The Long Result (19 page)

‘I’m afraid so,’ I admitted.

‘In other words, you didn’t feel that the people whose job is to handle visiting aliens were competent! You thought they might have overlooked something, hm? You didn’t perhaps think we’d had an emergency discussion on the matter, run a score of hypotheses through our computers,
and reached the decision that it was best left to cool down of itself?’

She didn’t wait for an answer, but launched into an interesting survey of my immediate ancestry, and continued to Tinescu’s, because he hadn’t put his foot down and told me to mind my own business. I learned the technical names for several kinds of congenital mental deficiency and twenty synonyms for pigheaded obtuseness.

But at last she stopped, almost in the middle of a word, and fixed me with her deep-set eyes.

‘That’s what I think of you,’ she said, drawing a deep breath. ‘On the other hand, the staff analysts handling Regulan social assay data inform me that this leads to a rational solution for no less than twenty-three equations we’d previously tested and dismissed as mismatched to the observed facts. Did Anovel also tell you that he’s a
kenekito-madual?’

‘A – what?’

‘Blazes, why did he have to pick on
you?’
She sighed. ‘A
kenekito-madual
– the term doesn’t translate – corresponds to what we’d call a “government spokesman”. Such people are in possession of certain facts which they call
kenekito,
or “crucial”. And they’re relied on to reveal them when they see fit. This is the first time a
kenekito
has been divulged away from Regulus. And what I desperately want to know is why a
madual
has been sent here on an ordinary zoo ship instead of being attached to the staff of the permanent delegation! Roald, that beast has thrown more trouble at me than anyone in fifty years – I hope you’re satisfied!’

She rang off with a gesture that seemed to consign me to the destructor.

It might have been a consolation to her to know that the very first item I picked out of the conveyor box after talking
to her presented me with troubles of my own. A survey mission on Viridis reported that somehow two misfits had slipped through our supposedly foolproof testing for emigrants. A man and a woman who found even the undemanding pace of modern Earth too much for their lazy natures had jumped to the conclusion that – Viridis being pastoral and under-mechanised – they could emigrate to a life of self-indulgent ease.

It was an easy enough assumption to make in error; when I did my mandatory fieldwork I selected Viridis, and at the back of my mind I’d visualized an idyllic society akin to primitive Polynesian islands, where people could sleep in the sun all day and make love in the bushes all night. I realized my stupidity within an hour or two of landing, and had sense enough to keep my mouth shut about it. Viridis, after all, was not Earth, though astonishingly similar in a great many ways, so one had to worry about native weeds and inedible animals and irritating insectoids and bacteria which were adaptable to human tissues; on top of that, without machines everyone had to work far harder than on Earth merely to maintain a decent standard of living.

Two things had led up to this pint-sized crisis: first, these two hadn’t had the sense to accept the facts, and were now going around complaining that they’d been deceived – and refusing to work like everyone else; second, someone had made a disastrous mistake in recruiting them.

So we’d have to bring them back. Free of charge. All human beings no matter which planet they were born on were entitled to the protection of Earth. That would make the Treasury annoyed. We’d have to re-examine our whole selection procedure. That would make everyone annoyed. If they’d lied to the personnel selectors, there might be a criminal charge to follow, so I’d have to contact the legal department; also I’d have to arrange for them to come off Viridis as soon as possible, which meant signalling the next
ship to reserve them accommodation – come to think of it, the ship would likely be Martin van’t Hoff’s, the
Mizar
…

With half my mind I listed the steps to be taken. With the other half I considered several random associations. I found myself for a few seconds almost envying the Starhomers, who were so efficient compared to us; if they’d had to operate an emigration selection procedure, they’d never have cobbled it together from bits and pieces as we’d done, but planned it from scratch with elaborate precautions against failure. As they were planning a counterpart of BuCult now the necessity had been forced on them…

Funny!
I shook my head. I could feel changes going on in myself. A week or more ago, I’d have taken placid, non-technological Viridis over driving, forceful Starhome any time I was asked to choose. Maybe it was talking to Micky that had shifted my perspectives.

