Null-A Continuum Page 27

  Anslark stared at him, and his lifelike mask held an expression of disbelief. “Is this the madness men get when they think they are immortal? If Enro has Predictors standing by, X will know the hour and minute of your approach: Either their visions will show you walking up, or, if you close the distance by distorter, they will see a blind spot approaching as the time of your arrival approaches.”

  Gosseyn said, “The prediction power is limited by the perceptual ‘set’ of the Predictor. And while I cannot see past a blur I cause, neither can they. Think of the psychological ramifications of that on an otherwise untrained nervous system. Yalertans rely on their power for their safety, and to reassure themselves of their superiority to other men: Both their pride-anxiety and fear are triggered when they go blind. Anxiety produces fatigue.”

  And so Gosseyn spent the next few hours revisiting every memorized spot he had visited on the planet, back along their route of travel, near the now-empty cave where the space-boat had rested, and, finally, into his cabin in the space liner. Once in the spaceport, it was relatively simple to sneak, in shadow-form, aboard a space liner preparing for departure.

  As the great liner rose on silent beams of force to the edge of the atmosphere, Gosseyn, still wearing the mask Anslark had given him, stood on the promenade deck, where there were a number of other tourists looking through highly magnified plates, focused on the various cities, high mountains, and other noticeable landmarks on the bright side of the planet, the one facing the Pistol Star. The magnifications were sufficient to allow him to memorize the landmarks, scores of them, over a hundred, widely scattered across the two continents of Petrino. He concentrated particularly on the isthmus connecting the two, where the oldest and largest cities were clustered. A moment later, grains of sand from the cave were distorted to those locations, and Gosseyn established an automatic sequence in his double brain to shift the grains of sand back and forth every few minutes.

  Any Predictor in this hemisphere was going blind every ten minutes or so. The human nervous system sought patterns in events, and so Gosseyn made sure his shifts occurred at irregularly spaced intervals and lasted erratic lengths of time. No Predictor could see past the blind spots to know if it would be the last or if hours, days, or months of this blindness lay ahead.

  By the time he rejoined Anslark in the truck, it was dawn in that latitude of the planet and Anslark was approaching the City of the Loyalty Machine, Munremar.

  Anslark helped Gosseyn put on a false face, and they passed the security checkpoints to enter the city without incident.

  To Anslark’s surprise, Gosseyn drove them to a boardinghouse, not toward the shining pyramid-shape of the Loyalty Machine looming over the skyscrapers of this metropolis. Gosseyn said, “We need to wait at least several hours, before anxiety fatigue makes the Predictors lose their alertness. By tonight, many of them will be grappling with the anxiety that their powers are permanently gone. I don’t think they will notice one more blind spot among the irregular pattern I established, if I am forced to use my extra brain.”

  “If? You don’t know?”

  Gosseyn would have smiled, but his extra brain could not manipulate the web of electrical muscles in the mask lining as expertly as Anslark: Instead he shrugged. “I can’t see the future, either, not as long as I keep this up.”

  “But it does not bother you?”

  “No one in this hemisphere is able to predict my actions, not at the moment.” His voice was confident, even though the expression on his loose-muscled mask was dull and blank.

  That night, they made their way down darkened streets. A curfew was in effect, but even without predictions to guide them, Gosseyn and Anslark could detect the electrical signatures of approaching patrol cars, or of armed soldiers afoot. They avoided all patrols.

  The two decided to enter the city power plant first, so that Anslark and Gosseyn would have potent nuclear and electrical energy flows to draw upon in case they needed a weapon or in case it might prove advantageous to interrupt all the municipal power. It was Gosseyn’s habit to gain control of such installations when he could. The building did not seem to be guarded or even locked. Perhaps no one in this city was psychologically capable of being disloyal enough to enter without permission.

