Null-A Continuum Read online

  “Accolon is also one of the only planets in the galaxy with monkeys and apes in her jungles, and other members of the primate family. Someone went to a lot of trouble, including burying evidence in the fossil record, to make this look like the world where man evolved, not Earth.”

  Gosseyn said, “I was looking at the defensive fortifications.” For they were passing over a vast spaceport, with commercial ships and warships more numerous than any he had seen on any world. “There is nothing here that can stop the Shadow Effect.”

  Moments later, they had arrived on the roof of the Interstellar League Organization building. A distorter-type elevator transmitted them to the anteroom of the Security Council, buried somewhere deep below the mile-high structure. From there it was a short walk down gleaming corridors and past armed space marines in dress uniforms.

  When Gosseyn stepped into the main chamber, an energy force entered his brain, and he was overwhelmed.

  Hanging near the ceiling was a small, round machine, emitting a number of complex vibrations on a wide number of bands. As in the Nirene police station, Gosseyn felt the nerve organization of his extra brain overstimulated by the electro-gravitonic white noise: His powers were cut off while that machine was active. He could use his extra brain to suppress the energy flows in the machine and neutralize it, but this would have taken the full attention of his extra brain, with nothing left over to do anything further.

  He drew down his eyes. There, behind the wide expanse of a gleaming oval table, sat nineteen men: the various ambassadors and officers of planetary governments, each with a robotic translator button in his ear. Norcross had explained that only three of the men had any real power: the Councilors for the worlds of Petrino, Corthid, and the Great Planet Accolon.

  The Accoloni Councilor, a No-Man named Edwenofer Prin, saw the direction of Gosseyn’s gaze and said, “We have it here as a security precaution against assassination by distorter.”

  But Gosseyn could see by the stiff and uncertain demeanor of the other sixteen Councilors that this was not the whole truth. The men were alarmed, dangerously alarmed, merely to see him.

  Gosseyn reminded himself that these were men who lived in a binary Aristotelian universe. Whatever rumors, exaggerations, or outright lies they had heard of Gilbert Gosseyn they would believe, consciously or unconsciously, and pattern their actions on assumptions as if those assumptions were the whole truth, not a partial picture of the truth.

  Prin’s special training must have made him sensitive to nuances of expression other men would miss, or perhaps he had a special instrument trained on Gosseyn, measuring his capillary and nerve responses, for he said, “Forgive our precautions. The intuitional science of my people needs only to observe ten percent of the data-pattern of an event to deduce the whole sequence. Based on just such a sequential-intuition model, it is certain that a deadly attack on the Security Council is the next step in the coming galactic war.”

  Gosseyn felt a sense of great relief. At least, that basic fact was beyond dispute.

  But his relief evaporated when Prin continued, “The intuitive model deduces that the war will proceed by stealth and misdirection, a matter of rare acts of piracy, while Enro’s men, without his leadership, play for time, and maneuver to secure his release.”

  Gosseyn was astonished at the unreality of the mental picture the Interstellar League government had permitted itself. He said, shocked, “You mean—you have not yet mobilized your worlds onto a wartime footing?”

  Cevric Nolo was the Councilor for Petrino and was a trained Nexialist, an expert in that strange gestalt-science that studied the areas of overlap, the parallels, between other sciences. Nolo spoke: “We are aware of the recent disappearances of veteran soldiers and military scientists from Imperial worlds. Also we are aware that roughly six hundred Imperial warships are unaccounted for during the supervised decommission. Some were reported destroyed in combat, where there is no League ship credited with the destruction; others are missing due to clerical errors.

  “Since the recent war involved the industrial production of hundreds of thousands of ships on tens of thousands of worlds, this handful—three percent of the eighteen-hundred-thousand-ship fleet of Imperial Gorgzid—can have no significant influence on the events of galactic history. It is an armed force insufficient to conquer and hold more than twenty planets. And at that, six hundred ships could hold twenty planets only until the League Fleet arrives in overwhelming numbers.

