“Gilbert Gosseyn,” said Gosseyn quietly.
There was silence. Some of the cherry-red tubes flickered unsteadily. Then: “For the time being,” said the Machine in a casual tone, “I’ll accept that name.”
Gosseyn sank back deeper into the chair. His skin warmed with excitement. He felt himself on the verge of discovery. He said, “You know my true name?”
There was another pause. Gosseyn had time to think of a machine that was at this very moment conducting
“B-but—”
“No further questions at this moment,” said the Machine more formally. Its tone was comfortable when it spoke again. “You’ll find writing materials in one of the drawers. The questions are printed on each sheet. Take your time. You’ve got thirty minutes, and you won’t be able to leave the room till they’re up. Good luck.”
The questions were as Gosseyn had expected: “What is non-Aristotelianism? What is non-Newtonianism? What is non-Euclidianism?”
The questions were not really easy. The best method was not to attempt a detailed reply but to show consciousness of the multi-ordinal meaning of words, and of the fact that every answer could be only an abstraction. Gosseyn began by putting down the recognized abbreviation for each term—null-A, null-N, and null- E.
He finished in about twenty minutes, then sat back tingling with anticipation. The Machine had said, “No further questions at this moment.” That seemed to imply that it would talk to him again. At the end of twenty-five minutes its voice came once more.
“Please don’t be surprised at the simplicity of today’s test. Remember, the purpose of the games is not to beguile the great majority of the contestants into losing. The purpose is to educate every individual of the race to make the best possible use of the complex nervous system which he or she has inherited. That can only be realized when everybody survives the full thirty days of the games. And now, those who failed today’s test have already been informed. They will not be accepted as contestants during the rest of this season’s games. To the rest—more than ninety-nine per cent, I am happy to say—good luck for tomorrow.”
It was fast work. He had simply put his paper into the slot provided. A television tube had scanned it, compared it to the correct answers in highly flexible fashion, and recorded a pass. The answers of the twenty-five thousand other contestants had been similarly judged. In a few minutes another group of contestants would repeat the experience.
“You wish to ask more questions, Gilbert Gosseyn?” asked the Machine.
Gosseyn tensed. “Yes. I have had some false ideas planted in my mind. Were they put there with a purpose?”
“They were.”
“Who put them there?”
“No records of that exists in your brain.”
“Then how do you know they were put there?”
“Logical reasoning,” said the Machine, “on the basis of information. The fact that your illusion was related to Patricia Hardie is very suggestive to me.”
Gosseyn hesitated, then spoke the thought that had been in his mind. “Many psychoneurotics have equally strong beliefs. Such people usually claim identification with the great: ‘I am Napoleon’; ‘I am Hitler’; ‘I am Tharg’; ‘I am married to Patricia Hardie.’ Was my false belief in that category?”
“Definitely no. Very strong convictions can be induced by hypnotic means. Yours comes under that heading. That is why you were able to throw off the emotion of grief when you first learned that she was not dead. Your recovery is not yet completed, however.”
There was a pause. Then the Machine spoke again and there was a curious sadness in its words. “I am only an immobile brain, but dimly aware of what is transpiring in remote parts of Earth. What plans are brewing I can only guess. You will be surprised and disappointed to learn that I can tell you nothing more about that.”
“What can you tell me?” asked Gosseyn.
“That you are very deeply involved, but that I cannot solve your problem. I want you to go to a psychiatrist and have a photograph taken of your cortex. I have an impression of something in your brain, but I cannot define it. And now that is all I will say to you. Good-by until tomorrow.”
There was a click from the door as it unlocked automatically. Gosseyn went out into the corridor, hesitated for a moment, and then worked his way northward through the hurrying crowds.
He found himself on a paved boulevard. To the northwest, starting at about a quarter of a mile from the Machine, other buildings began. They were geometrically arranged in clusters around the boulevard, at the far end of which, amid embanked flowers and trees, stood the palace of the Machine.
The palace was not tall; its stately contours nestled among the vivid green and brilliance of its verdant environment. But that wasn’t what held Gosseyn. His mind was reaching, visualizing, comprehending. President Hardie and his daughter Patricia lived there. If he was deeply involved, then so must they be. What had made them plant in his mind the conviction that he was married to a
Gosseyn turned and strode around the base of the Machine back toward the city proper. He ate lunch in a small restaurant near the river, then began to thumb through the yellow pages of a telephone directory. He knew the name he was looking for, and he found it almost right away:
ENRIGHT, DAVID LESTER, psychologist
709 Medical Arts Building
Enright had written several books which were prescribed reading for anyone who hoped to get beyond the tenth day in the games. It was a pleasure to remember the crystal-like clarity of the man’s writing, the careful semantic consideration given to every multi-ordinal word used, the breadth of intellect and understanding of the human body-and-mind-as-a-whole.
Gosseyn closed the directory and went out into the street. He felt at ease; his nerves were calm. Hope was surging in him. The very fact that he remembered Enright and his books in such detail showed how lightly the intruding amnesia rested on his memory. It shouldn’t take long once the famous man began to work on him. The reception clerk in the doctor’s office said, “Dr. Enright can be seen by appointment only. I can give you an hour three days from now; that is, Thursday at two P.M. You must, however, make a twenty-five-dollar deposit.”
Gosseyn paid the money, accepted his receipt, and went out. He was disappointed, but not too much so. Good doctors were bound to be busy men in a world that was still far from having attained null-A perfection.
On the street again, he watched one of the longest, most powerful cars he had ever seen slide past him and draw up at the curb a hundred feet away. The car gleamed in the afternoon sun. A liveried attendant leaped smartly from beside the driver and opened the door.
Teresa Clark stepped out. She wore an afternoon dress of some dark, rich material. The ensemble did not make her appear less slim, but the dark coloring of the dress made her face seem a little fuller and, by contrast, not so heavily tanned. Teresa Clark! The name was meaningless in the face of this magnificence.
“Who,” Gosseyn asked a man who had stopped beside him, “is that?”
The stranger glanced at him in surprise and then he spoke the name Gosseyn had already guessed. “Why, that’s Patricia Hardie, daughter of President Hardie. Quite a neurotic, I understand. Look at that car, for instance. Like an oversize jewel, a sure sign of—”
Gosseyn was turning away, turning his face from the car and its recent occupant. No sense in being recognized until he had thought this through. It seemed ridiculous that she would actually come again that very night to a dark lot to be alone with a strange man.
But she was there.
Gosseyn stood in the shadows staring thoughtfully at the shadow figure of the girl. He had come to the rendezvous very skillfully. Her back was to him and she seemed to be unaware of his presence. It was possible, in spite of his careful reconnoitering of the entire block, that he was already in a trap. But it was a risk he felt no
