The Original and Complete Null-A Trilogy, page 3
In three hundred years, people had come to accept its decisions as to who should rule them.
Gosseyn was briefly aware of a conversation between a man and a woman, who were walking along nearby:
“Frankly,” the woman was saying, “the policeless aspect of the games is rather terrifying. I think it could be dispensed with.”
The man thought it was necessary, and said so:
“The very terrifying aspects of it illustrate vividly what a paradise Venus must be, where no police are necessary, though there are detectives for special purposes.
“Just think,” he went on enthusiastically, “when we become worthy of Venus, we go to a planet where everybody is sane. There are no thieves, no murderers, no schemers. The policeless period here provides us with a yearly measuring rod as to how swiftly Earth people are progressing. At one time, it was a nightmare; but I’ve noticed a change even in my lifetime.
“Oh, yes, the policeless period is necessary.”
Gosseyn realized it was time he said something to the girl, something encouraging. He said:
“At least you won’t have to worry about today. And if you’re as quick in future at picking up facts, well—who knows!”
He knew. There was no room for amateurs in the games of the Machine.
A good possibility existed, of course, that she was not an amateur. But he couldn’t be sure of that yet.
“I guess here’s where we separate,” said Teresa Clark. “The C’s are down on the second basement, the G’s just above them. Meet me tonight at the vacant lot. O.K.?”
“O.K.!”
Gosseyn waited until she was out of sight down a stairway that led to the second basement. Then he followed. He caught a brief glimpse of her as he reached the bottom of the steps. She was pushing her way towards an exit at the end of a far corridor.
He was halfway along the corridor, when she vanished up a staircase that led outside. By the time Gosseyn pushed his way up the stairs, she was nowhere to be seen.
Thoughtfully, he walked towards his own staircase. He felt sharply conscious that the problem of Teresa Clark was not all going to be as simple as this discovery that she was not even considering taking the tests of the Machine.
He entered a vacant examination booth in the G section. The door had barely clicked shut behind him when a voice from a speaker said matter-of-factly: “Your name?”
Gosseyn forgot Teresa Clark. He stood funking an answer, conscious that here was an immediate and tremendous crisis.
The booth contained a comfortable swivel chair, a desk with drawers and a transparent paneling above the desk, behind which electron tubes gleamed in a variety of cherry red and flame yellow patterns. In the center of the panel, also made of transparent plastic, was an ordinary streamlined speaker.
It was from this speaker that the voice of the Machine had come. It repeated now:
“Your name? And please grasp the nodes.”
“Gilbert Gosseyn,” said Gosseyn quietly.
There was silence. Some of the cherry red tubes flickered unsteadily. Then:
“For the time being,” said the Machine, “I shall accept that name.”
Gosseyn sank slowly into the chair, and crouched there. The skin around his hot and cold nerve ends warmed with excitement. He had the sudden conviction that he was on the verge of discovery. He said:
“You know my true name?” There was another pause. Gosseyn had time to think of a Machine that was at this very second conducting tens of thousands of separate conversations with the individuals in every cubbyhole in its base. Then:
“There is no record in your conscious mind of another name,” said the Machine tonelessly. “I suggest a visit to a psychiatrist. Ask him to take a photograph of your cortex. And now, are you ready for your test?”
“B-but—” Gosseyn protested. “No further questions at this moment, please,” said the Machine coldly. “You will find writing materials in the top right-hand drawer of your desk. The questions are printed on each sheet. You have thirty minutes to answer them. You will not be able to leave your room till the thirty minutes have elapsed, regardless of the speed with which you complete your paper. Good luck.”
The questions were as he had expected:
What is non-Aristotelianism?
What is non-Newtonionism?
What is non-Euclidianism?
The questions were not really easy. The trick was not to attempt a detailed reply, but to show consciousness of the multiordinal meaning of words, and of the fact that every answer could only be an abstraction.
Gosseyn wrote his answers in the spaces provided, then sat back, tingling with anticipation.
The Machine had said: “No further questions at this moment
At what moment would it consider further questions?
Gosseyn waited.
At the end of twenty-five minutes, the voice came again:
“Please do not be too surprised at the simplicity of today’s tests. It is important to remember that the purpose of the games is not, as might seem the case, judging from the final results, to beguile the great majority of the contestants into losing. The purpose is nothing less than the education of the human race; and that purpose can only be realized when everybody survives the full thirty days of the games.
“And now, those who failed today’s test have already been informed. They will not be accepted as contestants during the rest of this season’s games. To them I say better luck next time. To the rest, more than ninety-nine percent I am happy to say, good luck for tomorrow.”
It was fast work. He had simply slipped his paper into the slot provided; some variation of a television tube had scanned it, compared it to the correct answers, in highly flexible fashion, and recorded a pass.
Similarly, with the answers of the twenty-five thousand other contestants, who would in a few minutes be replaced by twenty-five thousand more.
“You wish to ask more questions, Gilbert Gosseyn?” said the Machine.
