in every ten days, at about the same place?"
"Yes. I've been thinking of a way we might trap them," Skordran Kirv
said. "I'll need more men, and equipment."
"Order them from Regional or General Reserve." Vall told him. "This
thing's going to have overtop priority till it's cleared up."
He was mentally cursing Vulthor Tharn's procedure-bound timidity as
the conveyer flickered and solidified around them and the overhead red
light turned green.
* * * * *
They emerged into the interior of a long shed, adobe-walled and
thatch-roofed, with small barred windows set high above the earth
floor. It was cool and shadowy, and the air was heavy with the
fragrance of citrus fruits. There were bins along the walls, some
partly full of oranges, and piles of wicker baskets. Another conveyer
dome stood beside the one in which they had arrived; two men in white
cloaks and riding boots sat on the edge of one of the bins, smoking
and talking.
Skordran Kirv introduced them--Gathon Dard and Krador Arv, special
detectives--and asked if anything new had come up. Krador Arv shook
his head.
"We still have about forty to go," he said. "Nothing new in their
stories; still the same two time lines."
[Illustration:]
"These people," Skordran Kirv explained, "were all peons on the estate
of a Kharanda noble just above the big bend of the Ganges. The Croutha
hit their master's estate about a ten-days ago, elapsed time. In
telling about their capture, most of them say that their master's wife
killed herself with a dagger after the Croutha killed her husband,
but about one out of ten say that she was kidnaped by the Croutha. Two
different time lines, of course. The ones who tell the suicide story
saw no firearms among the Croutha; the ones who tell the kidnap story
say that they all had some kind of muskets and pistols. We're making
synthetic summaries of the two stories."
"We're having trouble with the locals about all these strangers coming
in," Gathon Dard added. "They're getting curious."
"We'll have to take a chance on that," Vall said. "Are the
interrogations still going on? Then let's have a look-in at them."
The big double doors at the end of the shed were barred on the inside.
Krador Arv unlocked a small side door, letting Vall, Dalla and Gathon
Dard out. In the yard outside, a gang of slaves were unloading a big
wagon of oranges and packing them into hampers; they were guarded by a
couple of native riflemen who seemed mostly concerned with keeping
them away from the shed, and a man in a white cloak was watching the
guards for the same purpose. He walked over and introduced himself to
Vall.
"Golzan Doth, local alias Dosu Golan. I'm Consolidated Outtime
Foodstuffs' manager here."
"Nasty business for you people," Vall sympathized. "If it's any
consolation, it's a bigger headache for us."
"Have you any idea what's going to be done about these slaves?"
Golzan Doth asked. "I have to remember that the Company has forty
thousand Paratemporal Exchange Units invested in them. The top office
was very specific in requesting information about that."
Vall shook his head. "That's over my echelon," he said. "Have to be
decided by the Paratime Commission. I doubt if your company'll suffer.
You bought them innocently, in conformity with local custom. Ever buy
slaves from this Coru-hin-Irigod before?"
"I'm new, here. The man I'm replacing broke his neck when his horse
put a foot in a gopher hole about two ten-days ago."
Beside him, Vall could see Dalla nod as though making a mental note.
When she got back to Home Time Line, she'd put a crew of mediums to
work trying to contact the discarnate former plantation manager; at
Rhogom Institute, she had been working on the problem of return of a
discarnate personality from outtime.
"A few times," Skordran Kirv said. "Nothing suspicious; all local
stuff. We questioned Coru-hin-Irigod pretty closely on that point, and
he says that this is the first time he ever brought a batch of
Nebu-hin-Abenoz's outlanders this far west."
* * * * *
The interrogations were being conducted inside the plantation house,
in the secret central rooms where the paratimers lived. Skordran Kirv
used a door-activator to slide open a hidden door.
"I suppose I don't have to warn either of you that any positive
statement made in the hearing of a narco-hypnotized subject--" he
began.
"... Has the effect of hypnotic suggestion--" Vall picked up after
him.
"... And should be avoided unless such suggestion is intended," Dalla
finished.
Skordran Kirv laughed, opening another, inner door, and stood aside.