  The dynamo room was a large chamber, lit only by a few dim orange backup lights. In the gloom, Anslark was standing on the concrete floor below, keeping watch for guards, while Gosseyn was on the catwalk, facing row upon row of round energy-cells. Each one was the antenna of an invisible beam of broadcast power reaching to some other receiving station or power-using unit somewhere in the city, and Gosseyn was tracing the flows with his extra brain, trying to see which led into the atomic pile he sensed buried far below.

  A soft voice from a few feet to his left called out, “Don’t move! My pistol is shielded. You can’t distort the shot!”

  It was a woman’s voice. Gosseyn turned with his hands up. He could see, on the catwalk, dimly outlined against the backup lights behind her, a slender silhouette in what seemed a long jacket. In one hand there was the glint of something metallic, pointed at him. Gosseyn was not sure if it was a weapon: His extra brain detected no energy signature. But neither did he sense nerve-activity from the woman. Something was blocking his perception.

  He did not even try to memorize the woman or her pistol. Instead, he memorized one of the large square plates of high-voltage insulation fixed to the machine and similarized it into his hands. It would have been too heavy for an ordinary man to lift, but Gosseyn’s Null-A training allowed him to momentarily cut off his muscles from all fatigue signals from his brain.

  The sudden sight of the slab snapping into existence provoked or startled the woman: A beam of white-hot energy, dazzlingly bright, drilled into the slab, sending molten droplets flying. The scream of the weapon was louder than thunder.

  In the sudden light, the woman was visible: young, very pretty, with blue eyes and blond ringlets tucked into a helmet with a transparent faceplate. She wore a long jacket of metallic fibers molded to her shapely form. The helmet was the same material and connected to the suit. It was all one piece. Even in the dazzling light, however, there was a flicker of shadow, of dark smoke, floating through the substance of the weave and gathered around the glinting barrel of her energy-pistol.

  Gosseyn had no remorse, no hesitation. The girl’s beam had been aimed at his heart! He rushed forward, dashing the heavy insulated plate into the woman with all his strength. Darkness fell when the solid blow landed, the metal plate ringing. Gosseyn glimpsed the pistol spinning off into the darkness, its beam extinguished.

  The blow would have stunned or killed a tall and well-knit man, not to mention a short and slender young woman: Unexpectedly, the silhouette of the woman merely staggered a moment under the force of the massive blow and then gripped the heavy metal slab in her slender hands and tore it from Gosseyn’s grip!

  Before he could recover, the slim girl darted forward, a swift shape in the gloom, and landed a blow that numbed the arm he only barely raised in time to block. Gosseyn backpedaled, dodging the swift, furious fists. The strength behind the punches was immense. He memorized the structure of the catwalk floor beneath both their feet.

  As he backed up, a pair of shapely arms seized him from behind, pinning his arms to his side. The helmet of the woman who had surprised him from behind was only as high as his broad shoulders, but, nonetheless, her grip was stronger than a bear’s, and he found his feet being pulled up off the catwalk. Meanwhile, the blond girl facing him had ripped a length of heavy iron railing from the catwalk, casually snapping inch-thick metal crossbeams, and came for Gosseyn with this metal club held high.

  He sent the catwalk elsewhere. Both women fell. He assumed his shadow-form so that the superstrong fingers of the girl behind him merely slid through his smoky substance. He adjusted his gravitational relation to the planetary field, so that he hovered in midair.

  The first girl, the blonde, uttered a high-pitch
ed cry of rage as she fell. The second—he saw in the sudden blaze of her drawn weapon that she was an attractive redhead—sent a white-hot beam through his shadow-body to scrape molten drops from the dynamo equipment behind him. She stopped firing before she hit the ground fifteen or twenty feet below: There were groans and gasps of pain from both women, which meant they had survived. One of them started sobbing and crying. Gosseyn noted how strangely girlish the crying seemed, and he wondered if an emotion of regret should be his proper response.

  Four beams of white-hot energy transfixed his body, aimed steadily toward the center of his shadowy mass. The output of the beams was adjusted so that while some heat was blackening the dangerous power circuits behind him, the weapons were not drilling into the shielded dynamo.

