Null-A Continuum

by John C. Wright

  Ashargin, his eyes glittering, his shoulders hunched, now pointed both his weapons at Gosseyn, and twin beams of force, brighter than lightning, hammered against the weakening force-shell. The slim pistol began to grow warm in Gosseyn’s hand: There was only a moment remaining before the tiny electron tubes in the weapon burned out.

  The moment was long enough.

  Gosseyn memorized a spot behind Ashargin’s throne and similarized himself to it. He sent Patricia’s weapon back to its hidden holster in her skirt, so that both his hands were free to clamp Rhade’s wrists. A momentary pressure—Gosseyn was strong enough to break the young man’s slender wrist bones, but he held his strength in check—was enough to force the Ashargin heir to drop both weapons. They clattered to the shining marble floor, barrels smoking.

  Gosseyn used his extra brain to examine the nervous system of the frail man in his grasp: “Why did you do that?”

  He said in a quivering voice, “You’re my enemy! Reesha is a traitor! You’re all out to kill me!”

  To Gosseyn’s astonishment, he detected not the sputtering, broken, and erratic nerve-flow of a neurotic man, thrust into a dangerous high position for which he was never qualified, but, rather, the calm, strong flow of a highly trained individual, cool under pressure.

  Amazingly, even the subconscious cues, the look of uncertainty, the nervous posture—all this was part of an act, coolly and deliberately followed by Rhade, obviously for the benefit of unseen watchers.

  Forgive the deception, but I had to force you to make flesh-to-flesh contact. Can you hear me? The fact that our minds were once linked gives me hope that, in close quarters, some thought-energy will be able to bridge the gap between us.

  The mental flow was only one-way. Rhade had, no doubt by a simple stimulant, accelerated the nerve-firings of his brain, making him the “greater” so that Gosseyn was the “lesser.”

  Gosseyn spoke aloud: “I am here to help you. What are you afraid of?”

  A short time ago the temple of the Sleeping God took off. Someone repaired the ancient engines.

  In the young man’s memory, Gosseyn saw Ashargin had been due for a civic ceremony, but his retinue had arrived late. The delay perhaps saved his life. Gosseyn caught the flash of a mental picture of the dome-shaped “building,” known as the Crypt of the Sleeping God, actually a sphere-shaped machine half-buried in a Gorgzid hillside, pulling itself out of its bedrock with unimaginable fury and flinging itself skyward: He saw the buildings and priest quarters around the temple being torn from their foundations and hurled into flinders by the gravitational energy of the liftoff.

  Gosseyn knew the Crypt, the starship of the Primordial Men from the Shadow Galaxy, was the only vessel, aside from the experimental ship Ultimate Prime, that could make a journey of intergalactic scope: Here was the explanation how an assassin from the Milky Way had been on hand in the remote black galaxy to slay Gosseyn Three.

  And if Enro had been active in the Shadow Galaxy, this explained the tremendous increase in range of his powers. The experiment attempted by Gosseyn Three showed that the Primordial Spheres could be used in just such a fashion.

  The scientists of the Greatest Empire, perhaps in secret, must have studied the sacred temple of the Sleeping God with far more skepticism and objectivity than is usually afforded the sacred relics of a powerful religion. The cooperation of the Predictors of Yaltera would have been an immense help. Invasive experiments would have only needed to be prepared, not performed.

  The thought-flow from Ashargin was continuing.

  Predictors loyal to Enro (many converted to his religion) have been anticipating my movements, blocking my every attempt to communicate to anyone outside the palace. I knew that your teleportation is the only thing that can blind the prediction visions: I am free to act for the first time in weeks. Warn the League Powers!

  Gosseyn understood. Ashargin knew Enro’s Predictors could not foresee whether Gosseyn lived or died when Gosseyn reacted to Ashargin’s shot, so they had not interfered with what looked like a scheme to kill Gosseyn.

  Was Enro’s power of remote viewing also blocked by the action of his extra brain? Ashargin was acting as if it were not.

