The Long Result (15 page)

I did my best to produce an answering smile and together we crossed the street to the annexe housing the Bureau’s canteen and staff residential quarters. Strictly we should have used the underground tunnel connecting the two buildings, but traffic was light around here except in the mornings and evenings, and anyhow it was a fine warm day.

As we settled to a table, and Jacky gave a piercing whistle to attract the robot waiter, I said, ‘Jacky, I’ve just been talking to Martin van’t Hoff.’

‘Hm? Oh yes. He said he was going to look in on you.’

‘Did he mention to you this Starhomer ship which brought the Tau Cetians here – the
Algenib
?’

Jacky’s face suddenly grew strained. He covered his tension by an over-careful scrutiny of the menu which the waiter flashed on its little screen.

‘Yes, he’s full of it at the moment. He has some vague theories about a design break-through they’ve made out there.’

‘The theories didn’t seem at all vague to me,’ I persisted.

He stabbed angrily at buttons on the waiter, selecting his food, and it wheeled silently over to my side of the table, where it went on waiting until I forced Jacky to speak.

At long last he said, ‘Damn you Roald. Do you have to rub my nose in it?’

Horrified, I took the point which sheer obtuseness had prevented me from seeing earlier: that if the colonists had really made such an immense stride forward, Jacky was going to carry the can for the failure of the survey missions to send us advance warning. He was responsible for handling all technical data from the human colonies, as I was for all cultural and social material.

‘Jacky, I’m sorry!’ I exclaimed.

He sighed. ‘No, I’m the one who should apologise. I have no business snapping at you when I’m really angry at the Starhomers. Aren’t you going to eat anything?’

I started, and chose my meal hastily, almost at random, so allowing the waiter to roll away.

‘Who’s the head of technical analysis out at Starhome?’ I said. ‘And what’s he been doing lately, that such a big news item escaped the missions completely?’

‘He picked up a virus and went on sick leave, and I don’t know the guy who’s been left in charge. Some greenhorn… That’s why I’m sore at the comptroller who named him – Charisse Wasawati. Yet I’d have staked my reputation on her as one of the ablest people we have.’ He ran his fingers through his crisp curly hair. ‘Roald, I get the impression these Starhomers have been playing us like fish – giving us what they wanted us to know, and keeping secrets we damned well ought to have dug out long ago!’

For a moment I was tempted to tell him Micky’s view: that we’d passed the point at which Starhome became the leading human planet. But I didn’t; the material was still in the computers, and once it had been checked out, everyone
in the Bureau would have to be informed officially.

With a great air of changing the subject, he began to talk rapidly about a new Viridian symphonic poem he’d just heard, and I fell in with his conversation as best I could. But when we returned to the Bureau at ten past thirteen we both knew neither of us had been interested in what the other was saying.

In leaving at thirteen-fifteen I was cutting it fine – Pacific Coast District police headquarters was sixty miles from here. I told the car to follow the expressway route and get ahead of schedule in the hundred-fifty lane; then I leaned back in the cushioned seat and mentally mapped what I wanted to say to Klabund.

I was going to have to allow for the after-effects of our first meeting. Tinescu had inveigled him into a breach of police ethics with that portable lie-detector, and he wouldn’t have been human if my catching him out didn’t rankle. So he would have a reflex tendency to discount anything I said – especially since I was bringing only a chain of tenuous suspicions, not concrete court-of-law evidence.

How could I make it sound convincing, and at the same time persuade him that he must take no action before the Bureau told him to? I decided the best course was to be absolutely factual and sober – especially, I’d have to refrain from appearing angry at my escape from death, in case he thought I was exaggerating as a compensation for the shock.

I reached my destination three minutes ahead of time. Klabund was already in his office and I was shown directly to it. He was listening to a newscast as I entered; the
announcer was reporting the latest adjournment of the rocket crash inquiry, and his voice was indignant.

He greeted me politely and waved me to a chair.

‘I understand you want to see me in connection with the attempt on your life which was made this morning,’ he suggested.

Only this morning? Days seemed to have gone by since then. I nodded.

‘Do you mind if I record this?’ he continued, hand hovering over a switch on his desk.

