Time Crime
"Come on back and sit down," he invited. "Be with you in a moment."
Then he switched on the phone again and went on talking--something
about prompter evaluation and transmission of reports and less
reliance on robot equipment. "Sign that up, my personal order, and see
it's transmitted to everybody down to and including Sector Regional
Subchief level," he finished, then hung up the phone and turned to
them.
"Sorry about this," he said. "Sit down, if you please. Cigarettes?"
She shook her head and sat down in one of the chairs behind the desk;
she started to relax and then caught herself and sat erect, her hands
on her lap.
"This won't interfere with your vacation, Vall," Tortha Karf was
saying. "I just need a little help before you transpose out."
"We have to catch the rocket for Zarabar in an hour and a half," Dalla
reminded him.
"Don't worry about that; if you miss the commercial rocket, our police
rockets can give it an hour's start and pass it before it gets to
Zarabar," Tortha Karf said. Then he turned to Vall. "Here's what's
happened," he said. "One of our field agents on detached duty as guard
captain for Consolidated Outtime Foodstuffs on a fruit plantation in
western North America, Third Level Esaron Sector, was looking over a
lot of slaves who had been sold to the plantation by a local slave
dealer. He heard them talking among themselves--in Kharanda."
Dalla caught the significance of that before Vall did. At first, she
was puzzled; then, in spite of herself, she was horrified and angry.
Tortha Karf was explaining to Vall just where and on what paratemporal
sector Kharanda was spoken.
"No possibility that this agent, Skordran Kirv, could have been
mistaken. He worked for a while on Kholghoor Sector, himself; knew the
language by hypno-mech and by two years' use," Tortha Karf was saying.
"So he ordered himself back on duty, had the slaves isolated and the
slave dealers arrested, and then transposed to Police Terminal to
report. The SecReg Subchief, old Vulthor Tharn, confirmed him in
charge at this Esaron Sector plantation, and assigned him a couple of
detectives and a psychist."
"When was this?" Vall asked.
"Yesterday. One-Five-Nine Day. About 1500 local time."
"Twenty-three hundred Dhergabar time," Vall commented.
"Yes. And I just found out about it. Came in in the late morning
generalized report-digest; very inconspicuous item, no special urgency
symbol or anything. Fortunately, one of the report editors spotted it
and messaged Police Terminal for a copy of the original report."
"It's been a long time since we had anything like that," Vall said,
studying the glowing tip of his cigarette, his face wearing the
curiously withdrawn expression of a conscious memory recall. "Fifty
years ago; the time that gang kidnaped some girls from Second Level
Triplanetary Empire Sector and sold them into the harem of some Fourth
Level Indo-Turanian sultan."
"Yes. That was your first independent case, Vall. That was when I
began to think you'd really make a cop. One renegade First Level
citizen and four or five ServSec Prole hoodlums, with a stolen
fifty-foot conveyer. This looks like a rather more ambitious
operation." Dalla got one of her own cigarettes out and lit it. Vall
and Tortha Karf were talking cop talk about method of operation and
possible size of the gang involved, and why the slaves had been
shipped all the way from India to the west coast of North America.
"Always ready sale for slaves on the Esaron Sector," Vall was saying.
"And so many small independent states, and different languages, that
outtimers wouldn't be particularly conspicuous."
"And with this barbarian invasion going on on the Kholghoor Sector,
slaves could be picked up cheaply," Tortha Karf added.
In spite of her determination to boycott the conversation, curiosity
began to get the better of her. She had spent a year and a half on the
Kholghoor Sector, investigating alleged psychic powers of the local
priests. There'd been nothing to it--the prophecies weren't
precognition, they were shrewd inferences, and the miracles weren't
psychokinesis, they were sleight-of-hand. She found herself asking:
"What barbarian invasion's this?"
"Oh, Central Asian nomadic people, the Croutha," Tortha Karf told her.
"They came down through Khyber Pass about three months ago, turned
east, and hit the headwaters of the Ganges. Without punching a lot of
buttons to find out exactly, I'd say they're halfway to the delta
country by now. Leader seems to be a chieftain called Llamh Droogh the
Red. A lot of paratime trading companies are yelling for permits to
introduce firearms in the Kholghoor Sector to protect their holdings
there."
She nodded. The Fourth Level Kholghoor Sector belonged to what was
known as Indus-Ganges-Irriwady Basic Sector-Grouping--probability of
civilization having developed late on the Indian subcontinent, with
the rest of the world, including Europe, in Stone Age savagery or
early Bronze Age barbarism. The Kharandas, the people among whom she
had once done field-research work, had developed a pre-mechanical,
animal-power, handcraft, edge-weapon culture. She could imagine the
roads jammed with fugitives from the barbarian invaders, the conveyer
hidden among the trees, the lurking slavers--
Watch it, Dalla! Don't let the old scoundrel play on your feelings!
* * * * *
"Well, what do you want me to do, Chief?" Vall was asking.
"Well, I have to know just what this situation's likely to develop
into, and I want to know why Vulthor Tharn's been sitting on this ever
since Skordran Kirv reported it to him--"
"I can answer the second one now," Vall replied. "Vulthor Tharn is due
to retire in a few years. He has a negatively good, undistinguished
record. He's trying to play it safe."
