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Transcriber's note.
This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction Magazine
February and March 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.
TIME CRIME
BY H. BEAM PIPER
_First of Two Parts. The Paratime Police had a real headache this
time! Tracing one man in a population of millions is easy--compared
to finding one gang hiding out on one of billions of probability lines!_
Illustrated by Freas
[Illustration:]
ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION
Kiro Soran, the guard captain, stood in the shadow of the veranda
roof, his white cloak thrown back to display the scarlet lining. He
rubbed his palm reflectively on the checkered butt of his revolver and
watched the four men at the table.
"And ten tens are a hundred," one of the clerks in blue jackets said,
adding another stack to the pile of gold coins.
"Nineteen hundreds," one of the pair in dirty striped robes agreed,
taking a stone from the box in front of him and throwing it away. Only
one stone remained. "One more hundred to pay."
One of the blue-jacketed plantation clerks made a tally mark; his
companion counted out coins, ten and ten and ten.
Dosu Golan, the plantation manager, tapped impatiently on his polished
boot leg with a thin riding whip.
[Illustration:]
"I don't like this," he said, in another and entirely different
language. "I know, chattel slavery's an established custom on this
sector, and we have to conform to local usages, but it sickens me to
have to haggle with these swine over the price of human beings. On
the Zarkantha Sector, we used nothing but free wage-labor."
"Migratory workers," the guard captain said. "Humanitarian
considerations aside, I can think of a lot better ways of meeting the
labor problem on a fruit plantation than by buying slaves you need for
three months a year and have to feed and quarter and clothe and doctor
the whole twelve."
"Twenty hundreds of _obus_," the clerk who had been counting the money
said. "That is the payment, is it not, Coru-hin-Irigod?"
"That is the payment," the slave dealer replied.
The clerk swept up the remaining coins, and his companion took them
over and put them in an iron-bound chest, snapping the padlock. The
two guards who had been loitering at one side slung their rifles and
picked up the chest, carrying it into the plantation house. The slave
dealer and his companion arose, putting their money into a leather
bag; Coru-hin-Irigod turned and bowed to the two men in white cloaks.
"The slaves are yours, noble lords," he said.
Across the plantation yard, six more men in striped robes, with
carbines slung across their backs, approached; with them came another
man in a hooded white cloak, and two guards in blue jackets and red
caps, with bayoneted rifles. The man in white and his armed attendants
came toward the house; the six Calera slavers continued across the
yard to where their horses were picketed.
"If I do not offend the noble lords, then," Coru-hin-Irigod said, "I
beg their sufferance to depart. I and my men have far to ride if we
would reach Careba by nightfall. The Lord, the Great Lord, the Lord
God Safar watch between us until we meet again."
Urado Alatana, the labor foreman, came up onto the porch as the two
slavers went down.
"Have a good look at them, Radd?" the guard captain asked.
"You think I'm crazy enough to let those bandits out of here with two
thousand _obus_--forty thousand Paratemporal Exchange Units--of the
Company's money without knowing what we're getting?" the other
parried. "They're all right--nice, clean, healthy-looking lot. I did
everything but take them apart and inspect the pieces while they were
being unshackled at the stockade. I'd like to know where this
Coru-hin-Whatshisname got them, though. They're not local stuff. Lot
darker, and they're jabbering among themselves in some lingo I never
heard before. A few are wearing some rags of clothing, and they have
odd-looking sandals. I noticed that most of them showed marks of
recent whipping. That may mean they're troublesome, or it may just
mean that these Caleras are a lot of sadistic brutes."
"Poor devils!" The man called Dosu Golan was evidently hoping that
he'd never catch himself talking about fellow humans like that. The
guard captain turned to him.
"Coming to have a look at them, Doth?" he asked.
"You go, Kirv; I'll see them later."
"Still not able to look the Company's property in the face?" the
captain asked gently. "You'll not get used to it any sooner than now."
"I suppose you're right." For a moment Dosu Golan watched
Coru-hin-Irigod and his followers canter out of the yard and break
into a gallop on the road beyond. Then he tucked his whip under his
arm. "All right, then. Let's go see them."
The labor foreman went into the house; the manager and the guard
captain went down the steps and set out across the yard. A big
slat-sided wagon, drawn by four horses, driven by an old slave in a
blue smock and a thing like a sunbonnet, rumbled past, loaded with
newly-picked oranges. Blue woodsmoke was beginning to rise from the
stoves at the open kitchen and a couple of slaves were noisily
chopping wood. Then they came to the stockade of close-set pointed
poles. A guard sergeant in a red-trimmed blue jacket, armed with a
revolver, met them with a salute which Kiro Soran returned: he
unfastened the gate and motioned four or five riflemen into positions
from which they could fire in between the poles in case the slaves
turned on their new owners.
There seemed little danger of that, though Kiro Soran kept his hand
close to the butt of his revolver. The slaves, an even hundred of
them, squatted under awnings out of the sun, or stood in line to drink
at the water-butt. They furtively watched the two men who had entered
among them, as though expecting blows or kicks; when none were
forthcoming, they relaxed slightly. As the labor foreman had said,
they were clean and looked healthy. They were all nearly naked; there
were about as many women as men, but no children or old people.
"Radd's right," the captain told the new manager. "They're not local.
