Alfred van Vogt - The Players of Null-A

Had Crang established some control over that machine? It sounded as if he had.

But what did he mean, sleep?

He was two floors down, starting along the corridor to Nirene's and Ashargin's apartment, when a Venusian robotic weapon snatched at his mind.

He had time for one startled realization: This couldn't be the Null-A manned battleship Venus . There hadn't been time for it to arrive.

It could only be that this was a major League attack. But how had they got through?

The thought ended. He was fighting desperately to save Ashargin's body from being controlled.

For the sake of sanity, each individual should break down the blockages in his own nervous system. A blockage is a semantic disturbance in which adequate response is inhibited. Blockages can often be eliminated by the proper use of the thalamo-cortical 'delayed reaction,' by self-analysis, or by heteroanalysis.

Almost, he was overwhelmed before he could think. The feel of the complex force was so much stronger than when he had felt it in his own brain, its effect so swiftly paralyzing that he stopped involuntarily.

It was possible that that was what saved him then. He had to stand there, and he thought back to the old, simple version of establishing the famous cortical-thalamic pause, the method used to condition trainees:

'I am now relaxing,' he told himself, 'and all stimuli are making the full circuit of my nervous system, along my spinal cord, to the thalamus, through the thalamus and up to the cortex, and through the cortex, and then, and only then, back through the thalamus and down into the nervous system.

'Always, I am consciously aware of the stimulus moving up to and through the cortex.'

That was the key. That was the difference between the Null-A superman and the animal man of the galaxy. The thalamus—the seat of emotions—and the cortex—the seat of discrimination—integrated, balanced in a warm and wonderful relationship. Emotions, not done away with, but made richer and more relaxed by the association with that part of the mind—the cortex—that could savor unnumbered subtle differences in the flow of feeling.

All through the palace, men would be struggling in a developing panic against the powerful force that had struck at them. Once that panic began it would not stop short of hysteria. And instant by instant it would grow. The stimulus flashing down from the fearful thalamus, quickening the heartbeat, speeding up the breathing process, tensing the muscles, stimulating the glands to more violent production —and each overexcited organ in its turn sending a new stimulus to the thalamus. Quickly, the cycle gained in speed and intensity.

Yet all that the individual had to do was to stop for an instant, and think: The stimulus is now going through my cortex. I'm thinking and feeling, not just feeling.

And so he achieved for Ashargin a full cortical-thalamic pause.

The complex force continued to struggle against him, and he realized that he would have to be alert to make sure that Ashargin was not overwhelmed by a surprise emotional shock.

He ran without hindrance to the apartment, and headed for the bedroom. He knew in what condition he'd find Nirene. He let the thought of it come consciously into his mind, so that Ashargin would know, also,. and not be surprised. As he expected, Nirene was in bed rigid and unconscious. She had apparently wakened at the moment of attack, for there was a twisted look of amazed horror on her face.

It was her expression that sent a shock through Ashargin. Anxiety, alarm, fear; like lightning the emotion ran its gamut. Like lightning, the complex force pressed in and seized his mind.

In a desperate effort Gosseyn threw himself across the bed, so that he would be able to relax. It did no good. His muscles stiffened. He lay tautly sprawled at the foot of the bed.

He had wondered what it would be like, what a controlled person thought and felt. And it really wasn't very complicated at all. He slept.

And he dreamed a strange dream.

He dreamed that the body of Gosseyn in the crypt was now receptive as it had never been before, and that only in that unconscious position, and inside the memory crypt was it possible in its comparatively untrained state to achieve the tremendous rapport that had at last been established.

The thought came not from Gosseyn but through him.

'I am the memory of the past.' The thought reached to his mind through the unconscious body of Gosseyn. 'In me, the machine beneath the crypt, is the only memory of the Migration that has survived, and my memory is the result of an accident.

'All the machines were damaged to some extent in passing through great clouds of matter, the nature of whose basic energy was not suspected. As a result the memories of most of them were lost. What saved mine was that a key circuit was burned out before the greater damage could be done.

'In spite of their injuries, most of the machines that succeeded in making the journey were able to revive the bodies they carried, for that is a simple mechanical function. I could also revive the one body still in my care, but unfortunately he would not be able to survive. And I am not allowed willfully to destroy a body until it is dead. Those who have tended me in recent years have forgotten that their ancestors came to this planet in the same way as the human being they worshipped, and still worship, as the Sleeping God.

'The ancestors arrived memoryless, and quickly forgot the manner of their arrival. The struggle for existence was fierce and demanding. The ships in which they came lie buried and forgotten in the soil drift of the ages. I arrived late, so my ship has not yet been covered.

'Everywhere their descendants have built up false pictures of their evolution on the basis of studying the fauna of their new homes. They do not yet realize that all life seeks movement, and that macrocosmic movement is limited to certain forms, and that the struggle to stand erect is part of the will to movement of particular species.

‘The Great Migration was undertaken on the basis of an assumption not necessarily true, but true as fas as was and is know. The assumption that the human nervous system with its cortical and higher developments is unique in time-space. It has never been imitated, and, when considered in all its intricate aspect, probably never will be ——— '

Two bodies, two nervous systems interacting, the greater to the lesser in the similarity fashion. The first picture came then, of men watching a brief point as it moved nearer the edge of a shadowed substance.

What that substance was neither the man in the crypt nor the machine whose vibrations were suffusing him knew.

A bright point that moved sedately, and men thoughtfully watching it. Men who had lived and died many million years before. The bright point hovered at the edge of the shadowed substance, poised for a moment, and then slipped over the edge.

It was gone instantly.

The pattern of surrounding space altered slightly. There was a sudden strain, a tension that brought a break in a basic rhythm. Matter began to change.

An entire galaxy shifted its time balance, but long before the physical crisis the decisive moment came for the inhabitants. The alternatives were bleak. To remain and die, or go to another galaxy.

They knew that the time required for such a journey would be vast beyond all the powers of mechanical and human ingenuity. As the years passed, even electronic patterns would alter radically, and would in many instances become meaningless.

More than ten thousand million ships started out, each with its crypt, each with its intricate machine designed to control the life cycles of two men and two women for a million or more years. Those ships were wonderfully made. Through the darkness they sped at three quarters the speed of light. For this was no Distorter-swift journey. There were no set matrixes where they were going, no memorized areas to which men and their machines could flash with the speed of thought. All that must yet be laboriously built up.