The Players of Null-A n-2

by Alfred Elton Van Vogt

  'What is he supposed to do with this?'

  'Read the message.'

  Janasen frowned. 'And what will happen?'

  'It is not necessary for you to know that. Just carry out my instructions.'

  Janasen pondered that, and then scowled. 'You said a little while ago that we must take a chance. It looks to me as if I'm the only one who is taking any chances.'

  'My Friend,' said the Follower in a steely tone, 'I assure you, you are wrong. But let us have no arguments. Any more questions?'

  Actually, he told himself, he had never worried the slightest bit. 'No,' said Janasen.

  There was silence. Then the Follower began to fade. It was impossible for Janasen to decide just when that fade-out was complete. But presently he knew that he was alone.

  Gosseyn looked down at the 'card', then up at Janasen. The calmness of the man interested him because it provided an insight into the other's character. Janasen was a solipsist who had struck a balance with his neurosis by developing a compensatory attitude value, since again and again it would depend on whether other stronger men would tolerate his insolence.

  The setting of their face-to-face meeting was colorfully Venusian. They sat in a room that opened onto a patio, with young flowering shrubs just outside. It was a room with all conveniences including automatic delivery of food, automatic table cooking devices, which dispensed with the necessity of having a kitchen.

  Gosseyn studied the hollow-cheeked man with hostile gaze. The task of finding Janasen had not been too involved. A few interplanetary messages—not obstructed this time, a quick canvassing of hotel roboregisters, and here was the end of the trail.

  It was Janasen who spoke first. The system on this planet sort of interests me. I can't get used to the idea of free food.'

  Gosseyn said curtly, 'You'd better start talking. What I do to you depends entirely on how much you tell me.'

  The clear, blue, unafraid eyes stared at him thoughtfully. 'I'll tell you everything I know,' Janasen said at last with a shrug, 'but not because of your threats. I just don't bother keeping secrets either about myself or anyone else.'

  Gosseyn was prepared to believe that. This agent of the Follower would be fortunate to survive another five years, but during that time he would maintain his self-respect. He made no comment, however, and presently Janasen began to talk. He described his relations with the Follower. He seemed to be quite candid. He had been in the secret service of the Greatest Empire, and somehow he must have come to the attention of the shadow-shape. He proceeded to give a word for word account of his conversations with the Follower about Gosseyn. In the end he broke off, and returned to his earlier statement.

  ‘The galaxy, ‘he said, ‘swarms with anarchistic ideas, but I’ve never before heard of them working. I’ve been trying to figure out how this non-artist…to…to——‘

  'Call it Null-A,' said Gosseyn.

  ' this Null-A stuff operates, but it seems to depend on

  people being sensible, and that I refuse to believe.'

  Gosseyn said nothing more. For this was sanity itself that was being discussed, and that could not be explained with words alone. If Janasen was interested, let him go to the elementary schools. The other must have realized his mood, for he shrugged again.

  'Read the card yet?' he asked.

  Gosseyn did not answer immediately. It was chemically active but not harmfully so. He had the impression that it was an absorbing material. Still, it was a strange thing, obviously some development of galactic science, and he had no intention of being, rash with it. .

  ‘This Follower,' he said finally, 'actually predicted that I would go into that elevator about 9:28 a.m.'

  It was hard to credit. Because the Follower was not of Earth, not of the solar system. Somewhere out in the far reaches of the galaxy, this being had turned his attention to Gilbert Gosseyn. And pictured him doing a particular thing at a particular time. That was what Janasen's account implied.

  The intricacy of prophecy involved was staggering. It made the 'card' valuable. From where he sat he could see that there was print on it, but the words were unreadable. He leaned closer. Still the print was too small.

  Janasen shoved a magnifying glass towards him. 'I had to get this so I could read it myself,' he said.

  Gosseyn hesitated, but presently he picked up the card and examined it. He tried to think of it as a switch that might activate a larger mechanism. But what?

