Null-A Three

by A. E. van Vogt

  Flickering memories came of how—last time—he had actually been brought out of the capsule into the virtually total darkness of the Dzan laboratory.

  Maybe the Troogs would make a similar attempt to conceal themselves from him while, by way of their instruments, they looked him over.

  Should he let them? After a rueful moment, he realized that the real question was: could he stop them?

  He recalled that . . . back there on the Dzan ship . . .” he had felt a sudden freshness because, then, what was apparently either a greater amount of air, or a slight different temperature in the laboratory, had affected the nerve ends of his naked body.

  Shall I? Shall I not?—

  He actually thought of where he should try to go first, and he actually, did what was necessary to “set up” his extra-brain for the 20-decimal similarity jump to that location.

  But the indecision, he realized, had a basic, underlying, unresolved uncertainty that was relevant only to the Gosseyn condition.

  Things were happening, and would continue to happen, to the Gilbert Gosseyn duo that was currently alive. And on one level—the level where the two of them operated as a team, whereby it didn’t matter if one body was killed so long as there was another one to carry on, with duplicate memories and abilities . . . or. that level, it might be a good idea to confront these people before he had any real understanding of what they could, or could not do.

  . . . On the other hand, if this body is killed—that really me, gone forever.

  Guilt came . . . Here we are, we Gosseyn bodies, was this great similarity thing in our heads, whereby memory equals identity, and similar bodies go on and on—That group of eighteen-year-olds were still waiting out there somewhere . . .

  In spite of that reality, I am the one—maybe the First one—who’s beginning to think like a separate person.

  In terms of General Semantics, of course, he was a separate being: an intricate complex of particles and energy flows arranged in the shape of a human being, different from all the other similar shapes in the universe, including Gosseyns One and Two.

  Something of the implications of that rapid reasoning in this stress situation must have reached out to the faraway alter ego. Because, suddenly, the thought came: “Hey, Three, wait a minute! Let’s talk!”

  Presumably, with that other Gosseyn mind reaching out to him, and at that very instant a door opening, and light glaring in on him from a room, where—instantly—he could see several twisted looking, two-legged beings standing, staring at him with round, lidless, black eyes . . . presumably it was a moment of confusion.

  Enough to trigger a reaction.

  CHAPTER

  20

  He arrived naked, still on his back, and face up.

  Gosseyn Three lay very still, orienting himself to a sunlit room. Not easy; for there was the confusion of those last moment mental pictures of what he had seen of the aliens.

  And there was the instant concern about them, and what they might do; and, simultaneously, a quick attempt at awareness of his own body feelings:

  . . . Were there any sensations that would indicate that they still had contact with him?—

  The several seconds required for him to realize that he was lying on the carpeted floor of the bedroom m the Institute of General Semantics, went by. Relief came when he saw that the door was closed, and that he was alone. And then, finally—

  He grew aware of a vague, slow, spinning sensation Deep inside him.

  Even though he had expected it, he was disappointed. “Okay, okay,” he thought glumly, as he climbed to his feet. “At least, now I know what it is and what it can lead to.”

  After several seconds of adjusting to the standing position, he was suddenly hopeful. Maybe they would observe him for a while. See what he did. Find out why he had come here.

  And, of course, there were obvious firsts for a human being to do.

  Blayney had sent over half a dozen men’s suits, with all the necessary complements; and five of them—Gosseyn discovered with relief—were still in his clothes closet.

  As he slipped hastily into, first, undershorts, and then a pair of dark beige trousers, and a brown shirt, socks and shoes, he found himself wondering what had happened to the suit he had been wearing at the moment when he was transported to the capsule duplicate aboard the alien ship.

  Was there a crumpled coat, trousers, shorts, shirt, tie, socks and shoes lying in the corridor outside the office of businessman Gorrold?

  That was the most likely possibility. Hard to believe that the spinning sensation, which had preceded the moment of transmission, had affected anything but his living body? In his own 20-decimal similarity extrabrain transport, clothes accompanied him only if he consciously took that special mental photograph of them . . .

  His small awarenesses about that ceased abruptly, as he grew more consciously aware of his surroundings, and of the fact that, during those final moments of getting dressed, he had the realization that Gosseyn Two was manifesting . . . out there.

  In effect, then, he looked up, and spoke silently: “Okay, alter ego, any suggestions?”

  The reply was peaceful: “No. You’re the one that’s out there. I seem to be sitting out this entire experience. I gather you want to do something about Enin before anything else happens.”

  It was true. Though—now that he was back on the scene—the purpose did not seem quite as urgent as it had earlier. He realized that Two’s moment about not being involved had brought a whole new train of thought.

  “Does that mean,” he asked, “that we’re getting to be sufficiently dissimilar, so that you don’t have any of that spinning sensation inside you?”

  “Apparently,” was the reply, “they seem to be able to differentiate us. Or it’s a focussing device they use, and they’ve got it pointed at you.”

  The second thought seemed, instantly, to be the most likely possibility. And so, Gosseyn Three telepathed “If that’s the truth of the matter, then, if necessary. you can either come and get Enin, or transmit him on the basis of the mental photograph in my extra-brain.”