  Aloud, Ashargin said, “Help me, eh?! You can help me by going to the Interstellar League and telling them that the Greatest Empire is protected by the power of the Sleeping God.”

  Enro has escaped from the asteroid cell where you imprisoned him. He has already gathered a large and competent cadre of men, his old supporters, to his cause. He has powers beyond any formerly revealed. I cannot be sure even this shielded building is beyond his range.

  Gosseyn was impressed that Ashargin’s mind had enough self-control to speak one set of thoughts aloud while concentrating on an entirely different second set of thoughts.

  Briefly, Gosseyn wondered what prevented Enro from striking down Gosseyn now, since Patricia was out of the room. Perhaps Enro had decided to use Gosseyn to track down Lavoisseur; perhaps he was unwilling to wreck his own palace. Perhaps his clairvoyance was focused on Patricia and he had lost the image of this chamber.

  Gosseyn forced the guesswork to the back of his mind. There were more immediate problems.

  “Describe this power.”

  The Observer of the Crypt, before Enro made off with it, warned me that Enro had his scientists reproduce a large-scale version of the space-disassociation machine that created the Follower.

  “The power of the Sleeping God is to kill all living things when He wakes!”

  He means to reproduce in the Milky Way, as a weapon, the same disaster that overwhelmed the Shadow Galaxy in ancient times.

  “What do you want me to tell the League?” Gosseyn asked.

  “They are about to be destroyed!”

  That thought was the same both aloud and what Ashargin said silently.

  THERE was no time for further questions: The guards, who had heard the blast of weapon-fire, flung open the doors, their rifles at their shoulders. Nor could Ashargin tell them to spare the man grappling with their Emperor, not and maintain the masquerade he was maintaining to fool any unseen spies, either Predictors or clairvoyant. Gosseyn similarized to the only spot open to him for retreat.

  He landed lightly on the slab of the wall panel that now rested on the floor of Patricia’s bedchamber.

  He tried to feel with his extra brain for that slight tug, which indicated that she was still attuned to him. Nothing. Her pistol was likewise out of his range, or had been de-attuned by some vibrational-disassociation method.

  She was gone.

  10

  Every identity is distinct. No matter their overt similarity, one of any two objects in a class of objects is an individual.

  Gosseyn was walking in the cool of the twilight down the streets of Ungzid, one of the major cities of Gorgzid, on an island far from the capital. The city occupied the whole body of the island, and many of the buildings simply continued past the shoreline and formed acres of towers and domes and city squares underwater. It was a spaceport as well as a seaport. Floating on the waves were interstellar vessels of all descriptions.

  Certain underwater restaurants would send their pretty waitresses swimming up through permeable membranes in the dining room ceiling to swim alongside the vessels and wave at the tourists.

  Gosseyn was not interested in the deceptively picturesque view. A war effort was under way, and its first overt steps had taken place.

  He had spent the last day and a half stranded on this world, eluding the police. This was not hard to do: Whenever he felt the energy of a detection-beam probing him from a lamppost or passing squad car, he used his extra brain to bend the invisible ray away from himself. If the police came too close, he stepped into a phone booth and moved to one of his several memorized spots forming a rough line between Ungzid and the Imperial Palace in the capital back on the main continent.

  For Gosseyn had left the palace immediately upon finding Patricia gone. While alarms and klaxons blar
ed in the corridor outside her room, he had stepped over to the window, used his extra brain to interrupt the window field and render it transparent. He had selected the most distant tower-top he could see, and, when he arrived there, he had selected the peak of a mountain on the horizon.

  It took him less than an hour to travel across the continent.

  In the island-city of Ungzid, he found a spaceport, but it was too heavily guarded, too well watched, even for a man of his special abilities to break into.

  So he stepped into a shop and bought a postcard for a penny and asked the shop owner to look up for him the schedule for mail runs to various planets. The proprietor studied star routes on the stat plate next to his cash register. Gosseyn casually turned his back to the man, for the news screen hanging over the shop counter had lit up with the picture of Gosseyn’s head. The caption identified the reward for information leading to the capture of the would-be assassin of Emperor Ashargin, the man who had kidnapped the Divine Empress Reesha.

