Null-A Continuum (10 page)

The path the chief technician took was a roundabout one, away from the other buildings in the Institute. Gosseyn could see that the tall arches of the Venusian architecture, peering high above the ornamental trees, were now shimmering with the telltale haze of a Nireni building. Generators were erecting anti-atomic fields. Shields were being lowered over the expansive Earth-style glass windows. The staff did not know how large a weapon Enro would unleash upon Gosseyn: They were taking every precaution.

While they walked, Gosseyn spoke into the phone he carried. One way to keep the Emperor talking was to give him the opportunity to boast. The kind of man who does not think men can be cowed by boasting speeches does not become an Emperor.

“You knew about Thorson's betrayal?”

“Oh, come now. What can be hidden from an interstellar-range clairvoyant? Of course I knew.”

Gosseyn had doubts about Enro's range. He suspected the dictator needed a distorter system to gather images at multiple-parsec distances. Secoh had used such a system, and it seemed a safe assumption that Secoh's shadow-being projection was a phenomenon related to Enro's clairvoyance.

The dictator continued, “The only reason why I delayed spraying your planet with radioactive isotopes was that my divine sister was holding herself hostage there, if you take my meaning.”

When they were halfway between the two buildings, Gosseyn simply stopped walking and the technicians and Secoh continued. They turned a leafy corner and were gone.

Gosseyn said, “You found out about the shadow-substance mechanism in the Crypt of the Sleeping God by listening to the psychiatrists here interview Secoh.”

Enro said, “Don't be absurd. Secoh told my parents about the machine when he first found it. That is why my father, Ajjan the Wise, struggled so long to maneuver Secoh into a position of more influence in the Crypt. Once he murdered his way into a high position, Cousin Secoh was able to arrange to have me placed in one of the medical coffins as part of an ancient ceremony when I was but a baby. Later, when I was an ambitious young planetary governor, Secoh murdered his way all the way to the Chief Guardianship. Do you think such a thing could happen on my world unknown to me?”

“But you said you didn't know who the Follower was!”

“Yes. So I
said.
I am gratified to note that you assume
everything I say is truth. Would that my own subjects were so trusting! But they believed that the Divine Emperor had nothing to do with the shadow-being that slew the priests disloyal to me. I would not confess otherwise even to my court, or in private. We never know who is listening, do we?”

A dry chuckle.

The dictator said lightly, half to himself, “Oh, that is wry, coming from me, isn't it? I should change the motto under my dynastic crest.”

Gosseyn looked around, both with his eyes and with his extra brain. There was no one nearby, no pulse of nerve energy to indicate someone hiding in the brush. Secoh was a safe distance away, in a shielded building.

Gosseyn said, “Who are you waiting for?”

A dry chuckle. “Surely that is obvious. Lavoisseur. I am curious to see if your creator will intervene when I dispose of you.”

“Lavoisseur is dead. Thorson killed him.”

“Oh, come now, Mr. Gosseyn. I understand you come from a planet with no laws, but are the basic principles of government power unknown to you? Agents are disposable; masters are not. According to my spies, Lavoisseur created two duplicates of himself. One was the cripple who Thorson thought was the chief of your Semantics Institute on Earth, the man you knew as X, who was shot by Prescott. The other was you. My spies were wrong. There were three duplicates. The third …”

“The third?”

“The third was the man seen by Thorson, killed by him; and with his death, all links to your original creator and the secret of deathlessness are severed. All clues are destroyed. Surely the advanced science of psychology for which your world is famous could detect that there is one thought so obvious that it should have occurred to you at once, Mr. Gosseyn. At once! Except that you were designed with a mental block, a subconscious interference that prevents you from thinking it.”

“You are saying the third man, the one I saw die, was not the real Lavoisseur. He was another X. Another Gosseyn. Another expendable spare body.”

Gosseyn was remembering that the dying man's last words to him had been to assure him that there was no Chessplayer behind him, no mysterious figure manipulating his life. Those words had convinced Gosseyn to cease seeking his origin.

