Time Crime
kidnaped by pirates, our enemies. That ought to explain everything
satisfactorily."
On his way back to the plantation house, he saw a clump of local
slaves staring curiously at the stockade, and noticed that the guards
had unslung their rifles and fixed their bayonets. None of them had
any idea, of course, of what had happened, but they all seemed to
know, by some sort of ESP, that something was seriously wrong. It was
going to get worse, too, when strangers began arriving, apparently
from nowhere, at the plantation.
* * * * *
Verkan Vall waited until the small, dark-eyed woman across the
circular table had helped herself from one of the bowls on the
revolving disk in the middle, then rotated it to bring the platter of
cold boar-ham around to himself.
"Want some of this, Dalla?" he asked, transferring a slice of ham and
a spoonful of wine sauce to his plate.
"No, I'll have some of the venison," the black-haired girl beside him
said. "And some of the pickled beans. We'll be getting our fill of
pork, for the next month."
"I thought the Dwarma Sector people were vegetarians," Jandar Jard,
the theatrical designer, said. "Most nonviolent peoples are, aren't
they?"
"Well, the Dwarma people haven't any specific taboo against taking
life," Bronnath Zara, the dark-eyed woman in the brightly colored
gown, told him. "They're just utterly noncombative, nonaggressive.
When I was on the Dwarma Sector, there was a horrible scandal at the
village where I was staying. It seems that a farmer and a meat butcher
fought over the price of a pig. They actually raised their voices and
shouted contradictions at each other. That happened two years before,
and people were still talking about it."
"I didn't think they had any money, either," Verkan Vall's wife,
Hadron Dalla, said.
"They don't," Zara said. "It's all barter and trade. What are you and
Vall going to use for a visible means of support, while you're there?"
"Oh, I have my mandolin, and I've learned all the traditional Dwarma
songs by hypno-mech," Dalla said. "And Transtime Tours is fitting Vall
out with a bag of tools; he's going to do repair work and carpentry."
"Oh, good; you'll be welcome anywhere," Zara, the sculptress, said.
"They're always glad to entertain a singer, and for people who do the
fine decorative work they do, they're the most incompetent practical
mechanics I've ever seen or heard of. You're going to travel from
village to village?"
"Yes. The cover-story is that we're lovers who have left our village
in order not to make Vall's former wife unhappy by our presence,"
Dalla said.
"Oh, good! That's entirely in the Dwarma romantic tradition," Bronnath
Zara approved. "Ordinarily, you know, they don't like to travel. They
have a saying: 'Happy are the trees, they abide in their own place;
sad are the winds, forever they wander.' But that'll be a fine
explanation."
Thalvan Dras, the big man with the black beard and the long red coat
and cloth-of-gold sash who lounged in the host's seat, laughed.
"I can just see Vall mending pots, and Dalla playing that mandolin and
singing," he said. "At least, you'll be getting away from police work.
I don't suppose they have anything like police on the Dwarma Sector?"
"Oh, no; they don't even have any such concept," Bronnath Zara said.
"When somebody does something wrong, his neighbors all come and talk
to him about it till he gets ashamed, then they all forgive him and
have a feast. They're lovely people, so kind and gentle. But you'll
get awfully tired of them in about a month. They have absolutely no
respect for anybody's privacy. In fact, it seems slightly indecent to
them for anybody to want privacy."
One of Thalvan Dras' human servants came into the room, coughed
apologetically, and said:
"A visiphone-call for His Valor, the Mavrad of Nerros."
Vall went on nibbling ham and wine sauce; the servant repeated the
announcement a trifle more loudly.
"Vall, you're being paged!" Thalvan Dras told him, with a touch of
impatience.
Verkan Vall looked blank for an instant, then grinned. It had been so
long since he had even bothered to think about that antiquated title
of nobility--
"Vall's probably forgotten that he has a title," a girl across the
table, wearing an almost transparent gown and nothing else, laughed.
"That's something the Mavrad of Mnirna and Thalvabar never forgets,"
Jandar Jard drawled, with what, in a woman, would have been
cattishness.
Thalvan Dras gave him a hastily repressed look of venomous anger, then
said something, more to Verkan Vall than to Jandar Jard, about titles
of nobility being the marks of social position and responsibility
which their bearers should never forget. That jab, Vall thought,
following the servant out of the room, had been a mistake on Jard's
part. A music-drama, for which he had designed the settings, was due
to open here in Dhergabar in another ten days. Thalvan Dras would
cherish spite, and a word from the Mavrad of Mnirna and Thalvabar
would set a dozen critics to disparaging Jandar's work. On the other
hand, maybe it had been smart of Jandar Jard to antagonize Thalvan
Dras; for every critic who bowed slavishly to the wealthy nobleman,
there were at least two more who detested him unutterably, and they
would rush to Jandar Jard's defense, and in the ensuing uproar, the
settings would get more publicity than the drama itself.
* * * * *
In the visiphone booth, Vall found a girl in a green blouse, with the
Paratime Police insigne on her shoulder, looking out of the screen.
The wall behind her was pale green striped in gold and black.
"Hello, Eldra," he greeted her.
"Hello, Chief's Assistant: I'm sorry to bother you, but the Chief
wants to talk to you. Just a moment, please."