Gosseyn jumped. He collected his thoughts automatically, made the semantic pause necessary to cortical-thalamic integration, and said: “Yes. I have had some false ideas planted in my mind. Were they put there with a purpose?”
“They were.”
“Who put them there?”
“No record of that exists in your conscious brain.”
“Oh!” Gosseyn was silent, grim, disappointed. He added finally: “You can’t help me much, can you?”
There was a curious sadness in the reply: “I am only an immobile brain, but dimly aware of what is transpiring in remote parts of Earth. What plans are brewing I can only guess. But you are involved in them as deeply and darkly as death itself.”
It’s tone grew decisive: “Gilbert Gosseyn, I give you fifteen days to solve your identity. At the end of that time, you must either know who you are, or be barred from further participation in the games.
“The time limit has not been lightly fixed. Go now, to your destiny.”
There was a click from the door, as it unlocked automatically. Gosseyn went out into the corridor, hesitated for a moment; and then worked his way northward through the hurrying crowds.
Gosseyn paused finally, and straightened, letting his shoulder muscles relax, and the great muscles in his back.
He stood like that, eyes half closed, his mind in a state of slow concentration that made physical relaxation one of the important systems for the maintenance of sanity. He thought:
“My situation is really ever so much better. I have two purposes, first to go to a psychiatrist, second to find out who I am. And the Machine, with its almost omnipotent perception, implies that I can find out in fifteen days if I try hard.”
He began to feel better. He opened his eyes, and looked around him. He was standing on a paved boulevard that led north.
To the north, starting at about a quarter of a mile from the Machine, other buildings began. They were geometrically arranged in clusters around the boulevard, at the far end of which amid embanked flowers and trees stood the palace of the Machine.
The palace was not tall; its stately contours nestled in among the vivid green and brilliance of its verdant environment—but that wasn’t what held Gosseyn.
His mind, was reaching, visualizing, comprehending.
President Hardie and his daughter, Patricia, lived there.
Patricia Hardie. Gosseyn was conscious of a distinct tug in his mind. He thought intently:
If he was darkly and deeply involved, then so must they be. What had made them plant into his mind the conviction that he was married to a dead Patricia?
It seemed futile. Any hotel group lie detector would have found him out, even if a Nordegg hadn’t been around to accuse him.
He ought to go up, and seek an interview. With Hardie? With Patricia?
Somehow, he couldn’t quite picture himself actually making the attempt to get into the palace. Not now, before he had been examined by a null-A psychologist.
Gosseyn turned, and strode around the base of the Machine, back towards the city proper. He ate lunch in a small restaurant near the waterfront, then began to thumb through the yellow pages of a telephone directory. He knew the name he was looking for, and he found it almost right away:
Enright, David Lester, Dr., psychologist, 709 Medical Arts Building
Enright had written several books, which were prescribed reading for anyone who hoped to get beyond the tenth day in the games.
It was a pleasure to remember the crystallike clarity of the man’s writing, the careful semantic consideration given to every multiordinal word used, the breadth of intellect and understanding of the human body-and-mind-as-a-whole.
Gosseyn closed the directory, and went out to the street. He felt at ease; his nerves were calm. Hope was surging in him.
The very fact that he remembered Enright and his books in such detail showed how lightly the intruding semi-amnesia rested on his memory.
It shouldn’t take long once the famous man began to work on him. The reception clerk in the doctor’s office said:
“Dr. Enright can be seen by appointment only . . . I can give you an hour three days from now, that is Thursday at 2 p.m. You must however make a twenty-five dollar deposit.”
Gosseyn paid the money, accepted his receipt and went out. He was disappointed, but not too much so. Good doctors were bound to be busy men in a world that was still far from having attained perfection.
On the street again, he watched the longest, most powerful car he had ever seen slide past him, and draw up at the curb a hundred feet away.
The car gleamed and shone in the afternoon sun. A liveried attendant leaped smartly from beside the driver, and opened a door.
Teresa Clark stepped out. She wore an afternoon dress of some dark shining material. The ensemble did not make her appear less slim, but the dark coloring of the dress made her face seem a little fuller and, by contrast, not so heavily tanned.
Teresa Clark! The name was a meaningless mockery in the face of this magnificence.
“Who,” Gosseyn hissed fiercely to a man who had stopped beside him, “is that?”
The stranger glanced at him in surprise; and then he spoke the name Gosseyn had already half guessed:
“Why, that’s Patricia Hardie, daughter of President Hardie . . . quite a neurotic, I understand. Look at that car, for instance, like an oversized jewel, a sure sign of—”
Gosseyn was turning away, turning his face from the car and its recent occupant. No sense in being recognized until he had thought this through.
It seemed ridiculous that she would actually come again that very night to a dark lot to be alone with a strange man.
But she was there.
Gosseyn stood in the shadows, staring thoughtfully at the shadow figure of the girl. He had come to the rendezvous very skillfully. Her back was to him, and she seemed to be unaware of his presence.
It was possible, in spite of his careful reconnoitering of the entire block, that he was already in a trap. But it was a risk he felt no hesitation in taking.
