Null-A Three

by A. E. van Vogt

  He concluded his communication, smiling: “Be seeing you—very soon now, I believe, after Dr. Kair interviews me.”

  The answer came, accompanied by misgivings: “I suppose it is, finally, going to happen. You and I meeting face to face—”

  Gosseyn Three replied: “I’m due to leave in a few minutes.”

  . . . As he sat in the rear seat of the limousine with Crang and Prescott, Gosseyn Three silently confronted the reality of what was about to happen:

  “. . . Am I going to do everything that’s expected of me?—”

  That was definitely a basic question. But, in terms of General Semantics, there was an even more fundamental consideration. It seemed, as he, memory-wise, glanced back over his behavior, the outward appearance was that he had, somehow, felt automatically committed to help the Dzan and the Troogs to return to their home galaxy.

  But why return?

  It seemed like a reasonable question. With their equipment, and their great ships, they would probably be acceptable colonists on any number of planets. And colonists seldom felt the need to go back to their homelands. The people, who had settled North America in those early days, for the most part never did, as individuals, return to Europe. Some of their descendants were occasionally, casually, interested to visit the land from which their forefathers had come. But theirs was a vacationer’s curiosity, without strong feeling, and certainly without a homing instinct.

  “. . . If they stayed, I’d have to take on a lower profile, and cease to be a target for bomb throwers—”

  Perhaps, he could move out to the middle west of earth, buy a little farm, and live there with Enin and Queen Mother Strala?

  Gosseyn found himself smiling again, as he visualized that improbable outcome of what he had got himself into. Not easy to realize that Gosseyn One had originally arrived in the City of the Games Machine with the hypnotically-implanted belief that he had been a farmer living just outside a little town called Crest City, and had been married to Patricia Hardie.

  What a confusion that had been—for a while.

  The train of thought evoked from him another communication with his alter ego: “How is Queen Mother Strala?”

  An instant smile impression came through. “She’s waiting for Enin to show up. That’s the only thing on her mind. I think she’s still mad at you.”

  There was abruptly no time to consider that. The beautiful machine was pulling over to the curb in front of a familiar large, white bungalow.

  . . . Dr. Lester Kair turned away from the viewing device, walked over to a chair, and sat down. Those piercing gray eyes of his were wide, and seemed to stare at the opposite wall.

  There was silence, as they all looked at him expectantly. Even though he radiated a special inner excitement, he seemed unchanged from what the joint Gosseyn memory recalled: Long body, strongly built, face still smooth, the overall impression of an intelligent man in his early fifties.

  Awareness of his audience came suddenly into his face. With that, he gulped, and spoke.

  “That damaged nerve complex seems to have been only partly disconnected, and so it did get minimal support from the energy source to which, of course, it should have been firmly attached, but wasn’t. The result of that partial connection looks fantastic.”

  “How do you mean?” Eldred Crang sounded puzzled, as he asked the question. “A damaged nerve end, as I visualize it, is merely a minute gray extension, which only an expert would be able to identify as being unnormal; but that word ‘fantastic’ is too dramatic.” Long pause. The tall man in the white doctorial over-cloak, so common in laboratory work, climbed to his feet. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I refuse to apologize for my reaction. I thought I had learned to accept the Gilbert Gosseyn extra-brain philosophically; but what I found myself looking at brought new awareness that we have here a neural interconnection with something basic in the universe. And, somehow, the damaged nerve group is in a state of over-stimulation.” He swallowed, and then finished the thought: “It’s like an actual light in there. If we opened his head, a brightness would pour forth.”

  He beckoned Crang. “Come and take a look.” Gosseyn was still firmly held in the special chair; his head was virtually embedded in machinery, as Crang walked over, and out of his line of sight. He assumed that the Venusian detective was peering into the viewing lens.

  Silence. Then there was the sound, and a feel of someone carefully backing away. Off to one side, Dr. Kair said, “Mr. Prescott, would you care to look, also?” Prescott’s answer was in his gentlest voice. “I have no medical qualifications; so, I think, one of us peering in is a sufficient witness for your statement.”

  Crang walked into Gosseyn’s line of sight. “Well, Doctor,” he said, “how do we deal with this situation?” The psychiatrist, who had, on their arrival been given a detailed account of everything, said, “I think we’d better get the other special people over here; and then get Gosseyn Two.”

  As Crang phoned Leej, and Prescott went out and dispatched the limousine to pick her up, Gosseyn said to Dr. Kair, “I deduce that by the special people you mean the persons who participated in the collective attempt to reach that other galaxy. And that, therefore, I should bring Enro here.”

  “Yes.”

  Since there had been agreement on that point with Yona, the Troog leader, Gosseyn took his extra-brain photograph of a floor area in one corner of the physician laboratory, and did his transfer. Moments later, a huge figure was lying there. Enro the Red picked himself up, looked around, said nothing; but he was presently briefed on what was about to happen.

  “You’re going to send those Troogs home?”

  In spite of his earlier argument with himself, Gosseyn Three said, “I’m sure you’ll agree it’s the best solution: get them out of the Milky Way galaxy as soon as possible.”

  “True. So now what?”

