The World of Null-A

by A. E. van Vogt

  As he studied the men, one of them walked forward and broke open the package of sandwiches. They spilled out in a brown and white array, two falling on the floor with a vague sound, like pieces of dry dough. The man didn’t speak immediately. But he smiled as he stared down at the sandwiches. He was a thickset, nicely groomed individual in his early thirties. He moved over to Gosseyn.

  “Going to leave us, were you?”

  His voice had a faint foreign tone to it. He smiled again. He hit Gosseyn stingingly across the face with the flat of his hand. He repeated in a dead-level tone, “Leaving, were you?”

  He drew his hand back again. From Gosseyn’s left, Crang said, “That’s enough, Blayney.”

  The man lowered his arm obediently. But his face worked, and his voice was blurred by emotion as he said, “Mr. Crang, suppose he’d gone? Suppose he hadn’t rung up exchange? Who’d have thought of searching for him here? Why, if he had escaped, the big boss would have-“

  “Silence!”

  Blayney subsided sullenly. Gosseyn turned to the wiry-bodied leader.

  “If I were you, Crang, I wouldn’t trust Blayney after he gets to be forty.”

  “Eh?” That was Blayney, an astounded look on his face. Crang’s yellow eyes questioned Gosseyn.

  “There are psychiatrical explanations for Blayney hitting me as he did,” Gosseyn explained. “His nervous system is beginning to react as strongly to things that might have happened as it would if they had actually occurred. It’s a purely functional disorder, but its outward form is distressing to the individual. A gradual loss of courage. Sadistic outbursts to cover up the developing cowardice. By the time he’s forty he’ll be having nightmares about the damage he might have suffered in some of the danger spots he was in as a youth.” He shrugged. “Another case of a person lacking null-A integration.”

  Blayney had gray eyes. They glared at Gosseyn, then twisted over to Crang. He said in a hushed voice, “May I hit him again, Mr. Crang?”

  “No. What do you care what he thinks?”

  Blayney looked dissatisfied, and Gosseyn said nothing more to aggravate the situation. It was time to tell his story.

  Surprisingly, they listened intently. When Gosseyn had finished, Crang took a cigarette out of a case and lighted it. He caught Gosseyn’s gaze on him, but he said nothing immediately. There was a slightly baffled expression on his face, and after a minute he was still puffing wordlessly at the cigarette. Gosseyn had time to study the man.

  Eldred Crang was a lean man but not tall. There was a dark quality about his appearance that suggested Middle Eastern or Mediterranean origin. He had possibly been born on a planet with a hotter sun than Sol. His manner was restless, and that, with his yellow-green eyes, gave a sort of fire to his personality.

  So this was the man whom Patricia Hardie loved. Gosseyn wondered if he ought to feel any emotional dislike. He didn’t. Instead, he found himself remembering what the roboplane had said, that Crang could not be expected to be helpful. The man was surrounded by gang adherents and by his own people. With Thorson in overall command, Crang would have to watch himself very carefully.

  The man’s silence ended abruptly. He laughed. “Just for a minute,” he said, “I had a mind to let you get away with that story. But the truth is we don’t have to play games. We’ve decided to have a general conference about you with you present. We leave for Earth within the hour.”

  “Earth!” said Gosseyn.

  His lips twisted wryly. Since his arrival on Venus, he had succeeded in letting one person know about the threat to the solar system. And at most that person, Amelia Prescott, had passed his story on to Detective Registry, not knowing that organization was now little more than an appendage of the gang. One human being out of two hundred million. Crang was speaking again.

  “All right, Blayney,” he commanded, “bring in the Prescotts.”

  Gosseyn started, then controlled himself. He watched curiously as John and Amelia Prescott were brought in, handcuffed and gagged. The man stared stolidly across the room at his erstwhile captor, but his wife looked shocked as she saw Gosseyn. For a moment she actually fought the gag. Her eyes twisted with the effort. She subsided gloomily and shook her head helplessly at Gosseyn.

