The Players of Null-A n-2

by Alfred Elton Van Vogt

  Such possession of another body could not be permanent —and, besides, he must never forget that the system of immortality which had enabled him to survive one death would protect him again. Therefore, this was a tremendously important incident. He must savor it, try to understand it, be aware of everything that went on.

  'Why,' he thought in wonder, 'I'm here at the headquarters of Enro the Red, the reigning overlord of the Greatest Empire. Actually eating breakfast with him.'

  He stopped eating, and stared at the big man in abrupt fascination. Enro, of whom he had heard vaguely through Thorson and Crang and Patricia Hardie. Enro, who had ordered the destruction of Null-A because it would be the simplest method of starting a galactic war; Enro, dictator, leader, caesar, usurper, absolute tyrant, who must gain some of his ascendancy by his ability to hear and see what was going on in nearby rooms. Rather a good-looking man in his way. His face was strong, but it was slightly freckled, which gave him a boyish appearance. His eyes were clear and bold, and blue in color. His eyes and mouth looked familiar, but that must be an illusion. Enro the Red, whom Gilbert Gosseyn had already helped to defeat in the solar system, and who was now waging the vaster galactic campaign. Failing an opportunity to assassinate the man, it would be a fantastic achievement to discover here in the heart and brain of the Greatest Empire, a method of defeating him.

  Enro pushed his chair away from the table. It was like a signal. Secoh immediately ceased eating, though there was still food on his plate. Gosseyn put down his own fork and knife, and guessed that breakfast was over. The waiters began to clear the table.

  Enro climbed to his feet, and said briskly, 'Any news from Venus?' Secoh and Gosseyn stood up, Gosseyn stiffly. The shock of hearing the familiar word at this remote distance from the solar system was personal, and therefore controlled. The jittery nervous system of Ashargin did not react to the name Venus.

  The priest's thin face was calm. 'We have a few more details. Nothing that matters.'

  Enro was intent. ‘We’ll have to take some action about that planet,’ he said slowly. ‘If I could be sure Reesha was not there——‘

  'That was only a report, your excellency.'

  Enro whirled, his expression grim. The mere possibility,' he said, 'is enough to hold my hand.'

  The priest was equally bleak. 'It would be unfortunate,' he said coldly, 'if the League powers discovered your weakness, and spread the report that Reesha was on any one of thousands of League planets.'

  The dictator stiffened, hesitated for a moment. Then he laughed. He walked over and put his arm around the smaller man's shoulder.

  ‘Good old Secoh,' he said sarcastically.

  The Temple lord squirmed at the touch, but bore it for a moment with a distasteful expression on his face. The big man guffawed. 'What's the matter?'

  Secoh withdrew from the heavy grasp, gently but firmly. 'Have you any instructions to give me?'

  The dictator laughed once more, then swiftly he grew thoughtful. 'What happens to that system is unimportant. But I feel irritated every time that I remember Thorson was killed there. And I would like to know how we were defeated. Something went wrong.'

  'A Board of Inquiry has been appointed,' said Secoh.

  'Good. Now, what about the battle?'

  'Costly but progressively decisive. Would you care to see the figures of losses?'

  'Yes.'

  One of the attending secretaries handed a paper to Secoh, who passed it silently over to Enro. Gosseyn watched the dictator's face. The potentialities of this situation were becoming vaster every moment. This must be the engagement which Crang and Patricia had referred to; nine hundred thousand warships—fighting the titanic battle of the Sixth Decant.

  Decant? He thought in a haze of excitement: 'The galaxy

  is shaped like a gigantic wheel—-' Obviously, they had

  divided it into 'decants.' There'd be other methods of locating the latitude and longitude of planets and stars of course, but——

  Enro was handing the paper back to his adviser. There was a pettish expression on his face, and his eyes were sulky.

  'I feel indecisive,' he said slowly. 'It's a personal feeling, a sense of my own life force not having been fulfilled.'

  'You have more than a score of children,' Secoh pointed out.