Much darker skins, and different face-structure; faces wedge-shaped
instead of oval, and differently shaped noses, and brown eyes instead
of black. I've seen people like that, somewhere, but--"
He fell silent. A suspicion, utterly fantastic, had begun to form in
his mind, and he stepped closer to a group of a dozen-odd, the manager
following him. One or two had been unmercifully lashed, not long ago,
and all bore a few lash-marks. Odd sort of marks, more like
burn-blisters than welts. He'd have to have the Company doctor look at
them. Then he caught their speech, and the suspicion was converted to
certainty.
"These are not like the others: they wear fine garments, and walk
proudly. They look stern, but not cruel. They are the real masters
here; the others are but servants."
He grasped the manager's arm and drew him aside.
"You know that language?" he asked. When the man called Dosu Golan
shook his head, he continued: "That's Kharanda; it's a dialect spoken
by a people in the Ganges Valley, in India, on the Kholghoor Sector of
the Fourth Level."
Dosu Golan blinked, and his face went blank for a moment.
"You mean they're from outtime?" he demanded. "Are you sure?"
"I did two years on Fourth Level Kholghoor with the Paratime Police,
before I took this job," the man called Kiro Soran replied. "And
another thing. Those lash-marks were made with some kind of an
electric whip. Not these rawhide quirts the Caleras use."
It took the plantation manager all of five seconds to add that up. The
answer frightened him.
"Kirv, this is going to make a simply hideous uproar, all the way up
to Home Time Line main office," he said. "I don't know what I'm going
to do--"
"Well, I know what I have to do." The captain raised his voice, using
the local language: "Sergeant! Run to the guardhouse, and tell
Sergeant Adarada to mount up twenty of his men and take off after
those Caleras who sold us these slaves. They're headed down the road
toward the river. Tell him to bring them all back, and especially
their chief, Coru-hin-Irigod, and him I want alive and able to answer
questions. And then get the white-cloak lord Urado Alatena, and come
back here."
"Yes, captain." The guards were all Yarana people; they disliked
Caleras intensely. The sergeant threw a salute, turned, and ran.
"Next, we'll have to isolate these slaves," Kiro Soran said. "You'd
better make a full report to the Company as soon as possible. I'm
going to transpose to Police Terminal Time Line and make my report to
the Sector-Regional Subchief. Then--"
"Now wait a moment, Kirv," Dosu Golan protested. "After all, I'm the
manager, even if I am new here. It's up to me to make the decisions--"
Kiro Soran shook his head. "Sorry, Doth. Not this one," he said. "You
know the terms under which I was hired by the Company. I'm still a
field agent of the Paratime Police, and I'm reporting back on duty as
soon as I can transpose to Police Terminal. Look; here are a hundred
men and women who have been shifted from one time-line, on one
paratemporal sector of probability, to another. Why, the world from
which these people came doesn't even exist in this space-time
continuum. There's only one way they could have gotten here, and
that's the way we did--in a Ghaldron-Hesthor paratemporal
transposition field. You can carry it on from there as far as you
like, but the only thing it adds up to is a case for the Paratime
Police. You had better include in your report mention that I've
reverted to police status; my Company pay ought to be stopped as of
now. And until somebody who outranks me is sent here, I'm in complete
charge. Paratime Transposition Code, Section XVII, Article 238."
The plantation manager nodded. Kiro Soran knew how he must feel; he
laid a hand gently on the younger man's shoulder.
"You understand how it is, Doth; this is the only thing I can do."
"I understand, Kirv. Count on me for absolutely anything." He looked
at the brown-skinned slaves, and lines of horror and loathing appeared
around his mouth. "To think that some of our own people would do a
thing like this! I hope you can catch the devils! Are you transposing
out, now?"
"In a few minutes. While I'm gone, have the doctor look at those
whip-injuries. Those things could get infected. Fortunately, he's one
of our own people."
"Yes, of course. And I'll have these slaves isolated, and if Adarada
brings back Coru-hin-Irigod and his gang before you get back, I'll
have them locked up and waiting for you. I suppose you want to
narco-hypnotize and question the whole lot, slaves and slavers?"
The labor foreman, known locally as Urado Alatena, entered the
stockade.
"What's wrong, Kirv?" he asked.
The Paratime Police agent told him, briefly. The labor foreman
whistled, threw a quick glance at the nearest slaves, and nodded.
"I knew there was something funny about them," he said. "Doth, what a
simply beastly thing to happen, two days after you take charge here!"
"Not his fault," the Paratime Police agent said. "I'm the one the
Company'll be sore at, but I'd rather have them down on me rather than
old Tortha Karf. Well, sit on the lid till I get back," he told both
of them. "We'll need some kind of a story for the locals. Let's
see--Explain to the guards, in the hearing of some of the more
talkative slaves, that these slaves are from the Asian mainland, that
they are of a people friendly to our people, and that they were
kidnaped by pirates, our enemies. That ought to explain everything
satisfactorily."
On his way back to the plantation house, he saw a clump of local
slaves staring curiously at the stockade, and noticed that the guards
had unslung their rifles and fixed their bayonets. None of them had
any idea, of course, of what had happened, but they all seemed to
know, by some sort of ESP, that something was seriously wrong. It was
going to get worse, too, when strangers began arriving, apparently
from nowhere, at the plantation.
* * * * *
Verkan Vall waited until the small, dark-eyed woman across the
circular table had helped herself from one of the bowls on the
revolving disk in the middle, then rotated it to bring the platter of
cold boar-ham around to himself.
