Alfred van Vogt - The World of Null-A

He spoke to the man who sat at his right. No answer. He turned to the man at his left. Before Gosseyn could speak, the man said, “We are not authorized to talk to you.”

“Authorized!” Street gangsters didn't talk like that. Gosseyn sank back into his seat considerably relieved. The cars finally made a great curve and swooped into a tunnel. Minute by minute they raced forward on an upward slant through a dimly lighted cavern. After about five minutes, the tunnel ahead grew lighter. Abruptly the cars emerged into a circular, streamlined court. They slowed and then drew up before a doorway.

Men began to climb out of them. Gosseyn had a glimpse of the girl as she emerged from the car ahead of his. She came back and peered in at him.

“Just to keep the record straight,” she said, “I'm Patricia Hardie.”

“Yes,” said Gosseyn, “I've known since this afternoon. Somebody pointed you out to me.”

Her eyes grew brighter. “You damned fool,” she said, “why didn't you beat it?”

“Because I've got to know. I've got to know about myself.”

There must have been a tone in his voice, something of the empty feeling of a man who had lost his identity.

“You poor idiot,” said Patricia Hardie in a softer voice.

“Just now, when they're nerving themselves for the plunge, they have spies in every hotel. What the lie detector said about you was reported at once. And they simply won't take any chances.”

She hesitated. “Your hope,” she said drably, “is that Thorson remains uninterested. My father is trying to persuade him to examine you, but so far he regards you as unimportant.”

Once more she paused, then, “I'm sorry,” she said, and turned away. She did not look back. She walked off toward a distant door that opened before her touch. Momentarily it revealed a very bright anteroom, then the door closed. Anywhere from five to ten minutes went by. Finally, a hawk-nosed man sauntered over from another door, and looked in at Gosseyn. He said, with an unmistakable sneer, “So this is the dangerous man!”

It seemed a futile insult. Gosseyn started to carry on with his examination of the man's physical characteristics, and then the import of the words penetrated. He had been expecting to be asked to get out of the car. Now he settled back in his seat. The idea that he was considered a dangerous man was absolutely new. It didn't seem to have any structural relation to the facts. Gilbert Gosseyn was a trained null-A whose brain had been damaged by an amnesic calamity. He might prove worthy of Venus in the games, but he would simply be one of thousands of similarly successful contenders. He had yet to show a single quality of structural difference between himself and other human beings.

“Ah, silence,” drawled the big man. “The null-A pause, I suppose. Any moment now, your present predicament will have been integrated into control of your cortex, and semantically clever words will sound forth.”

Gosseyn studied the man curiously. The sneer on the other's lips had relaxed. His expression was less cruel, his manner not so animalistically formidable. Gosseyn said pityingly, “I can only assume that you're a man who has failed at the games and that is why you are sneering at them. You poor fool!”

The big man laughed. “Come along,” he said. “You've got some shocks coming. My name, by the by, is Thorson-Jim Thorson. I can tell you that without fear of its going any further.”

“Thorson!” Gosseyn echoed, and then he was silent. Without another word, he followed the hawk-nosed man through an ornate door and into the palace of the Machine, where President and Patricia Hardie lived.

He began to think of the necessity of making a determined effort to escape. But not yet. Funny, to feel that so strongly. To know that learning about himself was more important than anything else.

There was a long marble corridor that ended in an open oak door. Thorson held the door for Gosseyn, a smile twisting his long face. Then he came in and closed the door behind him, shutting out the guards who had been following Gosseyn.

Three people were waiting in the room, Patricia Hardie and two men. Of the latter, one was a fine-looking chap of about forty-five, who sat behind a desk. But it was the second man who snatched Gosseyn's attention.

He had been in an accident. He was a patched monstrosity. He had a plastic arm and a plastic leg, and his back was in a plastic cage. His head looked as if it were made of opaque glass; it was earless. Two human eyes peered from under a glass-smooth dome of surgical plastic. He had been lucky in a limited fashion. From his eyes down, the lower part of his face was intact. He had a face. His nose, mouth, chin, and neck were human. Beyond that, his resemblance to anything normal depended partly upon the mental concessions of the observer. For the moment, Gosseyn was not prepared to make any concessions. He had decided on a course of action, a level of abstraction-boldness. He said, “What the devil is that?”

The creature chuckled in a bass amusement. His voice, when he spoke, was deep as a viol's G string.

“Let us,” he said, “consider me as the 'X' quantity.”

Gosseyn glanced away from “X” to the girl. Her gaze held his coolly, though a shade of heightened color crept into her cheeks. She had made a quick change into another dress, an evening gown. It gave a tone to her appearance that Teresa Clark had never had.

It was curiously hard to turn his attention to the other man. Even to his trained brain, the reorientation necessary to acceptance of President Hardie of Earth as a plotter was a hurdle too big for easy surmounting. But in the end there could be no shrinking from the identification.

Illegal actions were being taken. People didn't do what had been done to him, or say what Patricia and Thorson had said, unless it meant something. Even the Machine had hinted of imminent unpleasantness. And it had practically said in so many words that the Hardie family was involved.

The President, seen at this near distance, had the hard eyes of the disciplinarian and the smile of a man who must be tactful and pleasant to many people. His lips were thin. He looked as if he could cut an interview short or keep it firmly to the point. The man looked like an executive, alert, accustomed to the exercise of authority. He said now, “Gosseyn, we are men who would have been doomed to minor positions if we had accepted the rule of the Machine and the philosophy of null-A. We are highly intelligent and capable in every respect, but we have certain ruthless qualities in our natures that would normally bar us from great success. Ninety-nine per cent of the world's history was made by our kind, and you may be sure it shall be so again.”

Gosseyn stared at him, a tightness gathering over his heart. He was being told too much. Either the plot was about to come into the open, or the vague threats that had already been leveled at him had the deadliest meanings. Hardie was continuing.

“I have told you this in order to emphasize the following instructions: Gosseyn, there are several guns pointing at you. You will accordingly without fuss walk over to that chair”–he motioned with his right hand–“and you will submit to manacles and other such minor indignities.”

His gaze traveled beyond Gosseyn. He said, “Thorson, bring over the necessary machines.”

Gosseyn knew better than to hope to escape from this room. He walked forward and allowed Thorson to handcuff his wrists to the arms of the chair. He watched with tense curiosity as the big man wheeled over a table with a number of small, delicate-looking machines on it.

Silently, Thorson attached a dozen cup-shaped devices on one of the machines to Gosseyn's skin with adhesive-six of them to his head and face, the other six to his throat, shoulders, and the upper part of his back.