The Unreasoning Mask (20 page)

 

 

Far "below" these was a dark mass reminding Ramstan of the Horsehead Nebula
of Earth's universe. But the head formed by a vast "dustcloud" profiled by
blazing gases behind it looked like that of a troll. At least, that was what
Nuoli said it resembled. To Ramstan it seemed more of an ifrit's head.
The features were humanoid but bestial. Bestial humanoid. Yet beautiful
and awesome.

 

 

The third planet of the system beyond the ninth entrance was T-type,
and its sun was G0. It had been 707,000 kilometers from al-Buraq when
she had burst from the other universe. Ramstan had at once ordered her
to proceed at top speed in NS drive to the planet.

 

 

"'Go to the only place to go.'"

 

 

Ramstan thought that, if Wassruss's chant was not nonsense, that phrase
indicated that the inhabitable planet was his goal. Fortunately, he
did not have to choose between two planets. He had not expected to. No
solar-type system so far found had more than one inhabitable planet. There
was a narrow range of distance from the sun which determined whether or
not life could originate and thrive on a planet. And sometimes even then
the planet in that range was biohostile.

 

 

Life was rare and fragile. Yet it was also frequent and tough. Give it a
foothold, and it fought to hold on, to flourish, to evolve into forms
impossible to imagine until seen.

 

 

Al-Buraq's probes reported that this world was slightly smaller than Earth
but had slightly more mass. She went into orbit just above the atmosphere
and over the only continent. This was much longer than it was wide and
stretched around the southern hemisphere in the temperate zone. Its two
extremities were separated by 3,000 kilometers of islandless ocean.

 

 

"'To the tree which does not stand alone.'"

 

 

How in the seven hells was he to find that one? Except for freshwater
bodies and the upper slopes of the highest mountains, the continent
was covered with thick trees. There were no meadows or open spaces of
any consequence.

 

 

Ramstan sent ship down into the atmosphere about twenty kilometers above
land-level. He ordered her to follow a path which would eventually cover
every hectare. They soon determined that there was much bird and insect
life in the upper reaches of the forest and many species of animal. Among
these were monkey- and apelike creatures.

 

 

The biodetectors showed that each tree was attached to its immediate
neighbors by four to six thin, leafless, glossy-black branches extending
horizontally in a circle from the upper middle part of the trunk. These
formed an interconnecting and supporting system extending continent-wide.
The trees on the edges of the beaches and seacliffs only grew the connectors
inward to their neighbors.

 

 

Though approximately one out of a hundred trees was dead, they did not
seem to fall until completely rotted and eaten by the insects. Where
this had happened, treelets were growing up from the mounds of the
dead predecessors.

 

 

"'To the tree which does not stand alone.'"

 

 

Allah! How could he make any sense out of that?

 

 

He began pacing back and forth but stopped after a minute. It was not good
for the bridge people to see him so obviously worried. He ordered Toyce
to call him if any sentient life was detected.

 

 

"Yes, sir. But sentiency may not be obvious."

 

 

"Do the best you can."

 

 

He went to his quarters and there resumed pacing. Once, he stopped to
take the glyfa out, but it did not respond.

 

 

"I need you now!" he cried, and he struck it a glancing blow with his fist.
The round a-g units attached to it did not prevent it from rolling over
and dropping off the table onto the deck. The deck quivered, not from
the impact itself but from al-Buraq's reflex to what it considered might
be Ramstan's fall. Or was it due to ship's monitoring of his emotional
state? She was always sensing him, the play of electrical fields on his
skin, his body temperature, the tone of his voice.

 

 

He turned, jumped, and gasped. The green man was standing by the far
bulkhead. His arm was outstretched, and a fingertip was on the center
of a seven-sided screen.

 

 

The vision lasted no longer than two eyeblinks.

 

 

The green-shrouded man had indicated the empty screen. What did that have
to do with the tree that does not stand alone? Perhaps nothing. Something
else might have been meant by that fingertip on the center of a blank field.

