“Sister! What are you talking about?”
“Well, Zinna and I got along so well, I decided to adopt her—”
“ADOPT HER—without talking to me! Isn’t she a Prole?”
Dalla visibly cringed. “I’m sorry...”
“Tell me you haven’t actually done the ceremony yet? Have you? Without telling me—”
She made her sorry face; he wanted to smash it right through the visiscreen! “You did do it, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I’m sorry—”
“You should be. All my life you’ve been telling me how sorry you are...you’re not the only one who carries the family name, Hadron. A Prole—I won’t be able to go out in public anymore! Our family can trace its lineage back over eight thousand years, and there’s never been an outtimer in our genealogy—”
“I said, I’m sorry, Tharn—I don’t know what else to say.”
“Dalla, Sometimes I have a hard time believing we’re from the same gene pool. Do you ever use that head of yours for anything more than a hat rack for one of your pretty hats? Think—think about what our parents would say about this if they were still alive... Think about what it does to our social standing! Think about how it makes me look!”
Dalla was now in tears, which made him feel a little better.
“I’m sorry, Tharn, but I have to break-off. I just can’t talk to you when you’re like this—”
“You mean, when I’m crazy mad, or when you don’t have a good answer for another one of your dumb stunts—”
This time Dalla hung up on him; well, she’d pay for that. Her Paracop husband, too. One of these days, they’d all pay!
II
Danar Sirna knocked on her husband’s door; she knew better than to push the pneumatic release—he’d already bitten her head off twice today! She suspected something had gone wrong at work. He had been working for Hadron Tharn for several years as his personal aide. Tharn had an irascible temperament, often taking out his frustrations on those he employed. Rarth put up with them because he had deep political ambitions; he knew that his position as Tharn’s personal lobbyist and assistant would greatly advance his career.
Tharn not only knew everyone in the Executive Council, but—according to her husband—was one of the richest men on Home Time Line, which was wealth beyond wild imagination. He could do Rarth’s future political career a lot of good, but at a steep cost, working late into the evening and odd hours, sacrificing time with her. Even worse, her husband was beginning to pick up some of Tharn’s mannerisms and quick temper.
“Rarth, you need to eat something. Something to keep up your strength.”
Again, he didn’t answer. She knocked some more: sometimes he acted like such a child. Maybe that’s why she was considering dissolving their marriage. That and his moodiness and habit of blaming others for his faults. Still, Rarth was the most handsome man she’d ever met, although his petulance had begun to spoil his looks. Perhaps she was finally beginning to see beyond his surface façade.
Suddenly the door whooshed open, knocking her off balance. She teetered for a moment, then regained her footing.
Rarth stood before her, his tunic disheveled, face pale and anemic. “Leave me alone! How many times do I have to tell you?”
“What’s going on? I’m your wife; I have a right to know.”
The robot server rolled down the hall, beeping twice. “Dinner is ready, Mister and Madam.”
As soon as it came within reach, her husband shoved it hard. The robot smashed into the wall, squawking loudly, then crumpled to the floor. It hit the marble tiles with a sound like that of breaking dishes, beeped again, sputtered—then died, sending out a dark cloud of astringent smoke.
“Now you’ve done it. We just got that robot as a Year-End Day gift from my parents. What will they say?”
“Robots are passé,” Rarth responded. “Just like your phony parents.”
“They’ve always liked you.” If it wasn’t for their encouragement, I would have never married you, she thought to herself. She’d had no idea what a hypocrite he was until after their companionate marriage. And user….
He smirked. “The more fools they. If they wanted to give us a present, they should have given us a prole with a ten-year labor contract. None of my friends have robots anymore.”
“Your boss does.”
“You had to mention him. I haven’t seen him in three ten-days; no one else has either. He’s been outtime on Fifth Level Industrial Sector. That’s what you’ll tell anyone who asks.”
“That’s not true! I saw you talking with him on the visiphone just a couple of days ago; I recognized his penthouse.”
