The Unreasoning Mask Read Online Free Page A

controls. Beneath the mud? He could not determine

what it was. Something batlike and grinning.
     
     
He turned the controls back and moved the eye past the shore and into the

jungle. Here was a strange creature which seemed to stretch for miles,

which was, actually, a procession of beasts and birds sequentially

advancing, progressing, and retrogressing from the crutch-creature that

had achieved a total land life. It was many beings making a single being,

flowing out from the other, branching, flowering, sometimes a branch

curving back to enter the sea, a many-bodied many-limbed, many-headed

flow of flesh.
     
     
Ramstan reached out to turn the egg slightly, stopping his fingertips

short of it as if he feared that it might burn him or cling to his

flesh and suck him into it. After a few seconds' hesitation, he felt it,

and it was, as always, cool and smooth. But he could feel the squirm of

life and the suddenness and soddenness of death and the tingling of tiny

voltages of tenor and pain and laughter and joy and triumph and despair.
     
     
So he sat, turning the ovoid, adjusting the microscope, tracing the slow

spiral of sculpture.
     
     
Here was a city, proud and high-waned, about to be destroyed by barbarians

from the mountains, a horde that had wandered for decades over desert and

now coveted the milk and honey, the gold and the jewels, the furniture

and the trinkets, the women and the herds.
     
     
Here was another city destroyed only by time. The rains had gone, the

land had dried, the people had died or gone seeking a place where the

soil was wet and black and thick and the skies were wet and cloudy.

A jackalish beast crossed the wide street, now covered with sand, where

victorious armies had once marched down its length, dragging captives

behind chariots piled with loot while the citizens cheered and the band

played loud martial music. Now the only sound was that of the wind through

empty dusty rooms, the hoot of an owl, the hiss of a serpent. Beyond, the

descendants of the refugees pushed their herds across vast steppes, headed

toward a distant land of walled cities, many rivers, and easy pickings.
     
     
And here were rockets poised for the first manned leap to another planet,

helmeted figures working around it.
     
     
And there was the first starship, and beyond it the first confrontation

of explorers and natives.
     
     
And here was a sculpture which had puzzled Ramstan the first three times

ho had studied it. Now he understood that it was composed of symbolic

figures representing the universe, or a universe, collapsing, every

bit of matter from giant red stars to free hydrogen rushing back toward

the point of origin. Beyond that was another easily interpreted figure:

the single primal colossal star exploding. Beyond, stars forming. Beyond,

planets. Beyond, the thick sea with life forming.
     
     
And here and here and here were figures that filmed his skin with cold.

In the midst of the life and death of universes was a tiny, often-repeated,

egg-shaped object. Always with it were three hooded figures.
     
     
Ramstan understood what their ubiquitous presence meant, or he thought

he understood, but he could not believe it.
     
     
The river of birth and death and rebirth spiraled around the egg. But on

its one end was a blank area. Either the sculptors had not lived long enough

to complete their work or they had intentionally left it unfinished. If the

latter, why?
     
     
The glyfa could tell him, but it was silent and had been for some time.
     
     
Ramstan had taken the glyfa out of the bulkhead-safe, moved it easily to

the table since the a-g units on its ends reduced its 500-kilogram weight

to five grams, and asked it to speak to him. But the voice was still.
     
     
Was it mute because it wanted him to study the thousands of sculpturings,

to learn from them something that it could easily tell him but which

he would believe only if be had taught himself? Or