The Players of Null-A

XVIII NULL-ABSTRACTS

For the sake of sanity, remember: 'The map is not the territory, the word is not the thing it describes.' Wherever 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 wrecked 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.'

There were several references to Janasen, then a description of the Distorter relay system that had been used to transport Gosseyn from Janasen's apartment on Venus. 'Had this device built by the same people who made F. for me, so that it would actually seem to be an ordinary cooking table.' That was printed, but there was a notation in longhand on the margin: 'Very cunning.'

Gosseyn read the four pages with a sense of disappointment. He had expected to find an overtone of reference that would fill in his own picture of what had happened between the Follower and himself. But the account was too brief and too matter-of-fact. At the bottom of the fourth page was a note: 'See Ashargin.'

Gosseyn secured Ashargin's file. That was longer. In the early pages the writer dealt principally with Ashargin's life from the time he arrived at the Temple of the Sleeping God. It was not until the last page that there was any cross reference to Ashargin's 'file'. The comment was brief. 'Under lie detector questioning by Enro, Ashargin made several references to Gilbert Gosseyn.' Besides the item, in longhand, was written: 'Investigate.'

The final paragraph on Ashargin said:

‘The forced marriage of the Prince and Princess Ashargin seems to have developed into a relationship of fact as well as name. The change in this man calls for an urgent inquiry, although Enro is coming around to the idea that a cooperative Ashargin will be valuable even after the war. The Predictors find his conduct exemplary during the next three weeks.'

There was no indication as to when the three weeks had begun, no mention of the trip to Venus on which Gosseyn-Ashargin had started, nor any definite statement that he was back at the palace.

Gosseyn put the file back in its drawer, and continued his examination of the room. He found a narrow door skillfully built into the Distorter panels. It led into a tiny bedroom that contained one piece of furniture, a neatly made up bed.

There was no clothes closet, but there was a very small bathroom with toilet and wash basin. A dozen towels hung on a plain metal towel rack.

The Follower, if this was indeed his inner sanctum, did not coddle himself.

It took most of the day to explore the Retreat. The building had no unusual features. There were servants' quarters, several entire sections devoted to a busy clerical staff, the power plant in the basement, and a wing made up of prison cells.

The clerks and power attendants lived in cottages along the coast line farthest from the main building. Yanar and five other Predictors had apartments on one corridor. There was a hangar in the rear of the structure large enough to house a dozen skytrailers. When Gosseyn looked into it, there were seven large machines and three small planes. The latter were of the type that had attacked him during his escape from the prison.

No one interfered with him. He moved at will through the buildings and around the island. Not a single person seemed to have the authority or the inclination to bother him. Such a situation had probably never existed before on the island, and apparently they were all waiting for the Follower to come to do something about it.

Gosseyn waited also, not without some doubts, but with a strong determination not to depart. He had a will to action, a sense that events were moving to a head much faster than his almost passive existence at the Retreat indicated.

His plans were made, and it was only a matter of waiting till the battleship arrived.

He slept the first night in the little bedroom adjoining the Follower's office. He slept peacefully with his extra brain cued to respond to any operation of the Distorter equipment. He had not yet established that the Follower manipulated his curious shadow-shape by means of Distorter relays, but the available evidence pointed in that direction.

And he knew just what he intended to do to prove or disprove the theory.

The next morning he similarized to Leej's skytrailer, ate breakfast with three waitresses hovering around him, anxious to do his slightest bidding. They seemed puzzled by his politeness. Gosseyn didn't have time to train them in self-respect. He finished his meal and set to work.

First, he laboriously rolled up the drawing room rug. And then he began to cut free the metal floor plates as near as he could remember to the point where the Follower had materialized on the ship.

He found the Distorter within inches of where he expected it to be.

That was fairly convincing. But he had another verification in the cell where he had been imprisoned when he first arrived on Yalerta. A wild-eyed Yanar watched him through the bars as he broke open the seemingly solid metal cot, and there, also, found a Distorter.

Surely, the picture was becoming clearer, sharper. And the crises must be near.

The second night passed as uneventfully as the first. Gosseyn spent the third day going through the files. There were two pages on Secoh that interested him, because the information in them had not been a part of Ashargin's memory.

