Null-A Three

by A. E. van Vogt

  Gosseyn nodded, and said, “When you were predicting in connection with Gosseyn Two and the others on the intended big jump, what exactly was your role?” Once again, the reply was prompt. “I decided—we decided—that I would try to predict exactly what would be the exact atomic-molecular-particle configuration of some habitable area in that other galaxy. We accepted that nothingness separated the two universes. On the basis of that prediction Gosseyn Two took an extrabrain ‘photograph’ of my entire brain, including the prediction, and tried to similarize all of us over there in one jump. In a way it must have worked.”

  Gosseyn Three was thoughtful. “I had all those memories in my mind, of course. But they seemed so complex that I couldn’t quite get the picture. In other words—” with a smile—“pointing alone, the General Semantics ideal, meaning in this instance, my memory of the event, did not quite do the job of picturing the whole event. Words do have their value.”

  He finished: “What do you think went wrong?”

  “You.” It was her turn to smile. “Picture you in that capsule receiving all of those thoughts without anyone being aware of you. So, as it turned out, you were the most receptive part, of the whole process.”

  “But in reverse,” he pointed out.

  There was no answer. The woman just stood there. “Thank you,” said Gosseyn. With that he went back through the door, and then the alcove, to where the emperor’s mother was talking with a strange, excited, little man.

  Not wanting to intrude, Gosseyn stopped. At which moment he heard the woman say, “But I don’t understand. What are you saying? Enin what?”

  As Gosseyn stood there, out of sight just inside the alcove through which he had taken the others, the little man said in a shaking voice: “He disappeared! In front of my eyes!” He jabbered on, “You know how he is when I’m giving him lessons. Quiet for a while. Then he becomes restless. Talks back. Jumps up. Gets himself a drink. No manners. But he learns. This time he was just sitting. And, poof! he was gone!”

  It took a minute for the meaning to come through from the stuttering voice. But, finally, the picture being verbally presented by this highly disturbed individual was unmistakable.

  The little guy was the young emperor’s teacher. And, during the course of the lesson he had been giving the boy, he claimed to have been actually staring at his pupil when he, literally, blinked into non-existence.

  It occurred to Gosseyn Three, as he listened to the account, that the timing of the startling event could have coincided with the arrival of Eldred Crang and the others. Accordingly, Gosseyn Three communicated to his Alter Ego: “Do you think there was some overlap, whereby Enin was automatically transmitted somewhere else?”

  “I seem to remember,” came the reply, “that at the time of transmission you were recalling several 20-decimal locations of the past of Gosseyn One and myself. Did you think of the boy as you did that? That I can’t recall.”

  It was not a good moment for trying to remember those details. Because he saw that the woman had become aware of him, and that she was turning toward him, and that she was in a shaken condition.

  “Is it possible,” she asked uncertainly, “that all this that has happened?—”

  Gosseyn had recovered. “It sounds like what happened to him—before. I’ll see what I can do. I—”

  They had both ignored the emperor’s teacher, almost as if he did not exist. And if there had been any possibility of Gosseyn eventually taking notice of the little man, it ended because as he spoke the first word of what might have been another statement, there was a buzzing sound.

  “Oh, my God!” exclaimed the woman. “There’s Breemeg, come for you!”

  Gosseyn was recovering. “Don’t worry,” he said, “let it happen. I promise to be back in a few minutes; but first I should know—we should find out—what’s been going on in the rest of the ship.”

  Yet, actually, even to him it seemed like the final confusion when, a few minutes later, he walked away quietly with the courtier.

  Before, then, he actually got lost in the tangle of garden, he looked back once. The emperor’s mother was standing at the door, staring after him with haunted eyes.

  Considering what a capable, direct person she normally was, Gosseyn didn’t think of what she was feeling as a thalamic reaction. There was such a thing as true emotion.

  He was feeling a little himself. Because—could he be responsible for the young emperor’s disappearance?