  Gosseyn told him of the meeting that would now take place between two Gosseyn bodies, as a preliminary to the finale.

  The war lord’s face twisted into a frown. “You’re sure the place won’t just blow up?”

  Gosseyn Three replied, “We’re already different in many ways.”

  “But you’re still connected mentally?”

  “Yes. Thought-wise. But I would guess—” he continued—“if there’s ever going to be mental telepathy between the average people of the universe, it will merely be a scientifically similarized portion of some part of the brain that the individual gives his or her permission to have aligned.”

  The big man was shrugging. “I think I’d like to be in the next room.”

  It was interesting, then, to Gosseyn that the others, also, retreated through the door. When they had gone, Gosseyn Three wasted no time, but immediately addressed Gosseyn Two:

  “Well, alter ego, it looks as if our big moment is here.”

  “It sure does,” was the reply.

  “Do you need any help?”

  “No, I think I have the location where Enro arrived in the necessary exact extra-brain imprint. Hold still! Keep your thoughts neutral!”

  Holding still consisted of blanking out of his own extra-brain. He was still doing that moments later when there was a small noise. Gosseyn Three, who had his eyes closed, was aware of the door opening; and then came the voice of Leej, sounding as if she had not actually entered the room.

  “It’s all right,” she said, “I see no problems during the next fifteen minutes, at least.”

  Gosseyn opened his eyes, and saw that the man who had arrived had his back turned. He was fully dressed, and, when he slowly turned, he had the appearance of a tanned, lean-faced, strong-looking man in his middle thirties. But it was himself in another suit.

  Dr. Kair entered, and without a word released Gosseyn Three from the examining chair. He remained seated, with the thought that even a different position might be of value.

  And so, there they were together—gazing at each other; one standing, one sitting down. Two human beings, duplicates of e
ach other.

  Twins? No.

  Some similarity, of course, existed between twins. But the diversity that began immediately after conception, and the variation of experience after birth, quickly created innumerable differences, first, on a minute level but finally they were merely look alikes, with their own personalities.

  The similarities between Gilbert Gosseyn Two and Gilbert Gosseyn Three as they faced each other in the office of Dr. Lester Kair, included a whole series of interacting energy flows. Brain to brain, body to body.

  They were not twins in any ordinary meaning of the term. They were the same person in ten thousand times ten thousand ways.

  Gosseyn Three realized that he was almost unconsciously bracing himself against an interflow that tended to tug him out of the chair and toward the other body.

  Gosseyn Two seemed to be having a similar struggle; and he actually took several small steps toward Three before he, abruptly, braced himself. A tiny, grim smile relaxed the strong, even features of his face. He had the appearance of a man in control, as he said:

  “Looks like it’s going to be all right, and that we will be able to collaborate at close quarters, or otherwise.” As he spoke the words, his thoughts seemed to be coming through, also, and his body movements. To Gosseyn Three came the realization that he had a strong impulse to stand up, and that his face held the same tiny smile. He found himself wondering if Two was fighting with impulse to sit down.

  And, though he did not speak that aloud, the other man said, “Yes, I’m resisting the impulse; and I can deduce that if, for any reason, we ever have to stay together for a long period of time, we’ll have to work out a system.”

  It was a long speech, and Gosseyn Three was slightly resigned to realize that, although he made no sound, his lips were moving and somehow saying the same words, but under his breath.

  He thought: “. . . It really has been a case of duplicate memories—”

  . . . The same thought, the same feeling about that thought, the same experience. The complete recollection of having walked along a street, or on a planet’s surface . . . the muscular sensation recalled by both minds—exactly.

  It could even be that, all those years while the mental images of Gosseyn One and Two were being recorded in the sleeping brain of Gosseyn Three, that all neural responses and muscles mechanisms had operated in unison in some limited way; perhaps a twitching.

  Thus it was, at that long later moment as the eyes of the third Gosseyn blinked open, the impression of being the second Gosseyn had been that of a sleeper awakening the morning after, with the automatic acceptance that it was I, who had all those experiences, who was waking up after a night of restful sleep.

  CHAPTER

  31

  At Dr. Kair’s request, Gosseyn had sat down again in the special chair with all the equipment attached. This time there were no straps; he merely agreed to maintain the correct motionless state at the key moment. Sitting there, he was aware of the viewing device being adjusted slightly behind and to one side of his head.

  He did not move, or acknowledge, as the dark-haired Leej walked past him, and took up the position whereby she could lean forward and peer through the viewing device at the damaged nerve inside his head.

  Off to Gosseyn Three’s right Enro sat in an upholstered chair, and stared at the wall across the room. Presumably, he was ready to contribute his special distance seeing ability.

  Gosseyn Two sat at Dr. Kair’s desk. His task: he had all of Gosseyn Three’s memorized areas carefully catalogued in his extra-brain, ready to do his part.

  It was Gosseyn Two who broke the silence. He said in a soft voice: “What we did that time, when all this kicked back on us, and did the reversal whereby the Dzan ship was transmitted here from another galaxy: Leej actually predicted a location in that other galaxy.

  And so. now, as she gazes into the viewing device, she’s going to predict again where the location is, and what it’s like.

