“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.”
“That’s why this hasn’t come to light before, then. The conveyer comes 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.”
“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.”
The H. Beam Piper Megapack Page 69