 

 

Did al-Khidhr really exist? Or was the thing that he, Ramstan, had seen
just a form beamed by someone? Had al-Khidhr been shot forth like a
three-dimensional hologram from Ramstan's four-dimensioned brain,
self-awareness being the extra dimension?

 

 

Something, objective or subjective, nonhuman or human, was trying to
tell
him something.

 

 

He began pacing again but halted after twelve steps. Perhaps the vision
was not referring to the screen as a whole but to its center.
Look
for the center
was the message. The center of what? His own center,
the inmost recess of his being?

 

 

No.

 

 

Look in the center, the middle, of the forest.

 

 

That could be it.

 

 

At one time there may have been only one tree on this continent,
an Urgenitor, the hermaphroditic Adam-Eve of all these now existing.
Possibly, it had stood or was still standing in the geographical center
of the land-mass, and where it was was his goal.

 

 

He called the bridge. The scanners having fed the data into al-Buraq's
brain, the geographical center and the middle point of the land-mass were
located. The latter was that point halfway between the two extremities
of the continent and halfway between the north and south coasts. Since
the two centers did not coincide, Ramstan ordered that ship go to the
latter first.

 

 

Her central part contracted into a rocket-shape, her lower outer part
shaped like the wings of antique airplanes, al-Buraq sped above the surface
of the green arboreal-ocean. At 300 kilometers from her destination,
she began descending and decelerating and within ten minutes was poised
over it. Ten meters below the bottom of her hull, the tip of the highest
tree rocked in the wind. Ramstan did not think that it was a coincidence
that the tallest and most massive tree grew from the continental center.

 

 

The sun had almost zenithed. The sky was cloudless. The only life visible
to the unaided eye was aerial: large insects, primitive birds, and some
small and some large mammals. At least, the latter were assumed to be
mammals since they were furred. The biggest had wingspreads of eight meters,
batlike bodies and wings, and bloodhoundish faces, but their cries were
monkeylike. They were too heavy to take off from the tree branches,
and their webbed feet suggested that they used water as their landing
fields. The nearest large lake was 50 kilometers away, so the dogbats
must have an amazingly extended range of flight. They dived down and
caught the smaller birds and mammals and ate them while flying.

 

 

Though the tossing green surface looked lifeless from a distance, it was,
when seen closely, surging with vitality. In addition to the winged things
skimming it, insects and some unclassifiable creatures crawled, ran,
or hopped on the broad, dark-green, leathery-looking, cupped, and immense
leaves of the Brobdingnagian tree just below them. The foliage did not
swarm with the creatures, but it was well-populated.

 

 

This was where the top branches met the open air. What about below
that level?

 

 

The viewbeams could not penetrate the density more than a few meters.

 

 

Nuoli, looking at the magnification on the screens, said, "You'd think
that the leaves below, all growth below the upper leaves, would die from
lack of sunlight. Surely . . ."

 

 

Ramstan said, "Yes?"

 

 

"Surely, it can't be as thick as it seems. At least, elsewhere, the sun
must be able to penetrate here and there."

 

 

What could live down there besides pale things of low or no intelligence,
blind, moving slowly in the darkness?

 

 

But if "the tree which does not stand alone," meant anything, it must apply
to the prodigious plant below him. It stood higher than the others by
a thousand meters. Its circumference, the circle formed by the tips
of the branches at a level with the tops of the surrounding trees, was
10,000 meters. Outside the edge of the circle, through small breaks here
and there in the foliage of the smaller parts of trees, the connecting
branches could be seen.

 

 

"The mothertree?" Ramstan muttered to himself.

 

 

The sunlight glanced from some of the tossing leaves, which seemed to contain
mica. There was nothing visible to suggest anything sinister. Yet, he felt
that there was danger under those leaves. Not the expected peril of feral
animals or poisonous reptiles. Something or some things which he could
not possibly anticipate, entities which had been beyond the ken, and still
might be, of humankind.