  Enro ignored that. ‘Priest,’ he said, ‘it is now four sidereal years since my sister, destined by the ancient custom of the Gorgzid to be my only legal wife, departed for where?'

  There is no trace.' The lean man's voice had a remote quality.

  Enro gazed at him somberly, and said softly, ‘My friend, you always were taken with her. If I thought you were withholding information ' He stopped, and there must have

  been a look in the other's eyes, for he said hastily, with a faint laugh, 'All right, all right, don't be angry. I'm mistaken. It would be impossible for a man of your cloth to do such a thing. Your oaths, for one thing.' He seemed to be arguing with himself.

  He looked up bleakly, and said, 'I shall have to see to it that of the children of my sister and myself—yet to be born—the girls are not educated in schools and on planets where the dynastic principle of brother-sister marriages is derided.'

  No reply. Enro hesitated, staring hard at Secoh. He seemed unaware for the moment that others were witnessing the interchange. Abruptly, he changed the subject.

  'I can still stop the war,' he said. The members of the Galactic League are nerving themselves now, but they'll almost fall over themselves to give me my way if I showed any willingness to stop the battle of the Sixth Decant.'

  The priest was quiet, calm, steady. ‘The principle of universal order,' he said, 'and of a universal State transcends the emotions of the individual. You can shirk none of the cruel necessities.' His voice was rocklike. 'None,' he said.

  Enro did not meet those pale eyes. 'I am undecided,' he repeated. 'I feel unfulfilled, incomplete. If my sister were here, doing her duty ...'

  Gosseyn scarcely heard. He was thinking gloomily. So that's what they're telling themselves; a Universal State, centrally controlled, and held together by military force.

  It was an old dream of man, and many times destiny had decreed a temporary illusion of success. There had been a number of empires on Earth that had achieved virtual control of all the civilized areas of their day. For a few generations then, the vast domains maintained their unnatural bonds—unnatural because the verdict of history always seemed to narrow down to a few meaningful sentences: 'The new ruler lacked

  the wisdom of his father ——— ‘ 'Uprisings of the masses ——— '

  ‘The conquered states, long held down, rose in successful rebellion against the weakened empire ——— ' There were

  even reasons given as to why a particular state had grown weak.

  The details didn't matter. There was nothing basically wrong with the idea of a universal state, but men who thought thalamically would never create anything but the outward appearance of such a state. On Earth Null-A had won when approximately five percent of the population was trained in its tenets. In the galaxy three percent should be sufficient. At that point, but not till then, the universal state would be a feasible idea.

  Accordingly, this war was a fraud. It had no meaning. If successful, the resultant universal state would last possibly a generation, possibly two. And then, the emotional drives of other unsane men would impel them to plotting and to rebellion. Meanwhile, billions would die so that a neurotic could have the pleasure of forcing a few more high-born ladies to bathe him every morning.

  The man was only unsane, but the war he had started was maniacal. It must be prevented from development. . . . There was a stir at one of the doors, and Gosseyn's thought ended. A woman's angry voice sounded:

  'Of course I can go in. Do you dare to stop me from seeing my own brother?'

  The voice, in spite of its fury, had a familiar ring in it. Gosseyn whirled, and saw that Enro was racing for the door at the far end, opposite the
great window.

  'Reesha!' he shouted, and there was jubilance in his voice.

  Through the watering eyes of Ashargin, Gosseyn watched the reunion. There was a slim man with the girl, and as they came forward, Enro carrying the girl in his arms and hugging her fast against his dressing gown, it was that slim man who drew Gosseyn's fascinated gaze.

  For it was Eldred Crang. Crang? Then the girl must be

  must be He turned and stared, as Patricia Hardie said

  peevishly, 'Enro, put me down. I want you to meet my husband.'

  The dictator's body grew rigid. Slowly then, he set the girl down, and slowly turned to look at Crang. His baleful gaze met the yellowy eyes of the Null-A detective. Crang smiled, as if unaware of the other's immense hostility. Something of his tremendous personality was in that smile and in his manner. Enro's expression changed ever so slightly. For a moment he looked puzzled, even startled, then he parted his lips and he seemed on the point of speaking when out of the corner of his eyes, he must have caught a glimpse of Ashargin.