  CHAPTER

  11

  Beside him, Breemeg broke his initial silence. “I’m deducing,” he said, “that you did not mention our private conversation to the emperor or his mother.”

  They were out of the royal garden, and had come to a long corridor, in the desertedness of which the leanbodied, middle-aged courtier apparently felt free to speak.

  “True,” said Gosseyn.

  It seemed, under the circumstances, a subject of minor importance; and so he had the private thought that two or three minutes had gone by since Leej’s prediction. So that in about nine minutes the whatever would happen that would cause him to use his extra-brain.

  In its way nine minutes was a long time. No point, therefore, in dwelling on that . . . for a while.

  “I’m deducing it,” continued Breemeg, “because I would surely not have been called by Queen Mother Strala to come and get you if you had made even the slightest reference to my words.”

  This time there were two private thoughts. The first, a simple, personal reaction: . . . Imagine, she invited me “into her bedroom without telling me her first name—And now, in this casual mention there was the name.

  “Strala!” He spoke the name aloud, adding: “I like the sound of it.”

  Breemeg seemed not to have heard the comment. They walked on, Gosseyn thinking that her name had a feminine beauty to it.

  The second thought consisted of a series of fleeting memories that triggered a sudden hardness. The memories were of Gosseyn Two in action, on the planet of the Predictors, on the planet Gorgzid, the capitol of Enro’s the Greatest Empire. The awareness brought the beginning of determination that was new to this body. There were things to do. Where was that boy? He should be rescued, and quickly.

  Breemeg’s next words actually interrupted that train of thought-feeling. “Obviously,” the man said, “our most important task is, still, to find out where we are in space, and to discover what happened to bring us here.” Listening to those words, for the first time Gosseyn had a feeling of relief in relation to this man. Somebody with good sense must have talked to Breemeg in the past forty-five minutes.

  The deserted corridor continued to stretch into the distances ahead, as Breemeg enlarged upon his argument: “Naturally, if there’s any chance of our returning to join the fleet, then my statements about a rebellion would have no meaning. That, of course, would be the best solution, since it would ultimately bring us all back to our families.”

  It was—Gosseyn conceded silently to himself—not a great moment for General Semantics, as it related to himself. The problem of such a return, according to the data he had, was complicated beyond anything that had ever happened. So it was another lie that the real life situation he was in made it necessary for him to go along with.

  But since the truth would probably evoke swift, strong actions from these people, once more optimum survival for everybody—including the villains—seemed to depend on his not revealing what he knew.

  The alternative was to tell the facts, and, if there were repercussions, fight it out. Obviously, that had to be for later, if possible.

  “On the other hand,” Breemeg said, as Gosseyn came to that decision, “if we are going to be in this area of space from now on, then the sooner we find a habitable planet that we can go to, the better. At which time—” grimly—“our little imperial family will be subject to severe action. The boy—” he shrugged his gaunt shoulders as he walked—“maybe we can leave him in your care.” He smiled, showing his teeth. “Eight h
undred games of scroob a day, perhaps.”

  He shrugged again. The smile faded. “Whatever—so long as he’s out of the way. As for the mother—”

  He paused. And there was a sudden stiffening of his body that brought an abrupt return of Gosseyn’s feeling of purposefulness.

  Breemeg said earnestly, “Do you realize that this is the only woman on a ship with one hundred and seventy-eight thousand men. So—” a twisted smile, suddenly—“there’ll be several dozen top echelon leaders who may decide among themselves to share her womanly charms.” The man concluded, “You can see that these are all after-thoughts, and are somewhat more realistic than what I said earlier.”

  So it was going to be a fight, after all. Gosseyn was curious. “Are any military officers involved in the plan to share the woman?”

  There was a long pause. Breemeg slowed in his rapid walk, and simultaneously turned his head and was staring at Gosseyn. Abruptly, he came to a full stop. And Gosseyn, after walking several steps farther, did the same, turning as he did so.

