Free The Long Result by John Brunner Page A

home?’
    The long head waved in a slow negative. ‘You see, we live much longer than you. The eight or ten years the trip will take is – you might say really a vacation.’
    ‘How long do you live, then?’ Jacky exclaimed.
    ‘At our natural rate – breathing fluorine, that is – twelve hundred of your years. Though since our subjective time is faster than yours, of course it seems even longer.’
    ‘And how old are you yourself – if it’s not a rude question?’ Jacky said.
    ‘On your scale, about two hundred. Quite a youngster yet!’
    There was a stunned pause. Glancing around, I saw Patricia had reappeared and was sitting by herself on the other side of the room. Anovel drained his glass and rose.
    ‘Well, I have to be back at zoo by morning,’ he said. ‘I really must be going – no, I mean it!’ He gestured with all four arms to forestall Jacky’s objections, and departed amid a flurry of invitations to return as soon as possible.
    ‘That,’ Helga said to me dreamily, ‘is a lovely piece of design.’
    ‘What?’ I hadn’t quite seen the point.
    ‘Oh, Roald! Look, he can breathe fluorine, oxygen, chlorine or what-have-you with cheerful indifference. He can eat practically anything – and on top of that he lives twelve hundred years. A
lovely
piece of design!’
    ‘With all those natural advantages,’ sighed Martin van’t Hoff, ‘they ought to have discovered starflight instead of us.’ He gazed gloomily into the depths of his current drink.
    At that point Patricia came over and sat on my knee, and for some while we paid no attention to the other people in the room. Finally she pulled away with a sigh.
    ‘I’m glad that thing’s gone,’ she murmured.
    ‘Why? Because I was paying attention to him instead of you?’ I grinned at her. ‘Don’t be silly, my sweet!’
    She bit my ear casually. ‘What did he mean – he “had to be back at zoo”?’
    ‘Of course, you weren’t here when he explained.’ I told her about the zoo ship system, and finished thoughtfully, ‘You know, it might be fun to make a trip that way. Say to Regulus.’
    She pulled away from me. ‘Roald, you can’t mean that!’
    ‘Why not?’ I was much drunker than I’d imagined. ‘I’d love to visit Regulus, and if there isn’t any other way…’
    ‘You mean you’d let yourself be turned into a lab specimen, poked and probed at by all sorts of—?’
    The phone shrilled. I half saw Jacky unfold from his chairto go and answer it, but all my attention was on Patricia – as usual. ‘Say you’re joking!’ she pleaded with intensity I couldn’t account for in my liquor-muzzy state.
    ‘Sure I’m joking,’ I soothed. ‘Think I could stand to be away from you all that time? Of course, if I could take you with me—’
    She tore away from me and stood up facing my chair, all the colour draining from her face. My shock of bewilderment and words I had in mind to speak were cut short by a cry from Jacky.
    ‘Roald! Here – quickly, for heaven’s sake!’
    The edge of terror on his voice rasped through my personal dismay. I muttered an apology to Patricia, leaving explanations for later, and hurried to the phone. On the screen was the scowling face of bin Ishmael.
    ‘Finally
we managed to locate somebody! I’ve been calling all over town trying to get hold of your boss, but he’s – Oh, the hell with that. You’ll have to do. Come on over here, and make it fast.
    ‘Someone’s tried to murder the Tau Cetians!’

10
    The words seemed to explode in my mind like a bomb. They were no less of a shock to everyone else in the room, and a babble of incredulous exclamations followed. I struggled to absorb the horrible fact bin Ishmael had hurled at me, but long before I’d recovered Jacky had seized command of the situation. With a fierce roar he made everybody else shut up; then he fired some crisp questions at bin Ishmael, and rang off with a promise of immediate action.
    ‘Madeleine, get me and Roald a