The Long Result (23 page)
‘Director!’ Wegener was shouting from the phone. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Hm? Oh, I’m sorry, Wegener – I was just thinking. The
Alcor
is Master van’t Hoff’s ship, isn’t she? How odd that he should have been the one. Well, stranger things have happened, I guess. Do a couple of things for me, please: have this ridiculous general alert cancelled, and call the port and ask Director Rosenbaum to lay on a ship for me. I think I deserve to be on the reception committee after all this time.’
He added the last sentence almost under his breath, but Wegener wouldn’t have heard it anyway. He had turned away from the phone in response to another call, and now the mikes were picking up only confused fragments.
‘No, that’s absurd … can’t be true … van’t Hoff must have blown his generators
…
but Regulans? Are you sure
they’re
Regulans?’
‘Wegener!’ Roald snapped.
‘Sir, this is crazy!’ Wegener cried, facing the phone again. ‘The
Alcor
says the aliens are signalling in Anglic on our standard band, and
–
but it’s impossible!’
‘What?’
‘For one thing,’ Wegener complained, ‘they’re asking for you, and for another the Alcor says they look like Regulans. But Regulans don’t have starships!’
‘No, they’re not Regulans,’ Roald said calmly. ‘Not exactly. But since they’re asking to speak to me, it might be civil to try and rig a circuit for them.’
Wegener rolled his eyes and made as though to clench his fists against his temples, but he was used to doing incomprehensible things for Roald, and since they usually turned out well in the long run he complied from habit.
Abruptly the connexion was made, and there in the screen was a long blue head with a rippling yellow mane, so like Anovel’s that the creature might have been his twin. Except that Anovel was at Regulus; no ships but human ships had called there in the century or so since the
madual
ruled that it was safest to keep back certain crucial facts.
Roald drew a deep breath. He had made several visits to Regulus and picked up a smattering of the subtle language. Using the most elaborate and formal inflections, he said, ‘We are honoured by the confidence of the
kenekito-madual.’
The creature in the screen looked him over at length. He answered finally in Anglic, deliberately slowing his words to a comprehensive speed
–
he was breathing fluorine, of course, and his subjective time-rate was far faster than the human in such an atmosphere.
‘I am directed before communicating with your government to extend you an apology from a member of our species, namely Anovel. I am to tell you that he regrets exercising the
madual
constraint on your mind. He has
watched you for fifty of your years, and has concluded that the
kenekito
would have been guarded by your honour alone.’
He bent his long head in a slow, incredibly graceful bow.
‘Kenekito-madual
Roald Vincent, we hope to welcome you at our ship. We await your arrival at your convenience.’
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A Planet of Your Own
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Born Under Mars
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Catch a Falling Star
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Double, Double
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Galactic Storm
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I Speak for Earth
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Meeting at Infinity
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Quicksand
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Stand on Zanzibar
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The (Compleat) Traveler in Black
The Altar on Asconel
The Avengers of Carrig
The Brink
The Crucible of Time
The Dramaturges of Yan
The Dreaming Earth
The Gaudy Shadows
The Infinitive of Go
The Jagged Orbit
The Ladder in the Sky
The Long Result
The Martian Sphinx
The Productions of Time
The Psionic Menace
The Repairmen of Cyclops
The Rites of Ohe
The Sheep Look Up
The Shift key
The Shockwave Riders
The Skynappers
The Space-Time Juggler
The Squares of the City
The Stardroppers
The Stone That Never Came Down
The Super Barbarians
The Tides of Time
The World Swappers
The Wrong End of Time
Threshold of Eternity
Times Without Number
Timescoop
To Conquer Chaos
Total Eclipse
Web of Everywhere
John Brunner (1934-1995) was a prolific British SF writer. In 1951, he published his first novel,
Galactic Storm
, at the age of just 17, and went on to write dozens of novels under his own and various house names until his death in 1995 at the Glasgow Worldcon. He won the Hugo Award and the British Science Fiction Award for
Stand on Zanzibar
(a regular contender for the ‘best SF novel of all time’) and the British Science Fiction Award for
The Jagged Orbit
.
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © John Brunner 1965
All rights reserved.
The right of John Brunner to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 1965
This eBook first published in 2011 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 10134 0
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