  He gazed at her with pitying eyes. Here was the result of her decision to trust that her husband was more null-A than gang. Prescott had failed her. If she had been a member of the group they wouldn’t have gagged her. She would have been able to carry through the appearance of being a prisoner without needing to be restrained from speaking.

  It must be annoying to her husband, that he too had to be gagged. And whatever the purpose of the farce, Gilbert Gosseyn had better play along with it. He knew who Prescott was, and they didn’t know that he knew. It was one of his few advantages in a game where the cards were otherwise heavily stacked against him.

  XII

  Through the vast dark rushed a spaceship with one woman and four hundred and two men aboard. Crang gave Gosseyn the figures on the second day out.

  “I have orders,” he said, “to take no chances with you.”

  Gosseyn made no comment. He was puzzled about Crang. The man obviously intended to cling to his position in the gang, regardless of his belief in the philosophy of null-A. It would necessitate unpleasant compromises, and even a remorseless attitude where individual lives were at stake. But if he intended in the long run to use his power for null-A, then all the intermediate concessions to the gang would be compensated for.

  Crang passed on along the promenade. Gosseyn stood for a long time peering through one of the mammoth forward portholes out into the interplanetary night. There was a supernally bright star in the darkness ahead. Tomorrow it would take on the contours of earth. And tomorrow evening he would be inside the official residence of President Hardie, after a voyage in space of three days and two nights.

  The landing was a disappointment to Gosseyn. Mists and clouds ringed the continents, and all the way down through the atmosphere of Earth those clouds hid the land below. And then-final disappointment-a blanket of fog lay over the city of the Machine covering all that the clouds had missed. He had a tantalizing glimpse of the atomic light that was the Games Machine’s own dazzling beacon. And then the spaceship sank down into the cavernous interior of a gigantic building.

  Gosseyn was whisked off into the gathering fog-ridden twilight. The street lamps came on, and were mist-blurred blobs of light. The courtyard of the presidential palace was deserted, but it came alive with the sounds of men who poured out of the escort cars and surrounded him. He was herded into a long, brightly lighted corridor and up a flight of stairs into a luxurious hallway. Crang led the way to a door at the far end.

  “Here we are,” he said. “This will be your apartment while you remain a guest of the president. The rest of you remain outside, please.”

  He opened a door into a living room that was at least twenty feet long and forty wide. There were three other doors leading into it. Crang indicated them.

  “Bedroom, bathroom, and back entrance. There’s another door inside the bedroom joining it to the bathroom.” He hesitated. “You will be neither locked in nor guarded, but I wouldn’t try to get away if I were you. You couldn’t possibly get out of the palace, I assure you.”

  He grinned. It was an engaging grimace, and quite friendly.

  “You’ll find suitable dinner clothing in the bedroom. Do you think you could be ready in about an hour? I want to show you something before dinner.”

  “I’ll be ready,” said Gosseyn.

  He undressed, thinking of the opportunities for escape. He didn’t accept Crang’s statement that it would be impossible to get away, if they really had no guards around. He wondered if they were trying to tempt him.

  There were several suits of clothing in the clothes closet of the bedroom, and he had selected one that was made up of a dark but shiny material when he heard a door open. He slipped into his dressing gown and went out into the living room. P
atricia Hardie was in the act of closing the door which Crang had called the back entrance. She whirled with a lithe movement and came toward him.

  “You damned fool!” she said without preliminary. “Why did you leave so fast when those guards came into my apartment? Didn’t you hear me tell them I didn’t allow my rooms to be searched on Thorson’s orders?” She made a movement with her hand, a silencing movement. “Never mind. It’s past. You did leave, got yourself killed, and now here you are again. That was you that was killed, wasn’t it? It wasn’t only a chance resemblance?”

  Gosseyn parted his lips. She cut him off.