“Even now you do not see it. Amazing! I am saying he was as much the ‘real' Lavoisseur as you were the ‘real' Gosseyn. The first version of you, Gosseyn One, was gunned down on Earth. You are Gosseyn Two, who woke up on Venus. The artificial memories of Lavoisseur One held the crucial idea that there was no Cosmic Chessplayer behind his actions: an idea he passed on to you. His mission done, he was also gunned down. And so … where did Lavoisseur Two wake up?”

“Why do you assume he is still alive?”

“Oh, I do not. Not really. Because the Lavoisseur who created Lavoisseur One, the original and unknown Lavoisseur, perhaps had no more need for a Lavoisseur Two, and simply let that line die. Gosseyn Two he needed to corrupt Thorson's loyalty to me. But the Lavoisseur Zero, the Unknown, he is surely still alive. You don't see it, do you? You are an intelligent and curious man, Mr. Gosseyn. But you have one blind spot, placed in your mind by your creator. You are programmed to overlook clues leading back to your creator. A little over two years ago, the last and highly degenerate remnants of the extragalactics, the Primordial Men who fled from the Shadow Galaxy, stumbled across one of the asteroids where Gosseyn Three was held in a medical suspension capsule. An accident woke him prematurely. This just so happened to place a Gosseyn at the right place at the right time to quell the threat posed by the extragalactics. It was during my investigation of the extragalactic men and their technology that Gosseyn Three, with no warning or formality, teleported me to a remote asteroid
prison. I recall the incident well. So very well. Now ask yourself why this astronomical coincidence happened.”

Gosseyn said nothing.

Enro continued in an amiable tone, “I admire the economy of his moves. Lavoisseur Zero is clearly one of the Primordial Men, perhaps the last of them. I require his knowledge and technology to serve me. So far, I have been content to leave you alive, hoping you would lead me back to him. He has not seen fit to contact you. Surely you wish to find him?”

“I hardly have any reason to cooperate with you, Enro.”

“You have no reason to be loyal to him, do you? He created Gosseyn One for the express purpose of dying, merely as a stunt, to impress Thorson. So much blood, just for a gesture. No, Lavoisseur does not care if you live.”

“Lavoisseur, if he is alive, would not want the secrets of his technology in your hands.”

“Nonetheless, you will help me find him, willingly, in life, or unwillingly, by your death.”

“You are asking me to join you?”

“To serve me, yes.”

“I refuse, of course.”

“Is my cause so ignoble? Since the dawn of time men have yearned for universal empire, and dreamed of the end of all wars.”

“Imperium obviates the need for external wars, but the civil wars and revolutions are just as bloody, or more so. Even decent men are trapped by the need to betray or be betrayed; armistice and honorable surrender are impossible to rebels.”

“Nonsense!” Enro's tone was dismissive. “If the Empire is well run, there will be no rebellions. If the Emperor is immortal, there will be no wars of succession. If he is clairvoyant and prescient, there will be no chance of conspiracy against him. There will be one law, eternal and all-powerful.”

“Enforced by whom? Unless there is universal agreement
on the principles behind the government, there can be no universal peace. Only a scientific principle has the necessary objective truth behind it: such as Null-A neurolinguistic psychology.”

“Oh, I have plans along those lines, Mr. Gosseyn,” Enro said airily. “But come now! I am not unreasonable! I offer a temporary partnership: You wish to find your creator for your reasons, and I for mine. We cooperate until our interests no longer intersect. Surely that is preferable to immediate, painful, and permanent death?”

Gosseyn said, “Very well. I agree.”

“I will wait while you get a lie detector to confirm that for me. From the Institute, please! I do not trust the lie detectors used by the Nireni police.”

So Gosseyn walked back into the building. As he expected, it was deserted. The fires had been extinguished in Secoh's room. There was a bank of lie detectors built into the wall: Gosseyn opened a panel and touched one.

“Confirm that I am sincerely willing to help Enro find Lavoisseur, if he is alive. I believe the attempt will be futile; if Lavoisseur allows himself to be found, it will only be under such conditions as will defeat Enro's schemes. I also honestly believe that Enro, even knowing that I have these mental reservations, will not be psychologically able to believe that he has no chance of success.”

Again the dry chuckle came from the phone. “I see we understand each other, Mr. Gosseyn.”

