crowd" now. "How about this dinner at Dras' place?"
"Oh, that was easy." She shifted position again. "I just called Dras
up and told him that our vacation was off, and he invited us before I
could begin hinting. What are you going to wear?"
"Short-jacket greens; I can carry a needler with that uniform, even
wear it at the table. I don't think it's smart for me to run around
unarmed, even on Home Time Line. Especially on Home Time Line," he
amended. "When's this affair going to start, and how long will
Rendarra take to get that goo off you?"
* * * * *
Salgath Trod left his aircar at the top landing stage of his apartment
building and sent it away to the hangars under robot control; he
glanced about him as he went toward the antigrav shaft. There were a
dozen vehicles in the air above; any of them might have followed him
from the Paratime Building. He had no doubt that he had been under
constant surveillance from the moment the nameless messenger had
delivered the Organization's ultimatum. Until he delivered that
speech, the next morning, or manifested an intention of refusing to do
so, however, he would be safe. After that--
Alone in his office, he had reviewed the situation point by point, and
then gone back and reviewed it again; the conclusion was inescapable.
The Organization had ordered him to make an accusation which he
himself knew to be false; that was the first premise. The conclusion
was that he would be killed as soon as he had made it. That was the
trouble with being mixed up with that kind of people--you were
expendable, and sooner or later, they would decide that they would
have to expend you. And what could you do?
To begin with, an accusation of criminal malfeasance made against a
Management or Paratime Commission agency on the floor of Executive
Council was tantamount to an accusation made in court; automatically,
the accuser became a criminal prosecutor, and would have to repeat his
accusation under narco-hypnosis. Then the whole story would come out,
bit by bit, back to its beginning in that first illegal deal in
Indo-Turanian opium, diverted from trade with the Khiftan Sector and
sold on Second Level Luvarian Empire Sector, and the deals in
radioactive poisons, and the slave trade. He would be able to name few
names--the Organization kept its activities too well compartmented for
that--but he could talk of things that had happened, and when, and
where, and on what paratemporal areas.
No. The Organization wouldn't let that happen, and the only way it
could be prevented would be by the death of Salgath Trod, as soon as
he had made his speech. All the talk of providing him with
corroborative evidence was silly; it had been intended to lead him
more trustingly to the slaughter. They'd kill him, of course, in some
way that would be calculated to substantiate the story he would no
longer be able to repudiate. The killer, who would be promptly rayed
dead by somebody else, would wear a Paratime Police uniform, or
something like that. That was of no importance, however; by then, he'd
be beyond caring.
* * * * *
One of his three ServSec Prole servants--the slim brown girl who was
his housekeeper and hostess, and also his mistress--admitted him to
the apartment. He kissed her perfunctorily and closed the door behind
him.
"You're tired," she said. "Let me call Nindrandigro and have him bring
you chilled wine; lie down and rest until dinner."
"No, no; I want brandy." He went to a cellaret and got out a decanter
and goblet, pouring himself a drink. "How soon will dinner be ready?"
The brown girl squeezed a little golden globe that hung on a chain
around her neck; a tiny voice, inside it, repeated: "Eighteen
twenty-three ten, eighteen twenty-three eleven, eighteen twenty-three
twelve--"
"In half an hour. It's still in the robo-chef," she told him.
He downed half the goblet-full, set it down, and went to a painting, a
brutal scarlet and apple-green abstraction, that hung on the wall.
Swinging it aside and revealing the safe behind it, he used his
identity-sigil, took out a wad of Paratemporal Exchange Bank notes and
gave them to the girl.
"Here, Zinganna; take these, and take Nindrandigro and Calilla out for
the evening. Go where you can all have a good time, and don't come
back till after midnight. There will be some business transacted here,
and I want them out of this. Get them out of here as soon as you can;
I'll see to the dinner myself. Spend all of that you want to."
The girl riffled through the wad of banknotes. "Why, _thank_ you,
Trod!" She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him
enthusiastically. "I'll go tell them at once."
"And have a good time, Zinganna; have the best time you possibly can,"
he told her, embracing and kissing her. "Now, get out of here; I have
to keep my mind on business."
When she had gone, he finished his drink and poured another. He drew
and checked his needler. Then, after checking the window-shielding and
activating the outside viewscreens, he lit a cheroot and sat down at
the desk, his goblet and his needler in front of him, to wait until
the servants were gone.
