Soong seemed dazed. She said, "Aye, aye, sir!" weakly. Then she said, "But . . . ?"
"Commodore Benagur is dead. I'm in command now. We're going to attack the bolg!"
She turned back to her control panel. Ramstan looked around. The bridge people were almost fully recovered now. The viewplates showed him that the crew elsewhere was almost ready to resume its duties.
His voice carried throughout the vessel.
"Attention! Attention! Captain Ramstan speaking! Hear this! Hear this!"
There was no need for the regulation address. Everybody could see him, and their attention was fully beamed at him. But, now that he was in command, he must do what he must to make them feel that he was the duly constituted authority again.
"I . . . we . . . don't have time for my full story since I disappeared from al-Buraq. It's enough for you to know that I used the three gifts of Wassruss to go elsewhere. And that these, now useless to me, are in the hands of the Vwoordha.
"I am back, as you can see. I am in command again, but I want your voluntary cooperation, not the kind I was enforcing at the time I left. You have just come out of a state of . . . shock . . . which I don't have time to explain. I will do so fully later.
"Commodore Benagur is dead. I don't know what killed him, though I have an explanation. I'll give that to you later. I know that some of you are probably thinking that I killed him while you were unconscious . . . or whatever state you were in. I did not! I found him dead when I came aboard.
"The only thing that matters now, at this moment anyway, is that the bolg has appeared over this planet. It is in orbit and is probably re-arming itself with missiles. Hence, it should be vulnerable to attack.
"We are going to attack! As soon as possible! We leave within the hour!
"We must do this. I speak the truth when I tell you that the bolg threatens Earth. It threatens a thousand planets whose people are as dear to themselves as Earth is to us. It must be stopped.
"Now . . . I confess that it is possible that there may be more than one bolg. If we should put an end to this one, another may be produced. Or there may be thousands of them already existing, and, if this is so, then we are doing nothing useful.
"You must know, also, that, once we're completely inside the bolg, we may not be able to get out of the bolg by alarafing. The material of its hull will negate the effect of the drive. At least, that is what the Vwoordha told me.It is possible that ship could alaraf out because of the openings to the horns. But ship would have to be aligned exactly with the alaraf channels, and there is no way we can determine that.
"The Vwoordha don't have alaraf drive in their ship. But they can use a sigil to escape the bolg. What I'm saying is that, if the bolg should somehow block the horn openings, it'll trap us. Then we have to get out by other means."
And, he thought, I don't know of any other means than using the horns.
"The Vwoordha tell me that they believe there is only one bolg. One at a time, anyway. If there is more than one or if a second comes to replace the first, then all we've done is buy Earth . . . and others . . . a little more time.
"I say, what of it? Life is precious to the living. If we've managed to prolong the lives of billions on Earth, and of those elsewhere, for a century . . . or even a few years . . . then it is worth it.
"In any event, the bolg is the enemy. Not a human enemy, with whom there's a possibility of reasoning or who might have just reasons for attacking us. It is mindless, an automatic thing. It has no soul. It has but one function. We know what that is. We've seen its work."
And yet, he thought, that world slaughter has one purpose: to keep One alive. If we were saints, would we not say yes to the death it brings to us, be glad to sacrifice ourselves for its goal?
Some might. Not I. I have ridden Its thoughts and seen as much of It as, perhaps, any sentient. But It is not my Creator. In a sense, It is. But in the sense that It deliberately created us, no. It is as unaware of us as we of It. No, that is not true. We, Its byproducts, Its parasites, have attained more knowledge of It than It of us. In fact, as far as I know, It has no awareness of us at all.
Yet, he could not be sure of this.
But now was the time to abandon all uncertainties, all doubts, all considerations of tolerant philosophies.
But . . . what a . . . what should he call it? . . . situation? . . . case? . . . no, these don't fit, aren't adequate. Mess? Why not? It's a real mess. Time alter time, Pluriverse after Pluriverse . . . eon after eon . . . It produces sentient life, which develops the alaraf drive, which causes the death of the Pluriverse . . . yet, Its creatures want to talk to It, to develop It, to rear It, teach It . . . but It also produces a thing which kills Its creatures to prevent or halt the cancer produced by the only creature that can bring It to full maturity. . . .
Surely, surely, there must be some way. . . .
What if even the eons-old and eons-wise glyfa and Vwoordha had not seen the truth? What if there was another explanation of this . . . mess . . . which would clarify everything? What if, if these understood what was truly going on, then there would be an end to this seemingly inevitable life-death-life-death, the unending, seemingly useless and forever-doomed process?
