Null-A Continuum (36 page)

Anslark evidently meant
everyone in the chamber, including himself.
Patricia answered before Gosseyn could speak.

She said, “We're friends.” She looked over at Gosseyn's shadow-form and sniffed. “Sort of.” Patricia holstered her weapon, and she smiled an arch smile.
“Gilbert and I have kind of an on-again off-again relationship.”

Patricia coolly opened her bejeweled cigarette case and drew out a lit cigarette, her eyes surveying Anslark. She said offhandedly to a green-eyed brunette standing nearby, “Anrella, shoot Mr. Gosseyn if he solidifies.”

“Anslark, hold your fire,” Gosseyn said, “Patricia, this prevents me from blocking Enro's Predictors.”

Patricia gave a silvery little laugh. “The Predictors are the least of your worries.”

“Tell me where Enro is. Does he know that an extradimensional superbeing called the Ydd is using him to destroy the continuum?”

Patricia shook her head. “Let's not talk about him now. You have other business you should be seeing to, Gilbert.”

Gosseyn thought that was curious. Was she warning him that they were under observation? “Patricia, was your brother able to watch the Follower remotely? I have been assuming he could not, because the Follower successfully conspired against him once.”

She said briefly, “Don't underestimate him!”

Gosseyn had been hoping the blur he created over the Predictors' vision across time might also blur Enro's clairvoyance across space. But photons were easier to similarize than other particles, and space was easier to breach than time. Her comment was as plain as she dared speak in Enro's hearing.

Anslark said, “I hate to interrupt, but what is going on here? Which side is Reesha on?”

Gosseyn's shadow-form could not show expression, but there was a slight shrug of the smoky outlines of his shoulders. “In the past she has to me seemed consistently to act in the interests of Null-A, while also working toward the benefit of the Gorgzid people, though not the Imperial government.”

Anslark said, “I notice you qualified that statement.”

Patricia said in a lilting drawl, “He's from Venus. They qualify all their statements.”

She turned toward Anslark and bent her head in a regal nod of greeting. “My dear Prince Anslark: It is a pleasure to hear the voice of Your Highness once again. I was most grieved at reports of your death, and am delighted to find that they are false.”

“Your Divine and Imperial Majesty,” said Anslark. He could not bow with his arms held tight, but he returned the nod. There came a hiss of sparks at his hairline and jawline, and his flesh mask fell wetly to the floor, revealing the staring-eyed skull-face beneath. The women holding him flinched, and he yanked his arms free during the moment they were startled. Anslark stepped back, a nimbus of lightning crackling from his aura. The two women hesitated to grapple with him. Even in their neutralizing armor, it would have been like grabbing a live wire.

The women, some kneeling and some standing with legs spread, raised their energy-pistols. They held the pistols military-style, a two-handed grip. Others were covering Gosseyn.

Patricia called over the crackling roar of the lightning surrounding Anslark, “I would prefer not to demonstrate that our weapons are immune to your powers, O Prince. You won't be able to turn aside the bolts.”

“Nor you mine, Your Majesty.” The white fire around Anslark dimmed, and its roar sank to a menacing hiss. There could be no expression on the fleshless face of Anslark, but his voice held a note of surprise: “Is that Lady Inlith? And Yolendra of Yvar?”

Gosseyn noticed an anomaly. Why did Anslark betray surprise to find these other noblewomen here but not the Empress Reesha? What did he know about her that Gosseyn did not?

Patricia said, “These women were all forced to become the lovers of certain high officers in my brother's space navy, intelligence services, and court, so that he
could both reward and blackmail his men: It also allowed him the pleasure of grinding underfoot the pride of any of the ancient, noble houses of the Greatest Empire who refused to send their daughters to attend the Emperor at his morning bath.”

Interesting. Gosseyn noticed the same pattern here as before: A sexual neurosis was influencing what should have been purely political determinations in Enro's policy.

It was a pattern seen in many men suffering from the Violent Man Syndrome. Without the artificial support of their female victims, the whole structure of false belief surrounding their masculine superiority would collapse. Enro was a case where this syndrome was being played out on a gigantic level. Whole worlds of innocent people were dying, whole cultures annihilated, because one man could not control the un-sane demands of his thwarted sex instinct.