  He looked around the room. At the moment of entering he had memorized the nearest electric sockets and traced live wires. Some ran to the table at which he sat, and supplied power to the built-in compact electronic cooking machine. Gosseyn looked up finally.

  'You and I are going to stick together for a while, Mr. Janasen,' he said. 'I have an idea that you're going to be removed from Venus either by a ship or a Distorter transporter. I intend to go with you.'

  Janasen's gaze was curious. 'Don't you think that might be dangerous?’

  'Yes,' said Gosseyn with a smile. 'Yes, it might be.'

  There was silence.

  Gosseyn attuned the card to one of his memorized areas, and simultaneously, he made the action cue a simple fear-doubt. If the emotion of fear and doubt should enter his mind, the card would instantly be similarized out of the room. The precaution was not altogether adequate, but it seemed to him he had to take the chance. He focused his glass on the card, and read:

  Gosseyn:

  A Distorter has a fascinating quality. It is electrically powered, but shows no unusual characteristics even when it is on. Such an instrument is built into the table at which you are sitting. If you have read this far, you are now caught in the most intricate trap ever devised for one individual.

  If the emotion of fear came, he did not recall it then or afterwards. For there was night.

  IV

  NULL-ABSTRACTS

  A child's mind, lacking a developed cortex, is virtually incapable of discrimination. The child inevitably makes many false evaluations of the world. Many of these false-to-facts judgments are conditioned into the nervous system on the 'unconscious' level, and can be carried over to adulthood. Hence, we have a 'well educated' man or woman who reacts in an infantile fashion.

  The wheel glinted as it turned. Gosseyn watched it idly, as he lay in the cart. His gaze lifted finally from the gleaming metal wheel, and took in the near horizon, where a building spread itself. It was a wide structure which curved up from the ground like a huge ball, only a small part of which was exposed to view.

  Gosseyn allowed the picture to seep into his consciousness, and at first did not feel either puzzled or concerned. He found himself making a comparison between the scene before him and the hotel room where he had been talking to Janasen. And then he thought: I am Ashargin.

  The idea was nonverbal, an automatic awareness of self, a simple identification that squeezed up out of the organs and glands of his body and was taken for granted by his nervous system. Not quite for granted. Gilbert Gosseyn rejected the identification with amazement that yielded to a thrill of alarm and then a sense of confusion.

  A summer breeze blew into his face. There were other buildings beside the great one, outbuildings scattered here and there inside a pattern of trees. The trees seemed to form a kind of fence. Beyond them, a backdrop of unsurpassed splendor, reared a majestic, snowcapped mountain.

  'Ashargin!'

  Gosseyn jumped as that baritone yell sounded no more than a foot from his ear. He jerked around, but in the middle of the action caught a glimpse of his fingers. That stopped him. He forgot the man, forgot even to look at the man. Thunderstruck, he examined his hands. They were slender, delicate, different from the stronger, firmer, larger hands of Gilbert Gosseyn. He looked down at himself. His body was slim, boyish.

  He felt the difference, suddenly, inside, a sense of weakness, a dimmer life force, a mix-up-edness of other thoughts. No, not thoughts. Feelings. Expressions out of organs that had once been under the control of a di
fferent mind.

  His own mind drew back in dismay, and once again on a nonverbal level came up against a fantastic piece of information: 'I am Ashargin.'

  Not Gosseyn? His reason tottered, for he was remembering what the Follower had written on the 'card'. You are now caught . . . in the most intricate trap . . . ever devised. The feeling of disaster that came was like nothing else that he had ever experienced

  'Ashargin, you lazy good for nothing, get out and adjust the harness on the drull.'

  He was out of the cart like a flash. With eager fingers he tightened the loosened cinch on the collar of the husky, ox like beast. All this before he could think. The job done, he crawled back into the cart. The driver, a priest in work garb, applied the whip. The cart jogged on, and turned presently into the yard itself.

  Gosseyn was fighting for understanding of the servile obedience that had sent him scurrying like an automaton. It was hard to think. There was so much confusion. But at last a measure of comprehension came.