In what had been the paratimers' recreation room, most of the
furniture had been shoved into the corners. Four small tables had been
set up, widely spaced and with screens between; across each of them,
with an electric recorder between, an almost naked Kharanda slave
faced a Paratime Police psychist. At a long table at the far side of
the room, four men and two girls were working over stacks of cards and
two big charts.
"Phrakor Vuln," the man who was working on the charts introduced
himself. "Synthesist." He introduced the others.
Vall made a point of the fact that Dalla was his wife, in case any of
the cops began to get ideas, and mentioned that she spoke Kharanda,
had spent some time on the Fourth Level Kholghoor, and was a qualified
psychist.
"What have you got, so far?" he asked.
"Two different time lines, and two different gangs of Wizard
Traders," Phrakor Vuln said. "We've established the latter from
physical descriptions and because both batches were sold by the
Croutha at equivalent periods of elapsed time."
Vall picked up one of the kidnap-story cards and glanced at it.
"I notice there's a fair verbal description of these firearms, and
mention of electric whips," he said. "I'm curious about where they
came from."
"Well, this is how we reconstructed them, Chief's Assistant," one of
the girls said, handing him a couple of sheets of white drawing paper.
The sketches had been done with soft pencil; they bore repeated
erasures and corrections. That of the whip showed a cylindrical
handle, indicated as twelve inches in length and one in diameter,
fitted with a thumb-switch.
"That's definitely Second Level Khiftan," Vall said, handing it back.
"Made of braided copper or silver wire and powered with a little
nuclear-conversion battery in the grip. They heat up to about two
hundred centigrade; produce really painful burns."
"Why, that's beastly!" Dalla exclaimed.
"Anything on the Khiftan Sector is." Skordran Kirv looked at the four
slaves at the tables. "We don't have a really bad case here, now. A
few of these people were lash-burned horribly, though."
Vall was looking at the other sketches. One was a musket, with a wide
butt and a band-fastened stock; the lock-mechanism, vaguely flintlock,
had been dotted in tentatively. The other was a long pistol, similarly
definite in outline and vague in mechanical detail; it was merely a
knob-butted miniature of the musket.
"I've seen firearms like these; have a lot of them in my collection,"
he said, handing back the sketches. "Low-order mechanical or
high-order pre-mechanical cultures. Fact is, things like those could
have been made on the Kholghoor Sector, if the Kharandas had learned
to combine sulfur, carbon and nitrates to make powder."
The interrogator at one of the tables had evidently heard all his
subject could tell him. He rose, motioning the slave to stand.
"Now, go with that man," he said in Kharanda, motioning to one of the
detectives in native guard uniform. "You will trust him; he is your
friend and will not harm you. When you have left this room, you will
forget everything that has happened here, except that you were kindly
treated and that you were given wine to drink and your hurts were
anointed. You will tell the others that we are their friends and that
they have nothing to fear from us. And you will not try to remove the
mark from the back of your left hand."
As the detective led the slave out a door at the other side of the
room, the psychist came over to the long table, handing over a card
and lighting a cigarette.
"Suicide story," he said to one of the girls, who took the card.
"Anything new?"
"Some minor details about the sale to the Caleras on this time line. I
think we've about scraped bottom."
"You can't say that," Phrakor Vuln objected. "The very last one may
give us something nobody else had noticed."
Another subject was sent out. The interrogator came over to the table.
"One of the kidnap-story crowd," he said. "This one was right beside
that Croutha who took the shot at the wild pig or whatever it was on
the way to the Wizard Traders' camp. Best description of the guns
we've gotten so far. No question that they're flintlocks." He saw
Verkan Vall. "Oh, hello, Assistant Verkan. What do you make of them?
You're an authority on outtime weapons, I understand."
"I'd have to see them. These people simply don't think mechanically
enough to give a good description. A lot of peoples make flintlock
firearms."
He started running over, in his mind, the paratemporal areas in which
gunpowder but not the percussion-cap was known. Expanding cultures,
which had progressed as far as the former but not the latter. Static
cultures, in which an accidental discovery of gunpowder had never been
followed up by further research. Post-debacle cultures, in which a few
stray bits of ancient knowledge had survived.
Another interrogator came over, and then the fourth. For a while they
sat and talked and drank coffee, and then the next quartet of slaves,
two men and two women, were brought in. One of the women had been
badly blistered by the electric whips of the Wizard Traders; in spite
of reassurances, all were visibly apprehensive.
