The Unreasoning Mask

  How could a nonvoice chuckle? Yet, it had done so.

  "No, I don't really laugh. I just evoke laughter in you. Laughter for me. Never mind. It's too complicated to explain. Tell me why you want to speak with me."

  In one sense, the glyfa could read his mind. In another sense, it could not. It had told him that it had read his electrical matrix, the pulsing configuration of his neural system, when he had appeared at the Great Temple in Tolt's capital city. It had been able to "see" him as a skeleton of twisting lightning streaks, a storm of tiny stars and comets' tails. It had invaded his mind and triggered certain impulses in a configuration which had made Ramstan lust for the glyfa as he had never lusted for anyone or anything. It had enveloped him in a globe of light, a bomb-burst of energy which would have blinded those around him if they could have seen it. And perhaps Benagur had seen it, and Nuoli had been touched by it.

  The glyfa had great powers, but these had certain limitations, and distance was one of the factors modifying them. Not until the three had entered the house of the glyfa had it been able to determine which of the three it wanted.

  "I waited for eons for one, and then I got three," the glyfa had said. "Truly remarkable. Not at all probable. But there it was. As you Terrans say, 'Feast or famine.'"

  The glyfa had been able to converse at once with Ramstan because it knew Urzint. But it had been compelled to "use" Ramstan's own voice. In the interval between the first time it had "spoken" and the second, it had learned much Terrish and Arabic. It was able to "see" the full referents of any word or image pulsing in Ramstan's mind.

  At least, that was Ramstan's explanation for the glyfa's quick learning of the two languages. The glyfa offered none of its own.

  It was evoking the proper words in the proper order from Ramstan's own mind. In a sense, he was talking to himself. In another, he was conversing with the glyfa. If he had been asked to define the different senses, he would have failed.

  Ramstan finally unclogged his mental throat. Subvocalizing, he said, "Here is what's happened since I last talked to you. Or do you already know it?"

  "Tell me."

  Ramstan did, finding that the glyfa seemed to leap ahead of his words, to pull out the word or the image by its roots, see the entire plant, the roots, stein, leaves, flowers, seeds, everything in one scan of unbelievable speed.

  Strangely, the glyfa seemed more interested in the ghostly person in the hotel than in other events. At least, it spoke of this first.

  "Do you think it is, indeed, al-Khidhr?"

  "I don't know what to think," Ramstan said. "It could be an exteriorized projection of my concept of al-Khidhr. A subjective image seeming to be objective. Or it could be . . . I don't know what."

  The glyfa chuckled. By now Ramstan found this sound sinister.

  "No, not menacing or conspiratorial," the glyfa said. "Secretive, perhaps. But with good reason. In time all things that are capable of being revealed will be revealed. But I am making sure that you are not rushed too green into events which require for you a steady ripening, a slow and sure maturing.

  "That is, if there's time. If not, then . . . Well, we'll see. This Webnite, Wassruss, is going to give you three gifts, and you have no idea what they are. But from your description of what happened before she told you this, I know. I am truly amazed, and, believe me, it takes much to amaze me. First, three of you come along after a wait so long that your mind couldn't grasp it. Three at once. Then the gifts of Wassruss. These could easily have been lost in space or have come to someone else.

  "But there you were, Ali Baba-on-the-spot, as you say in New Babylon. Where, out of a vastness of cosmos, it was the only place I would have chosen you, if I had known there was a choice. I did not, of course, and yet, there you were."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "It's too early to tell you. Though, as I said, I may have to tell you anyway if events require it. But I was right when I picked you. Perhaps you are that exceedingly rare individual, one who is a magnet for unlikely events. One whose matrix overcomes the principles of probabilities.

  "Such beings are possible, though I have never met one, until now, and I'm still not sure about you. Perhaps it is they who . . ."

  "They?" Ramstan said.

  "Never mind. Not now, anyway."

  Ramstan exploded. "What about the Tolt ship, then? That captain is determined to get you back! And he's also, I'm sure, out to get revenge on me and perhaps the entire crew for the sacrilege! But he doesn't dare make a move which will imperil his chances of retrieving you! So he's taking it easy, shadowing, waiting for the first chance, and then . . . bang, boom, that's it! And I can't tell my crew why he's dogging us!"

  "You'll find some way to handle it. It may be that you'll have to fight him. In which case, you'll have to convince your crew that the Tolt is a grave danger. And you'll have to antagonize him into attacking you."

  "Do you know what you're saying?" Ramstan said.

