The Long Result (12 page)

He stretched out an arm to take a paper from the stack beside the typer. ‘Here, this is my fundamental equation. For simplicity you can take Earth’s cultural index as a constant – unity. In fact the advances and regressions average out over the last hundred fifty years to plus point zero eight.’

‘As small as that?’ I whistled. Anything less than point one was generally regarded as negligible. I studied the equation and arrived at a rough answer in my head.

‘With unity,’ I announced finally, ‘I get twenty to forty years
ago
as the time when the balance tips to Starhome.’

‘Near enough. We’ve postponed it a little, but for the last time now. The next step will likely be for the Starhomers to try and get rid of the cultural survey missions. Remote government – which is what it is, no matter how discreetly we disguise it – won’t appeal to them when they realize the facts.’

I snapped my fingers as a horrifying recollection jumped up at me. ‘They
do
know!’ I exploded.

‘What?’ Micky blinked. ‘Then your survey missions have missed it. Even when I got rid of the faked insertions, I found nothing to prove it in their reports.’

I told him about Kay’s invitation to me to become Chief of Bureau for a Starhome rival to BuCult.

‘So they’ve decided to take away our lead in the last field where Earth retains unarguable superiority. That fits. And yet — ’ He bounced to his feet again.

‘Roald, they can’t have worked it out the way I did – they haven’t got the trained men. They’re flying another kite. Ach! And they’re going to be proved right. Because don’t you see? They must have been hiding the truth from the survey missions, and that takes skill we never suspected they had!’

Correct. Not to mention long-term planning and incredible self-control. But no one would deny that Starhomers had the latter talent.

‘So the colonists are taking the initiative,’ Micky sighed. ‘Blazes, Roald – it’s the United States and Britain all over again!’

I saw the parallel instantly. I saw other things, too. Most strikingly, how the matter of the Tau Cetians fitted in. For generations Starhomers had regarded ‘soft’ disciplines like psychology as of minor importance; doubtless they felt they could tackle contact with Tau Ceti by rule of thumb. When they discovered it wasn’t that simple, they reacted characteristically: first, by trying to put BuCult in an impossible position, leading us to make mistakes of our own; second, by instituting a crash programme in order to make good their deficiencies.

‘I think Tinescu suspects,’ I said slowly.

‘There’s a brilliant man, if you like!’ He whirled to face me. ‘He has a genius for his work. He has fantastic intuition. What makes you think he knows?’

I described my impression that in handling the Tau Cetian business Tinescu had been at the mercy of forces beyond his control.

‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ Micky punctuated the words by driving his fist into his open palm. ‘My guess is, Roald, that in a year or eighteen months at most the Starhomers will make a showdown of it. If Tinescu has been giving in to them, it’s almost certainly because he didn’t want to antagonise them and make them declare themselves before we were prepared. Lord isn’t a year a short time?’

He hesitated. ‘Hell, I think I’d better move to the Bureau, don’t you?’

‘What about your doctorate?’

‘Oh, damn my doctorate! If this goes off properly, they’ll be giving me degrees right left and centre
e causis non
disputandis –
for unarguable reasons. Think of what’s to be done, after all. We must reconcile Earth to its back seat we’ll have to get the Starhomers’ cultural exchange working —’

‘We will?’

‘Don’t we owe it to other races to ensure that Starhome is better in
all
respects than Earth? And there’s work to do on Starhome too, to prevent their pride of achievement turning into the megalomania that breeds cults like the Stars Are For Man League …’

Listening, I felt a mood of calm certitude, as though impersonal destiny had spoken to me. This, I told myself, is going to be Micky’s – no: Miguel de Madrigal de las Altas Torres’s claim to a place in history. It may take a thousand years for his work to be recognized, and of all the people I know only Anovel will live to see that. But it is definite.

A shiver of cold awe went down my spine. Words with a silent ring of truth came into my mind.

I am in the presence of the first human being to whom all aliens will be grateful – and acknowledge their gratitude.