  “We have some fine reasoning to do,” came the reply, “and maybe even some testing. But in anything to do with Enin and you, we must include in our logic the effect on the Queen Mother Strala of anything to do.” A faint smile seemed to accompany the concluding thought: “If you’re going to be the first Gosseyn to make love to a woman, you’d better not muff the emotional preliminaries any more than you already have Gosseyn Three did not argue with the analysis. He finished putting on his shoes. And then he was or opening the door.

  He saw at once that Enin was there in the living room with Dan Lyttle. The boy saw him, and said “Gee, I’m sure glad you’re back. This guy is worse than—” He spoke an unfamiliar name.

  It was one of those delayed hearing processes: but presently it seemed as if what he had heard was “Traada!” And, equally important, it dawned him that that must be the name of the emperor’s teacher on the Dzan battleship.

  The disgusted hand movement seemed to mean that Dan Lyttle was worse than Traada.

  The situation seemed to call for a question. “What’s the subject?” Gosseyn asked.

  “Names.”

  “Oh!” acknowledged Gosseyn.

  “He says a chair is not a chair.”

  In spite of himself, Gosseyn found himself smiling. Evidently, Dan Lyttle had been continuing the boy’s General Semantics’ education. And this was the latest.

  What bothered him was the feeling that he didn’t really have the time for things like this. His logic said the Troogs, not being semantically oriented, would swiftly become impatient if he involved himself with the homey details of human existence.

  Nevertheless, there were things he should know. Quickly.

  He turned to the man. “Any problems while I was—” At that point he hesitated, with the realization that Dan and Enin believed him to have been interviewing business people who were against General Semanti
cs; there were no suitable words that could possibly describe the awesome reality of what had happened, so he completed the thought with a stereotype—“out?”

  The phone rang.

  Whereupon Dan Lyttle smiled, and said, “I think we have the answer to your question. That’s the fourth call since I came in. The first three were from outraged business men. Shall I take it?”

  “No. Let me.”

  As Gosseyn hurriedly walked over to the end of the couch, sank into it, and picked up the receiver, Enin said, “And there were two calls when I was here alone.”

  Gosseyn said, “Hello.” In his best baritone.

  There was a long pause at the other end. Then the sound of a man forcefully inhaling. And finally a familiar voice said, “This is Gorrold. In case you don’t remember my name, maybe it will help if I tell you I’m phoning from an observatory in the Andes. And there are four President Blayney guards here. And we’ll be back this evening. Three of us have plans for you.”

  So it had been earth.

  Gosseyn was aware of mixed feelings as that reality penetrated. Presumably, he should feel relief; since, of course, he had never intended permanent harm to any of the men. Also, it seemed reasonably logical that his extra-brain had, during those moments of confusion, selected the known location from the unknown. Split-instant interactions would have been involved. And at that speed the familiar had automatically synchronized more swiftly.

  They were split-instant, fleeting thoughts; and, even as he had them, he was making his decision.

  “I have the feeling,” he said into the mouthpiece, “that we ought to have a face-to-face conversation. And, now that you have experienced the basic nothingness of the universe, maybe right now would be a good time.”

  The voice at the other end of the line made a sound. It seemed to be an expression of puzzlement. The word uttered, if it could be called that, had in it a combination of h’s and n’s, and a vowel, or two, or three. And it came through something like:

  “Huhnnuhhn?” The tone implied a question.

  Gosseyn did not attempt an exact translation. In the moments that followed its utterance he, first, made an extra-brain photograph of a location of the floor a dozen feet away; and simultaneously, recalled his mental photograph of Gorrold.

  As he did so, there was a sound and a gasp. It came from the business executive he had seen so briefly—was it the day before?—who was lying on the floor across the room.

  Gosseyn replaced the receiver, and said in his calmest voice, “The difficulties we find in our dealings with other people is that they have an overall simplistic idea in their heads about how things are. To such people the world is a series of fixed mental pictures. They look at what we call a chair, and they think of it as exactly that—no more, no less.”

  His self-control was evidently catching. Because Enin, after one startled look at the writhing body on the floor, seemed to recover. He said in a challenging tone, “Well, isn’t it? Chairs are for sitting down in.” The boy was shrugging. “I’m beginning to think maybe I’m on their side.”

  “Each chair is different from all other chairs,” Gosseyn explained. “Even in a factory, where they make a single style of chair by the thousands, the grain of the wood—as one example—is different in each. But that’s a superficial aspect of what we’re talking about in General Semantics. What’s important for the mind is that we should at all times be essentially aware that any object is a complex structure in terms of physics and chemistry. In this instance, we have given the structure the name, ‘chair’, and we generally use it for what you said. But I’ve also seen it used for holding open a door. What it’s called is okay. But we should be aware of the underlying particles, atoms, molecules, energy flows, etc.” He smiled. “Got that?”

  There was no immediate answer from his Imperial Majesty of the Dzan. Gosseyn grew aware that Dan Lyttle also had a faint smile on his face. The younger man glanced at him, and then, without a word, walked over to where Gorrold was climbing to his feet.