"Want some of this, Dalla?" he asked, transferring a slice of ham and
a spoonful of wine sauce to his plate.
"No, I'll have some of the venison," the black-haired girl beside him
said. "And some of the pickled beans. We'll be getting our fill of
pork, for the next month."
"I thought the Dwarma Sector people were vegetarians," Jandar Jard,
the theatrical designer, said. "Most nonviolent peoples are, aren't
they?"
"Well, the Dwarma people haven't any specific taboo against taking
life," Bronnath Zara, the dark-eyed woman in the brightly colored
gown, told him. "They're just utterly noncombative, nonaggressive.
When I was on the Dwarma Sector, there was a horrible scandal at the
village where I was staying. It seems that a farmer and a meat butcher
fought over the price of a pig. They actually raised their voices and
shouted contradictions at each other. That happened two years before,
and people were still talking about it."
"I didn't think they had any money, either," Verkan Vall's wife,
Hadron Dalla, said.
"They don't," Zara said. "It's all barter and trade. What are you and
Vall going to use for a visible means of support, while you're there?"
"Oh, I have my mandolin, and I've learned all the traditional Dwarma
songs by hypno-mech," Dalla said. "And Transtime Tours is fitting Vall
out with a bag of tools; he's going to do repair work and carpentry."
"Oh, good; you'll be welcome anywhere," Zara, the sculptress, said.
"They're always glad to entertain a singer, and for people who do the
fine decorative work they do, they're the most incompetent practical
mechanics I've ever seen or heard of. You're going to travel from
village to village?"
"Yes. The cover-story is that we're lovers who have left our village
in order not to make Vall's former wife unhappy by our presence,"
Dalla said.
"Oh, good! That's entirely in the Dwarma romantic tradition," Bronnath
Zara approved. "Ordinarily, you know, they don't like to travel. They
have a saying: 'Happy are the trees, they abide in their own place;
sad are the winds, forever they wander.' But that'll be a fine
explanation."
Thalvan Dras, the big man with the black beard and the long red coat
and cloth-of-gold sash who lounged in the host's seat, laughed.
"I can just see Vall mending pots, and Dalla playing that mandolin and
singing," he said. "At least, you'll be getting away from police work.
I don't suppose they have anything like police on the Dwarma Sector?"
"Oh, no; they don't even have any such concept," Bronnath Zara said.
"When somebody does something wrong, his neighbors all come and talk
to him about it till he gets ashamed, then they all forgive him and
have a feast. They're lovely people, so kind and gentle. But you'll
get awfully tired of them in about a month. They have absolutely no
respect for anybody's privacy. In fact, it seems slightly indecent to
them for anybody to want privacy."
One of Thalvan Dras' human servants came into the room, coughed
apologetically, and said:
"A visiphone-call for His Valor, the Mavrad of Nerros."
Vall went on nibbling ham and wine sauce; the servant repeated the
announcement a trifle more loudly.
[Illustration:]
"Vall, you're being paged!" Thalvan Dras told him, with a touch of
impatience.
Verkan Vall looked blank for an instant, then grinned. It had been so
long since he had even bothered to think about that antiquated title
of nobility--
"Vall's probably forgotten that he has a title," a girl across the
table, wearing an almost transparent gown and nothing else, laughed.
"That's something the Mavrad of Mnirna and Thalvabar never forgets,"
Jandar Jard drawled, with what, in a woman, would have been
cattishness.
Thalvan Dras gave him a hastily repressed look of venomous anger, then
said something, more to Verkan Vall than to Jandar Jard, about titles
of nobility being the marks of social position and responsibility
which their bearers should never forget. That jab, Vall thought,
following the servant out of the room, had been a mistake on Jard's
part. A music-drama, for which he had designed the settings, was due
to open here in Dhergabar in another ten days. Thalvan Dras would
cherish spite, and a word from the Mavrad of Mnirna and Thalvabar
would set a dozen critics to disparaging Jandar's work. On the other
hand, maybe it had been smart of Jandar Jard to antagonize Thalvan
Dras; for every critic who bowed slavishly to the wealthy nobleman,
there were at least two more who detested him unutterably, and they
would rush to Jandar Jard's defense, and in the ensuing uproar, the
settings would get more publicity than the drama itself.
* * * * *
In the visiphone booth, Vall found a girl in a green blouse, with the
Paratime Police insigne on her shoulder, looking out of the screen.
The wall behind her was pale green striped in gold and black.
"Hello, Eldra," he greeted her.
"Hello, Chief's Assistant: I'm sorry to bother you, but the Chief
wants to talk to you. Just a moment, please."
The screen exploded into a kaleidoscopic flash of lights and colors,
then cleared again. This time, a man looked out of it. He was well
into middle age; close to his three hundredth year. His hair, a
uniform iron-gray, was beginning to thin in front, and he was
acquiring the beginnings of a double chin. His name was Tortha Karf,
and he was Chief of Paratime Police, and Verkan Vall's superior.
"Hello, Vall. Glad I was able to locate you. When are you and Dalla
leaving?"
"As soon as we can get away from this luncheon, here. Oh, say an hour.
We're taking a rocket to Zarabar, and transposing from there to
Passenger Terminal Sixteen, and from there to the Dwarma Sector."
"Well, Vall, I hate to bother you like this," Tortha Karf said, "but I
wish you'd stop by Headquarters on your way to the rocketport.