It was a tremendous, majestic sensation to see that it was possible to create a world in all ways better than Earth; perhaps to set an example for Starhome to follow when, in the very far future, it must itself give place to a culture which arose to surpass it. To be conscious of doing something to shape the long result of human history – it was a feeling close to delirium.

It drove everything else out of my mind. It wasn’t until I was climbing into the bunk assigned to me aboard the home-bound rocket late on Sunday night that I remembered I hadn’t called Patricia.

Well, I could call as soon as we touched down. But somehow it didn’t seem all that important.

We’d had to take a paired compartment, because we’d
left it very late to make our reservations, but at least we had bunks and not merely relaxers. Through the tightly stretched curtain which divided the little room into halves, I heard Micky also climbing into bed. I wished him good night, and some time later dropped into a light doze.

At first I dreamed incoherently of finding my own name in something that served the purpose of a history book but was not actually a book as such. This was pleasant and gratifying, and when I looked further and found Micky’s name there in black letters twice as big, I reminded myself, stirring in half-wakefulness, that this was only just. Below the surface of sleep I looked for the name again.

This time, though, it was growing – looming up from the thing which was not a book: a long flexible black shape, which reached out abruptly and clamped over my face.

I was suffocating!

I panicked awake, and found the sensation was real. I strained wildly to draw breath; then, for the first time, my naturally quick reactions saved my life.

Something soft, warm and slippery covered my face, from the bridge of my nose to my chin. It was perhaps as big as my two hands together. With my gasping for breath it had begun to ooze into my nostrils – and that was what told me the truth and enabled me to breathe
out
with the tiny volume of stale air my lungs still held. It was a sobbing, choking gasp, a horrible sound, but it served the purpose. The mass entering my nose drew back, and I wrenched a hand from under the cover and clamped a grip on it.

It tried to writhe away, but I forced my finger-tips between it and my face and peeled it off like putty. My lungs ached and I was dizzy with anoxia.

The last of my failing strength went into jerking my arm to full length. The thing flew from my hand and landed in the middle of the floor beside the curtain, making a soft cushion-like thud.

I was too weak with fright to make any further move at once; I simply lay and flooded my chest with air. There was the sound of movement: Micky sitting up, turning on a light, sliding back the curtain separating us.

‘Don’t get out of bed!’ I cried hoarsely, rolling on one elbow.

‘What is it?’ Micky whispered, his face as white as mine.

It –
the thing that had been on my face – was a lump of slowly pulsating blue jelly, translucent, veined with red, about six inches in diameter now it was humped on the floor. It seemed to flow within itself, as though searching, then began to crawl purposefully back towards my bunk. My stomach churned and I hunted for some means of driving it away.

‘Micky, have you anything that will burn?’ I demanded.

‘Of course not – all my gear is flameproofed.’ He didn’t take his gaze off the horrible object. ‘Roald, what in hell
is
that?’

Intent on disposing of both it and my lingering terror, I grabbed for my shoes. ‘I’ll tell you when I get back,’ I muttered grimly. ‘Stay in your bunk – I don’t see how it can climb a vertical slope – but don’t expose bare skin to it whatever you do.’

I scrambled up on the bunk and reached for the door. The catch resisted my pressure on it, and for an instant I felt another stab of terror; then I discovered that the panel was free to slide already. Someone had doctored the lock, then – but that figured, since an intruder must have brought the horrid jelly-thing. I had no time to puzzle over identities or motives. I knew what I wanted. If I could only find it…

At the end of the narrow corridor outside I’d noticed an emergency tool cabinet.
Let there only be a torch in it,
I thought as I sprinted towards it. And there was.

I smashed the fragmentation panel over the box’s lock and seized the torch. When the startled steward – the only
crew-man aboard this automated ship – came to answer the alarm connected with the tool cabinet, he met me carrying a foot-long sword of flame.

‘Stop!’ he shouted as I vanished into my own compartment, and came after me with a clatter of hard heels.

I didn’t stop. I pointed the roaring torch at the jelly-thing, drunk with a primitive sense of revenge. The blob flinched from the searing flame; melted before it could do more than flinch, giving off an evil smell. The surface cauterized into scar tissue and the thing was still. The fireproof plastic of the curtain seemed more alive as it curled away from the heat.