  Another mind had once controlled this body—the mind of Ashargin. It had been an unintegrated, insecure mind, dominated by fears and uncontrollable emotions that were imprinted on the nervous system and muscles of the body. The deadly part of that domination was that the living flesh of Ashargin would react to all that internal imbalance on the unconscious level. Even Gilbert Gosseyn, knowing what was wrong, would have scarcely any influence over those violent physical compulsions—until he could train the body of Ashargin to the cortical-thalamic sanity of Null-A.

  Until he could train it . . . 'Is that it?' Gilbert Gosseyn asked himself. 'Is that why I am here? To train this body?'

  Faster than his own questions, the flood of organic thought squeezed up into his brain—memories of that other mind. Ashargin. The Ashargin heir. The immense meaning of that came slowly, came dimly, came sketchily because there was so much that had happened. When he was fourteen, Enro's forces had come to the school he was attending. On that tense day he had expected death from the creatures of the usurper. But instead of killing him, they brought him back to Enro's home planet of Gorgzid, and placed him in the care of the priests of the Sleeping God.

  There he labored in the fields, and hungered. They fed him in the morning, like an animal. Each night he slept with a shuddering uneasiness, longing for the morning that would bring the one meal a day that kept him alive. His identity as the Ashargin heir was not forgotten, but it was pointed out that old ruling families tended to thin away and become weak and decadent. In such periods the greatest empires had a habit of falling by default into the possession of masterful men like Enro the Red.

  The cart rounded a clump of trees that ornamented a central portion of the grounds, and they came abruptly within sight of a skycar. Several men in black, priestly uniforms and one gorgeously arrayed individual stood in the grass beside the plane, and watched the approach of the cart.

  The work priest leaned back in agitation, and nudged Ashargin with the blunt end of his whip, a hurriedly brutal gesture. He said hastily, 'Down on your face. It's Yeladji himself, Watcher of the Crypt of the Sleeping God.'

  Gosseyn felt a violent jerk. He flipped over, and crashed to the bottom of the cart. He was lying there, dazed, as it slowly penetrated to him that the muscles of Ashargin had obeyed the command with automatic speed. The shock of that was still running its course when a strong, resonant voice said:

  'Koorn, have the Prince Ashargin enter the plane, and consider yourself dismissed. The prince will not be returning to the work camp.'

  Once more, the obedience of Ashargin was on an all-out basis. His sense blurred. His limbs moved convulsively. Gosseyn recalled collapsing into a seat. And then the skycar began to move.

  It was all as fast as that.

  Where was he being taken? It was the first thought that came when he could think again. Gradually, the process of sitting relaxed Ashargin's tensed muscles. Gosseyn made the Null-A cortical-thalamic pause, and felt 'his' body loosen even more. His eyes came into focus, and he saw that the plane was well off the ground, and climbing up over the snowcapped peak beyond the temple of the Sleeping God.

  His mind poised at that point like a bird arrested in mid-flight. Sleeping God? He had a vague memory of other 'facts' Ashargin had heard. The Sleeping God apparently lay inside a translucent case in the inner chamber of the dome. Only the priests were ever allowed to look inside the case of the body itself, and then only during initiation, once in each individual's life-time.

  Ashargin's memory reached that far. And Gosseyn had as much as he wanted. It was a typical variation of a pagan religion. Earth had had many such, and the details didn't matter. His mind leaped on to the vastly more important reality of his situation.

  Obviously, this was a turning point in the career of Ashargin. Gosseyn looked around him with a gathering awareness of the possibilities of what was here. Three black uniformed priests, one at the control—and Yeladji. The Watcher of the Crypt, was a plumpish man. His clothes, which had seemed so dazzling, resolved on closer inspection into a black uniform over which was draped a gold and silver cloak.

  The examination ended. Yeladji was number two priest in the Gorgzid hierarchy, second only to Secoh, religious overlord of the planet on which Enro had been born. But his rank and his role in all this meant nothing to Gilbert Gosseyn. He seemed a distinctly minor character in galactic affairs.