Rarth’s face turned brick red. “You never saw anything! Remember that. Nothing. Hadron Tharn’s been outtime; that’s all you know. Understand?”
If looks could kill, I’d be a corpse, she thought. For the first time in their marriage, she was deathly afraid of her husband.
III
Verkan Vall took aim at the target head-and-shoulders silhouette with his Europo-American Colt Python .357 Magnum with the eight-inch barrel, one of the finest revolvers ever produced on any time-line. When he retrieved his target, he saw a tight grouping at the head for the first five hits, with one miss. He was going to have to spend more time at the range, which was conveniently located in the basement of the Paratime Building. It was unusual for him to be off by even a single shot.
It was all the paperwork they had him doing, he thought. He was much more valuable in the field than sitting at his desk making charts of transtemporal interpenetration events and pickup graphs. At least his shooting skills hadn't completely atrophied. Most of his shots were grouped in the target's mid-facial area.
Vall took a deep breath, enjoying the smell of cordite from the spent rounds. This was as close to the outside as he was going to get for awhile.
“Vall, it's me.” a familiar voice said from behind.
He took off his ear protectors, then turned around to discover Ranthar Jard. They touched hands in greeting. “What crisis has you chasing me down here at the range?”
Ranthar laughed, showing large well-formed white teeth underneath a trim mustache. “First, I want to thank you for the promotion.”
“Well deserved, Inspector. You did a good job on the Abzar Sector cleanup.”
Ranthar shrugged, then changed the subject: “The real reason is we've finally got something worthwhile on the Organization.”
“Oh yeah,” Vall said, all ears. “What?”
“We've been hypo-meching the Wizard Trader suspects for the last two tendays; most of them either know nothing or refer us to other individuals—most of whom we found discorporated or missing. We traced one suspect, Valtar Karn, an employee of Outtime Exotic Beverages, who has mysteriously disappeared.”
“That's an all too familiar refrain with this case.”
Ranthar paused while another officer fired off about twenty rounds with an automatic from the Akor-Neb Sector. Once it was quieter, he continued, “Agreed. However, one of the techs, while going over his work computer discovered that Valtar Karn, an independent trader, made a number of unscheduled transpositions to a time-line on Fourth Level Europo-American, Hartley Belt. Upon his return, he spent a lot of time in Old Town Dhergabar gambling”
“How did Valtar make out?” Verkan asked, already knowing the answer.
“Very well, it appears. Or so he told the tax board. His last visit landed him more than a million Paratime Exchange Units.”
“Very well, indeed. He's cleaning units for the Organization; that's my take.”
“Mine, too,” Ranthar said.
“Where is he now?”
“Survey says he's disappeared. He has no permit for an outtime visit, but none of his acquaintances have seen him in the past two days.”
“What do we know about this Hartley Belt? It's a new one on me.” Which was no surprise to anyone, as there were tens of thousands of small belts throughout Europo-American,
less than a fraction of which the Paratime Police Survey Division had visited. Even with First Level perfect recall and complete access to the Paratime Police's data banks, there were too many belts and subsectors for any one man to know.
“Hey, Vall, it's a new one on me, too. After all, we're not the Paratime exploration corps.”
“No, but sometimes we have to act as if we are. Maybe that is what's needed to take some of the pressure off the Department.”
“Right, I can just see Chief Tortha taking that proposal to the Executive Council. As soon as the Speaker reaches the budget expenditures, the Council will have the Chief up on charges of trying to loot the Treasury.”
Vall grinned wryly. The sad part was the Treasury Bureau was filled to overflowing with Home Time Line's Outtime Trade Tax and import revenues collected over thousands of years. The Council acted as if the units were coming out of their own bank accounts instead of the government's.
“So what hard data does the Survey Division have on this Hartley Belt?” he asked.
