The Unreasoning Mask (22 page)

 

 

Just below the eyes was not a nose but a large round appendage of leathery
flesh darker than the face, the color of which was a pale red. There did not
seem to be any nostrils or openings of any kind in the projection. It pulsed
like the vein on top of its skull.

 

 

The mouth was much more like a human's; the lips were very everted.
The jaw was thick, and the chin was a ball with a deeply punched-in,
six-pointed star.

 

 

"Some dimple," Nuoli muttered.

 

 

The ears were very small, flat, close to the face, and their convolutions
were nonhuman alto-relief arabesques.

 

 

Ramstan ordered the magnifying power to be increased so he could look
directly into the wide-open mouth. The teeth were like a pig's; the purplish
tongue was warted.

 

 

The red leathery body reminded Ramstan of a kangaroo's, but its tail ended
in a wide fan and its feet were wide, splayed, and webbed, a frog's.
It used the feet and the tail to propel itself over the surface of the
strange liquid.

 

 

Its upper limbs, however, were quite human and so were its hands.

 

 

The "wise one who swims" was slowly circling the well near its wall.
It looked like an extinct salmon, though it was at least twelve meters long,
six times the length of the average man laid out for his funeral. Another
strange thought. Why had he used that comparison?

 

 

Ramstan was flabbergasted. He'd assumed that the three spoken of in the
chant would be sentient. It was possible though not probable that the hopper
was. But a fish could not be sentient.

 

 

Looking directly at the "cold-blood who drinks hot blood" hurt his eyes
and made him feel even more disorientated. It was a shimmer of pale-reddish
light fringed by purplish light. The glowing body expanded and contracted;
its major length was ten meters, its minor, nine, and its major height
was three meters and its minor, two. Now and then, in no regular pattern
that the scan-computer could determine, the shimmering was cut off,
and Ramstan got a flash of the thing behind the light. It seemed to
him at first that it looked like a mixture of bat and octopus. It had a
head, but it was on top of the central part of an oblong body, not at
one end. The features and the teeth, if they were teeth, were like a
South American vampire bat's. He had no sooner fixed that in his mind
than the next glimpse showed him a broad face, half lion, half human,
and a hint of something else. He did not know what the something else was.

 

 

Nuoli said, "Jumala!" and spoke then in Terrish. "I saw into its eyes.
They looked black, genuinely black. And . . . I must have been seeing
things. . . my imagination . . . I thought I saw stars deep within them.
Constellations . . . a gas cloud . . . shining . . . white."

 

 

Ramstan did not reply. He ordered the launch taken to a meter above the
head of the hopper. It had sunk to its waist, but now it began thrusting
its webbed and splayed hands and feet against the liquid. It rose swiftly,
spread out flat on the surface, then reared upright. And it began hopping.

 

 

Ramstan told the com-op to put some Urzint phrases into the translator.
He did not believe that these would be understood, but Urzint was the
interplanetary language in the areas where he'd been, and he had to
try something.

 

 

The hopper stopped, began sinking, and also began laughing. At least,
the hooting sounded somewhat like laughter.

 

 

The huge fish rolled so that its right eye was above the surface, and this
regarded the launch steadily.

 

 

The shimmering thing did not move.

 

 

Ramstan was not the only person startled when the hopper gabbled in an
unfamiliar language full of throaty and hissing sounds, then switched
to Urzint.

 

 

"Go to the house! Go to the house! Go to the house!"

 

 

Nuoli was the first to break the silence in the launch. "What I tell you
three times is true," she murmured.

 

 

"It's not indicative but imperative," Ramstan said. "Nothing to do with
validity."

 

 

"Well, at least we know it's sentient."

 

 

"Not necessarily," he said. "It may be like a parrot. Trained to
utter the directions when it's spoken to by strangers. Or . . ."

 

 

"But in Urzint?"

 

 

Ramstan did not comment. Obviously, the Urzint people must have been here
at one time. Or perhaps the hopper had met the legended pachydermoids on
some other planet.

 

 

He ordered the launch to rise to the left. That seemed as good a direction
as the right, though he may have had psychological reasons for choosing it.

 

 

The house, if it could be called such, was located three root-swellings
over from that by the well. The distance from the well was 300 meters,
which Ramstan would not have said was "nearby." It was three structures
arranged vertically or perhaps was one structure with three stories which
only looked like separate ones stacked. If it, or they, were a habitation,
it was certainly one he had never before encountered.

 

 

The main body of each was an oblate sphere, from the equator of which
extended a long tapering body toward the tree. He at first thought that
each looked like a round birdhead with a long bill. Then he perceived
it as a spermatozoon with its thick head and long thin tail, except that
the tail was straight, not curving. His third impression was of a mace,
a staff at the end of which was a big ball for bludgeoning. The spheres
were, according to the scanner, 50 meters in diameter and the extensions
were 100 meters long.

 

 

The bottom structure was green; the middle one, blue; the top one, black.
Over each a rusty-red lichenous growth formed circles and near-squares and
rough triangles but with enough of the metallic-looking surface exposed to
reveal its color. The growth was thick enough to provide nesting places
for the archeopteryx-like birds and various species of lizardoids and
insects. Also, and this surprised the Terrans because they had by now
assumed that this planet's birds were in a primitive stage of evolution,
there was an owl, or what looked like one, and a storkish avian. The
"owl" cachinnated at them, its cry sounding like the hopper's laughter,
and flew off on snowy black-barred wings. The "stork" looked once at the
launch and then began jabbing itself in the breast plumage, apparently
in search of parasites.

 

 

"They may not be indigenous," Nuoli said.

 

 

Ramstan thought that she could be right, but he did not say so. Her comment
annoyed him; she had always been too given to talking when it would have
been better to be silent or to confine herself to elemental moans and sighs
and screams.

