Time Crime
things like that on Home Time Line, and with the political situation
what it is now--"
"Why, what's been happening, Chief?"
Tortha Karf swore with weary bitterness. "Salgath Trod's what's been
happening. At first, after Yandar Yadd broke the story on the air,
there was just a lot of unorganized Opposition sniping in Council;
Salgath waited till the middle of the afternoon, when the Management
members were beginning to rally, and took the floor. The Centrists and
Right Moderates were trying the appeal-to-reason approach; that did as
much good as trying to put out a Fifth Level forest fire with a
hand-extinguisher. Finally. Salgath got a motion of censure against
the Management recognized. That means a confidence vote in ten days.
Salgath has a rabble of Leftists and dissident Centrists with him; I
doubt if he can muster enough votes to overturn the Management, but
it's going to make things rough for us."
"Which may be just the reason Salgath started this uproar," Vall
suggested.
"That," Tortha Karf said, "is being considered; there is a discreet
inquiry being made into Salgath Trod's associates, his sources of
income, and so on. Nothing has turned up as yet, but we have hopes."
"I believe," Vall said, "that we have a better chance right on Home
Time Line than outtime."
Tortha Karf looked up sharply. "So?" he asked.
Vall was stuffing tobacco into a pipe. "Yes. Chief. We have a big
criminal organization--let's call it the Slave Trust, for a
convenience-label. The people who run it aren't stupid. The fact that
they've been shipping slaves to the Esaron Sector for ten years before
we found out about it proves that. So does the speed with which they
got rid of this Nebu-hin-Abenoz, right in front of a pair of our
detectives. For that matter, so does the speed with which they moved
in to exploit this Croutha invasion of Kholghoor Sector India.
"Well, I've studied illegal and subversive organizations all over
paratime, and among the really successful ones, there are a few
uniform principles. One is cellular organization--small groups, acting
in isolation from one another, cooeperating with other cells but
ignorant of their composition. Another is the principle of no upward
contact--leaders contacting their subordinates through contact-blocks
and ignorant intermediaries. And another is a willingness to kill off
anybody who looks like a potential betrayer or forced witness. The
late Nebu-hin-Abenoz, for instance.
"I'll be willing to bet that if we pick up some of these Wizard
Traders, say, or a gang that's selling slaves to some Nebu-hin-Abenoz
personality on some other time line, and narco-hypnotize them, all
they'll be able to do will be name a few immediate associates, and the
group leader will know that he's contacted from time to time by some
stranger with orders, and that he can make emergency contacts only
through some blind accommodation-address. The men who are running this
are right on Home Time Line, many of them in positions of prominence,
and if we can catch one of them and narco-hyp him, we can start a
chain-reaction of disclosures all through this Slave Trust."
"How are we going to get at these top men?" Tortha Karf wanted to
know. "Advertise for them on telecast?"
"They'll leave traces; they won't be able to avoid it. I think, right
now, that Salgath Trod is one of them. I think there are other
prominent politicians, and business people. Look for irregularities
and peculiarities in outtime currency-exchange transactions. For
instance, to sections in Esaron Sector _obus_. Or big gold bullion
transactions."
"Yes. And if they have any really elaborate outtime bases, they'll
need equipment that can only be gotten on Home Time Line," Tortha Karf
added. "Paratemporal conveyer parts, and field-conductor mesh. You
can't just walk into a hardware store and buy that sort of thing."
Dalla leaned forward to drop her cigarette ash into a tray.
"Try looking into the Bureau of Psychological Hygiene," she suggested.
"That's where you'll really strike it rich."
Vall and Tortha Karf both turned abruptly and looked at her for an
instant.
"Go on," Tortha Karf encouraged. "This sounds interesting."
"The people back of this," Dalla said, "are definitely classifiable as
criminals. They may never perform a criminal act themselves, but they
give orders for and profit from such acts, and they must possess the
motivation and psychology of criminals. We define people as criminals
when they suffer from psychological aberrations of an antisocial
character, usually paranoid--excessive egoism, disregard for the
rights of others, inability to recognize the social necessity for
mutual cooeperation and confidence. On Home Time Line, we have
universal psychological testing, for the purpose of detecting and
eliminating such characteristics."
"It seems to have failed in this case," Tortha Karf began, then
snapped his fingers. "Of course! How blasted silly can I get, when I'm
not trying?"
"Yes, of course," Verkan Vall agreed. "Find out how these people
missed being spotted by psychotesting; that'll lead us to _who_ missed
being tested adequately, and also who got into the Bureau of
Psychological Hygiene who didn't belong there."
"I think you ought to give an investigation of the whole BuPsychHyg
setup very high priority," Dalla said. "A psychotest is only as good
as the people who give it, and if we have criminals administering
these tests--"
"We have our friends on Executive Council," Tortha Karf said. "I'll
see that that point is raised when Council re-convenes." He looked at
the clock. "That'll be in three hours, by the way. If it doesn't
accomplish another thing, it'll put Salgath Trod in the middle. He
can't demand an investigation of the Paratime Police out of one side
of his mouth and oppose an investigation of Psychological Hygiene out
of the other. Now what else have we to talk about?"