"We will not harm you," one of the psychists told them. "Here; here is
medicine for your hurts. At first, it will sting, as good medicines
will, but soon it will take away all pain. And here is wine for you to
drink."
A couple of detectives approached, making a great show of pouring wine
and applying ointment; under cover of the medication, they jabbed each
slave with a hypodermic needle, and then guided them to seats at the
four tables. Vall and Dalla went over and stood behind one of the
psychists, who had a small flashlight in his hand.
"Now, rest for a while," the psychist was saying. "Rest and let the
good medicine do its work. You are tired and sleepy. Look at this
magic light, which brings comfort to the troubled. Look at the light.
Look ... at ... the ... light."
They moved to the next table.
"Did you have hand in the fighting?"
"No, lord. We were peasant folk, not fighting people. We had no
weapons, nor weapon-skill. Those who fought were all killed; we held
up empty hands, and were spared to be captives of the Croutha."
"What happened to your master, the Lord Ghromdour, and to his lady?"
"One of the Croutha threw a hatchet and killed our master, and then
his lady drew a dagger and killed herself."
The psychist made a red mark on the card in front of him, and circled
the number on the back of the slave's hand with red indelible crayon.
Vall and Dalla went to the third table.
"They had the common weapons of the Croutha, lord, and they also had
the weapons of the Wizard Traders. Of these, they carried the long
weapons slung across their backs, and the short weapons thrust through
their belts."
A blue mark on the card; a blue circle on the back of the slave's
hand.
They listened to both versions of what had happened at the sack of the
Lord Ghromdour's estate, and the march into the captured city of
Jhirda, and the second march into the forest to the camp of the Wizard
Traders.
"The servants of the Wizard Traders did not appear until after the
Croutha had gone away; they wore different garb. They wore short
jackets, and trousers, and short boots, and they carried small weapons
on their belts--"
"They had whips of great cruelty that burned like fire; we were all
lashed with these whips, as you may see, lord--"
"The Croutha had bound us two and two, with neck-yokes; these the
servants of the Wizard Traders took off from us, and they chained us
together by tens, with the chains we still wore when we came to this
place--"
"They killed my child, my little Zhouzha!" the woman with the horribly
blistered back was wailing. "They tore her out of my arms, and one of
the servants of the Wizard Traders--may Khokhaat devour his soul
forever!--dashed out her brains. And when I struggled to save her. I
was thrown on the ground, and beaten with the fire-whips until I
fainted. Then I was dragged into the forest, along with the others who
were chained with me." She buried her head in her arms, sobbing
bitterly.
Dalla stepped forward, taking the flashlight from the interrogator
with one hand and lifting the woman's head with the other. She flashed
the light quickly in the woman's eyes.
"You will grieve no more for your child," she said. "Already, you are
forgetting what happened at the Wizard Traders' camp, and remembering
only that your child is safe from harm. Soon you will remember her
only as a dream of the child you hope to have, some day." She flashed
the light again, then handed it back to the psychist. "Now, tell us
what happened when you were taken into the forest; what did you see
there?"
The psychist nodded approvingly, made a note on the card, and
listened while the woman spoke. She had stopped sobbing, now, and her
voice was clear and cheerful.
Vall went over to the long table.
"Those slaves were still chained with the Wizard Traders' chains when
they were delivered here. Where are the chains?" he asked Skordran
Kirv.
"In the permanent conveyer room," Skordran Kirv said. "You can look at
them there; we didn't want to bring them in here, for fear these poor
devils would think we were going to chain them again. They're very
light, very strong; some kind of alloy steel. Files and power saws
only polish them; it takes fifteen seconds to cut a link with an
atomic torch. One long chain, and short lengths, fifteen inches long,
staggered, every three feet, with a single hinge-shackle for the
ankle. The shackles were riveted with soft wrought-iron rivets,
evidently made with some sort of a power riveting-machine. We cut them
easily with a cold chisel."
"They ought to be sent to Dhergabar Equivalent, Police Terminal, for
study of material and workmanship. Now, you mentioned some scheme you
had for capturing this conveyer that brings in the slaves for
Nebu-hin-Abenoz. What have you in mind?"
