The World of Null-A n-1 Read online

  “But now, here are your final instructions:

  “In a few moments you will be landed beside the forest home of Eldred Crang. Go to him and tell him your story of the threat to null-A as if you do not know anything about him. Carry the pretense through to the last possible moment, but you must be the judge of your danger at any given moment.”

  The plane tilted downward. “Better hurry,” it said, “and formulate your questions.”

  Gosseyn’s mind made a leap, then recoiled before the extent of his danger. He settled firmly back into his seat. This was not a moment for questions. The time had come to make a few things clear.

  “I am not,” he said grimly, “going to leave this plane and do anything so suicidal. Nowhere in all this is there a sign of a precaution taken for my safety. That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “No precautions are being taken,” admitted the roboplane. “You’re on your own from the moment you land.” It added quickly, “Don’t underestimate the potentialities of a man who has been killed but is still alive.”

  “To hell with that,” said Gosseyn harshly. “I’m not doing this, and that’s final.”

  The roboplane was calm. “You have no choice. If you do not leave the plane of your own free will, I shall release a particularly unpleasant gas and drive you out. I must point out that the instructions I have given you are designed to save your life. You can ignore them at your peril. Remember, it is the opinion of the Games Machine that you will either surrender to the gang or be captured by them. Please think that over, Mr. Gosseyn, and if you have any further questions—”

  Gosseyn said gloomily, “What is the purpose of letting me fall into their hands?”

  “It is important,” was the answer, “that they have a close look at a man whom they know to be dead.”

  There was a bump, then a bouncing motion that ended as the plane came to a full stop. “Out,” said the voice. “Get out! I cannot remain here even a minute. Get out. Quick!”

  Its tone impelled Gosseyn. He had no intention of being gassed. At the door he paused and half turned.

  “Hurry,” said the roboplane. “It is vital that no one suspect how you were brought here. Every second counts. Head straight away from the door.”

  Reluctant but obedient, Gosseyn stepped down to the ground. A moment later he was alone in the immense darkness of an alien planet.

  X

  The night was peaceful but dark. Gosseyn followed the directions of the roboplane, and he had proceeded scarcely a hundred yards when he saw a glimmer to his left. It was a vague reflection that grew brighter as he walked toward it. It became a glow that splashed the ground and lighted up neighboring trees. He saw its source finally. Massive shadows in a tree at the edge of the forest.

  Gosseyn paused in the shadow of a towering shrub and gazed up the windows. Back inside the roboplane, except for his one outburst of resentment, he had made up his mind that he had to follow the advice of the Games Machine. He waited now, watching for figures to silhouette against the great windows. But the light did not change. There was not even a reflected movement from inside. Dissatisfied but determined, Gosseyn stepped into the light. He had already noticed a great stairway to his right, cut out of the solid trunk. He walked up the steps to a terrace that led to a closed ornate door. He knocked loudly.

  At the end of a minute, it occurred to Gosseyn that despite the blazing lights there might be no one at home. Once more he knocked, and then he tried the handle. The door opened noiselessly, revealing a dimly lighted corridor, a corridor that had been cut out of the solid wood, highly polished, and then left in its natural state. It shone with a dull luster. It had an intricate design, resembling mahogany centerwood, but its coloring was like dark-walnut veneer.

  Gosseyn took one flashing glance and had the picture of it. He stood briefly hesitant. It would be silly if a man who intended to surrender was shot as a lawless intruder. He knocked once more, on the inner side of the door this time. No answer. Light streamed through an open door at the end of the corridor. He walked toward it and found himself in a large, cozy living room which, like the corridor, had been carved out of the solid wood of the great tree.

  It, too, was highly polished, but apparently a different finishing process had been used, for the wood was lighter.