  Gosseyn’s vision was dim when he was in his shadow-form, but he could make out the figure of Prince Anslark towering above the two shapely Amazons to either side of him who held him helpless. There were a dozen other curvaceous figures in metallic jackets and helmets. Four of them were pinning Gosseyn in their weapon-beams, so that he could not solidify and use his extra brain. The others were spaced here and there about the chamber, their weapons covering the corners, and three were running to give their fallen comrades aid.

  A woman’s voice rang out like a bell. “Gilbert! That is enough. You don’t need to prove to everyone how stubborn you are.”

  Gosseyn said in astonishment, “Patricia …? Is that you …?”

  “Of course. You blinded all my brother’s Predictors, but I knew where you’d come first. I know how you think.”

  28

  Emotion, like all neural “identification” actions, operates by means of approximations. In simpler animals, the approximations are cruder: An amoeba need only distinguish between food-objects and threat-objects. The purpose of Null-A training is to refine simplistic animal identifications.

  Gosseyn adjusted the gravity gradient so his shadow-body descended to hover just above the concrete floor. He was in the midst of the squad of women, so they risked hitting each other. Darkness fell when Patricia snapped out the order to cease fire.

  A halo of ball-lightning appeared above Prince Anslark’s head, illuminating the scene in a colorless, flickering glare. Anslark said in a voice of strained nonchalance, “I can kill everyone in the chamber, even if I cannot target them by similarization. I have formed a seventeen-point similarity link to the atomic pile buried here. Gosseyn, are these enemies?” Two attractive women were clutching his arms, and a third held the muzzle of her energy-pistol under his chin.

  Anslark evidently meant everyone in the chamber, including himself. Patricia answered before Gosseyn could speak.

  She said, “We’re friends.” She looked over at Gosseyn’s shadow-form and sniffed. “Sort of.” Patricia holstered her weapon, and she smiled an arch smile. “Gilbert and I have kind of an on-again off-again relationship.”

  Patricia coolly opened her bejeweled cigarette case and drew out a lit cigarette, her eyes surveying Anslark. She said offhandedly to a green-eyed brunette standing nearby, “Anrella, shoot Mr. Gosseyn if he solidifies.”

  “Anslark, hold your fire,” Gosseyn said, “Patricia, this prevents me from blocking Enro’s Predictors.”

  Patricia gave a silvery little laugh. “The Predictors are the least of your worries.”

  “Tell me where Enro is. Does he know that an extradimensional superbeing called the Ydd is using him to destroy the continuum?”

  Patricia shook her head. “Let’s not talk about him now. You have other business you should be seeing to, Gilbert.”

  Gosseyn thought that was curious. Was she warning him that they were under observation? “Patricia, was your brother able to watch the Follower remotely? I have been assuming he could not, because the Follower successfully conspired against him once.”

  She said briefly, “Don’t underestimate him!”

  Gosseyn had been hoping the blur he created over the Predictors’ vision across time might also blur Enro’s clairvoyance across space. But photons were easier to similarize than other particles, and space was easier to breach than time. Her comment was as plain as she dared speak in Enro’s hearing.

  Anslark said, “I hate to interrupt, but what is going on here? Which side is Reesha on?”

  Gosseyn’s shadow-form could not show expression, but there was a slight shrug of the smoky outlines of his shoulders. “In the past she has to me seemed consistently to act in the interests of Null-A, while also working toward the benefit of the Gorgzid people, though not the Imperial government.”

  Anslark said, “I notice you qualified that statement.”

  Patricia said in a lilting drawl, “He’s from Venus. They qualify all their statements.”

  She turned toward Anslark and bent her head in a regal nod of greeting. “My dear Prince Anslark: It is a pleasure to hear the voice of Your Highness once again. I was most grieved at reports of your death, and am delighted to find that they are false.”