"We still have Coru-hin-Irigod and all his gang, under hypno. I'd
thought of giving them hypnotic conditioning, and sending them back to
Careba with orders to put out some kind of signal the next time
Nebu-hin-Abenoz starts out on a buying trip. We could have a couple of
men posted in the hills overlooking Careba, and they could send a
message-ball through to Police Terminal. Then, a party could be sent
with a mobile conveyer to ambush Nebu-hin-Abenoz on the way, and wipe
out his party. Our people could take their horses and clothing and go
on to take the conveyer by surprise."
"I'd suggest one change. Instead of relying on visual signals by the
hypno-conditioned Coru-hin-Irigod, send a couple of our men to Careba
with midget radios."
Skordran Kirv nodded. "Sure. We can condition Coru-hin-Irigod to
accept them as friends and vouch for them at Careba. Our boys can be
traders and slave buyers. Careba's a market town; traders are always
welcome. They can have firearms to sell--revolvers and repeating
rifles. Any Calera'll buy any firearm that's better than the one he's
carrying; they'll always buy revolvers and repeaters. We can get what
we want from Commercial Four-Oh-Seven; we can get riding and pack
horses here."
Vall nodded. "And the post overlooking or in radio range of Careba on
this time line, and another on PolTerm. For the ambush of
Nebu-hin-Abenoz's gang and the capture of the conveyer, use anything you
want to--sleep-gas, paralyzers, energy-weapons, antigrav-equipment,
anything. As far as regulations about using only equipment appropriate
to local culture-levels, forget them entirely. But take that conveyer
intact. You can locate the base time line from the settings of the
instrument panel, and that's what we want most of all."
Dalla and the police psychist, having finished with and dismissed
their subject, came over to the long table.
"... That poor creature," Dalla was saying. "What sort of fiends are
they?"
"If that made you sick, remember we've been listening to things like
that for the last eight hours. Some of the stories were even worse
than that one."
"Well, I'd like to use a heat-gun on the whole lot of them, turned
down to where it'd just fry them medium-rare," Dalla said. "And for
whoever's back of this, take him to Second Level Khiftan and sell him
to the priests of Fasif."
"Too bad you're not coming back from your vacation, instead of
starting out. Chief's Assistant Verkan," Skordran Kirv said. "This is
too big for me to handle alone, and I'd sooner work under you than
anybody else Chief Tortha sends in."
"Vall!" Dalla cried in indignation. "You're not going to just report
on this and then walk away from it, are you?"
"But, darling," Vall replied, in what he hoped was a convincing show
of surprise. "You don't want our vacation postponed again, do you? If
I get mixed up in this, there's no telling when I can get away, and by
the time I'm free, something may come up at Rhogom Institute that you
won't want to drop--"
"Vall, you know perfectly well that I wouldn't be happy for an instant
on the Dwarma Sector, thinking about this--"
"All right, then; let's forget about the vacation. You want to stay on
for a while and help me with this? It'll be a lot of hard work, but
we'll be together."
"Yes, of course. I want to do something to smash those devils. Vall,
if you'd heard some of the things they did to those poor people--"
"Well, I'll have to go back to PolTerm, as soon as I'm reasonably well
filled in on this, and report to Tortha Karf and tell him I've taken
charge. You can stay here and help with these interrogations; I'll be
back in about ten hours. Then, we can go to Kholghoor East India
SecReg HQ to talk to Ranthar Jard. We may be able to get something
that'll help us on that end--"
"You may be able to have your vacation before too long, Dr. Hadron,"
Skordran Kirv told her. "Once we capture one of their conveyers, the
instrument panel'll tell us what time line they're working from, and
then we'll have them."
"There's an Indo-Turanian Sector parable about a snake charmer who
thought he was picking up his snake and found that he had hold of an
elephant's tail," Vall said. "That might be a good thing to bear in
mind, till we find out just what we have picked up."
