The Unreasoning Mask

by Philip José Farmer

  A section of the lower hull slid open as the covering was lifted. Ramstan walked through the opening onto a collapsible ladder, a series of seven steps, which slid out from the hull. He sank in the growth up to his calves, smelling for the first time a faint odor from it. It reminded him of fermenting grass in a compost heap. He walked through the impeding stuff and up a gentle slope to the house. It seemed to stare back at him without eyes.

  He paused before and below the outward curve of the first story.

  "'Knock at the entrance,'" Wassruss had said.

  What entrance? The house had neither door nor window.

  He did the only thing he could do. He raised his fist and beat on what looked like metal but was warmer than metal would have been in this cold air and felt springy. He could hear no sound from inside the sphere. He had expected a reverberating echo, a booming.

  After striking three times, he waited, his fist upraised for more hammering. Within a few seconds, the seamless wall showed a faint line, round and with a diameter wide enough to easily admit him. He wondered if the door was regulated for the occasion. If he had been much shorter or much taller, would the seam have accommodated his height?

  Instead of a section withdrawing or coming out, a panel swinging one way or the other, the area within the seam became wavy, then misty, then disappeared. He was confronted by a circlar hole.

  If there was a pressure differential, he could hear or feel no air blowing out or in. Beyond the hole was darkness. The light from the plants did not penetrate it. Ramstan shouted in Urzint instead of speaking softly as he had planned to.

  "I am Captain Ramstan of the Terran exploratory interstellar ship, al-Buraq! I come in peace! And I have questions."

  He felt foolish saying this, but what else could he say?

  Immediately following his declaration, he saw, or thought he saw, a dim flash of green in the darkness.

  His heart had been pounding hard before this. Now it accelerated.

  Al-Khidhr?

  Slowly, the darkness faded as light built up, seeming to leak out from every square centimeter of the walls, ceiling, and floor of the huge room. At first, he could not distinguish among the furniture and the three beings standing in the middle of the room. The room was round, and the doorways were seven-sided. The ceiling was a pale white; the walls, pale red; the floor, where not covered by a very thick, white, furry rug, was pale green. There were about a dozen mirrors against the walls or forming part of them. Their bases were set on the floor, and their sides tapered up, making long triangles, curving with the walls, their apexes meeting in the center of the domed ceiling. From this point hung a chain made of thin golden links and ending in an emerald the size of Ramstan's head.

  A little red-furred animal with a long thin snout and great tarsier-like eyes was curled around the jewel. The one red eye that Ramstan could see was directed at him. Ramstan wondered how the creature had gotten to the emerald; it was so high above the floor that the beast could not possibly have jumped to it.

  The furniture was sparse and consisted of fragile-looking chairs and sofas and tables of ornately carved black-and-white striped wood. The legs were very short. Here and there were enormous pillows piled around rugs folded over three times.

  Omitting the front "door," there were three oval entrances to the great chamber, one in front of him and two on each side.

  One of the three beings, the one in green robes, stepped forward. She spoke in Urzint. "Greetings, Ramstan. You've taken a long time getting here."

  The one clad in blue said, "You should have been here much sooner. That is the fault of the glyfa."

  The one in black said, "Ask, but be willing to pay the price."

  ... 20 ...

  Ramstan felt as if his blood had become mercury and was heavily draining into his feet.

  The voice of the green-robed one was the voice he had heard in the Kalafalan tavern.

  "The bolg kills all but one! . . .God is sick . . ."

  She? He? It? Whatever sex the green one was or was not, the voice was hers.

  In that moment, he knew, though he could not rationally justify his knowledge, that the green one was female. And it seemed to him that the others were also female.

  Moreover, he believed that she was the shadowy, briefly seen figure in the hotel and the being who had appeared on Webn while he and Benagur were quarreling.

  Was she also the old person he had seen when he was entering his parents' apartment in New Babylon?

  Encountering these three had been like a tremor before a great earthquake. Hearing her voice was the great earthquake itself. Now, he was seized with aftershocks. He could not stop trembling, and he was afraid that he was going to vomit.

  "You should sit down," the one in green said. Her eyes were large and as green as her robe. Deep wrinkles radiated from them; her face was that of a ten-thousand-year-old mummy. The teeth in the seamed lips were black, though he did not think that they were rotten. She was ugly, yet the hideousness went beyond ugliness. She was also very beautiful, not as a young woman was beautiful, but as an ancient star was beautiful. Something radiated from her, and her eyes seemed to shed kindness. Or compassion.

