The World of Null-A n-1

by Alfred Elton Van Vogt

  The psychiatrist said, “If you are a true mutation, the man after man, and should it come down to a choice between saving you and letting this galactic army assault a peaceful civilization, then you may be sure that I shall choose you. And they”—he smiled grimly—“shall have their opportunity to test whether null-A can be destroyed by a first adversity.”

  “But the Venusians don’t know.” Gosseyn found his voice. “They don’t even suspect.”

  “That,” said Dr. Kair, “underlines with very special emphasis what our next move must be. Our future depends on whether or not we can escape from this house before dawn. And that”—he stood up with astonishingly youthful litheness—“brings us right back to our friend on the couch.”

  It was easy to think again of urgent and deadly danger.

  XVII

  We copy animals in our nervous processes. . . . In man such nervous reactions lead to non-survival, pathological states of general infantilism, infantile private and public behavior. . . . And the more technically developed a nation or race is, the more cruel, ruthless, predatory, and commercialized its systems tend to become . . . all because we continue to think like animals and have not learned how to think consistently like human beings.

  A. K.

  John Prescott, galactic agent. That much identification was admissible. The man lay on the couch and his eyes watched them. His blond hair seemed curiously whitish in the strong light. The faintest sneer lurked in the crinkles of his lips, in spite of the slightly bulging gag inside his mouth.

  Gosseyn said with revulsion, “You know, there is something horrible here. This man allowed his wife to be murdered as a mere incident in a campaign to convince me of his bona fides. What took me in was that he had once been a partial believer in the null-A philosophy. I took it for granted, also, that his killing of ‘X’ and Hardie first was pure chance. But I recall now that he paused before he reached Thorson and gave me time to disarm him. In other words, he killed the two Earth men who had been used as a front by the galactic empire, which leaves only galactic people in control of the Earth government.”

  Gosseyn closed his eyes. “Just a moment,” he said, “I’m thinking of something. The games. Weren’t this year’s games supposed to produce a successor to President Hardie?” He opened his eyes. “Who’s ahead so far? Who’s leading?”

  Kair shrugged. “A man called Thorson.” He stopped and blinked. “You know,” he said slowly, “I didn’t connect the name when you mentioned it. But there you have your answer.”

  Gosseyn said nothing. There was a thought in his mind that chilled him. It had very little to do with the fact that Jim Thorson, personal representative of a galactic emperor, would be the next president of Earth. The thought had to do with the Machine. It had outlived its usefulness. It would never again be trustworthy, now that it had proved vulnerable.

  It was hard to imagine Earth without the Games Machine.

  Beside him, Dr. Kair said gently, “All this is unimportant now. We have our own problem. As I see it, one of us must impersonate Prescott and go outside to assess the situation.”

  Gosseyn drew a deep, slow breath, and was himself. He said quickly, “What about your wife? Is she here? I’ve been intending to ask. And children. Any children?”

  “Three but not here. Venusian-born children cannot visit Earth until they’re eighteen. At the moment my wife is with them in New Chicago, Venus.”

  They smiled at each other, the doctor looking gleeful. He had a right to be. The two men were alone with their great problem: one, the doctor, of great attainment in his field; the other—well, the other had still to prove himself.

  They decided without argument that Dr. Kair would go out to contact the gang’s agents. His white hair and his build gave him an appearance roughly similar to that of Prescott. It should suffice in the dark. Prescott’s shoes, while a little too long and half a size too narrow, fitted Kair. It seemed wise to wear the shoes that contained the locator. Imitating Prescott’s voice was comparatively easy. Like all trained speakers, like all Venusians, the psychiatrist had full control of the resonance chambers in his body and head. With a recent memory of Prescott’s voice and with Gosseyn there to check on the subtleties of tone, he had the imitation pat in three minutes, including an identifiable whisper.

  “And now,” said Gosseyn in a steely voice, “we’ll find out from the gentleman himself the details of his arrangements with his friends outside.”

  He bent down and removed the gag. The disgust he felt must have been in his manner, or perhaps Prescott was persuaded by a knowledge of what he would have done to secure information under similar circumstances. Whatever the reason, he said without prompting, “I have no objection to telling you that there are a dozen men outside, and they have orders to follow you, not arrest you. I was supposed to go out about now, to let them know that everything was all right. The all-clear word is ‘Venus.’ ”

  Gosseyn nodded to the psychiatrist. “All right, Doctor,” he said. “I’ll expect you back in five minutes. If you’re not, I’ll suppress my squeamishness and put a bullet through Prescott’s head.”

  The doctor laughed without humor. “Maybe it would be just as well if I stayed out six or seven minutes.”

  His laughter faded as he reached the door. The door moved slightly when he slipped through the opening. And then he was gone into the night and the fog.

  Gosseyn glanced at his watch. “It is now ten minutes after four,” he said to Prescott, and drew his gun.

  A tiny bead of perspiration started a path down Prescott’s cheek. It gave Gosseyn an idea. He looked again at his watch. The second hand, which had been at ten, was now at forty-five. Thirty-five seconds had passed. “One minute,” said Gosseyn.

