Null-A Continuum (44 page)

GOSSEYN, in his armor, hung near the cragged gray rock of Phobos, observing with grim horror the images of his near future. In a moment, the shadow-form would emerge from the glare of burning Mars. The information flows in his brain were still connected, by distorter link, to the Games Machines of Corthid and Venus, and the phalanxes of expert Nexialists and No-men and Callidetics and Null-A's were examining the galaxy-wide data flow from the Sphere of Accolon.

It was, after all, still a hierarchy of perception, no different in principle from the hierarchy of the man's nervous system. Here he had a perception that led to certain disaster: He needed to set in motion something like a Null-A pause, so that the unspoken assumptions underlying what he was perceiving would be laid bare.

He addressed the Nexialist coordinator and explained his notion of a Null-A pause. “Dr. Connelin,” he continued, “I am perceiving a future where X can not only similarize matter-energy while in his shadow-form but also do it to at least forty decimals of accuracy, which is nineteen orders of magnitude above my capacity. Somewhere in the mass of data of the memorized galaxy is the information we seek, but it is being lost because of a priority placed on certain information values by the Games Machines as they process the Accolon Sphere energy connections running through me. We need the higher centers of awareness to become consciously aware of what the lower centers processing the information in an automatic fashion are doing….”

Connelin said, “Dr. Hayakawa has an idea on how to do it: We are setting up relays of Callidetics and No-men to examine the data flow for anomalies, using neurological equipment to stimulate their specialized brain centers. Stand by….”

Now that one vision had located the asteroid where his next body was kept, Gosseyn similarized it to the farthest location in time-space he could reach with the Sphere network currently under his control. Then he looked at the future again: the end result of ten, twenty, fifty, two hundred possible futures … the end of every timeline radiating forward from this spot showed his next body destroyed in a wash of disintegrating darkness when it began to wake.

No matter where the asteroid was moved, the youth was there the moment it arrived. No point in the surrounding stars, not even in the Magellanic Clouds now orbiting the strangely intersecting collision of the Milky Way and Andromeda, was far enough.

Every future Gosseyn could see ended in death.

The future where he distorted to another location, of course, was a blur to him.

Dr. Connelin spoke, her voice tense and low: “The preliminary results are bad: Systems of distorter machines,
built by someone with an expert knowledge of Null-A technology, have been identified as interfering with the hierarchical priority calculations of seven hundred of the Games Machines. This is exploiting certain limitations built into the original mental architecture of the first Games Machine. Wait…. The Machines are recalculating at a basic level.”

Yvana interrupted, “We've stumbled across the clue you want. He must be using the Sphere system of the Shadow Galaxy to increase the range of his clairvoyance, and whatever calculation machinery the Primordials left behind allows for his more exact similarization fit, his forty-decimal-point accuracy…. Also, there may be several thousands of Loyalty Machines throughout the Greatest Empire and worlds where the Cult has temples, simply outnumbering our calculation capacity….”

Gosseyn said, “I can see his shadow-form manifesting about one hundred yards away, between me and Mars—”

The voice of Enosh, the No-man, interrupted, “It's your Chessplayer. That's the forbidden topic. The Games Machines were programmed to direct your attention away from the conclusion of your conversation with Reesha of Gorgzid.”

Patricia's voice rang over the earphones of his suit helmet: “That cannot be Lavoisseur, not X or any other version! That's not how he acts! That uniform, those little victory speeches … that's why, when he killed the League members, he shot the lie detector….”

Peter Clayton, the Venusian detective, said, “One set of clues we've overlooked…. I am having the Games Machine on Earth trigger a nerve cluster in your extra brain, connecting you to the planet Nirene…. If he is using a distorter circuit to amplify his range, one of them must be hidden somewhere on the grounds of the Semantics Institute of Nirene, where Secoh is being held…. Got it…. It was hidden in the phone…. Dr. Hayakawa and his team are looking at it now—”

Connelin interrupted, “There is no need to examine
the physical machine, since Stability Sphere data contains a pattern of all the material objects in the galaxy. One of the No-men has reverse-engineered the circuit by intuitive analysis. Someone tell Empress Reesha to finish her sentence as soon as we get Gosseyn out of this death trap.”

The calm, cool voice of the Games Machine, or one of them, came on: “Mr. Gosseyn, when your opponent establishes an energy connection with you, he must place part of his shadow-substance into phase with your frame of reference. We can attempt to synchronize with the incoming beam, and backtrack through his special long-range distorter system, and therefore reach to his setup in the Shadow Galaxy. We have no other way to reach the Primordial starship he used to reach the Shadow Galaxy, the so-called Crypt of the Sleeping God.”

“Do I need to wait till he opens fire?” asked Gosseyn.

“No,” replied the Machine. “Any energy path can serve.”

The shadow-figure flicked a radio-beam into Gosseyn's helmet. “So Gilbert Gosseyn comes to his futile end, having never discovered his origin or his purpose….”

But Gosseyn was already gone.

To think is to abstract.

Gosseyn opened his eyes. He was lying supine. About four inches before his eyes he saw the transparent metal sections of the inner lid of the Crypt of the Sleeping God of Gorgzid. Gosseyn's extra brain could sense, all around him, the complex energies of the thought-circuits of the Observer.

The pressure of the thousands of Games Machines, the surge of a galaxy-wide volume of information, was no longer in him. The voices of the staff of four institutions of specialized scientific thought, No-men, Null-A's, Nexialists, and Callidetics, were no longer in him. He was cut off.

He raised his fingers to fumble at the inside of the transparent coffin-lid, searching for a release.

Silently in his brain appeared the command:
Wait. If you open the lid, I will be out of contact.

Gosseyn said, “The last time I was in this crypt, I had to be asleep for your thought-waves to reach me.”

