The Unreasoning Mask

  He paced back and forth, knowing that he had to act very soon. Branwen, smiling strangely, spoke.

  "I'm very passionate, but I've been without sex since I was first captured by the Tenolt. The friction of anything in my vagina would set off the explosive. That's why I turned you down when . . ."

  He whirled and said, savagely, "This is no time to talk about such trivialities!"

  "Trivial! I can't ever go to bed with a man again! There's no way the section can be removed!"

  "There are other forms of sexual intercourse."

  "Spontaneous sex means spontaneous combustion," she said, and she giggled.

  "For the sake of Allah!" he roared in Arabic. Then, in Terrish, "Must I throw you out? Be quiet! Let me think!"

  "I've been through a lot," she said. "But I'm not cracking up . . . I don't think."

  He and Indra could not be the only ones who knew about the affection circuit. One of the bioengineers would think of it soon, if he or she had not already done so, and he would notify Benagur. The engineers would cut the circuit off from the rest of the neural system. How long would they take? They could not go in ripping and tearing; brutal surgery might damage al-Buraq's brain.

  A bulkhead screen pulsated orange, then showed the glyfa momentarily bathed in light. It was in the safe now.

  Ramstan removed it and placed it on a table formed by ship. Branwen's eyes became large, and she left her chair to walk to a bulkhead which was as far as she could get from the glyfa.

  "Speak!" Ramstan cried. "I need you!"

  Silence.

  "Damn you!"

  His fist struck the table top. Al-Buraq quivered.

  Ramstan shouted out orders to ship. Immediately, every screen throughout it, except those connected to the exterior-detection system and those in Ramstan's quarters, showed him throughout the vessel. He saw Benagur start when most of the screens on the bridge displayed the prisoner's face and shoulders. Benagur's face paled as if touched with frost when he realized that the room behind Ramstan was not the brig but the captain's quarters. Then Ramstan stepped aside briefly so that the glyfa was visible. He could almost hear Benagur's blood draining from his head.

  "Yes, I have complete control of ship," Ramstan said. "And you, all of you, are going to listen to me whether you want to or not. I don't know if you'll believe what I have to say. I hope you will. If you don't, if you reject my testimony, then you will put Earth in even graver peril than she is in now. You'll put the universe, all of the universes, in . . . you'll doom them!"

  "He's insane!" Benagur shouted. "Don't listen to him! Tenno, get marines down to the prisoner's quarters and blast through the iris! If Ramstan resists, kill him!"

  "They won't get near me," Ramstan said. "Ship will capture them. And if they do get off some shots, they're likely to injure ship. You can't take that chance, Benagur. Not when the Tenolt may show up any moment now."

  "Tenno, you have your orders!"

  Ramstan bellowed, "Tenno, don't carry them out! Don't even try to! Anyone who makes a hostile move will be enfolded! And you, Benagur, if you don't stop talking and start listening, you'll be wrapped up in a deck-extension, wrapped like a mummy."

  Benagur took a deep breath and shut his eyes. When he opened his eyes, he said, quietly, "Very well, traitor. We'll listen because we have to."

  "There's no need for insults, even if they should be justified," Ramstan said. "First, though, you have to know about Lieutenant Branwen Davis, formerly of Pegasus. That violent sidewise movement of ship was ordered by me so that she could capture the Tenolt launch and rescue Davis."

  He described how Davis had been forced by the Tenolt to steal the glyfa. And he explained what might happen if the Popacapyu got close enough to transmit a radio signal to the artificial flesh-explosive mixture in her.

  "She has no idea what the energy potential in the explosive is. If set off, it might blow her to pieces and those very near her. Or it might destroy ship and all in her, of course. That's one more reason why we must play hide-and-seek with the Popacapyu or find some means of destroying her before the signal is used."

  He paused and then said, "I hope no one will be cowardly enough to suggest that Davis be gotten off ship at the first opportunity."

  Tenno said, "But . . . but all we have to do is to put her in a room with radiation shielding."

  Ramstan smiled grimly. "That's an obvious idea. I told Davis the same thing, though I suspected that there had to be a reason why she hadn't confessed everything and then taken refuge behind shielding. It's because . . . or at least the Tenolt told her this and it may not be true . . . the transplanted section contains more than explosive. It also has a time bomb, a biological fuse, a fleshly clock, which is set to go off at a certain time and trigger the explosive.

  "Davis wasn't told when the clock would strike. All she knew was that the Tenolt had allowed her an unspecified time. If she did not have the glyfa back in their hands by then, she would blow up. The biological clock, however, could be forever stopped by a certain frequency transmitted by the Tenolt. That would be done as soon as she got the glyfa in their hands. By that, I suppose that they meant inside their ship."

