The Unreasoning Mask (14 page)

 

 

Indra felt Ramstan's body between him and the sun. He touched a control
on the side of the book, and the text stopped moving. He twisted around;
his teeth shone whitely in his dark face.

 

 

"Captain! I was hoping I'd catch you."

 

 

Ramstan came around the chair.

 

 

"Why?"

 

 

Indra stood up, the book held between two fingers.

 

 

"You'll remember that I told you some time ago that ship was growing a
new circuit."

 

 

"Yes."

 

 

"I've just determined what it is."

 

 

Ramstan said, "I know what it is. It's an affection circuit. One that has
an affection configuration, anyway."

 

 

"You know!"

 

 

"I'm not a bioengineer, but I know more about ship than anyone else."

 

 

Indra said, "How do you feel about it? I mean . . . do you respond to its
affection with your affection? With love?"

 

 

"To be loved isn't always the same as to love," Ramstan said stonily.
"We don't have time for experiments. There's that . . ." He pointed at the
sky. "I don't want to worry about ship getting hysterical or panicky if she
thinks I'm in danger."

 

 

"She's not a dog," Indra said, "though she may have developed some doglike
attitudes. I could find out just what effect the affection configuration
has on her gestalt. But it'll take time."

 

 

Ramstan said, "Excise the circuit."

 

 

Indra frowned and bit his lip.

 

 

"That's an order, not a suggestion. Operate
now
!"

 

 

"Aye, aye, sir!" Indra said. He snapped a salute and stalked off. Ramstan
watched him for a minute, then started toward the vessel. He stopped when
he saw Branwen Davis. She was so beautiful that his heart seemed to ache.

 

 

He hailed her and then asked her about her health, though he'd seen the
medical report on her that morning.

 

 

"I feel fine," she said. "The fever has gone as suddenly as it came,
and the doctors don't know where it came from, what caused it, or where
it went."

 

 

"Let's hope it doesn't return," he said. He paused, balled up what little
courage he had, and used it all up in one sentence.

 

 

"Would you care to dine in my cabin tonight?"

 

 

She smiled, but she said, "No, but thank you for the honor, sir."

 

 

He was shocked. He had not really expected her to turn him down. No woman
ever had.

 

 

Though he'd thought his face was expressionless, he must have shown
something somehow. She said, "I'm sorry. I don't mean to offend you,
Captain. But I've talked to some women . . ."

 

 

"What does that matter? You're not one of them. You're different."

 

 

"They all said that they were in love with you and that you were in love
with them. At least, you told them you were. But after a while, a short
while, they said, you became very cold and then downright nasty."

 

 

"I was never nasty!" he said. "They lied!"

 

 

If she had been anyone else, he would not have deigned to discuss the matter.
He despised himself for humbling himself like this.

 

 

"All of them?" she said. "Well, I won't argue. Anyway," she touched his
arm with a finger and held it there, "I'm not rejecting you, you know.
I'm just rejecting your invitation to dinner. I'm not ready to go to bed
with you, and I may never be. But I don't dislike you."

 

 

"You don't like me, either," he said. He was astonished; someone else
must have said that.

 

 

"Some people are very warm and, so, likeable," Branwen said. "You're
not warm."

 

 

"I'm the captain of ship," he said.

 

 

"And so proud and lonely," she said, and she laughed. "No, you've got it
the wrong way. You'd be aloof and lonely if you were the cabin boy.
Captain Irion was a very good commander, but still there was something
about her that made people love her." She paused.

 

 

"You're angry," she said. She withdrew her finger from his arm and he
had a flash of image, a wound made by the finger, now closing up, the
blood evaporating, and ice forming over the scar.

 

 

"Yes, I am," he said. "But not at you. Other things . . ."

 

 

He almost believed that he was not lying.

 

 

"I'll see you," he said, and strode away.

 

 

Ramstan went to his quarters and called the bridge. Overlieutenant
Ozma Garrick responded.

 

 

"I want Commodore Benagur arrested. He is to be put in his cabin, not the
brig, and he is to stay there until Doctor Hu has examined him. Notify me
as soon as he's quartered."

 

 

Garrick looked as if she'd like to ask him the reason for the order,
but she didn't, of course. Ramstan then called Indra.

 

 

"Have you started yet on the circuit?"

 

 

"I haven't started operating."

 

 

"The order is canceled. Hold yourself ready to resume operating, though."

 

 

The Hindu smiled but said nothing.

 

 

Ramstan was glad that Indra had not questioned him. He himself didn't know
why he'd put off the operation.

 

 

He sat down and drummed the fingers of his left hand on his thigh. Then he
called the bridge.

 

 

"Garrick, resume signaling to the Tolt ship. If you get an answer,
notify me at once."

 

 

Garrick's face faded from the octant. Ramstan sat motionless -- even his
fingers were unmoving -- for a few minutes. Then, sighing, he heaved
himself up and walked to the bulkhead. Shortly thereafter, he placed the
glyfa on a table. He ran his fingers over the surface and marveled again
at how some dead-for-eons artist had sculpted it so intricately and
wonderfully and deep, and yet it was so smooth.

 

 

He spoke to himself out loud. "If only I knew what the Tenolt were up to!"

 

 

The voice that answered him turned him around, his eyes wide, his skin
paling, his heart threatening to burst. But he was the only human in
the room.

 

 

"Allah!"

 

 

He spoke a few more words in Arabic, most of which were curses.

 

 

The voice had said or seemed to have said, "They know you stole me. But
they don't want to attack while you're in ship. Above all, they want to
get me back into their hands."

 

 

Now it said, "I should have warned you."

 

 

Ramstan leaned on the table while he gripped its edges. His heart began
to slow down, but he could only speak in gasps at first.

