Null-A Three (24 page)

It turned out to be a door that wouldn’t open. Still following his new theory, Gosseyn turned back and walked rapidly in the opposite direction. The barrier that way was about 400 feet distant. And there was another door, yes. With the familiar looking mechanism. Two of them clicked, one after the other; and, when they did, the door swung open.

What he was looking at, then, was another corridor I at right angles to the one he had already traversed. Another decision to be made: he chose a right turn again. It was a wrong choice once more. But since, when he went back in the other direction; and that door opened on still another cross corridor, he had the opportunity of going left as his first decision. Went that way; and this time
it
was the wrong direction.

But that was his journey through more than a dozen silent corridors. At the end of each corridor a door either opened, or it didn’t. It was, in its fashion, a good test for discovering how much of the Leej-style predictor ability he had. His conclusion: he either had none, or very little. His choice was correct four times only; eleven times it was wrong. And in all those latter instances he had to retrace his steps, and then go into the distance of another empty hallway, silent except for the soft sound of his shoes on the soft floor surface.

Not once did he see a Troog. Empty, deserted, silent, huge spaceship—so it seemed; and solidly locked up against intruders, except for the doors that opened, and presumably guided him toward where someone wanted him to go.

There were some diversions. Along each side of each corridor at intervals, not evenly spaced, were wall shapes that—he assumed—were doors that led to rooms like the laboratory from which he had started on this tire-some journey.

At first, he passed them by, but presently he paused at each one and tried to work the mechanism.

They were all locked, and stayed locked.

After a while he had a thought: “. . . I suppose this could be a way of exhausting me physically—”

And, still, he could not persuade himself to test whether or not he could escape to some 20-decimal location.

The continuing ordeal brought another, and unexpected response: he felt less willing to help. As the minutes and the miles—it seemed like—went by, a thalamic reaction began. He had started along that first corridor, accepting that when he was finally able to confront his captors, he would do his best to help them to get back to their own galaxy. Now, the memory came that General Semantics rejected most automatic acceptances.

True, it seemed obvious that the aliens were entitled to return where they had come from. But it was not necessarily true. And so it was interesting that by way of exhaustion and irritation had come the realization that perhaps he had better re-examine his automatic decision.

Fortunately, he recognized those negative speculations for what they were; and so his irritation never grew into the huge rage that might have festered inside an old-style he-man.

The end of that long harassment came suddenly. It was as he glanced along what could have been another meaningless corridor, that he saw a splash of bright light about 250 feet to his left.

The appearance was of a doorway . . . open, not closed. And, in fact, after he had walked rapidly toward it, and then slowed, edged forward, and stood there carefully peering in, what he saw was a duplicate of the earlier private restaurant room, except—instead of the recognizable human beings—sitting around the table in that dimly lit room were about a dozen Troogs.

It took a little while, then. But presently Gosseyn realized that they were aware of him. His hesitation ended. And, remembering they expected aggressiveness, he walked in. He had already in that first look noticed that there was an unoccupied place at the table.

It was on the far side of the table. And he went around behind a half-dozen Troogs, and over to the empty place. What was different from that earlier restaurant meeting, and in its fashion, more respectful, instead of continuing to stand as if he were the important person—he sat down.

But his faraway thought was: how close to the end can you be? . . . And how fantastic that they would have a dinner meeting like this!

Think positive!—Gosseyn admonished himself.

Despite the negative feelings that still lingered from the long walk through empty corridors, the truth was he was here to solve everybody’s problem . . . if they would let him.

No one said anything; but the room was dark enough in that dim-lit way of many restaurants, so that diners could be aloof from each other. Thus, he had his chance to glance around at the strange beings, who had been so busy causing trouble ever since their arrival.

The positive approach suffered an immediate diminishment. They looked awful. It was the same reaction as when he had had his initial glimpse that time in the laboratory.

Gosseyn fought a silent battle against that automatic human tendency to apply human standards to appearance. Beauty—he recalled the ancient adage—is in the eye of the beholder.

After all, there was human-ness. Except that their faces were almost round, and purplish in color. And that the part of the neck that he could see was almost skeleton thin; but there seemed to be some fairly large bodies below. All arrayed in uniforms that glinted as if they were constructed of bits of metal.

The head, like the face, was round. And almost bald. There was an ugly something that resembled hair: a cluster of what seemed to be bristles poked up from the top center.

But that face: a small, almost lipless mouth, a strange little nose, and above, dominating everything, were two large, round eyes, with black pupils, but without eyebrows. There did seem to be several folds in the skin immediately above and below. His impression: the eyes could be closed.

Before he could look further, a door to his right opened; and five Troogs and one human being entered, carrying platters. The human being—a youth—came around to Gosseyn, and set in front of him what looked like an omelette, and the Troog waiters supplied all eleven of his tablemates with a dark glop of some kind.

As the waiters started to leave, for just one moment Gosseyn’s gaze and the human youth’s eyes met. What he saw was a haunted expression: darkness of soul, hopelessness. They were gone out of the door, all six of them; but the memory remained.

Everybody, including Gosseyn, ate. There was the scraping sound of his fork, and of the slightly different, almost knife-thin utensils of his hosts . . . for that smaller mouth.

Since they could have a human being aboard, presumably they could also have genuine eggs; and that’s what the omelette tasted like: the product of a real earth chicken.

