Time Crime
"You'll have proof," the young man said. "We'll produce a couple of
these Kharandas whom Verkan Vall didn't get hold of. Under
narco-hypnosis, they'll testify that they saw a couple of Wizard
Traders take their robes off. Under the robes were Paratime Police
uniforms. Do you follow me?"
Salgath Trod made a noise of angry disgust.
"That's ridiculous! I suppose these Kharandas will be given what is
deludedly known as memory obliteration, and a set of pseudo-memories;
how long do you think that would last? About three ten-days. There is
no such thing as memory obliteration; there's memory-suppression, and
pseudo-memory overlay. You can't get behind that with any quickie
narco-hypnosis in the back room of any police post, I'll admit that,"
he said. "But a skilled psychist can discover, inside of five minutes,
when a narco-hypnotized subject is carrying a load of false memories,
and in time, and not too much time, all that top layer of false
memories and blockages can be peeled off. And then where would we be?"
"Now wait a minute, Councilman. This isn't just something I dreamed
up," the visitor said. "This was decided upon at the top. At the very
top."
"I don't care whose idea it was," Salgath Trod snapped. "The whole
thing is idiotic, and I won't have anything to do with it."
The visitor's face froze. All the respect vanished from his manner and
tone; his voice was like ice cakes grating together in a winter river.
"Look, Salgath; this is an Organization order," he said. "You don't
refuse to obey Organization orders, and you don't quit the
Organization. Now get smart, big boy; do what you're told to." He took
a spool of record tape from his pocket and laid it on the desk.
"Outline for your speech; put it in your own words, but follow it
exactly." He stood watching Salgath Trod for a moment. "I won't bother
telling you what'll happen to you if you don't," he added. "You can
figure that out for yourself."
With that, he turned and went out the private door. For a while,
Salgath Trod sat staring after him. Once he put his hand out toward
the spool, then jerked it back as though the thing were radioactive.
Once he looked at the clock; it was just 1600.
* * * * *
The green aircar settled onto the landing stage; Verkan Vall, on the
front seat beside the driver, opened the door.
"Want me to call for you later, Assistant Verkan?" the driver asked.
"No thank you, Drenth. My wife and I are going to a dinner-party, and
we'll probably go night-clubbing afterward. Tomorrow morning, all the
anti-Management commentators will be yakking about my carousing around
when I ought to be battling the Slave Trust. No use advertising myself
with an official car, and giving them a chance to add, 'at public
expense.'"
"Well, have some fun while you can," the driver advised, reaching for
the car-radio phone. "Want me to check you in here, sir?"
"Yes, if you will. Thank you. Drenth."
Kandagro, his human servant, admitted him to the apartment six floors
down.
"Mistress Dalla is dressing," he said. "She asked me to tell you that
you are invited to dinner, this evening, with Thalvan Dras at his
apartment."
Vall nodded. "Ill talk to her about it now," he said. "Lay out my
dress uniform: short jacket, boots and breeches, and needler."
"Yes, master: I'll go lay out your things and get your bath ready."
The servant turned and went into the alcove which gave access to the
dressing rooms, turning right into Vall's. Vall followed him, turning
left into his wife's.
"Oh, Dalla!" he called.
"In here!" her voice came out of her bathroom.
He passed through the dressing room, to find her stretched on a
plastic-sheeted couch, while her maid, Rendarra, was rubbing her body
vigorously with some pungent-smelling stuff about the consistency of
machine-grease. Her face was masked in the stuff, and her hair was
covered with an elastic cap. He had always suspected that beauty was
the real feminine religion, from the willingness of its devotees to
submit to martyrdom for it. She wiggled a hand at him in greeting.
"How did it go?" she asked.
"So-so. I organized myself a sort of miniature police force within a
police force and I have liaison officers in every organization down to
Sector Regional so that I can be informed promptly in case anything
new turns up anywhere. What's been happening on Home Time Line? I
picked up a news-summary at Paratime Police Headquarters; it seems
that a lot more stuff has leaked out. Kholghoor Sector, Wizard Traders
and all. How'd it happen?"
Dalla rolled over to allow Rendarra to rub the blue-green grease on
her back.
"Consolidated Outtime Foodstuffs let a gang of reporters in, today. I
think they're afraid somebody will accuse them of complicity, and they
want to get their side of it before the public. All our crowd are off
that Time line except a couple of detectives at the plantation."
"I know." He smiled; Dalla was thinking of the Paratime Police as "our
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