The Unreasoning Mask (13 page)

 

No one spoke for a moment. The only sound was Wassruss's whistling breath.

 

 

At last, Ramstan said hesitantly, "Do the Webnites have bells?"

 

 

Branwen said, "Yes. At the entrances to their underwater caverns and to
their stone houses on the islands."

 

 

"So what you translate as bells isn't a mistranslation or a substitute
translation? Tell me, are there puns in the Webnitos' language?"

 

 

"Yes. Why do you ask?"

 

 

"I'll tell you later."

 

 

Wassruss's eyes became larger as if she had just seen something
surprising. The frosted glass within them spread out. A sound as of mice
feet scratching on a metal floor came from her mouth. Then she sighed.

 

 

The monitors emitted unmodulated beeps; the green lines on the 'scopes
were like arrow shafts. Hu turned the machines off and did not think it
worth the effort to apply the mentoscope to Wassruss.

 

 

Branwen held the big, brown hand for a minute, then gently lowered it.

 

 

"She was holding off until she had passed on the gifts and the mystery."

 

 

He looked at the triangle, square, and circle.

 

 

"I'll put these in my cabin-safe. Their status can be determined later."

 

 

"Status?" Hu said.

 

 

"Yes, whether they are my property or the government's. After all,
they can't be said to be bribes."

 

 

"You don't know the twisted ingenuity of our bureaucrats," Toyce said.

 

 

The medical corps people came to take Wassruss's body away. Branwen seemed
to be waiting for Ramstan to say something to her, but he walked out and
went to his quarters. Instead of placing the gifts in the safe, he kept
them in his pocket. He did not know why he had changed his mind. Then
he tried to communicate with the glyfa. If it was receiving, it was not
transmitting. He gave up after five minutes and went to mess. Hu came
in late and sat down in the space reserved for her, the chair rising
from the deck as she lowered her buttocks.

 

 

"Lieutenant Davis's fever -- its cause -- is as mysterious as ever.
But I have a hunch. . . yes, smile, it's okay, a hunch. She is trying
to tell us something. Or perhaps she is sick so that she won't have to
do something she doesn't want to do."

 

 

Ramstan did not comment. When mess was over, he excused himself and went
to the sickbay now formed to hold Davis alone. A marine stood guard at the
entrance. Ramstan went in, the entrance closing behind him. Branwen was
lying in bed staring up at the overhead. A large plate had been transformed
into a screen on which an old 4-D movie was being shown. Her lackluster eyes
did not brighten when he entered. She told ship to turn off the movie,
and there was silence and less light.

 

 

"You look sick and are," Ramstan said. "Frankly. I think that Doctor Hu
may be right. Your fever
is
psychosomatically engendered. Are you
repressing something?"

 

 

She burst into tears and put her hands over her face.

 

 

Ramstan waited for a minute, then said, "What is it?"

 

 

She took her hands away. The eyes were brighter now because of the tears.

 

 

"You're wrong, sir," she said. "I'm hiding nothing. I don't know why I'm
sick. I wept because it seemed so unjust to be accused of deliberately
making myself sick. It's almost like being accused of malingering."

 

 

"There's nothing illegal about that type of goldbricking. But I get the
feeling that you're . . . not quite truthful."

 

 

Indignation burned in her eyes. Or was it the fever?

 

 

"I'm not hiding anything," she said, and she began weeping again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

... 13 ...

 

 

"The Tolt ship is now in stationary orbit, sir," the petty officer said.
"She's directly above the island. As you ordered, a message is being
transmitted to her. But so far she hasn't responded."

 

 

Ramstan refrained from looking upward. He knew he could not see it,
but he had an impulse to bend his neck back and gaze into the bright blue.

 

 

"Very well," he said. "Continue transmitting. If it does nothing else,
it will annoy them. And it will serve notice that we're aware of them."

 

 

Al-Buraq, panting yellow, lay about fifty meters away. She was in
starfish-shape now. Crewpeople were strolling around it, most of them
nude, taking the opportunity to absorb some natural sunshine.

