Null–A Three

CHAPTER 3

Corridors—Gosseyn told himself—do not go on forever. And, since he still believed that he was on a spaceship, he felt entitled to anticipate that his two guards and he would presently arrive in another room. He presumed, further, that it would not simply be a residential room of the type found on a planet, where people lived in apartments and houses. For a location inside a spaceship—particularly, as he had reason to believe, a space warship—he expected that it would be another place where machinery was kept.

The first signal that, perhaps, the journey through the dimly lit metal hallway was about to end, was that Voice One and Voice Two slackened their rapid walking. And their gripping fingers on his arms slowed his walk, also. Naturally, he adjusted to the easier pace immediately. And, when moments later, they stopped before a barrier, he was not surprised when a hand reached past him, and touched something in the wall.

There was a click. And then the wall moved, and became a sliding door. There was brightness beyond. Gosseyn needed no urging. Even as they pushed at him, he stepped forward willingly. And there it was: a room.

It was a large room, with walls and ceiling of what seemed to be a glassy substance. The glass was opaque. The walls were light blue in color, and the ceiling a darker shade of blue. The floor that spread a good hundred feet in front of Gosseyn looked different.

A hundred long, and about seventy wide, of emptiness. No machinery was visible. No tables. No chairs. No equipment. The floor seemed to be made of some non-glassy material, but it was vaguely bluish in color and was decorated by an unusually intricate and repetitive design.

The deserted condition of what he had been brought to evoked a feeling of surprise. But there seemed to be nothing to do but await further communication.

Once more, Gosseyn waited. His captors had removed their hands from him. And so, tentatively, and slowly, Gosseyn took several steps forward thereby entering the room. No attempt was made to stop him. In fact, he was aware that Voice One and Voice Two had followed him, and were still on either side of him, as close as before.

It was Gosseyn who, after going forward half a dozen feet, came to a stop. He stood there. And it seemed to him that there was still no purpose he could have in this situation except a sort of re-affirmation of future purpose: keep finding out, if possible, what this big ship was and where it had come from. Provide only minimum clues about himself. Do nothing dramatic, or revealing, except in an emergency. But he didn’t know at the moment what he meant by an emergency.

With those limitations in mind, he parted his lips, intending to test if there were any communication outlets in the glassy stuff on either side or above.

And he actually, then, had time to say, “My impression is that I am being badly treated for no good reason. I should not be regarded as a pris—”

That was as far as he got. From the glassy ceiling, Voice Four interrupted, coldly: “You will presently receive the exact treatment that you deserve. In our predicament, we are entitled to be intensely suspicious when, after being precipitated to an unknown area of space, we find a capsule in that new location with you in it. And the fact that, on being awakened, you were immediately in communication with some distant alter ego makes you very suspect, indeed. Accordingly—” Pause; then: “Accordingly, we have brought you to this room, which we normally use for lectures, to be interviewed in the presence of our top specialists, who will determine your fate in not too many minutes.” Almost without pause, Four added commandingly to what were evidently subordinates. He said, “Take him to the podium!”

That last part, at least—it seemed to Gosseyn—had very little, or no reality. As he was led—he moved willingly, as before—across the intricately designed floor of that empty, empty “lecture” room, no podium was visible.

Except that when his guards and he were halfway to the far end of the room—where they seemed to be heading—the floor there suddenly moved.

Lifted. Silently raised itself about two feet. Simultaneously, a complex of movements began on the raised portion. Parts of the “podium” floor folded upward. Suddenly, there was a table taking shape, and chairs behind it. They faced towards the length of the room.

Several smaller movements between the platform and the floor produced a set of small steps.

Moments later, his guards and he came to the steps. And, since it seemed to be a destination, Gosseyn climbed them without a word. He thereupon also presumed his next move: without looking back, or awaiting instruction, he walked around the table, and sat down in the middle chair.

… Just in time to see the hundred feet of floor, over which he had just been escorted… start moving. Up.

It was no longer a complete surprise. As he gazed, interested, the intricate floor design was wordlessly explained. Each of the repetitive decorations, it quickly developed, was a folded-down chair. Which now folded up. And clicked into place.

Within a minute several hundred seats in the time-honored rows of auditoriums, theaters, and lecture rooms, were waiting out there in front of him for—

Click! click! click!

