The Unreasoning Mask

  "When you get back to ship, Benagur, report to sickbay."

  "No! I won't be hospitalized again! I just got out! There's too much . . ."

  "Too much what?"

  "Too much going on. The Tenolt, everything . . . Why would they want to gas you?"

  Ramstan said, "I doubt we'll ever find out. What I want to know right now is why you came here."

  "Shouldn't you call for the sanitizers?" Benagur said.

  Ramstan didn't like being told that he should do so. But Benagur was right. He called ship and was put through to Chief Petty Officer Wang. She said that she and a squad would be up in five minutes. Ramstan ordered her to bring along a medic and a squad of marines.

  Ramstan looked hard at Benagur, who was still on the inflatable.

  "I'll ask you again. Why did you come here?"

  Benagur straightened, and he winced.

  "I wanted to have it out with you."

  "Yes?"

  "You know why," Benagur said loudly.

  "You tell me," Ramstan said softly.

  "I want to hear your explanations, privately, before I take action. That is, if I have to do it. I hope I don't have to."

  "I don't know what you're talking about," Ramstan said. "You sound as if you're going to make charges against me. Is that it?"

  "Why did you order the marines? So you can put me under arrest?"

  "You keep sidling away from my questions. I decided that you should be escorted to sickbay. There's no telling how fast the spores may affect you. You might even . . ."

  "What?"

  "Become violent. It's for your own good."

  "Sure it is!" Benagur cried. "Of course! Listen! I've been very much disturbed -- and puzzled -- by your strange behavior on Tolt. You were missing for some time from ship. Suddenly, there you were, like a thief in the night, carrying that bag and shouting that ship must take off at once. And you've never given a word of explanation. No one has dared to ask you what was in it. But, believe me, everybody has been talking about it. And I've not had one good night's sleep."

  "'Like a thief in the night,'" Ramstan said. "Well, out with it, man! Exactly what do you suspect?"

  His face was expressionless, but his heart was thumping like an imprisoned annual trying to butt its way through a wall, and he was sweating.

  "I don't want to do this, Captain! That's why I came here, so we could talk alone and solve this matter without the crew knowing about it. Maybe it's not too late to rectify matters. Maybe we could go back to Tolt and just leave it there and take off, hoping the Tenolt would be so happy to have it back that they wouldn't bother us."

  "What is it ?" Ramstan said.

  Benagur's face was red now. He shook as if his bones were crumbling. Ramstan had seen him angry before, but he had never seen him fearful. Or was he reading him wrong? Was it fury possessing him?

  " It, it!" Benagur shouted. "You know what it is! The glyfa! The glyfa! The Tolt idol!"

  "You're accusing me of having stolen the glyfa?" Ramstan said. He was surprised at the steadiness of his voice.

  "I'm not accusing you!" Benagur said. "I'm telling you what you and I know!"

  "I wonder if you haven't accidentally breathed in some spores before tonight. There's no other way to account for this crazy accusation."

  Benagur ground his teeth. He stood up, swaying, and took three steps toward Ramstan. His huge hands were closed, but he did not raise them. His voice was clotted with phlegm.

  "What I'm telling you to your face is what the whole crew is saying behind your back."

  "I don't know why the Tenolt are here," Ramstan said. "Listen. Has it occurred to you and those other idiots that I might be on a secret government mission and that your idle curiosity is endangering it?"

  He trembled. For the first time in forty-two years' he had lied. Al-Khidhr forgive him. Allah forgive him.

  Nonsense. Neither existed except as concepts. But concepts were as real, as alive, as the person who thought they were real and alive.

  "May God forgive you," Benagur said.

  "May He forgive us all," Ramstan said, but he did not know what he meant by that.

  Benagur closed his eyes and moved his lips soundlessly. He was either praying or using mental techniques to locate the injured cells on the back of his head and then to summon the healing forces of his body. Perhaps he was doing both.

  Ramstan, hands locked behind his back, paced back and forth. When he passed the ceiling-high mirror made to reflect behemoths, he saw a hunting falcon whose hood had slipped onto the beak. His eyes were wide and shot with madness and desperation. He must regain his composure or at least the appearance of it. Otherwise, when the marines came to pick up Benagur, they might think that he, too, had breathed in the spores.

  A knock on the door. Ramstan used his skinceiver to make sure that it was the ship's crew outside the door. He admitted Lieutenant Malia Fu'a, a biochemistry officer, Chief Petty Officer Wang, and the PD and marine squads. Fu'a was a pretty Samoan who'd parted with Ramstan on good terms after she'd left his bed. She was the only ex-lover who didn't seem to hate him. But she could be an excellent actress.

