The World of Null-A (15 page)

“It must operate the games fairly, within the framework of the laws laid down long ago by the Institute of General Semantics. It must protect the development of null-A in the broadest sense. It can kill human beings only when they directly attack it.”

Gosseyn was searching Prescott. No detail of the man’s clothing escaped his probing fingers. The pockets yielded a pistol and two blasters, extra ammunition, a box of Drae powder capsules, a packet of antidote pills, and a pocket-book. He didn’t stop with the pockets, but examined the cloth itself. The material was plastic, of the kind that was worn a few times and then discarded.

It was on the side of the heel of the right shoe that he found the printed instrument. It was an electronic locator device made of the same plastic as the shoe, and recognizable only by the pattern of wires that had been printed from a photographically reduced cut. Gosseyn sighed as he discovered it. It must have been by the use of such a device that Patricia Hardie had been able to run into his arms that first day, pretending she needed protection. He hadn’t had time, then, to find out how he had been located. It was good to know. Explanations made the mind easy, took a score of tiny strains off the nervous system, and released the body from the thrall of negative excitations for more positive activity. It was easier, suddenly, to listen to the psychologist.

The doctor, too, had been combining activity with conversation. From his very first word, he had started packing the test material into a leather case. Photographs and notes went in the case. He opened machines and removed recording tubes, wires, screens, rolls of film, ribbons of autotype paper, and special sensitive sound and light tracks. Almost every item, before he packed it, was briefly interpreted.

“This proves the new brain is not cortical material … and this … and this … and this … that the cells are not thalamic… memory … association. Here are some of the main channels by which it is connected to the rest of the brain… . No indication that any impulses have flowed to or from the new gray matter.”

He looked up finally. “The evidence shows, Gosseyn, that what you have resembles not so much a brain as the great control systems in the solar plexus and the spine. Only it is the most compact setup of controls that I have ever seen. The number of cells involved is equal to about a third of the total now in your brain. You’ve got enough control apparatus in your head to direct atomic and electronic operations in the microcosm, and there just aren’t enough objects in the macrocosm to ever engage the full potential control power of the automatic switches and relays now in your brain.”

Gosseyn hadn’t intended to interrupt. But he couldn’t help himself. “Is there any possibility,” he said in a strained voice, “that I can learn to integrate that new brain
during the next hour?”

The answer was a grave shake of the head. “Not in an hour, or a day, or a week. Have you ever heard of George, the boy who lived with the animals?

“George, a two-year-old baby boy, wandered off into the wilderness of foothills and brush behind his parents’ farm. Somehow, he fumbled his way into the lair of a renegade female dog which had just given birth to a litter of pups. Most of the pups died, and the wretched bitch, heavy with milk, its ferocity restrained by dimly remembered human training, permitted the child to feed.

“Later, it hunted food for him, but hunger must have come often, because ants, worms, beetles, anything that moved and had life, were found to be part of the boy’s diet when he was captured at the age of eleven, a sullen, ferocious animal, as wild as the pack of dogs whose leader he had become. His early history was pieced together from his actions and habits.

“Grunts, snarls, growls, and a very passable bark-that was his language. Sociologists and psychologists realized the opportunity he represented, and failed hopelessly in their efforts to educate him. Five years after his capture, he had been taught to set up alphabet blocks, spelling out his name and the names of a few other objects. His aspect at this stage remained bestial. His eyes glowed with easy hatred. He descended frequently and with great agility to all fours, and, even after half a decade, his forest lore was astounding. The tracks of animals, even if hours old, could set him into such a state of excitement that he would jump up and down and whine with eagerness.

“He died at the age of twenty-three, still an animal, a wizened creature-boy looking hardly human in the bed of his padded cell. A post mortem revealed that his cortex had not developed fully, but that it existed in sufficient size to have justified belief that it might have been made to function.”

Dr. Kair ended, “We could have made George human now with what we know about the brain, but you will agree, I think, that your case and his are similar, with one difference-
your start as a human being.”