  The sturdily built business executive seemed to be uncertain. Finally: “Where the hell is my jacket?” he asked in a sullen tone.

  For Gosseyn, it was a moment of mild surprise. He hadn’t noticed in a meaningful way that the man had arrived coatless. Vaguely, the awareness had been there at the back of his mind. But he had had—he realized—so many other things going on in the observational side of his brain that, in fact, the automatic truth of the extrabrain had not transferred its meaning.

  Belatedly, he recalled that originally he had transmitted Gorrold to the icy mountainside, and had then transmitted the jacket to the same location as an act of kindness—not really wanting the man to suffer any more cold than was minimally necessary.

  Presumably, the coat was now lying on the floor beside the phone in the observatory off there in South America.

  Under the circumstances, it was no greater problem for the extra-brain to transfer the coat than the man. And so, bare moments later, Gosseyn warily walked past Gorrold and Dan. Reached down. Picked up the jacket. And handed it to the owner.

  There was silence as the chunky man put on the coat. His fifty-ish face reflected a whole series of inner reactions. Then, as he completed the act of dressing—

  “I have to admit—” began Gorrold.

  . . . Hopeful beginning, thought Gosseyn—

  “—that,” continued the man, “however you’re doing what has been happening to me—”

  The words seemed to indicate that caution was moving in behind all the basic outrage and anger.

  “—maybe I’d better think things over before I do anything further!” With those words, the super-executive completed his thought.

  For Gosseyn, it was undoubtedly the best outcome he could hope for. For the time being.

  He saw that Dan Lyttle had walked over, and was opening the corridor door. And then he waited while the older man walked over to it, through it and, turning, moved off out of the line of sight.

  Gosseyn was prepared to deduce that the man would leave the building as swiftly as possible; but Enin trotted over to the door, and peered around it. The boy presently reported, “He’s heading for the main door.”

  Then: “He’s gone.”

  During the half-minute involved, Gosseyn had closed his eyes, and transmitted President Blayney’s four guards one by one to a street location the earliest Gosseyn had once used.

  Enin was coming back into the room. He asked, “Going to do anything about those other guys who called?”

  Gosseyn drew a deep breath. “No,” he said.

  A strange thought had come—strange for him. It was time to take a break; that was the feeling. There had to be a pause to the ceaseless driving existence in which this Gosseyn body had been involved since that first moment of awakening inside the capsule aboard the Dzan battleship.

  True, he had slept in Dan Lyttle’s little house. But though a sleep of exhaustion had its place, and its own necessity, that was not what he needed.

  A break.

  He said, “Listen Enin! listen, Dan! President Blayney put a billfold with money in every one of the suits he sent over for me. So Jet’s leave right now, and go to the nearest restaurant, and eat. And talk.”

  . . . The restaurant had one of those dimly lighted interiors; but there was a video game room, from which Enin had to be rescued twice; both times he came dutifully when Gosseyn went over and reported that food had arrived. Each time he ate his share, and then departed at speed.

  In between, as Gosseyn and Dan Lyttle each ate a sandwich and salad, the subject of conversation was Dan Lyttle himself.

  Gosseyn’s first question: “Why, after your training in General Semantics was accepted by the Games Machine as being adequate, didn’t you go to Venus?”

  The younger man’s answer was, in view of the subject matter, obviously straightforward: “As you know,

  I’m a night clerk at a good hotel. Despite the advanced state of computer technology for su
ch places, they still need human beings; and I got the job at a time when work was temporarily scarce. I immediately discovered that it removed me from the normal condition of a human being.

  “Working all night, and sleeping eight hours some time during the following day quickly ended the few associations I had formed when I first came to the City of the Games Machine from the east coast. I thought about that, and, after taking two different young ladies out during my days off—separately, of course—I decided I could not subject a normal young woman to a marriage with me. Now, General Semantics, as you know, and as I discovered later, merely provides guide lines in the direction of survival within the frame of any life situation.

  “Before I ever took my GS training, there was a woman who had seen me late one night when she visited an out-of-town friend who was staying at the hotel. Naturally, I found this out only later. But what happened: she checked in one night, and called me at three A.M., and asked me to come up to her room and make love to her. Well, I was a young fellow; I still hadn’t made any decisions about things like that. It turned out that her husband had died; and she had resolved to be his wife forever, and never marry again. But she saw me and called me, and I went up. And thereafter, once a month, she would pray for her husband’s forgiveness, and check into the hotel, and call me.”

  “As I said, I started getting involved in that situation before I took my training in General Semantics. And, when I later discussed this relationship with the Games Machine, apparently human sexual activity was something it could not evaluate. Believe it or not, after it discovered that I was awake all night, the Games Machine occasionally phoned me in the wee hours, and talked to me.”

  Gosseyn waited. It was a minor item, but interesting, implying that the machine was busy thinking even during off hours.

  Dan Lyttle continued: “Maybe it was also phoning other night clerks; but I think not. Because, after you showed up for the Games, and it started evaluating your situation, and the meaning of the great armies that were arriving in the vicinity of earth, it used me as its outside ally in case of an emergency. So one day I went over, and that was when the machine gave me a duplicate it had made of itself.”