Something's come up--it may be a very nasty business--and I'd like to
talk to you about it."
"Well, Chief, let me remind you that this vacation, which I've had to
postpone four times already, has been overdue for four years," Vall
said.
"Yes, Vall, I know. You've been working very hard, and you and Dalla
are entitled to a little time together. I just want you to look into
something, before you leave."
"It'll have to take some fast looking. Our rocket blasts off in two
hours."
"It may take a little longer; if it does, you and Dalla can transpose
to Police Terminal and take a rocket for Zarabar Equivalent, and
transpose from there to Passenger Sixteen. It would save time if you
brought Dalla with you to Headquarters."
"Dalla won't like this," Vall understated.
"No. I'm afraid not." Tortha Karf looked around apprehensively, as
though estimating the damage an enraged Hadron Dalla could do to his
office furnishings. "Well, try to get here as soon as you can."
* * * * *
Thalvan Dras was holding forth, when Vall returned, on one of his
favorite preoccupations.
"... Reason I'm taking such an especially active interest in this
year's Arts Exhibitions; I've become disturbed at the extent to which
so many of our artists have been content to derive their motifs, even
their techniques, from outtime art." He was using his vocowriter,
rather than his conversational, voice. "I yield to no one in my
appreciation of outtime art--you all know how devotedly I collect
objects of art from all over paratime--but our own artists should
endeavor to express their artistic values in our own artistic idioms."
Vall bent over his wife's shoulder.
"We have to leave, right away," he whispered.
"But our rocket doesn't blast off for two hours--"
Thalvan Dras had stopped talking and was looking at them in annoyance.
"I have to go to Headquarters before we leave. It'll save time if you
come along."
"Oh, no, Vall!" She looked at him in consternation. "Was that Tortha
Karf, calling?" She replaced her plate on the table and got to her
feet.
"I'm dreadfully sorry, Dras," he addressed their host. "I just had a
call from Tortha Karf. A few minor details that must be cleared up,
before I leave Home Time Line. If you'll accept our thanks for a
wonderful luncheon--"
"Why, certainly, Vall. Brogoth, will you call--" He gave a slight
chuckle. "I'm so used to having Brogoth Zaln at my elbow that I'd
forgotten he wasn't here. Wait. I'll call one of the servants to have
a car for you."
"Don't bother; we'll take an aircab," Vall told him.
"But you simply can't take a public cab!" The black-bearded nobleman
was shocked at such an obscene idea. "I will have a car ready for you
in a few minutes."
"Sorry, Dras; we have to hurry. We'll get a cab on the roof. Good-by,
everybody; sorry to have to break away like this. See you all when we
get back."
* * * * *
Hadron Dalla watched dejectedly as the green crags and escarpments of
the Paratime Building loomed above the city in front of them, and
began slipping under the aircab. She felt like a prisoner recaptured
at the moment when attempted escape was about to succeed.
"I knew it," she said. "I knew he'd find something. He's trying to
break things up between us, the way he did twenty years ago.'"
Vall crushed out his cigarette and said nothing. That hadn't been
true, and she knew it as well as he did. There had been many other
factors involved in the disintegration of their previous marriage,
most of them of her own contribution. But that had been twenty years
ago, she told herself. This time it would be different, if only--
"Really, Vall, he's never liked me," she went on. "He's jealous of me,
I think. You're to be his successor, when he retires, and he thinks
I'm not a good influence--"
"Oh, rubbish, Dalla! The Chief has always liked you," Vall replied.
"If he didn't, do you think he'd always be inviting us to that farm of
his, on Fifth Level Sicily? It's just that this job of ours has no
end; something's always turning up, outtime."
The music that the cab had been playing died away. "Paratime Building,
just below," it said, in a light feminine voice. "Which landing stage,
please?" Vall leaned forward and punched at the buttons in front of
him. Something in the cab's electronic brain gave a rapid series of
clicks as it shifted from the general Paratime Building beam to the
beam of the Paratime Police landing stage, then it said, "Thank you."
The building below seemed to rotate upward toward them as it settled
down. Then the antigrav-field snapped off, the cab door popped open,
and the cab said: "Good-by, now. Ride with me again, sometime."
They crossed the landing stage, entered the antigrav shaft, and
floated downward; at the end of a hallway, below, Vall opened the door
of Tortha Karf's office and ushered her through ahead of him.
Tortha Karf, inside the semicircle of his desk, was speaking into a
recording phone as they approached. He shut off the machine and waved,
a cigarette in his hand.
"Come on back and sit down," he invited. "Be with you in a moment."
Then he switched on the phone again and went on talking--something
about prompter evaluation and transmission of reports and less
reliance on robot equipment. "Sign that up, my personal order, and see
it's transmitted to everybody down to and including Sector Regional
Subchief level," he finished, then hung up the phone and turned to
them.
"Sorry about this," he said. "Sit down, if you please. Cigarettes?"
She shook her head and sat down in one of the chairs behind the desk;
she started to relax and then caught herself and sat erect, her hands
on her lap.
"This won't interfere with your vacation, Vall," Tortha Karf was
saying. "I just need a little help before you transpose out."
"We have to catch the rocket for Zarabar in an hour and a half," Dalla
reminded him.