‘It’ll have to go under seal, I’m afraid – but I’ll consent to recording provided you scramble it.’

The newscast gave way to the regular pre-hourly bulletin from Area Met; he shut it off and with a sigh activated the scrambler on his recorder.

‘Go ahead,’ he invited.

I put my hand up absently to the slick dressing on my face. ‘The attempt on
my
life,’ I said. ‘I don’t think I was the intended victim. I think my companion was the target – we’d accidentally exchanged bunks on coming aboard.’

Klabund gave a wary nod. ‘And your companion was–?’

‘Micky Torres. You may have heard of him.’

‘Is that Miguel Torres, who wrote
Stars Beckoned?’

‘That’s the man. Primarily he’s not a writer, but our leading authority on Starhomer social evolution. He was on his way to the Bureau to make an extremely important report concerning Starhome, and we think an attempt was made to silence him – out of panic.

‘We also think that there is definite indication of a link between the Stars Are For Man League and the Star-homers.’

Klabund turned that over in his mind. Finally he said, ‘It fits. You’ll have to be more specific, but one of the dead ends we’ve run into on this inquiry is the question of what’s made the League become a menace instead of a fanatical
talking-shop. Neither their new finances nor the complete change of tactics can be traced to Earthside origins.’

He cocked his head, waiting for me to substantiate the theory.

‘We don’t yet know
why
the Starhomers want to encourage the League,’ I admitted at once. ‘Our strongest suspicion is this. On Friday I learned that they plan to found a rival organization to BuCult – as I’m sure you know, that area is where they lag most markedly behind ourselves. We feel they may be trying to cast doubt on Earth’s ability to deal with alien contact, to excite sympathy for their claim for a chance to tackle the problem.’

‘If that’s your opinion, I suppose I must respect you as experts in the field,’ he muttered dubiously. ‘But it seems very thin … I don’t imagine you can tell me the nature of this important disclosure Torres was due to make?’

‘I’m very sorry, I can’t. We’re testing it in our computers, and till the job’s done I mustn’t talk about it.’

He shrugged. ‘Assuming you’re right, anyhow: who could have known about it and been sufficiently alarmed to try and – I think you said “silence him”?’

‘The computer team in Cambridge who processed his data for him. There is, incidentally, a chapter of the League there.’

‘I’ll follow it up, certainly. It’s no worse than some of our other leads. But I can make no promises, you understand?’

I nodded. ‘Looking for Starhomer influence on the League ought to be fairly simple, though,’ I suggested.

‘Not really. Starhomers enjoy the same rights as Earthly natives. We don’t make special provisions to trace their comings and goings.’ Klabund chewed his lower lip. ‘But thanks anyway for coming to see me. Oh, by the way, I was going to ask your chief something – I might as well ask you since you’re here. This isn’t confidential.’ He shut off the scrambler.

‘You remember Dr bin Ishmael received a threat from some anonymous source about what the League would do to his visiting aliens if they were allowed to roam about?’

‘Yes, he told me.’

‘We’re assuming that the damage done to the airpipe on the Tau Cetians’ quarters was their way in implementing the threat. Dr bin Ishmael says it can’t have been coincidence that the race which was attacked was the one your Bureau has most trouble with. I’d be inclined to agree, except that I can’t trace any information leak which would have enabled the League to tell where the delegation was accommodated. Is it possible that the knowledge was available to personnel at the Bureau?’

‘It certainly wasn’t on our Tau Cetian master file. I’d read that the morning of their arrival.’ I frowned. Somewhere at the back of memory Klabund’s words had started an itch, but nothing would come clear. I continued slowly, ‘I guess it could have been passed on casually, but it’s very much a Bureau habit to leave work at the office, so it’s unlikely to have been made public through conversation with outsiders.’

‘I see.’ Klabund pushed back his chair. ‘Well, we shall just have to keep on digging till we trace the leak – if there was one.’

It was an obvious hint for me to leave him, and I did so willingly enough; I’d said all I wanted to.