  Physiological time was a flux of irreversible changes of the tissues and cells. But inward time depended on the human system, on variable circumstances, and on each individual. It changed under stress. Duration was as firmly wedded to man and his momentary emotions as life was to the nervous system. The second hand was twitching toward the ten, completing its first round. Accordingly, one minute had actually passed since the departure of Dr. Kair.

  “Two minutes,” said Gosseyn in an implacable tone.

  Prescott said in a low, harsh voice, “Unless Kair is a fool he should be back in five minutes, but the contact man out there is a talkative idiot. Take that into account, and don’t be too hasty.”

  By the time a minute and a half had gone by, Prescott was sweating profusely. “Three minutes,” said Gosseyn.

  Prescott protested, “I told you the truth. Why shouldn’t I? You can’t escape our dragnet for long. One week, two weeks, three weeks—what does it matter? After listening to Kair, it’s clear to me that your chance of gaining control of that extra part of your mind is almost zero. That’s what we wanted to find out.”

  It was curious, listening to the man talk and at the same time picturing Dr. Kair out in the fog of that pre-dawn night. His watch said that the psychiatrist had been gone only two minutes.

  “Four minutes!” said Gosseyn.

  It startled him a little. If a weak link was going to snap in Prescott’s mind, it would have to be soon now. He leaned forward, expectant, his questions quivering on the tip of his tongue.

  “Another reason I told the truth,” Prescott babbled, “is that I am no longer convinced even a superman could interfere with the interplanetary operations which are now about to be launched. The organization has been overcautious in your case.”

  Gosseyn’s watch showed twelve and one half minutes after four. According to the accelerated time sense working on Prescott’s nervous system, the five minutes allotted for Dr. Kair’s absence was up. It was too fast, it seemed to Gosseyn. By telescoping time in half, he hadn’t given Prescott the opportunity to get really upset. It was too late to slow down. If the man was going to break, now was the time.

  “The five minutes are up,” he said decisively. He raised the gun. Prescott’s face was a
strange, livid color. Gosseyn added savagely, “I’m going to give you one more minute, Prescott. And if you haven’t started talking then, or if Kair isn’t back, you’re through. What I want to know is, where did ‘X’ or the gang get the instrument they use to corrupt the Games Machine? And where is that instrument now?”

  The words spoken, he glanced at his watch to emphasize the time limit. He stared, startled, and briefly forgot his purpose with Prescott. The time was fourteen minutes after four. Four minutes gone! He had an empty feeling, a qualm, the first shocked thought that Dr. Kair had been gone a long time. He saw that Prescott was gray, and that steadied his own nerves. Prescott said in a curious uneven tone, “The Distorter is in Patricia Hardie’s apartment. We built it in to look like a part of one wall.”

  The man looked on the verge of collapse. And his story had the sound of truth. The “Distorter”—the very naming of it was a partial verification—had to be located near the Machine, and they would obviously try to conceal it. Why not in Patricia Hardie’s room? Gosseyn suppressed an impulse to get the lie detector. Suppressed it because he had Prescott on the run, and the introduction of a machine might be fatal. But he couldn’t prevent himself from taking another glance at his watch. It was 4:15 A.M. Gosseyn glared at the door. Time was calling his bluff. He began to understand the pressure Prescott had endured. With an effort he forced his attention back to the man.

  “Where,” he urged, “did you get the ‘Distorter’?”

  “Thorson brought it. It’s being used illegally, since its use is forbidden by the League except for transport, and—”

  A sound at the door silenced him. He relaxed with a sick grin as Dr. Kair came in, breathless.

  “No time to waste,” said the doctor. “It’s getting light outside, and the fog is beginning to clear. I told them we were leaving right away. Come on.”

  He snatched up the leather case containing the test material about Gosseyn’s brain. Gosseyn stopped him long enough for them to gag Prescott, long enough for him to have time to think, and say, “But where are we going?”

  Kair was as gleeful as a boy who has tasted adventure. “Why, we’re taking my private roboplane, of course. We’re going to act just as if we’re not being watched. As to where we’re going, I’m sure you don’t expect me to mention that in front of Mr. Prescott, do you? Particularly since I’m going to drop his shoes, with the locator device in them, before we’re clear of the city.”

  In five minutes they were in the air. Gosseyn looked out into the pressing fog and felt the exultation gathering in him.

  They were actually getting away.

  XVIII

  Gosseyn sank deeper into his seat in the roboplane and glanced at Dr. Kair. The psychiatrist’s eyes were still open, but he looked very sleepy. Gosseyn said, “Doctor, what is Venus like—the cities, I mean?”

  The doctor rolled his head sideways to look at Gosseyn, but did not move his body.

  “Oh, much like Earth cities, but suited to the perpetually mild climate. Because of the high clouds it never gets too hot. And it never rains except in the mountains. But every night on the great verdant plains, there’s a heavy dew. And I mean heavy enough to look after all the luxuriant growth. Is that what you’re getting at?”

  It wasn’t. “I mean the science.” Gosseyn frowned. “Is it different? Is it superior?”