"Don't worry about that; if you miss the commercial rocket, our police
rockets can give it an hour's start and pass it before it gets to
Zarabar," Tortha Karf said. Then he turned to Vall. "Here's what's
happened," he said. "One of our field agents on detached duty as guard
captain for Consolidated Outtime Foodstuffs on a fruit plantation in
western North America, Third Level Esaron Sector, was looking over a
lot of slaves who had been sold to the plantation by a local slave
dealer. He heard them talking among themselves--in Kharanda."
Dalla caught the significance of that before Vall did. At first, she
was puzzled; then, in spite of herself, she was horrified and angry.
Tortha Karf was explaining to Vall just where and on what paratemporal
sector Kharanda was spoken.
"No possibility that this agent, Skordran Kirv, could have been
mistaken. He worked for a while on Kholghoor Sector, himself; knew the
language by hypno-mech and by two years' use," Tortha Karf was saying.
"So he ordered himself back on duty, had the slaves isolated and the
slave dealers arrested, and then transposed to Police Terminal to
report. The SecReg Subchief, old Vulthor Tharn, confirmed him in
charge at this Esaron Sector plantation, and assigned him a couple of
detectives and a psychist."
"When was this?" Vall asked.
"Yesterday. One-Five-Nine Day. About 1500 local time."
"Twenty-three hundred Dhergabar time," Vall commented.
"Yes. And I just found out about it. Came in in the late morning
generalized report-digest; very inconspicuous item, no special urgency
symbol or anything. Fortunately, one of the report editors spotted it
and messaged Police Terminal for a copy of the original report."
"It's been a long time since we had anything like that," Vall said,
studying the glowing tip of his cigarette, his face wearing the
curiously withdrawn expression of a conscious memory recall. "Fifty
years ago; the time that gang kidnaped some girls from Second Level
Triplanetary Empire Sector and sold them into the harem of some Fourth
Level Indo-Turanian sultan."
"Yes. That was your first independent case, Vall. That was when I
began to think you'd really make a cop. One renegade First Level
citizen and four or five ServSec Prole hoodlums, with a stolen
fifty-foot conveyer. This looks like a rather more ambitious
operation." Dalla got one of her own cigarettes out and lit it. Vall
and Tortha Karf were talking cop talk about method of operation and
possible size of the gang involved, and why the slaves had been
shipped all the way from India to the west coast of North America.
"Always ready sale for slaves on the Esaron Sector," Vall was saying.
"And so many small independent states, and different languages, that
outtimers wouldn't be particularly conspicuous."
"And with this barbarian invasion going on on the Kholghoor Sector,
slaves could be picked up cheaply," Tortha Karf added.
In spite of her determination to boycott the conversation, curiosity
began to get the better of her. She had spent a year and a half on the
Kholghoor Sector, investigating alleged psychic powers of the local
priests. There'd been nothing to it--the prophecies weren't
precognition, they were shrewd inferences, and the miracles weren't
psychokinesis, they were sleight-of-hand. She found herself asking:
"What barbarian invasion's this?"
"Oh, Central Asian nomadic people, the Croutha," Tortha Karf told her.
"They came down through Khyber Pass about three months ago, turned
east, and hit the headwaters of the Ganges. Without punching a lot of
buttons to find out exactly, I'd say they're halfway to the delta
country by now. Leader seems to be a chieftain called Llamh Droogh the
Red. A lot of paratime trading companies are yelling for permits to
introduce firearms in the Kholghoor Sector to protect their holdings
there."
She nodded. The Fourth Level Kholghoor Sector belonged to what was
known as Indus-Ganges-Irriwady Basic Sector-Grouping--probability of
civilization having developed late on the Indian subcontinent, with
the rest of the world, including Europe, in Stone Age savagery or
early Bronze Age barbarism. The Kharandas, the people among whom she
had once done field-research work, had developed a pre-mechanical,
animal-power, handcraft, edge-weapon culture. She could imagine the
roads jammed with fugitives from the barbarian invaders, the conveyer
hidden among the trees, the lurking slavers--
Watch it, Dalla! Don't let the old scoundrel play on your feelings!
* * * * *
"Well, what do you want me to do, Chief?" Vall was asking.
"Well, I have to know just what this situation's likely to develop
into, and I want to know why Vulthor Tharn's been sitting on this ever
since Skordran Kirv reported it to him--"
"I can answer the second one now," Vall replied. "Vulthor Tharn is due
to retire in a few years. He has a negatively good, undistinguished
record. He's trying to play it safe."
Tortha Karf nodded. "That's what I thought. Look, Vall; suppose you
and Dalla transpose from here to Police Terminal, and go to Novilan
Equivalent, and give this a quick look-over and report to me, and then
rocket to Zarabar Equivalent and go on with your trip to the Dwarma
Sector. It may delay you eight or ten hours, but--"
"Closer twenty-four," Vall said. "I'd have to transpose to this
plantation, on the Esaron Sector. How about it, Dalla? Would you want
to do that?"
She hesitated for a moment, angry with him. He didn't want to refuse,
and he was trying to make her do it for him.
"I know, it's a confounded imposition, Dalla," Tortha Karf told her.
"But it's important that I get a prompt and full estimate of the
situation. This may be something very serious. If it's an isolated
incident, it can be handled in a routine manner, but I'm afraid it's
not. It has all the marks of a large-scale operation, and if this is a
matter of mass kidnapings from one sector and transpositions to
another, you can see what a threat this is to the Paratime Secret."
