The World of Null-A (24 page)

The big man’s face was a study in calculation, in a tensed anticipation of action about to be taken. He said in a harsh voice, “Naturally, I am prepared to pay a price for your assistance. I won’t destroy null-A. I will use no atomic energy. I break with Enro, or at least keep him in the dark as long as possible. I fight a holding war here only, and restrict the slaughter. All that I am prepared to pay for your voluntary co-operation. If we have to force your help, then I am not bound. The only question, accordingly, that remains is”-the gray-green eyes were like burning pools-“are you going to help us willingly or unwillingly? Help us you shall!”

Because of his realization of what was coming, Gosseyn had had time to decide, and time to think of some of the implications. He said now without hesitation, “Willingly, of course. But I hope you realize the initial step
must
be to train my extra brain. Are you prepared to carry your logic to that limit?”

Thorson was on his feet. He came over and patted Gosseyn on the shoulder. “I’m way ahead of you,” he said in a ringing voice. “Listen, we’ve rigged up a transporter system between here and Earth. Crang should be here any minute with Dr. Kair. Prescott won’t be here till tomorrow, because he’s to be in charge on Venus, and so for the benefit of our Earth supporters he had to come by spaceship. But-“

There was a knock on the door. It opened and Dr. Kair came in, followed by Crang. Thorson waved at them, and Gosseyn stood up and a moment later silently shook hands with the psychiatrist. He was aware of Thorson and Crang talking together in low tones. Then the big man walked over to the door.

“I’ll leave you three to talk over the details at your leisure. Crang tells me there’s a major revolution started on Earth, so I’ve got to get back to the palace to direct the fighting.”

The door closed behind him.

In the elder days of Art, Builders wrought with greatest care Each minute and unseen part, For the Gods see everywhere.

W.W.L.

“It will be,” said Dr. Kair, “a battle of wits. And I’ll bet on the extra brain.”

They had been talking for more than an hour, with Crang interjecting only an occasional remark. Gosseyn watched the hazel-eyed man from the corner of his eyes, puzzled and uncertain. According to Kair, it was Crang who had found and arrested him. The man, of course, had to appear to be a Thorson man, but he was acting out his role the hard way. Gosseyn decided not to ask him about Patricia Hardie. Not yet, anyway. He saw that Kair was standing up.

“No use wasting time,” the psychiatrist said. “I understand that galactic technicians have been rigging up a special room for you. The training should not be difficult with all the equipment they have here.” He shook his head wonderingly. “It’s still hard for me to grasp that they’ve got several square miles of underground buildings here, with only Crang’s tree house as a front. But to get back to what I was saying.” He frowned thoughtfully. “The main point is, if we’re right, your extra brain is an
organic
Distorter, and all that that implies. With the help of the mechanical Distorter, you should be able to similarize two small blocks of wood in three or four days, and that will be the beginning.”

But it took only two days.

Afterward, alone in the dark room, where the test had taken place, Gosseyn sat and stared down at the blocks. They had been three centimeters apart. He had seen no movement, but now they were touching. The single beam of light that focused on the two blocks marked their changed positions unmistakably. In some way, though he had had no sensation, thought waves had reached out from his extra brain and controlled matter.

The ascendancy of mind over matter-age-old dream of man. Not that he had done it without assistance. Every effort had been made to make the two blocks similar. And yet they would have changed slightly since then. So slightly. His body heat in the confined room would have affected them. Both the light beam and the surrounding darkness would have had a different influence on each block, despite the absorber tubes that lined the walls, despite the most delicate electron thermostat. Without the Distorter, of course, he wouldn’t have succeeded this first time. It had similarized the blocks to nineteen decimal places. It quieted the molecular movement of the air, partially similarized the table on which the blocks rested, Gosseyn’s chair, and Gosseyn himself.

And yet the final impulse had come from him. It
was
the beginning.

Gosseyn emerged from the training room, and Thorson came by transporter from Earth to assist Kair with the tests. The photographs showed thousands of tiny impulse lines that had reached up into the extra brain.