  Gosseyn glanced out of the window; there were still mountains below. In the act of glancing down, he realized for the first time that the clothes he had on were not normal for Ashargin, the farm laborer. He was wearing an officer's dress uniform of the Greatest Empire—gold-braided trousers and pull-over coat with jeweled staff, the like of which Ashargin had not seen since he was fourteen, and that was eleven years before.

  A general! The greatness of the rank startled Gosseyn. His thoughts grew clearer, sharper. There must be some very important reason why the Follower had put him here at this turning point in the career of the Ashargin heir—without his extra brain and helpless in a body that was controlled by an unintegrated nervous system.

  If it was a temporary state, then it was an opportunity to observe a facet of galactic life such as might never have come his way normally. If, on the other hand, escape from this trap depended on his personal efforts, then his role was even clearer. Train Ashargin. Train him at top speed by Null-A methods. Only in that way could he ever hope to dominate his unique environment—in possession of a body not his own.

  Gosseyn drew a deep breath. He felt amazingly better. He had made his decision; made it with determination and with a reasonably full knowledge of the limitations of his position.

  Time and events might add new facts to his purpose, but so long as he was imprisoned in Ashargin's nervous system, that training must be first in all his plans. It shouldn't be too hard.

  The passive way that Ashargin accepted the flight fooled him. He leaned across the aisle toward Yeladji.

  'Most noble Lord Watcher, where am I being taken?’

  The assistant head priest turned in surprise. 'Why, to Enro. Where else?' he said.

  Gosseyn had intended to watch the journey, but his ability to do so ended at that moment. Ashargin's body seemed to melt into a formless jelly. His vision blurred into the myopic blindness of terror.

  The jar of the plane landing shocked him back to a semblance of normalcy. On trembling legs, he clambered out of the plane, and saw that they had landed on the roof of a building.

  Eagerly, Gosseyn looked around. It seemed important that he get a picture of his surroundings. He realized he was out of luck. The nearest edge of the roof was too far away. Reluctantly, he let the three young priests direct him towards a staircase that led down. He caught a glimpse of a mountain far to his left—thirty, forty miles away. Was that

  the mountain beyond which lay the temple? It must be, for he could see no corresponding mountain range anywhere else.

  He walked with his escort down three broad flights of stairs, and th
en along a bright corridor. They paused before an ornate door. The lesser priests stepped back. Yeladji came slowly forward, his blue eyes glittering.

  'You will go in alone, Ashargin,' he said. 'Your duties are simple. Every morning, exactly at this hour—eight o'clock, Gorgzid city time—you will present yourself at this door, and enter without knocking.'

  He hesitated, seemed to consider his next words, and then went on with a prim note in his voice:

  'It shall never be any concern of yours what his excellency is doing when you come upon him, and this applies even if there is a lady in the room. To such incidents you literally pay no attention. Once inside, you will place yourself completely at his disposal. This does not mean that you will necessarily be required to do menial work, but if the honor of performing some personal service for his excellency is requested of you, you will do it instantly.'

  The positivity of command went out of his manner. He grimaced as if in pain, and then smiled graciously. It was a lordly gesture of condescension intermixed with a slight anxiety, as if all this that had happened was unexpected. And there was even the suggestion that the Watcher of the Crypt regretted certain actions which he had taken against Ashargin as a matter of discipline. He said:

  'As I understand it, we now part company, you and I, Ashargin. You have been brought up with a strict regard for your rank, and the great role which is now thrust upon you. It is part of our creed that the first duty of man to the Sleeping God is that he learn humility. At times you may have wondered if perhaps your burden was not too great, but now you can see for yourself that it was all for the best. As a parting admonition, I want you to remember one thing: From time immemorial it has been the custom of new princes such as Enro to exterminate rival royal houses root, stock and branch. But you are still alive. That alone should make you grateful to the great man who governs the largest empire in all time and space.'

  Once more, a pause. Gosseyn had time to wonder why Enro had left Ashargin alive; time to realize that this cynical priest was actually trying to make him feel grateful, and then: