The room was large and dome-shaped and of a bare green metal. Around him were upright thin disks, twice as tall as he, the lower edges set into the floor. There were at least five hundred.
He knew where he was at once. Through the only entrance, an arch, was a hall. This opened at its end onto another arch. Beyond that was the great room where he had visited the Vwoordha.
He removed the sigil from his mouth and pocketed it.
"Why didn't they tell me I'd only end up here?" he muttered.
He set the glyfa down and said, "You knew all the time we'd come here. 'One who runs away runs toward.' Why didn't you say anything?"
"I didn't know for sure," the glyfa said in Habib's voice. "I had heard a long time ago, a very long time ago, that the Vwoordha had a ph'rimon target. I'd also heard that they'd spent many years in tracking down and removing ph'rimons in various stations. But there must be thousands of them throughout the Pluriverse. Thus, I could not say with any certainty that your ph'rimon would bring us to this target. In any event, you had to use your sigil, but you might have balked if you'd known there was a chance you'd arrive here."
"You're all manipulating me," Ramstan said savagely.
"You haven't struck out yet," the glyfa said. "To use another analogy, you're in a sort of cosmic poker game. We, the Vwoordha and I, hold very good hands. But the joker is wild, and you may be it."
The ferretlike animal, Duurowms, flashed through the far arch, raced down the hall, and ran down a lane through the forest of disks. It reared up on its hind legs and gestured that Ramstan should follow him. He did so while the creature danced wildly. Coming to the far arch, they turned left -- a good omen for him -- and went toward the ancient three. These were sitting on their folded carpets and pillows near the most distant wall. Ramstan turned once to look behind him. If only he had gotten up and strolled around while talking to the Vwoordha, he might have seen the ph'rimon target room.
But what could he have done if he'd known about it? Despite what the glyfa said, he would not have stayed at the Urzint world.
Blue-robed Grrindah laughed, and she said, "Welcome back, Ramstan!"
He did not reply. When he was close to the three, he set the glyfa down, and he removed from his pocket the three sigils.
"You knew you'd be getting these eventually," he said. "Tell me now, what information or help do I get for this price?"
Green-robed Shiyai held out a gnarled band. He started toward her, then stopped. Through the arched exit doorway, he saw al-Buraq.
He was shocked and confused. Ship had escaped the bolg! The thing had been diverted by the planet Shabbkorng. That had to be the explanation. Even if al-Buraq had left the Shabbkorng bell before the bolg's missiles reached it, she would have been quickly caught if the bolg had jumped after her to the next bell.
However, al-Buraq could not have had enough time to transfer through several systems and bells and returned here by now. That would have taken far too much time, and he had not been in the first two stations more than a half hour, if that.
"Time is determined by the curvature of space-matter," the glyfa said. "And by the curvature of the mind."
"Does Benagur know that I'm here?"
"No," Shiyai said. "We weren't sure that you would be."
"What are they doing here?"
Grrindah said, "Benagur had to check on your story. He could not resist coming back to question us. We assured him that his return to Earth would bring the bolg much more quickly to Earth. He may not believe us. However, he also came here to find out if the bolg can be attacked. Or if there is some way to elude it."
Ramstan put the sigils back into his pocket. Shiyai dropped her hand. Grrindah said, "You're thinking that you'll give them to someone on the vessel?"
He did not answer her. He strode to a point near the arch and looked out. About half a kilometer behind and to one side of a1-Buraq, the nose of the launch stuck out from behind a root-swelling. Branwen Davis was, so far, unharmed.
Ramstan turned. "Is there anything to be done about the bolg?"
"It will have discharged most, if not all, of its missiles," Shiyai said.
"Then al-Buraq could go down one of its horns," Rmmstan said. "It might be vulnerable on the inside."
"We told Benagur that. He didn't say what he meant to do."
"How would we find the bolg?" Ramstan said. "Won't it be gone by now?"
"It could be. But often it orbits around the planet it's just attacked until it builds up a new supply of missiles."
"How long does that take?"
"I don't know."
"It was gone only a short time after it attacked Kalafala," he said.
He thought for a moment, then said, "What was Benagur's reaction to my disappearance?"
"He was puzzled and furious," Shiyai said. "We didn't enlighten him. Come now, Ramstan. The sigils."
She held out her hand again.
"Only one of you could use them to escape the bolg," he said. "What good would it do the other two?"
Grrindah laughed and then said, "You are not as intelligent as we thought. Why . . ."
His skin warmed.
"I see. I was holding the glyfa, and it went with me. If you all hold each other . . . ?"
"Right."