Was there someone . . . Some One . . . behind all this? Some One to whom the Pluriverse . . . God, if you will . . . was only another creature?
He roared, "We've seen its work! We don't know what it is or where it comes from or why it is so intent on slaying all sentient life! We have the Vwoordha's explanation for it. I've told you that. But we don't have the time to consider Time or whether what the Vwoordha say is true or not.
"We are beings of the immediate. We are sentients who live, in a sense, in the past and the future. But never as fully as in the immediate. And immediately, now, we have an enemy. We know what has happened in the past; we know what it will do in the future. Unless we stop it!
"I am the only one who has known, however dimly, what has been going on! Therefore, I am the one who will lead you against the bolg!"
He did not say that doing this might recompense for his sins against them and against himself.
Because of the residue of the backwash of the glyfa's transceivering, they might still be dazed, overawed, mentally and emotionally turbulent, and, thus, unsure. Eager to fasten onto one who did seem sure.
Whatever the reason, they cheered him, clutched each other, danced around, wept, shouted, screamed, or gestured their defiance of the bolg and their faith in him.
"Ramstan! Ramstan! Ramstan!"
Uttering his name, they were also uttering their own.
He held up his hands for silence. It was a long time coming, but he was patient. However short the period allotted for action, there was a time for patience and a time for impatience.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw that Benagur's body was being carried away. Nevertheless, the faces of the bearers were turned to their captain; they were not concentrating on their task.
Poor Benagur! He may have gone farther than I did. Why . . . poor Benagur?
If the mind could be launched from the body, shot towards union with the mind of God, or the Pluriverse, then it would eventually be betrayed. God or the Pluriverse would die. Would the mind of the God-pulled moth then die, too? Or was there a haven, a repository, where, just as the glyfa and the Vwoordha endured between eons, the One-magnetized mind also endured?
As Toyce had once said, "You can't turn around in this world without bumping into a question. The answers are all biding somewhere."
In expanding universes, the answers had more than enough room to hide. But when the universes collapsed, would the refugee answers come streaming in, obeying the eons-long o11y olly oxen free ? If it happened, who then would care about them?
The com-op said, "Sir! Lieutenant Davis requests permission to board."
"Permission granted. Tell her to report to me now."
Branwen ran onto the bridge. She began weeping as soon as she saw Ramst
an.
"I was so scared, so lonely!" she cried.
"I'm sorry," he said. "But you're here now. Get to your post."
"Aren't you afraid I'll blow up?"
"That's a chance we'll take. I don't think that you will. Too much time has passed. Anyway . . ."
He wanted to say that she had suffered too much and, besides, the danger, whether existent or not, did not matter much anymore. The words could not get out; it was like trying to give birth to a dying baby.
He was startled when her face got red and rage replaced grief.
"You son of a bitch!"
"What? I thought you'd be thankful . . ."
"If it wasn't for you, I'd never have been in that mess!"
"True," he said evenly. "Now . . . I've given you some slack, Lieutenant, because of your trying situation. That's over. Get to your post or arrest yourself and go to your quarters."
"Holy Mother of God!" she said. She whirled and stalked off.
He said to Tenno, "Find out what she intends to do. Someone will have to fill her post if . . ."
"Captain, see this," the com-op said. "VP S06."
Ramstan looked at the indicated viewplate. A section of the lowest story of the Vwoordha's house had swung open, and a vessel of curious shape was coming out. It looked more like an ancient inkpot than anything. Inside the transparent hull were Shiyai and Grrindah, sitting cross-legged on rugs and pillows. Ramstan could see no control boards or instruments of any kind. The space under the upper deck, also transparent, was empty.
The vessel moved up a few meters from the ground and shot around the root-swelling. Ramstan had to listen then to reports from various parts of ship, but he kept an eye on the viewplate.
Within ten minutes, the vessel reappeared. The huge lower space was half-filled with the liquid from the well. It was clear, and he could not see it, but it was evident that it was enclosed in the vessel. Hallway up the lower part, seemingly floating or swimming in air, were the three strange pets. The kangaroo-like thing seemed to look directly into Ramstan's eyes, and its mouth opened in unheard laughter. The giant salmon seemed to fix one eye on him. The bottomless eyes of the shimmering thing seemed, briefly, to encompass him, and he felt as if he were falling.
"Captain, are you all right?" Tenno said.
"Of course. Why?"
"You were pale; you staggered."