  “The nexus of the sciences involved (military history, economics, the metallurgical and electro-nuclear industrial production sciences, and, in this case, theology) indicates that Enro’s men will surprise a score of planets, and cut them off from the galactic distorter network by destroying all local distortion-circuit recordings. This will give them a respite of a few years to build up ship production on those few planets, while the League Fleet travels slowly through normal space.

  “As best we can tell, their plan is futile, irrational. Enro’s men must be staking everything on the hope that the Sleeping God will wake and reward their devotion with some miraculous, divine intervention.”

  Nolo finished his speech in a voice of self-satisfaction: “These religious fanatics cannot possibly overcome a galaxy-wide civilization, rationally organized to a rational police effort.”

  Gosseyn said, “Gentlemen, your model is based on two false assumptions. First, Enro is at large. He has secretly traveled to the Shadow Galaxy, and presently controls certain of the technologies of the Primordial Humans. Second, you are thinking in terms of the last war. The space-superdreadnoughts of the last war will be of no use whatsoever against the Shadow Effect. Enro intends to unleash in this galaxy the same all-destroying phenomenon which wiped out the Primordials, whose technology was more advanced than ours. Six hundred ships, crewed by Yalertan Predictors, is more than enough to accept the surrenders of fleets and planets with no defense against him.”

  He saw the disbelief on the faces of the Councilors.

  White-haired Councilor Ifvrid Madrisol of Corthid, the so-called World of Luck, a planet famed for the high number of callidetic geniuses amongst her people, spoke next. “Mr. Gosseyn, let us assume matters are as dire as you suggest; what is your proposal? If Enro were free, and in possession of the Shadow Galaxy technology, what would you have us do?”

  Gosseyn said, “Abandon the Milky Way.”

  He succinctly outlined his plan: a fleet of ships to be built using the experimental engines of the Ultimate Prime; a concerted effort to be made to find wherever Lavoisseur had hidden the next group of Gosseyn bodies. Perhaps there were enough of them, and perhaps even a seventeen-year-old might have the trained double brain needed to reproduce what Gosseyn Three did to carry the Ultimate Prime, with its half-understood primordialtechnology engines, to the Shadow Galaxy. The shipboard Gosseyns, interacting with the Spheres, could begin the whole-scale transmission of planets to stable orbits circling the suns of various nearby galaxies. Meanwhile, Sphere technology could be brought back here to combat the Shadow Effect, which, by then, Enro would have released into several areas of space-time inside the Milky Way.

  The Councilors exchanged wary glances among themselves. One or two men broke into open laughter.

  Prin said archly, “I notice this new setup—shall I call it a new form of government?—would involve no one but copies of yourself in control of the technology to move and remove stars and planets.” Turning his head, he said to the other Councilors, “It is as we were warned.”

  The accusation was so astonishing that Gosseyn could say nothing.

  Nolo said in a voice of heavy condescension, “Mr. Gosseyn, your planet can be proud of the advances she has made, while isolated from the mainstream of Galactic Civilization, in the psychological sciences, what you call Null-A. But you may be unaware of where such a science fits into the grand scheme of things, into the overall picture. You see, yours is not the first world to have developed a unique approach, and you are not the firs
t man to fall into the philosophical and psychological trap of judging everything in terms of your own inflexible system of ideas.”

  Gosseyn said, “You haven’t studied Null-A if you regard it as inflexible.”

  Nolo raised his hand. “Nonetheless, I have studied it enough to know that it predisposes the mind to make rapid alterations in behavior based on small changes in circumstances. But all the other sciences, from anthropology to engineering, predispose a more careful approach. Organisms and machines need adaptation time. Even to heat or cool the strongest metal in too brief a time will shatter it. Enro’s men cannot possibly study and reproduce an unknown supertechnology and reduce it to military practice under a trained cadre in anything less than months or years. The Interstellar League cannot even consider the possibility of making you dictator for the duration of the emergency—and this is, in effect, what you have just asked us to do.”