Gosseyn was silent. For the first time, the problem of his extra brain had been clearly defined in the only possible rational way-by analysis and comparison. Until this moment his picture of it had been vague and idealistic, disturbing only because the new brain had shown no activity, no reactions whatever. But always, through the blur of his visualizations, hope had blazed. It had given him a measure of arrogance and of strength in the harder moments of his brief career as a potential savior of civilization. And somewhere inside his skin, permeating possibly his entire nervous system, he had felt pride that he was more than a man. That would remain, of course. It was human to be proud of physical or mental attributes that had come by chance. But as for the rest, as far as further development was concerned, it would undoubtedly take time.

The psychiatrist said, “If you are a true mutation, the man after man, and should it come down to a choice between saving you and letting this galactic army assault a peaceful civilization, then you may be sure that I shall choose you. And they”-he smiled grimly-“shall have their opportunity to test whether null-A can be destroyed by a first adversity.”

“But the Venusians don’t know.” Gosseyn found his voice. “They don’t even suspect.”

“That,” said Dr. Kair, “underlines with very special emphasis what our next move must be. Our future depends on whether or not we can escape from this house before dawn. And that”-he stood up with astonishingly youthful litheness-“brings us right back to our friend on the couch.”

It was easy to think again of urgent and deadly danger.

We copy animals in our nervous processes. … In man such nervous  reactions lead to non-survival, pathological states of general infantilism, infantile private and public behavior… . And the more technically developed a nation or race is, the more cruel, ruthless, predatory, and commercialized its systems tend to become … all because we continue to think like animals and have not learned how to think consistently like human beings.

A.K.

John Prescott, galactic agent. That much identification was admissible. The man lay on the couch and his eyes watched them. His blond hair seemed curiously whitish in the strong light. The faintest sneer lurked in the crinkles of his lips, in spite of the slightly bulging gag inside his mouth.

Gosseyn said with revulsion, “You know, there is something horrible here. This man allowed his wife to be murdered as a mere incident in a campaign to convince me of his
bona fides.
What took me in was that he had once been a partial believer in the null-A philosophy. I took it for granted, also, that his killing of ‘X’ and Hardie first was pure chance. But I recall now that he paused before he reached Thorson and gave me time to disarm him. In other words, he killed the two Earth men who had been used as a front by the galactic empire, which leaves only galactic people in control of the Earth government.”

Gosseyn closed his eyes. “Just a moment,” he said, “I’m thinking of something. The games. Weren’t this year’s games supposed to produce a successor to President Hardie?” He opened his eyes. “Who’s ahead so far? Who’s leading?”

Kair shrugged. “A man called Thorson.” He stopped and blinked. “You know,” he said slowly, “I didn’t connect the name when you mentioned it. But there you have your answer.”

Gosseyn said nothing. There was a thought in his mind that chilled him. It had very little to do with the fact that Jim Thorson, personal representative of a galactic emperor, would be the next president of Earth. The thought had to do with the Machine. It had outlived its usefulness. It would never again be trustworthy, now that it had proved vulnerable.

It was hard to imagine Earth without the Games Machine.

Beside him, Dr. Kair said gently, “All this is unimportant now. We have our own problem. As I see it, one of us must impersonate Prescott and go outside to assess the situation.”

Gosseyn drew a deep, slow breath, and was himself. He said quickly, “What about your wife? Is she here? I’ve been intending to ask. And children. Any children?”

“Three but not here. Venusian-born children cannot visit Earth until they’re eighteen. At the moment my wife is with them in New Chicago, Venus.”

They smiled at each other, the doctor looking gleeful. He had a right to be. The two men were alone with their great problem: one, the doctor, of great attainment in his field; the other-well, the other had still to prove himself.

They decided without argument that Dr. Kair would go out to contact the gang’s agents. His white hair and his build gave him an appearance roughly similar to that of Prescott. It should suffice in the dark. Prescott’s shoes, while a little too long and half a size too narrow, fitted Kair. It seemed wise to wear the shoes that contained the locator. Imitating Prescott’s voice was comparatively easy. Like all trained speakers, like all Venusians, the psychiatrist had full control of the resonance chambers in his body and head. With a recent memory of Prescott’s voice and with Gosseyn there to check on the subtleties of tone, he had the imitation pat in three minutes, including an identifiable whisper.