  Certainly, he had wrongly conceived the green one. Whatever she was, she was not al-Khidhr. His childhood religion had made a certain mold in his mind, a preconception, and her image had been fitted into that mold.

  Again, the green one said, "You should sit down."

  Ramstan looked around. If he did sit, and he needed to do so before he collapsed, he'd have to look up at them. He'd be at a psychological disadvantage. Allah knew that he was weak enough now, that he needed every advantage and strength he could get.

  "No, thank you," he said. Surprisingly, his voice was firm.

  "As you will," the green one said.

  She sat down on a pile of rugs and leaned back against some giant pillows. The others also seated themselves, their legs crossed under their robes. They did not have to care that they must look up at him. Or perhaps they were giving him a chance to rest and to be on the same level at the same time.

  He lowered himself on a pile of rugs and crossed his legs. He said, "Pardon me. I must tell my crew what's happening."

  After speaking briefly into his skinceiver and telling Nuoli that no one must follow him as yet, he waited for a few seconds for his "hosts" to speak. When they did not, he said, "You know who I am. But I don't know . . ."

  "At present," the green-robed one said, "I am called Shiyai."

  The black-robed one cackled, and she said, "At present! She has been Shiyai for a billion of your years, Ramstan!"

  The others broke into high-pitched laughter. When that died, the black-robed one said, "I am called Wopolsa."

  "And I," the blue-robed one said, "am called Grrindah."

  "What we are called and who we are are not the same," Wopolsa said.

  "These are my sisters," Shiyai said, waving a withered, blue-veined, dark-spotted hand. "Sisters in name only, since we do not belong to the same species and were born more years apart than you can imagine, even if you can encompass the time in a phrase."

  "Language is cheap," Wopolsa said. "Time is dear."

  "Yet, waste time as much as you wish, there is always as much as before," Shiyai said.

  "If you are like us," Grrindah said.

  "And one other," Wopolsa said.

  "Or perhaps two others," Shiyai said.

  The three looked at each other and burst into their nerve-rubbing laughter again.

  If they were frying to put him at bin ease, they were falling. His stomach was folding in on itself like a flower at nightfall.

  "What is this planet called?" he said.

  "Grrymguurdha," Shiyai said.

  "At least, that is what it sounds like to us," Wopolsa said. "That is what the tree calls it."

  "The tree?" he said, feeling foolish. Were they playing with him? What would they gain by it?

  "Yes, the tree," Grrindah said. She wave
d a hand. It was webbed between the first joints of the fingers.

  "It need be no riddle or mystery," Wopolsa said. "The trees are one tree, and it is this planet's sole native sentient. We three planted its seed, and we helped it to evolve into sapiency."

  Her face was more deeply hooded than the others. Her eyes were black, and Ramstan could not look long into them, though he tried. He shivered. They reminded him of the eyes of the shimmering thing in the well.

  "We three call ourselves the Vwoordha," Shiyai said. "Though not very often."

  She laughed again. The others smiled, their faces cracking open like defective eggs in boiling water.

  "You have some rather strange pets," he said.

  "Pets?" Grrindah said. The blue eyes regarded him steadily, and, though she had been blinking before, now her eyelids did not move. There was something about those eyes . . . where had he seen them before?

  "In the well."

  "He calls it a well," she said, and all three cackled.

  Ramstan became angry.

  "You're very rude!"

  That made them laugh again. When the shrilling died, Wopolsa said, "We are beyond politeness or rudeness."

  Shiyai said, "You are sweating, but your voice sounds as if your mouth and throat are very dry. I think we could all do with some refreshment before we get away from the small talk. Would you care for some?"

  Ramstan nodded, and he said, "A cool drink would be nice."

  Shiyai clapped her brittle-looking hands, making a brittle noise. The creature coiled around the jewel hanging from the chain straightened out and dropped to the floor. Ramatan started. He had forgotten about it.

  Though it had fallen from a height of at least 20 meters, the animal landed without seeming to hurt itself and ran out of the room through the door on the right. Ramstan was surprised at its size; he had thought it was only a meter long. He was also surprised that it ran on its back legs. He'd assumed from its long body that it was four-footed.

  "I don't know how much I have to explain," Ramstan said. "I mean, who I am and why I'm here. You seem to know . . . I mean, my experiences . . . you've talked to me . . . I've seen you, you, at least . . ." He pointed a finger at Shiyai, then raised his hands, palms upward.

  There was a silence for a few seconds. Then Grrindah said, "We'll wait until Duurowms serves us."