When the whole visible surface was blackened, I withdrew the torch for a moment. A crack appeared in the covering crust and a thread of blue oozed out questingly. I conquered a desire to vomit, at least temporarily, and re-applied the flame. This time I held it on the spot till the metal glowed and the air was almost unbearable with the stench. After that, there was only a charred lump like overdone meat.

For a second I stood wavering. Then I turned off the torch and thrust it into the ready hands of the steward. I pushed him out of my way and fled towards the head.

This time, I did throw up.

When I felt sufficiently recovered to do so, I went back. The door of our compartment had been closed, and I had to check the reservation cards before I could tell which was the right cabin.

The air conditioners had already got rid of the odour, and Micky was trying to explain to the mystified steward. On seeing me he broke off.

‘Are you all right?’ he demanded anxiously.

I nodded, and apologized ridiculously to the steward, who was holding the glowing torch carefully away from his body. ‘If you’ll just wait a moment, I’ll tell you all about it.’

I turned to shut the door, and found that the catch was still not operating.

‘It was working all right when we came aboard,’ I muttered to no one in particular. I felt giddy from my narrow escape.

Going back into the corridor, I ran my fingers over the underside of the lock mechanism. As I’d expected, I touched a small disc clinging there limpet-fashion. I slid it off the edge of the lock, and the catch worked perfectly.

‘Know what this is?’ I asked the steward, showing him the disc.

‘It’s – why, it’s a nullifier. Holds the wards of the lock by magnetism and stops them engaging when the door is closed.’

I sat down wearily on the edge of my bunk. Guessing that I must be in a state of shock, the steward put down the torch in the corner and fumbled out a flat case from his pocket.

‘Here!’ he said, handing me a green tablet. ‘It’s a euphoric – it ought to help.’

I chewed on it gratefully, and it did help. Within half a minute I felt calm enough to turn to Micky and explain.

‘Micky, you were asking what that lump of jelly was. It was a Sagittarian parasite. In the natural state it has the typical Sag silicon metabolism, but recently they’ve been building us some with a carbon base for experiments in tissue-restoration. The idea is to provide a seal for wounds which will be incorporated into the body as the incision heals. A good idea – but up to now it doesn’t work. Human beings are allergic to them.’

I fingered the skin of my face. So far, there was no sign of a rash, but I was certain one would erupt before we landed.

‘Someone put that nullifier on the lock, crept in while we
were both asleep, and put that jelly over my mouth and nose. If a miracle hadn’t made me realize that I had to breathe out and not in, I’d have suffocated in complete silence. When I was found dead, there would have been no visible trace of the weapon. It would have been absorbed through the mucous membrane in my nose and united with the natural tissue.’

When I was found dead!
First the numbness of shock, now the artificial elation of the euphoric, was saving me the full force of that horror. But sooner or later I was going to have to face it.

Micky gave me a compassionate glance and turned to the steward.

‘You’d better call the police and have the ship met by a lie-detector squad. Presumably they’ll have to interrogate all the passengers directly we land.’

‘But surely they can’t do that,’ the steward objected. ‘We don’t know if the passengers will agree.’

‘Blazes!’ Micky jumped to his feet. ‘They’re going to have to put up with it! Don’t you realize this is the attempted murder of a government official?’

The steward blanched. The idea of that rarest of crimes – murder – aboard his own ship obviously hadn’t connected in his mind till this moment. Now he hurried out, and the door slid to with a hiss.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Just what I wanted to say, only I couldn’t think of the right words. But —’

I hesitated.

‘But what?’ Micky urged.

‘You’re wrong,’ I said slowly. ‘Not the attempted murder of a government official.’

‘Roald, I don’t get you. It was sure as hell intended to be murder!’

‘I’m not arguing about that!’
Nor about my nearly being the victim,
I added silently. I shuddered.

‘But you aren’t a government official, Micky.’

He exhaled sharply and his eyes became round and wide. ‘Do you mean I was the one supposed to be killed? Why in the world—?’