Time Crime
"Now why would the Paracops do that, I wonder? Slavery's an
established local practice on Esaron Sector; our people have to buy
slaves if they want to run a plantation."
"I know that." Sphabron Larv replied. "That's what I want to find out.
There must be something wrong, either with the slaves, or the
treatment our people were giving them, or the Paratime Police, and I
want to find out which."
"To tell the truth, Larv, so do I." Yandar Yadd said. He turned to the
man behind the counter. "Varkar, do we see that claim, or do I make a
story out of your refusal to show it?" he asked.
"The Paratime Police asked me to keep this confidential," Varkar Klav
said. "Publicity would seriously hamper an important police
investigation."
Yandar Yadd made an impolite noise. "How do I know that all it would
do would be to reveal police incompetence?" he retorted. "Look,
Varkar; you and the Paratime Police and the Paratime Commission and
the Home Time Line Management are all hired employees of the Home Time
Line public. The public has a right to know what its employees are
doing, and it's my business to see that they're informed. Now, for the
last time--will you show us a copy of that claim?"
"Well, let me explain, off the record--" the official begged.
"Huh-uh! Huh-uh! I had that off-the-record gag worked on me when I was
about Larv's age, fifty years ago. Anything I get, I put on the air or
not at my own discretion."
"All right," Varkar Klav surrendered, pointing to a reading screen and
twiddling a knob. "But when you read it, I hope you have enough
discretion to keep quiet about it."
The screen lit, and Yandar Yadd automatically pressed a button for a
photo-copy. The two newsmen stared for a moment, and then even Yandar
Yadd's shell of drowsy negligence cracked and fell from him. His hand
brushed the switch as he snatched the hand-phone from his belt.
"Marva!" he barked, before the girl at the news office could more than
acknowledge. "Get this recorded for immediate telecast!... Ready?
Beginning: The existence of a huge paratemporal slave trade came to
light on the afternoon of One-Five-Nine Day, on a time line of the
Third Level Esaron Sector, when Field Agent Skordran Kirv, Paratime
Police, discovered, at an orange plantation of Consolidated Outtime
Foodstuffs--"
* * * * *
Salgath Trod sat alone in his private office, his half-finished lunch
growing cold on the desk in front of him as he watched the teleview
screen across the room, tuned to a pickup behind the Speaker's chair
in the Executive Council Chamber ten stories below. The two thousand
seats had been almost all empty at 1000, when Council had convened.
Fifteen minutes later, the news had broken; now, at 1430, a good three
quarters of the seats were occupied. He could see, in the aisles, the
gold-plated robot pages gliding back and forth, receiving and
delivering messages. One had just slid up to the seat of Councilman
Hasthor Flan, and Hasthor was speaking urgently into the recorder
mouthpiece. Another message for him, he supposed; he'd gotten at least
a score such calls since the crisis had developed.
People were going to start wondering, he thought. This situation should
have been perfect for his purposes; as leader of the Opposition he could
easily make himself the next General Manager, if he exploited this
scandal properly. He listened for a while to the Centrist-Management
member who was speaking; he could rip that fellow's arguments to shreds
in a hundred words--but he didn't dare. The Management was taking
exactly the line Salgath Trod wanted the whole Council to take: treat
this affair as an isolated and extraordinary occurrence, find a couple
of convenient scapegoats, cobble up some explanation acceptable to the
public, and forget it. He wondered what had happened to the imbecile who
had transposed those Kholghoor Sector slaves onto an exploited time
line. Ought to be shanghaied to the Khiftan Sector and sold to the
priests of Fasif!
A buzzer sounded, and for an instant he thought it would be the
message he had seen Hasthor Fan recording. Then he realized that it
was the buzzer for the private door, which could only be operated by
someone with a special identity sign. He pressed a button and unlocked
the door.
The young man in the loose wrap-around tunic who entered was a
stranger. At least, his face and his voice were strange, but voices
could be mechanically altered, and a skilled cosmetician could render
any face unrecognizable. He looked like a student, or a minor
commercial executive, or an engineer, or something like that. Of
course, his tunic bulged slightly under the left armpit, but even the
most respectable tunics showed occasional weapon-bulges.
"Good afternoon, councilman," the newcomer said, sitting down across
the desk from Salgath Trod. "I was just talking to ... somebody we
both know."
Salgath Trod offered cigarettes, lighted his visitor's and then his
own.
"What does Our Mutual Friend think about all this?" he asked,
gesturing toward the screen.
"Our Mutual Friend isn't at all happy about it."
"You think, perhaps, that I'm bursting into wild huzzas?" Salgath Trod
asked. "If I were to act as everybody expects me to, I'd be down there
on the floor, now, clawing into the Management tooth and nail. All my
adherents are wondering why I'm not. So are all my opponents, and
before long one of them is going to guess the reason."
"Well, why not go down?" the stranger asked. "Our Mutual Friend thinks
it would be an excellent idea. The leak couldn't be stopped, and it's
gone so far already that the Management will never be able to play it
down. So the next best thing is to try to exploit it."
Salgath Trod smiled mirthlessly. "So I am to get in front of it, and
lead it in the right direction? Fine ... as long as I don't stumble
over something. If I do, it'll go over me like a Fifth Level
bison-herd."
