Alfred van Vogt - The World of Null-A

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 windows 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.