Alfred van Vogt - The Players of Null-A

Actually, what could the Follower do against him?

Cautiously, Gosseyn shifted his gaze for a flickering moment to take in the rest of the scene before him. If there was going to be a battle, he wanted to be in the best possible position for it.

Leej was standing where she had paused. Her body was rigid, her eyes still unusually wide open. During the fleeting instant that his attention lingered upon her, he noted that the neural sensations that flowed from her showed an unvarying anxiety. It could be an alarm for her own safety exclusively, but Gosseyn thought not. Her fate was too closely bound up with his. He dismissed all thought of danger from her.

His eyes shifted toward the door of the corridor that led to the control room. For the barest .moment, then, he lost sight of the Follower. He twisted back immediately, but he had his fact. The door was too far to the right. He had to turn his head too sharply in order to see it.

Gosseyn began to back toward the wall behind him. He moved slowly. There were several thoughts in his mind, several possibilities of danger. Yanar. The Predictor, he discovered with a swift probe of his extra brain, was still in the control room. Unfriendly vibrations flowed from him.

Gosseyn smiled grimly. He could just imagine how the older man might do him great damage in a critical moment. From memory, he visualized the wall behind him, and it had the air conditioning slits that he wanted for his purpose. He twisted slightly to one side, until the soft breeze was blowing directly against his back, and there, one heel pressed against the wall, he took up his position.

Having done what he could, he studied his enemy with appraising eyes.

A man? It was hard to believe that a human form could become so shadowy, so insubstantial. The structure of darkness had no form. Gosseyn saw, now that he was looking at it sharply, that it wavered ever so slightly. As he watched, fascinated, it changed and grew fuzzy at the edges, only to fill in again as if a pressure was behind it pushing the foggy stuff forward.

Cautiously, Gosseyn probed into that gas like thickness. He held himself ready to nullify potent energies.

But there was nothing.

He took his usual prolonged moment to photograph an object. And still there was nothing. No image formed.

No normal image, that is. His extra brain registered the presence of air. But the darkness itself came out blank.

He remembered what Leej had said, that the Follower was a being out of phase. He had assumed from other comments that the man had found a way of being out of phase in time. Somehow, not in this time. Here, but not now.

Suddenly, now, he realized that he had a more far-reaching assumption than that. He had assumed that Leej knew what she was talking about.

Where would she have gained the idea that the Follower was out of phase? Why, from the propaganda of the Follower! Neither she nor the Predictors had any critical ability, at least not in a scientific sense. These Predictors stole their science from the islands. And so, in their innocence, they had accepted the Follower's own picture.

'Leej!' Gosseyn spoke without looking at her.

'Yes?' shakily.

'Have you ever seen the Follower as a man, without '

he paused, finished sardonically, 'his make-up on?'

'No.'

'Do you know anybody who has?'

'Oh, yes. Yanar. And, oh, many others. He grew up from childhood, you know.'

For a tense moment Gosseyn toyed with the idea that Yanar was the Shadow. Yanar standing in the control room manipulating the shadow puppet. He rejected the notion. The man's reactions under questioning, both inward and outward, had been on a provincial level. The Follower was a great man.

The question of how the Follower did what he did was not something about which he could make up his mind on the available evidence. But it was just as well to clear away the assumptions of people who didn't really know the truth.

Gosseyn waited.

A mental finger in his brain quivered on a nerve trigger that would bring the power from the forty thousand kilowatt dynamo in the Follower's Retreat across the gap of space, and straight into the shadow stuff.

He didn't pull the trigger. This was one time he had no intention of forcing the issue.

He had not long to wait. A deep, resonant voice came out of the shadow emptiness.

'Gilbert Gosseyn, I offer you—partnership.'

For a man who had been nerving himself for deadly conflict, the words came with almost the force of a bombshell.

His mind adjusted swiftly. He remained puzzled but his skepticism faded. Actually, Leej had indicated something like this might happen. In describing the Follower's visit to his cell while he still lay unconscious, she had reported the Follower as saying that he preferred to use people rather than kill them.

It was interesting, but not convincing, that he had now decided on equal status. Gosseyn waited to be convinced.

'Between us,' said the shadow-thing in his strong voice, 'you and I can dominate the galaxy.'

Gosseyn had to smile at that, but it was an unpleasant smile. The word 'dominate' was not calculated to win the good will of a person trained as he had been.

Still he made no reply. He wanted to hear every word of the offer without any more comment than was necessary.

'I warn you, of course,' said the Shadow, 'that if you should prove to be less strong than I suspect, you will eventually have to take a subordinate role. But for the moment I offer full partnership, without conditions.'

Gosseyn grew sardonic. This was thalamic talk. Without conditions, indeed! He did not doubt but that he was expected to co-operate with the purposes of the Follower. People tended to project their own hopes and desires, and so a plan for personal aggrandizement became the plan.

Next move: bloodthirsty threats.

'If you refuse,' said the resonant voice, 'then you and I are enemies, and you will be destroyed without mercy.'

And that, Gosseyn presumed cynically, was that The pattern of the neurosis was complete.

His analysis must have been correct. Silence settled over the room, and once more for a little time there was only the movement of the ship as it raced through the night sky on wings of magnetic power.

It was clear that he was now expected to make an answer.

Well, what ought he to say?

From the corner of his eyes, Gosseyn saw that Leej was edging cautiously toward a chair. She made it, and sighed audibly as she sank into it. That brought a bleak amusement to Gosseyn, which passed as the Follower said in his steeliest tone, 'Well?'

There was the beginning of purpose in Gosseyn now, a half determination to test the strength of the other. Test it now. But first, as much information as he could get.

'What's the war situation?' he temporized.

'I predict unqualified victory for Enro in three months,' was the reply.

Gosseyn hid his shock. 'You actually see the moment of victory?'

The pause, then, was so slight that Gosseyn wondered afterwards if it had occurred, or if he imagined it.

'I do,' was the firm reply.

He couldn't accept that, since it failed to take his extra brain into account. The strong possibility that he was being lied to made him sardonic again.

'No blurs?' he said.

'None.'

There was an interruption, a movement from Leej. She sat up.

'That,' she said in a clear voice, 'is a lie. I can foresee everything that anyone else can. And it is difficult to prophesy in detail for more than three weeks. Even that is always within certain limits.'

'Woman, hold your tongue!'

Leej's color was high. 'Follower,' she said, 'if you can't win with the power you really have, then you are as good as lost. And don't think for an instant that I feel myself bound to obey your orders. I do not desire, and never have desired, your victory.'