Damon Knight - Orbit 19

When Garrett finished his mental examinations of the entire crew of the GO, he had little more to act on than when he had started. There was incompetence, certainly, and a few deliberately destructive actions. But every org had those aberrations without creating trouble of this magnitude. The superstructure of the organization was sound; he had checked that. And the basic structure was modeled on an organization that had survived eighty million years—and what had caused their downfall had been corrected here!

Every problem in the org led to a dead end; every grouping of problems by whatever variable or group of variables led to an anarchy of dead ends. He had expected when he finished the executives that more data would isolate one thing, one individual, one game as source. Not only had that not materialized, but nothing had materialized.

Garrett flitted to Flag then. The experience was like a sudden shift of scene inside a spherical slide show, complete with all fifty-six senses. Beings, of course, perceive circumambiently; they are senior to, they contain the objective universe and thus can change locations at will. Garrett learned what he wanted to know: after a week the stats were still dropping, visibly now. And the stats of the GO had crashed. He went back to GO headquarters.

After checking in with the quartermaster, he located himself in the body mockup station, a small open rotunda near the executive division building, and mocked up his Homo novus.

His body was apparently a facsimile of his last born body, fifteen hundred years before, in its twenty-sixth year. Actually, however, it was three times more efficient—which is saying something, since he had been a Level Nine then, a veritable superman. Now its communication channels were even cleaner, and he had established lines for direct electrical stimulation of the musculature, bypassing the nervous system. This permitted an instantaneousness of action impossible within the physical structure alone. Thus he controlled the body like a puppet, but it was a puppet with the consummate control and grace of a danseur.

Garrett’s body was lean and smooth, and to anyone esthetically sensitive, flawlessly beautiful. Esthetics had been his medium for thousands of years—it was no secret that he had been two of the greatest artists in history before Soul Technology—and a body always has expressed the being. Now Garrett’s energy pattern interfused with his body’s: surrounding the flawless physical beauty radiated and flowed an aura of blended white and gold.

Such was the quality of the Fleet Admiral who appeared at GO headquarters that day. Those who saw him and had done Level Eleven were awed; those who had not were stunned.

Howard ushered Garrett to the office that had been prepared for him. The room would have been a replica of Garrett’s oval office on Flag if it had not avoided certain details, such as certificates, personal mementos, and unique patterns in the paneling and furniture, which might have disturbed his equilibrium.

“Thank you, sir, for canceling War Game 113,” Howard began as soon as they were seated. “A lot of us kind of knew it was aberrated, but none of us took the initiative to really check it out. Same for C-U 46; we’ve got that straight now.

“If you don’t mind my asking, though, sir, I’m in the dark as to how you found out about them. But even more, I’d like to know”—he hesitated, checking the indicators of his superior, and, finding them still good—”how you happened to start investigating here before our stats crashed. I know Flag is good, but. . .”

Garrett laughed. “No, we haven’t perfected the ability of prophecy. That was done by stats. But first, the method of finding those games is still classified; but I can tell you it’s part of Fifteen.

“As for the mission, though, here’s the situation—but I’d like you to keep it sealed for a while. A week ago the Old Man noticed a galaxy-wide stat drop, just below normal variation. Nobody else did; it was too slight. Anyway, he isolated the cause—here.”

“But our stats were soaring then,” Howard blurted; then he understood. “Oh, the inversion precept.”

“Right. The little-used ‘bank robber in the family’ rule; one unit brings the group up and then crashes ignominiously. The Old Man is great; he deduced our stat analysis system, remember, from the laws of the universe, and he’s the best at using it.”

“Agreed.” Howard frowned. “Then what’s out here, sir?”

“Don’t know, John. It has to be something suppressive as hell. You know of anything?”

Howard thought for a minute. “No, sir.” Then added: “You suspect Game P-U?”

“Just as an outside possibility. Have you got the data on it?”

“Here, sir. I have also located two people who have been in Game P-U and might have further information.”

Then, alone, Garrett studied for several hours the records and promotional literature. His detailed analysis revealed that Game P-U was not intrinsically suppressive of beings. It could, however, be extrinsically suppressive: players acting crazy could make a sane game crazy.

He leaned back in his chair and, slowly at first, expanded his space to include the entire base. This was a serene state of knowing and affinity, of responsibility and creation. Truly one’s existence depends not upon identity, but upon created space. From this commanding position, he considered the situation anew.

What could be wrong, that wrong, and not yet locatable? Procedure was correct. Funny the way Game P-U showed up, but nothing big was there. Besides, its stats were good, even fantas— Its stats! His space exploded as he cognized.

The inversion precept! Of course! He had been scouring the org for something spectacularly wrong when he should also have been looking for something spectacularly right.

“Howard!” Garrett yelled mentally, connecting with the Admiral.

“Yes, sir?” The Admiral, in conference, put his total attention on the incoming communication.

“What’s the source of your largest stats?”

“Why. Game P-U, sir. I thought you already knew.”

“I didn’t, but forget it. How long has it been big—and by how much larger than the next largest?”

“It really took off about six weeks ago, sir; now it varies between three and four times the next largest. Except for the last two days. Its crash was virtually our total crash.”

“Okay. Thanks, John. I’d like to have all the stats for the last two months; and I’d like to talk to those two who were in Game P-U. Can do?”

“Right away, sir.”

The records arrived in a few minutes. No other game had anything like that storytelling pattern. Game P-U was undeniably, incontrovertibly, it.

While he was waiting for the two people, he spent some time in his personal universe. He reflected with pleasure that he had no stimulus/response mind anymore. If he had, it would be kicking him all over the universe now with caustic, suppressive invalidation for not applying the inversion precept earlier. Now, however, he knew what he was: a being, the only thing that was precisely and completely nothing—the true zero, containing no wavelengths, having no dimension or motion or mass or location. How could a nothing get kicked around the universe, and with what?

The two people arrived, bodiless. They had been married thirteen hundred years, they said. They had been in Game P-U only one day.

“We didn’t like the space or the mood of the game or something,” one said. “It seemed antagonistic, a fighting game.”

“But it was a covert fighting,” interjected the other, “like the game was supposed to be peaceful. But there was a constant undertone of force, police-type force. Very hypocritical.”