The Unreasoning Mask (4 page)

 

 

But there was that puzzling and disturbing encounter, if it was such,
which he could not forget. . . .

 

 

He was a third-year cadet at the space academy at Sirius Point,
Australian Department, and on this day, the star pitcher, he was in the
ninth inning during a game against the University of Tokyo. The score
was 6-6, and he had just struck out two men. Next up was Jimmy Ikeda,
the best batter Tokyo had. Daishonin Smith had just stolen second. And
then, while Ramstan was winding up to pitch the first ball at Ikeda,
he had been stopped. A messenger from the commandant told him that he
was wanted immediately in the commandant's office.

 

 

Ramstan had been furious, then he became frightened. Only a few minutes
ago, the commandant had been in the first row in the section reserved for
the higher officers. Now he was gone. And what terribly serious event
had made him halt the game at this moment? Ramstan could think of only
one thing. He was numb as, still in his player's uniform, he hurried to
the commandant's office.

 

 

"Your father has died," the commandant said. A moment later, his mother's
stricken face was on the phone and she was sobbing and telling him of the
heart attack. His father had been rushed to the hospital, which was only
half a kilometer down the corridor in the megabuilding. But his father
had insisted that he be taken home, and he was now there in his own bed.

 

 

A half hour later, Ramstan was on the shuttle to New Babylon. Eighty minutes
after embarking, he was on the twentieth level, which held the university
and the staff residences. On opening the door to his parents' apartment,
he found his entrance blocked by someone who was just leaving. He or she
was tall, only half a head shorter than Ramstan. Under a green hood was
the face of a centenarian, deeply wrinkled, the lips absent as if they
had chewed themselves away on the hard edge of time. The nose was long and
sharp, ground thin by a remorseless grindstone. The chin was bony; a few
long hairs bristled from it. Under prominent brows were extraordinarily
large eyes, set very far apart, their color indeterminable in the shadow
of the hood. The body and legs were under a loose green robe, from which
protruded wrinkled spotted feet in sandals. Under one arm was a very large
black book, the old-fashioned printed kind, a collector's item. The arm
covered part of the large Arabic letters on the cover.

 

 

At any other time, Ramstan would have given the ancient in his or her
long-outmoded clothes his full attention. But now, after the stranger
had passed by, he strode into the apartment crowded with relatives
and friends.

 

 

They were chanting the
Surat Ya-Sin
as he walked through them and into
the bedroom where the gaunt eagle face of his father was still uncovered.

 

 

"When We sent to them two, and they denied them both, so We reinforced
for a third, and they said: We are messengers to you.

 

 

"They said: You are only mortals like us. The Merciful has not sent
down anything. You are lying!"

 

 

After the funeral, Ramstan asked his mother, "Who was that old man who left
just as I entered?"

 

 

By then he had decided that the stranger was male.

 

 

"What old man?"

 

 

"He looked as if he must be a hundred years old. He was dressed in a
hooded green robe, and be carried a huge black book under one arm."

 

 

"I didn't see him," his mother had said. "But there were so many people
there to mourn. He must have been a friend of your father's."

 

 

She gasped, and she held her hand to her mouth, her eyes very wide.
"An old man in green robes and holding a black book! Al-Khidhr!"

 

 

"Don't be silly."

 

 

"He came to record your father's name in his book!"

 

 

"Nonsense!"

 

 

Ramstan had had to leave soon thereafter for the shuttle to Sirius Point.
But the next evening his mother phoned him.

 

 

"Son, I asked everybody who'd been there when your father was dying,
and nobody saw the old man in green carrying a large black book. You were
the only one who saw him! Now do you believe that it was al-Khidhr? And
since you alone saw him, it must be a sign! A good one, I hope!"

 

 

"It's a sign that you hope I'll return to the faith."

 

 

"But if you were the only one to see him!" she had wailed.

 

 

"Then it was my grief. When the father dies, the son becomes a child again,
if only for a little while."

 

 

"No, it was al-Khidhr! Think about it, Had. Your faith isn't dead after
all! Allah has given you another chance!"

 

 

Ramstan had never told his parents how he had seen an old man -- the same?
-- bending over him when he was twelve and sick and had just awakened from
a dream. The old man had been, of course, the tag-end of a fever-inspired
hallucination. Thus, when he had been stricken with grief for his father,
somewhere in his brain a switch had closed, and the old man of the sickbed
dream had been imaged forth again in a circuit. That was all there was
to it. Certainly, he was not going to say anything about him at the academy.
If the authorities heard about it, they would suspect mental instability.
Even if he were then run through another battery of PS tests and still
came out with a high score, he'd not even be an alaraf-ship crewmember,
let alone be an officer.

 

 

At that time, the first alaraf ship was not yet built, but it was known that
she would be and that more were planned. Ramstan was fiercely determined
to be an officer on one and then, someday, the captain.

 

 

He had achieved his ambition, and he had, in effect, then thrown it away.

 

 

"Was it worth it?" he said out loud, though it wasn't necessary to speak
to be heard.

 

 

There was no answer.

 

 

"Speak, damn you!" he cried, and he struck the egg with a fist. He yelped
with pain. The egg was as hard and unyielding as Death itself.

 

 

He heard a chuckle -- or thought he heard it. Was that himself laughing
at himself? Had he been talking to himself? He did not think so when the
glyfa spoke or when he thought it was speaking. But, when it was silent,
he wondered if he talked for both himself and it.