There was only one way out alive. He knew that, and yet he needed
brandy, and a great deal of mental effort, to steel himself for it.
Psycho-rehabilitation was a dreadful thing to face. There would be
almost a year of unremitting agony, physical and mental, worse than a
Khiftan torture rack. There would be the shame of having his innermost
secrets poured out of him by the psychotherapists, and, at the end,
there would emerge someone who would not be Salgath Trod, or anybody
like Salgath Trod, and he would have to learn to know this stranger,
and build a new life for him.
In one of the viewscreens, he saw the door to the service hallway
open. Zinganna, in a black evening gown and a black velvet cloak, and
Calilla, the housemaid, in what she believed to be a reasonable
facsimile of fashionable First Level dress, and Nindrandigro, in one
of his master's evening suits, emerged. Salgath Trod waited until they
had gone down the hall to the antigrav shaft, and then he turned on
the visiphone, checked the security, set it for sealed beam
communication, and punched out a combination.
A girl in a green tunic looked out of the screen.
"Paratime Police," she said. "Office of Chief Tortha."
"I am Executive Councilman Salgath Trod," he told her. "I am, and for
the past fifteen years have been, criminally involved with the
organization responsible for the slave trade which recently came to
light on Third Level Esaron. I give myself up unconditionally; I am
willing to make full confession under narco-hypnosis, and will accept
whatever disposition of my case is lawfully judged fit. You'll have to
send an escort for me; I might start from my apartment alone, but I'd
be killed before I got to your headquarters--"
The girl, who had begun to listen in the bored manner of public
servants phone girls, was staring wide-eyed.
"Just a moment, Councilman Salgath; I'll put you through to Chief
Tortha."
* * * * *
The dinner lacked a half hour of being served; Thalvan Dras' guests
loitered about the drawing room, sampling appetizers and chilled
drinks and chatting in groups. It wasn't the artistic crowd usual at
Thalvan Dras' dinners; most of the guests seemed to be business or
political people. Thalvan Dras had gotten Vall and Dalla into the
small group around him, along with pudgy, infantile-faced Brogoth
Zaln, his confidential secretary, and Javrath Brend, his financial
attorney.
"I don't see why they're making such a fuss about it," one of the
Banking Cartel people was saying. "Causing a lot of public excitement
all out of proportion to the importance of the affair. After all,
those people were slaves on their own time line, and if anything,
they're much better off on the Esaron Sector than they would be as
captives of the Croutha. As far as that goes, what's the difference
between that and the way we drag these Fourth Level Primitive
Sector-Complex people off to Fifth Level Service Sector to work for
us?"
"Oh, there's a big difference, Farn," Javrath Brend said. "We recruit
those Fourth Level Primitives out of probability worlds of Stone Age
savagery, and transpose them to our own Fifth Level time lines,
practically outtime extensions of the Home Time Line. There's
absolutely no question of the Paratime Secret being compromised."
[Illustration:]
"Beside, we need a certain amount of human labor, for tasks requiring
original thought and decision that are beyond the ability of robots,
and most of it is work our Citizens simply wouldn't perform," Thalvan
Dras added.
"Well, from a moral standpoint, wouldn't these Esaron Sector people
who buy the slaves justify slavery in the same terms?" a woman whom
Vall had identified as a Left Moderate Council Member asked.
"There's still a big difference," Dalla told her. "The ServSec Proles
aren't beaten or tortured or chained; we don't break up families or
separate friends. When we recruit Fourth Level Primitives, we take
whole tribes, and they come willingly. And--"
One of Thalvan Dras' black-liveried human servants, of the class under
discussion, approached Vall.
"A visiphone call for your lordship," he whispered. "Chief Tortha Karf
calling. If your lordship will come this way--"
In a screen-booth outside, Vall found Tortha Karf looking out of the
screen; he was seated at his desk, fiddling with a gold multicolor
pen.
"Oh, Vall; something interesting has just come up." He spoke in a
voice of forced calmness. "I can't go into it now, but you'll want to
hear about it. I'm sending a car for you. Better bring Dalla along;
she'll want in on it, too."
"Right; we'll be on the top south-west landing stage in a few
minutes."