  Gosseyn realized that government structures produce their own rigidity, which they seek, by their own accord, to keep intact. When an emergency calls for a response not permitted within that perception-structure, that rigidity must be set aside. Aloud he said, “Gentlemen, you can draft me into your military, or assign me whatever post you like in your system, and place any oversight on my actions, but the fact is that no one else available at the moment has the ability to use the Sphere technology to preserve the galaxy from the Shadow Effect.”

  Nolo said, “Nonsense. You are a man with a biological version of a distorter in your skull. Our industrial planets produce millions of units per year of mechanical distorters.”

  Elderly Madrisol raised a thin hand. “The point is moot. Mr. Gosseyn, you are the one operating under several false assumptions, not this council.”

  He must have made some signal to the marine standing near the door, for at that moment a technician wheeled in a large depth-video tank, which he connected by a cable to a plug in the floor.

  The tank showed an image of Enro the Red, dressed in his prison garb, in his small but comfortable asteroid-prison cell. There were robot guards in the view but no human beings. Built into the ceiling of his cell was a suppression emitter, the same type of emitter that hung here in the Council Chambers, suppressing Gosseyn’s powers.

  Enro had his back to the view. He was watching a wall screen: the news broadcast from his home world, describing the abduction of Empress Reesha. Enro’s shoulders were tense, and his whole attitude and demeanor was that of a man receiving shocking news, helpless to do anything about it.

  Nolo said, “This is a current image—as nearly simultaneous as anything can be inside an Einsteinian universe. There is Enro.”

  Gosseyn shook his head. “I saw Enro on the planet Ur, a projected image of his. I have memories from my destroyed alternate copy of myself, destroyed by a shadow-body: the kind of body Enro has recently discovered how to duplicate.”

  Nolo smiled thinly. “Actually, Mr. Gosseyn, your Null-A science says that you should say, I remember seeing Enro. We have no assurance your memories are correct.”

  Prin spread his hands. “Put yourself in our position, Mr. Gosseyn. Here you are, the man who cannot be killed, but who has no past, no family, no particular reason to be loyal to the Interstellar League. We have a report from Planet Nirene that you are wanted for the murder of your best friend, a Mr. Crang, a detective helping the police there. The local lie detector says your experimental extra brain—a mass of tissue neither you nor anyone else in the galaxy truly understands—may be insane. We next have official word from the Ashargin ruler of the planet Gorgzid that you are wanted for the kidnapping of their Empress … who also happens to be the murdered man’s bride.

  “Then—according to the Nireni police report—there is the possibility that you are being influenced by emotions of jealousy somehow being transmitted into your nervous system from an outside point. But there is also the more obvious possibility that you are insane, that you killed your friend, and carried off his wife. Is it true that the missing woman is someone who you once hallucinated you were married to?”

  Gosseyn said, “Those were false memories implanted in my brain.”

  Prin gave a sad little shrug. “How do we know that your memories of seeing Enro released from prison are true ones? More to the point, why should we believe them, when we can see with our eyes that Enro is still in prison?”

  “No, sir. You are seeing what purports to be a transmission, carrying an image of someone who looks very much like Enro. Perhaps it is a recorded image. The news releases on Gorgzid could have been prepared in advance, and …”

  Madrisol said, “Gentlemen, my people have made a science of a certain type of pattern recognition, which gives us the reputation of being gifted with unusual luck. But it is not luck: It is a discipline of recognizing that two objects in the same category, two throws of the same dice, are not the same, and of being ready to act on the infinitesimal but real differences between situations that seem the same.” He held up a thin sheet of plasto-paper, upon which lines of text and pictures appeared and disappeared. “I have in hand the report of one of these trained Callidetics of Corthid. His close observation of the man we now see in this image tank convinces him, from a hundred tiny nuances of gesture and expression, that it is Enro, not an actor or impostor made to look like him, and a live image, not a recording. I regard this report as definitive.” Madrisol’s pale eyes now turned toward Gosseyn. He said scathingly, “Unless you wish this council to believe that Enro just happens to have a twin brother no one ever heard of?”