  The effect was of richness, a magnificence accentuated by the furniture and by a rug that was at least ninety feet long by sixty feet wide. It was from here, obviously, that the light that he had seen outside had come. Massive, gleaming windows curved spaciously along one entire wall the full length of the room. It had six doors leading from it and Gosseyn followed each one in turn. To a kitchen with pantries and cold rooms and breakfast nook leading off it. To five bedrooms, each with private bath, and with a doorway leading into a dark room that seemed to be an immense garden inside the tree.

  By the time he emerged from the fifth bedroom, it was apparent that Eldred Crang was not at home. No doubt he would return in due course, but his absence now posed a psychological problem. Gilbert Gosseyn’s decision was postponed. He remained uncommitted. Until Crang came home, a change of mind was possible. It left things unsettled. It would make for nerve wear, for unease, and for recurring doubts as to the advisability of staying here to be captured by an enemy when the people of Venus had yet to be warned of danger.

  He came to doors that faced each other across a hallway at the rear of the apartment. He tried each in turn. As with all the other doors he had tested, they were unlocked. One opened into the kitchen; the other into darkness. The light from the hallway poured over his shoulder, and, after his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, he saw that he was looking into a cavelike corridor. After a hundred and fifty feet, the light melted into shadow, but Gosseyn had the impression that the cave continued on into the depths of the tree bole.

  He closed the door and went to one of the bedrooms, undressed, and took a bath in the adjoining bathroom. Refreshed and drowsy, he crawled under the smooth sheets. The silence around him was as complete as anything he had ever experienced. His thoughts turned inward to the mystery of Gilbert Gosseyn, who had once been killed and now lived again. Even the gods of old hadn’t done any better than that. In the old, romantic days he could have turned out to be a prince, an important government agent, or the son of some rich merchant. But there weren’t any special people in the null-A universe. True, there were rich men in great numbers, and presumably President Hardie’s agents could be called government agents of a sort. But values had changed. People were people, normally born equal, requiring null-A training to integrate their intelligence. There were no kings, no archdukes, no supermen, traveling incognito. Who was he that he was so important?

  He slept with that thought in his mind.

  Gosseyn awakened with a start. The light of day shone through the open bedroom door from the corridor that led to the living room. He sat up, wondering if Crang had returned without noticing that he had a visitor. He climbed out of bed, washed noisily whistling loudly and tunelessly the while. He felt a little foolish. But it was important that he make his presence known, rather than startle someone who might shoot on sight.

  He whistled furiously as he strode into the kitchen. Nor was he quiet about the way he peered into drawers and cupboards. He rattled pots and pans. He examined the well-stocked refrigerator, noisily pulling out containers. He brought a cup and saucer down from a shelf with a crash. He fried his bacon with a crackle and sputter of fat. And he ate gustily-bacon, toast, tea, and fresh Venusian fruit.

  When he had finished breakfast, he was still alone. He left the kitchen and swiftly explored the apartment. The living room was bright with the daylight that blazed in through the great windows. None of the bedrooms, except his own, had been slept in. He opened the door that led into the great tree and along the corridor. It was as dark as it had been the night before. For a moment he hesitated, wondering if he should explore it. He decided against it finally, and returned to the living room. From the great wi
ndows there he saw that the house in the tree looked out on a green meadow. Part of that meadow formed a portion of a neatly arranged garden. The garden covered several acres and was terraced up toward the tree to some connection with the tree that he couldn’t see from the living-room windows. It began, he discovered on investigation, inside the tree, about seventy feet inside. A mere chip that seventy feet was, out of such a mass of growing wood. But it made possible a fairyland garden. There were shrubs he hadn’t seen in the wild state, aglow with flowers. Flowers as big as Earth trees, so colorful that they seemed to be giving off a light of their own. Venus must be an experimental paradise for botanists.

  The beauty of the garden could not hold him long. Restlessly, he went back into the apartment. What to do while he waited for Crang? In the living room, he examined the books on the bookshelves. Several titles interested him: The Aristotelian and Non-Aristotelian History of Venus, The Egotist on Non-Aristotelian Venus, The Machine and Its Builders, and Detectives in a World without Criminals.