"Moral considerations entirely aside," Vall said. "We don't need to
discuss them; they're too obvious."
She nodded. For over twelve millennia, the people of her race and
Vall's and Tortha Karf's had been existing as parasites on all the
innumerable other worlds of alternate probability on the lateral
dimension of time. Smart parasites never injure their hosts, and try
never to reveal their existence.
"We could do that, couldn't we, Vall?" she asked, angry at herself now
for giving in. "And if you want to question these slaves, I speak
Kharanda, and I know how they think. And I'm a qualified and licensed
narco-hypnotic technician."
"Well, that's splendid, Dalla!" Tortha Karf enthused. "Wait a moment;
I'll message Police Terminal to have a rocket ready for you."
"I'll need a hypno-mech for Kharanda, myself," Vall said. "Dalla, do
you know Acalan?" When she shook her head, he turned back to Tortha
Karf. "Look; it's about a four-hour rocket hop to Novilan Equivalent.
Say we have the hypno-mech machines installed in the rocket; Dalla and
I can take our language lessons on the way, and be ready to go to work
as soon as we land."
"Good idea," Tortha Karf approved. "I'll order that done, right away.
Now--"
Oddly enough, she wasn't feeling so angry, now that she had committed
herself and Vall. Come to think of it, she had never been on Police
Terminal Time Line; very few people, outside the Paratime Police, ever
had. And, she had always wanted to learn more about Vall's work, and
participate in it with him. And if she'd made him refuse, it would
have been something ugly between them all the time they would be on
the Dwarma Sector. But this way--
* * * * *
The big circular conveyer room was crowded, as it had been every
minute of every day for the past ten thousand years. At the great
circular desk in the center, departing or returning police officers
were checking in or out with the flat-topped cylindrical robot
clerks, or talking to human attendants. Some were in the regulation
green uniform; others, like himself, were in civilian clothes; more
were in outtime costumes from all over paratime. Fringed robes and
cloth-of-gold sashes and conical caps from the Second Level Khiftan
Sector; Fourth Level Proto-Aryan mail and helmets; the short tunics
and kilts of Fourth Level Alexandrian-Roman Sector; the Zarkantha
loincloth and felt cap and daggers; there were priestly vestments
stiff with gold, and military uniforms; there were trousers and
jackboots and bare legs; blasters, and swords, and pistols, and bows
and quivers, and spears. And the place was loud with a babel of voices
and the clatter of teleprinters.
[Illustration:]
Dalla was looking about her in surprised delight; for her, the
vacation had already begun. He was glad; for a while, he had been
afraid that she would be unhappy about it. He guided her through the
crowd to the desk, spoke for a while to one of the human attendants,
and found out which was their conveyer. It was a fixed-destination
shuttler, operative only between Home Time Line and Police Terminal,
from which most of the Paratime Police operations were routed. He put
Dall in through the sliding door, followed, and closed it behind him,
locking it. Then, before he closed the starting switch, he drew a
pistollike weapon and checked it.
In theory, the Ghaldron-Hesthor paratemporal transposition field was
uninfluenced by material objects outside it. In practice, however,
such objects occasionally intruded, and sometimes they were alive and
hostile. The last time he had been in this conveyer room, he had seen
a quartet of returning officers emerge from a conveyer dome dragging
a dead lion by the tail. The sigma-ray needler, which he carried, was
the only weapon which could be used, under the circumstances. It had
no effect whatever on any material structure and could be used inside
an activated conveyer without deranging the conductor-mesh, as, say, a
bullet or the vibration of an ultrasonic paralyzer would do, and it
was instantly fatal to anything having a central nervous system. It
was a good weapon to use outtime for that reason, also; even on the
most civilized time-line, the most elaborate autopsy would reveal no
specific cause of death.
"What's the Esaron Sector like?" Dalla asked, as the conveyer dome
around them coruscated with shifting light and vanished.
"Third Level; probability of abortive attempt to colonize this planet
from Mars about a hundred thousand years ago," he said. "A few
survivors--a shipload or so--were left to shift for themselves while
the parent civilization on Mars died out. They lost all vestiges of
their original Martian culture, even memory of their extraterrestrial
origin. About fifteen hundred to two thousand years ago, a reasonably
high electrochemical civilization developed and they began working
with nuclear energy and developed reaction-drive spaceships. But
they'd concentrated so on the inorganic sciences, and so far neglected
the bio-sciences, that when they launched their first ship for Venus
they hadn't yet developed a germ theory of disease."
"What happened when they ran into the green-vomit fever?" Dalla asked.
"About what you could expect. The first--and only--ship to return
brought it back to Terra. Of course, nobody knew what it was, and
before the epidemic ended, it had almost depopulated this planet.
Since the survivors knew nothing about germs, they blamed it on the
anger of the gods--the old story of recourse to supernaturalism in the
absence of a known explanation--and a fanatically anti-scientific cult
got control. Of course, space travel was taboo; so was nuclear and
even electric power. For some reason, steam power and gunpowder
weren't offensive to the gods. They went back to a low-order
steam-power, black-powder, culture, and haven't gotten beyond that to
this day. The relatively civilized regions are on the east coast of
Asia and the west coast of North America; civilized race more or less
Caucasian. Political organization just barely above the tribal
level--thousands of petty kingdoms and republics and principalities
and feudal holdings and robbers' roosts. The principal industries are
brigandage, piracy, slave-raiding, cattle-rustling and intercommunal
warfare. They have a few ramshackle steam railways, and some
steamboats on the rivers. We sell them coal and manufactured goods,
mostly in exchange for foodstuffs and tobacco. Consolidated Outtime
Foodstuffs has the sector franchise. That's one of the companies
Thalvan Dras gets his money from."