  ‘Oh.’ he said. His manner altered radically. His self-possession returned. He beckoned Gosseyn with a brusque gesture. ‘Come along, my friend. I want you to act as my liaison officer with Grand Admiral Paleol. Tell the admiral—-

  ————- ’ He began to walk toward a nearby door. Gosseyn trailed him, and found himself presently in what he had

  previously identified as Enro’s military control room. Enro paused before one of the Distorter cages. He faced Gosseyn.

  'Tell the admiral,' he repeated, 'that you are my representative. Here is your authority.' He held out a thin, glittering plaque. 'Now,' he said, 'in here.' He motioned to the cage.

  An attendant was opening the door of what Gosseyn had already recognized as a transport Distorter. Gosseyn walked forward, nonplussed. He had no desire to leave Enro's court just now. He hadn't yet learned enough. It seemed important that he remain and learn more. He paused at the cage door.

  'What shall I tell the admiral?'

  The other's faint smile had broadened. 'Just who you are,' Enro said suavely. 'Introduce yourself. Get acquainted with the staff officers.'

  ‘I see,' said Gosseyn.

  He did see. The Ashargin heir was being exhibited to the military men. Enro must expect opposition from high-ranking officers, and so they were to have a look at Prince Ashargin —and realize how hopeless it would be for them ever to build up resistance around the only person who would have any legal or popular position. He hesitated once more.

  This transport will take me straight to the admiral?'

  'It has only one control direction either way. It will go there, and it will come back here. Good luck.'

  Gosseyn stepped into the cage without another word. The door clanged behind him. He sat down in the control chair, hesitated for a moment—after all, Ashargin wouldn't be expected to act swiftly—and then pulled the lever.

  Instantly, he realized that he was free.

  VI

  NULL-ABSTRACTS

  Children, immature adults and animals 'identify'. Whenever a person reacts to a new or changing situation as if it were an old and unchanging one, he or she is said to be identifying. Such an approach to life is Aristotelian.

  Free. That was the tremendous fact. Free of Ashargin. Himself again. Odd how he knew that. It seemed to grow out of the very elements of his being. His own transport experience with his extra brain made the transition feel familiar. Almost, he was aware of the movement. Even the blackness seemed incomplete, as if his brain did not quite stop working.

  Even as he came out of the darkness, he sensed the presence of a powerful electric dynamo and of an atomic pile. And simultaneously, with intense disappointment, he realized that they were not near enough for him to make use of them, or control them, in any way.

  Quickly, then, he came to consciousness. As vision returned, he saw that he was neither in the Venusian apartments of Janasen, nor in any place to which Enro would have sent Ashargin.

  He was lying on his back on a hard bed staring up at a high, concrete ceiling. His eyes and his mind absorbed the scene in one continuous glance that followed through. The room he was in was snail. A needle-studded grille came down from the ceiling. Beyond it, sitting on a bunk watching him, was a distinguished-looking young woman. Gosseyn's eyes would have paused, would have stared, but there was another metal grille on the other side of her cell. In it, sprawled on a bunk, seemingly asleep, was a very large man who was naked except for a pair of discolored sport shorts. Beyond the giant was concrete wall.

  As he sat up, more intent now, Gosseyn saw that that was the scene. Three cells in a concrete room, three windows, one in each cell, at least fifteen feet above the floor, no doors. His summing up stopped short. No doors? Like a flash, he ran his gaze along the walls searching for cracks in the cement. There were none.

  Quickly, he went over the bars that separated his cell from the woman's. Quickly, he memorized a portion of the floor of his own cell, then of hers, and then of the cell of the sleeping colossus. Finally, he tried to similarize himself back to one of his safety points on Venus.

  Nothing happened. Gosseyn accepted the implications. Between distant points there was a time lag, and in this case the twenty-six hour period during which a memorized area remained similarizable had been used up. Venus must be immensely far away.

