The Unreasoning Mask (2 page)

 

When they struck the face of the Westering Beast, the gas in their humps
would explode, and the thin, brittle skeletons would shatter. The bone
shards would add their tiny amount to the trillions preceding them. Their
scattered flesh would feed larvae that would eat their way out of the
rubbery capsules hurled from the explosions.

 

 

The larvae would creep down the jagged face of the range and begin
the slow journey to the coast. There they, like their ancestors, would
metamorphose into the floating death-pregnant form.

 

 

In a few thousand years, the Westering Beast would have crept up to this
mountain and the city in the valley. In a few centuries after that,
this area would be covered. Before then, the cities, towns, villages,
and farm buildings now stretching from south coast to north coast would
be moved 200 kilometers to the west.

 

 

"Why haven't you killed the larvae long ago and stopped this burial
of your land and of all living things?" asked many visitors from many
planets. "Why didn't you do this 2000 years ago? Why didn't you destroy
the nests on the western seacoast hills? The time will come when you
will be pushed into the sea."

 

 

"Oh, no," the Kalafalans replied. "You do not understand. The bottom
layers of bone are decomposing and forming the basis for a very rich
soil. When the time comes, we will clear off the top layers and plant
vegetation and form a new world. By then, the awawa will be buried under
the bones of their ancestors, and the Goddess will have ended them,
and we will have a land richer than the rich land we now have."

 

 

"By the time you get around to doing that, you won't have enough
population to do the required work. And you, too, will be buried,"
the Earthpeople said.

 

 

The Kalafalans smiled. They trusted in their Goddess and Her designs.

 

 

Ramstan had discussed this attitude with Klizoo, the spaceport administrator.
Now he saw Klizoo coming out of a nearby park. Holding up his thumb and
forefinger in the broken O of salutation, Ramstan called out in the spaceport
lingua franca, Urzint.

 

 

"Klizoo, length and pleasure! Pardon my abruptness, but have you recently
seen any non-Kalafalans you didn't recognize?"

 

 

Klizoo laughed, revealing his sharklike teeth. Ramstan could see the
slender stalactite of flesh hanging from the roof of his mouth. It was
this organ that aided in forming two buzzing consonants which made
it impossible for non-Kalafalans to speak the language. Urzint was,
fortunately, simple in phones and relatively easy for most sentients
to master.

 

 

Klizoo stopped laughing. "I haven't seen any I didn't recognize, though,
to be frank, all aliens have a look-alike likeness. But an Earthwoman
has just come into the city. From the northern coast. She registered at
the hotel not more than an hour ago. Her name is Branwen Davis, and she
is a crewmember of Irion's ship."

 

 

"Irion? But Pegasus left months ago! What's this woman doing here?"

 

 

"Ask her."

 

 

Ramstan was exasperated. The Kalafalan authorities must have known that
this woman, Davis, had been left behind -- for scientific research? -- yet
they had never thought to mention it. Also, the hotel staff had probably
-- no, undoubtedly -- never mentioned to Davis that Ramstan's ship was in
port. Surely, if she'd known that, she would have reported to him at once.

 

 

He just did not understand Kalafalans, and he never would. But then the
Kalafalans said the same thing about the Earthpeople.

 

 

"Oh, yes," Klizoo said. "The Tenolt are here. They just landed."

 

 

Ramstan jumped as if he had stepped barefoot on a scorpion. His interest
in the mysterious Earthwoman evaporated.

 

 

"The Tenolt?"

 

 

He lifted his right hand, its back close to his mouth, and spoke through
his mask into his skinceiver.

 

 

"Alif Rho Gimel speaking. Alif Rho Gimel. Come in, Hermes."

 

 

Lieutenant-Commodore Tenno's voice said, "Hermes here, Alif Rho Gimel.
A Tolt ship, looks like the Popacapyu, landed thirty minutes ago. She
made an unconventional approach, must have descended on the far side
of Kalafala and stayed low until she came over the mountains. The port
authorities were upset, but the Tolt captain said that the ship was
having drive problems and he had to bring her in quickly."

 

 

"Why didn't you notify me at once?"