 

 

Moreover, except for the owl's cry, which had broken the glassy silence or
-- strange thought -- blasphemed it, there was a lack of sound even deeper
than that in the levels where life had ceased to be evident. Ramstan suddenly
realized that this silence had existed since he had entered the seemingly
nonzoic area.

 

 

Whatever his misgivings, starts, and too-late perceptions, the air was heavy,
motionless, and dark. The light-shedding plants were less numerous than
above. Around him was a twilight, brooding in between day and night.
Brooding.

 

 

Something, or some things, sat and waited for him, but their thoughts
were not entirely on him.

 

 

"It's spooky," Nuoli said.

 

 

As the launch settled like a sinking canoe in the deeps, Ramstan told
the marines and sailors to have their weapons ready. But they were not
to hold them. The holsters for the olsons should be unsealed and the
larger arms should be on the deck out of sight of anyone in the house.

 

 

"We don't want to appear belligerent," he said.

 

 

They looked as if they'd like to have much more information than this.
For instance, why were they here and what was in the house?

 

 

The launch settled on the thick lichenish growth which spread from the
building and covered the earth between the two colossal root-swellings.
Nobody spoke for a moment; the silence was as if sound itself had died.

 

 

After a long look at the "house," Ramstan said, softly, "I'll go alone."

 

 

A section of the lower hull slid open as the covering was lifted. Ramstan
walked through the opening onto a collapsible ladder, a series of seven
steps, which slid out from the hull. He sank in the growth up to his calves,
smelling for the first time a faint odor from it. It reminded him of
fermenting grass in a compost heap. He walked through the impeding
stuff and up a gentle slope to the house. It seemed to stare back at
him without eyes.

 

 

He paused before and below the outward curve of the first story.

 

 

"'Knock at the entrance,'" Wassruss had said.

 

 

What entrance? The house had neither door nor window.

 

 

He did the only thing he could do. He raised his fist and beat on what looked
like metal but was warmer than metal would have been in this cold air and
felt springy. He could hear no sound from inside the sphere. He had expected
a reverberating echo, a booming.

 

 

After striking three times, he waited, his fist upraised for more hammering.
Within a few seconds, the seamless wall showed a faint line, round and
with a diameter wide enough to easily admit him. He wondered if the door
was regulated for the occasion. If he had been much shorter or much taller,
would the seam have accommodated his height?

 

 

Instead of a section withdrawing or coming out, a panel swinging one way
or the other, the area within the seam became wavy, then misty, then
disappeared. He was confronted by a circlar hole.

 

 

If there was a pressure differential, he could hear or feel no air blowing
out or in. Beyond the hole was darkness. The light from the plants did not
penetrate it. Ramstan shouted in Urzint instead of speaking softly as he had
planned to.

 

 

"I am Captain Ramstan of the Terran exploratory interstellar ship, al-Buraq!
I come in peace! And I have questions."

 

 

He felt foolish saying this, but what else could he say?

 

 

Immediately following his declaration, he saw, or thought he saw, a dim
flash of green in the darkness.

 

 

His heart had been pounding hard before this. Now it accelerated.

 

 

Al-Khidhr?

 

 

Slowly, the darkness faded as light built up, seeming to leak out from
every square centimeter of the walls, ceiling, and floor of the huge
room. At first, he could not distinguish among the furniture and the
three beings standing in the middle of the room. The room was round,
and the doorways were seven-sided. The ceiling was a pale white; the
walls, pale red; the floor, where not covered by a very thick, white,
furry rug, was pale green. There were about a dozen mirrors against the
walls or forming part of them. Their bases were set on the floor, and
their sides tapered up, making long triangles, curving with the walls,
their apexes meeting in the center of the domed ceiling. From this point
hung a chain made of thin golden links and ending in an emerald the size
of Ramstan's head.

 

 

A little red-furred animal with a long thin snout and great tarsier-like
eyes was curled around the jewel. The one red eye that Ramstan could see
was directed at him. Ramstan wondered how the creature had gotten to the
emerald; it was so high above the floor that the beast could not possibly
have jumped to it.

 

 

The furniture was sparse and consisted of fragile-looking chairs and sofas
and tables of ornately carved black-and-white striped wood. The legs were
very short. Here and there were enormous pillows piled around rugs folded
over three times.

 

 

Omitting the front "door," there were three oval entrances to the great
chamber, one in front of him and two on each side.

 

 

One of the three beings, the one in green robes, stepped forward. She spoke
in Urzint. "Greetings, Ramstan. You've taken a long time getting here."

 

 

The one clad in blue said, "You should have been here much sooner.
That is the fault of the glyfa."

 

 

The one in black said, "Ask, but be willing to pay the price."

 

 

 

 

 

 

... 20 ...

 

 

Ramstan felt as if his blood had become mercury and was heavily draining
into his feet.

 

 

The voice of the green-robed one was the voice he had heard in the
Kalafalan tavern.

 

 

"The bolg kills all but one! . . .God is sick . . ."

 

 

She? He? It? Whatever sex the green one was or was not, the voice was hers.

 

 

In that moment, he knew, though he could not rationally justify his
knowledge, that the green one was female. And it seemed to him that the
others were also female.

 

 

Moreover, he believed that she was the shadowy, briefly seen figure in
the hotel and the being who had appeared on Webn while he and Benagur
were quarreling.

 

 

Was she also the old person he had seen when he was entering his parents'
apartment in New Babylon?

 

 

Encountering these three had been like a tremor before a great earthquake.
Hearing her voice was the great earthquake itself. Now, he was seized with
aftershocks. He could not stop trembling, and he was afraid that he was going
to vomit.