  Reading proved too quiet an occupation at first. Gosseyn turned on the recorder and gradually settled down. He began to read in a more sustained fashion. He ate lunch with a book beside his plate. By evening he was even more relaxed. With considerable anticipation, he lifted a side of beef from a deep freezer and sliced off a thick steak. After dinner he picked up the volume on Venusian history. It told the story of the first men to walk on Venus late in the twentieth century. It described how the boiling hell of that atmosphere was tamed as early as the first quarter of the twenty-first century, of how ice meteorites from Jupiter were coasted into a close orbit around Venus, and of how as a result it rained for thousands of days and nights.

  The ice meteorites ranged in size from ten to a hundred cubic miles; and when they had melted their huge volume of water down on the surface, and into the atmosphere, Venus had oceans and oxygen in its atmosphere. By 2081 A. D. the Institute of General Semantics, just then entering its governmental phase, realized the null-A potentialities of the bountiful planet. By this time, transported trees and other plants were growing madly. The Machine method of selecting colonists came a hundred or so years later, and the greatest selective emigration plan in the history of man began to gather momentum.

  Population of Venus as of 2560 A. D.—119,000,038 males, 120,143,280 females, the book said. When he finally put it down, Gosseyn wondered if the surplus of females might explain why a null-A woman had married John Prescott.

  He took The Egotist on Non-Aristotelian Venus to bed with him. A note in the frontispiece explained that Dr. Lauren Kair, Ps. D., the author, would be practicing on Earth in the city of the Machine from 2559 A. D. to 2564 A. D. Gosseyn glanced through the chapter headings and finally turned to one captioned, “Physical Injuries and their Effects on the Ego.” A paragraph caught his attention:

  The most difficult to isolate of all abnormal developments of the ego is the man or woman who has been in an accident that has resulted in injuries which do not immediately cause aftereffects.

  Gosseyn stopped there. He hadn’t known what he was looking for, but here at last was a concrete logicality about “X.” “X,” the frightfully injured, the abnormal ego that had developed unnoticed by psychiatrists whose duty it was to watch for dangerous individuals.

  Gosseyn awakened the following morning in a silent house. He climbed out of bed, amazed that he was still undiscovered. He’d give Crang another day and night, he decided, then take positive action. There were several things he could do. A videophone call, for instance, to the nearest exchange. And the tunnel in the tree should be explored.

  The second day passed without incident.

  Morning of the third day. Gosseyn ate his breakfast hurriedly and headed for the videophone. He dialed “Long Distance” and waited, thinking how foolish he had been not to do it before. The thought ended as a robot eye took form on the video plate.

  “What star are you calling?” the robot’s voice asked matter of factly.

  Gosseyn stared at it blankly and finally stammered, “I’ve changed my mind.” He hung up and sank back into his chair. He should have realized, he thought shakily, that the galactic base on Venus would have a private exchange, and that they would have direct communication with any planet anywhere. What star? For these people long distance meant long!

  He studied the dial again and put his finger in the slot marked “Local.” Once more a robot eye looked at him.

  Its voice answered his request unemotionally. “Sorry, I can put no outside calls through from that number except from Mr. Crang himself.”

  Click!

  Gosseyn climbed to his feet. The silence of the apartment flowed around him like a waveless sea. It was so quiet that his breathing was loud and he could hear the uneven beating of his heart. The voice of the robot operator again echoed in his brain. “What star?”And to think that he had wasted time. So much to do. The tunnel first.

  He stood, a few minutes later, peering along the dim corridor that led into the depths of a tree that was an eighth of a mile thick and half a mile tall. It was very dark, but there was an atomic flashlight in the kitchen storeroom. Gosseyn secured the flash. He left the tunnel door open behind him. He began to walk along the low-roofed corridor into the interior of the tree.