  Gosseyn strolled out of the shop and slipped the card into an express mailbox.

  Later, he strolled past the mailbox at collection time and then loitered near the wall of the spaceport annex, watching armed marines check the incoming parcels and search the ticket-carrying passengers. The annex windows were of the same type as he’d seen on Nirene, so the spaceport was one huge opaque structure of steel, with no way for him to see in. But he picked out the container from the post office, and he saw the mailbag going in.

  As he stood watching, Gosseyn heard a strident voice ringing from a street-corner public loudspeaker nearby, calling for “uncompromising action!” The Interim Government was being blamed for its inability to protect Reesha—or perhaps having a hand in her disappearance.

  The efficiency of Enro’s propaganda organization was startling: Without Ashargin being able to stop it, already the government of Gorgzid, the police, and the public telecommunications networks were reacting to Enro’s will. Even treason against Ashargin was being broadcast on government-sponsored channels.

  “We were never defeated—we were betrayed by disloyal elements in the government! … We demand the return of our Divine Empress! We yearn for the swift and safe release of our young and beautiful leader … torture chambers … unspeakable … of the corrupt and decadent Interstellar League! … How long is the Greatest Empire to tolerate this humiliation?!”

  A small crowd had gathered to listen to the harangue, and some of the young men there were already nodding and muttering their agreement. A hunter-gatherer tribe steeling itself for bloody violence against its neighbors would have addressed its appeals to the same deeply rooted complexes: The outsiders are threatening our women.

  Briefly, Gosseyn found the sight depressing. He walked away, passing a line of news-boxes.

  The flashing stat-plates of the dedicated news channels were also filled with rumors of missing men, mostly veterans from the previous wars but also scientists and technicians: highly trained personnel of the Gorgzid military who, when the Imperial Forces demobilized, had been permitted to return home. Most had been under observation, ordered by the Interim Government not to travel outside their home districts, not allowed to own a firearm or to receive or send uncensored mail—except now they had vanished. Others had been under more strict confinement, house arrest or even jail.

  The degree of advance planning needed to smuggle distorter units to within transmission range of over ten thousand men was startling. The stealth involved bespoke the presence of a powerful and efficient network of spies and agents, guided, no doubt, by the Predictors of Yalerta, who could foresee and forestall any possibility of detection or capture.

  The news reports spoke of the police questioning the wives and mistresses of the missing men, hoping their families would know something of their whereabouts: There were uglier rumors of arrests and interrogation of these innocent women.

  Gosseyn bought a newspaper from the automatic vendor, paying the extra coin for the detailed version. Here on a back sheet was a fine-print column of names released by the police, veterans confirmed as missing; under the entry for “F” Gosseyn found the name:

  Free, Anaxim vor Capech, Capt. 1033th ImpGalNaval

  Destryr., Cmdr. Y381907.

  Captain Free had been the Commanding Officer of the Gorgzid expedition to Yalerta. Gosseyn assumed every name on this list would be that of a man with a working knowledge of that once-hidden world of superhumans.

  Gosseyn turned: Silent as a thundercloud, one of the medium-sized space vessels was rising slowly from the bay, waters sluicing from its titanium-steel hull. It hung weightless in the air only for a moment, suspended on its powerful gravity-nullification engines. Then there was an eye-confusing blur, a green afterimage shimmering where the vast hull had been. This was the distortion effect. The ship had dematerialized, reappearing light-years away, at whatever world held the distorter to which the ship’s engine matrices were currently attuned.

  Gosseyn, once he saw the ship depart, spent the evening in a hotel room, with the lights dimmed, soaking in the hottest water he could tolerate in the tub, using a rhythmic-breathing technique to relax his body.

  For there was a limitation to his range: At roughly twenty hours’ time, or twenty light-hours’ distance (something over thirteen billion miles), he could not maintain the degree of similarity needed to bypass time-space. Beyond that interval, the small, unpredictable atomic changes in the matter memorized made Gosseyn’s mental “photograph” of the object insufficiently accurate—twenty decimal places was the crucial threshold.