  "Calm down. Your agony is affecting me. Yes, I know. You don't realize as yet, unfortunately, that there is much more at stake than the fate of a few hundred Tenolt. Or a few hundred Terrans. Or even a few billion Waliukans."

  "What is at stake then?" Ramstan cried. His voice rang back from the bulkheads, which shivered as al-Buraq caught a trace of Ramstan's pain and perplexity. If Chief Engineer Indra was hooked into ship's neural circuits at this moment, he would be alarmed.

  "Your immortality, for one thing."

  "I don't really care for that!" Ramstan bellowed.

  "No, of course not. Not at the moment. However, I cannot tell you what the stakes are. Not as yet. You wouldn't believe me. Or, if you did, you might lose your reason. I am protecting you. Believe me. But then you have to believe me, don't you?"

  "Damn you!" Ramstan shouted. "Why did you seduce me?"

  The unseduceable can't be seduced," the glyfa said. "You seduced yourself. When I made my offer, I did not force you to accept. There was no magic involved, no hypnotism. You had perfect free will or at least as near to perfect as is possible. It was your choice. You said yes. And your second thoughts are only that -- second, that is, superficial. The first are the deepest."

  Ramstan had no reply to this. There was silence. It was possible that the glyfa was overwhelmed by the emotional blaze from Ramstan.

  The gap was suddenly closed again.

  "This Branwen Davis, the woman you are so attracted to. Haven't you wondered if there was a connection between her and the Tenolt?"

  Ramstan was shocked.

  "How could there be?"

  He paused in his vocalization, but the glyfa was reading the images and emotions pouring out like the damned from the suddenly opened gates of Hell.

  "I do not know. That is up to you to find out. Of course, I am only suggesting a possibility."

  "And I thought I was paranoiac."

  "Don't let your personal feelings for her interfere with good judgment. As for paranoia, anyone who has the imagination to postulate all possibilities is automatically a paranoiac."

  "I don't see . . . well, of course, there could be a very slight possibility. But even so, she is, at this moment anyway, not important. What is vital is that monster that shoots meteorites, isn't it?"

  "Obviously."

  "And you won't tell me what it is?"

  "When you get to a certain place and meet certain persons, if you ever do, that is, then I'll tell you. Though by then I may not have to."

  Ramstan struck the top of the table with his fist.

  "I am enjoying this splendid display of emotion, even if it hurts me somewhat," the glyfa said. "At the same time, I regret that you do not have better self-control."

  Doctor Hu's voice came from the bulkhead.

  "Captain! The Webnite wishes to speak to you. She says it's very urgent. It's my opinion, sir, that she hasn't long to live."

  ... 11 ...

  Davis stood by Wassruss, holding one of the huge webbed hands with her two hands. Hu was l
ooking at an oscilloscope screen on which a green horizontal line was displaying tiny sawteeth at irregular intervals. A medical technician was adjusting the dials on a panel.

  Hu turned away from the screen and started when she saw Ramstan.

  "You must have run."

  Ramstan did not reply. He walked to the container in which Wassruss floated. She rolled her huge head toward him and fixed her great seal's eyes upon him. They were bright enough, but he thought he could see something like frosted glass deep within them.

  She spoke for a long time. Branwen Davis finally said something, and the Webnite stopped.

  "She's going too fast for me," Branwen said. "I asked her to start over again."

  Wassruss opened her mouth and took in a great amount of air. Then, slowly, she repeated herself, pausing now and then to allow Davis to interpret.

  "I, Wassruss of the Violet Isle, will soon be dead. I had hoped to live long enough to see my native sea, the deep blue waters around the rocky, pine-grown Violet Isle, before I died. But my life is draining away faster than I had thought. The Tssokh'azgd did that to me; it tore my soul to shreds. You do not see the creature that devours all life and remain the same being. You know then how insignificant and meaningless you are, what a cipher, what a tiny piece of meat. The you, that is, the I that thinks itself the center of the universe, the goal of the cosmos, the being from which all things spread out and return to, becomes suddenly and irrecoverably dwindled, cut off, alone. It is no longer the source and resource of the world. It is alone, unconnected, a nothing. Without a history, with no love from anyone and no love for itself.

  "It suddenly realizes, not intellectually but in the deepest part of its cells, that it is without hope and always has been. That it doesn't deserve hope and should never have wished for it. That in the beginning was nothing, that there has always been, behind the appearance of something, nothing, that there will always be nothing.

  "That we are masks with no faces behind them, unless the void has a face ."

