The Unreasoning Mask Read Online Free PDF

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