Null-A Continuum (19 page)

Despite their stiff postures, Gosseyn could see an eager glitter in their eyes, a foxlike avarice, which they could only partly hide. These men were keyed up.

The one on the far left pointed through the transparent wall at a section of the airlock floor near Gosseyn. At this gesture, a small hatch slid back and a machine in the niche beyond focused its lenses on Gosseyn. Gosseyn recognized it as a language imprinter.

Rather than remove his helmet to expose his brain for the imprinter, Gosseyn turned on his external loudspeaker: “Can we converse in the language of Accolon or Nirene?”

The second from the left replied, “Welcome to Corthid, central planet of the Interstellar League. We represent the Unit Vathirid of Organization Vathir, and, by extension, we represent the interests of the Corthidian Unity. Right now, we are examining how to exploit you. We have already rejected the option of executing you and taking your extraordinary battle-suit as salvage as being an option of limited imagination. What have you to offer us?”

Gosseyn, who had been expecting some terrific struggle with soldiers of the Greatest Empire, said in surprise, “The planet below us is Corthid? I was assuming it to be a base of Enro's.”

The six exchanged wry glances. Another man, the third from the left, now spoke: “What is the empirical basis of that assumption?”

Gosseyn decided on a policy of openness. “I was brought into your area of space by a mutual enemy, whom I call X, an agent of Enro's. He attempted to similarize me to a location nearby, but the circuits in this suit automatically interrupted the distorter pattern involved before the transmission was complete.”

Again the six men exchanged rapid glances. Gosseyn wondered if they were communicating by some silent method.

“You have piqued our curiosity,” said the fourth man.
“Obviously, whatever interests us can interest other members of our larger group organization. There may be exploitation value here as news or entertainment. On what basis did you come here, a single person, to engage a military base of Enro?”

Gosseyn said, “If you are seeking some personal advantage from this situation, put the safety of yourself and your planet first! Are there military authorities here?”

There was a flicker of smiles among the sly-faced men gathered there. “We are all members of the militia,” said the fifth man, shrugging. “The government, in peacetime, only acts as the umpire to see that we settle our wagers as promised.”

“Our organizations each police themselves,” said the sixth man, the one on the far right. “We would take it as a sign of your peaceful intent if you would put off your armor. Come now! The six of us have staked our lives on the wager that you will not open fire or force us to open fire. We could have hammered you with torpedoes from a distance: The cousin unit in our organization, Vathnogrod, wagered that we would come to regret not doing exactly that. Surely you want to see their wager lost! Cooperate with Unit Vathirid and we can share the profit with you. Our unit will be raised in value, and their unit will be depressed.”

Gosseyn decided there was no use trying to hide his identity. He selected a spot of hull next to where the speaker was standing, made a mental “photograph” of it to the depth of several molecules, and similarized himself to it, leaving the armor standing empty.

Rather than appearing startled or alarmed, the six men merely seemed amused. The sixth man said, “An interesting method: no need to open the suit.” He turned to the others and said, “Clearly his weapons can operate across space regardless of intermediary objects, barriers, or distances.”

At that moment, a door opened near Gosseyn. Two women, as alike as twin sisters, dressed in white, stepped
out. They were pale skinned and dark haired, with large, night-adapted eyes. Without a word, they stepped close to Gosseyn and began removing the medical appliances and recording boxes taped to his skull and spine. The two nurses (so Gosseyn assumed them to be) placed the instruments carefully on a table nearby.

He noticed that the women had the proper tools, calibrated to the proper standard-Venus fittings, to remove the surgical probes without any difficulty.

Gosseyn said, “I am trying to imagine how you run a society where everyone is lucky. Your callidetic sciences apparently enable you to launch ships on perfect trajectories to match the course and speed of tiny moving bodies at remote distances and to be prepared to meet with potentially dangerous visitors from other stars. I have heard it described as a type of observation system, but my own hunch is that it is a time-energy effect, perhaps like what a Predictor of Yalerta does, but on an unconscious level.”