  The marines were instructed to take Benagur to ship's hospital after he'd been externally disinfected. Fu'a's squad sprayed his rooms and the hall with a liquid which smelled like new lavender. Ramstan stripped and showered while his clothes were sprayed. He put on pajamas and lit up a cigar while the squad ran a scanner over the room and the hall. The little pistol-shaped device flashed a red light now and then, and the infected spots were then resprayed. By then, the liquid had dried, but the lavender odor hung in the air.

  Benagur had not spoken during the entire proceeding. When told by a marine that he must come along now, sir , he walked out without a look behind. Fu'a, the last to leave, carried the gas-expeller in a plastic bag. Its contents would be analyzed before morning.

  Ramstan explained that unknown persons had tried to shoot the gas into his room and that Benagur had chased them away but had been hit on the head. He said nothing about conducting an investigation later. Though Fu'a had looked curious, she had not, of course, asked him questions. And all the party had been ordered not to say a word to anyone else about the affair.

  It would have been wise to station a guard at his door, but Ramstan did not think that the Tenolt -- he was sure they were Tenolt -- would be back.

  A few minutes later, just as he was about to fall asleep despite resonating nerves, he heard a banging on his door. He picked up the olsons, rolled out of bed, and walked to the door.

  He spoke through the keyhole in Urzint and then in Terrish.

  "Who is it?"

  A woman's voice, speaking Terrish, came thinly. "Lieutenant Branwen Davis of Pegasus, sir. I must speak to you. May I come in?"

  She spoke with a lilt that seemed. . . what?. . . Irish? He looked through the keyhole, straightened up, unlocked the door, and backed away. The door swung open, and a very beautiful woman entered.

  ... 6 ...

  She was approximately two meters tall, a little over average female height. Her black, coarse, and straight hair was in a pageboy bob. Her eyebrows were thick and dark. The wide-spaced, slanting eyes were large and as green as the Persian Gulf. Her skin was a soft golden-brown. The facial skin below the eyes was paler than that above. The contrast gave her features an almost clown-like appearance.

  Al-Buraq' a crew, when on Kalafala, wore green masks, in the corner of which was a silver-winged mule with a woman's face. The scarlet mask that hung around her neck was the regulation color used by Pegasus's crew. In its lower right-hand corner was a silver-winged horse.

  She wore a shimmering light-green dress, knee-length, flaring out at the waist. The sleeves came to the elbow, and the V-neck was wide and plunging. He did not need her to tell him that she had gotten it from a Kalafalan. Her legs and feet were bare and dirty. She carried a small leather bag in her left hand. Her right hand was heavily bandaged.

  She put the bag d
own and saluted. His return salute was sloppy, resembling a gesture for her to go away.

  "You look tired, Davis. You must've had a long hard journey. Sit down before you fall down. Before you report, would you like a drink?"

  She smiled, showing beautiful white teeth. Sighing, she dropped onto the inflatable chair as if her legs had given up the ghost.

  "I'd love a drink, thank you."

  He gestured at the bar, installed by the hotel for its smaller and more recent guests. "There's plenty of native liquor there. But I have a bottle of Scotch in my case."

  "Scotch will more than do."

  "On the rocks?"

  "Rocks? Oh, you mean . . . It's been so long. I mean . . . I've been talking Urzint so long that I forgot . . . Yes, Scotch on the rocks."

  He asked her when she had discovered that al-Buraq was in port. She said that she'd found out a few minutes ago. She'd returned to the hotel, gotten a room and had fallen asleep at once, hadn't even bothered to wash. But she'd awakened about fifteen minutes later and had seen some Earthpeople on the street through her window. She'd gone downstairs at once, and the clerk had told her that Captain Ramstan was in his room. She'd come up at once.

  He handed her the drink and sipped on his Djinn's Delight. Then he said, "So what happened?"

  "I'm a marine biologist. I was left behind, at my request, to continue experiments at a Kalafalan station on the northwest coast. When it was close to the time for Pegasus to return from the Raushghol system, I packed up, said good-bye to my Kalafalan scientist and technician Mends, and drove off in my jeep. Its a-g generator malfunctioned about a thousand kilometers north of here. The jeep fell, but fortunately it was only two meters above the ground. Unfortunately, it was on the edge of a cliff. It went into the sea. I jumped out when it struck but almost went over the edge, too.

  "I tore up the skin on my hand, enough to put my skinceiver out of operation. My NI transceiver went with the jeep, and so I couldn't call the spaceport. Also, I lost my TR box. I also lost my clothes. I like to sunbathe, and so I was nude when the accident happened. I borrowed a dress from a farm woman and started walking. Alter a week, I came to the Kurodan River. I got passage on a fishing vessel which was returning to the capital. And here I am."

