Null-A Continuum (15 page)

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.”

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 power.” 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.

“This man is not an agent of Enro the Red, consciously or subconsciously,” the machine said firmly.

Gosseyn studied the faces of the Councilors. He said, “That's not it, is it? Your fear of me is more fundamental.”

Nolo laughed weakly. “I do admit that the shock of meeting the man who cannot die is greater than I expected. A more-than-human confidence gleams in your eyes; it echoes in your words. No matter what we mere mortals say or do, you, the unknown man from an unknown world, are going to decide what happens to our lives and our worlds, and nothing we can do can stop you.”

Gosseyn put his hand on the lie detector. “First, I have turned over all that I know of my origins to the Games Machines which are, even now, being constructed on the various planets that have accepted colonists from Venus and Earth. These machines can measure human sanity and integrity.”

He paused while sensitive, energy-conducting lights played over his face. One by one, he met the eyes of the Councilors. In his deep baritone he continued, “Second, it is only a matter of time until I can discover who I am and where I come from. Once that is done, I will know the secret of how to preserve continuity of memory from one duplicate body to another: a secret I will share with any men sane enough to not destroy themselves, or others, with the knowledge. Gentlemen, these two statements taken together offer great promise. I expect that you all will soon join me, and be as I am.”

Prin said to the lie detector, “Well?”

The machine said, “The statement is true as far as it goes, but there is a deeper thought behind it.”

Gosseyn said, “Once many men, not just one, have my special method of bypassing space-time, and the
scientists of many worlds can study it, humanity as a whole will have an opportunity to understand something fundamental—essential—about the base nature of reality. The repercussions are not merely unknown, but unknowable.”

Prin said to the machine, “Based on that last statement, can you tell us what this man's real purpose is in coming here?”

The lie detector said, “There is an identity confusion in the subject. He does not know who he is. On the surface, he regards himself as a copy of three other dead men, perhaps four, inheriting their memory chains, and therefore inheriting their name and self-ness…. This central difficulty obscures all other readings. The subject is not himself aware of his purpose in life, but that purpose is an immense one … his real purpose is tied into his real identity…. He is … connected … in some way, some basic-energy way, to an identity older than mankind.”

Prin said in a hushed tone, “But … then who is this man? What is he?”

Nolo said, “We know who he is. We were warned. Marines!” He raised his hand to the two guards flanking the doors.

A voice came into Gosseyn's head at that moment.
This is Lavoisseur. You represent a tremendous secret, which you yourself only dimly grasp: a secret not just of immortality, but of infinity! By revealing your true nature, you are repeating the mistakes I made during an earlier incarnation, mistakes that led to the destruction of the Shadow Galaxy. The Councilors' fear of you has grown beyond all bounds: They are going to kill you unless you let me help you. Quickly! Use your extra brain to suppress the radiations from the vibration machine!

Gosseyn triggered all the nerve-combinations in his extra brain at once. The suppression emitter was muffled, but it required all of Gosseyn's capacity to do it: He
could feel the flow of nervous energy in his brain stem, stiffened with the overload.

From outside the main doors came cries of pain and alarm, the shocking noise of energy-rifles being fired in an enclosed space, the sizzling echo of ricochets. The two marines threw open the doors and raced out, beyond Gosseyn's range of vision.

Then, a sudden ominous silence fell.

The echo of a pair of footsteps resounded from the marble floor as a figure walked calmly through the double doors.

It was a boyish figure, short and slim, but with the awkwardly large hands and feet of a late teenager going through a growth spurt. However, he had the large head, the wide shoulders, the hawkish eyes, the slender-lipped mouth, of a Gosseyn body. Gosseyn estimated the biological age of this younger version of him as equal to sixteen or seventeen. The youth was wearing a red and scarlet jacket of a military cut.

There was a series of rapid metallic clicks as the tall doors slid shut behind him. The magnetic pistons of the locking mechanism had been triggered by some outside power.

Elderly Ifvrid Madrisol rose to his feet saying, “Who are you, young man? How dare you to enter here?”

The seventeen-year-old spoke. From such a young man the voice was surprisingly powerful and strong, indicating a Null-A precision of control over the acoustic cavities and vocal cords. More highly pitched, of course, but the tone, timbre, and accent were those Gosseyn had heard, before his death, from the mouth of Lavoisseur.

Only the words themselves were horribly, insanely wrong.

“I bear a message from your Emperor, who is the father of the race that will replace mankind. The universe has judged you, gentlemen, by the laws of evolution … and you have been condemned to death.”

Norcross was the only man quick enough to put his
hand to his pistol before he died. The other Councilors were slain where they sat, their heads sheared off by a jagged lightning bolt.

The similarity channel used to send words into Gosseyn's brain, at the moment, flooded Gosseyn with a complex of thought-forces meant to paralyze his nervous system. He used the cortical-thalamic pause to break the connection and defeat the paralysis, but that moment of distraction was enough: The young man pulled out his sidearm, a Gorgzid military-issue nuclear-electric piece, pointed it at Gosseyn, and pulled the trigger.

The boy said, “I am similarizing the energy from this weapon in my hand to a neutral spot in orbit. However, the moment you release the suppressor machine, my powers will be neutralized, and the bolt will strike you. Now, you might think that you will merely wake up in another Gosseyn body elsewhere, but the same suppressor field that prevents you from using your biological distorter in your brain will prevent the automatic similarization of your memory information into your next body. Checkmate.”