“First, it's a very recent Europo-America Belt, post the War against Hitler. It appears to be a divarication off the Islamic Kaliphate Subsector. On the Kaliphate there are three major power blocs, instead of two as on most of the Europo-American Sector. They are the recently formed Islamic Kaliphate, the Soviet Union and the United States. The unusual aspect of this belt is the appearance in the United States of an outfit that calls itself Associated Enterprises, a cartel that's one of the Hartley Belt's largest industrial cartels. From all Survey evidence of the para-area, it appears that the actual divarication took place less than a decade ago.”
“What's it named after?”
“The Hartley family. They're the ones that appear to be propelling the changes that have made this Belt unique through their cartel, Associate Enterprises.”
“Hmm,” Vall said, “I'm well traveled on Fourth Level Europo-American and I don't recall ever hearing mention of either Associated Enterprises or the Hartley family.”
“On the surface it appears to be one of those sudden success stories so popular in Europo-America cinema, and sometimes in real life. As far as our survey team could learn, the principal, Blake Hartley, was a nonentity, a small town lawyer in Williamsport, Pennsylvania”
“Williamsport,” Verkan said with a frown. “I've been there. Remember the Venusian Nighthound Case on Fourth Level, Europo-American?”
Ranthar shook his head. “I must have been outtime.”
“It was a doozy of a case. A very dangerous beast that got away from a paratimer on vacation, a Venusian nighthound.”
“That's a Code violation, and a bad one at that. That was his last Paratime jaunt, I expect.”
“Yes,” Vall said, pausing to light his pipe. “Fortunately for him, he was killed in an accident in one of their self-propelled vehicles—what they call a ground car. It crashed and burned, releasing the nighthound which caused no end of devilment for the locals.”
“Those nighthounds are rapacious, all right. How'd you fix it?”
“Posed as a relative of the dead man to close the investigation, then tracked down the nighthound and terminated it. But, getting back to Blake Hartley, what did Survey give us on his background?”
Ranthar shrugged. “Small-town lawyer who suddenly came into money; Survey doesn't give any information on how he got it to begin with. Inheritance, maybe? However, once he had his stake, he began buying ownership in small companies, then later larger ones. Now his cartel is one of the wealthiest and most important on the Minor Land Mass, Northern Continent. Since the Belt wasn't flagged, Survey only did a very basic overview of the Belt.”
“What caused the divarication?”
Ranthar shook his head. “Not enough information. Survey is too overtaxed to do more than a cursory appraisal of most new Belts—especially on Fourth Level. We may never know the exact divarication trigger or date.”
“Why would the Organization be interested in this particular Belt?” Vall asked.
“Maybe because no one else is. If you want to do something nefarious, do it in the middle of a city in a deserted building.”
“I believe you're onto something, Ranthar. Just how large is the Hartley Belt?”
“About three paradays.”
“That's manageable,” he said. “We should be able to monitor all transposition conveyer activity there quite easily. I'm going to talk with Dhergabar Metropolitan Police Chief Rondar Valt and see what he knows about this Valtar Karn and his contacts. Meanwhile, I want you to stop what you're doing now and head up a Hartley Team on Pol-Term. First, monitor the entire Belt for outtime conveyer traffic, in-bound and out-bound; those are the time-lines where we'll concentrate our energies. I want a hundred five-man field teams to start. Once we have a target, we can focus our energies on seeing just what the Organization is doing there. We'll start in Williamsport; learn everything we can about Blake Hartley, then go from there.
“Obviously, it's no two-bit slaving operation like on Third Level Esaron Sector. They're up to something big there; I can feel it.”
Ranthar paused to take out his pipe and fill it with tobacco from his pouch. “Do you think the Organization's behind this new cartel, Associated Enterprises?”
Verkan shrugged. “Could be. Blake Hartley might be a Paratimer, or an out-timer, working as a stalking horse for the Wizard Traders. Or maybe it's the Organization's attempt to create a pocket Belt where they can get themselves into all kinds of mischief and devilment—without anyone being the wiser. They know how overextended the Force is on Fourth Level.