"Don't worry about that," the stranger laughed reassuringly. "There
are others on the floor who are also friends of Our Mutual Friend.
Here: what you'd better do is attack the Paratime Police, especially
Tortha Karf and Verkan Vall. Accuse them of negligence and
incompetence, and, by implication, of collusion, and demand a special
committee to investigate. And try to get a motion for a confidence
vote passed. A motion to censure the Management, say--"
Salgath Trod nodded. "It would delay things, at least. And if Our
Mutual Friend can keep properly covered, I might be able to overturn
the Management." He looked at the screen again. "That old fool of a
Nanthav is just getting started; it'll be an hour before I could get
recognized. Plenty of time to get a speech together. Something short
and vicious--"
"You'll have to be careful. It won't do, with your political record,
to try to play down these stories of a gigantic criminal conspiracy.
That's too close to the Management line. And at the same time, you
want to avoid saying anything that would get Verkan Vall and Tortha
Karf started off on any new lines of investigation."
Salgath Trod nodded. "Just depend on me; I'll handle it."
After the stranger had gone, he shut off the sound reception, relying
on visual dumb-show to keep him informed of what was going on on the
Council floor. He didn't like the situation. It was too easy to say
the wrong thing. If only he knew more about the shadowy figures whose
messengers used his private door--
* * * * *
Coru-hin-Irigod held his aching head in both hands, as though he were
afraid it would fall apart, and blinked in the sunlight from the
window. Lord Safar, how much of that sweet brandy had he drunk, last
night? He sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, trying to think.
Then, suddenly apprehensive, he thrust his hand under his pillow. The
heavy four-barreled pistols were there, all right, but--_The money!_
He rummaged frantically among the bedding, and among his clothes,
piled on the floor, but the leather bag was nowhere to be found. Two
thousand gold _obus_, the price of a hundred slaves. He snatched up
one of the pistols, his headache forgotten. Then he laughed and tossed
the pistol down again. Of course! He'd given the bag to the plantation
manager, what was his outlandish name, Dosu Golan, to keep for him
before the drinking bout had begun. It was safely waiting for him in
the plantation strong box. Well, nothing like a good scare to make a
man forget a brandy head, anyhow. And there was something else,
something very nice--
Oh, yes, there it was, beside the bed. He picked up the beautiful
gleaming repeater, pulled down the lever far enough to draw the
cartridge halfway out of the chamber, and closed it again, lowering
the hammer. Those two Jeseru traders from the North, what were their
names? Ganadara and Atarazola. That was a stroke of luck, meeting them
here. They'd given him this lovely rifle, and they were going to
accompany him and his men back to Careba; they had a hundred such
rifles, and two hundred six-shot revolvers, and they wanted to trade
for slaves. The Lord Safar bless them both, wouldn't they be welcome
at Careba!
He looked at the sunlight falling through the window on the still
recumbent form of his companion, Faru-hin-Obaran. Outside, he could
hear the sounds of the plantation coming to life--an ax thudding on
wood, the clatter of pans from the kitchens. Crossing to
Faru-hin-Obaran's bed, he grasped the sleeper by the ankle, tugging.
"Waken, Faru!" he shouted. "Get up and clear the fumes from your head!
We start back to Careba today!"
Faru swore groggily and pushed himself into a sitting position,
fumbling on the floor for his trousers.
"What day's this?" he asked.
"The day after we went to bed, ninny!" Then Coru-hin-Irigod wrinkled
his brow. He could remember, clearly enough, the sale of the slaves,
but after that--Oh, well, he'd been drinking; it would all come back
to him, after a while.
* * * * *
Verkan Vall rubbed his hand over his face wearily, started to light
another cigarette, and threw it across the room in disgust. What he
needed was a drink--a long drink of cool, tart white wine, laced with
brandy--and then he needed to sleep.
"We're absolutely nowhere!" Ranthar Jard said. "Of course they're
operating on time lines we've never penetrated. The fact that they're
supplying the Croutha with guns proves that; there isn't a firearm on
any of the time lines our people are legitimately exploiting. And
there are only about three billion time lines on this belt of the
Croutha invasion--"
"If we could think of a way to reduce it to some specific area of
paratime--" one of Ranthar Jard's deputies began.
"That's precisely what we've been trying to do, Klav," Vall said. "We
haven't done it."
Dalla, who had withdrawn from the discussion and was on a couch at the
side of the room, surrounded by reports and abstracts and summaries,
looked up.
"I took hours and hours of hypno-mech on Kholghoor Sector religions,
before I went out on that wild-goose chase for psychokinesis and
precognition data," she said. "About six or eight hundred years ago,
there were religious wars and heresies and religious schisms all over
the Kharanda country. No matter how uniform the Kholghoor Sector may
be otherwise, there are dozens and dozens of small belts and
sub-sectors of different religions or sects or god-cults."
"That's right," Ranthar Jard agreed, brightening. "We have
hagiologists who know all that stuff; we'll have a couple of them
interrogate those slaves. I don't know how much they can get out of
them--lot of peasants, won't be up on the theological niceties--but a
synthesis of what we get from the lot of them--"