“And now,” said Gosseyn in a steely voice, “we’ll find out from the gentleman himself the details of his arrangements with his friends outside.”

He bent down and removed the gag. The disgust he felt must have been in his manner, or perhaps Prescott was persuaded by a knowledge of what he would have done to secure information under similar circumstances. Whatever the reason, he said without prompting, “I have no objection to telling you that there are a dozen men outside, and they have orders to follow you, not arrest you. I was supposed to go out about now, to let them know that everything was all right. The all-clear word is ‘Venus.’”

Gosseyn nodded to the psychiatrist. “All right, Doctor,” he said. “I’ll expect you back in five minutes. If you’re not, I’ll suppress my squeamishness and put a bullet through Prescott’s head.”

The doctor laughed without humor. “Maybe it would be just as well if I stayed out six or seven minutes.”

His laughter faded as he reached the door. The door moved slightly when he slipped through the opening. And then he was gone into the night and the fog.

Gosseyn glanced at his watch. “It is now ten minutes after four,” he said to Prescott, and drew his gun.

A tiny bead of perspiration started a path down Prescott’s cheek. It gave Gosseyn
an
idea. He looked again at his watch. The second hand, which had been at ten, was now at forty-five. Thirty-five seconds had passed. “One minute,” said Gosseyn.

Physiological time was a flux of irreversible changes of the tissues and cells. But inward time depended on the human system, on variable circumstances, and on each individual. It changed under stress. Duration was as firmly wedded to man and his momentary emotions as life was to the nervous system. The second hand was twitching toward the ten, completing its first round. Accordingly, one minute had actually passed since the departure of Dr. Kair.

“Two minutes,” said Gosseyn in an implacable tone.

Prescott said in a low, harsh voice, “Unless Kair is a fool he should be back in five minutes, but the contact man out there is a talkative idiot. Take that into account, and don’t be too hasty.”

By the time a minute and a half had gone by, Prescott was sweating profusely. “Three minutes,” said Gosseyn.

Prescott protested, “I told you the truth. Why shouldn’t I? You can’t escape our dragnet for long. One week, two weeks, three weeks-what does it matter? After listening to Kair, it’s clear to me that your chance of gaining control of that extra part of your mind is almost zero. That’s what we wanted to find out.”

It was curious, listening to the man talk and at the same time picturing Dr. Kair out in the fog of that pre-dawn night. His watch said that the psychiatrist had been gone only two minutes.

“Four minutes!” said Gosseyn.

It startled him a little. If a weak link was going to snap in Prescott’s mind, it would have to be soon now. He leaned forward, expectant, his questions quivering on the tip of his tongue.

“Another reason I told the truth,” Prescott babbled, “is that I am no longer convinced even a superman could interfere with the interplanetary operations which are now about to be launched. The organization has been overcautious in your case.”

Gosseyn’s watch showed twelve and one half minutes after four. According to the accelerated time sense working on Prescott’s nervous system, the five minutes allotted for Dr. Kair’s absence was up. It was too fast, it seemed to Gosseyn. By telescoping time in half, he hadn’t given Prescott the opportunity to get really upset. It was too late to slow down. If the man was going to break, now was the time.

“The five minutes are up,” he said decisively. He raised the gun. Prescott’s face was a strange, livid color. Gosseyn added savagely, “I’m going to give you one more minute, Prescott. And if you haven’t started talking then, or if Kair isn’t back, you’re through. What I want to know is, where did ‘X’ or the gang get the instrument they use to corrupt the Games Machine? And where is that instrument now?”

The words spoken, he glanced at his watch to emphasize the time limit. He stared, startled, and briefly forgot his purpose with Prescott. The time was fourteen minutes after four. Four minutes gone! He had an empty feeling, a qualm, the first shocked thought that Dr. Kair had been gone a long time. He saw that Prescott was gray, and that steadied his own nerves. Prescott said in a curious uneven tone, “The Distorter is in Patricia Hardie’s apartment. We built it in to look like a part of one wall.”