How curious it would have been, I reflected idly, if the Starhomers hadn’t contacted the Tau Cetians and we’d contrived to miss them ourselves. Suppose they’d developed starships of their own, and encountered men for the first time on Viridis – wouldn’t it have been a shock when they moved on and found us elsewhere, too, living under totally different conditions?

Something followed from that, but I had no time to waste chasing it. I had work to do. Determinedly I wiped such speculations away and concentrated on the problem facing me.

A few minutes before noon I found out what had gone wrong – they’d revised the requirements for permission to emigrate to Viridis earlier in the year, and someone had assigned wrong values to half a dozen factors when programming the computers which processed the selection data. It was an honest error due to an ambiguity in the verbal definition the Viridians themselves had sent us.

So I buckled to and rewrote the offending section; then I had to revise every single reference to it in a fat volume of general instructions to emigrant personnel selectors, and by the time I’d done that the noon recess was over and I’d missed my usual lunchtime.

I yawned, sent the revised material for computer checking and printing, and set off for the canteen across the street. I didn’t expect to find anyone I knew there – it was after fourteen by now – and by a wide margin the last person of all I imagined I’d run into was Micky, simultaneously spooning up soup and making notes on a document full of complex equations.

I said hullo, and he raised his pale face to me. Enormous dark rings had developed under his eyes.

‘Micky, you look ghastly!’ I exclaimed. ‘You can’t have had any sleep since you got here!’

He stretched, pushed aside his papers and gestured for me to join him at the table. ‘I’m glad you turned up,’ he grunted. ‘Gives me an excuse to shelve that and it isn’t urgent anyway. Just that this business expands into every spare moment like water filling a sunken ship … Go ahead, place your order?’

I started; I hadn’t heard the waiter roll up to my side.

‘Tinescu tells me you’ve made a start already,’ I said as I my food.

‘That thing we put out last night? Hell, it was a kite, nothing more. But it did go well. The port staff were most co-operative, especially Rattray and the supervisor who brought the
Algenib
down – Susumama. It wasn’t the start of our programme, though Tinescu got so worked up about it he seemed to convince himself that it was. No, we’ve decided to build the first stage around the Tau Cetians to exploit their existing news value. I had a devil of a job getting bin Ishmael to make them available – he’s still worried stiff that the League will have another go at them – but he finally agreed that we can have them. We shall play down the work of BuCult, I’m afraid, stressing the difficulties the Starhomers had in making contact – same general angle as last night’s thing, presenting them as people doing the dirty work and doing it well. Then – oh, the ideas crop up every few seconds. Already we have more than the staff can handle. Tinescu wants to set up a special department – give it some neutral name so people won’t deduce its purpose. Threatens to put me in charge.’

‘Who else? But will the Treasury allot the kind of budget a separate department needs?’

‘Are you serious?’ He drew back a little, staring at me. ‘Tinescu got us the first two billion yesterday. For an old man he has more drive and initiative than twenty ordinary people.’ A thought struck him, and he added in a puzzled tone, ‘How old is he, anyway?’

‘I honestly don’t know,’ I said. ‘He hasn’t changed since I joined the Bureau – not so you’d notice.’

‘Was he already Chief of Bureau then?’

‘Oh yes. He’s held the post for about twenty-five years.’ I did some mental arithmetic. ‘I guess he’s eighty-five or ninety.’

‘Was he very young when he was appointed, then? It
wouldn’t surprise me – he must have been a brilliant man.’

‘He can’t have been all that young. They tried having a very young Chief of Bureau the time before – somebody named Brown, who was only fifty-one. But the Bureau was going through a bad patch – the budget wouldn’t support the work and the staff was going crazy with the strain. I believe Brown tried to kill himself. But it was before my time; you might ask Indowegiatuk for the details, perhaps.’

Micky finished his soup and exchanged it for a salad the waiter brought him. ‘It’s a curious fact, you know,’ he mused, ‘but we haven’t even yet adjusted to our increased lifespan. I hear Indowegiatuk ought strictly to have retired years ago, because the limit was fixed when people only averaged ninety or ninety-five. We have this top-heavy load of people still active, still productive, whom we’ve shuffled off into cosy pigeonholes, and there they sit, chewing their nails and – I think – dying of boredom before they have to.’

