The Players of Null-A n-2

by Alfred Elton Van Vogt

  For seconds she sat rigid, then slowly relaxed, 'It's all right,' she said, 'they're captured.'

  It was nearly fifteen minutes before Robot Control confirmed that a hundred and eight warships, including two battleships and ten cruisers had been seized by a concentrated force of fifteen million mind-controlling robots.

  Gosseyn accompanied a large boarding party that investigated one of the battleships. As swiftly as possible the officers and crew were removed. Meanwhile Null-A scientists studied the controls of the ship. In that department Gosseyn proved helpful. He lectured to a large group of prospective officers on the information he had gained as to the operation of the destroyer.

  Afterwards, he made several attempts to utilize his new ability to foresee events, but the pictures jumped too much. Whatever relaxation he had achieved must still be incomplete. And he was too busy to more than discuss the problem with Dr. Kair, briefly.

  'I think you're on the right track,' the psychiatrist said, 'but well have to go into that thoroughly When we have more time.'

  Time became a watchword during the days that followed. It was discovered on the basis of interviews—Leej foresaw the discovery by twenty-four hours—that there were no Predictors with the fleet.

  It made no difference to the Venusian plan. A survey of Venusian opinion indicated the general belief that there could be a second fleet within a few weeks, that it would have Predictors aboard, and that it might be captured despite the presence of the prescient men and women from Yalerta.

  It made no difference. Venus would still have to be abandoned. Action groups of scientists worked in relays on a twenty-four-hour basis, setting up auxiliary Distorters in each of the captured ships, similar to those which had been used to send the Predictors from Yalerta to the fleet in the Sixth Decant.

  The capture of the warships of the Greatest Empire made it possible to set up a chain of ships stretching to within eight hundred light-years of the nearest League base, which was just over nine thousand light-years distant. From that near point videophonic communication was established.

  The arrangement with the League proved surprisingly easy. A planetary system that would shortly be attaining a daily peak production of twelve million robotic defense units of a new type made a surprising amount of sense to the rigid-minded Madrisol.

  A fleet of twelve hundred League ships used the chain of captured warships to break toward Gela. The four planets of that sun were overwhelmed in four hours, and so further attacks by future Enro forces were cut off until he could recapture his base.

  It made no difference. To the Venusians, the League members were almost as dangerous as Enro. So long as the Null-As were on one planet, they were at the mercy of people who might become afraid of them because they were different, people who would shortly be justifying the execution of millions of other neurotics like themselves, and who would also presently discover that the new weapons which they were being offered were not invincible.

  The reaction to such a discovery could not be guessed. It might not mean anything. And then again, all the benefits derived from the defense units might be dismissed as unimportant if they failed to achieve that absolute perfection so dear to the hearts of the unintegrated.

  The Null-As did not bring up the possible weaknesses of their offerings during the conferences which decided that two hundred to two hundred thousand individuals would be allotted immediately to each of some ten thousand League planets.

  Even as the details were discussed, the movement of families got under way.

  Gosseyn watched the migration with mixed emotions. He did not doubt the necessity of it, but having made the concession, logic ended and feeling began.

  Venus abandoned. It was hard to believe that two hundred million people would be scattered to the far distances of the galaxy. He did not doubt that in scattering there would be collective safety. Individuals might meet with disaster as still more planets were destroyed in the war of wars. It was possible, though only vaguely so, that some would be

  harmed on planets here and there. But that would be the exception and not the rule. They were too few to be considered dangerous, and each Null-A would swiftly size up the local situation and act accordingly.

  Everywhere now there would be Null-A men and women at the full height of their integrated strength, never again to be cut off in one group on an isolated star system. Gosseyn selected several groups going to comparatively nearby planets, and went with them through the Distorters, and saw them safely to their destinations.

  In each case the planets where they arrived were democratically governed. They were absorbed into the population masses that, for the most part, didn't even know they existed.

  Gosseyn could only follow groups at random. More than a hundred thousand planets were receiving these very special refugees, and it would have taken a thousand lifetimes to follow them all. A world was being evacuated except for a small core of one million who would remain behind. The role of those who stayed was to act as a nucleus for the billions on Earth who knew nothing of what had happened. For them the Null-A training system would carry on as if there had been no migration.

  The rivers of Null-A travelers flowing toward the Distorter transmitters became a stream, then a trickle. Before the last of the migrants were finally gone, Gosseyn went to New Chicago where a captured battleship, renamed the Venus, was being fitted out to take him, Leej, Captain Free and a crew of Null-A technical experts into space.

  He entered a virtually deserted city. Only the factories, which were not visible, and the Military Center were flamboyantly active. Elliott accompanied Gosseyn into the ship, and gave him the latest available information.

  'We haven't heard anything from the battle, but then our units are probably just going into action.' He smiled, and shook his head. 'I doubt if anybody will bother to give us the details of what happens. Our influence is waning steadily. The attitude toward us is a mixture of tolerance and impatience. From one hand we get a pat on the shoulder for having invented weapons which, for the most part, are regarded as decisive, though they aren't. From the other hand we get a shove and an admonition to remember that we are now just a tiny, unimportant people, and that we must leave the details in the hands of those who are the experts in galactic affairs.'