 

 

"Why . . . do you use . . . Branwen Davis's voice?"

 

 

Only then did it strike him that the glyfa was reading his mind. He was
outraged. No one or no thing should be permitted that violation.

 

 

"No, I don't read your mind, and I can't," the glyfa said in the voice
of Khadija, his mother.

 

 

"If you can't . . . then . . . how did you know . . . what I was thinking?"

 

 

"I knew that you would have thought that I was," the voice said.

 

 

Ramstan had not wept for years. Now tears rolled down his cheeks.

 

 

"Please don't use her voice," he said.

 

 

"Very well. How's this?"

 

 

Benagur's voice boomed.

 

 

"No!"

 

 

"I'll speak to you as your mother, then."

 

 

"No!"

 

 

"You'll get used to it, and eventually you'll love it. I think you've
been carrying your grief too long, even if you didn't know you had it
buried so deeply."

 

 

"It makes me feel as if she's speaking from the grave," Ramstan said.
"Or. . . as if you're her tomb, and she's talking to me from it."

 

 

"In a sense, she is," the glyfa said.

 

 

Ramstan asked it to explain the remark, but the glyfa ignored his question.
It said, "You'll like to hear her. You've been using your quarters as a
sort of womb in which you can take refuge. Now, hearing her here, you
will be even more in the womb. That isn't a good thing, perhaps. But
you seem to need it."

 

 

"If you can't read my mind, then how do you know so much about Davis
and Benagur and only Allah knows who else?"

 

 

"I can detect vibrations and see objects at a distance," his mother's
voice said. "I can detect electrical and electronic phenomena. I can
detect other things, too."

 

 

"You can see and hear things outside this cabin?"

 

 

"Yes. Of course."

 

 

"How far?"

 

 

"Quite far."

 

 

"You won't tell me the exact distance?"

 

 

"I have my reasons not to."

 

 

"Could you tell the captain of the Popacapyu to go away and leave
us alone?"

 

 

The glyfa did not answer.

 

 

Ramstan said, "It's obvious that you can't."

 

 

"Or that I may have some reason not to wish to."

 

 

"It's also obvious," Ramstan said, "that you can influence electricity
at a distance. How do you do that?"

 

 

"The explanation would be meaningless to you."

 

 

"But you have to find the right words in my memory bank, put them together
in Arabic or Terrish syntax, modulate them, get the right intonations,
stresses, and so on. And when you use my mother's voice, evoke it. I mean,
you use some words that my mother never heard nor read. Also, you must
originate your transmissions of language in your own language. How do
you manage the translation? I mean, even if you're transmitting your
voice to me in some manner or some sort of coded signals or whatever,
they wouldn't mean anything to me if I heard them directly. Via vibration
of air through my eardrums, I mean. So . . ."

 

 

"It must be enough for you that I can do this," the glyfa said. "Now.
To your original question to yourself. What are the Tenolt up to?
They wish to get me back, and they're not going to use violence and so take
a chance of losing me unless desperation drives them to it. Also, for all
they know, you may have hidden me elsewhere than in al-Buraq. On Kalafala
or Walisk, perhaps, or even on Webn. Though they would have seen you do
that unless you somehow tricked them.

 

 

"Also, I am their god. It frightens and puzzles them that I permitted you
to take me. Or, perhaps, and this must deeply disturb them, that perhaps
you, Ramstan, were able to steal me because you might be more powerful
than I. I doubt, though, that anyone on their vessel has dared voice that
thought. It would go very hard with anyone who did, even their high priest."

 

 

A whistle shrilled. Ramstan was startled, but he spoke a few words to cut
off video on his end of the line. Garrick's face appeared in an octant.

 

 

"Commodore Benagur has been arrested and confined to his quarters, sir.
Doctor Hu is en route to examine the commodore, as you ordered."

 

 

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Ramstan said, and he cut off the transmission.

 

 

The glyfa said, "Poor Benagur. He's a mystic, and, in his search for the
ineffable, be has caught a glimpse of it. Or is the rag of glory worn by
something else? The Opponent, for instance? Would not the Opponent have
a glory of his own, and would it not be difficult to distinguish his
glory from the true glory?"

 

 

"You seem amused," Ramstan said.

 

 

Though he did not like Benagur, he felt sorry for him at this moment.
Perhaps that was because he felt sorry for himself, too. Rather, he felt
confused and, because of this confusion, helpless. He loathed that feeling
and despised himself for it. He could make his way against all obstacles.
At least, until recently, he had thought so. Now . . . he was not so sure.

 

 

He had to ask the glyfa some questions, yet he hated doing it. He should
be able to find the answers by himself.

 

 

"What the the bolg?" he said.

 

 

There was a pause as if the glyfa had been taken by surprise. But Ramstan
might be misinterpreting the silence.

 

 

"The bolg? the glyfa said. "I haven't heard that name for a long time.
A time so long you would be shattered just to contemplate the idea of it."

 

 

"Well?" Ramstan said.

 

 

"It's a name for a chaos-monster. The people who used it have perished
long ago. In fact, several . . ."

 

 

Ramstan said, "Several what?"

 

 

"Never mind. Where did you hear it?"

 

 

Ramstan told it what had happened in the Kalafalan tavern. This gave him
some satisfaction, despite the reawakening of the bad emotions connected
with the incident. The glyfa had not been observing him when he was in
the tavern. Was that because it was unable to do so or because it had
preferred not to? Or was the glyfa lying for some reason and had known
about the tavern incident all along?

 

 

"There are many in this war," the glyfa said. "I knew that long ago,
but I still don't know who some of them are. But I have time enough. At
least, I hope so."