Alfred van Vogt - The Players of Null-A

Even as the details were discussed, the movement of families got under way.

Gosseyn watched the migration with mixed emotions. He did not doubt the necessity of it, but having made the concession, logic ended and feeling began.

Venus abandoned. It was hard to believe that two hundred million people would be scattered to the far distances of the galaxy. He did not doubt that in scattering there would be collective safety. Individuals might meet with disaster as still more planets were destroyed in the war of wars. It was possible, though only vaguely so, that some would be

harmed on planets here and there. But that would be the exception and not the rule. They were too few to be considered dangerous, and each Null-A would swiftly size up the local situation and act accordingly.

Everywhere now there would be Null-A men and women at the full height of their integrated strength, never again to be cut off in one group on an isolated star system. Gosseyn selected several groups going to comparatively nearby planets, and went with them through the Distorters, and saw them safely to their destinations.

In each case the planets where they arrived were democratically governed. They were absorbed into the population masses that, for the most part, didn't even know they existed.

Gosseyn could only follow groups at random. More than a hundred thousand planets were receiving these very special refugees, and it would have taken a thousand lifetimes to follow them all. A world was being evacuated except for a small core of one million who would remain behind. The role of those who stayed was to act as a nucleus for the billions on Earth who knew nothing of what had happened. For them the Null-A training system would carry on as if there had been no migration.

The rivers of Null-A travelers flowing toward the Distorter transmitters became a stream, then a trickle. Before the last of the migrants were finally gone, Gosseyn went to New Chicago where a captured battleship, renamed the Venus , was being fitted out to take him, Leej, Captain Free and a crew of Null-A technical experts into space.

He entered a virtually deserted city. Only the factories, which were not visible, and the Military Center were flamboyantly active. Elliott accompanied Gosseyn into the ship, and gave him the latest available information.

'We haven't heard anything from the battle, but then our units are probably just going into action.' He smiled, and shook his head. 'I doubt if anybody will bother to give us the details of what happens. Our influence is waning steadily. The attitude toward us is a mixture of tolerance and impatience. From one hand we get a pat on the shoulder for having invented weapons which, for the most part, are regarded as decisive, though they aren't. From the other hand we get a shove and an admonition to remember that we are now just a tiny, unimportant people, and that we must leave the details in the hands of those who are the experts in galactic affairs.'

He paused, amused but grave.

'Whether they know it or not,' he said, 'almost every Null-A will try to affect the ending of the war. Naturally, the direction we want events to take are peaceful rather than warlike. It may not show immediately, but we don't want the galaxy divided into two groups that violently hate each other.'

Gosseyn nodded. The galactic leaders had yet to discover —though actually they might never do so; the process would be so subtle—that what one Null-A like Eldred Crang had done, would shortly be multiplied by two hundred million. Thought of Eldred Crang reminded Gosseyn of a question he had been intending to ask for many days.

'Who developed your new robot devices?'

'The Institute of General Semantics, under the direction of the late Lavoisseur.'

'I see.' Gosseyn was silent for a moment, thinking out his next question. He said finally, 'Who directed your attention to the particular development that you've used so successfully?'

'Crang,' said Elliott. 'Lavoisseur and he were very good friends.'

Gosseyn had his answer. He changed the subject. 'When do we leave?' he asked.

‘Tomorrow morning.' 'Good.'

The news brought a sense of positive excitement. For weeks he had been almost too busy to think, and yet he had never quite forgotten that such individuals as the Follower and Enro were still forces to be reckoned with.

And there was the even greater problem of the being who had similarized his mind into the nervous system of Ashargin.

Many vital things remained to be done.

For the sake of sanity, remember: 'The map is not the territory, the word is not the thing it describes.' Wherever the map is confused with the territory, a 'semantic disturbance' is set up in the organism. The disturbance continues until the limitation of the map is recognized.

The following morning the powerful battleship sped out through the interstellar darkness. In addition to its all Null-A crew, it was loaded with a hundred thousand robotic mind control units.

They stopped the ship at Dr. Kair's request after the first break.

'We've been studying you at odd intervals,' he told Gosseyn, 'though you were about as elusive as anyone could be. But still, we got something.'

He brought some photographs out of his brief case, and handed them around. 'This picture of the extra brain was taken a week ago.'

The area glowed with millions of fine interlacing lines. 'It's alive with excitation,' Dr. Kair said. 'When you consider that at one time its only contact with the rest of your body and brain tissue appeared to be the blood vessels that supply it and the nerve connections that affect the blood stream directly—when you consider that, then the present condition of the extra brain is, by comparison, one of enormous activity.'

He broke off. 'Now,' he said, 'about further training. My colleagues and I have been thinking about what you told us, and we have a suggestion to make.'

Gosseyn interrupted. 'First, a question.'

He hesitated. What he had to say was in a way irrelevant. And yet, it had been pressing on his mind ever since his • talk the day before with Elliott.

'Who,' he asked, 'gave the direction to the training I received under Thorson?'

Dr. Kair frowned. 'Oh, we all made suggestions but in my opinion the most important contribution was made by Eldred Crang.'

Crang again! Eldred Crang, who knew how to train extra brains; who had transmitted messages from Lavoisseur before the death of that earlier, older Gosseyn body—the problem of Crang was thus suddenly and intricately again to the fore.

Briefly, objectively, he outlined the cases of Crang to the group. When he had finished, Dr. Kair shook his head.

'Crang came to me for an examination just before he left Venus. He was wondering if the strain was telling on him. I can tell you he is a normal Null-A without any special faculties, though his reflexes and integration were on a level that I have seen only once or twice before in my entire career as a psychiatrist.'

Gosseyn said, 'He definitely had no extra brain?'

'Definitely not.'

'I see,' said Gosseyn.

It was another door closing. Somehow, he had hoped that Eldred Crang would be the player who had similarized his mind into the body of Ashargin. It wasn't eliminated from the picture but a different explanation seemed to be required.

‘There's a point here,' said the woman psychiatrist, 'that we discussed once before, but which Mr. Gosseyn may not have heard about. If Lavoisseur gave Crang his knowledge of how to train extra brains, and yet now it turns out that the method is not a very good one, are we to believe that Lavoisseur-Gosseyn bodies were only trained in what now seems to be an inefficient method?' She finished quietly, 'The death of Lavoisseur seems to indicate that he had no ability at prevision, and yet already you are at the edge of that and other abilities.'