  XI

  There was a drabness about his surroundings that dulled thought. The tunnel became winding and tilted more sharply downward. The curving walls gleamed vaguely in the light of the flashlight. Twice, during the first ten minutes, the tunnel divided in two. During the next hour, seven tunnels joined the one he was in, and three times more the corridor split ahead of him. It could have been confusing, but Gosseyn sketched a map in his notebook, ticking off each side tunnel.

  “I must,” he thought finally, “be walking several hundred feet below the ground, following the intertwining roots. I’m actually under the forest.”

  He had not thought before of the extent of the roots supporting the mighty trees. But here in this continuous maze was evidence that the roots were at once large in size and pressing in, one upon the other, so tightly that it was impossible to decide from inside the tunnel where the connections were, where one root left off and another began. He examined the next side tunnel for markings. There was nothing visible. The wood, lemon-colored here in the nether roots, curved solidly up to a solid ceiling. Asfar as his fingers could reach, he fumbled over the metallically hard surface. And there were no switches, no hidden panels, no directions of any kind.

  He was disturbed now. These tunnels apparently were endless. He’d need food if he was really going to investigate them, as he must. Too bad he had to retrace two hours of walking. But better two hours than five. The time to turn back was before he began to feel hungry or thirsty.

  He reached Eldred Crang’s apartment without incident. He made a pile of meat sandwiches and was sitting down to a lunch of eggs and bacon when the four men came in. They entered through three different doors. The first three men held guns, and they came in as if they had been catapulted by the same tight-wound spring. The fourth man was a wiry chap with hazel eyes. He had no gun and he entered in a more leisurely fashion. It was he who said, “All right, Gosseyn, put up your hands.”

  Gosseyn, sitting rigidly at the table, head twisted up and around, presumed that Eldred Crang, galactic agent, Venusian detective, and secret supporter of null-A, had come home at last.

  His first reaction was relief. Until responsible people with null-A training knew the danger that civilization faced, Gilbert Gosseyn must hold his life in trust. He tried to think of the coming of Crang as precipitating movement in that direction. He climbed to his feet, hands raised above his head, and watched the men curiously, trying to saturate his senses with the reality of their presence. He felt undecided as to how best he might tell them the story the Machine had urged upon him.

  As he studied the men, one of them walked forward and broke open the package of sandwiches. They spilled out in a brown and white array, two
falling on the floor with a vague sound, like pieces of dry dough. The man didn’t speak immediately. But he smiled as he stared down at the sandwiches. He was a thickset, nicely groomed individual in his early thirties. He moved over to Gosseyn.

  “Going to leave us, were you?”

  His voice had a faint foreign tone to it. He smiled again. He hit Gosseyn stingingly across the face with the flat of his hand. He repeated in a dead-level tone, “Leaving, were you?”

  He drew his hand back again. From Gosseyn’s left, Crang said, “That’s enough, Blayney.”

  The man lowered his arm obediently. But his face worked, and his voice was blurred by emotion as he said, “Mr. Crang, suppose he’d gone? Suppose he hadn’t rung up exchange? Who’d have thought of searching for him here? Why, if he had escaped, the big boss would have—”

  “Silence!”

  Blayney subsided sullenly. Gosseyn turned to the wiry-bodied leader.

  “If I were you, Crang, I wouldn’t trust Blayney after he gets to be forty.”

  “Eh?” That was Blayney, an astounded look on his face. Crang’s yellow eyes questioned Gosseyn.

  “There are psychiatrical explanations for Blayney hitting me as he did,” Gosseyn explained. “His nervous system is beginning to react as strongly to things that might have happened as it would if they had actually occurred. It’s a purely functional disorder, but its outward form is distressing to the individual. A gradual loss of courage. Sadistic outbursts to cover up the developing cowardice. By the time he’s forty he’ll be having nightmares about the damage he might have suffered in some of the danger spots he was in as a youth.” He shrugged. “Another case of a person lacking null-A integration.”