Alfred van Vogt - The Players of Null-A

But if there was a weakness in this man, that was it. Gosseyn-Ashargin sat up slowly as Secoh approached the bed and sat down facing him. The priest said in a rich tone:

'Prince, you are about to be given an opportunity to win back for your family a measure of your former position.'

Gosseyn guessed then what was coming. He was not mistaken. He listened to the offer, which was in effect a vice regency with, as Secoh carefully put it, 'Only the Sleeping God himself above you.'

Meaning himself. And yet he undoubtedly believed what he said.

There was no pretense that League forces had captured Gorgzid. The Lord Guardian was frank. 'It seemed to Crang it might be a good bargaining point if the League appeared to have captured the capital.'

He waved a hand, dismissing that aspect of the subject.

'I can tell you,' he said sincerely, 'that Enro was no longer satisfactory to the Sleeping God, and I need hardly say that the calls you have received from the Temple are an indication of where the God is trying to point my attention.'

He meant it. This man believed in his curious religion. His eyes glowed with honest purpose. Gosseyn studied him, and was only too conscious of how unsane the man was.

He wondered then: Was Enro dead? He asked the question.

Secoh hesitated, but only for a moment. 'He must have suspected something,' he confessed. 'I went to his apartment last night after his return to the palace, hoping to hold him in conversation until it was too late for him to get away. We had rather an explosive conversation.'

He scowled. ‘The sacrilegious scum! In the past he has dissembled his hatred of the Sleeping God, but last night he was in a state of anxiety, and so he forgot himself, and actually threatened to destroy the temple.

Then, just as the attack began, he similarized himself to Paleol's flagship.'

Secoh paused. Some of the fire went out of his eyes. He said thoughtfully, 'Enro is a very able man.'

It was a grudging admission, but the fact that Secoh could make such a statement was a measure of his own ability. His failure to capture Enro was clearly a major defeat, and yet he had already adjusted to it.

'Well,' said Secoh, 'are you with me or against me?'

It was a bald way of putting it, especially as there was no indication of what refusal might mean. Gosseyn decided against a direct question about that. He said instead:

'What would you have done with Enro if you had caught him?'

The Lord Guardian smiled. He stood up and walked over to the bedroom window. He beckoned Gosseyn-Ashargin, who came without hesitation.

Gosseyn stood beside the priest, and looked down on a courtyard that was changed. Gallows were going up. More than a dozen were already in position, and there were silent shapes hanging from nine of them. Gosseyn stared at the dead men thoughtfully. He was neither shocked nor impressed. Wherever men acted thalamically there usually would be found a full quota of hangmen. Beside him, Secoh said: . 'Enro managed to get away but I did seize a number of his uncompromising supporters. Some of them I am still trying to persuade.' He sighed. 'I am easy to please, but in the final issue I must have cooperation. Accordingly, such scenes as that'—he pointed downward—'are necessary concomitants to the elimination of evil forces.' He shook his head. 'One can have no mercy on recalcitrants.'

Gosseyn had his answer. This was what happened to people who were 'against' instead of 'for'.

He knew now what crisis he must try to arrange. But it would be staking a great deal—Ashargin's life, among other things—on the intensity of Secoh's beliefs.

It was surprisingly easy to say the nonsense words. It took a moment to realize why: Ashargin's nervous system would have established channels for false to fact verbalisms about the Sleeping God—a point he'd have to remember in his final plans for the prince, who was obviously not yet trained in general semantics.

But he spoke the necessary words about having received a summons from the Sleeping God to the effect that a great honor was planned for Secoh. He must come to the temple, bringing with him Ashargin and a Distorter circuit. Gosseyn watched tensely for the Lord Guardian's reaction to the inclusion of the Distorter, since that would be a deviation from long established rituals. But apparently Secoh accepted any direct command of his god, regardless of past formalisms.

And so the first and simplest step was accomplished.

General semantics is a discipline, and not a philosophy. Any number of new Null-A oriented philosophies are possible, just as any number of geometrical systems can be developed. Possibly, the most important requirement of our civilization is the development of a Null-A oriented political economy. It can be stated categorically that no such system has yet been developed. The field is wide open for bold and imaginative men and women to create a system that will free mankind of war, poverty and tension. To do this it will be necessary to take control of the world away from people who identify.

Secoh decided to make a pageant of it. In three hours, lines of planes, loaded with troops and priests from the capital, dotted the sky on the route over the mountain to the Temple of the Sleeping God.

Gosseyn-Ashargin had hoped that they would make the journey through the Distorter in Crang's and Patricia's apartment. But when that didn't happen, he requested that Crang be in the same machine as he himself.

They sat down together.

There were many things Gosseyn wanted to know. He assumed, however, that there might be listening devices. So he began gravely, 'I have only gradually realized the nature of the friendship between yourself and the Lord Guardian.'

Crang nodded, and said with equal wariness, 'I am honored by his confidence.'

To Gosseyn, the fascinating aspect of the relationship so suddenly revealed was that Crang had, four years before, unerringly chosen Secoh instead of Enro as the person to whom he should attach himself.

The conversation went on in that polite fashion, but gradually Gosseyn obtained the information he wanted. It was an amazing picture of a Null-A Venusian detective, who had secretly gone out to space from Venus to discover the nature of the threat against Null-A.

It was Secoh, as Enro's adviser, who had put Crang in charge of the secret Enro base on Venus. Why? So that the Gorgzin Reesha would be beyond the reach of her brother's determination to make her his wife.

At that point Gosseyn had a sudden memory of Enro accusing Secoh. 'You always were taken with her!' the dictator had said.

He had a vision then of a work priest aspiring to the hand of the highest lady on the planet. And because such emotions became set on the unconscious level, all his triumphs since then meant nothing beside the potent early love feeling.

Another phrase of Crang's brought him a vivid picture of how the marriage of Crang and Patricia had been presented to Secoh as not a true marriage, but as another protection for her. They were saving her for the day when the Follower could claim her for his own.

A subsequent statement of Crang's made later, and seeming to have no connection with what had gone before, justified the dangerous deception. 'When a person has put away the fear of death,' the detective said quietly, 'he is free of petty fears and petty tribulations. Only those who want life under any conditions suffer bad conditions.'

Clearly, if the worst came to the Worst, Mr. and Mrs. Eldred Crang would take death.

But why the attack driving out Enro? The explanation for that required even more caution in the telling. But the answer was dazzling. It was important that the dictator be put in a frame of mind where he would consider, or even initiate, negotiations for ending the war. Enro, driven from his home planet, his sister in the control of his enemy, would have a reason for making outside peace, so that he could concentrate on restoring his position in his own empire.