  He paused, amused but grave.

  'Whether they know it or not,' he said, 'almost every Null-A will try to affect the ending of the war. Naturally, the direction we want events to take are peaceful rather than warlike. It may not show immediately, but we don't want the galaxy divided into two groups that violently hate each other.'

  Gosseyn nodded. The galactic leaders had yet to discover —though actually they might never do so; the process would be so subtle—that what one Null-A like Eldred Crang had done, would shortly be multiplied by two hundred million. Thought of Eldred Crang reminded Gosseyn of a question he had been intending to ask for many days.

  'Who developed your new robot devices?'

  'The Institute of General Semantics, under the direction of the late Lavoisseur.'

  'I see.' Gosseyn was silent for a moment, thinking out his next question. He said finally, 'Who directed your attention to the particular development that you've used so successfully?'

  'Crang,' said Elliott. 'Lavoisseur and he were very good friends.'

  Gosseyn had his answer. He changed the subject. 'When do we leave?' he asked.

  ‘Tomorrow morning.' 'Good.'

  The news brought a sense of positive excitement. For weeks he had been almost too busy to think, and yet he had never quite forgotten that such individuals as the Follower and Enro were still forces to be reckoned with.

  And there was the even greater problem of the being who had similarized his mind into the nervous system of Ashargin.

  Many vital things remained to be done.

  XVIII

  NULL-ABSTRACTS

  For the sake of sanity, remember: 'The map is not the territory, the word is not the thing it describes.' Wh
erever the map is confused with the territory, a 'semantic disturbance' is set up in the organism. The disturbance continues until the limitation of the map is recognized.

  The following morning the powerful battleship sped out through the interstellar darkness. In addition to its all Null-A crew, it was loaded with a hundred thousand robotic mind control units.

  They stopped the ship at Dr. Kair's request after the first break.

  'We've been studying you at odd intervals,' he told Gosseyn, 'though you were about as elusive as anyone could be. But still, we got something.'

  He brought some photographs out of his brief case, and handed them around. 'This picture of the extra brain was taken a week ago.'

  The area glowed with millions of fine interlacing lines. 'It's alive with excitation,' Dr. Kair said. 'When you consider that at one time its only contact with the rest of your body and brain tissue appeared to be the blood vessels that supply it and the nerve connections that affect the blood stream directly—when you consider that, then the present condition of the extra brain is, by comparison, one of enormous activity.'

  He broke off. 'Now,' he said, 'about further training. My colleagues and I have been thinking about what you told us, and we have a suggestion to make.'

  Gosseyn interrupted. 'First, a question.'

  He hesitated. What he had to say was in a way irrelevant. And yet, it had been pressing on his mind ever since his • talk the day before with Elliott.

  'Who,' he asked, 'gave the direction to the training I received under Thorson?'

  Dr. Kair frowned. 'Oh, we all made suggestions but in my opinion the most important contribution was made by Eldred Crang.'

  Crang again! Eldred Crang, who knew how to train extra brains; who had transmitted messages from Lavoisseur before the death of that earlier, older Gosseyn body—the problem of Crang was thus suddenly and intricately again to the fore.

  Briefly, objectively, he outlined the cases of Crang to the group. When he had finished, Dr. Kair shook his head.

  'Crang came to me for an examination just before he left Venus. He was wondering if the strain was telling on him. I can tell you he is a normal Null-A without any special faculties, though his reflexes and integration were on a level that I have seen only once or twice before in my entire career as a psychiatrist.'

  Gosseyn said, 'He definitely had no extra brain?'

  'Definitely not.'

  'I see,' said Gosseyn.

  It was another door closing. Somehow, he had hoped that Eldred Crang would be the player who had similarized his mind into the body of Ashargin. It wasn't eliminated from the picture but a different explanation seemed to be required.

  ‘There's a point here,' said the woman psychiatrist, 'that we discussed once before, but which Mr. Gosseyn may not have heard about. If Lavoisseur gave Crang his knowledge of how to train extra brains, and yet now it turns out that the method is not a very good one, are we to believe that Lavoisseur-Gosseyn bodies were only trained in what now seems to be an inefficient method?' She finished quietly, 'The death of Lavoisseur seems to indicate that he had no ability at prevision, and yet already you are at the edge of that and other abilities.'

  Dr. Kair said, 'We can go into those details later. Right now I'd like Gosseyn to try an experiment.'

  When he had explained what he wanted, Gosseyn said, 'But that's nineteen thousand light-years away.'

  'Try it,' urged the psychiatrist.

  Gosseyn hesitated, and then concentrated on one of his memorized areas in the control room of Leej's skytrailer. He swayed as with vertigo. Startled, he fought a sense of nausea. He looked at the others in amazement. 'That must have been a similarity of just under twenty decimals. I think I can make it if I try again.'

  Try,' said Dr. Kair.

  'What'll I do if I get there?'

  'Look the situation over. We'll follow you as far as the nearby base.'

  Gosseyn nodded. This time he closed his eyes. The changing picture of the memorized area came sharp and clear.