 

 

"It didn't seem necessary. No sooner did the Popacapyu land than her ports
opened and out came a number of crewpeople. They went immediately to the
control tower, and then some went to the hotel and the tavern. That didn't
indicate hostile motives, sir. Besides, we have no reason to suspect
hostility."

 

 

Was there a questioning tone in Tenno's voice?

 

 

He added, "Sir, more Tenolt have left the ship. They're unarmed --
like the others."

 

 

Ramstan had continued walking. He stopped under a tree on the edge of
the field. He could not see his ship, al-Buraq, because she was on a
lower-level berth in the center of a great concrete basin. But the upper
part of the oyster-shaped Tolt vessel was visible. Most of the ship was
concealed by a triple-row of giant, poplarlike trees. Only Kalafalans
would plant trees and flowers in the middle of a landing field.

 

 

The ship had to be the Popacapyu, which had been berthed near al-Buraq on
the Tolt port on the night that al-Buraq took off so suddenly, uncleared
by the Tolt authorities.

 

 

Now that the Popacapyu was here -- and how had the Tenolt found al-Buraq?
-- her captain would, sooner or later, be visiting Ramstan. He would ask
why the Earthship had made its unauthorized departure. Or would he?
He knew why.

 

 

Ramstan started walking again. When he came to the limit of the field,
he left the trees to continue southward. After going down the hill
far enough so he would not be seen from the Tolt ship, he walked east
across the face of the hill. He took a half-hour to circle until he
could approach al-Buraq from the east.

 

 

He paused to lean against the slim, corkscrew-shaped flying buttress of
a government building to catch his breath and to admire -- for how many
times? -- his ship.

 

 

From this side of the field, he could see her upper part. The vessel lay
in a depression, the opposite wall of which was deep and vertical.
On this side, ramps led up from the craft for the passage of crew and
supplies. Many Kalafalans stood along the edges of the depression gazing
at al-Buraq. She crouched in her berth, glowing with a bright-red wax
and wane, breathing light. A monstrous starfish-form bright as a hot
coal just fallen from a fireplace, her five arms sprawled out from the
fat central body. She was now in this form so that the loading and
unloading of cargo and supplies and the entry and exit of personnel
could be expedited. For take-off, she could shift to space-form in
two minutes, though she did not have to metamorphose to do so. The
five arms, covered with hundreds of thousands of small armor plates,
would shrink in length, swell in circumference, draw up, become part
of the saucer-shaped body. Or, if she were to travel in the atmosphere,
she would become needle-shaped. There was no danger of personnel being
crushed in corridors or cabins during the shape-change. The bulkhead
sensors detected that which must be uninjured or undamaged. Only if the
captain -- or a delegated authority -- overrode the inhibitions with a
spoken code could the shape-shifting be harmful to the crew.

 

 

Ramstan crossed the field and gently moved through the hundreds gathered
to admire the ship. They smiled and spoke to him in their native tongue or
in Urzint. Many reached out to touch him lightly. Their fingers scraped
off dust of meteors, powder of comets, light-exudations of stars, and
also the texture of all the fleshes of Earth. Or so they claimed.

 

 

Ramstan smiled diplomatically when the fingers touched him. He smiled at
a baby held up to him and at a particularly pixyish female. She gestured
with one hand, thumb and a finger curved and touching to indicate she'd
like to rendezvous with him.

 

 

At that moment he envied those of his crew who would have accepted her
invitation. But he had to behave as the representative of the best on
Earth. Whether or not he liked it, he was clad in moral armor. It was
not that of Kalafala but of Earth. And his own.

 

 

The natives did not understand his behavior. Some of it repelled them,
though they had not told him so directly. Despite this, they touched
him with wondering, wonder-netting fingers. He might be as cold as
interstellar space, but this, too, was thrilling. Cold burned in beauty.

 

 

"Kala!watha! Kala!watha!"

 

 

The murmurs flowed around him. Kala- indicated "person" or "sentient"
or "speech." -!watha was as close to "Earth" as their language permitted
them to approach. The Terrans could not pronounce at all the buzzing
consonant designated by ! in the phonetic transcription used by the
Terran linguists.