  Benagur opened his mouth, then closed it. Nuoli said, "Either way, she'll be killed!"

  "Perhaps," Ramstan said. "We don't know if the Tenolt were lying about that. But we can't take a chance."

  "Poor Branwen," Nuoli said softly.

  "She wouldn't be in this horrible situation if you hadn't stolen the glyfa!" Benagur bellowed. "None of us would be!"

  "True," Ramstan said coolly. He gave the order, and the deck swelled up all around Benagur and enfolded him tightly. Only his head from the nose up was visible. That was very red, and his eyes were rolling like ball bearings about to tear loose.

  "Tenno, I'm going to let a marine come down here," Ramstan said. "But only if the marine is unarmed. The marine will escort Lieutenant Davis to a launch. A technical force will prepare shielding for the launch. The launch will be the one that has alaraf drive. When this is completed, by that I mean so that no radio signal can penetrate it, Lieutenant Davis will be put in it. The launch will be programmed to accompany al-Buraq at a distance of two kilometers. No, make that three. I don't know how powerful the explosive is. The program will automatically direct the launch to keep pace with ship at this distance. When we go to another bell, the launch will go also. Lieutenant Davis will be given enough life support for four weeks of ship's time. Is that clear?"

  Ramstan's words had been recorded, and, if Tenno was uncertain about their meaning, he could play back the recording. He said, "Aye, aye, sir. Clear."

  Ramstan felt relief. One more crisis gotten through. He had not known if Tenno would disobey him because he thought that Benagur had to be, according to regulations, still in command. But Tenno could not be trusted. He might be going along with his former captain because there was nothing else he could do at the moment. For the moment, he was obeying, and that was what Ramstan wanted.

  Davis said, "You're really doing this to me?"

  He turned. "Listen, Branwen, I don't like it. But it's absolutely necessary. I'd be justified if I had you ejected into space. You're a very real danger, and there are events . . . things . . . which you don't know about. These make your situation very insignificant . . . unimportant . . . comparatively speaking. I'm extending myself . . . I shouldn't even be doing this for you . . ."

  "They're right!" she cried. "They're right!"

  He did not ask her what she meant by that. He supposed that she was referring to what the other women had told her about him. She was wrong, though, in assuming that this situation had anything to do with his relations with the crewwomen. If she were not so frightened, she would understand that he had to do this for the preservation of ship and her crew. And for even larger matters. Much much larger.

  He told her that she should leave his quarters now and go to meet the marine.

  "I can't wait until he gets here. There may be lit
tle time left. But you can hear what I have to say in ship and the launch. It'll clarify this business for you."

  Or perhaps make her even more confused, he thought.

  She turned her head to glare as she walked by him toward the iris.

  He said, "After all, I did save your life, and I'm doing all I can to keep you safe. It's much better to be by yourself, no matter how lonely you are for a while, than to be blown up. And I do have to consider the safety of ship first."

  "Now you do," she said. "What about then?"

  He did not reply. He assured the tec-op and cam-op that the order for silence while he talked did not apply to them if the detectors picked up anything that might be dangerous.

  ... 24 ...

  "First, I must tell you what happened when Commodore Benagur, Lieutenant Nuoli, and I went to the temple of the glyfa. I must because you cannot understand the events following unless you know what impact this had on us three. Especially, on me."

  He paused. And the glyfa spoke.

  "Ramstan, tell me what's been happening since I last talked to you and what is happening now."

  This time it was using his father's voice.

  He started, and he came close to choking.

  "Officers and crew! Just a minute!"

  He turned, though it was not necessary to do so, to speak to the glyfa. Human beings, all sentients he'd met, felt that looking at the face of the one they were talking to ensured a fuller communication and a deeper trust in whatever that one was saying. The face expressed the soul, the consciousness, the sincerity. The speaker could be judged by his, her, or its expression. But the egg-shape was unchangeably fixed; no play of emotions crossed its surface, no ripple of face, no bodily movements, only the voice itself was the index of truth or falsehood. And that voice was changing and could be his mother's or father's or anyone he knew. It was like talking over an ancient telephone or radio transceiver which lacked the image of the one you were talking to.

  Also, what the Vwoordha had told him about it when he was in their house weighed heavily on him. The atmosphere seemed to thicken, to become layers on layers of glue-impregnated paper, layers rising to unimaginable heights, a crushing weight. He was pressed down as if a building had fallen down on him, and he felt as if the building was something unknown before. One which towered up, up, up past the boundaries of air and Space.

  Boundaries.

  The word flashed like a meteorite over the fields of his mind.