 

 

Another fifty meters in the opposite direction, the green-blue ocean
lashed great white-capped waves at the yellow sands of the beach. The wind
blew from the west, bringing with it a spicy odor from a large tree-capped
island-peak 10 kilometers distant. The trees near Ramstan resembled Terran
palms. Their fronds waved in the breeze. Yellow-and-scarlet birds with
black toucanlike beaks and cartilaginous horns on top of their heads
swooped over the crew. From the top of a double-trunked baobablike plant
an enormous green many-angled insect dropped a sticky noose. Presently,
along came a tiny bird, and the noose jerked and ensnared the
bird. Screaming, it was drawn up toward the mouth into which the long
gelatinous rope was disappearing.

 

 

Branwen shuddered.

 

 

"Webn is beautiful, but it has its sinister features."

 

 

"Nonsense," Toyce said. "There is nothing evil about that insect. It has
to eat, doesn't it? And it really is beautiful. Would you like to take
a closer look?"

 

 

She held out an electron-telescope.

 

 

"No, thanks. I've seen them before at close range."

 

 

Branwen's fever was now very low; her body temperature was only one-tenth
of a degree above normal. Hu had given her permission to go as interpreter
with the burial party. It had just come back from half a kilometer
offshore where Wassruss, weighted down with rocks tied to her, a wreath
of flowers and weeds attached to her chest, had been dropped into the
sea. There were thousands of dark-brown, flippered giants in the water,
floating in concentric circles around the corpse and singing joyous songs.

 

 

There was no reason, now that Ramstan had carried out his promise to
Wassruss, for ship to stay here. Yet Ramstan did not give the order
to take off. No one seemed to have made any criticism of this. The
crew had been on extended shore leave, but it did not object to going
on another. Though al-Buraq was not a cramped vessel, she could not
offer open skies and ground to run on and vegetation and a natural
sun. Moreover, there was fishing and swimming with the friendly
seal-centaurs and hiking through the woods and hills and much discreet
lovemaking behind trees or boulders.

 

 

The Tolt ship hanging above, invisible to the naked eye, mute, sinister,
could be forgotten easily enough by all but Ramstan. He was aware of it
in every waking moment and sometimes in his dreams. It was an unseen shadow
that darkened the beauty and glory of island and sea.

 

 

Ramstan, thinking of this, walked through the woods on a path which large
beasts had made. The wild animals were so unafraid of the strangers that
they seemed almost domesticated. When he reached the foot of the basalt
mountain dominating the island, he turned back. But he halted within a
few meters. Stocky, bull-necked, Assyrian-bearded Benagur blocked his way.

 

 

"I didn't know Hu had given you permission to leave ship," Ramstan said.

 

 

"I've been a good boy," Benagur said sarcastically. "And I've shown no signs
of misintegration since my outburst. Which I don't think was a symptom
of craziness. You don't believe in God, and you have stolen the glyfa.
But. . ." he paused . . . "perhaps I was wrong in one thing. You do
believe in a god, the Tenolt god."

 

 

"You'll only do yourself a disservice if you keep saying that," Ramstan said.

 

 

Benagur's bellow seemed to be the echo of the distant sea crashing against
the base of the cliffs on the western shore. Like the sound of the ocean,
it held a suggestion of danger.

 

 

"It's very frustrating for me! I know that you took the glyfa, yet I can't
prove it! And if I accuse you officially, you will just have me locked up
or sickbayed again! But you're the crazy man, Ramstan! You've put us all
in the most extreme jeopardy, but you don't seem to care at all! You'll
die for your sin, and so will we, the innocents!"

 

 

Ramstan felt sick with guilt and with hatred of Benagur. His hands curled
into half-fists. He took one step forward. Benagur did not flinch. He
crouched, and his left shoulder rose a trifle as if he was on the verge
of adopting a boxer's stance. His hands, too, were partly clenched.

 

 

Ramstan felt like hurling himself at Benagur. But be saw something flicker
at the base of a huge tree near the foot of the low hills beyond Benagur.
The flicker became a figure in green. Its hood and robes were bright green;
the face below the hood was featureless, shrouded in darkness. An arm rose,
and its hand moved slowly back and forth at a 45-degree angle upward to
the ground. The hood moved as if the turbaned head within it was moving
to the right and then the 1eft. It said as plainly as if it were speaking,
"No!"