Dalla was still heatedly repudiating any resemblance between the
normal First Level methods of labor-recruitment and the activities of
the Wizard Traders; she had just finished the story of the woman whose
child had been brained when Vall rejoined the group.
"Dras, I'm awfully sorry," he said. "This is the second time in
succession that Dalla and I have had to bolt away from here, but
policemen are like doctors--always on call, and consequently
unreliable guests. While you're feasting, think commiseratingly of
Dalla and me; we'll probably be having a sandwich and a cup of coffee
somewhere."
"I'm terribly sorry." Thalvan Dras replied. "We had all been looking
forward--Well! Brogoth, have a car called for Vall and Dalla."
"Police car coming for us; it's probably on the landing stage now,"
Vall said. "Well, good-by, everybody. Coming, Dalla?"
* * * * *
They had a few minutes to wait, under the marquee, before the green
police aircar landed and came rolling across the rain-wet surface of
the landing stage. Crossing to it and opening the rear door, he put
Dalla in and climbed in after her, slamming the door. It was only then
that he saw Tortha Karf hunched down in the rear seat. He motioned
them to silence, and did not speak until the car was rising above the
building.
"I wanted to fill you in on this, as soon as possible," he said. "Your
hunch about Salgath Trod was good; just a few minutes before I called
you, he called me. He says this slave trade is the work of something
he calls the Organization; says he's been taking orders from them for
years. His attack on the Management and motion for a censure-vote
were dictated from Organization top echelon. Now he's convinced that
they're going to force him to make false accusations against the
Paratime Police and then kill him before he's compelled to repeat his
charges under narco-hypnosis. So he's offered to surrender and trade
information for protection."
"How much does he know?" Vall asked.
Tortha Karf shook his head. "Not as much as he claims to, I suppose;
he wouldn't want to reduce his own trade-in value. But he's been
involved in this thing for the last fifteen years, and with his
political prominence, he'd know quite a lot."
"We can protect him from his own gang; can we protect him from
psycho-rehabilitation?"
"No, and he knows it. He's willing to accept that. He seems to think
that death at the hands of his own associates is the only other
alternative. Probably right, too."
The floodlighted green towers of the Paratime Building were wheeling
under them as they circled down.
"Why would they sacrifice a valuable accomplice like Salgath Trod, in
order to make a transparently false accusation against us?" Vall
wondered.
"Ha, that's our new rookie cop's idea!" Tortha Karf chuckled, nodding
toward Dalla. "We got Zortan Harn to introduce an urgent-business
motion to appoint a committee to investigate BuPsychHyg, this morning.
The motion passed, and this is the reaction to it. The Organization's
scared. Just as Dalla predicted, they don't want us finding out how
people with potentially criminal characteristics missed being spotted
by psychotesting. Salgath Trod is being sacrificed to block or delay
that."
Vall nodded as the wheels bumped on the landing stage and the antigrav
field went off. That was the sort of thing that happened when you
started on a really fruitful line of investigation. They got out and
hurried over under the marquee, the car lifting and moving off toward
the hangars. This was the real break; no matter how this Organization
might be compartmented, a man like Salgath Trod would know a great
deal. He would name names, and the bearers of those names, arrested
and narco-hypnotized, would name other names, in a perfect chain
reaction of confessions and betrayals.
Another police car had landed just ahead of them, and three men were
climbing out; two were in Paratime Police green, and the third,
hand-cuffed, was in Service Sector Proletarian garb. At first, Vall
though that Salgath Trod had been brought in disguised as a Prole
prisoner, and then he saw that the prisoner was short and stocky, not
at all like the slender and elegant politician. The two officers who
had brought him in were talking to a lieutenant, Sothran Barth,
outside the antigrav shaft kiosk. As Vall and Tortha Karf and Dalla
walked over, the car which had brought them lifted out.
"Something that just came in from Industrial Twenty-four, Chief,"
Lieutenant Sothran said in answer to Tortha Karf's question. "May be
for Assistant Verkan's desk."
"He's a Prole named Yandragno, sir," one of the policemen said.
"Industrial Sector Constabulary grabbed him peddling Martian hellweed
cigarettes to the girls in a textile mill at Kangabar Equivalent.
Captain Jamzar thinks he may have gotten them from somebody in the
Organization."