In three separate locations—back, middle and front—of both of the side walls, a wall section slid back. Through the six doorways, so swiftly created, trooped long lines of men. They were definitely all males, but differently arrayed than Voice One and Voice Two. In face and body they resembled his two guards. But their clothing was not puffed out. Was more streamlined, and uniformly gray.

And that, of course, was the clue: these were uniforms. Those who wore them must be military personnel.

Gosseyn held himself, unhappily, in his chair as the long lines of “top specialists”—he recalled the status as named by Voice Four—walked in through the six doors. Seemed to know where they were supposed to sit. And virtually, within a minute, were sitting there.

Staring at him.

… To be in a lecture room, sitting down at a table on the podium facing an audience: it was an earth stereotype for professors and other lecturers.

So it required a conscious mental effort on Gosseyn’s part to dismiss those automatic memory associations. It was not that the recollections of the stereotype took over his awareness; but they were there intruding, and interfering just enough to divert his attention from what, at another level of awareness, he believed was the hour of decision.

Voice Four had taken the big step. Thus, in a single action, the man was warding off responsibility for anything that might now occur, or be done.

In an autocracy, what Voice Four had done had to be close to the ultimate defense.

… Can I have any meaningful approach to what is about to happen? It was Gosseyn s silent question to himself.

Before he could analyze what such an approach might be, there was a sound to his right of a chair scraping. As Gosseyn turned to look, he saw that a large man, also in a gray uniform, was in the act of sitting down. At the moment—in that first look—there was no indication of where the new arrival had come from. Undoubtedly, another sliding door.

The big man had a square face, and a big, bushy head of brown hair sticking out from under the complicated head covering he wore. He must have been aware of Gosseyn’s glance. But he did not turn his head to acknowledge the look or the presence.

… Making sure, thought Gosseyn, cynical again, that no one, afterward, could accuse him in any way of treating the prisoner as a fellow human being.

The newcomer was clearly a key figure. For he raised his right hand and arm stiffly in front of him. Down there in the audience was surprisingly little shuffling, or sound. But if there had been, the authoritatively raised arm was clearly intended to stifle it.

After waiting several moments, apparently to make sure he had everyone’s attention, the big man parted his lips, and said in English: “In the name of his Divine Majesty, I call this meeting to order.”

For Gosseyn, it was a brief period of confusion. Because, English—spoken directly. At once, his earlier analysis of the source of the spoken English tongue (his belief that it came from the headgear, as a translation) was made meaningless.

That was only his first reaction and awareness. The second followed at the speed of thought. Because even word his seat mate had spoken, was loud, obviously intended for the audience to hear. But the voice that spoke the words was that of Voice Four.

So… no question; the analysis was off somewhere to one side of his thought: Voice Four was a somebody in the heirarchy that was confronting him in this determined fashion.

But, of course, the biggest revelation were the words:

. . In the name of his Divine Majesty—” There, finally, was the ultimate authority in this fantastic situation into which the third living Gilbert Gosseyn had been awakened. And, since everybody was being so careful, it was evident that “his majesty” operated in the grimmer regions of penalties and autocratic rule—

The tumble of thoughts in Gosseyn’s brain came to a pause. Because, suddenly, more was happening: out there on the floor, a rhythmic action. Every man in the audience leaped—virtually leaped—to his feet. Saluted. And sat down again.

Then there was complete quiet.

The speed of the entire sequence, from the moment the revealing words were vibrantly spoken to the final silence, left the one neutral listener essentially blank.

Not totally blank, of course. The meaning of “Divine Majesty” kept stirring associations. And there remained the fantastic fact that English was being spoken and understood by everyone. Yet, already, it was very apparent at this stage that any thought he could have on what had happened, would be speculation. And he had—it seemed to Gosseyn—already done enough of that.

Time, therefore, for his own verbal approach to these people… The first words he spoke, after he had had that decisive thought, were easy. Because: when in doubt throw the onus of—whatever (in this case, answers)—upon the other party.

What he said was, “I don’t understand what your predicament is. Earlier, I heard the statement that you people don’t know where you are. But the question to that has to be: in relation to what? Where are you from? And who are you?”

A pause. In speaking, he had turned to face the big man, presuming that, since the two of them were on the podium, any question and answer cycle would be between himself and Voice Four.