 

 

Al-Khidhr, the Green One, the Wanderer.

 

 

If he was indeed Elijah, the ancient Hebrew, he was watching over Ramstan,
protecting the atheist ex-Muslim, not the devout Jew, Benagur.

 

 

But al-Khidhr was a Sufi, the pristine Sufi, and Sufis could be Jewish
or Christian as well as Muslim.

 

 

Then Ramstan thought, I'm crazy. Benagur is right, I
am
crazy.

 

 

The green figure flickered and was gone.

 

 

Ramstan stepped back and straightened his fingers. His voice shook.

 

 

"You're the dangerous one, Benagur, the mad one. You almost provoked me
into attacking you."

 

 

He took another step back.

 

 

"Is this a trap? Are you transmitting to my officers through the skinceiver?"

 

 

Benagur scowled.

 

 

He roared, "No! I came here to make a final appeal to your honor and your
duty! To your reason or what's left of it! But I can see that it's useless!"

 

 

"And now what?"

 

 

"I will make official charges! You can do your best to get me locked up
again, but the charges can't be ignored! They'll have to be investigated!
Your quarters will be searched! And the glyfa will be found! Then . . ."

 

 

"Then . . . ?" Ramstan said softly. His voice was now as steady as a steel
beam on bedrock.

 

 

"Perhaps they . . ." Benagur pointed up at the invisible Tolt vessel . . .
"they will be satisfied with the return of their god! My God, Ramstan!
Crazy as you are, surely you see what danger we're all in! We could all
be killed, killed for no good reason! I don't know what impelled you to
take the glyfa, what foul lust, what . . ."

 

 

"That's a strange word," Ramstan said, smiling slightly. "Lust! What made
you say that?"

 

 

Despite his smile, he felt ice sinking through him from the top of his head
toward his toes. It was, in a sense, lust. And he had no idea why he should
have been seized with it. Nor how Benagur had stumbled over and on that
description. Perhaps. . . Benagur himself had felt the lust.

 

 

Benagur said, "The glyfa must have made you lust for it!"

 

 

"It's just an artifact," Ramstan said. "Are you saying it's alive?
A true god? A living idol? Who's crazy, Benagur? You or me?"

 

 

"I felt something there!" Benagur cried. "I felt a vast, an overwhelming
evil! I knew where it came from! It came from the glyfa! And, yes, I'll
admit it, Ramstan, since I am only human and so subject to temptation!
I was tempted to succumb to the evil! But it was God who saved me,
who showed me the ineffable Good, His true Nature! He stepped in,
and He gave me a glimpse of Him, of His face, and so saved me!"

 

 

Perhaps we're both insane, Ramstan thought.

 

 

It was then that he got the first faint thought that he and Benagur might
not be standing on the seashore of the world of Webn. Not in reality. They
just thought they were there. They seemed to be there. Where were they,
in actuality?

 

 

He got a flash of where they might be, and he just as quickly rejected
the image.

 

 

He shook his head and then rolled it as if he were trying to dislodge
some thing clinging to it, a giant louse, perhaps. Some filthy and
blood-sucking thing.

 

 

"We have nothing more to say to each other," Ramstan said.
"Not here, anyway."

 

 

He strode off though he was not sure that he should turn his back on Benagur.
The man was no coward, far from it, but he might be overcome by his fury
and jump on his captain from behind. Ramstan refused to look behind him.
He did not wish Benagur to think that he feared him.

 

 

After cutting through a forest which covered the neck of the peninsula
like a ruff, he came onto the seashore again. Half a kilometer inland,
mighty al-Buraq stretched out across a clearing.

 

 

Chief Engineer Indra, nude, was sitting on a floating chair in the sun.
On an extended arm of the chair was a half-full bottle of Kalafalan
wine. In his hands was a book, a square plate half a meter wide
and a centimeter thick. Ramstan paused behind Indra to read the
phonemic-character words appearing and disappearing swiftly one by one.
Indra did not have to move his eyes from side to side or down. It was
The Maltese Falcon, a classical twentieth-century American novel
translated into Terrish.