The Long Result (17 page)

‘Did they go over the pipe with a microscope?’

‘Looking for holes? Why in the world should they? A three-inch tear is big enough to do all the damage we have to account for!’

I shook my head. ‘Tell your forensic people to look again – this time, for a hole so small the naked eye doesn’t notice it.’

‘And if it’s there, what will it prove?’ Klabund snapped.

‘It will be the hole left by the projectile which tore open the pipe. A bullet, presumably.’

Klabund took a deep breath. ‘Mr Vincent, I don’t know how busy you are. Myself, I’m conducting an extensive and
very
complicated inquiry, and I have people screaming down my neck for quick results. Do you mind getting the hell off this phone?’

I hesitated, long enough to check on two facts in my mind’s eye: first, of course, whether I was confident of what I was saying. I decided I was.

Second, I ran through two little tables of rank-structure. Klabund’s went: inspector – superintendent – commissioner – Minister of Justice. Mine went: assistant – Chief of Bureau – Minister of Extra-Terrestrial Affairs. We were both government employees; I was one step nearer the top.

I said, ‘All right, do it your way. Inspector Klabund, I rank you. I order you to examine that pipe for such a hole as I have described.’

I’d never seen such a raw fury in a man’s face before. He broke the connexion with a gesture like a sword-thrust, and I immediately began to have second thoughts. It was too late to worry now, of course – the conversation would have been recorded, and if I proved to have pulled rank without good cause and wasted his valuable time, the least I could expect was a severe reprimand.

For the next fifteen minutes I was in an agony of suspense. I welcomed the buzz of the phone when it next came. Perhaps, I thought, Patricia was calling – she’d told me she was flying up to Alaska tonight to see her married sister, and she’d promised to say good-bye before leaving for the rocket-port.

But it wasn’t her. It was Klabund again, and so subdued I felt an enormous sinking weight of relief.

‘I owe you an apology,’ he said without preamble. ‘I
sent down to the lab, and they found the hole at once. It isn’t even microscopic – it’s about point zero five of an inch across. Some blockhead decided it wasn’t worth looking at closely because it was so small! Now they have examined it, though, it turns out to look exactly like a miniature bullet-hole. How in the
galaxy
did you know it had to be there?’

I conquered my jubilation and remembered to ask him to turn on his scrambler.

‘I don’t think they can be blamed, inspector,’ I said. ‘They were looking for something to make an exit hole three inches across, weren’t they? And since they’d ruled out explosives or atomics, they’d also ruled out a connexion with this tiny hole.’

‘But I thought you said this was made by the projectile! In that case, we’re going to have to bring atomics back into consideration—’

‘No, you won’t.’ I launched my own bombshell with some pride. ‘It was a bullet of condensed matter.’

‘Mr Vincent, I thought you were on the social assay side, not the technical side. I’ve heard of condensed matter as a theoretical possibility, but I didn’t know it had been made yet.’

‘Hear me out. You know it was a ship built at Starhome which brought the Tau Cetians here? Well, I’ve been told unofficially’ – a fine way of dressing-up Martin van’t Hoff’s guesswork, I glossed mentally – ‘that the design breakthrough which that ship represents implies a means of directly manipulating electron orbits.

‘If you can do that, you can presumably condense matter. Consult your ballistics section; I think they’ll agree that a shot whose inertia was so large compared to its size would permit tremendous accuracy over very long distances. My view is that it was designed to expand to its normal volume when it struck the outer wall of the pipe. Moreover, it was made of some volatile compound that dissipated in the
escaping gas – perhaps a substance soluble in chlorine but not in ordinary air. This accounts for your detectives not finding it when they came on the scene.

‘And another thing. This ties in with what I told you before – that the Starhomers are connected with the League. As far as we know, only on Starhome would anyone have the ability to make such bullets.’

Klabund was looking almost happy now. ‘Mr Vincent, I’m eternally grateful to you. A special kind of gun sounds like something concrete to try and trace – much more solid than an influx of money or propaganda, which is what we’re hunting for right now. I – I’m sorry I lost my temper with you.’

‘And I’m sorry to have pulled rank on you,’ I countered.

