Alfred Van Vogt - Null–A Three

As Crang phoned Leej, and Prescott went out and dispatched the limousine to pick her up, Gosseyn said to Dr. Kair, “I deduce that by the special people you mean the persons who participated in the collective attempt to reach that other galaxy. And that, therefore, I should bring Enro here.”

“Yes.”

Since there had been agreement on that point with Yona, the Troog leader, Gosseyn took his extra-brain photograph of a floor area in one corner of the physician laboratory, and did his transfer. Moments later, a huge figure was lying there. Enro the Red picked himself up, looked around, said nothing; but he was presently briefed on what was about to happen.

“You’re going to send those Troogs home?”

In spite of his earlier argument with himself, Gosseyn Three said, “I’m sure you’ll agree it’s the best solution: get them out of the Milky Way galaxy as soon as possible.”

“True. So now what?”

Gosseyn told him of the meeting that would now take place between two Gosseyn bodies, as a preliminary to the finale.

The war lord’s face twisted into a frown. “You’re sure the place won’t just blow up?”

Gosseyn Three replied, “We’re already different in many ways.”

“But you’re still connected mentally?”

“Yes. Thought-wise. But I would guess—” he continued—“if there’s ever going to be mental telepathy between the average people of the universe, it will merely be a scientifically similarized portion of some part of the brain that the individual gives his or her permission to have aligned.”

The big man was shrugging. “I think I’d like to be in the next room.”

It was interesting, then, to Gosseyn that the others, also, retreated through the door. When they had gone, Gosseyn Three wasted no time, but immediately addressed Gosseyn Two:

“Well, alter ego, it looks as if our big moment is here.”

“It sure does,” was the reply.

“Do you need any help?”

“No, I think I have the location where Enro arrived in the necessary exact extra-brain imprint. Hold still! Keep your thoughts neutral!”

Holding still consisted of blanking out of his own extra-brain. He was still doing that moments later when there was a small noise. Gosseyn Three, who had his eyes closed, was aware of the door opening; and then came the voice of Leej, sounding as if she had not actually entered the room.

“It’s all right,” she said, “I see no problems during the next fifteen minutes, at least.”

Gosseyn opened his eyes, and saw that the man who had arrived had his back turned. He was fully dressed, and, when he slowly turned, he had the appearance of a tanned, lean-faced, strong-looking man in his middle thirties. But it was himself in another suit.

Dr. Kair entered, and without a word released Gosseyn Three from the examining chair. He remained seated, with the thought that even a different position might be of value.

And so, there they were together—gazing at each other; one standing, one sitting down. Two human beings, duplicates of each other.

Twins? No.

Some similarity, of course, existed between twins. But the diversity that began immediately after conception, and the variation of experience after birth, quickly created innumerable differences, first, on a minute level but finally they were merely look alikes, with their own personalities.

The similarities between Gilbert Gosseyn Two and Gilbert Gosseyn Three as they faced each other in the office of Dr. Lester Kair, included a whole series of interacting energy flows. Brain to brain, body to body.

They were not twins in any ordinary meaning of the term. They were the same person in ten thousand times ten thousand ways.

Gosseyn Three realized that he was almost unconsciously bracing himself against an interflow that tended to tug him out of the chair and toward the other body.

Gosseyn Two seemed to be having a similar struggle; and he actually took several small steps toward Three before he, abruptly, braced himself. A tiny, grim smile relaxed the strong, even features of his face. He had the appearance of a man in control, as he said:

“Looks like it’s going to be all right, and that we will be able to collaborate at close quarters, or otherwise.” As he spoke the words, his thoughts seemed to be coming through, also, and his body movements. To Gosseyn Three came the realization that he had a strong impulse to stand up, and that his face held the same tiny smile. He found himself wondering if Two was fighting with impulse to sit down.

And, though he did not speak that aloud, the other man said, “Yes, I’m resisting the impulse; and I can deduce that if, for any reason, we ever have to stay together for a long period of time, we’ll have to work out a system.”

It was a long speech, and Gosseyn Three was slightly resigned to realize that, although he made no sound, his lips were moving and somehow saying the same words, but under his breath.

He thought: “… It really has been a case of duplicate memories—”

… The same thought, the same feeling about that thought, the same experience. The complete recollection of having walked along a street, or on a planet’s surface… the muscular sensation recalled by both minds—exactly.

It could even be that, all those years while the mental images of Gosseyn One and Two were being recorded in the sleeping brain of Gosseyn Three, that all neural responses and muscles mechanisms had operated in unison in some limited way; perhaps a twitching.

Thus it was, at that long later moment as the eyes of the third Gosseyn blinked open, the impression of being the second Gosseyn had been that of a sleeper awakening the morning after, with the automatic acceptance that it was I, who had all those experiences, who was waking up after a night of restful sleep.

At Dr. Kair’s request, Gosseyn had sat down again in the special chair with all the equipment attached. This time there were no straps; he merely agreed to maintain the correct motionless state at the key moment. Sitting there, he was aware of the viewing device being adjusted slightly behind and to one side of his head.

He did not move, or acknowledge, as the dark-haired Leej walked past him, and took up the position whereby she could lean forward and peer through the viewing device at the damaged nerve inside his head.

Off to Gosseyn Three’s right Enro sat in an upholstered chair, and stared at the wall across the room. Presumably, he was ready to contribute his special distance seeing ability.

Gosseyn Two sat at Dr. Kair’s desk. His task: he had all of Gosseyn Three’s memorized areas carefully catalogued in his extra-brain, ready to do his part.

It was Gosseyn Two who broke the silence. He said in a soft voice: “What we did that time, when all this kicked back on us, and did the reversal whereby the Dzan ship was transmitted here from another galaxy: Leej actually predicted a location in that other galaxy.

And so. now, as she gazes into the viewing device, she’s going to predict again where the location is, and what it’s like.

“Enro,” Gosseyn Two continued in that same soft voice, “will use his special ability to perceive the predicted location. When he has done so, I will do for my brother what we have agreed will be the safest method for him to handle the situation.

“I have to admit,” he concluded, “that what will happen here in this room at the moment Enro perceives Leej s predicted area in that other galaxy is not obvious to me.”

As he completed his summation, Enro raised one of those strong hands of his, and wiggled his fingers for attention.

“Perhaps, I should report,” he said, “that what happens when I have my distance perception, is that I seem to see it as on a screen in front of me, or, if it is an individual, I see him standing on the floor.”