  “Your Divine and Imperial Majesty,” said Anslark. He could not bow with his arms held tight, but he returned the nod. There came a hiss of sparks at his hairline and jawline, and his flesh mask fell wetly to the floor, revealing the staring-eyed skull-face beneath. The women holding him flinched, and he yanked his arms free during the moment they were startled. Anslark stepped back, a nimbus of lightning crackling from his aura. The two women hesitated to grapple with him. Even in their neutralizing armor, it would have been like grabbing a live wire.

  The women, some kneeling and some standing with legs spread, raised their energy-pistols. They held the pistols military-style, a two-handed grip. Others were covering Gosseyn.

  Patricia called over the crackling roar of the lightning surrounding Anslark, “I would prefer not to demonstrate that our weapons are immune to your powers, O Prince. You won’t be able to turn aside the bolts.”

  “Nor you mine, Your Majesty.” The white fire around Anslark dimmed, and its roar sank to a menacing hiss. There could be no expression on the fleshless face of Anslark, but his voice held a note of surprise: “Is that Lady Inlith? And Yolendra of Yvar?”

  Gosseyn noticed an anomaly. Why did Anslark betray surprise to find these other noblewomen here but not the Empress Reesha? What did he know about her that Gosseyn did not?

  Patricia said, “These women were all forced to become the lovers of certain high officers in my brother’s space navy, intelligence services, and court, so that he could both reward and blackmail his men: It also allowed him the pleasure of grinding underfoot the pride of any of the ancient, noble houses of the Greatest Empire who refused to send their daughters to attend the Emperor at his morning bath.”

  Interesting. Gosseyn noticed the same pattern here as before: A sexual neurosis was influencing what should have been purely political determinations in Enro’s policy.

  It was a pattern seen in many men suffering from the Violent Man Syndrome. Without the artificial support of their female victims, the whole structure of false belief surrounding their masculine superiority would collapse. Enro was a case where this syndrome was being played out on a gigantic level. Whole worlds of innocent people were dying, whole cultures annihilated, because one man could not control the un-sane demands of his thwarted sex instinct.

  Gosseyn was once again appalled at how infantile, how self-destructive, it all was.

  And now Patricia’s finely chiseled aristocratic features grew hard and cold, and her hazel eyes flashed. “The Equalization drug—makes you the equal of a man—was developed here on Petrino: a crystalline manganese compound that combines with estrogen to allow a temporary tremendous increase in muscle pressure. Those officers regretted obeying Enro’s orders once these ‘equalized’ women joined me in the resistance. Each woman had the pleasure of determining the fate of the man who had forced himself upon her. Some were maimed or emasculated, others killed.”

  One of the women spoke up: “In retaliation, Enro gave the order to have our famil
ies and home nations killed, or sent to the slave-worlds. If Secoh had not overthrown Enro in the last days before the surrender … But now that Enro is at large again, no one is safe.”

  Anslark lowered his hands to his sides. His lightning failed; the chamber grew dark again. Anslark’s voice came out of the gloom: “I am sincerely sorry for your loss, Lady Rhianwy. If it is within my power, I will avenge your loss in Enro’s blood.”

  “Avenge your own loss!” came the voice of the lady who had spoken. “Don’t you know what damage the shadow-ships have done against your home stars, just in the last forty hours?”

  Anslark said, “Tell me.”

  Patricia said, “Corthid was swallowed in the Shadow Effect. This was the signal for a general massacre. The war has begun. Nine of the original nineteen members of the Interstellar League have been decimated. Enro has brought back designs for the nonidentity machines from the dead galaxy. His hundreds of secret factory-planets, billions of work-slaves on each, have been toiling for months to produce the equipment. All throughout the Sixth Decant of the Galaxy, planets in the Corthidian Fellowship have vanished, above eleven thousand. Enro’s ships appear, discharge a darkness onto the planet, and retreat, in a matter of moments. The Iron World of Fortineb where the fleet was gathered is lost, as well as the League capital worlds of Drasil, Ff, Vanardoon, Utternast, Illaanj, and Golden Xanthilorn … all destroyed, and their colonies, the republics or empires they rule, broken and demoralized. The shadow is spreading.”