He still hesitated. Could he use Wassruss's gift to get the crew to accept him as its captain again? He'd be easily able to get taken aboard as a prisoner, but he did not want that. The only one with authority to make him a member of the crew or of the officers was Benagur. Would Benagur regard the sigils as a worthwhile price for this?
No, he would not.
Ramstan had nothing to offer the people in al-Buraq. They would all despise him for deserting them when threatened by the bolg. They would reject his justifications for having done so.
He took the sigils out, walked to Shiyai, and dropped them in her hand.
She rubbed her thumb over them one by one and put them somewhere inside her robe.
"The glyfa acts for its own interests and those only," she said. "But, however sentient and contrary it is, it is, in one respect, a tool. Anyone who knows how to use it as such may do so, and there is nothing the glyfa can do about it."
"True," the glyfa said, using Ramstan's mother's voice. It sounded very angry. "True. But if you use me as the Vwoordha wish, you'll become their tool. They want to put God in their pocket."
"No doubt the glyfa is talking to you now," Shiyai said. "We've told you the truth, but I'll repeat. It wants power, the supreme power. When a supremely selfish person uses supreme power, what will that person do with it? Consider well, Ramstan."
The glyfa or the Vwoordha or all could be lying.
"The glyfa is a tool," he said. "For what?"
"We told you. Its primary purpose is to communicate with the Pluriverse."
"How can you communicate with someone who can't talk yet?"
"You can communicate, to a limited extent, with a baby who can't talk yet," Shiyai said. "However . . ."
Ramstan was angry enough to interrupt her.
"Show me how."
Grrindah laughed again, making him even angrier.
"We intended to do that, but not until you chose between us or it."
"Show me now."
Grrindah and Shiyai exchanged glances and then stared briefly at black-robed Wopolsa. It was difficult to determine exactly what or whom she ever looked at. He also flashed on the feeling that the other two were somewhat afraid of her.
Shiyai said, "Very well. Know first, Ramstan, that the overpowering light that fell upon you, that shone through you in the Tolt temple, was only the edge of the numinous that you'll experience when you first . . . venture. It was transmitted by the gJyfa just to impress you, Nuoli, and Benagur. And to weaken your defenses against its guile.
"It was the beginning, the relatively weak beginning, of a deeper experience. It was what the mystics and the saints of many worlds, yours included, have . . . should I say . . . seen? Many sentie
nts are rotatable amplifying antennae . . . not antennas, antennae . . . which receive some of what the Pluriverse radiates. Or perhaps I should say they glimpse into Its mind. Not very far, though some see deeper than others.
"In any event, some sentients are such antennae, though not very efficient. The use of the glyfa enables anyone who has this inborn power to receive and detect, and, if the glyfa is used well, to communicate. Or perhaps I should say, to observe and be observed. But it takes a long time to learn to do whatever the doing is. How long, we don't know yet. The glyfa managed to get away from us before we could get to that stage."
"If," Ramstan said, "the glyfa can't get into . . . touch with this . . . being, then how did it transmit this . . . power . . . to us three in the temple?"
Shiyai opened her mouth. Ramstan said quickly, "It must have been using a Tolt. The high priest, I suppose."
Shiyai stood up. "We'll do it now."
Grrindah also rose to help her sister, but Wopolsa remained sitting, her eyelids closing slowly as if a greater night were falling on a lesser. At Shiyai's orders, Ramstan placed the glyfa on top of a table. This was much higher than the others and had not been here on his last visit. He felt that it had been brought in for just this occasion, and he flashed rage. He was being manipulated, controlled.
A Vwoordha stood on each side of him, but far enough across the table so that the three formed the corners of an equilateral triangle. He was surprised when Shiyai said something softly to Duurowms, and the animal leaped upon the table and put its front paws on an end of the glyfa.
"He represents our beast nature," Shiyai said. "There's enough of that in us sentients to amplify the transmission, but he will greatly increase the power."
"The glyfa is the only sentient in all the worlds who has no subconscious," Grrindah said, and she cackled. "It never sleeps, and so it can't dream. Not in the way sentients dream. But when it shuts down to recharge, it does not do so entirely and it couldn't if it tried. We built that limitation into it. It is during the charging, when only a slight trickle of energy keeps it awake, that it daydreams in a peculiar way."
"Yes," Shiyai said. "It is then that it watches the microscopic similitudes of the creatures that it has drawn within itself. It has set up many worlds there, and it observes the mockups of living beings, mostly sentients, who enact their own fantasies within it. The glyfa is even capable of participating to some extent in these dramas and comedies. It feels and sees and hears and smells what the tiny personae experience."
