I hesitated. With a touch of pique, he added, ‘Roald, I am one who is trusted with such things!’
Granted. So I overcame my reluctance and told him the full story.
‘I wish you all success,’ he said when I was done. ‘If it goes well, you should be ready to meet us in fifty years. My compliments!’
He rose and held out his hand; I did the same.
‘But before you leave,’ he said, ‘there is one thing I have to do. I regret the necessity, but… There is a third side to the work of a madual. And that is the suppression of kenekito not yet ripe to be divulged.’
Some force seemed to flow from the hand which touched mine, and instantly I forgot what I had learned.
Epilogue
Roald Vincent, Director-in-chief of the Interstellar Cultural Exchange, chairman of the Multiracial Board, ex-officio vice-chairman of the Starhome Planetary Council, Fellow of the Starhome Scientific Academy, corresponding member of the Academy of Earth, honorary patron of the Sociology Society, fourteen times an honorary doctor of various universities under three different suns, folded his new cohabitation contract and slipped it into his pocket along with pictures of Kay, his two sons, and his granddaughter. He gave a sigh of contentment. It was a good idea to try separating for a while when the oldest boy got married, and he couldn’t deny he’d enjoyed his little fling. He was pretty sure Kay had enjoyed hers, too; she was still amazingly attractive. The point was neither of them enjoyed it enough. So…
Fifty years since their first meeting! In the old days it would have been a lifetime. But here he was, still vigorous – as he had recently proved to his entire satisfaction – and looking forward to another thirty years of productive work.
He gazed out of his office window at the world which he had made his home. It wasn’t Earth. But in some ways it was better than Earth, and he could take some of the credit for it becoming so.
His mind roamed. Some of the changes that had taken place were fantastic, considering it was only half a century. Who’d have expected Shvast, the little interpreter, to be elected first planetary president of Tau Ceti Four? A world government and a world language already – and probably, before he died, he’d see a starship built by Tau Cetians landing at the port here.
And Jacky Demba becoming Minister of Extra-Terrestrial Affairs, back Earthside! Attending Tinescu’s funeral, laying the wreath of Starhome lilies which Roald had been able to send when the new Starhomer ships cut interstellar freight charges from prohibitive to merely exorbitant.
And Micky Torres, of course. When they’d finally revealed the secret masked by the innocuously-titled Department of Pan-human Relations, there had been that fantastic write-in campaign which almost made him President of Earth against his will. Ridiculous! President of Earth at forty? But he would have refused the job anyway; his eyes were set on something much more crucial, and here it was turning up at last. He’d been behind the scenes all the time when they set up the Multiracial Board, had masterminded its progress for more than a decade, and now was resigned to coming into the spotlight, for the other races would accept no one else as chairman when they turned it into the brand-new Council of Worlds.
Roald was glad that with the dissolution of the old Board he’d have one less job on his shoulders. He’d never had Micky’s gift for cramming his time to the uttermost. His eyes lingered on a row of books in a place of honour under the window; three novels, three authoritative texts on social evolution, and a classic study of the forces responsible for war, all bearing the proud name of Miguel de Madrigal de las Altas Torres.
When the hell did Micky fit all of it in?
He was roused from his reverie by the phone. The face of one of his aides appeared on the screen, taut with excitement.
‘What is it, Wegener?’ he grunted.
‘Sir, there’s a general alert been signalled!’
‘What?’ Roald sat bolt upright. ‘Why in the galaxy a general alert?’
‘As far as I can learn, sir, it’s due to an unidentified ship. The Alcor broached normal half an hour ago and a few minutes later beamed in a message about some strange ship heading into the system from the direction of Galactic Centre. There aren’t supposed to be any of our ships in that area, certainly not under sublight drive. Director, it must be an alien ship!’
Roald sat rock-still. In a single instant his mind had been snapped back fifty years, and he remembered.
By what miraculous insight into human psychology Anovel had worked his trick, Roald dared not guess. But he bore no resentment; fifty years he had said, and fifty years were up, and here they were: those who had had starflight for fifteen millennia …
‘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.
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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Also by John Brunner
A Maze of Stars
A Planet of Your Own
Age of Miracles
Bedlam Planet
Born Under Mars
Castaways’ World
Catch a Falling Star
Children of the Thunder
Double, Double
Enigma from Tantalus
Galactic Storm
Give Warning to the World
I Speak for Earth
Into the Slave Nebula
Manshape
Meeting at Infinity
More Things in Heaven
Muddle Earth
Players at the Game of People
Polymath
Quicksand
Sanctuary in the Sky
Stand on Zanzibar
Telepathist
The Atlantic Abomination
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.
Copyright
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.
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