“Or possibly this Hartley suffers from a messiah complex and just wants to be deified. We've run into megalomaniacs before whose ambition was to be the Dictator of an entire time-line. If so, the Paratime Police Survey Division has just given him his heart's desire—naming the entire Belt after him.”
I
Verkan Vall had barely time to sit down in his seat, when his office visiphone chirped. He keyed it on and saw Kaldron Zarn, Deputy Chief of the Bureau of Outtime Fraud, whose blocky visage took up most of the screen.
“Hello, Chief 's Assistant. Congratulations on your recent promotion.”
“Thanks, Kaldron. What's up?”
“I got your interdepartmental memo on the Organization, asking for help identifying unusual trends or outtime activities.”
Vall nodded, thinking, get to the point .
“The Department has been picking up a lot of information from our informants about famous artworks and masterpieces appearing on the black market. As you know from our previous memos, there's been a flood of rare artworks on the market since the Fourth Level Europo-American war against Hitler began—the one the outtimers like to call World War II. The Nazis, under the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Institute for the Occupied Territories, looted many museums and private collections during the War. Both Outtime Art Works, Ltd. and Holnyt Art House extensively looted the Nazi crèches and storage depots, increasing the number of rare art treasures from Fourth Level by tenfold. Much of the loot came from the Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria right after the war.”
“I remember,” Verkan said. “I also recall the public outcry by the Concerned Citizens Against Outtime Cultural Theft and the resultant newsie feeding frenzy.”
Kaldron gave a pained look. “Yes, we got a black eye from not doing more to stem the flow of these quasi-illegal thefts. I remember Chief Tortha's response, ‘We're a damn good bunch of parasites and it's our job to take what our hosts can't keep. It's when we forget who we are that we get in trouble.'”
Verkan nodded, trying to keep the smile off his face. That was a Karfism, if there ever was one. It did stir up a bad publicity storm for a while, but no one could refute it—that is, nobody who wasn't a complete hypocrite or total ass, which included most of the Opposition Party.
“Recently, there's been a major increase in the number of cultural art treasures and masterpieces that have been popping up on the secondary markets, private e
xchanges and collectors' auctions. For example, a Mona Lisa was recently auctioned off for less than ten thousand Paratime Exchange Units!”
“What?” Verkan, thanks to his friend Thalvan Dras and Dalla, had quite an education on outtime and First Level artworks. He'd even visited the Louvre on several occasions and was quite familiar with the Mona Lisa.
“Yes, from our initial survey over a thousand of them appear to be in private hands.”
“A thousand original paintings! I thought there were only three; one in the Dhergabar Museum of Outtime Treasures, one in the Home Time Line Repository for Rare and Unusual Artifacts and one in the World Museum of Art in Vendaran City.”
“That's what I believed, as well. Those three paintings were stolen from three different Vincenzo Peruggias, the Louvre employee who originally took the Mona Lisa from the museum by putting it under his coat, on three separate time-lines. He held it for two years intending to return it to Italy, when he was caught attempting to sell it to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Of course, on those three time-lines the Mona Lisa was never recovered, but that theft was over forty years ago and the painting was recovered everywhere else—that we know of.”
“I thought the Nazis had refrained from looting the Louvre and other major museums because of all the bad publicity.”
“Yes, that was true throughout most of Europo-American; but not true on those time-lines in the Axis Subsector where Nazi Germany won the war. The Mona Lisa originals have to be coming from that Subsector, or we've got more problems than we know about.”
Verkan nodded. “The Axis Subsector time-lines are on the Proscribed List of time-lines by the Paratime Commission—especially for trading and retrieval operations.”
“Yes, for all legitimate trading and retrieval firms and operations. However, I believe it's possible this may be another one of the Organization's operations.”
“We've had problems on that Subsector before. Thank you, Kaldron, for bringing this to my attention.”
“Should I put my operatives to work on the Axis Subsector?”
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