  Ramstan held the skinceiver area close to his mouth and asked in a soft voice for the time. His eyes on the three if they should object to his reporting, he told Nuoli what had happened so far. Her only reaction was to ask if he thought that he was in any danger.

  "I don't think so," he said. "I may be here for a long time. I'll report every fifteen minutes or so. Relay this to ship."

  Nuoli must be wondering why he just did not keep his skinceiver on so that she could listen in. He could not tell her that he could not because the glyfa would probably, no, undoubtedly, be mentioned sooner or later.

  He waited. The three were motionless, free of the fidgeting and eye-rolling, sighing and coughing, twitching and turning that possessed most sentients in similar situations. They looked withdrawn, but he felt that each was not just communing with herself. They could be holding a lively conversation among themselves. Telepathy? The scientists still had neither proved or disproved its existence.

  Presently, and it seemed to be a long time, the creature called Duurowms entered. It carried in its two front paws a large tray with four silvery-looking goblets and a plate with tiny squares of some food. It came to Ramstan first and extended the tray, bowing at the same time. Ramstan looked into its large eyes. The eyeballs were entirely dark-brown, soft, liquidish -- animal eyes. But sentients were animals. And the paws were not paws; they were hands, four humanoid fingers and an opposable thumb.

  The goblets bore figures in both alto- and bas-reief, figures he could identify as animal, bird, fish, reptile, and bipedal and quadrupedal sentients, and things he'd never seen before. But they lasted only a flash to be replaced by other figures, which in turn were replaced. Alto-relief became bas-relief and vice versa.

  Three of them held a blue liquid with a pleasant odor. Odors, rather. They seemed to change as swiftly as the figures on the goblet sides. Perhaps they coincided with the changing figures. He could not say that they did, since the transmutation was confusingly swift. Each odor evoked memories in him, all pleasing. None were ecstatic, just highly gratifying.

  He was a baby, and his mother was nursing him. He was a baby, and his father was bathing him. He was a child in a boat on the Shatt-al-Arab, and his mother and father were teaching him how to fish. He had just mastered the Terrish alphabet; he had just mastered the Arabic alphabet. He had just been informed that he had been accepted as a cadet in the Terran space navy. His uncle had taught him the signals of the squirrels in the great forest just outside New Babylon, and he was "talking" to them. His father and mother were showing him, for the first time, the family genealogy book, and they were telling him the origin of the family name. Originally, it had been Ramstam, brought to the newly built city of New Babylon by a Scot transported to this area by the "hostage" system of the world government. Ramstam, in Scots Gaelic, meant "reckless or stubborn." During the generations after his coming to this land, the Arabic language of New Babylon had changed Ramstam to Ramstan.

  It had also been a pleasure, which his parents for some reason found ecstatic, to discover that he was a descendant of the prophet Muhammad. Certainly, his parents were in a state exceeding pleasure because of this. But he could not attain their emotional heights at the news. Why should he? There were millions all over the world who could claim the same lineage.

  Ramstan tried to ignore the pleasant memories. He looked at the goblet containing a different liquid. This was reddish-brown, and its odor made his nose wrinkle and evoked unpleasant memories. It looked like rapidly oxidizing blood, and its smell verified that impression.

  "Take whichever one you like," Wopolsa said.

  Ramstan looked up from lowered lids at her. She seemed to be smiling, her mouth just a larger wrinkle in a mass of smaller ones. The teeth, unlike Shiyai's black ones, looked red.

  A tremor passed through him, and his stomach, which had been expanding at the pleasing memories, shot back into a contracting ball. And someone was kicking that ball down . . . what field?

  "Take one," Shiyai and Grrindah said at the same time.

  "Only one?" Ramstan said, and he enjoyed the change of expression in the three. He did not know why. Perhaps because he had surprised them, and they were supposed to do the surprising.

  Wopolsa, however, said, "All, if you wish."

  "No, thank you," he said. He gripped the goblet nearest him. He came close to dropping it because the seeming metal gave way under his fingers. If anything, it felt as if it were made of something that was part mercury. It held together, but it yielded. It was part rigid substance, part liquid. When he released two fingers, the indentations filled out.

  This goblet, for some reason, terrified him more than anything that he'd experienced in this house. It told him that he was in the presence of a science far advanced beyond any he had so far met.

  He lifted the goblet but did not drink.

  "After you," he said.

  Duurowms carried the tray to Wopolsa first. Ramstan wondered if this meant that Wopolsa was the leader of the trio? He also noticed for the first time, though he should have seen it before, that the liquid in her goblet gave off a thin steam.