TIME PRIME

by H. Beam Piper

  “Barth!” Vall called. “Have you a hypodermic and a sleep-drug ampoule?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, give this boy a shot; he’s only impact-stunned. Be careful of him; he’s important.”

  He glanced around the landing-stage. “Fact is, he’s all we have to show for this business.” Then he stooped to help Dalla gather her things, picking up a few of them—a lighter, a tiny crystal perfume flask, miraculously unbroken, a face-powder box which had sprung open and spilled half its contents. He handed them to her, while Sothran Barth bent over the prisoner and gave him an injection, then went to the body of the other pseudo-policeman, forcing open his mouth. In his cheek, still unbroken, was a second capsule, which he added to the first. Tortha Karf was watching him.

  “Same gang that killed that Carera slaver on Esaron Sector?” Vall asked. “Of course, exactly the same general procedure. Let’s have a look at the other one.”

  The man in Proletarian dress must have had his capsule between his molars when he had been killed; it was broken, and there was a brownish discoloration and chemical odor in his mouth.

  “Second time we’ve had a witness killed off under our noses,” Tortha Karf said. “We’re going to have to smarten up in a hurry.”

  “Here’s one of us who doesn’t have to,” Vall said, nodding toward Dalla. “She knocked a needler out of one man’s hand and we took him alive. The Force owes her a new shoulder-bag: she spoiled that one using it for a club.”

  “Best shoulder-bag we can find you, Dalla,” Tortha Karf promised. “You’re promoted, herewith, to Special Chief ’s Assistant’s Special Assistant—You know, this Organization’s murder-section is good; they could kill anybody. It won’t be long before they assign a squad to us. Blast it, I don’t want to have to go around bodyguarded like a Fourth Level dictator, but—”

  A detective came out of the control room and approached. “Screen call for you, sir,” he told Tortha Karf. “One of the news services wants a comment on a story they’ve just picked up that we’ve illegally arrested Councilman Salgath and are holding him incommunicado and searching his apartment.”

  “That’s the Organization,” Vall said. “They don’t know how their boys made out; they’re hoping we’ll tell them.”

  “No comment,” Tortha Karf said. “Call the girl on my switchboard and tell her to answer any other news-service calls. We have nothing to say at this time, but there will be a public statement at ... at 2330,” he decided after a glance at his watch. “That’ll give us time to agree on a publicity line to adopt. Lieutenant Sothran! Take charge up here. Get all these bodies out of sight somewhere, including those of Councilman Salgath and Detective Malthor. Don’t let anybody talk about this; put a blackout on the whole story. Vall, you and Dalla and...oh, you, over there; take the prisoner down to my office. Sothran, any reports from any of the cars that were chasing that fake police car?”

  I

  Verkan Vall and Dalla were sitting behind Tortha Karf ’s desk; Vall was issuing orders over the intercom and talking to the detectives who had remained at Salgath Trod’s apartment by visiscreen; Dalla was sorting over the things she had spilled when her bag had burst. They both looked up as Tortha Karf came in and joined them.

  “The prisoner’s still under the drug,” the Chief said. “He’ll be out for a couple of hours; the psych-techs want to let him come out of it naturally and sleep naturally for a while before they give him a hypno. He’s not a ServSec Prole; uncircumcised, never had any syntho-enzyme shots or immunizations, and none of the longevity operations or grafts. Same thing for the two stiffs. And no identity records on any of the three.”

  “The men at Salgath’s apartment say that his housekeeper and his two servants checked out through the house conveyer for ServSec One-Six-Five, at about 1830,” Vall said. “There’s a Prole entertainment center on that time-line. I suppose Salgath gave them the evening off before he called you.”

  Tortha Karf nodded. “I suppose you ordered them picked up. The news services are going wild about this. I had to make a preliminary statement, to the effect that Salgath Trod was not arrested, came to Headquarters of his own volition, and is under no restraint whatever.”

  “Except, of course, a slight case of rigor mortis,” Dalla added. “Did you mention that, Chief?”

  “No, I didn’t.” Tortha Karf looked as though he had quinine in his mouth. “Vall, how in blazes are we going to handle this?”