They had run down through the civilized Second and Third Levels and
were leaving the Fourth behind and entering the Fifth, existing in the
probability of a world without human population. Once in a while,
around them, they caught brief flashes of buildings and rocketports
and spaceports and landing stages, as the conveyer took them through
narrow paratime belts on which their own civilization had established
outposts--Fifth Level Commercial, Fifth Level Passenger, Industrial
Sector, Service Sector.
Finally the conveyer dome around them shimmered into visibility and
materialized; when they emerged, there were policemen in green
uniforms who entered to search the dome with drawn needlers to make
sure they had picked up nothing dangerous on the way. The room outside
was similar to the one they had left on Home Time Line, even to the
shifting, noisy crowd in incongruously-mixed costumes.
* * * * *
The rocketport was a ten minutes' trip by aircar from the conveyer
head; when they boarded the stubby-winged strato-rocket, Vall saw that
two of the passenger-seats had square metal cabinets bolted in place
behind them and blue plastic helmets on swinging arms mounted above
them.
"Everything's set up," the pilot told them. "Dr. Hadron, you sit on
the left; that cabinet's loaded with language tape for Acalan. Yours
is loaded with a tape of Kharanda; that's the Fourth Level Kholghoor
language you wanted, Chief's Assistant. Shall I help you get fixed in
your seats?"
"Yes, if you please. Here, Dalla, I'll fix that for you."
Dalla was already asleep when the pilot was adjusting his helmet and
giving him his injection. He never felt the rocket tilt into firing
position, and while he slept, the Kharands language, with all its
vocabulary and grammar, became part of his subconscious knowledge,
needing only the mental pronunciation of a trigger-symbol to bring it
into consciousness. The pilot was already unfastening and raising his
helmet when he opened his eyes. Dalla, beside him, was sipping a cup
of spiced wine.
On the landing stage of the Sector-Regional Headquarters at Novilan
Equivalent, four or five people were waiting for them. Vall recognized
the subchief, Vulthor Tharn, who introduced another man, in riding
boots and a white cloak, as Skordran Kirv. Vall clasped hands with him
warmly.
"Good work, Agent Skordran. You got onto this promptly."
"I tried to, sir. Do you want the dope now? We have half an hour's
flight to our spatial equivalent, and another half hour in
transposition."
"Give it to me on the way," he said, and turned to Vulthor Tharn.
"Our Esaron costumes ready?"
"Yes. Over there in the control tower. We have a temporary conveyer
head set up about two hundred miles south of here, which will take you
straight through to the plantation."
"Suppose you change now, Dalla," he said. "Subchief, I'd like a word
with you privately."
He and Vulthor Tharn excused themselves and walked over to the edge of
the landing stage. The SecReg Subchief was outwardly composed, but
Vall sensed that he was worried and embarrassed.
"Now, what's been done since you got Agent Skordran's report?" Vall
asked.
"Well, sir, it seems that this is more serious than we had
anticipated. Field Agent Skordran, who will give you the particulars,
says that there is every indication that a large and well-organized
gang of paratemporal criminals, our own people, are at work. He says
that he's found evidence of activities on Fourth Level Kholghoor that
don't agree with any information we have about conditions on that
sector."
"Beside transmitting Agent Skordran's report to Dhergabar through the
robot report-system, what have you done about it?"
"I confirmed Agent Skordran in charge of the local investigation, and
gave him two detectives and a psychist, sir. As soon as we could
furnish hypno-mech indoctrination in Kharanda to other psychists, I
sent them along. He now has four of them, and eight detectives. By
that time, we had a conveyer head right at this Consolidated Outtime
Foodstuffs plantation."
"Why didn't you just borrow psychists from SecReg for Kholghoor,
Eastern India?" Vall asked. "Subchief Ranthar would have loaned you a
few."
"Oh, I couldn't call on another SecReg for men without higher-echelon
authorization. Especially not from another Sector Organization, even
another Level Authority," Vulthor Tharn said. "Beside, it would have
taken longer to bring them here than hypno-mech our own personnel."
He was right about the second point. Vall agreed mentally; however,
his real reason was procedural.
"Did you alert Ranthar Jard to what was going on in his SecReg?" he
asked.
"Gracious, no!" Vulthor Tharn was scandalized. "I have no authority to
tell people of equal echelon in other Sector and Level organizations
what to do. I put my report through regular channels; it wasn't my
place to go outside my own jurisdiction."
And his report had crawled through channels for fourteen hours, Vall
thought.
"Well, on my authority, and in the name of Chief Tortha, you message
Ranthar Jard at once; send him every scrap of information you have on
the subject, and forward additional information as it comes in to
you. I doubt he'll find anything on any time-line that's being
exploited by any legitimate paratimers. This gang probably work
exclusively on unpenetrated time-lines; this business Skordran Kirv
came across was a bad blunder on some underling's part." He saw Dalla
emerge from the control tower in breeches and boots and a white cloak,
buckling on a heavy revolver. "I'll go change, now; you get busy
calling Ranthar Jard. I'll see you when I get back."