Ramstan did not reply. He watched the vessel move into the house and the section close like the grim mouth of a sphinx that has swallowed back the secrets she was about to tell. A minute later, all was ready for the take-off of al-Buraq. There was, however, the question of how the Vwoordha would accomplish their promise to leave with Ramstan. Was he supposed to wait until they sent a messenger? If so, they would be frustrated. He would not wait another sixty seconds.
He started. A voice spoke within him. It was Shiyai, not the glyfa, activating it. Though it was not her voice as he'd heard it in the ancient house, he knew it was she because she now identified herself. His reaction had been caused, however, not by the unexpectedness of the voice but because he suddenly recognized it. He had heard it before, when he was awakening from the doze in the Kalafalan tavern.
"Shiyai!" he said. "No. Omar ibn Wu Tai. My best friend when I was a child. He drowned at the age of eleven in the Shatt-al-Arab. We were great friends, fished, hiked, wrestled, played on the same baseball team. He was my catcher. He was also a wonderful teller of scary tales, he would frighten me with stories of djinns, ogres, marids, rocs, from The Thousand and One Nights, from Japanese horror stories, from Slavic and Finnish tales . . ."
He stopped. He had no time for this. But hearing Omar's voice had stirred up something. Something that was waiting to be stirred.
"Why are you using his voice?" he said. "Are you trying to push me a certain way?"
"I can't choose the voice," Shiyai said with some asperity. "The choice is made by your unconscious. How, I don't know."
His mental or emotional state or both determined which voice was evoked, he thought. Omar's had spoken because of the frightful implications of the Vwoordha's words. But how would his unconscious know which voice to use until the words were spoken? It could be that it heard the first few but blocked out his reception of them, then fed them back to him after the vocal speaker in his mind had been selected.
What of the visions, the thing that he had thought was al-Kihidhr? He had never seen that mythical being. No. But he had seen pictures of him in storybooks, and he had formed his own image of him.
He looked at the chronometer.
"We're leaving in a few seconds."
"Wait two minutes. We'll be ready."
The digits flashed on the chronometer. When eighty seconds had passed, he saw the three-storied house begin to rise. It ascended slowly, vegetation and pieces of earth falling from the base. There was also a very long worm, or perhaps it was a serpent, which was wrapped around a clod of dirt which adhered stubbornly to the rounded base. The clod fell and with it the worm, writhing as if it were trying to form hieroglyphics.
The alarms sounded. After assurance that all was ready, Ramstan gave the order to follow the house-spaceship of the Vwoordha. Once in orbit, however, al-Buraq would take the lead. Ramstan would no longer trail behind or be pushed ahead.
... 31 ...
Coming around the curve of the planet, Ramstan saw the great horned sphere of the bolg. It looked like the head of Shaitan, al-Eblis, rearing up from the depths of Hell. But it was just an elemental thing produced by Nature, formed unconsciously by a Creature. Moreover, from a different viewpoint, it might have looked like the head of an avenging angel. Was not its function good for the Pluriverse, as good as Ramstan's was for him? It was here to preserve the life of the cosmic being, and he was here to preserve the lives of those who inhabited that being.
"Both winner and loser foul out," Ramstan muttered.
"What, Captain?" Tenno said.
"What captain?" Ramstan said viciously, but he laughed.
Al-Buraq, having measured the distance between her and the bolg and their relative velocities, began to decelerate. It would be six hours before ship caught up with the thing. Behind her, at a distance of 60 kilometers, was the Vwoordha vessel. Not decelerating as much as al-Buraq, it would soon be alongside Ramstan's craft.
He went down to his quarters and put the glyfa on a table top.
"If you have anything to say, do it now," he said. "I'll soon be too busy to listen to you. I don't want you distracting my attention then."
"So . . . you've heard the voice of God," the glyfa said in his mother's voice. "It doesn't seem to have made much difference in you."
"It's the voice of an idiot," Ramstan said. "An awesome idiot, true. No. That isn't quite right. An idiot has no potentiality for a higher intelligence. This being has."
"Then be Its teacher, It's father," the glyfa said. "Let us both be Its mentor and nurse."
"And then?"
"Don't think for one moment that you or I or anyone could control It. It may not be truly God, as sentients define God, but Its powers will be staggering. We could not . . ."
"Not be Its masters? Why not? We'd have an emotional grip on It. Whatever Its other powers, It would be as a child to Its parents. And some . . . many parents are tyrants and use the child for their own purposes."
"Then it depends upon the parent. Do you think that either of us is capable of using It for evil?"