The Unreasoning Mask (32 page)

 

 

"Long before that, however, the bolg will have tracked along our spatial
and interspatial path back to Earth and eliminated all or almost all there.
The Vwoordha say that that may be done within a month or fifty years from
now. Those are the limits of time for the bolg.

 

 

"What happens if we could somehow destroy the bolg with our puny weapons?
Would the Pluriversc then produce another bolg?

 

 

"Nobody knows. No bolg has so far been destroyed by sentients.

 

 

"But if it can be done, then it must be done. After that, we wait and see.
And if we could kill one bolg, we can kill the next.

 

 

"Even so, Earth's universe and many others are doomed. And we can't go
to one which hasn't started to collapse yet. Our very act of entering
it would cause its death if we used alaraf drive. But what if we could
analyze and reproduce the means which the bolg uses for transition from
one cell to the other? Then we could travel interuniversally without
damage to any of them.

 

 

"How can we take the first step? That is, killing the bolg so that it may
be dissected, as it were. Direct attack won't do. Al-Buraq would be pierced
thousands of times over, and we, too. Our missiles wouldn't get through
its trillions of missiles. It's a colossal antibody, the specific function
of which is to wipe out all life. Nobody knows how it makes and throws those
meteoritelike missiles. Probably some sort of energy-matter conversion
is used. If so, it's far more efficient than anything Terran science
has developed.

 

 

"But there's a good probability that, after it's discharged its missiles,
it takes a long time for it to make a new stock. It should be vulnerable
during the recharging period. Unless it reserves a small supply for attacks
against it."

 

 

Tenno must have been so eager to talk that he forgot or deliberately
ignored his captain's order not to interrupt him.

 

 

"Then you're planning to attack it at that time? How will you know it's
emptied its ammunition? Oh, I see! I think. It's devastated three planets
in a row! It must be empty now!"

 

 

"We'll talk about that after I'm through with my résumé of what's
happened," Ramstan said. "Uh, just a moment."

 

 

He had forgotten that Indra and Toyce were still trapped. They would have
heard and seen what the others did because al-Buraq would automatically
have placed a viewscreen in front of them. But they must be very
uncomfortable. He ordered ship to release them. Then he said, "Benagur,
if I free you, will you promise not to interrupt?"

 

 

At Ramstan's command, ship lowered the flesh sealing the commodore's mouth.
Benagur shouted, "No! This is mutiny! And blasphemy! Insan- "

 

 

The flesh had closed over his lips.

 

 

"I just wanted to spare you further constraint and humiliation,"
Ramstan said.

 

 

"The Vwoordha became aware of the nature and development of God . . .
of the Pluriversal entity, if you prefer . . . three Pluriverses ago.
They made the glyfa with the assistance of several peoples. Its primary
function was to be a rotatable amplifying antenna."

 

 

He paused. "A rotatable amplifying antenna. A device to communicate with
the Pluriverse. Or, if It was in an infant state, to study It and learn more
of Its nature. And, it was hoped, eventually perhaps to . . . ah . . .
nurse It . . . educate It . . . help It grow into an adult. In a sense,
because all sentients are basically human, humans would become the father
and mother, the parents of God. The most ambitious project ever launched.

 

 

"As I said, the tool had to be a sentient, and in time the glyfa became
independent, rebelled, as sentients often do, and went off on its own.
Before that, however, the Vwoordha . . . and the g1yfa . . . learned
something of the Pluriverse. It seemed indeed to be in an infant stage.
Its voice could be . . . heard? . . . but it seemed to be the babblings of
a baby. Of a baby in the prespeech stage, using every sound Its . . . lips
. . . could utter, tuning up, as it were, for the stage where It would
have to use only certain sounds and drop the others. That's how the
Vwoordha interpreted what they detected.

 

 

"Its babblings were part of the cosmic background
noise
that astronomers
have picked up. But they would not be able to distinguish the Pluriversal
babbling, from other noise without something like the glyfa."

 

 

This was perhaps the part of his explanation the most difficult to believe.
The masks on the screen had melted a little now; the incredulity was hot
beneath them.

 

 

"You're asking yourselves how the Vwoordha could know this. You're thinking
that what they termed babbling was really just a different type of noise
and that the Vwoordha, without sufficient evidence, arbitrarily decided
on a certain explanation for it. An explanation fitting their preconceptions.
Infant babbllngs are meaningless noise, though they are a necessary prelude
to the meaningful structure called language.

 

 

"But," and again he lifted a finger, though this time he felt that
the gesture looked as if he was testing the wind of their judgment,
"ten million years passed . . ."

 

 

He stopped once more. Should he digress on just how the Vwoordha had
managed to live so long, tell them of the enormously long periods of
suspended animation which enabled them to endure such eons? No, that
would have to come later.

 

 

"Ten millions years passed. And then the Vwoordha heard a modulation
of Its sounds more complex than those detected before. Rather, they
heard what seemed to be the beginning of structure in the use of the
sounds. And they noted that now It uttered only certain
sounds
;
others had been dropped.

 

 

"A baby does this when it begins to learn the speech of its parents.
But . . . what parents could It have? To whom was It talking, from whom
was It learning speech?

 

 

"One theory was that It was, In a sense, schizophrenic. It had two
personalities or chambers or parts, call them what you will. This theory
was quickly abandoned, though. Two infants can't teach each other to talk
if neither has had a teacher.

 

 

"How, then, could the Pluriversal being . . . or God . . . be sentient
if It had no language with which to think? Or does It think in feelings
and images only? If It does, then It could never talk to sentients,
though many sentients have claimed that It has talked to them. It could
never be more than a highly intelligent and perhaps even self-conscious
animal, just as a human being brought up from infancy in total linguistic
isolation, isolation even from dumb and deaf signs, would be an animal,
its potentiality for speech undeveloped.