  The courtier of His Imperial Majesty, Enin, said, “That is the damnedest question I’ve heard recently. It implies some thought of your own, a scheme perhaps to enlist those—”

  He stopped. Seemed to brace his body. And said grimly, “No, the subject has not been brought up to members of the military. Why do you ask?”

  It seemed, to Gosseyn, to be the information he needed. So he said, “It seems to me that you and your associates are all making your plans too quickly. I would guess—” he picked a figure at random—“that you and your friends should hold back from any private plans for a couple of weeks. Meaning, don’t do an irrevocable act that someone else, who is not ready for such a step, might react to.”

  Breemeg’s expression changed as the meaning of Gosseyn’s words evidently ended his anxiety. He was suddenly tolerant. “The fact is,” he said, “we have to consider the alien prisoners we have aboard. As a result, the political situation aboard this ship does not permit too much leeway. We have to act, or someone else will act.”

  He seemed to have recovered from his momentary shock; for he started walking again. Almost automatically, Gosseyn did the same. But he was thinking: “Alien!” After a long moment, he said, “Just a minute!”

  He stopped that reaction with an effort of will, and spoke mentally to his Alter Ego:

  “I suddenly feel as if the moment has come for a General Semantics recapitulation. I seem to have been at the receiving end of too many generalizations. And I’m beginning to think I’m assuming a lot that isn’t so—”

  The answer from the faraway Gosseyn Two was favorable: “It does appear as if we’re taking a lot for granted. The mention of alien prisoners seems to indicate that the Dzan enemy in Galaxy Two is vulnerable like anyone else, and that individuals among them will surrender, and place themselves at the mercy of their opponents, as soldiers have been doing from time immemorial.”

  While his mental exchange took place with the duplicate Gosseyn, he had continued walking along beside the gaunt man. Now, Gosseyn glanced at the courtier, and wondered if he had noticed the silence. There was no indication on the long face that Breemeg was concerned.

  So perhaps there was still time enough for the recapitulation.

  Gosseyn said, “There’s an overall impression I have that this is a warship.”

  It required moments only for that to bring a reaction. Once more the man slowed in his walk, and, turning his head, stared with what seemed to be an expression of astonishment.

  “What else?” he said. He added, “You have strange thoughts.”

  Gosseyn persisted: “The very existence of such a large vessel, and your mention just now of alien prisoners, implies that wherever you came from—let us call your place of origin Galaxy Two—you have a mighty enemy.”

  The other man seemed to have recovered from his surprise at the simplicity of the questions. He was walking again at normal pace; and he nodded, and said, “It’s a two-legged, two-armed, semi-human race. These beings are both technically and as individuals dangerous to us. For example, it is risky for a human being without some electronic protection to be in the vicinity of a Troog. And we have had to develop elaborate devices to defend ourselves as a group from computer systems that are able to amplify their mental control methods for taking over the minds of the personnel of a Dzan warship during a battle.”

  “I gather that such a battle was in progress when your ship suddenly found itself in this area of space.”

  “True,” was the reply.

  Momentarily, Gosseyn tried to picture that battle scene in the remote universe nearly a million light years from the Milky Way galaxy. Human beings there fighting as men had been fighting here since the beginning of recorded history.

  He shook his head, sadly. The General Semantics notion that one human being is not the same as any other—Gilbert Gosseyn is not Breemeg, is not Eldred Crang, is not Prescott, is not Enro—while it had a limited truth in terms of individual identity and appearance, did not seem to encompass the character of the race as a whole.

  He sighed. And continued with his recapitulation: “I’m going to guess that the absence of your ship could be an advantage for the enemy.”

  Silence. They walked several steps, and the end of the corridor was visibly only a a few hundred feet ahead now. Then: “It will probably take a while,” Breemeg said, “before anyone becomes aware that we have disappeared. So ours may not yet be a dangerous absence.”