  “We ought to keep Salgath’s death hushed up as long as we can,” Vall said. “The Organization doesn’t know positively what happened here; that’s why they’re handing out tips to the news services. Let’s try to make them believe he’s still alive and talking.”

  “How can we do it?”

  “There ought to be somebody on the Force close enough to Salgath Trod’s anthropometric specifications that our forensic disguise experts could work him over into a passable impersonation. Our story is that Salgath is on Pol-Term, undergoing narco-hypnosis. We will produce an audio-visual of him as soon as he is out of narco-hyp. That will give us time to fix up an impersonator. We’ll need a lot of sound-recordings of Salgath Trod’s voice, of course—”

  “I’ll take care of the Home Time Line end of it; as soon as we get you an impersonator, you go to work with him. Now, let’s see whom we can depend on to help us with this. Lovranth Rolk, of course; Home Time Line section of the Paratime Code Enforcement Division. And—”

  Verkan Vall and Dalla and Tortha Karf and four or five others looked across the desk and to the end of the room as the telecast screen broke into a shifting lightpattern and then cleared. The face of the announcer appeared; a young woman.

  “And now, we bring you the statement which Chief Tortha of the Paratime Police has promised for this time. This portion of the program was audio-visually recorded at Paratime Police Headquarters earlier this evening.”

  Tortha Karf ’s face appeared on the screen. His voice began an announcement of how Executive Councilman Salgath Trod had called him by visiphone, admitting to complicity in the recently-discovered paratemporal slave-trade.

  “Here is a recording of Councilman Salgath’s call to me from his apartment to my office at 1945 this evening.” The screen-image shattered into light-shards and rebuilt itself: Salgath Trod, at his desk in the library of his apartment, the brandy goblet and the needler within reach, appeared. He began to speak: from time to time the voice of Tortha Karf interrupted, questioning or prompting him.

  “You understand that this confession renders you liable to psycho-rehabilitation?” Tortha Karf asked.

  Yes, Councilman Salgath understood that.

  “And you agree to come voluntarily to Paratime Police Headquarters, and you will voluntarily undergo narco-hypnotic interrogation?”

  Yes, Salgath Trod agreed to that.

  “I am now terminating the playback of Councilman Salgath’s call to me,” Tortha Karf said, re-appearing on the screen. “At this point Councilman Salgath began making a statement about his criminal activities, which we have on record. Because he named a number of his criminal associates, whom we have no intention of warning, this portion of Councilman Salgath’s call cannot at this time be made public. We have no intention of having any of these suspects escape, or of giving their associates an opportunity to murder them to prevent their furnishing us with additional information. Incidentally, there was an attempt, made on the landing stage of Paratime Police Headquarters, to murder Councilman Salgath, when he was brought here guarded by Paratime Police officers—”

  He went on to give a colorful and, as much as possible, truthful, account of the attack by the two pseudo-policemen and their pseudo-prisoner. As he told it, however, all three had been killed before they could accomplish their purpose, one of them by Salgath Trod himself.

  The image of Tortha Karf was replaced by a view of the three assassins lying on the landing stage. They all looked dead, even the one who wasn’t; there was nothing to indicate that he wa
s merely drugged. Then, one after another, their faces were shown in close-up, while Tortha Karf asked for close attention and memorization.

  “We believe that these men were Fifth Level Proles; we think that they were under hypnotic influence or obeying posthypnotic commands when they made their suicidal attack. If any of you have ever seen any of these men before, it is your duty to inform the Paratime Police.”

  That ended it. Tortha Karf pressed a button in front of him and the screen went dark. The spectators relaxed.

  “Well! Nothing like being sincere with the public, is there?” Dalla commented. “I’ll remember this the next time I tune in a Management public statement.”

  “In about five minutes,” one of the bureau chiefs, said, “all hell is going to break loose. I think the whole thing is crazy!”

  “I hope you have somebody who can give a convincing impersonation,” Lovranth Rolk said.

