The Players of Null-A

XIX NULL-ABSTRACTS

For the sake of sanity, remember: First is the event, the initial stimulus; second is the nervous impact of the event, via the senses; third is the emotional reaction based on the past experience of the individual; fourth comes the verbal reaction. Most individuals identify the first and fourth steps, and are not aware that the second and third exist.

'It's dinner time,' said Nirene.

Gosseyn-Ashargin climbed to his feet, and they walked in silence along the corridor. Her face was thoughtful, and when she tucked her fingers lightly under his arm, it looked like an automatic gesture. But the very unconscious nature of it emphasized for Gosseyn what he had already realized from Ashargin's memory, that this marriage had indeed developed into an affectionate relationship.

'I'm not so sure,' said Nirene, 'that the privilege of being at the royal dinner table is one that I enjoy. I can't decide whether I've been promoted or not.'

Gosseyn-Ashargin did not reply. He was thinking of the body of Gilbert Gosseyn lying in the storeroom in the Temple of the Sleeping God. At any moment, Secoh might walk in and find it.

Beside that fact, the private life of the Prince and Princess Ashargin faded into insignificance.

Neither Enro nor Secoh were present for dinner, which did not make Gosseyn feel any better He had a vision of the Lord Guardian deciding to spend this night of nights at the Temple. There was no question of what he himself must do, but the details occupied his attention for most of the meal. So it was with a sense of something wrong that he looked up suddenly and saw that the two women were very pale. Patricia was saying:

'. . . I didn't think I'd feel this way, but the possibility of a complete League victory makes me almost as uneasy as I used to be when I thought of my brother winning unconditionally.'

Nirene said: 'The terrible thing about being pulled into a war against your will is that, no matter how little you had to do with it, you discover finally that your own fate is bound up with the fortunes of your side.'

Briefly, Gosseyn was drawn aside from his urgent private purposes. He knew what they were thinking, and there must have been a real reverse to shock them so violently. Defeat would be a personal disaster for everyone in the Greatest Empire. There would be humiliation, armies of occupation, a ruthless search for war criminals, vengefulness that would show little or no comprehension of the possible effects on the nervous systems of both victors and vanquished.

He parted his lips to speak, and then closed them again, struck by a sudden thought. If the situation was really serious, then this might be the explanation for the dictator's absence from dinner.

Before he could say anything, he had confirmation. Patricia said:

'Enro's with the fleet. They lost four divisions without a trace, and the battle of the Sixth Decant is stopped while they plan counter measures.'

'And where is Secoh?' Gosseyn asked.

Nobody knew, but Crang gave him a sharp questioning look. All he said, however, was: 'It's important, of course, that there be no complete victory. Unconditional surrender is an illusion.'

Gosseyn did not hesitate. They might as well know the facts. Briefly, succinctly, without giving his source of information, or describing the robotic weapons and their effect, he told them what the possible result would be in the war.

He finished: ‘The sooner Enro realizes that he's got a long war of attrition on his hands, and makes or accepts overtures of peace, the more quickly he'll insure that no accidents of fate brings about complete ruin.'

He stood up. 'If Enro comes back before I do, tell him I want to see him.'

He excused himself, and walked rapidly out of the room.

Arriving in the outer corridor, he headed for the roof.. Several planes were parked near the stairway from which he emerged. As he seated himself in the front seat of the nearest one, the plane's electronic brain spoke to him through a loudspeaker.

'Where to?'

'Over the mountain,' said Gosseyn, 'I'll tell you where to go from there.'

They took off swiftly over the city. To the impatient Gosseyn, it seemed as if the spread of lights below would never end. Finally, however, the blackness began, and soon it was

general except for vagrant spots of light that dotted the horizon.

Once more the roboplane spoke. 'We're over the mountains. Where to?'

Gosseyn looked down. He could see nothing. The sky was cloud-filled, the night like pitch.

'I want you to land on a little road about half a mile this side of the Temple of the Sleeping God,' he ordered.

He described it in detail, estimating the distance of various clumps of trees, and picturing the curving of the road on the basis of Ashargin's sharp memory of the scene.

The flight continued in silence. They came down in darkness, and bumped to a stop.

Gosseyn's parting admonition was: 'Come back every hour.'

He stepped down onto the road, walked a few feet, and stopped. He waited then for the plane to make its almost silent take off—a rush of air and a slight hiss of power— and then he started off along the road.

The night was hot and still. He met no one, but that was expected. This was a road that Ashargin knew of old. A thousand and more nights like this he had tramped from the potato fields back to Ms cot in one of the work huts.

He reached the even deeper shadows of the temple itself and paused again. For a long minute he listened for sounds that would indicate activity.

There was no sound.

Boldly, yet with care, he pushed open the metal door, and started down the same metal stairway which had been his route during the Parade of the Beholding.

He reached the door of the inner chamber without incident, and to his surprise it was unlocked. The surprise lasted only a few moments. He had brought along an instrument for picking locks, but it was just as well not to have to make Ashargin's poorly coordinated fingers cope with it.

He slipped inside, and closed the door softly behind him. The now familiar scene of the crypt spread before him. Swiftly, he walked to the small corridor that led to the private office of the Lord Guardian.

