. He himself didn't know why he'd put off the operation.

  He sat down and drummed the fingers of his left hand on his thigh. Then he called the bridge.

  "Garrick, resume signaling to the Tolt ship. If you get an answer, notify me at once."

  Garrick's face faded from the octant. Ramstan sat motionless -- even his fingers were unmoving -- for a few minutes. Then, sighing, he heaved himself up and walked to the bulkhead. Shortly thereafter, he placed the glyfa on a table. He ran his fingers over the surface and marveled again at how some dead-for-eons artist had sculpted it so intricately and wonderfully and deep, and yet it was so smooth.

  He spoke to himself out loud. "If only I knew what the Tenolt were up to!"

  The voice that answered him turned him around, his eyes wide, his skin paling, his heart threatening to burst. But he was the only human in the room.

  "Allah!"

  He s
poke a few more words in Arabic, most of which were curses.

  The voice had said or seemed to have said, "They know you stole me. But they don't want to attack while you're in ship. Above all, they want to get me back into their hands."

  Now it said, "I should have warned you."

  Ramstan leaned on the table while he gripped its edges. His heart began to slow down, but he could only speak in gasps at first.

  "Why . . . do you use . . . Branwen Davis's voice?"

  Only then did it strike him that the glyfa was reading his mind. He was outraged. No one or no thing should be permitted that violation.

  "No, I don't read your mind, and I can't," the glyfa said in the voice of Khadija, his mother.

  "If you can't . . . then . . . how did you know . . . what I was thinking?"

  "I knew that you would have thought that I was," the voice said.

  Ramstan had not wept for years. Now tears rolled down his cheeks.

  "Please don't use her voice," he said.

  "Very well. How's this?"

  Benagur's voice boomed.

  "No!"

  "I'll speak to you as your mother, then."

  "No!"

  "You'll get used to it, and eventually you'll love it. I think you've been carrying your grief too long, even if you didn't know you had it buried so deeply."

  "It makes me feel as if she's speaking from the grave," Ramstan said. "Or. . . as if you're her tomb, and she's talking to me from it."

  "In a sense, she is," the glyfa said.

  Ramstan asked it to explain the remark, but the glyfa ignored his question. It said, "You'll like to hear her. You've been using your quarters as a sort of womb in which you can take refuge. Now, hearing her here, you will be even more in the womb. That isn't a good thing, perhaps. But you seem to need it."

  "If you can't read my mind, then how do you know so much about Davis and Benagur and only Allah knows who else?"

  "I can detect vibrations and see objects at a distance," his mother's voice said. "I can detect electrical and electronic phenomena. I can detect other things, too."

  "You can see and hear things outside this cabin?"

  "Yes. Of course."

  "How far?"

  "Quite far."

  "You won't tell me the exact distance?"

  "I have my reasons not to."

  "Could you tell the captain of the Popacapyu to go away and leave us alone?"

  The glyfa did not answer.

  Ramstan said, "It's obvious that you can't."

  "Or that I may have some reason not to wish to."

  "It's also obvious," Ramstan said, "that you can influence electricity at a distance. How do you do that?"

  "The explanation would be meaningless to you."

  "But you have to find the right words in my memory bank, put them together in Arabic or Terrish syntax, modulate them, get the right intonations, stresses, and so on. And when you use my mother's voice, evoke it. I mean, you use some words that my mother never heard nor read. Also, you must originate your transmissions of language in your own language. How do you manage the translation? I mean, even if you're transmitting your voice to me in some manner or some sort of coded signals or whatever, they wouldn't mean anything to me if I heard them directly. Via vibration of air through my eardrums, I mean. So . . ."

  "It must be enough for you that I can do this," the glyfa said. "Now. To your original question to yourself. What are the Tenolt up to? They wish to get me back, and they're not going to use violence and so take a chance of losing me unless desperation drives them to it. Also, for all they know, you may have hidden me elsewhere than in al-Buraq. On Kalafala or Walisk, perhaps, or even on Webn. Though they would have seen you do that unless you somehow tricked them.

  "Also, I am their god. It frightens and puzzles them that I permitted you to take me. Or, perhaps, and this must deeply disturb them, that perhaps you, Ramstan, were able to steal me because you might be more powerful than I. I doubt, though, that anyone on their vessel has dared voice that thought. It would go very hard with anyone who did, even their high priest."

  A whistle shrilled. Ramstan was startled, but he spoke a few words to cut off video on his end of the line. Garrick's face appeared in an octant.

  "Commodore Benagur has been arrested and confined to his quarters, sir. Doctor Hu is en route to examine the commodore, as you ordered."

  "Thank you, Lieutenant," Ramstan said, and he cut off the transmission.

  The glyfa said, "Poor Benagur. He's a mystic, and, in his search for the ineffable, be has caught a glimpse of it. Or is the rag of glory worn by something else? The Opponent, for instance? Would not the Opponent have a glory of his own, and would it not be difficult to distinguish his glory from the true glory?"

  "You seem amused," Ramstan said.

  Though he did not like Benagur, he felt sorry for him at this moment. Perhaps that was because he felt sorry for himself, too. Rather, he felt confused and, because of this confusion, helpless. He loathed that feeling and despised himself for it. He could make his way against all obstacles. At least, until recently, he had thought so. Now . . . he was not so sure.

  He had to ask the glyfa some questions, yet he hated doing it. He should be able to find the answers by himself.

  "What the the bolg?" he said.

  There was a pause as if the glyfa had been taken by surprise. But Ramstan might be misinterpreting the silence.

  "The bolg? the glyfa said. "I haven't heard that name for a long time. A time so long you would be shattered just to contemplate the idea of it."

  "Well?" Ramstan said.

  "It's a name for a chaos-monster. The people who used it have perished long ago. In fact, several . . ."

  Ramstan said, "Several what?"

  "Never mind. Where did you hear it?"

  Ramstan told it what had happened in the Kalafalan tavern. This gave him some satisfaction, despite the reawakening of the bad emotions connected with the incident. The glyfa had not been observing him when he was in the tavern. Was that because it was unable to do so or because it had preferred not to? Or was the glyfa lying for some reason and had known about the tavern incident all along?

  "There are many in this war," the glyfa said. "I knew that long ago, but I still don't know who some of them are. But I have time enough. At least, I hope so."

  "What does that mean?" Ramstan said.

  There was no answer.

  It was evident that the glyfa must know about the destruction of Waliskan life. Ramstan asked it if that had had anything to do with the bolg.

  "As of now, everything in the universes has to do with the bolg," the glyfa said.

  "What do you mean by universes?"