Tortha Karf nodded. "That's what I thought. Look, Vall; suppose you
and Dalla transpose from here to Police Terminal, and go to Novilan
Equivalent, and give this a quick look-over and report to me, and then
rocket to Zarabar Equivalent and go on with your trip to the Dwarma
Sector. It may delay you eight or ten hours, but--"
"Closer twenty-four," Vall said. "I'd have to transpose to this
plantation, on the Esaron Sector. How about it, Dalla? Would you want
to do that?"
She hesitated for a moment, angry with him. He didn't want to refuse,
and he was trying to make her do it for him.
"I know, it's a confounded imposition, Dalla," Tortha Karf told her.
"But it's important that I get a prompt and full estimate of the
situation. This may be something very serious. If it's an isolated
incident, it can be handled in a routine manner, but I'm afraid it's
not. It has all the marks of a large-scale operation, and if this is a
matter of mass kidnapings from one sector and transpositions to
another, you can see what a threat this is to the Paratime Secret."
"Moral considerations entirely aside," Vall said. "We don't need to
discuss them; they're too obvious."
She nodded. For over twelve millennia, the people of her race and
Vall's and Tortha Karf's had been existing as parasites on all the
innumerable other worlds of alternate probability on the lateral
dimension of time. Smart parasites never injure their hosts, and try
never to reveal their existence.
"We could do that, couldn't we, Vall?" she asked, angry at herself now
for giving in. "And if you want to question these slaves, I speak
Kharanda, and I know how they think. And I'm a qualified and licensed
narco-hypnotic technician."
"Well, that's splendid, Dalla!" Tortha Karf enthused. "Wait a moment;
I'll message Police Terminal to have a rocket ready for you."
"I'll need a hypno-mech for Kharanda, myself," Vall said. "Dalla, do
you know Acalan?" When she shook her head, he turned back to Tortha
Karf. "Look; it's about a four-hour rocket hop to Novilan Equivalent.
Say we have the hypno-mech machines installed in the rocket; Dalla and
I can take our language lessons on the way, and be ready to go to work
as soon as we land."
"Good idea," Tortha Karf approved. "I'll order that done, right away.
Now--"
Oddly enough, she wasn't feeling so angry, now that she had committed
herself and Vall. Come to think of it, she had never been on Police
Terminal Time Line; very few people, outside the Paratime Police, ever
had. And, she had always wanted to learn more about Vall's work, and
participate in it with him. And if she'd made him refuse, it would
have been something ugly between them all the time they would be on
the Dwarma Sector. But this way--
* * * * *
The big circular conveyer room was crowded, as it had been every
minute of every day for the past ten thousand years. At the great
circular desk in the center, departing or returning police officers
were checking in or out with the flat-topped cylindrical robot
clerks, or talking to human attendants. Some were in the regulation
green uniform; others, like himself, were in civilian clothes; more
were in outtime costumes from all over paratime. Fringed robes and
cloth-of-gold sashes and conical caps from the Second Level Khiftan
Sector; Fourth Level Proto-Aryan mail and helmets; the short tunics
and kilts of Fourth Level Alexandrian-Roman Sector; the Zarkantha
loincloth and felt cap and daggers; there were priestly vestments
stiff with gold, and military uniforms; there were trousers and
jackboots and bare legs; blasters, and swords, and pistols, and bows
and quivers, and spears. And the place was loud with a babel of voices
and the clatter of teleprinters.
Dalla was looking about her in surprised delight; for her, the
vacation had already begun. He was glad; for a while, he had been
afraid that she would be unhappy about it. He guided her through the
crowd to the desk, spoke for a while to one of the human attendants,
and found out which was their conveyer. It was a fixed-destination
shuttler, operative only between Home Time Line and Police Terminal,
from which most of the Paratime Police operations were routed. He put
Dall in through the sliding door, followed, and closed it behind him,
locking it. Then, before he closed the starting switch, he drew a
pistollike weapon and checked it.
In theory, the Ghaldron-Hesthor paratemporal transposition field was
uninfluenced by material objects outside it. In practice, however,
such objects occasionally intruded, and sometimes they were alive and
hostile. The last time he had been in this conveyer room, he had seen
a quartet of returning officers emerge from a conveyer dome dragging
a dead lion by the tail. The sigma-ray needler, which he carried, was
the only weapon which could be used, under the circumstances. It had
no effect whatever on any material structure and could be used inside
an activated conveyer without deranging the conductor-mesh, as, say, a
bullet or the vibration of an ultrasonic paralyzer would do, and it
was instantly fatal to anything having a central nervous system. It
was a good weapon to use outtime for that reason, also; even on the
most civilized time-line, the most elaborate autopsy would reveal no
specific cause of death.
"What's the Esaron Sector like?" Dalla asked, as the conveyer dome
around them coruscated with shifting light and vanished.
"Third Level; probability of abortive attempt to colonize this planet
from Mars about a hundred thousand years ago," he said. "A few
survivors--a shipload or so--were left to shift for themselves while
the parent civilization on Mars died out. They lost all vestiges of
their original Martian culture, even memory of their extraterrestrial
origin. About fifteen hundred to two thousand years ago, a reasonably
high electrochemical civilization developed and they began working