The screen exploded into a kaleidoscopic flash of lights and colors,
then cleared again. This time, a man looked out of it. He was well
into middle age; close to his three hundredth year. His hair, a
uniform iron-gray, was beginning to thin in front, and he was
acquiring the beginnings of a double chin. His name was Tortha Karf,
and he was Chief of Paratime Police, and Verkan Vall's superior.
"Hello, Vall. Glad I was able to locate you. When are you and Dalla
leaving?"
"As soon as we can get away from this luncheon, here. Oh, say an hour.
We're taking a rocket to Zarabar, and transposing from there to
Passenger Terminal Sixteen, and from there to the Dwarma Sector."
"Well, Vall, I hate to bother you like this," Tortha Karf said, "but I
wish you'd stop by Headquarters on your way to the rocketport.
Something's come up--it may be a very nasty business--and I'd like to
talk to you about it."
"Well, Chief, let me remind you that this vacation, which I've had to
postpone four times already, has been overdue for four years," Vall
said.
"Yes, Vall, I know. You've been working very hard, and you and Dalla
are entitled to a little time together. I just want you to look into
something, before you leave."
"It'll have to take some fast looking. Our rocket blasts off in two
hours."
"It may take a little longer; if it does, you and Dalla can transpose
to Police Terminal and take a rocket for Zarabar Equivalent, and
transpose from there to Passenger Sixteen. It would save time if you
brought Dalla with you to Headquarters."
"Dalla won't like this," Vall understated.
"No. I'm afraid not." Tortha Karf looked around apprehensively, as
though estimating the damage an enraged Hadron Dalla could do to his
office furnishings. "Well, try to get here as soon as you can."
* * * * *
Thalvan Dras was holding forth, when Vall returned, on one of his
favorite preoccupations.
"... Reason I'm taking such an especially active interest in this
year's Arts Exhibitions; I've become disturbed at the extent to which
so many of our artists have been content to derive their motifs, even
their techniques, from outtime art." He was using his vocowriter,
rather than his conversational, voice. "I yield to no one in my
appreciation of outtime art--you all know how devotedly I collect
objects of art from all over paratime--but our own artists should
endeavor to express their artistic values in our own artistic idioms."
Vall bent over his wife's shoulder.
"We have to leave, right away," he whispered.
"But our rocket doesn't blast off for two hours--"
Thalvan Dras had stopped talking and was looking at them in annoyance.
"I have to go to Headquarters before we leave. It'll save time if you
come along."
"Oh, no, Vall!" She looked at him in consternation. "Was that Tortha
Karf, calling?" She replaced her plate on the table and got to her
feet.
"I'm dreadfully sorry, Dras," he addressed their host. "I just had a
call from Tortha Karf. A few minor details that must be cleared up,
before I leave Home Time Line. If you'll accept our thanks for a
wonderful luncheon--"
"Why, certainly, Vall. Brogoth, will you call--" He gave a slight
chuckle. "I'm so used to having Brogoth Zaln at my elbow that I'd
forgotten he wasn't here. Wait. I'll call one of the servants to have
a car for you."
"Don't bother; we'll take an aircab," Vall told him.
"But you simply can't take a public cab!" The black-bearded nobleman
was shocked at such an obscene idea. "I will have a car ready for you
in a few minutes."
"Sorry, Dras; we have to hurry. We'll get a cab on the roof. Good-by,
everybody; sorry to have to break away like this. See you all when we
get back."
* * * * *
Hadron Dalla watched dejectedly as the green crags and escarpments of
the Paratime Building loomed above the city in front of them, and
began slipping under the aircab. She felt like a prisoner recaptured
at the moment when attempted escape was about to succeed.
"I knew it," she said. "I knew he'd find something. He's trying to
break things up between us, the way he did twenty years ago.'"
Vall crushed out his cigarette and said nothing. That hadn't been
true, and she knew it as well as he did. There had been many other
factors involved in the disintegration of their previous marriage,
most of them of her own contribution. But that had been twenty years
ago, she told herself. This time it would be different, if only--
"Really, Vall, he's never liked me," she went on. "He's jealous of me,
I think. You're to be his successor, when he retires, and he thinks
I'm not a good influence--"
"Oh, rubbish, Dalla! The Chief has always liked you," Vall replied.
"If he didn't, do you think he'd always be inviting us to that farm of
his, on Fifth Level Sicily? It's just that this job of ours has no
end; something's always turning up, outtime."
The music that the cab had been playing died away. "Paratime Building,
just below," it said, in a light feminine voice. "Which landing stage,
please?" Vall leaned forward and punched at the buttons in front of
him. Something in the cab's electronic brain gave a rapid series of
clicks as it shifted from the general Paratime Building beam to the
beam of the Paratime Police landing stage, then it said, "Thank you."
The building below seemed to rotate upward toward them as it settled
down. Then the antigrav-field snapped off, the cab door popped open,
and the cab said: "Good-by, now. Ride with me again, sometime."
They crossed the landing stage, entered the antigrav shaft, and
floated downward; at the end of a hallway, below, Vall opened the door
of Tortha Karf's office and ushered her through ahead of him.
Tortha Karf, inside the semicircle of his desk, was speaking into a
recording phone as they approached. He shut off the machine and waved,
a cigarette in his hand.