  “I can only stay a minute. Believe me, I’m suspect number one in your escape last month, and if I’m caught up here-” She shuddered convincingly. “Gosseyn, who are you? You must know by now.”

  He studied her, infected by her excitement. She brought an aliveness into the room that had been missing. Her very breathlessness was intriguing.

  “Tell me,” she said imperiously. “Quick!”

  It was easy enough to tell her what he knew. He had awakened on Venus without memory of how he had gotten there. He had nothing to hide of subsequent events except his knowledge that Prescott was of the gang. Even that Patricia knew, for she had loudly made the identification within his hearing. It was the one fact, however, that he could not mention aloud. If dictaphones were listening to this conversation, that was a secret which they must share in silence.

  But everything else he told her, succinctly. Before he finished, she flung herself into a chair and bit her lips in obvious vexation.

  “This second body of yours,” she said finally, “actually knows nothing more than the first. You’re really just a pawn.”

  Gosseyn stood looking down at her. He couldn’t decide whether to be annoyed or amused. He was not prepared to go into the problem of two Gosseyn bodies with her, though he had had a few thoughts on the subject. The reference to his being a pawn stung, because it was true.

  “Look,” he said shortly, “where do you fit into all this?”

  The girl’s eyes softened. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. The truth is that your very lack of knowledge has startled all groups. Thorson, the personal representative of Enro, has postponed the invasion of Venus. There! I thought that would interest you. But wait! Don’t interrupt. I’m giving you information which I intended to give you a month ago. You’ll want to know about ‘X.’ So do the rest of us. The man has a will of iron, but no one knows what his purpose is. He seems to be primarily interested in his own aggrandizement, and he has expressed the hope that some use can be made of you. The Galactic League people are bewildered. They can’t decide whether the cosmic chess player who has moved you into this game is an ally or not. Everybody is groping in the dark, wondering what to do next.”

  She paused. Her eyes were bright and excited. “My friend,” she said, “there must be an opportunity for you in all this confusion. Take it.” She was suddenly earnest. “Take it if it is offered and hasn’t got impossible conditions attached to it. Stay alive.”

  She was on her feet. She touched his arm in a gesture of friendliness, and half ran to the door. In the open doorway she paused.

  “Good luck!” she said, and shut the door behind her.

  Gosseyn had his shower, thinking, “How does she know what all these people do and believe? Who is she?” When he came out of the bathroom, he saw that he had another visitor. President Hardie sat in one of the chairs.

  The man’s noble face lighted as he saw Gosseyn. Sitting there, he looked strong and calm and determined, an idealized version of a great man. He fixed his steady gaze on Gosseyn’s face.

  “I had this suite prepared for you,” he said, “because I wanted to talk to you without fear of being overheard. But there is no time to waste.”

  “Isn’t there?” said Gosseyn.

  He spoke with deliberate hostility. This man had permitted a gang to make him president by a method which subverted the games of the Machine. The crime was colossal, unforgivable, and personal.

  The fine face of the older man broke into a faint smile. “Come now,” said Hardie. “Let us not be juvenile. You want information. So do I. You ask three questions, then I’ll ask three.” A pause. Then sharply, “You must have questions, man.”

  Gosseyn’s hostility collapsed. He had more questions than he could ask in an evening. There was no time to waste.

  “Who are you?” he asked pointedly.

  Hardie shook his head regretfully. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I am either what I appear to be or I am not. If the latter, then for me to tell you would put me at your mercy. A lie detector could get the information out of you.”

  He finished curtly, “Don’t take up time with questions that might destroy me. Now hurry.”

  “Do you know anything about me other than what has already been told?”

  “Yes,” said President Hardie.

  He must have seen the look that came into Gosseyn’s face, for he added quickly, “Not much, frankly. But a few days before you appeared on the scene, I received a letter in my personal mail. It was mailed here in the city of the Machine, and it indicated that the author knew all the details of what we had considered the best-kept secret in the solar system-the author knew about the attack being planned against Venus. After giving the whole story in brief, the letter went on to state that you would be staying at the Tropical Park Hotel and that you would prevent the attack on Venus.