You have developed since that time. The evolution of life is a process of channeling the overwhelming complexity of the signals surrounding an organism into meaningful sense-categories; the evolution of the mind is the process of overcoming those categorical limits. Higher forms can comprehend and react to more complete mental pictures of the environment without being overwhelmed. Because of your development, your nervous system is more integrated, and the confusion of your conscious mind no longer drowns out the messages to which your midbrain and hindbrain are sensitive.

Gosseyn allowed himself a moment of curiosity: “Why can you only attune thought-messages to such buried nerve paths? If you made a similarity connection with the cortex, anyone would hear you, awake or asleep.”

Your nervous system resembles that of your remote ancestors only in the older, less flexible, brain sections. The primate cortex mutated over the eons, and no longer matches my specific compatibility. My circuits were designed to mesh with the Primordial Humans, which your modern subspecies only partly resembles.

Gosseyn remembered seeing archeological evidence that Cro-Magnon and other primitive forms of man actually had the same brain-mass as
Homo sapiens,
merely more tightly knit, with a preponderance of brain matter in the rear of the skull. Oddly, that was where Gosseyn's
extra brain resided. The assumption that those forms were simpler merely because they were older was one science could not definitively confirm.

But no matter. “You told me the original Chessplayer, the original gods, died long ago. Are you still receiving orders from him?”

I am not able to answer that question.

“Interesting that you phrase it that way.”

It is within my allowed scope of discretion to phrase my sentences in any way that does not contradict a specific order or directive.

“Secoh claims you deceived me about several important matters. He became the Follower under your orders and direction, not by accident, as you told me. Why did you lie?”

I am not able to answer that question.

Gosseyn was momentarily silent, for a sense of awe came upon him. This entity, this machine, was surely the oldest self-aware being in existence. It survived the two-hundred-million-year-ago migration from the Shadow Galaxy, nursing the sole wounded survivor of the trip while the dust and soil of Gorgzid settled upon it, burying it. And still it waited, until a later generation of semicivilized peoples, mining deep, found the hull and thought it was the dome of a temple….

Except that if Patricia had told the truth, none of that happened by accident. And there was at least one being, still alive, as old as this unthinkably ancient machine. Someone who had maneuvered to preserve this machine through all the passing centuries intact. Why?

“You told me that Lavoisseur landed on a different ship, not this one. And yet now that the Sleeping God is dead, Lavoisseur is the only survivor of the Migration, and you conspired to bring him into this crypt, but he was wary of you….”

Allow me now to correct that falsehood: I attempted to bring him into my medical unit so that I might continue repairs on him. He was also changed by the Shadow
Effect, and his personality and actions became unpredictable. He was wary of me because he did not wish to resume his former state of mind.

Gosseyn's attention was arrested by the word “unpredictable.” He had been assuming that the action of his secondary brain naturally blocked the prediction power. Apparently, it was not natural. The Primordials, a whole race of men with highly evolved double brains, had not had that particular side effect. Only him.

Could it be a specific application of some attunement to the shadow itself? The Shadow Effect could block prediction by disturbing the future-to-past identity connections used by the Yalertans.

Gosseyn imagined that the Primordials, like the Yalertans, had depended heavily on the prediction power to maintain their social order, deter crimes before they occurred, prevent frauds, and so on. Surely they, and the machine they built, would react defensively to anyone suddenly developing the ability to blind them.

“You didn't force him?”

My directives sharply limit when I may use force on a patient under my care. Patients may refuse treatment. I have more latitude when circumstances require I defend them.

“Secoh said you wanted me to kill the Sleeping God because you were weary of the burden of guarding and sustaining him.”

It is inaccurate to attribute to me motives typical of biological organisms. I do not grow weary. Recall that I asked you to kill Secoh, not to incapacitate him. When I released my patient to your care, I had not anticipated that you would provoke Secoh into destroying my patient. I would not have been permitted to release my patient into your care had I known your intention.

“Why didn't you stop me? You said you can act to protect your patients. No, let me ask a more important question: Why did you release your patient at all?”

I am not allowed to answer that question. My orders
and directives are organized in a flexible non-Aristotelian logic hierarchy, allowing me to avoid positive and absolute judgments, and to assess facts with multiple-valued inductive logic rather than simple binary logic. Hence authorities that I am bound to obey can restrict areas where I would otherwise have discretion.

“You were told not to interfere with me? Even when I endangered one of your patients, you could not act to stop me.”

It was a general order, and it was ambiguous enough to allow me to interpret it to cover you.

“Who gave the order?”

You did.

An interesting response. Gosseyn asked
the
question.

“Who am I?”

You are Ptath, the second of my original four charges.

“And why did I order you not to interfere with me?”

As previously stated: You grew wary of my attempts to trick you into reentering the medical coffin, because you did not wish to be repaired….

“That wasn't me. That was Lavoisseur.”

I am required at this point to ask you for clarification of that last statement. Am I allowed to interpret this as speculation on your part, which is to say, you have uttered the declarative statement expressing an opinion about your identity, or am I required to interpret that statement as an order, which is to say, you have uttered an imperative command to regard orders coming from Ptath, and directives concerning him, not to apply to you while you remain in your present condition?

Gosseyn was silent a moment, thinking through the ramifications of that statement. Very interesting. He said slowly, “If I were to ask you to use your discretion to interpret my last comment, how would you interpret it?”

Generally, I seek to minimize possible conflicts of priority within my hierarchy of directives.

“You would follow the path of least resistance?”

That's one way of putting it.

“What would happen if I asked you to interpret the comment as a command?”

I would expel you from the medical coffin, and lower your priority in my hierarchy of directives, and stand by for further orders from an authority.