The forty-seven pages on Enro were divided into sections, but they merely confirmed what he had already heard, with many added details. Madrisol was listed as a dangerous and ambitious man. Grand Admiral Paleol was depicted as a killer. ‘An implacable character,' the Follower had written, which was quite a tribute from a person who had some fairly implacable characteristics himself.

He investigated only names that he knew, and a few cross references. It would take a staff of experts to go through the tens of thousands of files and make a comprehensive report.

On the fourth day he left the files alone, and worked out a plan for himself and the battleship to follow. It was uneconomical in terms of time wasted for the ship to trail him over the galaxy, when his purpose, as well as the purpose of Elliott and the others, was to get through to Gorgzid.

He wrote, 'Enro has safeguarded his home planet by a system of doling out matrixes for the Gorgzid base under such a strict system that it is highly improbable that any could be secured by normal methods.

'But a man with an extra brain should be able to secure a matrix. . . .'

He reached that early point in his summing up when the long expected relay closed in his brain, and he knew that the battleship had similarized to a break halt near the base eleven hundred light-years away.

Gosseyn made the jump back to the Venus instantly.

'You must have similarized yourself from the ship to Yalerta in a little over an hour,' Dr. Kair estimated.

They couldn't figure it out exactly. But the speed was so much greater, the margin of error so very small compared to the ninety-odd hours the battleship had required for the journey, that the time involved scarcely mattered.

One hour plus. Awed, he walked a hundred feet to the towering transparent dome of the battleship's control room. He was not exactly a man who had to have the vastness of space explained to him, and that made the new potential of his extra brain seem even more impressive.

The blackness pressed against the glass. He had no particular sense of distance with the stars that he could see. They were tiny bright points a few hundred yards away. That was the illusion. Nearness. And, now, for him they were near. In five and a half hours he could similarize himself across the hundred thousand light-year span of this spinning galaxy of two hundred thousand million suns—if he had a memorized area to which he could go.

Elliott came up beside him. He held out a matrix which Gosseyn took.

'I'd better be going,' he said. 'I won't feel right until those filing cabinets are aboard the Venus.'

He checked to make sure the matrix was in the sheath, and then similarized himself to the Follower's office.

He took the matrix out of its protective sheath, and carefully laid it on the desk. It would be too bad if the battleship actually similarized to the matrix, but Leej was aboard to make sure that the ship's break toward Yalerta fell short of a complete jump.

As he had expected, the Venus arrived successfully above the island just under three hours later. Study units were landed, and Gosseyn went aboard for a conference.

To his surprise, Dr. Kair planned no experiments and no training.

'We're going to use a work therapy,' the psychiatrist explained. 'You will train yourself by doing.'

He amplified briefly. 'Frankly, Gosseyn, training would take time, and you're doing all right. The advantage that you appear to have had over Lavoisseur is that you found out that there were other things that could be done, and you tried to do them. It seems certain that he knew nothing of the Predictors, or he would have mentioned them to Crang. Accordingly, he never had any reason to believe that he could train himself to foresee the future.'

Gosseyn said, 'That means I go back immediately and go through the Distorter in the Follower's office.'

There was one other thing he had to do, and he did it the moment he was down in the Retreat again. He similarized Yanar to his one memorized area on the island of Crest.

That humane duty performed, he joined the group investigating the Follower's private Distorter system. Already the results were interesting.

'That is the most advanced setup we've seen to date,' one of the Null-As told him. 'More intricate. Some of the printed circuits inside that paneling will take time to trace.'

They had already decided to work on the assumption that the Follower's Distorters operated on a better than twenty decimal similarity basis.

'So we're going to remain on Yalerta for a while, and give you a chance to come back. Besides, we have to wait for that battleship of Enro's which you mentioned. It's due any day now.'

Gosseyn agreed that the final purpose at least was important. It was vital that no more Predictors be sent to Enro's fleet.

He was not so sure about waiting for his return. The action he was about to take could become involved, and might require a prolonged effort. Still, if the Distorter Was really fast, only the journey through it would take time. He could now be sure of similarizing himself back to the ship with minimum time error, and then back again to wherever he had been.