The man on the far left spoke: “Because of the cultivation of the callidetic talent among our peoples, we are quick to recognize, in the pattern of events, opportunities for advancement and exploitation. The group-surety system acts as a check, if you will, on what otherwise would be dangerous ambitions among us.”

“Group-surety?”

“The whole unit is punished if one of us oversteps the social norms.”

Gosseyn said, “The system would seem to discourage individual initiative.”

The man on the far left smiled wryly, a very foxlike expression. “That is precisely its purpose. Individualism leaves the society incapable of coherent group action, and vulnerable to ambitious individuals using clever misinformation systems.”

One of the women Gosseyn had thought to be a nurse stepped in front of the man talking and spoke: “The Corthid culture has risen to galactic predominance because
of what outworlders call our luck, which is actually no more than a talent for recognizing significant patterns in apparently chaotic events.”

Gosseyn noticed that the woman's eyes glittered with energetic personality: cunning and excited. He now recognized that look: the intensity of someone addicted to risk.

By speaking to him the woman was engaged in some dangerous gamble.

Meanwhile, the second woman had opened the medical cases and was examining Gosseyn's brain recordings. Gosseyn was startled at the casual invasion of his privacy. But this second woman spoke without looking up: “You can see why we must organize ourselves into a flexible yet coherent social structure: We must exploit advantages when they appear, acting as a team, quickly and without friction.”

She looked up, exchanging glances with the men. Gosseyn suspected how the callidetic talent could allow them to exchange silent messages: She was sizing up her allies, predicting how the rest of the unit would react, relying on her “luck” to tell what the others would do if she seized the initiative. All the members of the group were using this method, keeping each other in view, trying to guess which way they would jump.

The second woman nodded to the first, who turned and said, “Gilbert Gosseyn! We have decided to deal with you on the same basis as we would negotiate with a sovereign interplanetary power. Your ability to disturb the patterns of fate is equal in magnitude, at least, to that of Enro the Red, even were his entire military empire restored to his command.”

One of the men stepped forward and said, “For the moment, the warrants for your arrest from Accolon and Gorgzid we will ignore. We are throwing in with you.” His glance toward the two women made Gosseyn realize that the six men, perhaps a different “unit” in this fluid
social structure, had decided to allow the two women to seize control and were now following their lead.

Gosseyn realized the psychological pressures merely of the day-to-day life in such a society would be immense. Any misstep, real or feared, any moment of hesitation or doubt, and the initiative would be seized by someone luckier or more ruthless. Added to this was the continuous doubt whether one would be punished for some failure by another person in the unit or organization; there would be a constant pressure to stay alert and abandon any units about to be punished for failure.

There were quick introductions: The men were named O-Vath, E-Vath, Wu-Vath, Ai-Vath, Ah-Vath, and Y-Vath. The women were Evana and Yvana. At the moment, Yvana had seized the leadership role.

Gosseyn said, “You said you represented both your organization and also the general Corthid government? How do you resolve conflicts between the two?”

Yvana replied, “If you choose to deal with our unit, you will be wagering your prestige that the rest of Corthid will accept to be bound by what our unit decides. If our unit is successful, the other organizations will fall in line with our policy; otherwise, they will repudiate us, and we will suffer, as well as you. If you treat with us as if we represent Corthid, your fate is tied to our group fate.”

Gosseyn realized that he had been assuming that, like the other galactics he had met, these people would be organized into a hierarchy: one of them the ship's captain, the others his crew. A foolish assumption. From the casual way they spoke, Gosseyn realized their mental and social habits were more flexible than that: Whoever was the “luckiest” among them, the quickest to turn events to his advantage, would be in the leadership role for so long as his luck held out.

There was something familiar about such an approach.

Gosseyn said, “You have a Games Machine here on Corthid, don't you?”