* * * * *
A little warning bell began ringing in the back of Verkan Vall's mind,
but at first he could not consciously identify the cause of his
suspicions. He looked the two policemen and their prisoner over
carefully, but could see nothing visibly wrong with them. Then another
car came in for a landing and rolled over under the marquee; the door
opened, and a police officer got out, followed by an elegantly dressed
civilian whom he recognized at once as Salgath Trod. A second
policeman was emerging from the car when Vall suddenly realized what
it was that had disturbed him.
It had been Salgath Trod, himself, less than half an hour ago, who had
introduced the term, "the Organization," to the Paratime Police. At
that time, if these people were what they claimed to be, they would
have been in transposition from Industrial Twenty-four, on the Fifth
Level. Immediately, he reached for his needler. He was clearing it of
the holster when things began happening.
The handcuffs fell from the "prisoner's" wrists; he jerked a
neutron-disruption blaster from under his jacket. Vall, his needler
already drawn, rayed the fellow dead before he could aim it, then saw
that the two pseudo-policemen had drawn their needlers and were aiming
in the direction of Salgath Trod. There were no flashes or reports;
only the spot of light that had winked on and off under Vall's rear
sight had told him that his weapon had been activated. He saw it
appear again as the sights centered on one of the "policemen." Then he
saw the other imposter's needler aimed at himself. That was the last
thing he expected ever to see, in that life; he tried to shift his own
weapon, and time seemed frozen, with his arm barely moving. Then there
was a white blur as Dalla's cloak moved in front of him, and the
needler dropped from the fingers of the disguised murderer. Time went
back to normal for him; he safetied his own weapon and dropped it,
jumping forward.
He grabbed the fellow in the green uniform by the nose with his left
hand, and punched him hard in the pit of the stomach with his right
fist. The man's mouth flew open, and a green capsule, the size and
shape of a small bean, flew out. Pushing Dalla aside before she would
step on it, he kicked the murderer in the stomach, doubling him over,
and chopped him on the base of the skull with the edge of his hand.
The pseudo-policeman dropped senseless.
With a handful of handkerchief-tissue from his pocket, he picked up
the disgorged capsule, wrapping it carefully after making sure that it
was unbroken. Then he looked around. The other two assassins were
dead. Tortha Karf, who had been looking at the man in Proletarian
dress whom Vall had killed first, turned, looked in another direction,
and then cursed. Vall followed his eyes, and cursed also. One of the
two policemen who had gotten out of the aircar was dead, too, and so
was the all-important witness, Salgath Trod--as dead as
Nebu-hin-Abenoz, a hundred thousand parayears away.
* * * * *
The whole thing had ended within thirty seconds; for about half as
long, everybody waited, poised in a sort of action-vacuum, for
something else to happen. Dalla had dropped the shoulder-bag with
which she had clubbed the prisoner's needler out of his hand, and
caught up the fallen weapon. When she saw that the man was down and
motionless, she laid it aside and began picking up the glittering or
silken trifles that had spilled from the burst bag. Vall retrieved his
own weapon, glanced over it, and holstered it. Sothran Barth, the
lieutenant in charge of the landing stage, was bawling orders, and men
were coming out of the ready-room and piling into vehicles to pursue
the aircar which had brought the assassins.
"Barth!" Vall called. "Have you a hypodermic and a sleep-drug ampoule?
Well, give this boy a shot; he's only impact-stunned. Be careful of
him; he's important." He glanced around the landing-stage. "Fact is,
he's all we have to show for this business."
Then he stooped to help Dalla gather her things, picking up a few of
them--a lighter, a tiny crystal perfume flask, miraculously unbroken,
a face-powder box which had sprung open and spilled half its contents.
He handed them to her, while Sothran Barth bent over the prisoner and
gave him an injection, then went to the body of the other
pseudo-policeman, forcing open his mouth. In his cheek, still
unbroken, was a second capsule, which he added to the first. Tortha
Karf was watching him.
"Same gang that killed that Carera slaver on Esaron Sector?" he asked.
"Of course, exactly the same general procedure. Let's have a look at
the other one."
The man in Proletarian dress must have had his capsule between his
molars when he had been killed; it was broken, and there was a
brownish discoloration and chemical odor in his mouth.
"Second time we've had a witness killed off under our noses," Tortha
Karf said. "We're going to have to smarten up in a hurry."