It was the opinion of all that there was no time to waste, and that a thorough investigation of the instruments would take quite a while.

Once again Gosseyn agreed. His own examination had shown him that the paneling was divided into two sections. In one division were three Distorters, the controls of which could be adjusted to any patterns.

The second division had in it only one instrument. It had as its control a single protruding tube, which could be pulled or pushed by a tiny lever. In the past he had discovered that such single control Distorters were similarizable to any one destination to which they had a permanent matrix. He hoped that this one was tuned to the Follower's real headquarters in the galaxy.

He pulled the lever without hesitation.

Gosseyn did not move immediately after the blackness ended. He was in a large, book-lined room. Through a half open door he could see the edge of a bed.

He let his extra brain become aware of the life in the building. There was a great deal, but it seemed on a quiet and peaceful level. As far as he was able to make out, there was no one in the adjoining room.

His gaze was moving around swiftly now. He saw that the Distorter to which he had been similarized was one of two set at right angles to each other in a corner.

That seemed to complete the general picture.

He memorized a floor area at his feet, then walked over and picked one of the books out of the bookcase. It was printed in the Gorgzid language.

That gave him a moment of exhilaration, but as he was turning to the flyleaf he thought: It doesn't necessarily mean I'm on Gorgzid. Many people in the Greatest Empire will have books printed in the language of the capital planet.

At that instant his thought poised. He stared down at the name in the flyleaf, shook his head, and put the book back on the shelf.

But five other volumes he selected at random had the 'same name in them.

It was the name of Eldred Crang.

Gosseyn walked slowly to the bedroom door. He was puzzled, but not very worried. As he moved across the bedroom, he sensed the presence of people in the room beyond. Cautiously, he opened the door a crack. A corridor. He opened the door wider, slipped through and closed it behind him.

If necessary, he could make a retreat at the speed of similarity. But he wasn't sure yet whether he was going to retreat.

He reached the end of the corridor and stopped. From where he stood he could just see the back of somebody who looked like Patricia Hardie. She spoke then, and the identification was complete.

Her words had no importance, nor had the answer Crang gave her. What mattered about them was that here they were, and in the library adjoining their bedroom was a Distorter that connected with the Follower's Retreat on Yalerta.

It was a bewildering discovery, and Gosseyn decided against confronting the couple until he had discussed the matter with Elliott and the others.

But he was not yet ready to leave Gorgzid. He returned to the library, and stood contemplating the second Distorter. Like the one which he had already used in the Retreat, it was a single control affair.

It seemed logical to find out where it would take him. He pressed the lever.

He emerged in what seemed to be a small storeroom. There were piles of metal cases in one corner, and several shelves. A single, closed door seemed the only normal entrance.

There was no Distorter except the one through which he had come.

Swiftly, Gosseyn memorized a floor area, and then tried the door. It opened out upon a rather bare office. A desk, two chairs and a rug completed the picture.

Beyond the desk was another door.

Gosseyn paused on his way across the room and tried the drawers of the desk. They were locked with key locks, and could not be opened by an extra brain without the use of power.

The office door opened onto a corridor about ten feet long, at the end of which was another door. Gosseyn pushed it wide without hesitation, stepped through, and stopped.

The large chamber that spread before him hummed with faint undercurrents of sound. A narrow buttress extended twenty feet from one wall. It was so skillfully integrated that it seemed to be a projection of the wall itself, a prolonged curving out instead of the flat surface which the wall normally should have been.

The nearer curve of the jutting wall was translucent, and glowed with an all-pervading light. Tiny stairways led from the floor to the top of the crypt of the Sleeping God of Gorgzid.

The effect of it upon him was different than when he had seen it through the eyes of Ashargin. Now, with his extra brain, he sensed the pulsing currents of energy that operated the invisible machines. Now, there came a faint sense of life force, a human neural flow, slight, steady, and with scarcely any variation in intensity.

Gosseyn climbed the steps without benefit of the Ceremony of the Beholding, and looked down at the Sleeping God of Gorgzid. His examination of the face and of the crypt was different from that of Ashargin, sharper, more alert. He saw things to which the duller senses of the prince had been blind.

