Read Online Null-A Three by A.E. Van Vogt - Free Book Online Page A

best.
    He was glad, then, to see that everybody looked relieved, as the boy said, “Okay, later.”
    The young emperor thereupon turned to the man who had, in effect, whispered to Gosseyn to “let the emperor win”, and said in his boyish voice, but firmly, “Breemeg, find him living quarters in the—” it was one more new word; it sounded like “. . . palomar. And then—” the boy continued, “after he’s eaten, bring him to to the . . . Place.”
    That was the way that final word seemed to be pronounced: The Place.
    The courtier, Breemeg, was bowing. “Very well, your majesty, it shall be done immediately.”
    The young emperor was turning away. “That’s where I’ll be, myself.”
    Gosseyn stood quietly with the others, as the boy walked off into the alcove, and out of sight.
CHAPTER

6
    The journey to . . . Palomar . . . started out on the double. As if his guide, the suave courtier, Breemeg, realized, also—as had the other guides before him—that this interlude had better be brief.
    As he sped along another lengthy corridor at his fastest stride short of running, Gosseyn nevertheless took the time to glance at his companion. Breemeg’s profile, earnest, intent, had the same pointed, slightly over-sized nose as he had noticed in the others. The skin coloring was the same white as earth whites, but something was subtly different; maybe it was too white, virtually bloodless. The mop of golden hair on top of the head seemed to be a physical quality common to one of the human types among these people, the other being the brown hair of Four.
    Right now, Breemeg’s was a face with a clenched jaw and eyes narrowed, as if some unpleasant thought was working through the man’s mind.
    Since Gosseyn could not know what these thoughts were until they were expressed, he took the rest of the brief journey in stride, so to speak. And he was not surprised when, presently, Breemeg and he went through a door into—it had to be—
    Palomar!
    His first impression: an indoor garden. Small trees. Shrubs. Some equivalent of grass. Presumably—that was the immediate thought—a large greenhouse aboard this huge vessel.
    He had other fleeting awarenesses—of distinctly higher ceilings, of half-hidden doorways, dozens of them, partly visible through the shrubbery. The doors were at the far end of the garden. In between, mostly to his left—he had glimpses only—was the glint of water.
    A pool? He couldn’t be sure. Because, at virtually the exact moment that he and his guide stepped across the threshold of the double door Breemeg had opened, and stepped onto the garden walk, the man said:
    “Well, Mr. Gosseyn, now you know the problem of the adults aboard this command vessel of the Dzan fleet. We have to spend our waking hours in sickening, miserable, outrageous subservience to a mad boy who has a special brain control of live energy.”
    Unexpected remark, yes. But at some level, not totally. The earlier Gosseyns had met and observed toadies. So, now, silently, as he heard those bitter words, Gosseyn shook his head unhappily. His thought: . . . I’m about to hear an attempt to involve me in the secret politics of a resistance group—And of course the answer to that from a General Semanticist had to be—what? Obviously, something related to survival.
    He thought: . . . I’m on this ship, still—I decided to stay—not because I intended to take sides, or make special friends, but to find out what happened to cause these people to arrive in the vicinity of the space capsule where I was waiting in a very special state of suspended animation—
    That had to continue to be more important to him than any problem that the Dzan lesser nobility had with their monarchy. Except—
    Well to remember that the captured inhabitant of the capsule—Gilbert Gosseyn—had now been given secret information: someone or group hated the imperial power so viciously that, presumably, they were revealing that hatred with the intention of