"Here's one of us who doesn't have to, much," Vall said, nodding
toward Dalla. "She knocked a needler out of one man's hand, and we
took him alive. The Force owes her a new shoulder-bag: she spoiled
that one using it for a club."
"Best shoulder-bag we can find you, Dalla," Tortha Karf promised.
"You're promoted, herewith, to Special Chief's Assistant's Special
Assistant--You know, this Organization murder-section is good; they
could kill anybody. It won't be long before they assign a squad to us.
Blast it, I don't want to have to go around bodyguarded like a Fourth
Level dictator, but--"
A detective came out of the control room and approached.
"Screen call for you, sir," he told Tortha Karf. "One of the news
services wants a comment on a story they've just picked up that we've
illegally arrested Councilman Salgath and are holding him
incommunicado and searching his apartment."
"That's the Organization," Vall said. "They don't know how their boys
made out; they're hoping we'll tell them."
"No comment," Tortha Karf said. "Call the girl on my switchboard and
tell her to answer any other news-service calls. We have nothing to
say at this time, but there will be a public statement at ... at
2330," he decided after a glance at his watch. "That'll give us time
to agree on a publicity line to adopt. Lieutenant Sothran! Take charge
up here. Get all these bodies out of sight somewhere, including those
of Councilman Salgath and Detective Malthor. Don't let anybody talk
about this; put a blackout on the whole story. Vall, you and Dalla and
... oh, you, over there; take the prisoner down to my office. Sothran,
any reports from any of the cars that were chasing that fake police
car?"
Verkan Vall and Dalla were sitting behind Tortha Karf's desk; Vall was
issuing orders over the intercom and talking to the detectives who had
remained at Salgath Trod's apartment by visiscreen; Dalla was sorting
over the things she had spilled when her bag had burst. They both
looked up as Tortha Karf came in and joined them.
"The prisoner's still under the drug," the Chief said. "He'll be out
for a couple of hours; the psych-techs want to let him come out of it
naturally and sleep naturally for a while before they give him a
hypno. He's not a ServSec Prole; uncircumcised, never had any
syntho-enzyme shots or immunizations, and none of the longevity
operations or grafts. Same thing for the two stiffs. And no identity
records on any of the three."
"The men at Salgath's apartment say that his housekeeper and his two
servants checked out through the house conveyer for ServSec
One-Six-Five, at about 1830," Vall said. "There's a Prole
entertainment center on that time line. I suppose Salgath gave them
the evening off before he called you."
Tortha Karf nodded. "I suppose you ordered them picked up. The news
services are going wild about this. I had to make a preliminary
statement, to the effect that Salgath Trod was not arrested, came to
Headquarters of his own volition, and is under no restraint whatever."
"Except, of course, a slight case of rigor mortis," Dalla added. "Did
you mention that, Chief?"
"No, I didn't." Tortha Karf looked as though he had quinine in his
mouth. "Vall, how in blazes are we going to handle this?"
"We ought to keep Salgath's death hushed up, as long as we can," Vall
said. "The Organization doesn't know positively what happened here;
that's why they're handing out tips to the news services. Let's try to
make them believe he's still alive and talking."
"How can we do it?"
"There ought to be somebody on the Force close enough to Salgath
Trod's anthropometric specifications that our cosmeticians could work
him over into a passable impersonation. Our story is that Salgath is
on PolTerm, undergoing narco-hypnosis. We will produce an audio-visual
of him as soon as he is out of narco-hyp. That will give us time to
fix up an impersonator; We'll need a lot of sound-recordings of
Salgath Trod's voice, of course--"
"I'll take care of the Home Time Line end of it; as soon as we get you
an impersonator, you go to work with him. Now, let's see whom we can
depend on to help us with this. Lovranth Rolk, of course; Home Time
Line section of the Paratime Code Enforcement Division. And--"
* * * * *
Verkan Vall and Dalla and Tortha Karf and four or five others looked
across the desk and to the end of the room as the telecast screen
broke into a shifting light-pattern and then cleared. The face of the
announcer appeared; a young woman.
"And now, we bring you the statement which Chief Tortha of the
Paratime Police has promised for this time. This portion of the
program was audio-visually recorded at Paratime Police Headquarters
earlier this evening."