Gosseyn was once again appalled at how infantile, how self-destructive, it all was.

And now Patricia's finely chiseled aristocratic features grew hard and cold, and her hazel eyes flashed. “The Equalization drug—makes you the equal of a man—was developed here on Petrino: a crystalline manganese compound that combines with estrogen to allow a temporary tremendous increase in muscle pressure. Those officers regretted obeying Enro's orders once these ‘equalized' women joined me in the resistance. Each woman had the pleasure of determining the fate of the man who had forced himself upon her. Some were maimed or emasculated, others killed.”

One of the women spoke up: “In retaliation, Enro gave the order to have our families and home nations killed, or sent to the slave-worlds. If Secoh had not overthrown Enro in the last days before the surrender … But now that Enro is at large again, no one is safe.”

Anslark lowered his hands to his sides. His lightning failed; the chamber grew dark again. Anslark's voice
came out of the gloom: “I am sincerely sorry for your loss, Lady Rhianwy. If it is within my power, I will avenge your loss in Enro's blood.”

“Avenge your own loss!” came the voice of the lady who had spoken. “Don't you know what damage the shadow-ships have done against your home stars, just in the last forty hours?”

Anslark said, “Tell me.”

Patricia said, “Corthid was swallowed in the Shadow Effect. This was the signal for a general massacre. The war has begun. Nine of the original nineteen members of the Interstellar League have been decimated. Enro has brought back designs for the nonidentity machines from the dead galaxy. His hundreds of secret factory-planets, billions of work-slaves on each, have been toiling for months to produce the equipment. All throughout the Sixth Decant of the Galaxy, planets in the Corthidian Fellowship have vanished, above eleven thousand. Enro's ships appear, discharge a darkness onto the planet, and retreat, in a matter of moments. The Iron World of Fortineb where the fleet was gathered is lost, as well as the League capital worlds of Drasil, Ff, Vanardoon, Utternast, Illaanj, and Golden Xanthilorn … all destroyed, and their colonies, the republics or empires they rule, broken and demoralized. The shadow is spreading.”

Anslark said, “What of Dzan, Dzan of the myriad splendors?”

“Last I knew, your home world itself was safe, but the Dzan Protectorates and colony worlds in the M72 cluster, ninety-one hundred worlds, have been swallowed by the shadow, suns and whole solar systems eaten up. Your cousin King Indark committed suicide by pulling down a lightning bolt from the sky: The crown passed to your niece, Dsiryan the Beautiful, and she is contemplating surrender.”

Anslark said in a voice of shock, “What am I to do? The nine suns no longer shine on the diamond towers of Tentessil; the water-world of Oss is gone, and her unsounded
seas, as are the jeweled moons of Lallandur, where once I reigned as Duke.”

Patricia said, “You do have a better legal claim than your niece, Your Highness.”

“I am unsightly, Your Imperial Majesty; I have taken wages from the spy masters of the Interstellar League. No, I will never sit upon the Stormbolt Throne.”

Gosseyn had been listening quietly all this time, making minor adjustments to his shadow-body, to see if he could find a combination of energy-tensions that would allow his extra brain to operate in this strange condition. So far, he found none. Unless he departed, levitating through the ceiling and out of the range of the Amazon squad and their pistols, he dared not solidify. And until he learned more, he dared not depart.

He saw that Patricia was maneuvering to get Anslark to leave; he suspected he knew the reason why.

Patricia merely motioned to two of her women. “Escort His Highness to the spaceport. He will be wanting to return home, because Queen Dsiryan will need his support now. Gilbert, why don't you remind Prince Anslark that you can find him later?”

The grief-stricken Anslark spoke no farewells but allowed the gun-women to lead him away.

Gosseyn said to Patricia, “You're assuming that Enro just lost his picture of us?”

She said, “He cannot focus on you, not while you're a shadow. He needs a point in space, an object, a person that he can attune his clairvoyance to. Is that why you sent an uncoded message about Enro to the No-men of Accolon? You must have known Enro has spies among the Special Police of the League.”