Here, in this girl, was the available concrete clue he had to the mystery of himself.
He watched her curiously, as well as he could in the developing darkness.
She was sitting, at the beginning, with her left leg tucked under right one. In the course of ten minutes, she changed her position five times. Twice during the shifts, she half stood up. In between, she spent some time apparently tracing figures on the grass with her finger. She pulled out her cigarette case and put it away again without taking a cigarette.
She jerked her head half a dozen times, as if in defiance of some thought. She shrugged her shoulders twice, folded her arms and shivered as with a chill, sighed audibly three times, clicked her tongue impatiently, and for about one minute, one whole minute, she sat tensely still.
She hadn’t been so nervous the night before. She hadn’t, except for the little period when she was acting fearful of the men who were supposed to have been chasing her. seemed nervous at all.
It was the waiting, Gosseyn decided. She was geared to meeting people, and to handling them. Alone, she had no resources of patience.
What was it the man had said that afternoon? Neurotic! There was no doubt of it. As a child she must have been denied that early null-A training so necessary to the development of certain intelligences. Most people could pick up something of training at any age, but some had to have childhood impregnation. Apparently, she was one of the latter.
Just how training could have been neglected in the home of a superbly integrated man such as President Hardie must be, was a puzzle. Whatever the reason, she was one human being whose thalamus was always in full control of her actions.
He could imagine her having a nervous breakdown.
The possibilities interested Gosseyn. At last, frowningly, he rejected the obvious solution. He was not prepared to exploit the neural weaknesses of women or men.
It would be nice, in his situation, to have someone who was for you all the way, even against her own family. But the means to bring that about would also be criminal.
Accordingly, love-making was out.
He continued to watch her there in that almost darkness. After ten minutes, she stood up and stretched, then she sat down again. She took off her shoes, and, rolling over towards Gosseyn, lay down on the grass.
She saw Gosseyn.
“It’s all right,” Gosseyn assured softly, “it’s only me. I guess you heard me coming.”
He guessed nothing of the kind, but she had jerked to a sitting position; and it seemed the best way to soothe her.
“You gave me a start,” she said. But her voice was calm and unstartled, and properly sotto voce.
She had suave thalamic reactions, this girl.
The visualization of that started his thoughts anew on the problem of her, and on the events leading up to this moment:
Patricia Hardie DISGUISED . . .
Had RUN out to him . . .
On a DESERTED street . . .
How had she KNOWN he would be there?
Was he being FOLLOWED?
Or did they have some device attached to HIM that enabled them to keep track of him no matter where he went?
That was formulation number one. Two:
Had she driven up in the car that afternoon KNOWING he would see her.
If so, she knew that HE knew who she was.
Three: If THAT was true, then there was no doubt . . .
They were trying to FORCE reactions from him.
If he didn’t react they would DEDUCE his weakness and uncertainty.
If he did react, he would play INTO their hands.
He intended to react.
He sank down on the grass near her; and let the feel of the night creep upon him.
The second night! Here was the second policeless night. It seemed hard to believe. He could hear the noises of the city, faint, unexciting, quite unsuggestive. Where were the gangs and the thieves? They seemed unreal, examined in absentia, from the safety of this dark hiding place.
Perhaps the years and the great educational system had winnowed their numbers, leaving only the fearful legend and a few trivial wretches who slunk through the night seeking the helpless.
No, that couldn’t be right. Men were becoming more brave, not less, as their minds grew progressively integrated with the structure of the universe around them.
Somewhere violence was being planned or performed.
Somewhere? Perhaps here!
Gosseyn looked at the girl. Then very softly he began to talk. He described his plight, the way he had been kicked out of the hotel, the amnesia that hid his memory, the curious delusion that he had been married to Patricia Hardie. “And then,” he finished ruefully, “she turned out to be the daughter of the president, and very much alive.”
Her silence, after his voice ceased, was prolonged. Gosseyn had time to think of the things he hadn’t told her: the Machine giving him fifteen days to identify himself; his knowledge of who she was.
Patricia Hardie said: “These psychologists, such as the one you’re going to—is it true that they’re all people who have won the trip to Venus in the games, and have come back to Earth to practice their profession? And that actually no one else can go in for psychiatry and the related sciences?”
Gosseyn hadn’t thought of that. But now she mentioned it—
“Why, yes,” he said. “Others can train for it of course but—”
A flame of excitement titillated his nerves. He was conscious of a sudden eagerness, a desire for the moment of the interview with Dr. Enright to arrive. How much he might learn from such a man.
Caution came at that point, flashingly. Why had she asked that question, instead of commenting on his story as a whole?
In the dark he stared at her searchingly. But Tier face, her expression, was night-wrapped.
Her voice came again:
“You mean, you haven’t the faintest idea who you are. How did you get to the hotel in the first place?” Gosseyn laughed softly but bitterly; and it was no act.
“I have a memory of taking a bus from Cress Village to the airport at Nolendia; and then I distinctly remember being on the plane.”