The tests were prolonged, and it was an exhausted Gosseyn who finally set out for his apartment. As he walked toward the “elevator” he noticed that, in addition to his usual guards, a small metal ball bristling with electronic tubes floated in the air behind him. Prescott, in charge of the guards, caught his glance.

“It contains a vibrator,” he explained coolly. “Crang reported Kair’s statement that this would be a battle of wits and we’re taking no chances. It will be used to make tiny changes in the atomic structure of the walls, ceilings, floors, ground, everything-wherever you’ve been. It will follow you from now on right to your apartment door.”

His voice grew louder. “It is a precaution against the time when you will be able to transport yourself from your apartment to any piece of matter, the structure of which you have previously ‘memorized.’ “

Gosseyn did not answer. He had never bothered to conceal his dislike of Prescott, and now he merely gazed at him with steady eyes. The man shrugged, but there was a significant note in his voice as he looked at his watch and said with a twisted smile, “It is our purpose, Gosseyn, to tie you down with every means available to us. To that end we have prepared a little surprise for you.”

Gosseyn was still wondering about the surprise a few minutes later when he switched on the lights of his living room. He put on his pajamas and headed for the dark alcove where the beds were. A movement on one of the en-shadowed pillows stopped him. A pair of sleepy eyes stared at him. Even in that dimness Gosseyn recognized the face instantly. The girl sat up with an indolent grace, and yawned.

“You and I do get around, don’t we?” said Patricia Hardie.

Gosseyn sat down on the other bed with an abrupt movement. His relief was tremendous, but when his excitement faded he recalled what Prescott had said. He said slowly, “I suppose if I try to escape, you get killed.”

She nodded, more seriously. “Something like that.” She added, “It was Mr. Crang’s idea.”

Gosseyn lay down on his bed and stared silently up at the ceiling. Crang again. His doubts about the man began to dissolve. He wondered if Thorson had wanted to kill Patricia and if this was Crang’s compromise suggestion for saving her life without having to come out into the open himself. He could almost visualize the man pointing out to Thorson that Gilbert Gosseyn had once believed himself to be married to Patricia Hardie and that some of the emotion might have remained. It could be one more tie to hold him to his bargain. So Crang might have argued.

Brilliant Eldred Crang, thought Gosseyn. The one man in all this affair who had so far not made a personal mistake. From the corner of his eye, he glanced at Patricia. She was yawning and stretching like a relaxed kitten. She turned her head and caught his gaze.

“Haven’t you any questions to ask?” she said.

He pondered that. He couldn’t ask about Crang, of course. And he had no idea how much she had confessed to Thorson. It wouldn’t do to talk about things of which Thorson knew nothing. Gosseyn said cautiously, “I think I know the whole situation fairly well. We on Earth and Venus have witnessed a greedy interstellar empire trying to take over another planetary system, in spite of the disapproval of a purely Aristotelian league. It’s all very childish and murderous, an extreme example of how neurotic a civilization can become when it fails to develop a method for integrating the human part of man’s mind with the animal part. All their thousands of years of additional scientific development have been wasted in the effort to achieve size and power when all they needed was to learn how to co-operate. Yes, I have a fairly good over-all picture. The status of certain individuals still puzzles me. You.”

“I’m your wife,” said the woman. And Gosseyn was irritated that she should joke at such a time.

“Don’t you think,” he said reproachfully, “it’s unwise to make vital admissions? Eavesdroppers might-well, you know.”

She laughed softly, then said earnestly, “My friend, Thorson is being led around by the nose by the sharpest-brained man I’ve ever met. Eldred Crang. I assure you Eldred has seen to it that we can talk freely.”

Gosseyn let that go. There was no doubt about her admiration for her lover. The woman went on slowly, “I don’t know just how long Eldred can go on as he has been, or how long he can protect us. Thorson will kill us when it suits his purpose, as casually and callously as he did my father and ‘X.’ If the person behind you fails us, then we are all as good as dead right now.”

Her conviction upset Gosseyn for an odd reason. She clearly had no faith in anything he might do. Was it possible that they were all depending on an individual who had not once come into the open? Didn’t Crang have any solution for the day when the extra brain was finally trained? He asked the question.

