Alfred Van Vogt - Null–A Three

For Gosseyn, it was a moment of mild surprise. He hadn’t noticed in a meaningful way that the man had arrived coatless. Vaguely, the awareness had been there at the back of his mind. But he had had—he realized—so many other things going on in the observational side of his brain that, in fact, the automatic truth of the extrabrain had not transferred its meaning.

Belatedly, he recalled that originally he had transmitted Gorrold to the icy mountainside, and had then transmitted the jacket to the same location as an act of kindness—not really wanting the man to suffer any more cold than was minimally necessary.

Presumably, the coat was now lying on the floor beside the phone in the observatory off there in South America.

Under the circumstances, it was no greater problem for the extra-brain to transfer the coat than the man. And so, bare moments later, Gosseyn warily walked past Gorrold and Dan. Reached down. Picked up the jacket. And handed it to the owner.

There was silence as the chunky man put on the coat. His fifty-ish face reflected a whole series of inner reactions. Then, as he completed the act of dressing—

“I have to admit—” began Gorrold.

… Hopeful beginning, thought Gosseyn—

“—that,” continued the man, “however you’re doing what has been happening to me—”

The words seemed to indicate that caution was moving in behind all the basic outrage and anger.

“—maybe I’d better think things over before I do anything further!” With those words, the super-executive completed his thought.

For Gosseyn, it was undoubtedly the best outcome he could hope for. For the time being.

He saw that Dan Lyttle had walked over, and was opening the corridor door. And then he waited while the older man walked over to it, through it and, turning, moved off out of the line of sight.

Gosseyn was prepared to deduce that the man would leave the building as swiftly as possible; but Enin trotted over to the door, and peered around it. The boy presently reported, “He’s heading for the main door.”

Then: “He’s gone.”

During the half-minute involved, Gosseyn had closed his eyes, and transmitted President Blayney’s four guards one by one to a street location the earliest Gosseyn had once used.

Enin was coming back into the room. He asked, “Going to do anything about those other guys who called?”

Gosseyn drew a deep breath. “No,” he said.

A strange thought had come—strange for him. It was time to take a break; that was the feeling. There had to be a pause to the ceaseless driving existence in which this Gosseyn body had been involved since that first moment of awakening inside the capsule aboard the Dzan battleship.

True, he had slept in Dan Lyttle’s little house. But though a sleep of exhaustion had its place, and its own necessity, that was not what he needed.

A break.

He said, “Listen Enin! listen, Dan! President Blayney put a billfold with money in every one of the suits he sent over for me. So Jet’s leave right now, and go to the nearest restaurant, and eat. And talk.”

… The restaurant had one of those dimly lighted interiors; but there was a video game room, from which Enin had to be rescued twice; both times he came dutifully when Gosseyn went over and reported that food had arrived. Each time he ate his share, and then departed at speed.

In between, as Gosseyn and Dan Lyttle each ate a sandwich and salad, the subject of conversation was Dan Lyttle himself.

Gosseyn’s first question: “Why, after your training in General Semantics was accepted by the Games Machine as being adequate, didn’t you go to Venus?”

The younger man’s answer was, in view of the subject matter, obviously straightforward: “As you know,

I’m a night clerk at a good hotel. Despite the advanced state of computer technology for such places, they still need human beings; and I got the job at a time when work was temporarily scarce. I immediately discovered that it removed me from the normal condition of a human being.

“Working all night, and sleeping eight hours some time during the following day quickly ended the few associations I had formed when I first came to the City of the Games Machine from the east coast. I thought about that, and, after taking two different young ladies out during my days off—separately, of course—I decided I could not subject a normal young woman to a marriage with me. Now, General Semantics, as you know, and as I discovered later, merely provides guide lines in the direction of survival within the frame of any life situation.

“Before I ever took my GS training, there was a woman who had seen me late one night when she visited an out-of-town friend who was staying at the hotel. Naturally, I found this out only later. But what happened: she checked in one night, and called me at three A.M., and asked me to come up to her room and make love to her. Well, I was a young fellow; I still hadn’t made any decisions about things like that. It turned out that her husband had died; and she had resolved to be his wife forever, and never marry again. But she saw me and called me, and I went up. And thereafter, once a month, she would pray for her husband’s forgiveness, and check into the hotel, and call me.”

“As I said, I started getting involved in that situation before I took my training in General Semantics. And, when I later discussed this relationship with the Games Machine, apparently human sexual activity was something it could not evaluate. Believe it or not, after it discovered that I was awake all night, the Games Machine occasionally phoned me in the wee hours, and talked to me.”

Gosseyn waited. It was a minor item, but interesting, implying that the machine was busy thinking even during off hours.

Dan Lyttle continued: “Maybe it was also phoning other night clerks; but I think not. Because, after you showed up for the Games, and it started evaluating your situation, and the meaning of the great armies that were arriving in the vicinity of earth, it used me as its outside ally in case of an emergency. So one day I went over, and that was when the machine gave me a duplicate it had made of itself.”

“That was the small transistorized plate you showed me?” Gosseyn asked.

“That’s it. Believe it or not, until you came along with your duplicate body, it had not thought of such a solution as a duplicate of itself.”

“Well—” Gosseyn was thoughtful—“that still doesn’t entirely explain you’re not going to Venus.”

“I became its special agent.” The eyes on the other side the restaurant table gazed at him earnestly. “You’ll have to admit that was a worthwhile status. As for the woman, after I became GS oriented I urged her to take the training. She did, and, after a while, I discovered that something inside her was beginning to adjust to her husband’s death; and that in fact a male acquaintance had suddenly noticed her, and had asked her to go out to dinner with him. Not too long after that, she stopped seeing me. But there was a change in her. She held herself differently, somehow.”

Gosseyn had no additional question, or comment. What he had heard gave him a new view of the late, great Games Machine. As for the woman, and her association with an hotel clerk—there had always been a human problem to solve in that area.

It had been observed that men normally preferred women who had a lot of outer appearance, and who, as a consequence, showed some kind of inner strength. Interesting that, perhaps, the inner strength was all that was needed.

He stopped. Because… inside him… an odd, tugging sensation had started suddenly.

He rose hastily to his feet. He said, “You take Enin back to the Institute.” By the time he finished those words, he had hastily taken out the Blayney billfold and tossed it on the table. “You pay for the dinner out of that.”