  When he opened his eyes, he was on the skytrailer.

  He did not move immediately from the area of his arrival, but stood gathering impressions. There was a quiet, neural flow from the near reaches of the ship. The servants, he decided, were still on duty.

  He walked forward, and looked out. They were over open countryside. Below was a level plain. Far to his right he caught the shimmer of water. As he watched, and the ship moved on, he lost sight of the sea. That gave him an idea.

  He bent over the controls, and straightened again almost immediately as he saw how they were set. The trailer was still following the circular route that he had set for it just before he made his successful effort to seize the destroyer.

  He made no attempt to touch the controls or alter them. The ship could have been tampered with in spite of its appearance of being exactly as he had left it.

  He probed for magnetic current flow, but found nothing unusual. He relaxed his mind, and tried to see what was going to happen. But the only picture of the control room that he could get showed no one in it.

  That brought up the question, Where am I going next?'

  Back to the battleship? It would be a waste of time. He had an impulse to know how long it had taken him to come to Yalerta, but that was something he could check on later.

  Great events were transpiring. Men and women for whose safety he felt partially responsible were still in danger areas: Crang, Patricia, Nirene, Ashargin.. . .

  A dictator must be overthrown, a great war machine brought to a halt by any possible means.

  Abruptly, he made his decision.

  He arrived at the Follower's Retreat at his memorized area just outside the door of the power house. He reached the upper floor without incident, and paused to ask a man the way to the Follower's apartment.

  I'm here for an appointment,' he explained, 'and I must hurry.'

  The servant was sympathetic. 'You came in the wrong way,' he said, 'but if you will follow that side corridor you'll come to a large anteroom. They'll tell you there where to go next.'

  Gosseyn doubted if anyone would tell him what he wanted to know. But he came presently to a room that was not as large as he had expected, and so ordinary that he stared at it, wondering if he had come to the right place.

  A number of people sat in lounges, and directly across from him was a little wooden fence inside which were eight desks. A man sat at each desk, apparently doing clerical work.

  Beyond the desks was a glass enclosed office with one large desk in it.

  As he passed through the gate, and into the little fenced area, several of the clerks rose up from their chairs in a half protest. Gosseyn ignored them. He was shifting the wire in the control room of the skytrailer again, and he wanted to get inside the glass office before letting Yanar become aware of him.

  He opened the door, and he was closing it behind him when the Predictor became aware of him. The man looked up with a start.

  There was another door beyond Yanar, and Gosseyn headed straight for it. With a jump, Yanar was on his feet and barring his way. He was defiant.

  'You'll have to kill me before you can go in there.'

  Gosseyn stopped. He had already penetrated with his extra brain the room beyond the door. No impulse of life came. That was not final proof that it was unoccupied. But his sense of urgency dimmed considerably.

  He frowned at Yanar. He had no intention of killing the man, particularly when he had so many other ways at his disposal of dealing with the Predictor. Besides, he was curious. Several questions had bothered him for some time. He said:

  'You were aboard Leej's ship as an agent of the Follower?'

  'Naturally,' Yanar shrugged.

  'I suppose you mean by that, how else would the ship have been waiting for us?'

  Yanar nodded warily. His eyes were watchful.

  'But why allow any means of escape?'

  The Follower considered you too dangerous to be left here. You might have w
recked his Retreat.'

  'Then why bring me to Yalerta?'

  'He wanted you where Predictors could keep track of your movements.'

  'But that didn't work?'

  'You're right. That didn't work.'

  Gosseyn paused at that point. There was an implication in the answers that startled him.

  Once more now, more sternly, he stared at the Predictor. There were several other questions he had in mind, particularly about Leej. But actually they didn't matter. She had proved herself to his present satisfaction, and the details could wait.

  That settled it. He similarized Yanar into the prison cell which Leej and Jurig and he had occupied weeks ago.

  Then he opened the door and stepped into the room he believed to be the Follower's private office.

  As he had sensed, the place was unoccupied.

  Curiously, Gosseyn looked around him. An enormous desk faced the door. There were built-in filing cabinets against the wall to the left, and an intricate system—it looked intricate and somewhat different—of Distorter mechanisms and controls to his right.

  Feeling both relieved and disappointed, Gosseyn considered his next move. Yanar was out of the way. Not that that meant much one way or the other. The man was a nuisance, but not a danger.

  Gosseyn headed for the filing cabinets. They were all magnetically locked, but it was the work of a moment to open each circuit with his extra brain. Drawer after drawer slid outward at his touch. The files were of the plastic variety, similar to the palace directory which Nirene had shown him when he was in Ashargin's body.

  The equivalent of scores of pages of print were impressed on successive layers of molecules. Each 'page' showed up in turn as the index slide at the edge was manipulated.

  Gosseyn searched for and found a plate with his own name on it. There were four printed pages in the file. The account was very objective, and for the most part detailed what had been done in connection with him. The first item read.

  'Transferred name from GE-4408C.' It seemed to indicate another file elsewhere. There followed a reference to his training under Thorson with the notation, 'Have been unable to find any of the individuals who participated in the training, and discovered it too late to prevent it.'