“Eldred has no plans,” said Patricia Hardie. “At that point you go on your own.”

Gosseyn turned out the light. “Patricia,” he said into the darkness, “do you think I’ve made a mistake in agreeing to Thorson’s plan?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’ll find this mysterious person, I’m pretty sure.”

She hesitated, then, “Eldred thinks so too.”

Eldred again. Damn Eldred.

“Why didn’t Crang warn your father?”

“He didn’t know what was being planned.”

“You mean, Thorson suspects him?”

“No. But ‘X’ was a Crang man. Thorson obviously thought Crang would oppose his elimination, and so he worked the assassination through Prescott.”

Gosseyn said softly, ” ‘X’ was a Crang man?”

“Yes.”

It was hard to imagine that, much easier to believe the monstrosity had been turned into an egocentric by his injuries. And yet even Thorson had been suspicious of “X.”

“It seems to me,” Gosseyn said at last sourly, “that the entire structure of the opposition to Enro is built on the machinations of Eldred Crang.” He stopped. Putting the thought into words made the man seem bigger than life. Gosseyn’s mind made a tremendous leap. “Is
he
the cosmic chess player?”

Patricia’s answer came instantly. “Definitely not.”

“What makes you say that?”

“He has pictures of himself when he was a child.”

“Pictures could be faked.” Swiftly.

She didn’t reply to that, and after a moment Gosseyn abandoned the subject of Crang. “What about your father?”

“My father,” she said quietly, “believed the Machine had wrongly denied him advancement in spite of his qualifications. When I was a child, I shared his resentment. I refused to have anything to do with null-A. But he went too far for me. When I began to realize that behind his wonderful personality-and you must admit he had it-was a man who felt careless of the consequences of his acts, I secretly rebelled. When Eldred came on the scene a year and a half ago, after a meteoric rise in the diplomatic service of the Greatest Empire, I had my first contact with the Galactic League.”

“He’s a galactic agent?”

“No.” There was pride in her voice. “Eldred Crang is Eldred Crang, unique individual. He put me in touch with the League.”

“And you became a League agent?”

“In my own way.”

There was a tone to her voice that made Gosseyn say quickly, “What do you mean by that?”

“The League,” said Patricia, “suffers from many shortcomings. It’s only as determined as its member nations. It’s so easy, so awfully easy, to sacrifice one star system for the good of the whole. I always kept that in mind, and so worked
for
Earth
through
the League. The permanent League personnel,” she added, “has long been aware of null-A, but has been unable to promote it anywhere else in the galaxy. The various governments associate it with pacifism, which it is not. They cannot imagine a state where the people adjust instantly to the requirements of any situation, including extreme militarism.”

Gosseyn nodded, remembering what Thorson had told him. He ceased wondering why Enro had chosen an obscure planetary system in which to provoke his war. An attack on the only unarmed planet in the galaxy would be the most brazen method of flouting the League treaties.

“It was Eldred,” said Patricia, “who discovered that the injuries suffered by old Lavoisseur in the explosion at the Semantics Institute a few years ago had turned that great scientist into the bloodthirsty maniac whom you knew as ‘X.’ He thought the man would recover, and so become useful, but that didn’t happen.”

Back to Eldred. Gosseyn sighed.

The silence between them lengthened. With each passing minute, Gosseyn grew more determined, grimmer. He had no illusions. This was the calm before the storm. A rapacious Thorson had been drawn from the purpose for which he had come to the solar system. So the world of null-A had a chance to arm itself, and the League had a few additional weeks to realize that Enro meant war. Thorson would play his private game as long as he dared, but if he ever felt himself threatened, he would carry on with the war of extermination.

Gosseyn could see his hopes narrowing down to one lone being working, with the help of a few uncomprehending assistants like himself, against the colossal might of a violently unsane, all-embracing galactic civilization.

“It’s not enough,” he thought with sudden insight. “I’m counting too much on somebody else to perform the final miracle.”

In that moment, with that realization, the first germ of desperate action was born.