  Wassruss stopped talking. The only sound was her heavy breathing. Branwen still held the Webnite's hand; her expression had become even more sad. Hu shook her head. The technician slipped out of the room. Ramstan saw that the frosted glass in Wassruss's eyes had floated up from the depths.

  Presently, Wassruss withdrew her hand from Branwen's hands and reached with it into the belly pouch. It came out holding the three objects that Ramstan had seen on his first visit.

  These were the gifts of which she had spoken.

  Wassruss held all three in the palm of her hand, which was extended to Ramstan. But when he put his hand out to take them, she closed her fingers.

  "I must tell you something about the gifts of the Vwoordha," she said. "The Vwoordha made these a long time ago. The Vwoordha were once a great people, very powerful. Now there are only three left, according to what I have been told. They have lost many of their powers, but not all, and the little they have left is more than that of many who boast of their greatness and riches.

  "There are some who say that the Vwoordha are so ancient that they have survived the Death of All and Many Worlds."

  Here Ramstan interrupted to ask Branwen if she was translating correctly. Wasn't the phrase "All and Many" a contradiction?

  Branwen spoke to the Webnite, who gave a short answer. Branwen said, "No, that is what she said. It is an ancient phrase, the exact meaning of which she doesn't know."

  Wassruss began talking again.

  "These gifts, these sigils, were once my grandmother's. She did not tell me the details of how they came into her hands. But she did say that she had once done a great favor for a queen of our nation, and the queen had given her these three objects. The queen herself had received them from her great-grandfather, who had gotten them from the captain of an Urzint spaceship. Neither she nor her great-grandfather ever used them. When she was about to die, she gave them to me. She told me what she knew about them, which was actually not much.

  "But all you need to know is that each has a distinctive power. You must use one when you are in such a situation that there seems no other way out.

  "Then you will place one in your mouth. Why there and not just in your hand, I do not know. That is all that is needed. The gift of the Vwoordha does the rest.

  "But you must use, first, the shengorth , the triangle. After it has been used, it is of no more use to you. It can only be used once by one owner. If you use it, you should give it to someone you think worthy to have it, though that is not absolutely necessary. But not until after you have used the other two. Or, if you never use the other two, then, before you die, you must give all three to someone.

  "Do not spilt up the three. Keep all three for yourself until the day comes when you give them away, and then give all three to one person."

  Ramstan tried to keep his face expressionless. Did this creature really believe in magic, in this tale of three thaumaturgical objects?

  As if Wassruss had read his mind, she said, "What I say of the gifts of the Vwoordha is no lie. Perhaps you are wondering why, if the gifts can take their owner from danger, I did not use one to save myself?"

  Ramstan said, "Tell her I was wondering that."

  Branwen spoke.

  Wassruss coughed, and she said, "I did not wish to use the sigils unless I absolutely had to. I had no warning of the meteorite or missile or whatever it was. When it pierced my body, I went into shock. I didn't have enough of my wits left to place the shengorth in my mouth before I became unconscious."

  She was dying, and if it made her feel better to give him the objects, then she should be able to do so. He'd be doing a kind deed. Allah saw every good deed and gave you credit for it.

  That last was a stray thought that had no business in his mind. But, as Toyce had once said, "You can only wash off the dirt. The skin is still there."

  Wassruss was saying, ". . . and so you must not forget to use the shengorth first. Next, the square, the pengrathon . Third, the disk, the ph'rimon. I do not know why, but to use one out of proper sequence nullifies the power."

  She repeated, "And if you use all three, then you must pass them on as soon as possible to someone else. If, by the time you are ready to die, you have not used them, you must give them to someone who deserves them."

  Ramstan could not help saying, "And what if I should die unexpectedly and have no chance to give them away?"

  He was talking as if he believed that the things had power.

  "Then someone will take them."

  Ramstan was going to ask her how the taker would know how to use the objects. If he had no instructions and perhaps did not even know what they were supposed to be, how could the taker get any benefit from them? Or pass the knowledge along to someone else? And since this was likely to happen many times in a long period of time, and the three gifts were supposed to be very ancient, how had they escaped being lost or knowledge of their use lost? Why hadn't the chain been broken?

  He had other questions, but why bother with them?

  "Of course," Wassruss said, "like all gifts, they are not necessarily beneficial. If not used properly, they can harm or even kill their owner. And there may be situations where death will be preferable to using them. What these are I don't know."

  "Perhaps it would be better if you gave them to someone else," Ramstan said.

  Davis said, "She is honoring you in the highest way known to her people. You must not refuse! Uh, sir, that is, you shouldn't ."