“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.”
* * * *
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—”
* * * *
Salgath Trod sat alone in his private office, his half-finished lunch growing cold on the desk in front of him as he watched the teleview screen across the room, tuned to a pickup behind the Speaker’s chair in the Executive Council Chamber ten stories below. The two thousand seats had been almost all empty at 1000, when Council had convened. Fifteen minutes later, the news had broken; now, at 1430, a good three quarters of the seats were occupied. He could see, in the aisles, the gold-plated robot pages gliding back and forth, receiving and delivering messages. One had just slid up to the seat of Councilman Hasthor Flan, and Hasthor was speaking urgently into the recorder mouthpiece. Another message for him, he supposed; he’d gotten at least a score such calls since the crisis had developed.
People were going to start wondering, he thought. This situation should have been perfect for his purposes; as leader of the Opposition he could easily make himself the next General Manager, if he exploited this scandal properly. He listened for a while to the Centrist-Management member who was speaking; he could rip that fellow’s arguments to shreds in a hundred words—but he didn’t dare. The Management was taking exactly the line Salgath Trod wanted the whole Council to take: treat this affair as an isolated and extraordinary occurrence, find a couple of convenient scapegoats, cobble up some explanation acceptable to the public, and forget it. He wondered what had happened to the imbecile who had transposed those Kholghoor Sector slaves onto an exploited time line. Ought to be shanghaied to the Khiftan Sector and sold to the priests of Fasif!
A buzzer sounded, and for an instant he thought it would be the message he had seen Hasthor Fan recording. Then he realized that it was the buzzer for the private door, which could only be operated by someone with a special identity sign. He pressed a button and unlocked the door.
The young man in the loose wrap-around tunic who entered was a stranger. At least, his face and his voice were strange, but voices could be mechanically altered, and a skilled cosmetician could render any face unrecognizable. He looked like a student, or a minor commercial executive, or an engineer, or something like that. Of course, his tunic bulged slightly under the left armpit, but even the most respectable tunics showed occasional weapon-bulges.
“Good afternoon, councilman,” the newcomer said, sitting down across the desk from Salgath Trod. “I was just talking to…somebody we both know.”
Salgath Trod offered cigarettes, lighted his visitor’s and then his own.
“What does Our Mutual Friend think about all this?” he asked, gesturing toward the screen.
“Our Mutual Friend isn’t at all happy about it.”
“You think, perhaps, that I’m bursting into wild huzzas?” Salgath Trod asked. “If I were to act as everybody expects me to, I’d be down there on the floor, now, clawing into the Management tooth and nail. All my adherents are wondering why I’m not. So are all my opponents, and before long one of them is going to guess the reason.”
“Well, why not go down?” the stranger asked. “Our Mutual Friend thinks it would be an excellent idea. The leak couldn’t be stopped, and it’s gone so far already that the Management will never be able to play it down. So the next best thing is to try to exploit it.”
Salgath Trod smiled mirthlessly. “So I am to get in front of it, and lead it in the right direction? Fine…as long as I don’t stumble over something. If I do, it’ll go over me like a Fifth Level bison-herd.”
“Don’t worry about that,” the stranger laughed reassuringly. “There are others on the floor who are also friends of Our Mutual Friend. Here: what you’d better do is attack the Paratime Police, especially Tortha Karf and Verkan Vall. Accuse them of negligence and incompetence, and, by implication, of collusion, and demand a special committee to investigate. And try to get a motion for a confidence vote passed. A motion to censure the Management, say—”
Salgath Trod nodded. “It would delay things, at least. And if Our Mutual Friend can keep properly covered, I might be able to overturn the Management.” He looked at the screen again. “That old fool of a Nanthav is just getting started; it’ll be an hour before I could get recognized. Plenty of time to get a speech together. Something short and vicious—”
“You’ll have to be careful. It won’t do, with your political record, to try to play down these stories of a gigantic criminal conspiracy. That’s too close to the Management line. And at the same time, you want to avoid saying anything that would get Verkan Vall and Tortha Karf started off on any new lines of investigation.”
Salgath Trod nodded. “Just depend on me; I’ll handle it.”
After the stranger had gone, he shut off the sound reception, relying on visual dumb-show to keep him informed of what was going on on the Council floor. He didn’t like the situation. It was too easy to say the wrong thing. If only he knew more about the shadowy figures whose messengers used his private door—
* * * *
Coru-hin-Irigod held his aching head in both hands, as though he were afraid it would fall apart, and blinked in the sunlight from the window. Lord Safar, how much of that sweet brandy had he drunk, last night? He sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, trying to think. Then, suddenly apprehensive, he thrust his hand under his pillow. The heavy four-barreled pistols were there, all right, but—The money!