There was a pause. A pair of orange-yellowish eyes stared into his—color unknown; unless all the Gosseyn eyes were the same, in which case steely-gray was what Voice Four was seeing.

It was the orange-yellow gaze that narrowed abruptly. Whereupon, the hard, accustomed-to-command voice said, “We’ll do the questioning. What is your name?”

Gosseyn did not argue. It seemed to him that only the truth would evoke from these people the information that he wanted.

“My name is Gilbert Gosseyn,” he said.

“Where are you from?”

Essentially, said Gosseyn, “I am a human being from a sun called Sol, and from a planet, Earth, in that sun’s system.”

There seemed no point in volunteering that Gosseyn One and Gosseyn Two believed that Mankind of Earth apparently had come long ago from another galaxy.

“What were you doing in a state of suspended animation in a space capsule?”

Gosseyn took time for a deep breath. Undoubtedly, this was the big question. But since they already had significant data, Gosseyn said in the same even voice,

“I am a duplicate body scheduled to awaken if my Alter Ego is killed.”

“Has he been killed?”

Gosseyn did not hesitate. “As you should know only too well, I was awakened by the equipment of your ship. So now there are two of us; but we are far apart.”

“Is this a common technique for personality survival among the human beings who live on the planet Earth?”

“No, it is unique to myself and my predecessors.”

“Do you have any explanation for your special situation?”

“Not really. A few speculations on the part of my predecessor that would take a while to tell.”

“Very well.” The face staring at him was suddenly grim. “How would you explain the coincidence of a hundred and seventy-eight thousand warships of the Dzan empire suddenly, without warning, finding themselves in an unknown part of space, and in that space is a capsule with you in it in this unawakened state?” After a period of blankness, Gosseyn made the cortical-thalamic pause. He was thinking: I asked for it. It was information I wanted… And the trouble was that he had got more than he bargained for. He was aware of a vague analytical function in his mind adding up figures, among other items, including the possibility that on each of those warships were thousands of fighting men.

It was an event in space-time so colossal that, finally, it seemed to him only General Semantics could offer a conditional answer. With that thought, he said, carefully, “There is a possibility that at base the universe is a seeming, not a being; and that if, by any means, that seemingness is triggered, the nothingness momentarily asserts. During such a split-instant, distance has no meaning.”

It did not seem advisable to reveal that this was the frame within which—it was believed—the extra-brain of the Gilbert Gosseyns operated during 20-decimal similarity travel.

Even as Gosseyn had the cautionary thought, his eyes were watching the face of Four, as that face reflected the big man’s reaction. In that face Gosseyn could almost see the man evaluate the fantastic meaning. Consider each datum. Arrive, finally, at the enigma.

“Yes—” the tone was argumentative though not angry—“but what would be the connecting factor between that point in space where we were engaged in a major battle with the fleet of our mortal enemy, and this area in space where you were in that capsule?”

No question—thought Gosseyn after a pause… I’m getting more information than I bargained for. Because, battle. 178,000 Dzan battleships against a “mortal” enemy. The meaning was “major” on a level beyond the grasp of the human mind. It was an event in spacetime overshadowing even the great battle of the Sixth Decant between the colossal forces of Enro the Red and the League; which Gosseyn Two had managed to bring to a halt in his defeat of the Follower.

The implications brought a thought of equal vast meaning; and the words came almost automatically: “What do you think happened to your enemy at that moment? Is it possible that you were lucky enough to leave him and his fleet… back there?”

“Your concept of what is lucky,” came the immediate cold reply, “is not ours. Our disappearance from that battle means that our vast civilization… back there… now lies at the mercy of a hostile non-human culture. And it is our belief that you are in some way responsible for this disaster. So—”

As Voice Four paused, threateningly, there was an interruption. A young boy’s high, treble voice yelled from a source in the ceiling:

“Bring him up here! I want to see him! I’ll find out what happened! I’ll handle him!”

Complete surprise. And amazing what happened then. Out on the floor everybody stood up, and saluted. And remained standing. From beside Gosseyn, a suddenly breathless Voice Four said urgently, “Yes, your majesty! At once, your majesty!”

Unexpected development!… A boy king, with total power—

But Gosseyn did have a thought: What kind of power?