 

 

"Perhaps It was teaching Itself to talk to Itself. How could It do
that? A human infant couldn't. In fact, on reaching a certain age,
its linguistic potentiality would be so stultified that it couldn't
learn to talk even if it had a teacher after that age.

 

 

"But that theory may be too anthropomorphic. The Pluriverse may have
potentialities which humans don't have. Perhaps It could form names for
objects It sees or feels or hears in some way we can't understand. Perhaps
It could even find, through experimentation, a syntax for the words,
the verbal referents it would invent.

 

 

"The Vwoordha don't think so. They think that It has somehow developed to
a sound-selection stage but won't progress beyond that if sentients don't
help It. They think that just possibly evolution may have as its goal, if
evolution could have a goal, a role for sentients that no one, as far as
anybody knows, even thought of. Until, that is, the Vwoordha came along.

 

 

"It may be built into the structure of evolution or it may just be chance
or the workings of probability. But the Vwoordha believe that one of
the roles of sentients, the most important, is to be a teacher of God
. . . the Pluriverse. It is up to sentients, the minute life on planets,
the life much much smaller in relation to God than a microbe or virus
is to a human, to teach God speech. And so help It to attain adulthood.

 

 

"After which, of course, sentients would profit by their relationship,
their parenthood, to God."

 

 

The glyfa, using the voice of Ramstan's father, said, "In a sense, the
Vwoordha are my parents, and they reared me. But I will have nothing to
do with them. Indeed, I am their enemy. Why should God differ from me?
It may hate Its teachers, despise them, or become indifferent to them."

 

 

"You are not It," Ramstan subvocalized.

 

 

"True. I am, however, the only being through whom you. anybody . . . can
speak to that entity and through whom you may receive intelligible
communication."

 

 

"If it's not intelligible, it's not communication."

 

 

"Always the pedant," the glyfa said. Somewhere, far off, faint, reverberating
in some neural path, was a ghostly jeering cachinnation.

 

 

Ramstan hated the glyfa at the same time that he was attracted to it,
and now its use of the voices of his parents and uncle was making him hate
them. It brought up something in him that he did not want to confront.
Of course, he had no time for that now anyway. The Vwoordha . . . they
reminded him of his great-grand-mothers . . . no time for that, either.

 

 

He steered his attention back to the crew.

 

 

"But, according to the Vwoordha, the glyfa desires more than just being
the father to God. It lusts after power; it aches for domination. It would
become Its master and, so, even greater than God."

 

 

"Liars!" the glyfa said in the voice of Ramstan's father.

 

 

"Yes, liars. Contemptible worms!" the voice of Ramstan's mother said.
"It's they who want to be to God as parents to a boy. Tyrants!"

 

 

"My sister and her husband are right," the voice of Ramstan's uncle said.
"Hűd! You must not listen to those liars, those wretches, those insane
creatures! Do what is right!"

 

 

Ramstan did not reply to the glyfa, though he felt that he was somehow
being wicked by not doing so.

 

 

"The glyfa maintains that it's the Vwoordha who want to do what they
claim he wants to do. I have no way now, perhaps never, of determining
which is telling the truth." He paused. "Or if both are lying."

 

 

"You must listen to me!" the voice of his mother cried. "You know what is
at stake!"

 

 

Ramstan said, "I decided to put off my decision for a while. I refused to
give the glyfa or the three gifts of Wassruss to the Vwoordha. For now,
anyway. I did have to pay a price, however. It was only fair; they had
given me information that I . . . we . . . desperately need.

 

 

"So, I promised the Vwoordha that when they needed me, I would come to them.
Take them aboard ship or do whatever else they required, if I could do it
without endangering ship and crew. Though under certain conditions I might
have to do that.

 

 

"It's possible that we might be able to dispose of the bolg and so not have
to deal with the Vwoordha or do what the glyfa wants. We can use the glyfa
for the purpose for which it was intended. It may refuse to cooperate, but
it is in our hands, and there must be means to make it do what we want."

 

 

"Ungrateful monster!" the voice of his mother said. "You'd do this to me!"

 

 

Ramstan sipped some water. He said, "Now is the time for you to decide.
I won't make any speech about how vital it is that you let me keep on being
your captain. You must know that by now. Whether or not you believe me,
I don't know. But if you reject me, you cause all, and I mean all in the
universal sense, to be lost. Doomed."

 

 

He said a code word. A chair flowed up from the deck. He sat down.

 

 

Nuoli cried, "I believe him!"

 

 

Tenno said, "I don't know what . . . whom . . . to believe."

 

 

"Vote!" Ramstan said loudly. "Now! We don't have time for long conferences
and discussions! Nor, for that matter, for short ones!"

 

 

He roared from the chair, screaming and holding his oars. He could not
hear his own voice, and his hands were no protection. The whistling
overrode everything else.

 

 

 

 

 

 

... 27 ...

 

 

The glyfa's voice came through the noise as his mother's. It sounded as
if it came from afar, from some wildly retreating and advancing horizon,
louder, then softer.

 

 

"The bolg is too close for you to outrun it. You can do only one thing.
Escape. Use the first of Wassruss's gifts."

 

 

Ramstan only understood the glyfa peripherally. His hindbrain, the animal
heritage from which his subconscious exerted influence, told him to run.
But he had, automatically, thrust his mental probings into his cells, and
they, too, told him to run. That was the adverse effect of the generally
beneficial result of being able to locate and analyze the physical health
of each cell in the body. Now, without thinking about it, he contacted
the cells, all three trillion, and got an overall impression of their
reaction to this situation.

 

 

Run!

 

 

If his rational mind had been in command, he might have done otherwise.
But, perhaps, he might not have.