  He was about to make a more detailed survey of his prison when once more he grew aware of the woman. This time his attention held. His first fleeting impression had been of someone whose appearance was very distinctive. Now, with measured glance, he saw that his picture was correct.

  The woman was not tall, but she held herself with an air of unconscious superiority. Unconscious; that was the telling reality. What the conscious mind of an individual thought was important only insofar as it reflected or helped to anchor the set of the nervous system. The only comparison Gosseyn could think of was Patricia Hardie, who so surprisingly had turned out to be the sister of the mighty Enro. She also had that pride in her eyes, that automatic, innate conviction of superiority—different from the Null-A trained Venusians, whose dominant characteristic of complete adequateness seemed part of their body and their faces.

  Like Patricia, the stranger was a grande dame. Her pride was of position and rank, of manners and—something else. Gosseyn stared at her with narrowed eyes. Her face showed that she acted and thought thalamically, but then, so did Enro and Secoh, and so had virtually every individual in history before the development of Null-A.

  Emotional people could build up their talents along one or two channels, and achieve as greatly as any Null-A Venusian in a particular field. Null-A was the system of integrating the human nervous system. Its greatest values were social and personal.

  The important thing about assessing this woman was that, as he studied her, the extra component of the neural vibrations that flowed from her seemed to take on greater proportions with each passing moment.

  She was dark-haired, with a head that seemed a shade too large for her body, and she returned his gaze with a faint, puzzled, anxious yet supercilious smile.

  'I can see,' she said uneasily, 'why the Follower has taken an interest in you.' She hesitated. 'Perhaps you and I could escape together.'

  'Escape?' echoed Gosseyn, and looked at her with steady eyes. He was astonished that she spoke English, but the explanation of that could wait while he gained more vital information.

  The woman sighed, then shrugged. The Follower is afraid of you. Therefore this cell cannot be quite as much of a prison to you as it is to me. Or am I wrong?'

  Gosseyn didn't answer that, but he felt grim. Her analysis was wrong. He was as completely a prisoner as she was. Without an outside point to which he could similarize himself, without a power socket before his eyes to memorize, he had no resources.

  He studied the woman with a faint frown. As a fellow prisoner, she was, theoretically, an ally. As a lady of quality, and, possibly, an inhabitant of this
planet, she might be very valuable to him. The trouble was that she was very likely an agent of the Follower. And yet, he had a conviction that a fast decision was needed here.

  The woman said, 'The Follower has Been in here three times wondering why you didn't wake up when you first arrived more than two days ago. Have you any idea?’

  Gosseyn smiled. The idea that he would be giving out information struck him as naïve. He was not going to tell any one that he had been in the body of Ashargin, although surely the Follower, who had put him there ———

  He stopped. He felt himself grow taut. He thought, almost blankly, But that would mean ———

  He shook his head in wonder, and then stood in blank amazement. If the Follower had lost control of him, that would indicate the existence of still another being of enormous power. Not that that was out of the question. He must never forget his theory. Somewhere out here were the players of this mighty game, and even a queen, such as he had estimated himself to be, could be moved or forced, checked and endangered, or even taken and removed from the board.

  He parted his lips to speak, but restrained himself. His slightest word would be noted and analyzed by one of the sharp and dangerous minds of the Galaxy. He pondered for a moment, and came back to his own first question.

  Aloud, he said, 'Escape?'

  The woman was sighing. 'It seems incredible,' she said. 'A man whose movements cannot be predicted. Up to a point, I have a clear picture of what you're going to do, then, because one of those actions is without logic, I get only blur.'

  Gosseyn said, 'You can read the future—like the Follower?' He was intent. He walked to the bars, separating their two cells, and stared down at her in fascination. 'How is it done?' Who is this Follower who has the appearance of a shadow?'

  The woman laughed. It was a slightly tolerant laugh, but it had a musical note in it that was pleasing to the ear. The laughter ended.