  “Not one whit. Everything ever discovered on Venus is immediately introduced on Earth. As a matter of fact, research on Earth is ahead of Venus on some things. Why shouldn’t it be? There are more people here, and specialization makes it possible for minds of middling intelligence—even unsane minds—to invent and discover.”

  “I see.” Gosseyn was intent now. “Tell me, then. From your knowledge of Earth and Venusian science, what is the explanation for two bodies and the same personality?”

  “I intended to think about that in the morning,” said Dr. Kair wearily.

  “Think about it now.” Gosseyn was persistent. “Is there any explanation on the basis of solar science?”

  “None that I know of.” The psychiatrist was frowning. “There’s no question, Gosseyn. You’ve hit at the heart of this situation. Who discovered such absolutely radical processes? I have no doubt there have been some potent biological experiments undertaken in the solar system by semantically trained biologists. But two bodies and a new brain!”

  “Notice,” said Gosseyn softly, “both sides have something. The miracle of my strange immortality was a product of somebody who opposes the group that owns the Distorter. And yet, Doctor, my side—our side—is afraid. It must be. If it had comparable strength, it wouldn’t play this hidden game.”

  “Hm-m, you seem to have something there.”

  Gosseyn persisted, “Doctor, if you were a human being powerful enough to make decisions of planetary importance on your own, what would you do if you discovered that a galactic empire was organizing to seize an entire sun system?”

  The older man snorted. “I’d rouse the people. The strength of null-A has yet to be tested in battle, but I have an idea it will show up well.”

  Several minutes passed before Gosseyn spoke again. “Where are we going, Doctor?”

  Dr. Kair perked up for the first time. “There’s a cabin,” he said, “on an isolated shore of Lake Superior where I stayed a couple of months three years ago. It seemed such an ideal place for quiet thought and research that I bought the place. And then never went back, somehow.” He smiled wryly. “I’m pretty sure we’ll be safe there for a while.”

  Gosseyn said, “Oh!”

  He sat there estimating the time that had passed since their flight began. He decided half an hour had gone by. Not bad, in a way. A man who could in thirty minutes realize that the enticing easy path was not for him had come a long distance toward domination of his environment. It was enticing to think of lying for hours on some sandy beach, with nothing to do but take mind exercises, in a leisurely fashion, under the guidance of a great scientist. The one flaw in the picture was a rather tremendous one. It wouldn’t be like that at all.

  He pictured Dr. Kair’s cabin hideout. There would be a village near by, and perhaps some farms and fishermen’s homes. Three years before, with a clear conscience, intent on his own purposes, the psychiatrist would have been almost unaware of these addenda to his surroundings. He had probably caught up on his reading and gone for meditative walks on lonely shores, and the occasional habitant whom he met would have been a person seen but not really considered. That didn’t mean that the doctor himself would have been unremarked. And the chances of two men coming to that cabin immediately after the assassination of Hardie and not being closely observed were—well, they were zero.

  Gosseyn sighed. For him there could be no time for settling down on some lake-shore pasture, there to vegetate while the inhabited worlds of the solar system rocked under the impact of invading armies. He stole another look at the doctor. The man’s shaggy head was drooped against the back of his seat; his eyes were closed. His chest rose and fell with regularity. Softly, Gosseyn called, “Doctor!”

  The sleeper did not stir.

  Gosseyn waited a minute, then slipped to the controls. He set them to make a wide half circle, and head back in the direction from which they had come. He returned to his seat, took out his notebook, and wrote:

  Dear Doctor:

  Sorry to leave you like this, but if you were awake we’d probably only argue. I am very anxious to undergo mind training, but there are urgent things to do first. Watch the evening paper personals. Look for an ad signed by “Guest.” If answer is necessary, sign yourself “Careless.”

  He stuck the note into the controls and then strapped on one of the ingravity parachutes. Twenty minutes later, the atomic light of the Machine showed through the fog. Once more, Gosseyn set the controls for a wide half circle, so that the plane would return to its original course.

  He waited till the blazing beacon of the Games Machine was like a raging fire below him, th
en slightly behind. He saw the vaguely shaped buildings of the presidential residence just ahead. When the plane was almost over the palace, he pulled the trigger of the exit door.

  Instantly he was falling through the foggy darkness.

  XIX

  Even Leibnitz formulated the postulate of continuity, of infinitely near action, as a general principle, and could not for this reason become reconciled to Newton’s Law of Gravitation, which entails action at a distance.

  H. W.

  The ingravity parachute was in its entirety a product of purest null-A thinking. Its discoverer had actually sat down and consciously and deliberately worked out the mathematical principles involved; then he had superintended the construction of the first plates. It did its work within the limitations of that law of gravity which said that it is easier for two objects in space to fall toward each other than away from each other, with the smaller of the two doing most of the actual falling. Only an applied force could change this tendency, and applied forces had tendencies of their own that usually included bulkiness, weight, and a capacity for being dangerous when used in close proximity to human beings. There were still Aristotelians around who had fuzzy ideas about making things “fall” upward, and who talked semantic rubbish about nothing being impossible. Non-Newtonian physics, the physics of the real world, recognized the urge of the two bodies to fall toward each other as an invariant of nature, and simply adjusted their nucleonic structures to slow the fall.