“Actually, I thought Enro would simply send one of his own agents, not follow an agent of the League, like Anslark. Now that Anslark is not tailing me, why won't Enro just kill him?”

“Because, after all, you can find Anslark later, can't you? My brother might suspect a trick, but it will tempt
him to keep an eye on Prince Anslark, hoping to find you. Besides”—Patricia gave a little smile—”Anslark was quite handsome before his disfigurement, and he and I met at ambassadorial functions, and he paid me some flattering attention. Enro might still be jealous, and that will make him want to keep an eye on Prince Anslark, even now—”

Gosseyn interrupted, “Did Enro spare this planet because you were on it?”

Patricia frowned. “That's what I wanted to happen, but no. I failed here. X is making my brother smarter, less brutal.”

“He's going to destroy the planet anyway?”

Patricia laughed a sad little laugh. “This planet
is
destroyed. Do you think these xenophobes can cooperate rationally with the remaining League members to offer a defense against Enro? Their farms are burnt; their factories are idle.

“This world was once known for her intellectual achievements, her genius, her high civilization! And now: The Porgrave neural-readers are set to identify anyone with the Nexialist training. Nexialists, you see, are too educated to be blind to what madness this economic planning is, and the Loyalty Police are rounding them up. Students get shipped off to forced-labor camps on the polar islands. The Committee calls it aversion therapy. Professors and experts, the intellectual giants, are imprisoned not far from here.”

Gosseyn mentioned his run-in with the Petrino mind-paralysis robots. “I assumed at the time that they were meant to root out Null-A's. Does Nexialism form similar nerve paths between the thalamus and cortex as non-Aristotelianism?”

Patricia said, “Like Null-A, Nexialism is an attempt to break out of the primitive animal system of relating to reality. Obviously the Standardization Committee finds that untrained thinkers are easier to manipulate into voting
themselves into a trap … a trap from which there is no escape.” She continued, her voice growing bitter, “All the Loyalty Machine need do is see to it that a sufficient technical base remains to keep its remote units in operation. It does not matter what political or economic reforms they vote on, because the underlying psychology of the planet has been fixed in place. The Total Loyalty system will never fall, because it can never be questioned. The population will use all their ingenuity to maintain their mass-neurosis, no matter how conditions change. This is what happens when Null-A is misused.”

Patricia shivered slightly, frowned at her cigarette, and threw it down to the concrete, stamping it under the toe of her black boot.

Gosseyn said, “If Enro wanted to use his long-range assassination method on me, he would have done it when Anslark and I first met. So why should he kill me now? Or is there another reason why you think I should remain in this out-of-phase condition?”

Patricia said thoughtfully, “Now that is interesting. You actually do have blind spots built into your psychology, don't you?”

Gosseyn pondered the implications of that statement. “Let us assume for the sake of argument that Lavoisseur, using very advanced psychological techniques, created and organized my personality to have an inability to be interested in his actions and his origins. You seem to be implying that I should fear an immediate threat from him?”

“From that crazed version of Lavoisseur that used to call himself X, yes, of course. I'll always regret that I didn't get to put the bullet into his bald, crippled body. Prescott won that privilege. Now X is young and handsome and cruel again, and, ugh! You just don't seem to take the threat seriously. He has the memories, or most of them, of the man who designed you.”

Gosseyn said, “My plan had been to have Anslark
carry my sleeping body close enough to whatever poor soul X is possessing at the moment to trigger an exchange of thought-information. If he does not know I am coming, and does not know I have assumed the ‘lesser' pole of power, he won't know his thoughts are being read into me.”

“That is what I mean: You are assuming you can survive your next encounter with him. You won't. He will predict what you mean to do.”

“He cannot use his Predictor power to spy on me.”

“But he can use his brain power. What would you do, if it were you?”

Gosseyn was startled, because the answer to the question was obvious: X was unwilling to have Gosseyn die while in mental link with him, lest the cortical-thalamic integration of the Gosseyn memories be transmitted to and cure the thoughts of the older being. This meant one of two strategies. The first was to murder Gosseyn while he was insulated from the rest of the universe—and the trap on Corthid had been meant to do that. X knew by now that trap had inexplicably failed. Which implied a second strategy.