Ramstan said, "Yes, I know. It said that it could draw within it my neural atoms and set them up in a seeming body. Thus, I could live forever inside it and enjoy eternity. If I wished, I could play Muhammad or Einstein or Jesus or Buddha or Crazy Horse or even fictional characters, Natty Bumppo, Sam Spade, the Wizard of Oz, Sinbad the Sailor, Ishmael, who sailed under Captain Ahab, Ishmael, the son of Abraham by Hagar, ancestor of the Arabs, Alyosha Karamazov, Sherlock Holmes, Frodo, whomever I wanted to be. I would still know that I was Ramstan and could withdraw whenever I wanted to, but a part of me would be that person or seem to be. It was very tempting but not tempting enough."
"Why did you resist?" Shiyai said.
"It is not what I want."
"You could have had the similitude of eternity in your Moslem paradise or whatever paradise you wished," Shiyai said. "You could have had houris to lie with, and your orgasms would have lasted for a thousand years or have seemed to. You could have sat on the right hand of Allah while hosts of angels sang their praise of you."
"I don't want similitudes. I want the real thing. Though, in this case, I would not want the Moslem paradise or the Christian or any that human minds have conceived."
"What is it that you do want?"
"I don't know. But when I see it, I'll know it."
"Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, you will never see it," Shiyai said. "It is seldom that anyone gets the best, and it never lasts very long. Why not settle for second-best?"
"It is not what I want."
"You are indeed appropriately named, Ramstan. Now. Put your left hand on the glyfa and your right hand on me."
He did so while Shiyai put one hand on the egg-shape and one on Grrindah's shoulder. The blue-robed one placed a hand on Ramstan's left shoulder and the other on the glyfa, one finger touching the side of Duurowms' long nose.
He had a horrifying thought. What if, somehow, the glyfa had already sucked him into it and he was playing out one of its fantasies?
The glyfa could not have known what he was thinking unless he was subvocalizing. Nevertheless, its words, transmitted as his mother's voice, shocked him.
"You are a fool, Ramstan!"
He said softly, "So be it, then."
"What I am going to tell you is to be taken figuratively, not literally," Shiyai said. Her green irises and red, broken-veined eyeballs seemed to be long spoons stirring up something in him. "You must let yourself fall, Ramstan. Think of yourself as a great, heavy-bodied, but mighty-winged eagle. You have to launch yourself from your high nest, and you will fall before you soar. Then, if you do what must be done, you will become a hummingbird. To do that, you must overcome your fear."
"Fear!" Grrindah said, and she laughed.
"She laughs because she, too, is afraid," Shiyai said. "I do not laugh, but I am also afraid."
"What happens if one of us becomes so frightened that he or she withdraws from the contact among us?" Ramstan said.
"It would not be good. Perhaps. Who knows? Shut your eyes. That helps, though it is not absolutely necessary."
Ramstan did so. He had expected some sort of chanting or prelude, but he instantly fell and saw himself hurtling in free flight. His hands were still in contact with the glyfa and Shiyai, and he could feel Grrindah's hand on him and the pressure of his feet against the floor and the edge of the table against his stomach. Then the touch faded away, and the light began, the light that blinded yet was overrich in vision.
He had told himself that he was not afraid, but that was a lie to himself, the easiest of all lies.
... 29 ...
A ghost among ghosts, he sped "downwards" helplessly, turning over and over. The light became brighter and brighter, his fear increasing seemingly in proportion to the square of the intensity of illumination. Yet, the light was not what he knew as photonic light. Its nature was different and totally unfamiliar. And, despite his horror, it held at the same time an attraction, a promise of . . . what?
Also, though the light blinded him, he could "see." He was falling through what was still quaintly called outer space as if it were not true that any space outside the skin was not outer space. Or was any space exterior to one's self? Whatever the truth, he could see the pale phantoms of blazing stars and darker orbiting planets and their moons and comets and meteorites and vast gas clouds like wind-shaken curtains in a haunted house.
Then he plunged through a wall, a shimmering barrier, and was, so it seemed, in another universe not much different except for space-energy-matter arrangements from the one he had just left. Now he began "hearing" voices. Whisperings. Titterings. Screams. Agony. Ecstasy. Or sounds that combined agony and ecstasy. Whimperings. Whistlings. (For a very brief moment, he thought of the bolg.) Phantoms of thunderings. Spectres of lightning. Muffled crashes of stars, of galaxies. Sighings as expanding universes met, their boundaries merging as softly, lightly, and tenderly as two amoebae touching.