  "Glyfa! I've been trying for a long time to get you to talk to me. But you didn't reply."

  "I was thinking."

  "You may have been," Ramstan said. "But you were also not receptive to anything outside yourself. You were recharging your . . . battery? . . . fuel? . . . self? You didn't answer me because you couldn't hear me."

  "The Vwoordha told you this."

  "Yes. They told me that you had periods of unwilling withdrawal. That you have to depend upon a fuel source, like all life, to keep alive, if alive is the correct term. When your source of energy is not equal to your demands on it, you must rest and draw in the energy before you. . . ."

  "So. They told you. I expected that they would. I have a very small surface area. Though I operate on a 67-percent economy, which is more efficient than anything or anyone else in this cosmos, excluding one, I have to go through periods of . . . hibernation . . . suspended animation . . . no, you'd understand the analogy to a recharging battery best."

  "But you have a wide range of energy sources," Ramstan said. "Electricity, X-rays, gravitons, even antigravitons, photons, antiphotons. There's no reason why you should recharge so often. Especially when there's an energy source on ship and I could connect you to it."

  He paused, then said, "No. I'm wrong. The bioengineers would note any unexplainable consumption of power. They'd track It down."

  He still did not believe that a forced quiescence during recharging accounted for all or even half of the glyfds silence. Most, if not all, of the time it had failed to respond to him, it had done so for reasons only it knew.

  It was trying to nudge him here and there with both its silences and its enigmatic revelations.

  The Vwoordha were pushing him towards their goal, too. When the glyfa nudged, they counternudged. And vice versa. Or were the Vwoordha and the glyfa just pretending to be opponents?

  "You know two of my limitations," the glyfa said. "Did the Vwoordha tell you about the third?"

  "Yes."

  "I know when you're lying. You're lying now."

  "Then I won't lie to you from now on," Ramstan said. "Maybe. I don't know that you can tell when I'm lying. My truth may not be yours."

  "Sly, sly. Always considering all the variables -- as you can see them. See. Why must you sentients use this term? There are so many things that you can't see but can still sense otherwise. Even without light, you can see. Within limits."

  "All senses have limits," Ramstan said. "Except one. And even that . . ."

  "You must have had a long talk with the Vwoordha. But it could not have been long enough. However, they did tell you of my restrictions. I am dependent on other sentients for mobility, and I am dependent on my energy source, like all of my kind. Though it may surprise and even repulse you, I am of your kind, though I am artificial"

  "What . . . who . . . was your model?"

  "None! Or perhaps a thousand were my model. Whatever the sources of my creators . . . the models . . . the end result was unique. Just as you, the result of a hundred million models . . . are unique."

  "Uniqueness does not necessarily mean anything more than mediocrity . . . even idiocy . . . a pale similitude of humanity," Ramstan said. "Listen! This is getting us nowhere. Let me tell you what I've been doing since you withdrew to . . . recharge. I'll have to go fast. The crew is waiting for me. They must be wondering what the hell's going on, why I should have started to tell them everything."

  "Everything?"

  Ramstan felt his skin warming. He realized that the glyfa was, in some ways, just like him. It questioned the inexact use of a word or term; it liked to demonstrate that the other did not know exactly what he, she, or it was saying. Was this characteristic a means for putting down the other and so showing his own superiority? Or was it his personal requirement, quite justified, for the precise use of a word? Or both?

  It might even be that the glyfa was not like him. It might be subtly mocking him. It might be that it knew that no sentient could ever use a word in the dictionary sense, the objective sense, that every sentient had his own personal, unique language.

  Ancient as it was, the glyfa could not use language as he, Ramstan, so impermanent, so time-bound, so mayflyish, used it.

  "Within your limits . . . and mine . . . even mine... everything," the glyfa said.

  "I haven't time," Ramstan said.

  "Tiiiiimmmme." The word murmured, swelled, leaped up, like a surf wave striking a cliff, and receded. Now the speaker was Ramstan's uncle, the one who'd taught him "squirrel talk," the queerly inconsistent philosophical and humorous uncle. The uncle long-dead who still lived in his mind and had been resurrected by the glyfa.

  "No, I don't have time!" Ramstan shouted. "Listen while I tell the others!"

  "Others! Others! Others!" echoed and then faded away.

  Ramstan turned from the glyfa and spoke again to the crow.

  "When I went into the Tolt temple with Benagur and Nuoli, I, too, experienced something phenomenal. Numinous. The very nature of the experience, if reported, would have made you doubt my sanity. I was flooded with light, just as Benagur and Nuoli were. Not photonic light. It was a light such as few have ever seen."