‘Oh, I understand you’re feeling the strain, same as I am. I don’t imagine the attempt on your life helped any. By the way’ – he glanced at something off-screen, and gave a wry smile – ‘we’ve got the man who supplied Castle with the parasite.’

‘That was fast work. Who was it?’

‘One of the Fellows in the Cambridge Faculty of Medicine. Name of Aristide Scarlatti, an extra-terrestrial biochemist. As a matter of fact, when we picked him up he’d just initiated a new research project involving a friend of yours, who’s with me now. Which of course is why I didn’t want to be interrupted. Anovel!’

He swung the phone around, and there was the Regulan perched on a high broad stool, his back-bent legs hanging down the far side. He nodded a greeting to me, ripples running down his yellow mane.

‘A pity about Scarlatti – he’s a brilliant man. But dreadfully mixed up in his mind! He’s pathologically convinced that my virtual immunity to anything which endangers a human life implies an insult to his own species. I’m surprised his psychosis hadn’t been noticed before.’

The phone swung back to show Klabund, very worried. ‘I’m afraid that’s so. Scarlatti appeared to be doing his best to – uh – penetrate that immunity.’

‘You mean find a way of killing Anovel?’ My head spun; this was the stuff of which we in the Bureau made our nightmares.

‘Bluntly, yes. Luckily Anovel has been most understanding about the whole nasty affair.’

‘Tell him that his – uh – employer on the zoo ship is going to find him a bad bargain,’ I said in a tone of forced lightness. ‘And ask if he’d care to come over to my apartment for the evening, if he’s free.’

Klabund relayed the message, turning the phone again.

‘I’d be delighted,’ Anovel said. ‘May I have the address?’

I gave it, suggested he come at twenty hours, and rang off with my hands shaking. Immediately I called Tinescu, meaning to break the awful news.

But he’d already heard it.

‘It’s a disgraceful thing to have happened,’ he agreed. ‘But it was at least a Regulan who was concerned, not some more vulnerable creature.’

‘A pretty slim consolation!’ I snapped. ‘What’s a League sympathizer doing in alien biology, anyway? Trying to put his race-prejudice on a scientific footing?’

‘Possibly.’ Tinescu gave a glance at the clock in his office, out of range of the camera. ‘Don’t let it bother you, Roald. I’ve discussed it with Indowegiatuk, and the verdict is that now the harm’s done we can only rely on Anovel’s tolerance.’

‘He seemed amused, rather than annoyed,’ I conceded. ‘But it’s hard to know what those beasts are thinking … Anyhow, I did the first thing that came into my head: invited him to my apartment for the evening.’

‘What’s become of this woman who’s been monopolizing your evenings, then?’ Tinescu grunted.

‘Huh? Oh, Patricia!’ I forced a laugh. ‘She’s off to see her sister in Alaska.’

‘I thought there must be some special reason for your being on your own. Well, do your best with Anovel, but I don’t expect much from your meeting.’

‘Nor do L’ I frowned. ‘You know, Regulans worry me. I get the impression that it’s we who ought to be travelling in
their
zoo ships.’

‘Agreed! With their fantastic adaptability they seem tailor-made for interstellar colonization. Well, I must be off – dinner with the Minister again tonight.’ He sighed lugubriously, and cut the connexion.

‘Twenty hours is rather a neutral time for an evening invitation,’ Anovel said deprecatingly. ‘An hour earlier, and one is certain that a meal is included in the invitation; an hour later, and one may assume the necessity of eating before one arrives. Lacking a truly exact knowledge of Earthly etiquette, and realizing that food suitable for my species may be difficult for you to obtain, I brought my own. I trust I don’t offend the code of good manners.’

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘Though getting Regulan food isn’t any problem for me. I’d intended to call the Ark and have a meal sent over. That’s one of the advantages of being in the Bureau.’

‘Not one which most people envy you?’ Anovel suggested dryly, cocking his long head, and I had to chuckle.

I watched with interest as he set out his meal on my table: a number of sandwich-like objects made of a material resembling brown glass and textured like a cracknel biscuit, filled with a creamy substance as yellow as his mane; a
globular fruit whose thick white skin was patched with black, which he broke tidily into quarters and dusted with sodium fluoride; and a dish containing a dark green liquid as sluggish as mercury.

‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘is eating a social funtion among your people? I know it is among the Sags and the Ophiuchians.’

‘So far as I know, the sharing of food is characteristic of all advanced species. I remember talking to a member of one of your survey missions on my own world, who suggested it might be because food is such a valuable commodity in a primitive community. Once it’s established that it is for sharing rather than hoarding, the first stage has been passed on the way to a developed society – in which co-operation is indispensable.’

I nodded. ‘Sounds plausible. In our case, it would have been the hunter-family relationship which started the process; at Sigma Sagittarii, that between cultivating and breeding sexes.’

‘Presumably.’ Anovel trapped a thread of yellow as it oozed out of his first sandwich, with a curious sidewise movement of his lower lip. ‘I have occasionally speculated,’ he went on, ‘whether civilization could arise among a species whose nourishment is come by automatically – say, a race subsisting on solar energy and reactive gases. My impression is that it could not, any more than it has done among your plants – or if it did, it would be based on motives incomprehensible to us, and we wouldn’t recognize it as civilization.’

For a moment I was silent. I’d been inclined to regret my spur-of-the-moment invitation before Anovel arrived; then I began to enjoy myself when I discovered what pleasant company he was, and now we’d been chatting happily for an hour and a half. The mention of ‘incomprehensible motives’, however, had cast me back to my original intention: to try and determine an alien’s reaction to Scarlatti’s horrifying behaviour. While I was still pondering, he spoke
again. He seemed to have no difficulty in talking with a full mouth.

‘Of course, it might not have to be food which was the essential symbol. It’s a common denominator we take for granted, but you have had – so I’m told – societies on this planet which maintained a fairly high cultural level despite minimal co-operation between the members.’

I thought back to my college sociology courses, and to the pioneering work of twentieth-century anthropologists. ‘Do you mean societies like the Dobu, where the members were insanely suspicious of one another’s intentions?’

‘Yes, I had that example in mind.’ He dipped his flexible lips into the green fluid and drank daintily. ‘Such attitudes are no longer socialized, of course – though I’m afraid they survive in individuals.One person this applies to is Aristide Scarlatti, whose acquaintance I made so briefly and was not unhappy to be deprived of.’

‘You – uh – you view him as atypical?’ I ventured hopefully.

‘If he weren’t, you couldn’t support this weight of technology, could you? I gather it’s a truism in your psychology that maniacs do not combine; their communication is too meagre. In a sense Scarlatti is mad, wouldn’t you agree? Racial loyalty is praiseworthy in itself, but when it’s distorted into talk of divine right and intrinsic superiority it’s – foolish!’

He sounded annoyed, yet at the same time clinically detached, like a doctor frustrated at the poor progress of a mental patient. And yet how could I know whether his tone and manner reflected his true feelings?

Not for the first time today I wondered why we weren’t the ones to travel in Regulan zoo ships. Anovel’s people appeared to have the mental attributes required for the invention of space travel: an interest in other planets and races, acute intelligence, excellent astronomy and astrophysics –
not to mention their unique physical qualifications. In spite of which, they seemed content to take advantage of Earth’s starflight monopoly and to permit us to maintain survey missions on their planet.

The official excuse for our mystification at this state of affairs was that we ought not to anthropomorphize. Regulan goals and ideals might differ fundamentally from ours; we might have assigned definitions to them which owing to loss in translation were badly inaccurate. We took it for granted that cultures of a certain type aimed ultimately at interstellar travel – our own, or the Tau Cetians’. Regulans had to be an exception, however well they fitted most of the prime assumptions. Certainly one couldn’t say they hadn’t got to the right stage yet – their culture had a
finished
quality, being tremendously stable and simple.

Maybe they didn’t care one way or the other.

I finished my own main course and for dessert took a plum from the bowl in the centre of the table. Anovel had already eaten everything he’d brought, leaving neither crumbs nor dregs.

I was turning the egg-shaped yellow fruit round and round in my hand when Anovel pitched me headlong into the situation I’d been postponing ever since he arrived.

‘Forgive me for saying this, Roald, but we’re a direct species. It’s my impression that you are working up to something, and perhaps afraid of offending me if you broach the subject. I assure you any questions you care to ask will be treated quite impersonally.’