He rummaged frantically among the bedding, and among his clothes, piled on the floor, but the leather bag was nowhere to be found. Two thousand gold obus, the price of a hundred slaves. He snatched up one of the pistols, his headache forgotten. Then he laughed and tossed the pistol down again. Of course! He’d given the bag to the plantation manager, what was his outlandish name, Dosu Golan, to keep for him before the drinking bout had begun. It was safely waiting for him in the plantation strong box. Well, nothing like a good scare to make a man forget a brandy head, anyhow. And there was something else, something very nice—
Oh, yes, there it was, beside the bed. He picked up the beautiful gleaming repeater, pulled down the lever far enough to draw the cartridge halfway out of the chamber, and closed it again, lowering the hammer. Those two Jeseru traders from the North, what were their names? Ganadara and Atarazola. That was a stroke of luck, meeting them here. They’d given him this lovely rifle, and they were going to accompany him and his men back to Careba; they had a hundred such rifles, and two hundred six-shot revolvers, and they wanted to trade for slaves. The Lord Safar bless them both, wouldn’t they be welcome at Careba!
He looked at the sunlight falling through the window on the still recumbent form of his companion, Faru-hin-Obaran. Outside, he could hear the sounds of the plantation coming to life—an ax thudding on wood, the clatter of pans from the kitchens. Crossing to Faru-hin-Obaran’s bed, he grasped the sleeper by the ankle, tugging.
“Waken, Faru!” he shouted. “Get up and clear the fumes from your head! We start back to Careba today!”
Faru swore groggily and pushed himself into a sitting position, fumbling on the floor for his trousers.
“What day’s this?” he asked.
“The day after we went to bed, ninny!” Then Coru-hin-Irigod wrinkled his brow. He could remember, clearly enough, the sale of the slaves, but after that—Oh, well, he’d been drinking; it would all come back to him, after a while.
* * * *
Verkan Vall rubbed his hand over his face wearily, started to light another cigarette, and threw it across the room in disgust. What he needed was a drink—a long drink of cool, tart white wine, laced with brandy—and then he needed to sleep.
> “We’re absolutely nowhere!” Ranthar Jard said. “Of course they’re operating on time lines we’ve never penetrated. The fact that they’re supplying the Croutha with guns proves that; there isn’t a firearm on any of the time lines our people are legitimately exploiting. And there are only about three billion time lines on this belt of the Croutha invasion—”
“If we could think of a way to reduce it to some specific area of paratime—” one of Ranthar Jard’s deputies began.
“That’s precisely what we’ve been trying to do, Klav,” Vall said. “We haven’t done it.”
Dalla, who had withdrawn from the discussion and was on a couch at the side of the room, surrounded by reports and abstracts and summaries, looked up.
“I took hours and hours of hypno-mech on Kholghoor Sector religions, before I went out on that wild-goose chase for psychokinesis and precognition data,” she said. “About six or eight hundred years ago, there were religious wars and heresies and religious schisms all over the Kharanda country. No matter how uniform the Kholghoor Sector may be otherwise, there are dozens and dozens of small belts and sub-sectors of different religions or sects or god-cults.”
“That’s right,” Ranthar Jard agreed, brightening. “We have hagiologists who know all that stuff; we’ll have a couple of them interrogate those slaves. I don’t know how much they can get out of them—lot of peasants, won’t be up on the theological niceties—but a synthesis of what we get from the lot of them—”
“That’s an idea,” Vall agreed. “About the first idea we’ve had, here—Oh, how about politics, too? Check on who’s the king, what the stories about the royal family are, that sort of thing.”
Ranthar Jard looked at the map on the wall. “The Croutha have only gotten halfway to Nharkan, here. Say we transpose detectives in at night on some of these time lines we think are promising, and check up at the tax-collection offices on a big landowner north of Jhirda named Ghromdour? That might get us something.”
“Well, I don’t want you to think we’re trying to get out of work, Chief’s Assistant,” one of the deputies said, “but is there any real necessity for our trying to locate the Wizard Trader time lines? If you can get them from the Esaron Sector, it’ll be the same, won’t it?”
The H. Beam Piper Megapack Page 70