 

 

The unknown had always held fear. The human mind was constructed to project
fear into the nonexplored whether or not there were reasons to be afraid.
On the other hand, the unknown also enticed. Humans could not resist its
allure and had to plunge into whatever dangers might exist there. Also,
there was a fascination about fear itself that had its allure. Humans,
some humans, anyway, liked to be afraid -- to a certain degree. Perhaps
the basic drive here was the desire to test their courage. No, that was
not the only basic. Curiosity, monkey curiosity, also pulled them into
the unknown.

 

 

This situation, however, differed from any which Ramstan had been in.
He had always felt confident that he could handle any predicament. But this
one . . . there was something about it. . . something so vast and powerful
that it made him feel very small and weak . . . no . . . he must not think
like that. Even smallness and weakness had their powers, their advantages.

 

 

"Besides," he said aloud, "I am Ramstan!"

 

 

Nuoli, who was standing near him, jumped. She said, "What?"

 

 

Suzuki was also looking strangely at him.

 

 

"Nothing," Ramstan said. "Nothing."

 

 

So . . . he was Ramstan? So what? He was unique, but so was every sentient
being. So, for that matter, was every one of the millions of seemingly
alike trees on this land. The difference was that he was sentient,
self-conscious, and he had a self or a series of selves called Ramstan,
and that Ramstan had a body-mind and a development through a unique
environment that no one else had. No one, not even God. God might know
every sentient, might even participate in the full consciousness and
unconsciousness of every unique sentient. But not even He could be that
person. There were limits even to God's powers. Which, since God was by
definition all-powerful, meant that God was not God. Which meant that
the definition should be restated.

 

 

He had no time to think of the implications of that. He ordered that a
launch be readied for take-off in ten minutes. He also told Tenno that
he, Ramstan, would be on it.

 

 

"We're going down to the surface," he said.

 

 

Tenno had obviously been speculating on his captain's reasons for coming
here. He said, "You're following the directions in Wassruss's chant?"

 

 

Ramstan hesitated, then said, "It may be in vain. But, after all, our mission
is scientific, and anthropology, I mean, sentientology, is one of our main
studies. This chant . . . it's so curious . . . it intimates that there have
been alaraf drives in the very distant past . . . perhaps before humanity
was quite evolved from the ape. Anyway, I have more than one motive for
traveling through the walls of the universes."

 

 

Tenno interrupted. " Walls?"

 

 

That slip checked Ramstan for an instant. He opened his mouth, could not
get the words out, glared, shut his mouth, briefly closed his eyes,
then spoke.

 

 

"Yes, walls. I'm not at all certain that we are, per theory, traveling from
one galaxy to another either by time travel or by tunnel-bell. You know that
it's been suggested, though, I'll admit, not seriously, that when a ship
jumps it penetrates the 'wall' between one universe and the next."

 

 

He paused, and Tenno said, "The multiverse hypothesis. Though, really,
it's not even a hypothesis. It's a wild speculation, and . . ."

 

 

"I tend to think that it's more than that. But what's the difference
what the truth is? In this situation, anyway. You're in charge of ship
now, Tenno. You have your orders on what to do if the Tenolt or that
monster appears."

 

 

Tenno said, "Aye, aye, sir," and saluted.

 

 

Five minutes later, Ramstan was seated in the launch. It left its port
and nosed down toward the tree. Seen from ship with the naked eyes,
the plant seemed a solid monolith. As the launch neared it, however,
its occupants saw vast openings, the entrances to the emptinesses
between the levels of branches. The branches were gigantic, ranging
from 50 to 70 meters in radius near the trunk, and were supported about
a third of their length from the trunk by arboreal flying buttresses,
branches growing at a 45-degree angle upward from the trunk and merging
into the lower part of the branches they upheld. In the outer part of
the vertical aisles formed by the branches was a space about 100 meters
high. The launch moved into the aisle formed by the seventh and eighth
branches from the tip of the tree.