What puzzled him was that he seemed to be hungry. Did the body experience more time in these journeys than was outwardly apparent?

Something to think about later.

Gosseyn Three put down his fork, and leaned back.

Sitting there, he saw that his dinner companions were, each separately, taking the final bites that completed the intake of whatever it was they had been eating. And they, also, thereupon leaned back in their chairs. There they were, then: all of them in that dimly lit duplicate of an earth restaurant. And his thought went back to the fact that they had made the effort to get him earth food. Somehow, the deeds of those millions of chickens back there . . . out there. . . had been observed: still surviving, although most of their eggs had been stolen from them day after day from earliest times.

. . . I wonder if I went to a Troog planet, would I make a point of noticing where they got that glop they ate here today?—

Looking back, he could not recall Gosseyns One and Two ever paying attention to the origin of the food on the planets where they had been: since other humans ate the stuff, so had they also.

His after-eating survey had been swift, but long enough. And so he had a strong feeling of relief when, directly across from him, one of the bulkier bodies stood up. For a long moment, the individual—presumably a leader—gazed at Gosseyn with those round, black eyes. And then, the tiny mouth under the tiny, slitted nose, said in a surprisingly normal, medium tenor voice: “As you are undoubtedly aware, something unfortunate happened. An entire shipload of the people who matter arrived in this galaxy, and in the process lost their ability to speak their own language, and instead acquired an equivalent ability to speak English, one of many languages spoken on the planet earth: but—and very significant this—your language.”

There was only one sentence in those introductory remarks that gave information Gosseyn did not already have:

. . .
The People Who Matter
. . .

It was an automatic acceptance of being better. All through human history on that singularly important planet of the solar system, there had been similar self-laudatory judgments by groups and by individuals, whereby the conclusion was forced upon them: somehow, they were superior.

Odd that, with all those brains, the Troogs had made such a huge project out of getting the help of the one person who possessed, somewhere in his head, the ability to assist them in their basic purpose.

As soon as possible he would tell them he was ready and willing. But even as he reiterated that thought within himself, the feeling came that the positive approach would run into problems.

Hard to know what? But if anyone could do it these people would find a way to negate what anyone from another race might try to do.

Fortunately, there were verities still.

The room, the table, the dishes, and those who had eaten—including himself—remained as they had been. The hidden source of light continued to shed the same dim illumination. The speaker was still standing; which seemed to promise more words would be spoken.

In fact, even as Gosseyn had the awareness, the human-like alien continued:

“Many of these developments are new, and have never before been observed. The implication is that our theory of the nature of the universe needs to be re-examined, and we shall seek an understanding that will include the new data.

“Our study—” he went on—“of that special section of your brain, has not yielded as much information as we need. Fortunately, you yourself have evidently finally realized that you could not escape from us; and so you have come here, presumably with one of those devious schemes, which we have noticed to be a common behaviour of those members of your kind in this galaxy, whom we have observed in their daily activities. I must warn you, therefore, that we are not easily deluded, and urge that you cooperate without mental, or other, reservations of any kind.”

With that, he performed a dangerous—it seemed to Gosseyn—physical feat. With only that thin neck to support the movement, he nodded the large head at the prisoner-guest, straightened the head again until it was once more balanced evenly above the body; and sat down.

Gosseyn remained where he was. He had a small feeling of an overwhelm. So many words had been spoken that he was aware of a need arising inside him to counteract, to defend, and point out, and, among other realities, to ask about the aggressive behavior of the Troogs; and other questions.

It took a long moment, then, to brace himself against those numerous little impulses. But he was finally able to exercise the necessary control, and to say, simply, “Sir, and gentlemen, you may count on my fullest cooperation.”

The silence that greeted his words was finally broken by a stirring movement: the old, human habit—it sounded like feet changing position, and making a shuffling noise in the process.

Then . . . the spokesman leaned forward. He did not get up; but when he spoke, his tone was accusing: “Don’t think for one minute that you can fool us with pretended cooperation. We are perfectly aware that you do not know how to deal with the damage that was done to that special part of your brain, whereby a reversal of some kind took place—and brought us here.” Gosseyn’s first reaction: it was definitely not a gracious acceptance of his offer. It also seemed to him that he could not entirely agree with the negative analysis of the situation. Surely, in those instants when he had been extra-careful, he had been able to control the deviant tendencies of the damaged nerve endings; and had, as one example, arrived safely aboard this ship, his intended destination; and had done so without deviation.

That part, of course, could be explained. But what additionally disturbed him about what the Troog had said, was a feeling that the speech was only partly for his benefit.

“. . . For some reason, he wants these onlookers to believe that he’s on the ball; that he’s handling one of those cagey characters from earth—me—in a no-nonsense manner, please notice, everyone—”

It was an oddly tense moment. And, sitting there, Gosseyn yielded to an impulse to shift his own body position before he spoke again.

He said, “I’m sure there must be a way by which we can convince each other that we actually need to cooperate for mutual benefit.”

He concluded as simply as possible, “Why don’t we set up a step by step program? And then, as we achieve each step in turn, we shall progressively gain confidence that all will be well.”

There was silence. The spokesman stared at him. His huge eyes had an odd, baffled expression in them. Sitting there, Gosseyn experienced a strange thought: could it be that this individual was not the chief authority?