  However, during Gosseyn’s brief stay on the planet Yalerta he had learned enough of the Predictors’ technique to extend his range to several thousand light-years.

  With the combination of the two techniques, he could predict what the subatomic organization of a memorized location would be past the twenty-hour limit and “update” his mental photograph of it. All this was done at a subconscious level, by the furious activity of his extra brain. Relaxation of the surrounding tissue was the key.

  To help himself enter the autohypnotic state, he used the phone hookup in the room to send himself a message he had recorded in a soothing tone and he set the phone timer to call itself and repeat the message every forty-five minutes—the space of time of the human dreaming-state cycle. The human mind is wonderfully prone to suggestion: A voice telling you to relax will make you relax.

  And so a hot bath, of all things, did wonders for him.

  The flashing mental pictures, images of possible future events, began to appear. He saw shadows engulfing the galaxy, whole planets warped and burnt even as Crang’s body had been … suns dying, turning black, falling inward on themselves, while their planets froze … he saw a warship of the Greatest Empire hanging above some metropolis beneath an alien sun, dropping an atomic warhead … he saw a young man, strangely familiar: a seventeen-year-old version of himself … a chamber full of burning corpses … he saw Patricia being killed by Enro in a fit of jealous rage….

  He made no attempt to examine the pictures that appeared and disappeared in his brain. These images pulled at his fear and curiosity with powerful magnetism, but he held himself aloof. Lingering would snap him out of his trance. Leej the Predictress had once explained that any attempt by a Predictor to read his own future too closely would create a positive feedback, as he would start to see visions based on the hypothetical futures where he reacted to the visions, and then more futures, and more, resulting from visions resulting from reactions to visions … eventually he would see nothing but dream extrapolations so unlikely as to have no meaning.

  So Gosseyn let the images wash through him, his mind receptive to signals from the future sections of space-time.

  Gosseyn rose to his feet, naked and dripping, in the general delivery room of the post office in the city of Accardistran Minor on the planet Accolon.

  In a small cubby nearby, a sorting machine was now placing the postcard he had bought, and whose atomic
structure he had memorized, on Gorgzid.

  The predictive image had been clear enough to allow him to select the proper moment: The total mass of a nearby robotic sorter machine was enough that, while the postcard was gripped in its magnetic slot, Gosseyn crossed the gap to it, rather than merely bringing the card back to him.

  GOSSEYN did not even bother to explain his nakedness to the post office security officer, nor to the Accoloni police. The police allowed him to call the Earth Consulate on Accolon, but the secretary who appeared on the vision-plate would not put him through to the ambassador. Gosseyn could see a spot through the vision-plate of the office behind: The picture was clear enough for him to memorize it. He stepped there. Had it not been an emergency, perhaps he would have taken the time to negotiate through complexities of the various bureaucracies of two worlds, the complexes and neuroses of the bureaucrats. As it was, this seemed the best method to quickly establish his identity and put himself on home soil.

  Fortunately, the Earth ambassador, James Norcross, was at least partly trained in Null-A techniques, so he could adjust his mind quickly to the situation. He arranged to have a tailor fit Gosseyn out with a new suit of clothing, at about the same time that he arranged an interview for Gosseyn to meet the members of the Security Council of the Interstellar League, in their headquarters in Accardistran Major, not ten minutes’ flight away by air-limousine.

  Through the tinted windows of the air-limousine, he saw the horizon twice as distant as that of Earth, or more. On the horizon, flattened and red, the setting sun bathed the mile-high towers of the supermetropolis, turning acres of windows to yellow and red gold. As on the planet Nirene, the architecture showed its military nature: The windows were merely repeater screens.

  Seeing Gosseyn’s stare, Ambassador Norcross explained that the world was many times the diameter of Earth but so much less dense that the gravity was only slightly above Earth-normal. “Between the buildings, you can glimpse the jungle canopy below us. Looks just like the Amazon, doesn’t it? Except this is the polar region. The sun won’t finish setting for another half year. The equator of Accolon is a lava belt. The life at the North and South poles here evolved in isolation.