But the lie detector said, “The subject is sincere on a conscious level, and speaks what he believes to be the truth; however, on an unconscious level, he is consumed with rage and jealousy, to the point where he intends to kill Enro at the earliest opportunity. The subject regards Enro as a rival for the love of Patricia Hardie, his wife.”

Gosseyn yanked his hand away from the unit. “Enro! If you overheard my conversation with Daley, you know those emotions came from an exterior source.”

Enro said slowly, “My spies tell me that the way
Lavoisseur made sure you came to Thorson's attention was to have the false memory that you were married to my sister placed in your brain. I had been assuming this was merely a surface delusion, like a hypnotic suggestion. Lie detector! Did he touch her? Does this baseborn infidel vermin remember touching my sister's divine flesh with his filthy hands?”

Gosseyn crushed the phone in his fist, but it was too late. The machine had heard the words and responded, “Subject memories include many instances of an erotic congress with his wife after their honeymoon, which are neither delirium nor fantasy, but neither do they seem to be true memories of this body….”

Enro was apparently not listening to the qualifications. If he had any last words or threats to accompany his attack, Gosseyn, broken telephone in hand, did not hear them.

The room around Gosseyn turned to black mist and swirled away from him in all directions. He still felt the solid floor underfoot, but his eyes beheld the cratered landscape and the wild seas of the twin-sun world of Ur. Where Enro had been standing now a shadow-figure loomed, eyes burning. Enro had no need to move to a position to put Gosseyn between him and his projection: The projection was all around Gosseyn, and above, and below.

Gosseyn felt the intolerable pain of space-time being distorted around him. The shock of death came faster than he could consciously react.

He felt his extra brain acting of its own accord, automatically.

Darkness.

He woke naked between the satin sheets of a four-poster bed. Dazzling pale sunlight shined from the marble floor and was reflected by the ornamental carvings in the painted ceiling. Seated before a vanity mirror in a sheer negligee was a woman brushing her brown hair, which shined like polished amber. The mirror was one of
those television types that could show the room at any angle: The image held both the seated woman and the bed where Gosseyn stirred.

She turned. Her eyes sparkled playfully, and her white teeth flashed in a mischievous smile as she said, “Well, well, sleepyhead! It is about time you woke up!”

It was Patricia.

The function served by a tool can be inferred by its design.

Gosseyn saw the gun when he started to sit up. Patricia half-turned in her seat, hairbrush still in one hand. In her other hand, shining like a jewel, was an electric-voltage pistol of powerful design.

Gosseyn noted abstractly that it was a Lady Colt 1.6 megavolt. The gun she bought on Earth, in Cress Village. But those memories were false.

Weren't they?

Noticing the direction of his stare, Patricia smiled slightly and inclined her head toward the deadly weapon held in her slender, rock-steady fist. “A woman can't be too careful. Last time we were alone in my bedroom, you tied me up and gagged me. You're a dangerous man.”

He said, “At that time, you were Patricia Hardie, member of a conspiracy to destroy Null-A. Who are you now?”

She flipped on the pistol's gyro, so it would continue to point at Gosseyn, and turned on the pinpoint microphone in the grip, so she could fire by voice command. The pistol balanced itself on the back of her chair and continued to cover him. This freed up her hands to continue putting her hair up.

She said casually, “Reesha. Her Radiant, Divine, and Imperial Majesty, the Gorgzin and Holy Imperatrix
Reesha vor Ptathrandu of the House of Gorgzid, Bride of the Sleeping God, Shepherdess of the People, August Mother of the Greatest Empire Ever to Exist in Time and Space, Protectress of the Mirabel Cluster, Grand Duchess of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud and the Stars beyond the Hercules Nebula, Sovereign Queen Absolute of all the stars, systems, and constellations of the Seventh Decant. I've got a dozen other titles to go with it. It's quite a mouthful.”

“At that time, your bedroom wall was the one holding the mechanism that had driven the Games Machine insane, and forced it to select your father—the man pretending to be your father—as President of Earth, instead of a qualified candidate. Even then, I should have wondered why the President of Earth would put himself in the position where his so-called daughter, by wrecking one unprotected machine, could send him to a criminal-psychiatric ward.”