  “Yes. A field agent named Kostran Galth,” Tortha Karf said. “We ran the personal description cards for the whole Force through the machine; Kostran checked to within one-twentieth of one per cent; he’s on Police Terminal right now, coming by rocket from Ravvanan Equivalent. We ought to have the whole thing ready for telecast by 1730 tomorrow.”

  “He can’t learn to imitate Salgath’s voice convincingly in that time, with all the work the cosmeticians will have to be doing on him,” Dalla said.

  “Make up a tape of Salgath’s own voice, out of that pile of recordings we got at his apartment, and what we can get out of the news file.” Vall said. “We have phoneticists who can split syllables and splice them together. Kostran will deliver his speech in dumb-show, and we’ll dub the sound in and telecast them as one. I’ve messaged Pol-Term to get to work on that; they can start as soon as we have the speech written.”

  “The more it succeeds now, the worse the blow-up will be when we finally have to admit that Salgath was killed here tonight,” the Chief Inter-officer Coordinator, Zostha Olv said. “We’d better have something to show the public to justify that.”

  “Yes, we had,” Tortha Karf agreed. “Vall, how about the Kholghoor Sector operation. How far’s Ranthar Jard gotten toward locating one of those Wizard Trader time-lines?”

  “Not very far,” Vall admitted. “He has it pinned down to the sub-sector, but the belt seems to be one we haven’t any information at all for. Never been any legitimate penetration by Paratimers. He has his own hagiologists, and a couple borrowed from Outtime Religious Institute; they’ve gotten everything the slaves can give them on that. About the only thing to do is start random observation with boomerang-balls.”

  “Over about a hundred thousand time-lines,” Zostha Olv scoffed. He was an old man, even for his long-lived race; he had a thin nose and a narrow, bitter, mouth. “And what will he look for?”

  “Croutha with guns.” Tortha Karf told him, then turned to Vall. “Can’t he narrow it down more than that? What have his experts been getting out of those slaves?”

  “That I don’t know, to date.” Vall looked at the clock. “I’ll find out, though; I’ll transpose to Police Terminal and call him up. And Skordran Kirv. No. Vulthor Tharn; it’d hurt the old fellow’s feelings if I bypassed him and went to one of his subordinates. Half an hour each way, and at most another hour talking to Ranthar and Vulthor; there won’t be anything doing here for two hours.”

  He rose. “See you when I get back.”

  Dalla had turned on the telescreen again; after tuning out a dance orchestra and a comedy show, she got the image of an angry-faced man in evening clothes.

  “... And I’m going to demand a full investigation, as soon as Council convenes tomorrow morning!” he was shouting. “This whole story is a preposterous insult to the integrity of the entire Executive Council, your elected representatives, and it shows the criminal lengths to which this would-be dictator, Tortha Karf, and his jackal Verkan Vall will go—”

  “So long, jackal.” Dalla called to him as he went out.

  II

  Verkan spent the half-hour transposition to Police Terminal sleeping. Paratime-transpositions and rocket-flights seemed to be his only chance to get any sleep. He was still sleepy when he sat down in front of the radio telescreen behind his duplicate of Tortha Karf ’s desk and put through a call to Nharkan Equivalent. It was 0600 in India; the Sector Regional Deputy Subchief who was holding down Ranthar Jard’s desk looked equally sleepy; he had a mug of coffee in front of him and a brown-paper cigarette in his mouth.

  “Oh, hello, Assistant Verkan. Want me to call Subchief Ranthar?”

  “Is he sleeping? Then for mercy’s sake don’t. What’s the present status of the investigation?”

  “Well, we were dropping boomerang balls yesterday, while we had sun to mask the return-flashes. Nothing. The Croutha have taken the city of Sohram, just below the big bend of the river. Tomorrow, when we have sunlight, we’re going to start boomerang balling the central square. We may get something.”

  “The Wizard Traders will be moving in near there about now,” Vall said. “The Croutha ought to have plenty of merchandise for them. Have you gotten anything more done on narrowing down the possible area?”