At that moment, a loudspeaker clattered to life in the room. “There is a message from the Hidden Capitol. The Safety Authority declares it is taking control of this case: All exploitation games must cease! All related wagers are held in abeyance until further notice. Escort Gilbert Gosseyn to the planet surface, to speak with Illverton.”

The eight cunning-eyed, sly-faced individuals in the chamber, the six men and two women, sagged with disappointment.

GOSSEYN was allowed up on the bridge to watch the landing. The bridge canopy was an enormous transparent dome, giving an unobstructed view in every direction: Amplifier screens just below the canopy were tuned to a number of different frequencies and showed the X-ray, radio emission, and infrared patterns of the surrounding universe. On one screen was an image of the gravity-waves, and this showed a black, smoky shape smothering several stars in one direction.

Gosseyn nodded toward that image. “Enro has begun destroying solar systems. What lies in that direction?”

E-Vath answered, “Many of the most highly populated planets of the Sixth Decant of the Galaxy used to be there. The spread of the shadow-matter cloud that swallowed the central systems will not be visible, from this location, for another ninety centuries; since the shadow itself is a faster-than-light effect, it overtakes any visible images of itself as it spreads. However, the influence on the space-time metric propagates at similar speeds, and so gravity-wave instruments can pick it up.”

Gosseyn tried to imagine the magnitude of the catastrophe: billions of lives snuffed out as planets and suns lost their coherent matter-energy states. Even with a highly organized evacuation, there were simply not enough ships to move whole continents of people into space, and the Shadow Effect rendered nearby distorter traffic unreliable.

Enro's doing. The great dictator had begun his next program of mass murder with the same callous efficiency as the last galactic war: Only now the weapon was a force of nature destroying the fabric of time and space.

The Corthid ship was entering the atmosphere, and the canopy overhead turned rosy-pink with reentry heat. In moments, the great dark curve of the world had flattened from a globe to a horizon, so that nocturnal landscape was spread below. In the dim light of two moons, Gosseyn could detect rough terrain below or perhaps (in the dimness it was difficult to see) merely clouds, but there was no light, no evidence of cities.

Dawn broke suddenly over a landscape of red crags tinged with white frost as the ship sped across the terminator to the dayside of the planet. There was nothing below but empty waste.

O-Vath explained, “Corthid is an ancient world, the eldest world inhabited by man. Our records stretch back over twelve million years. The atmosphere long ago lost its protective chemical-electrical properties, and the oceans evaporated to space. The surface has not been habitable for a quarter-million years: Our peoples removed their civilization underground during the many centuries long before that.”

Even as he spoke, the ship came to a cavern mouth two miles across. Down into a half-mile-wide bore fell the ship. Here were scattered lights, for built into the sides and floor of the round shaft were installations and barracks, looking small and doll-like in the distance.

Gosseyn's extra brain detected charges of energy running through the stone. Miles of rock had been artificially degravitized.

The bore was not straight, nor was it short. First on one heading, then on another, for many minutes and many miles, the ship sped on. Deeper and deeper beneath the crust of the planet they traveled.

The bore opened into vastness. They sunk into an
underground world. Above them, like a sky, was the solid roof of weightless stone, and suddenly below them, bright from the light of countless floating lamps, were the cities and farmlands of Corthid. The lit areas were gathered around buried cisterns large as oceans, connected by canals as large as rivers.

The cavern space was huge beyond the reach of sight. The lights were gathered high above the well-tilled robot-worked farms and rice paddies, plashes of green against a dark stone background. But the same lights were gathered low above the avenues and courtyards of the metropolitan areas, giving them a jewel-like, nighttime look. Since the crust of the planet overhead was artificially made weightless, there was no danger of collapse, no matter how large the cavern system grew.

Degravitized matter was unstable on a fundamental wave-level, so that the approach of any ordinary matter set the gravityless particles into agitation. Any time a ship appeared within light-years of the planet, the planet surface itself would act as one gigantic detection array, and the gravity reaction was not limited by the speed of light. The crust also protected them against all but atomic bombardment of planet-destroying magnitude. It was an elegant system.