 

 

When a man thought that he might be splitting in two, and that man was
responsible for the lives of four hundred men and women, he should turn
over his command and commit himself to the care of the chief medical officer.
But if Ramstan did, be could no longer conceal the glyfa. No, he would
not
give it up. He could not let Benagur take command. Benagur would search
the ex-captain's quarters and would find the glyfa. But perhaps Benagur,
like Ramstan, would keep silent, knowing that once the others learned
about it, they would lock it away or study it. Then Benagur would also
be denied possession of the glyfa -- or vice versa.

 

 

The silence undulated from the egg, curved back from the overhead, deck,
and bulkheads, and thickened like abyssal waters around a bathysphere.

 

 

"I speak!"

 

 

Ramstan started, his heart beating as if struck by a fist.

 

 

When the glyfa had spoken to him while he was carrying it from the Tolt
temple, it had used his father's voice. Now, Ramstan heard his mother's
voice. And, like his father's, it spoke in his familial New Babylonish,
basically a creolized Arabic but with at least half of its vocabulary
borrowed from Chinese or Terrish.

 

 

Ramstan said, "It's time . . . far past time . . . that you did speak."

 

 

"Immortality," his mother's voice said. "I offered it, but you neither
accepted nor rejected it."

 

 

"Two forms of immortality," Ramstan said. "A choice of one of two.
One of which is not true immortality. I may live for billions of years,
but I will eventually age, though very slowly. And I will eventually
die of old age. Though, probably, I'll die long before that. In such a
long lifespan, accident, homicide, or suicide will put an end to me. The
statistical distribution of events will ensure that.

 

 

"As for the other form, it's also probably not a true immortality.
I can live forever -- you say -- as a magnetically shaped complex of
neural waves existing inside you. Which means that I'll be under your
control. . . ."

 

 

"No! I promised you that you may live as you wish. Any and all of your
fantasies will be fully realized -- forever."

 

 

"How do I know that your word is good? Once I'm in your power . . ."

 

 

"What would I gain by betraying you?"

 

 

"How would I know that until it was too late for me to do anything
about it?"

 

 

After a long silence, Ramstan said, "Has it occurred to you that I might
not be interested in living forever or even beyond my natural lifespan?"

 

 

Silence.

 

 

Ramstan broke it. "Somehow, you stimulated in me an overpowering desire
to steal you from the Tenolt. I became a criminal. I abandoned my duty,
betrayed my trust, lost my honor. Threw away everything I've worked so
hard to get as if it were rusty old armor. How did you get me to do that?

 

 

"Was it because there was in me a criminal impulse, however slight,
and you detected it and amplified it until I couldn't resist it? The
impulse which should have died became an obsession because you brought
it from a dying flicker to a roaring blaze?

 

 

"But, if you could do that, why can't you overpower me to the point where I
agree to do what you want me to do in return for immortality? Is it because
you did not detect that, unlike most people, I have no desire to live
forever? That I want something else?

 

 

"Or don't you care whether or not I want immortality? You can and you
have manipulated me enough to use me as your agent, and that's all you're
concerned about. You've succeeded so far, glyfa, but you've gone as far as
you can with me. My back is up. I won't do anything more for you unless
I know what your goal is and maybe not then. What do you want me for?
What do you want?"

 

 

"What do
you
want?" his mother's voice said.

 

 

Minutes of silence passed. He would not reply because he had no answer
to that question, and the glyfa was done with this conversation. But not
with him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

... 4 ...

 

 

Masked, carrying some clothes and the glyfa in a small suitcase, Ramstan
left al-Buraq. He had hesitated a long time before he had decided to take
the glyfa with him to the hotel. Perhaps it was not too late to return it
to its worshipers. He was sure that the Tenolt would see him leave ship,
and they would quickly find out that he had checked into the hotel. They
would approach him, carefully, of course. They would have to do that
since there were many Earthpeople staying in the hotel during shore
leave. Or would they? They were fanatics, and they wanted their god
back. But they did not know that he had the glyfa with him. They could,
however, seize him or try to do so, and hold him as hostage until the
glyfa was returned to them.

 

 

He did not know what they would do. All he did know was that, at this moment,
he felt as if he would gladly be rid of the glyfa. And if he could somehow
negotiate its return and also keep his people from knowing what he had done,
he would never again, never, forget his duty.

 

 

Did he really believe that? He did not know.

 

 

When near the hotel, he passed Warrant Officer Deva Kolkoshki. She saluted
him despite his order not to do so outside ship during leave. She was
defying him subtly or perhaps not so subtly. In some way which she
probably could not define, she was showing her hatred for him.

 

 

He passed her, and his back rippled with cold. Daggers of ice seemed
to pierce his heart and genitals. Deva was very passionate, and Ramstan
felt sure that only her basic stability and morality and years of naval
discipline kept her from thrusting a knife into him. Perhaps he was
wrong. Just because she was Siberian and her culture was as violent as
the Americans' had been was no reason to assume that she had to suppress a
desire to stab him. He might be projecting his feelings of guilt upon her.

 

 

No. He felt no guilt. Why should he? He had had an affair with her,
as he had with twenty or so of the women of al-Buraq. Then she, like so
many others, had accused him of not loving her, of not even thinking of
her when they were making love. His mind, she had said, was on something
else. What was it? What was he thinking about when he should have been
entirely enfolded with her, become one with her? Whatever it was, it
offended her and made her feel more like a thing than a human being.

 

 

Ramstan had not been able to explain. But all his affairs ended in this
manner, though not all the women seemed to hate him as intensely as Deva did.

 

 

That was the trouble with the sensitivity techniques and raising of
consciousness disciplines that were part of the education of all Earthpeople.
He sometimes wished that his century had the same casual attitude towards
affairs that twentieth-century people were supposed to have had. The trouble
with his own time was that love was force-fed to the citizens. Not all
gavaged geese kept the food down and grew fat. Some vomited it up.