‘True. One of these days we’ll go beyond what we’ve managed so far. We won’t be content with postponing the degenerative diseases we call “old age”, but we’ll actually reverse the ageing process. And I daren’t guess what this will do to the society of Earth.’

‘I’ve wondered about that myself.’ Micky folded leaves of salad around his fork. ‘When my father’s mother died she was a hundred and twenty-four. She’s a classic example – did everything twenty years later than people used to. Married at forty, children at about fifty, her first grandchild when she was well past eighty … Speaking of ages, you’re young yourself for the post you hold.’

‘It’s ageing me two days for most people’s one,’ I said. ‘Yes, I guess I am on the young side. But the Bureau likes people whose ideas haven’t petrified. Jacky’s only – oh – four or five years my senior.’

‘Didn’t it make for friction when you were jumped over older men’s heads?’

‘Frankly, yes. But Tinescu settled that in short order, and after the first six months I had no more problems. Why are you so interested?’

‘I’ve been going into Bureau organization,’ Micky shrugged. ‘Seeing how to staff this new department Tinescu wants. I’ve never seen such a tangle of criss-crossing information paths – it’s about time someone reformed it to an optimum pattern. You have to have fieldwork before you’re promoted in the Bureau, isn’t that right?’

‘At least two years, and they like more than that. But people who do more than eight usually make a career with the survey missions.’

‘Damn. I have my eye on a new recruit, and in that case I can’t put him where I’d like him – he hasn’t been out in the field yet. Where did you do your fieldwork – Viridis?’

‘Naturally.’

‘Minimum?’

‘No, I stayed over for a second tour. As a matter of fact there was a girl I got involved with …’ I hadn’t thought of Vanella for at least five years. And once she meant more than my career to me. How people can change! I said, ‘Why are you so interested, anyway?’

‘I just happened to notice you’re the youngest appointee to such a high rank in the Bureau for more than a century. It might be illuminating if you looked up the name of the previous record-holder – bearing in mind that people live longer nowadays.’

More than that I just could not get out of him. It bothered me all afternoon – Micky, like Anovel, wasn’t in the habit of making such remarks without a purpose. But I couldn’t persuade myself to send to registry for the personnel records; I might have to sort them for an hour before hitting on the man’s name.

Blast
Micky! I glanced at the clock; it showed fifteen
hours thirty-one. I looked beyond it to the window, wondering how Patricia was getting on with shooting her trouble, and saw that clouds were building up in the west, wearing an ugly dark grey frown. It would take a long while to dry out that moist airstream. The rain would certainly drift this far inland.

Patricia
…

Oh, damn – here it was again. A little voice at the back of my head seeming to say, ‘I know something important and I don’t realize it.’

Normally I’d have shut it out. Yesterday, though, I hadn’t done so, and the result had been spectacular: I’d been able to tell Klabund his own business, and they had found a hole in the airpipe from the Tau Cetians’ quarters precisely where I’d predicted.

Being as vain as most people, I’d enjoyed that small triumph. It was too much to hope for a repetition; none the less, I shut my eyes and set off on the chain of associations which was now forming.

Where to start? Last Thursday night, apparently, at the Dembas’ party, when she’d behaved so strangely. But I’d battered at my memory of those events many times before. Was there some other point of attack?

Something I’d said to Klabund … about it being a Bureau habit to leave work at the office. In what connection was that? Oh, yes – he was trying to find out how the League could have known where in the Ark the Tau Cetians were living.

And suddenly I had it.

The knowledge brought me to my feet, almost crying out, a sickness in the pit of my stomach. No, it couldn’t be! Patricia? She couldn’t have lied to me; she couldn’t have been angry with me for
that
horrible reason!

Yet it fitted. Name of disaster, it fitted far too well.

I sank back in my chair, staring without seeing at the
window of the office. Cold ugly logic slotted fact after fact into place.