The 'coffin' was a structure of many sections. The body was held by a series of tiny, viselike arms and hands. He recognized their purpose. They were designed to exercise the muscles. If the Sleeping God ever wakened from his long sleep, he would not find himself stiff and weak, as Gilbert Grosseyn had after a month of being unconscious on the destroyer Y-381907.

The sleeper's skin was healthy. His body looked firm and strong. Whoever had planned his diet had had more equipment than had been available to Leej on the destroyer.

Gosseyn came down the steps, and examined the base of the coffin. As he had expected, the stairs were movable, and the base panels could slide back.

He slid them out of the way, and stood looking down at a machine.

Almost immediately he realized that he had come to the end of a trail. On all his journeyings, on the mightiest ships of the Greatest Empire, he had never seen a machine quite like this one.

After he had gazed at it a while, he shook his head in wonder. The circuits were printed in intricate designs, but he was able to identify more than a dozen purposes.

He recognized a Distorter circuit, a lie detector, a robot relay, and other more simple devices. But that electronic brain had no less than one hundred and forty-seven main circuits, each one of which was a unit in depth, the surface and interior of which was interlaid with many thousands of smaller circuits.

Even the almost human robot weapons which Lavoisseur had turned over to the Venusians had only twenty-nine main sections.

Intent now, Gosseyn studied the artificial brain. On that closer examination, several of the wires seemed burned out. The discovery alerted him, and in quick succession he saw several other damaged segments. How so well-built and protected an instrument could have been damaged was not easy to understand, but the end result was unmistakable.

It would take an immense amount of skill to repair the machinery and awaken the Sleeping God.

It would probably not be his job. He was in the front line, and not in the technical department. It was time he went back to the battleship.

He similarized himself, and arrived on the Venus to hear the alarm bells ringing.

Elliott explained that the battle was over. ‘When our robots acted, I don't think they even knew what hit them. We captured the entire personnel.'

It was a very satisfying victory, for more reasons than one. The captured battleship was the one Enro had sent more than a month before to replace the Y-381907. It had come to start a new flow of Predictors to the fleet of the Greatest Empire. It would take time for another ship to replace it That was one result.

The second result, it seemed to Gosseyn, was the more important when properly considered. The Venus was free to follow him to Gorgzid.

No Null-A had any explanation to offer for the mystery of Eldred Crang. Elliott said: 'We can only assume that he did not know about the Predictors, and therefore made no statements on a concrete predictable level. Your discovery seems to indicate that Crang is more aware of what is going on than we suspected.'

A short time later Gosseyn was given another matrix, and Elliott told him, 'We'll leave at once, and we'll see you in about three days.'

Gosseyn nodded. He intended to explore the Temple of the Sleeping God in more detail. 'I want to see if the atomic drive is still in working order. Maybe I can take the whole temple out to space.' He grinned. ‘They might take that as an omen that the god disapproves of their aggression.'

He finished more seriously. 'Except for that, I'll lie pretty low until you people arrive.'

Before leaving the ship, he sought out Dr. Kair. The psychiatrist motioned him to a chair, but Gosseyn rejected the offer. He stood frowning, then said:

‘Doctor, there’s something at the end of this trail we’re following that’s going to be different from anything we expected. I've had some hazy pictures—-' He paused, then:

'Twice, now, my mind has been similarized into the body of Prince Ashargin. On the surface it looks as if someone was helpfully giving me a look at the larger scene of events, and I'm almost willing to accept that as the motive.'

'But why through Ashargin's eyes? Why is he necessary?'

'You see, it comes down to this: If it's possible to put my mind into other people's bodies, why wasn't it put into the body of Enro? With Enro under my control, I think I could end the war like that.'

He snapped his fingers.

'The logic of that seems so inescapable that I can only conclude we are looking at the picture from the wrong angle. There must be another answer, possibly an answer bigger than the war itself.'

He stood frowning, then held out his hand. Dr. Kair shook it silently. Gosseyn stepped away, and, still holding on to the matrix, similarized himself to the little storeroom in the Temple of the Sleeping God on Gorgzid.

Even as he came out of the blackness, he realized with a thalamic sense of frustration that he was going to wake up in the body of the Prince Ashargin—for the third time in as many months.