"Those hundred slaves we got off the Esaron Sector," Vall said. "What
are we going to do with them? And if we locate the time line the
slavers have their bases on, we'll have hundreds, probably thousands,
more."
"We can't sort them out and send them back to their own time lines,
even if that would be desirable," Tortha Karf decided. "Why, settle
them somewhere on the Service Sector. I know, the Paratime
Transposition Code limits the Service Sector to natives of time lines
below second-order barbarism, but the Paratime Transposition Code has
been so badly battered by this business that a few more minor literal
infractions here and there won't make any difference. Where are they
now?"
"Police Terminal, Nharkan Equivalent."
"Better hold them there, for the time being. We may have to open a new
ServSec time line to take care of all the slaves we find, if we can
locate the outtime base line these people are using--Vall, this
thing's too big to handle as a routine operation, along with our other
work. You take charge of it. Set up your headquarters here, and help
yourself to anything in the way of personnel and equipment you need.
And bear in mind that this confidence vote is coming up in ten
days--on the morning of One-Seven-Two Day. I'm not asking for any
miracles, but if we don't get this thing cleared up by then, we're in
for trouble."
"I realize that, sir. Dalla, you'd better go back to Home Time Line,
with the Chief," he said. "There's nothing you can do to help me,
here, at present. Get some rest, and then try to wangle an invitation
for the two of us to dinner at Thalvan Dras' apartments this evening."
He turned back to Tortha Karf. "Even if he never pays any attention to
business, Dras still owns Consolidated Outtime Foodstuffs," he said.
"He might be able to find out, or help us find out, how the story
about those slaves leaked out of his company."
"Well, that won't take much doing," Dalla said. "If there's as much
excitement on Home Time Line as I think, Dras would turn somersaults
and jump through hoops to get us to one of his dinners, right now."
* * * * *
Salgath Trod pushed the litter of papers and record-tape spools to one
side impatiently.
"Well, what else did you expect?" he demanded. "This was the logical
next move. BuPsychHyg is supposed to detect anybody who believes in
looking out for his own interests first, and condition him into a
pious law-abiding sucker. Well, the sacred Bureau of Sucker-Makers
slipped up on a lot of us. It's a natural alibi for Tortha Karf."
"It's also a lot of grief for all of us," the young man in the
wrap-around tunic added. "I don't want my psychotests reviewed by some
duty-struck bigot who can't be reasoned with, and neither do you."
"I'm getting something organized to counter that," Salgath Trod said.
"I'm going to attack the whole scientific basis of psychotesting.
There's Dr. Frasthor Klav; he's always contended that what are called
criminal tendencies are the result of the individual's total
environment, and that psychotesting and personality-analysis are
valueless, because the total environment changes from day to day, even
from hour to hour--"
"That won't do," the nameless young man who was the messenger of
somebody equally nameless retorted. "Frasthor's a crackpot; no
reputable psychologist or psychist gives his opinions a moment's
consideration. And besides, we don't want to attack Psychological
Hygiene. The people in it with whom we can do business are our
safeguard; they've given all of us a clean bill of mental health, and
we have papers to prove it. What we have to do is to make it appear
that that incident on the Esaron Sector is all there is to this, and
also involve the Paratime Police themselves. The slavers are all
paracops. It isn't the fault of BuPsychHyg, because the Paratime
Police have their own psychotesting staff. That's where the trouble
is; the paracops haven't been adequately testing their own personnel."
"Now how are you going to do that?" Salgath Trod asked disdainfully.
"You'll take the floor, the first thing tomorrow, and utilize these
new revelations about the Wizard Traders. You'll accuse the Paratime
Police of being the Wizard Traders themselves. Why not? They have
their own paratemporal transposition equipment shops on Police
Terminal, they have facilities for manufacturing duplicates of any
kind of outtime items, like the firearms, for instance, and they know
which time lines on which sectors are being exploited by legitimate
paratime traders and which aren't. What's to prevent a gang of
unscrupulous paracops from moving in on a few unexploited Kholghoor
time lines, buying captives from the Croutha, and shipping them to the
Esaron Sector?"
"Then why would they let a thing like this get out?" Salgath Trod
inquired.
"Somebody slipped up and moved a lot of slaves onto an exploited
Esaron time line. Or, rather, Consolidated Outtime Foodstuffs
established a plantation on a time line they were shipping slaves to.
Parenthetically, that's what really did happen; the mistake our people
made was in not closing out that time line as soon as Consolidated
Foodstuffs moved in," the young man said.
"So, this Skordran Kirv, who is a dumb boy who doesn't know what the
score is, found these slaves and blatted about it to this Golzan Doth,
and Golzan reported it to his company, and it couldn't be hushed up,
so now Tortha Karf is trying to scare the public with ghost stories
about a gigantic paratemporal conspiracy, to get more appropriations
and more power."
"How long do you think I'd get away with that?" Salgath Trod demanded.
"I can only stretch parliamentary immunity so far. Sooner or later,
I'd have to make formal charges to a special judicial committee, and
that would mean narco-hypnosis, and then it would all come out."