None the less, for the rest of the day I couldn’t concentrate on my Bureau work. That last question of Klabund’s rankled. It did seem unlikely that of the five races represented at the Ark the one singled out for attack should be the latest to be contacted, the most difficult to deal with, and the one whose metabolism had been least thoroughly investigated – so that they were most likely to be killed outright, our surgeons and doctors helpless to heal them.

Since it had happened, then, the implication was the killer had known what he was after. He knew, in short, that in G Block were the Tau Cetians.

Odd. Very odd. You’d expect a random attack to be made from the public road passing the Ark. But G Block was at the back of the site …

Something there? I grabbed at the elusive recollection, and slippery as an eel it eluded me again. I shook my head and reached to answer an incoming call.

It was the Professor of Modern Anglic Literature from Montreal University. I spent ten minutes talking fast to persuade him that his analysis of recent Viridian drama not only could wait but was going to – like everything else due for processing by Integration it had been postponed to make way for Micky’s vital task – and then another five explaining why without once defining the actual reason. I was rather proud of myself; the professor rang off with a misty but distinct impression that he had been honoured with a glimpse of the workings of government which his duty as a citizen prevented him from letting go any further.

Sixteen-thirty came without my having trapped the maddening mental flea Klabund’s question had started jumping around my skull. I packed up and headed for home.

My face was no longer sore. I took the risk of peeling off the plastoskin, and was delighted to find that it had done its work already; the eruption of blisters had been stopped before it was really serious, and the skin was pinkly clean and soft. My hand, too, was healing fast.

Eager to see Patricia, I hurried through a bath and a change of clothes – so quickly, I allowed too much time, and when I arrived at her apartment had to waste five minutes walking up and down the street. I knew how much trouble she would go to over the dinner she was preparing; to be called to the door ahead of schedule might spoil some crucial stage of the sauce, I feared.

One minute past the due time, I was at her door. She came out to meet me in a backless halter and skin-tight pants of a lime-green so pale it looked white in the brilliance of the corridor lighting.

‘Darling! Are you all right?’ she exclaimed, worriedly inspecting my face.

‘Marvellous,’ I said.

‘That’s my line!’ She kissed me firmly and drew me inside. ‘Oh, Roald, I’m so glad all the fuss and bother is over!’

‘It doesn’t look that way to me,’ I commented as I glanced around the apartment. The arrangements were impressive; she’d put colour-filters on the lights, which made her clothes a shifting pattern of changing tints as she moved about, and the air was full of mouth-watering scents.

‘Silly!’ But she was pleased at my reaction. ‘That’s not what I meant. I don’t think of it as “fuss and bother” to make you welcome.’

‘Judging by the way you’re dressed,’ I said, ‘you had more than a polite hello in mind.’

She looked down at herself. ‘Don’t you like it?’ she demanded. ‘I bought this outfit specially.’

‘Like
it? It’s very nearly as eye-popping as you are.’

‘Roald, you’re sweet.’ She hugged me, then drew back at arm’s length to stare up into my face with a trace of anxiety.

‘You have, really, forgiven me, haven’t you?’

I showed her.

‘Mm-
hm
!’ she forced out at last. ‘You’ve made a quick recovery. Here I was expecting an invalid, and …! Sit down; I’ll fix you a drink. And in exactly eleven minutes it’ll be time for dinner.’

It ought to have been a flawless evening – a flawless
night.
Usually I was the one desperate to please her, afraid of offending her, of driving her away. Tonight she was going to
unprecedented lengths to please me – the food was magnificent, the wine and the liqueurs that followed so expensive I was taken aback. And when I over-ruled her laughing protests about my being supposed to take things gently because of my dreadful experience on the way home from England, she let herself go with a passion and violence I’d never known before.

Yet when she had sunk into an exhausted slumber, snuggled close beside me in her huge soft bed, two ridiculous nagging ideas kept my own eyes open a while longer.

The first was perhaps rooted in what Tinescu had defined for me – the suggestion that I didn’t have as much confidence in myself as other people did. I was paradoxically disturbed by the thought that she was altogether
too
eager to please me.

Stupid
! I rebuked myself.

But I couldn’t dismiss the second problem so lightly, though it was equally minor. At the instant before the last climax, I’d found myself wondering what it would be like if this weren’t Patricia, but Kay.