  “Enro,” Gosseyn Two continued in that same soft voice, “will use his special ability to perceive the predicted location. When he has done so, I will do for my brother what we have agreed will be the safest method for him to handle the situation.

  “I have to admit,” he concluded, “that what will happen here in this room at the moment Enro perceives Leej s predicted area in that other galaxy is not obvious to me.”

  As he completed his summation, Enro raised one of those strong hands of his, and wiggled his fingers for attention.

  “Perhaps, I should report,” he said, “that what happens when I have my distance perception, is that I seem to see it as on a screen in front of me, or, if it is an individual, I see him standing on the floor.”

  He concluded, “Until the key moment I’ve never thought of that method as being anything but an illusion, which is actually taking place inside my head. But if there is any reality to it, in this very unique circumstance, I suggest that no one walk anywhere between me and that floor and wall area I’m looking at.”

  Gosseyn Three realized that the last moment explanation seemed to evoke a feeling of relief; as if something that had been vague, and lacking concrete reality, had suddenly come into focus.

  . . . Interesting that the otherwise grim Enro, who normally kept his own counsel, had been motivated by the mounting tension to reveal a hitherto unsuspected aspect of his special ability.

  The voice of Gosseyn Two came again: “Any other comments, or information?” he asked.

  Silence.

  “Then,” Gosseyn Two said, “Leej, do your best.”

  Silence. And then a faint hissing sound.

  And a brightness. It was on the floor near the wall at which Enro was gazing. As Gosseyn Three continued to hold himself still, he saw that the bright area was neither quite oval, or quite round, or square; but a mix of all three. His extra-brain was reacting to it; and his instant evaluation was: Something . . . connected . . . this five foot uneven shape with an equivalent space and object across the immense distance between two galaxies. Connected it in a manner that fell infinitesimally short of similarity.

  The voice of Gosseyn Two intruded on those thoughts: “Three, it’s your turn.” He evidently leaned forward, and spoke into a microphone. His words were: “And Yona, of the Troogs, do your part!”

  . . . He was lying on his back in darkness.

  In spite of knowing that this time he had come purposefully, and, with the help of the Troogs, had arrived in exactly the right position, Gosseyn was aware of a small thalamic reaction.

  As he lay there, and after he had recovered from his momentary anxiety, he made the same checks that, on the first awakening . . . had been so puzzling—and on the second, when the capsule was aboard the Troog battleship, had evoked bafflement.

  This time his purpose was to make sure that he was, in fact, inside the capsule. It seemed to be so. Because, when he put his hands up, there was the expected hard, steely ceiling about twelve inches above him; and he appeared to be lying on the same type of padded material that he remembered.

  There were several differences, of course, between those other occasions and now: this time he was warmly dressed, and not naked; and this time nothing at all was connected to him. There were no soft wires attached to his head, and no rubber-like tubings poking into his body.

  Having verified his condition as well as possible, he permitted one more flow of thoughts; permitted it, and them, because they should be out of the way, and not intruding at the key moment:

  . . . Here he lay, the man who could make the jump for them all. Here, in Gilbert Gosseyn Three, was the decisive ability that, it was hoped, would resolve a puzzle two million years old.

  Across the endless miles human beings had escaped from a doomed galaxy. But, because of the nature of the doom, they had planned to return if they ever discovered how to reverse that doom: one point here, and one there. One predictor and one extra brain, one person who could “see” into distant places; one logic system to keep them
from destroying each other. Perhaps, there were other such groupings scattered over a thousand planets, blindly seeking to come together; and then, when each fulfilled his function, the whole was a unit capable of acting.

  Lying there, Gosseyn Three thought:

  The basic reality was, nothingness should reassert.

  Matter and mass had no “right” to exist, but were held together, and continuing, by awareness.

  Mind over Matter was Meaningful.

  The reason they had to go back to the 2nd galaxy was that nothing was re-asserting there because of unending wrong thought: the incredible Troog leadership system, whereby no one ever had had the thought of ending the war: so the Troogs constantly attacked, and the human beings constantly defended.

  . . . For two million years!

  With the return of Yona, he would make a statement asserting his leadership in terms of ending the war. And the encroachment of nothingness would be reversed.

  It would take time; but here and now was the beginning. Having had his reassuring thoughts, Gosseyn uttered the triggering words:

  “I’m as ready as I can be.”

  The reply came promptly. A voice spoke almost directly into his ear: “The capsule is out in space, floating alongside our Troog ship. The next step is up to you.”

  Gosseyn drew a deep breath. Then: “My first act will be to transfer this capsule, with myself in it, to your galaxy.”

  With that, with his eyes closed, he recalled the five foot shiningness that Leej and Enro, and with the help of the damaged nerve ends in his head—with their connections—had brought into focus.

  As he, next, did his extra-brain complexity, he told himself: it had to work!

  It did.

  First went the Troog ship. And then, after the Dzan battlecraft moved near his capsule, it also was instantly returned to where it had come from.

  Two million light-years away, in another galaxy.

  Thus, the distances between a hundred thousand million billion stars was, essentially conquered; the method could be utilized in future at will.