[Illustration:]
* * * * *
Coming down a hallway on the hundred and seventh floor of the
Management wing of the Paratime Building, Yandar Yadd paused to
admire, in the green mirror of the glassoid wall, the jaunty angle of
his silver-feathered cap, the fit of his short jacket, and the way his
weapon hung at his side. This last was not instantly recognizable as a
weapon; it looked more like a portable radio, which indeed it was. It
was, none the less, a potent weapon. One flick of his finger could
connect that radio with one at Tri-Planet News Service, and within the
hour anything he said into it would be heard by all Terra, Mars and
Venus. In consequence, there existed around the Paratime Building a
marked and understandable reluctance to antagonize Yandar Yadd.
He glanced at his watch. It was twenty minutes short of 1000, when he
had an appointment with Baltan Vrath, the comptroller general.
Glancing about, he saw that he was directly in front of the doorway of
the Outtime Claims Bureau, and he strolled in, walking through the
waiting room and into the claims-presentation office. At once, he
stiffened like a bird dog at point.
Sphabron Larv, one of his young legmen, was in altercation across the
counter-desk with Varkar Klav, the Deputy Claims Agent on duty at the
time. Varkar was trying to be icily dignified; Sphabron Larv's black
hair was in disarray and his face was suffused with anger. He was
pounding with his fist on the plastic counter-top.
"You have to!" he was yelling in the older man's face. "That's a
public document, and I have a right to see it. You want me to go into
Tribunes' Court and get an order? If I do, there'll be a Question in
Council about why I had to, before the day's out!"
"What's the matter, Larv?" Yandar Yadd asked lazily. "He trying to
hold something out on you?"
Sphabron Larv turned; his eyes lit happily when he saw his boss, and
then his anger returned.
"I want to see a copy of an indemnity claim that was filed this
morning," he said. "Varkar, here, won't show it to me. What does he
think this is, a Fourth Level dictatorship?"
"What kind of a claim, now?" Yandar Yadd addressed Larv, ignoring
Varkar Klav.
"Consolidated Outtime Foodstuffs--one of the Thalvan Interests
companies--just claimed forty thousand P.E.U. for a hundred slaves
bought by one of their plantation managers on Third Level Esaron from
a local slave dealer. The Paratime Police impounded the slaves for
narco-hypnotic interrogation, and then transposed the lot of them to
Police Terminal."
Yandar Yadd still held his affectation of sleepy indolence.
"Now why would the Paracops do that, I wonder? Slavery's an
established local practice on Esaron Sector; our people have to buy
slaves if they want to run a plantation."
"I know that." Sphabron Larv replied. "That's what I want to find out.
There must be something wrong, either with the slaves, or the
treatment our people were giving them, or the Paratime Police, and I
want to find out which."
"To tell the truth, Larv, so do I." Yandar Yadd said. He turned to the
man behind the counter. "Varkar, do we see that claim, or do I make a
story out of your refusal to show it?" he asked.
"The Paratime Police asked me to keep this confidential," Varkar Klav
said. "Publicity would seriously hamper an important police
investigation."
Yandar Yadd made an impolite noise. "How do I know that all it would
do would be to reveal police incompetence?" he retorted. "Look,
Varkar; you and the Paratime Police and the Paratime Commission and
the Home Time Line Management are all hired employees of the Home Time
Line public. The public has a right to know what its employees are
doing, and it's my business to see that they're informed. Now, for the
last time--will you show us a copy of that claim?"
"Well, let me explain, off the record--" the official begged.
"Huh-uh! Huh-uh! I had that off-the-record gag worked on me when I was
about Larv's age, fifty years ago. Anything I get, I put on the air or
not at my own discretion."
"All right," Varkar Klav surrendered, pointing to a reading screen and
twiddling a knob. "But when you read it, I hope you have enough
discretion to keep quiet about it."
The screen lit, and Yandar Yadd automatically pressed a button for a
photo-copy. The two newsmen stared for a moment, and then even Yandar
Yadd's shell of drowsy negligence cracked and fell from him. His hand
brushed the switch as he snatched the hand-phone from his belt.
"Marva!" he barked, before the girl at the news office could more than
acknowledge. "Get this recorded for immediate telecast!... Ready?
Beginning: The existence of a huge paratemporal slave trade came to
light on the afternoon of One-Five-Nine Day, on a time line of the
Third Level Esaron Sector, when Field Agent Skordran Kirv, Paratime
Police, discovered, at an orange plantation of Consolidated Outtime
Foodstuffs--"
* * * * *