  Gosseyn said, “Speaking as the fourth near-identical copy of my self-consciousness, I do not rule the possibility out. The fourth surviving copy.” Gosseyn, as he spoke those words, reflected grimly that men who lived lives of adventure and danger did not live long.

  He mentally corrected the figure upward: X was also a Gosseyn body, although a deviant one, as was Lavoisseur himself. Gosseyn had seen both men die, shot down before his eyes.

  The Councilors exchanged meaningful glances. There was a slight stiffening of shoulders, an intake of breath, a narrowing of eyes.

  With the suppression emitter hanging over his head, Gosseyn could not read the flow of neural energies, but he could see the suspicions settling on the faces of the men here.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “why are you afraid of me?”

  Prin said, “We have it from an unimpeachable source that you are an agent of Enro.”

  11

  Categorization, the mental act of treating individuals as identical members of a class, is an abstraction whose accuracy must be always open to question.

  Gosseyn was impressed by the sheer audacity of the suggestion. Then, harshly: “Might I suggest that this unimpeachable source be investigated quite thoroughly by your military intelligence for ties to Enro?”

  Nolo said, “Look at the logic of it. No one but you has the distorter coordinates of Enro’s prison asteroid. Only you could have released him from it. If what we are seeing is a duplicate body of Enro, only you are known to possess the duplicating technique as well. You visit Gorgzid and the Empress vanishes, undermining the Ashargin government, and drumming up popular support for Enro’s cause.”

  Gosseyn said, “Does it mean anything to you that the Predictors of Yalerta have foreseen, within the year, that many worlds and stars of this galaxy will be overwhelmed by the Shadow Effect, all life blotted out as all complex molecules lose their coherent structure?”

  Prin said, “One possible interpretation is that the Predictors of Yalerta are still loyal to Enro, and spreading a prediction useful to him. Now, if you are also his agent, and you appear with this unique plan to save the galaxy, requiring us to place all our worlds under the control of a technology only you can use …”

  Gosseyn said, “Bring in a lie detector.”

  Ambassador Norcross, who had been standing by Gosseyn’s shoulder this whole time, facing the table of Councilors, said, “Mr. Gosseyn is a citizen of Venus, an independent sovereign powe
r.” To Gosseyn he said, “You are not answerable to these men, and it is not in the interests of the Earth government that we cede this point of precedent.”

  Gosseyn said, “I act as an independent individual of Venus.”

  Norcross sighed. “Do Venusians ever act any other way?” Then, to the Councilors, he said, “The Earth government withdraws the objection. You may inspect Mr. Gosseyn with a lie detector.”

  Nolo said, “What would that prove? A man of Mr. Gosseyn’s unique mental powers—or should I say mental deficiencies?—can testify quite honestly about his memory without it bearing any relation to reality.” To the Council members he said, “Gentlemen, this … organism … this artificial life-form thinks only what his creator desires him to think.”

  But Prin said, “Gentlemen, I’d like to see the detector reading, nonetheless. If Mr. Gosseyn is not consciously working for Enro, it eliminates certain possibilities from the logic-gestalt.”

  Nolo said, “Enro is not so foolish as to send one of his men here, into the very Council Chambers of the Interstellar League!”

  Madrisol shook his white head, saying, “Recall the Battle of the Sixth Decant! Enro the Red is a bold strategist, and he believes that his Sleeping God protects him. Even imprisoned, I fear him.”

  The lie detector, carried in on an antigravity plate, was larger than other models Gosseyn had seen, a round housing with many electron tubes protruding from its rim.

  The Councilors had a technician shut off certain of the magnetic bands the suppressor was emitting, to allow the lie detector to interact with Gosseyn’s nervous system. Gosseyn could still not use his similarity methods, but his awareness of electromagnetic, chemical, and atomic actions in the nearby area was restored.