* * * * *
"Are you taking over, Chief's Assistant?" Skordran Kirv asked, as the
aircar lifted from the landing stage.
"Not at all. My wife and I are starting on our vacation, as soon as I
find out what's been happening here, and report to Chief Tortha. Did
your native troopers catch those slavers?"
"Yes, they got them yesterday afternoon; we've had them ever since. Do
you want the whole thing just as it happened, Assistant Verkan, or
just a condensation?"
"Give me what you think it indicates, remembering that you're probably
trying to analyze a large situation from a very small sample."
"It's big, all right," Skordran Kirv said. "This gang can't number
less than a hundred men, maybe several hundred. They must have at
least two two-hundred-foot conveyers and several small ones, and bases
on what sounds like some Fifth Level Time line, and at least one air
freighter of around five thousand tons. They are operating on a number
of Kholghoor and Esaron time lines."
Verkan Vall nodded. "I didn't think it was any petty larceny," he
said.
"Wait till you hear the rest of it. On the Kholghoor Sector, this gang
is known as the Wizard Traders; we've been using that as a convenience
label. They pose as sorcerers--black robes and hood-masks covered with
luminous symbols, voice-amplifiers, cold-light auras, energy-weapons,
mechanical magic tricks, that sort of thing. They have all the Croutha
scared witless. Their procedure is to establish camps in the forest
near recently conquered Kharanda cities; then they appear to the
Croutha, impress them with their magical powers, and trade
manufactured goods for Kharanda captives. They mainly trade firearms,
apparently some kind of flintlocks, and powder."
Then they were confining their operations to unpenetrated time lines;
there had been no reports of firearms in the hands of the Croutha
invaders.
"After they buy a batch of slaves," Skordran Kirv continued, "they
transpose them to this presumably Fifth Level base, where they have
concentration camps. The slaves we questioned had been airlifted to
North America, where there's another concentration camp, and from
there transposed to this Esaron Sector time line where I found them.
They say that there were at least two to three thousand slaves in
this North American concentration camp and that they are being
transposed out in small batches and replaced by others airlifted in
from India. This lot was sold to a Calera named Nebu-hin-Abenoz, the
chieftain of a hill town, Careba, about fifty miles south-west of the
plantation. There were two hundred and fifty in this batch; this
Coru-hin-Irigod only bought the batch he sold at the plantation."
* * * * *
The aircar lost speed and altitude; below, the countryside was dotted
with conveyer heads, each spatially coexistent with some outtime
police post or operation. There were a great many of them; the western
coast of North America was a center of civilization on many
paratemporal sectors, and while the conveyer heads of the commercial
and passenger companies were scattered over hundreds of Fifth Level
time lines, those of the Paratime Police were concentrated upon one.
The anti-grav-car circled around a three-hundred-foot steel tower that
supported a conveyer head spatially coexistent with one on a top floor
of some outtime tall building, and let down in front of a low
prefabricated steel shed. A man in police uniform came out to meet
them. There was a fifty-foot conveyer dome inside, and a fifty-foot
red-lined circle that marked the transposition point of an outtime
conveyer. They all entered the dome, and the operator put on the
transposition field.
"You haven't heard the worst of it yet." Skordran Kirv was saying. "On
this time line, we have reason to think that the native,
Nebu-hin-Abenoz, who bought the slaves, actually saw the slavers'
conveyer. Maybe even saw it activated."
"If he did, we'll either have to capture him and give him a
memory-obliteration, or kill him," Vall said. "What do you know about
him?"
"Well, this Careba, the town he bosses, is a little walled town up in
the hills. Everybody there is related to everybody else; this man we
have, Coru-hin-Irigod, is the son of a sister of Nebu-hin-Abenoz's
wife. They're all bandits and slavers and cattle rustlers and what
have you. For the last ten years, Nebu-hin-Abenoz has been buying
slaves from some secret source. Before the Kholghoor Sector people
began coming in, they were mostly white, with a few brown people who
might have been Polynesians. No Negroes--there's no black race on this
sector, and I suppose the paratime slavers didn't want too many
questions asked. Coru-hin-Irigod, under narco-hypnosis, said that they
were all outlanders, speaking strange languages."
"Ten years! And this is the first hint we've had of it," Vall said.
"That's not a bright mark for any of us. I'll bet the slave population
on some of these Esaron time lines is an anthropologist's nightmare."
"Why, if this has been going on for ten years, there must have been
millions upon millions of people dragged from their own time lines
into slavery!" Dalla said in a shocked voice.
"Ten years may not be all of it," Vall said. "This Nebu-hin-Abenoz
looks like the only tangible lead we have, at present. How does he
operate?"
"About once every ten days, he'll take ten or fifteen men and go a
day's ride--that may be as much as fifty miles; these Caleras have
good horses and they're hard riders--into the hills. He'll take a big
bag of money, all gold. After dark, when he has made camp, a couple of
strangers in Calera dress will come in. He'll go off with them, and
after about an hour, he'll come back with eight or ten of these
strangers and a couple of hundred slaves, always chained in batches of
ten. Nebu-hin-Abenoz pays for them, makes arrangements for the next
meeting, and the next morning he and his party start marching the
slaves to Careba. I might add that, until now, these slaves have been
sold to the mines east of Careba; these are the first that have gotten
into the coastal country."