  “There was certain information in the letter which I did not care to have the others see, so I burned it and had you brought to the palace through the complicated procedure of which you already know. There you are. Now, question three.”

  “Two!” corrected Gosseyn.

  “Three. If I ask a question you refuse to answer, it will count against me. Fair?”

  His protest had been automatic. His mind was on what Hardie had said. He did not doubt the story. The reality could have been something like that. What was behind it, of course, was another matter.

  Gosseyn studied the older man, impressed for the first time. The President was only one of a diverse group of highly capable plotters, each with his own purposes. But it was his personal achievement that he had persuaded men as egotistical as himself to give him the highest nominal position. The man’s character, which he had scarcely thought about before, suddenly proved more intricate.

  “Gosseyn, your next question!”

  He had forgotten that speed was important. And besides the conviction was already on him that he was not going to learn much. These people didn’t know enough. He said, “What’s going to happen to me?”

  “You will be made an offer, just what I don’t know yet Thorson and ‘X’ are talking it over. Whatever it is, I think you would be advised to accept it for the time being.

  Mind you, you’re in a strong position. Theoretically, if you can have two bodies, then why not a third?” He frowned. “Still, that’s a speculation.”

  Gosseyn had stopped believing that he had ever had two bodies. He parted his lips to say so scathingly, and then closed them again. His eyes narrowed. These people must have some purpose in trying to put over an idea like that. It all seemed obscure and meaningless, but he mustn’t forget that he had never actually been out of the control of the gang. Even the roboplane which claimed to be an agent of the Machine could have been carefully coached to give that impression. He’d better await developments.

  He looked at Hardie and said aloud simply, “Yes, it’s a speculation.”

  “My first question,” said Hardie, “has to do with the man or group who is behind you. Has anyone claiming to be the representative of such an individual contacted you?”

  “Definitely not. Unless the Machine is responsible, then I’m absolutely in the dark.”

  Hardie said, “Your belief about that does not make it so.” He smiled. “Now you’ve got me making null-A statements. I’ve noticed the others do it, too. Even as we plot
to destroy the null-A philosophy, we adopt its logic. ‘The map is not the territory.’ Your belief that you know nothing is an abstraction from reality, not the reality itself.”

  He paused. He sat quiet for a moment smiling with amusement, then said, “Question two: Have you any feeling in yourself of being different from other human beings?” He shrugged. “I admit that’s an unsemantic question, because you can only know by observation what other people are like and your observations my be different from my own. We live in private worlds. Still, I can’t describe it better than that. Well?”

  This time Gosseyn found the question not only acceptable but profoundly interesting. Here were his own thoughts being put into words.

  “I feel no difference in myself. I assume you mean the discovery made about my brain by Thorson.” He broke off, tense. “What is there about my brain?”

  He leaned forward. His body felt cold and hot by turns. He sighed as Hardie said, “Wait your turn. I still have my third question. What I want to know is, how did you find Crang’s hideout?”

  “I was taken there by a roboplane, which forced me to go along.”

  “Whose roboplane?” said Hardie.

  “It’s my question, thank you,” said Gosseyn. “I think maybe we’d better each ask a question at a time. What’s in my brain?”

  “Additional brain matter. I know nothing of its nature. Thorson has come to discount its possibilities.”

  Gosseyn nodded. He was inclined to agree with Thorson. From the beginning he had felt not the slightest “difference.”

  “Whose roboplane?” Hardie repeated.

  “It implied that it represented the Machine.”

  “Implied?”

  “My question,” said Gosseyn.

  Hardie scowled. “You’re not answering your questions completely. Didn’t it give you any evidence?”

  “It knew several things that the Machine knows, but it urged me to surrender. I regard that as suspicious.”