Time Crime
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."
"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