  “Your description of the enemy,” said Gosseyn, who had been considering what the other had said, “suggests that for the first time ever men have met a superior life form. By which I mean—”

  He stopped, incredulous.

  The floor was shaking. Shaking!

  It was a vibration that was visible. Literally, under him, the floor wobbled. And he saw that wobble run like a ripple that moved slantwise across the corridor. And, apparently, passed on to other parts of the ship. And was gone from where he was.

  Just ahead, a ceiling bell clanged. And then a man’s strident voice said urgently: “All personnel to stations.

  An enemy super-ship has just this minute entered our area of space—”

  Because of the intensity of tone, it took a moment to identify the voice as that of the Draydart Duart.

  Inside his brain, he was aware of his Alter Ego mentally groaning at him: “Three,” that distant thought came, “I think you’ve done it. You thought of that other galaxy battle location; and I have an awful feeling something big happened—again.”

  Gosseyn Three had no time for guilt. Because at that exact instant he felt an odd sensation in his head. It required several split instants for his second-in-line memory from Gosseyn Two and Gosseyn One, since he had no personally associated physical movements, to identify the feeling.

  Then: . . . Good God! Something was trying to take control of his mind—

  The twelve minutes of Leej’s prediction, must be up. That was only one of numerous fleeting impressions. Thought of Leej also brought instant memory of the Crangs, the Prescotts, Enro, and Strala . . . all of whom at this moment must be fighting efforts to control their minds.

  So Gilbert Gosseyn Three had better get back there. Too bad because—that was another of the fleeting realizations . . . I should really be tracking down that boy—

  CHAPTER

  12

  A chill wind blew into Gosseyn’s face.

  As far as the eye could see were snowy peaks. And, directly below the ridge on which they stood, was a swift flowing river with ice-encrusted shore lines.

  He saw that the boy was gazing at the scene, eyes wide. A flush of color was creeping into the white cheeks. And it just could be the chill of that wind was reaching through all the madness and making itself felt on a new level of reality.

  There was a long pause. Then: “Hey, this is really something, isn’t it?” The boyish voice had excitement in it.

  Even as the words were spoken, the wind
blew harder, icier. Gosseyn smiled grimly, and said, “Yes, it really is . . . something.”

  His Imperial Majesty, Enin, seemed not to hear and not to feel. His voice went up several pitches of excitement: “Hey, what do you do in a place like this?”

  It was not too difficult to believe that this boy had all his life been protected from extremes of weather. So Gosseyn’s feeling was that perhaps a little explanation was in order. Accordingly, he said, “Since, because of the battle that’s going on . . . back there—” He waved vaguely in the direction of the light-years-away Dzan ship—“we’ll be staying here for a little while, I should tell you that what you’re looking at is the winter season of this planet, and it’s a wilderness area. Not a sign of civilization is visible from here.”

  “There’s something over there,” said the boy. He pointed, and added, “I’ve been here twenty minutes longer than you, and it was brighter then, and it looked like something when the sun was out.”

  Gosseyn’s gaze followed the pointing finger, and saw that it was aimed in the direction that the river was flowing. The distance involved was more than a mile. There, at the point where the river and the valley turned leftward out of sight, was a dark area in the snow, seemingly at the very edge of the disappearing stream.

  Was it the first building of a settlement that was located beyond the bend?

  It would take a while to get there, and find out. But there was no question: if they remained here, that was the direction they would go.

  Aloud, he said, “Let’s hope so. We have to find a place where we can be warm when night comes.” Undecided, he looked up at the cloud that hid the sun. And saw that it was part of a dark mass that would presently cover most of the sky. Too bad! It would have been interesting to see what kind of sun it was.

  Already, the air seemed chillier than at the moment of his arrival. Time they were on their way.

  As the two of them partly climbed down, and partly slid down the icy slope, Gosseyn Three conducted a silent debate with himself.