At that door he paused again and listened. Silence. Safely inside, he headed for the storeroom door. He held his breath as he peered into the dim interior, and sighed with relief as he saw the body lying on the floor.

He was in time. But the problem now was to get the unconscious body to safety.

First, he hid the matrix under a metal box on an upper shelf. Then, quickly, he knelt beside the still form, and listened for life in it. He heard the heartbeat, and felt the pulse, and felt the warmth of the slow, measured breathing of the unconscious Gosseyn. And it was one of the strangest experiences of his existence to be there watching over his own body.

He climbed to his feet, bent down, and slipped his hands under the armpits. He drew a deep breath, and jerked. The limp body moved about three inches.

He had expected difficulty in moving the body, but not that much. It seemed to him that if he could get it started that would be the important thing. He tried again, and this time he kept going. But his muscles began to ache as he crossed the little den, and he took his first rest at the door.

His second rest, somewhat longer, came at the end of the short corridor. When he reached the middle of the chamber of the crypt nearly twenty minutes later, he was so worn out that he felt dizzy.

He had already decided on the only possible place in the temple where he could hide the heavy body. Now, he began to wonder if he would have the strength to put it there.

He climbed the steps to the top of the crypt. From that vantage point, he studied the mechanism of the covering; not the transparent plates near the head of the sleeper, but the translucent sections farther along the twenty-foot length of the coffin.

They slid back. It was as simple as that. They slid back, and revealed straps and tubes and holding devices for three more bodies. Two of them were on a slightly smaller scale than the other. At the sight, understanding dawned on Gosseyn. The smaller ones were for women.

This spaceship was designed to take two women and two men across the miles of interstellar space and the years of time between star systems that had not had similarity travel established between them.

He wasted no time pondering the implications, but bent his muscles to the enormous task of dragging the Gosseyn body up the steps and into the crypt.

How long it required he had no idea. Again and again he rested. A dozen times it seemed to him that Ashargin was being driven beyond all the resources of his thin physique. But at last he had the body tied in place. Tied because there must be a mechanism for disposing of dead bodies. Parts of this machine were so faulty that they probably had no operating function that would tell them when a body was alive. That might explain why the women and one of the men had not been replaced.

It was as well to take precautions.

He slid the panel back in place, moved the steps back into position, and he was standing on top of them making sure that there was no sign that they had been tampered with, when he heard a sound from the direction of the storeroom. He turned, tense.

Eldred Crang came in.

The Null-A detective stopped short, and put one finger to his lips in a warning fashion. He came forward swiftly, pushed the other stairway toward the rear of the crypt, and climbed up it.

With a gesture he slid back the panels where Gosseyn-Ashargin had put the Gosseyn body. For several seconds he gazed down at the body, and then he pulled the panels shut, climbed to the floor, and pulled the stairway back where it had been.

Ashargin meanwhile had returned to the floor also, Crang took his arm.

'Sorry,' he said in a low voice, 'that I didn't get a chance to help you cart it up there. But I wasn't in my apartment when the machine first sent a warning to me. I came as soon as I could make sure'—he smiled—'that you hid it where it ought to go.'

'But now, quick, come along.'

Gosseyn followed him without a word. There was not a Null-A aboard the Venus who had questioned Crang's motives, and he was not going to start now. His mind bubbled with questions, but he was prepared to accept the implications of Crang's words that there was need for haste.

Through the little office and into the storeroom they hurried. Crang stepped aside when they came to the Distorter. 'You first,' he said.

They emerged in Crang's library. Crang started forward as urgently as ever, and then, halfway across the floor, he paused and turned. He indicated the Distorter through which Gosseyn had originally come from Yalerta.

'Where does that lead?' he asked.

When Gosseyn told him, he nodded. 'I thought it was something like that. But I could never be sure. Going through from here depends upon the operation of remote controls, which I've never been able to locate.'

Crang asking a question about something he didn't know was a new experience for Gosseyn. Before Gosseyn could ask any questions of his own, Crang said:

'Enro has been away for eight days, but he's due back any minute. That's according to word we received shortly after dinner. So go to your room as fast as you can'—he hesitated, evidently considering his next words—'and sleep,' he finished finally. 'But quick now.'

In the drawing room, Patricia said, 'Good night!' quietly.

At the outer door Crang said earnestly, 'Have a good night's rest. And I mean sleep!'

Gosseyn headed sedately along the corridor. He felt strangely blank, and he had a feeling that too many things had happened too swiftly. Why had Crang assured himself that the Gosseyn body was in the right place, after having first been warned by a machine? What machine? There was only one that had any relevancy, so far as Gosseyn could make out. And that was the damaged electronic brain under the crypt.

Had Crang established some control over that machine? It sounded as if he had.

But what did he mean, sleep?

He was two floors down, starting along the corridor to Nirene's and Ashargin's apartment, when a Venusian robotic weapon snatched at his mind.

He had time for one startled realization: This couldn't be the Null-A manned battleship Venus. There hadn't been time for it to arrive.

It could only be that this was a major League attack. But how had they got through?

The thought ended. He was fighting desperately to save Ashargin's body from being controlled.