 

 

Here and there arose murmurs of p + hawaw!sona. Double-mask. Earthpeople
here wore masks to strain out the psyche-deligenic spores. Also, no matter
how expressive or uninhibited his or her features seemed to the other
Terrans, to the Kalafaian the Earthperson was masked with slow-flowing
concrete.

 

 

Ramstan stepped past the sign which bore the ideogram warning the natives
to go no further. He went down the ramp to the bottom of the depression
and up the nine stone steps to the slab on which al-Buraq sprawled.
Normally, the stone was gray. Now it seemed to blush lightly. A moment
later, it blushed deeply.

 

 

The ship panted red light through the semiopaque hull. The lower part
of the disk-shaped body and the five arms bulged out against the slab,
like a behemoth pressed down by its own weight.

 

 

Ramstan halted before the two masked marines at the port, gave the password
-- though both recognized him, of course -- held out his right hand so one
could read through UV glasses the code printed on the palm. He entered the
port, air under pressure blowing from it, and went down a short corridor.
The bulkhead before him smiled; he stepped through the lips. For about
seven seconds, he stood still while supersonic beams disintegrated spores
that had been killed in the corridor.

 

 

A whistle sounded; the bulkheads flashed red. He removed his mask, folded
it, and stuck it into an inner pocket of his jacket. He went on into a
corridor twice as tall as he, round, and curving toward the center
mess hall for the third-level crew. The floor was cartilaginous and
springy. Round and lozenge-shaped shining plates alternated along both
sides of the corridor. Opened or closed irises were spaced at irregular
intervals along the corridors. The light was white within the ship;
Ramstan moved shadowless. The glow on the circle to his right dulled,
then became a mosaic of partial views of operational-important places in
the ship. Eight triangles, separated by a thin black line, composed the
circle and showed him three slices of the bridge, the chief engineer's
post, chief gunnery officer's post, two laboratories, and the chief
medical officer's office.

 

 

"Cancel V-1," Ramstan said, and the mosaic died out in a burst of light.

 

 

A whistle shrilled. A lozenge on the right bulkhead showed the face of
Lieutenant-Commodore Tenno.

 

 

"No orders now," Ramstan growled. "Cancel A-1."

 

 

Tenno disappeared in a glory of light. That was one of the disadvantages
of replacing metal and plastic with protoplasm, cables with nerves,
computers with brains. Like a dog wriggling and fawning with frenzied
love at her master's return home, al-Buraq was overexcited at seeing
him after his long (ten-hour) absence.

 

 

The chief bioengineer, Doctor Indra, was working at the inhibition
of al-Buraq. At least, he was thinking about the problem or should
be. Ramstan had seen Indra squatting cross-legged on the floor, immobile,
even the eyes unblinking, one skinny brown arm extended to the bulkhead
and holding a mentoscope against a sensor plate.

 

 

Ramstan left the corridor for an elevator passageway.

 

 

At its end was a port which became a hatch as he neared it. He stepped onto
the gray disk which rose up through the hatch, said, "One-three. C-C,"
and waited. An iris opened in the bulkhead, the disk moved into the iris,
carrying him with a motion which he could barely feel. The bulkheads
rounded to form a shaft, the disk rose, the flesh-colored bulkheads
glowing, and then stopped with a slight chuffing sound. The shaft bent
overhead, the bulkhead behind him curving over, the rest of the shaft
quickly shaping itself into a corridor.

 

 

Ramstan stepped off the disk, walked three paces to where the shaft
curved upward again, and waited. In three seconds, the bulkhead just
before him split, and he walked into his quarters. This was a small room
which was expanding now that the master was home. It was hemispherical,
and the only visible furniture was a table on which stood an electron
microscope. The deck was bare except for a prayer rug, three meters
square, near a bulkhead by the iris. It was made of woven wool, as
required by the al-Khidhr sect, and was dark green except for a red
arrowhead design in one corner. This was the kiblah, the symbol which was
to be pointed towards Mecca when the worshiper knelt on the rug. Here,
of course, there was no means for determining where Mecca was. This
made no difference to Ramstan. He had not prayed since his father had
died. He did not know why he had not left the rug on Earth, and he had
not cared to wonder why. Most of the time he did not even notice it. Now,
looking intensely at it, he thought it moved.