  "Pegasus hasn't returned," he said. "She was supposed to rendezvous with al-Buraq at Sigdrauf. We waited a month for her. Then we went to Tolt, her stop before going on to Sigdrauf. She had not showed there."

  She was pale, and her voice was very low.

  "What do you think . . . ?"

  "I don't know. We can only assume that Pegasus is lost or has been delayed for some reason. Perhaps she is having or had bio-mechanical troubles, and she may be on any of a hundred planets. In any event, al-Buraq isn't staying here long. You will transfer to my command. What were your shipboard duties?"

  "Only those concerned with the biology laboratory."

  "It's only routine and ridiculous in these circumstances," he said. "But regulations require that your I.D. be checked."

  He lifted up her left hand with his. With his right hand he pulled from his jacket pocket a round piece of glasslike material rimmed with metal. Holding it over his right eye, he looked through it at the hand. He could see the pale violet symbols invisible to the naked eye.

  "Branwen Sacajawea Davis," he read aloud.

  Born A.D. 2238/1616 A.H. in the Cymric division of the Northwest European Department.

  He looked down at the upturned, dark, lovely face. Her green eyes were wide and bright. Too bright.

  He dropped her hand and said, "I'll send for a guard to conduct you to ship. By the way, your hand feels very warm. Do you have a fever?"

  "I feel a little feverish. But I didn't, as far as I know, come into contact with any sick native. Of course, you never know."

  He phoned ship via his skinceiver. After he'd signed off, he said, "You realize you'll be court-martialed?"

  Davis paled but said nothing.

  "It's just more routine. Any time loss of naval property is involved, a court martial is automatic. I'm sure that you weren't negligent. Don't worry about it."

  A few minutes later, the marines appeared. Davis picked up her bag, saluted him, and marched off. Ramstan watched the long, slim legs and swaying hips, and he sighed. He went up a movable staircase and crawled into a bed half the size of a basketball court.

  Halfway through a dream about some shadowy sinister whispering thing, he awoke. His door was shaking under furious knocks, and the skinceiver was shrilling. He put his wrist near his mouth and said, sleepily, "Alif Rho Gimel. What is it, Hermes?"

  "CL Waw reported in with an urgent message. She wants to speak to you."

  "I think she's here," Ramstan said. "Hold a minute."

  He rolled out of bed and dropped off without using the staircase. He looked through the keyhole and unlocked the door. Toyce reeled in, causing Ramstan for a moment to think that she was hurt. But she was only near-falling-down stoned.

  "CL Waw's here," Ramstan said. "Out, Hermes."

  Toyce fell into the chair that Davis had used. "I need a drink, Hűd."

  "Of water," Ramstan said. "What's the trouble?"

  "You know that barmaid I was interested in. Well, she told me the Tenolt had come into her place. They were asking about you and getting, as usual, indirect answers to direct questions. Thima, that's the barmaid, said one of the Tenolt was either drunk or about to have a nervous breakdown. He suddenly started babbling about the Klakgokl, and . . ."

  "The Klakgold?"

  "Yeah. It's some kind of monster in Tolt eschatology. It will appear near the end of time and wreck the world, eat up all life. That sort of nonsense. Anyway, he hadn't spoken more than a few sentences about it when his companions dragged him away. The barmaid knows some of their lingo, just enough to understand that something terrible had happened on Tolt. She also caught some references to you when the Tolt was carried off screaming. She didn't know what was said exactly. But she got the impression that the crazy Tolt was swearing vengeance."

  "Anything else?"

  "No. But whatever it was, it played hell with my plans for Thima. I had to bring you the news, whatever it means."

  Ramstan spoke quickly but calmly into the skinceiver.

  "Alif Rho Gimel. Come in, Hermes."

  "Hermes here."

  "Burning Troy! Repeat, Burning Troy!"

  There was a pause, and then Hermes said, "Acknowledge! Burning Troy, sir!"

  Before they got to ship, Ramstan received a report from the chemical laboratory. The traces of the gas in the expeller had been analyzed. Even in the quantity contained in the cylinder, the gas would not have done more than put him to sleep for several hours.

  ... 7 ...

  "Al-Buraq" had lost her starfish-shape and bright-red glow. She was a cylinder, flat on the underside, emitting yellow pulses. Flashes of light revealed spacers entering many ports.

  By the time Ramstan was on the bridge, all posts had reported in, the drunk and drugged were in the various sickbays, and the general-alert alarm was turned off. The crescent-shaped bridge pulsed whitely from its spongy deck and those bulkhead areas not having indicator/control plates. The six commissioned officers and seven warrant officers were seated in their chairs. Ramstan took his chair in the center of the crescent. The chair was, like the others, a pseudopod of the deck, extended by the ship, shaped to fit him as near perfectly possible.