Alfred van Vogt: The Players of Null-A

A normal human nervous system is potentially superior to that of any animal's. For the sake of sanity, and balanced development, each individual must learn to orientate himself to the real world around him. There are methods of training by which this can be done.

Shadows. A movement on the hill where the Games Machine had once stood, where all was now desolation. Two figures, one curiously shapeless, walked by slowly among the trees. As they came out of the darkness, and into the light of a street lamp that stood like a lonely sentinel on this height from which they could overlook the city—one of the figures resolved into a normal two-legged man.

The other was a shadow, made of shadow stuff, made of blackness through which the street lamp was visible.

A man, and a shadow that moved like a man, but was not. A shadow man, who stopped as he reached the protective fence that ran along the lip of the hill. Who stopped and motioned with a shadow arm at the city below, and spoke suddenly in a voice that was not shadowy but very human,

'Repeat your instructions, Janasen.'

If the other man was awed by his strange companion, he did not show it. He yawned slightly.

'Kind of sleepy,' he said.

'Your instructions!'

The man gestured in irritation. 'Look, Mister Follower,' he said in an annoyed voice, 'don't talk like that to me. That getup of yours doesn't scare me in the slightest. You know me. I'll do the job.'

'Your insolence,' said the Follower, 'will try my patience once too often. You know that there are time energies involved in my own movements. Your delays are calculated to offend, and I will say this: If I am ever forced into an unpleasant position because of that tendency on your part, I'll end our relationship.'

There was such a savage note in the Follower's voice that the man said no more. He found himself wondering why he taunted this immeasurably dangerous individual, and the only answer he could think of was that it burdened his spirit oppressively to realize that he was the paid agent of a being who was his master in every respect.

'Now, quick,' said the Follower, 'repeat your instructions.'

Reluctantly, the man began. The words were meaningless to the breeze that blew from behind them; they drifted on the night air like phantasms out of a dream, or shadows that dissipated in sunlight. There was something about taking advantage of the street fighting that would now shortly end. There would be a position open in the Institute of Emigration. ‘The false papers I have will give me the job during the necessary time.' And the purpose of the scheming was to prevent a Gilbert Gosseyn from going to Venus until it was too late. The man had no idea who Gosseyn was, what it was Gosseyn was to be late for—but the means were clear enough. 'I'll use every authority of the Institute, and on Thursday, fourteen days from now, when the President Hardie leaves for Venus, I'll arrange for an accident to take place at a certain time— and you'll see to it that he's there for it to happen to him.'

'I don't see to anything of the kind,' said the Follower in a remote voice. 'I merely foresee that he will be there at the proper instant. Now, what is the moment of the accident?'

'9:28 a.m., zone 10 time.'

There was a pause. The Follower seemed to be in meditation. ‘I must warn you,' he said at last, 'that Gosseyn is an unusual individual. Whether this will affect events or not, I do not know. There seems no reason why it should, but still there is the possibility. Take heed.'

The man shrugged. ‘I can only do my best. I'm not worried.'

'You will be removed in due course in the usual fashion. You can wait here or on Venus.'

'Venus,' said the man.

'Very well.'

There was silence. The Follower moved slightly, as if to free himself from the restraint of the other's presence. The shadow shape of him seemed suddenly less substantial. The street lamp shone sharply through the black substance that was his body, but even as the misty thing grew duller, vaguer, less clearly marked, it held together, held its form. It vanished as a whole, and was gone as if it had never been.

Janasen waited. He was a practical man, and he was curious. He had seen illusions before, and he was partially convinced that this was one. After three minutes, the ground glowed. Janasen retreated warily.

The fire raged furiously, but not so violently that he did not see the inner works of a machine with intricate parts as the white, hissing flames melted the structure into a shapeless mass. He did not wait for the end, but started to walk along the pathway that led down to a robocar station.

Ten minutes later he was deep in the city.

The transformation of time energy proceeded at its indeterminable pace to the hour of 8:43 a.m. on the first Thursday of March, 2561 A.D. The accident to Gilbert Gosseyn was scheduled for 9:28.

8:43 a.m. At the spaceport on the mountain above the city, the Venus-bound President Hardie floated into take-off position. It was due to leave at one o'clock in the afternoon.

Two weeks had passed since the Follower and his henchman looked down at the city from a world bathed in night. It was two weeks and a day since a bolt of electricity had spouted from an energy cup in the Institute of General Semantics, and bloodily sheared off the head of Thorson. As a result within three days the fighting in the city proper had ended.

Everywhere robotools whirred, buzzed, hissed and worked under the direction of their electronic brains. In eleven days a gigantic city came back to life, not without sweat, not without men having to bend their backs beside the machines. But the results were already colossal. Food supply was back to normal. Most of the scare of battle were gone. And, of overwhelming importance, the fear of the unknown forces that had struck at the solar system from the stars was, fading more with each bit of news from Venus, and with each passing day.

8:30 a.m. On Venus, in the pit that had once been the secret galactic base of the Greatest Empire in the solar system, Patricia Hardie sat in her tree apartment studying an abridged stellar guidebook. She was dressed in a three-day casual which she would wear today only before destroying it. She was a slender young woman whose good looks were overshadowed by another more curious quality—an air of authority. The man who opened the door and came in at that moment paused to gaze at her, but if she had heard his entrance, she gave no sign.

Eldred Crang waited, faintly amused, but not offended. He respected and admired Patricia Hardie, but she was not yet fully trained in the Null-A philosophy, and therefore she still had set techniques of reaction, of which she was probably unaware. As he watched she must have gone through the unconscious process of accepting the intrusion, for she turned and looked at him.

'Well?' she asked.

The lean man walked forward. 'No go,' he said.

'How many messages is that?

'Seventeen.' He shook his head. 'I'm afraid we've been slow. We took it for granted Gosseyn would find his way back here. Now our only hope is that he'll be on the ship that leaves Earth today for Venus.’

There was silence for a while. The woman made some marks with a needle-sharp instrument in the guidebook. Each time she touched the page, the material glowed with a faint bluish light. She shrugged finally.

'It can't be helped. Who'd have thought Enro would discover so quickly what you were doing? Fortunately, you were prompt, and so his soldiers in this area are scattered to dozens of bases, and are' already being used for other purposes.'

She smiled admiringly. 'You were very clever, my dear, releasing those soldiers to the tender mercies of base commanders. They're all so eager to have more men in their sectors that when some responsible officer gives them a few million they actually try to hide them. Years ago, Enro had to evolve an elaborate system for locating armies lost in just that fashion.'