  The deputy bit back a yawn and reached for his coffee mug. “The experts have just about pumped these slaves empty,” he said. “The local religion is a mess. Seems to have started out as a Great Mother cult; then it picked up a lot of gods borrowed from other peoples; then it turned into a dualistic monotheism; then it picked up a lot of minor gods and devils—new devils are usually gods of the older pantheon. And we got a lot of gossip about the feudal wars and faction-fights among the nobility, and so on, all garbled, because these people are peasants who only knew what went on at the estate of their own lord.”

  “What did go on there?” Vall asked. “Ask them about recent improvements, new buildings, new fields cleared, new paddies flooded, that sort of thing. And pick out a few of the highest IQs from both time-lines, and have them locate this estate on a large-scale map, and draw plans showing the location of buildings, fields and other visible features. If you have to, teach them mapping and sketching by hypnomech. And then drop about five hundred to a thousand boomerang balls at regular intervals over the whole Paratemporal area. When you locate a time-line that gives you a picture to correspond to their description, boomerang the main square in Sohram over the whole belt around it, to find Croutha with firearms.”

  The deputy looked at him for a moment then gulped more coffee. “Can do, Assistant Verkan. I think I’ll send somebody to wake up Subchief Ranthar right now. Want to talk to him?”

  “Won’t be necessary. You’re recording this call, of course? Then play it back to him. And get cracking with the slaves; you want enough information out of them to enable you to start boomerang balling as soon as the sun’s high enough.”

  Vall broke off the connection and sent out for coffee for himself. Then he put through a call to Novilan Equivalent, in western North America.

  It was 1530, there, when he got Vulthor Tharn on the screen. “Good afternoon, Assistant Verkan. I suppose you’re calling about the slave business. I’ve turned the entire matter over to Field Agent Skordran; gave him a temporary rank of Deputy Subchief. That’s subject to your approval and Chief Tortha’s, of course—”

  “Make the appointment permanent,” Vall said. “I’ll have a confirmation along from Chief Tortha directly. And let me talk to him now, if you please, Subchief Vulthor.”

  “Yes, sir. Switching you over now.” The screen went into a beautiful burst of abstract art, and cleared, after awhile, with Skordran Kirv looking out of it.

  “Hello, Deputy Skordran, and congratulations. What’s come up since we had Nebu-hin-Abenoz cutout from under us?”

  “We went in on that time-line that same night with an airboat and made a recon in the hills back of Careba. Scared the fear of Safar into a party of Caleras while we were working at low altitude, by the way. We found the conveyer-head site: hundred-foot circle with all the gra
ss and loose dirt transposed off it and a pole pen, very unsanitary where about two-three hundred slaves would be kept at a time. No indications of use in the last ten days. We did some pretty thorough boomeranging on that spatial equivalent over a couple of thousand time-lines and found thirty more of them. I believe the slavers have closed out the whole Esaron Sector operation, at least temporarily.”

  That was what he’d been afraid of; he hoped they wouldn’t do the same thing on the Kholghoor Sector.

  “Let me have the designations of the time-lines on which you found conveyer heads,” he said.

  “Just a moment, Chief ’s Assistant; I’ll photoprint them to you. Set for reception?”

  Vall opened a slide under the screen and saw that the photoprint film was in place, then closed it again, nodding. Skordran Kirv fed a sheet of paper into his screen cabinet and his arm moved forward out of the picture.

  “On, sir,” he said. He and Vall counted ten seconds together, and then Skordran Kirv said: “Through to you.” Vall pressed a lever under his screen, and a rectangle of microcopy print popped out.

  “That’s about all I have, sir. Want me to keep my troops ready here, or shall I send them somewhere else?”

  “Keep them ready, Kirv,” Vall told him. “You may need them before long. Call you later.”

  He put the microcopy in an enlarger, and carried the enlarged print with him to the conveyer room. There was something odd about the list of time-line designations. They were expressed numerically, in First Level notation; extremely short groups of symbols capable of exact expression of almost inconceivably enormous numbers. Vall had only a general-education smattering of mathematics—enough to qualify him for the chair of Higher Mathematics at any university on, say, the Fourth Level Europo-American Sector—and he could not identify the peculiarity, but he could recognize that there existed some sort of pattern.