Short Fiction · Temple Trouble (3/5)

“I know it will, because I’ll put through a recommendation to that effect, if those six men are tortured to death tomorrow,” Verkan Vall replied. “And in the fifty years that I’ve been in the Police Department, I’ve only heard of five such recommendations being ignored by the commission. You know, Fourth Level Mineral Products Syndicate is after your franchise. Ordinarily, they wouldn’t have a chance of getting it, but with this, maybe they will, even without my recommendation. This was all your fault, for ignoring Stranor Sleth’s proposal and for denying those men the right to carry energy weapons.”

“Well, we were only trying to stay inside the Paratime Code,” Brannad Klav pleaded. “If it isn’t too late, now, you can count on me for every cooperation.” He fiddled with some papers on the desk. “What do you want me to do to help?”

“I’ll tell you that in a minute.” Verkan Vall walked to the wall and looked at the map, then returned to Stranor Sleth’s desk. “How about these dungeons?” he asked. “How are they located, and how can we get in to them?”

“I’m afraid we can’t,” Stranor Sleth told him. “Not without fighting our way in. They’re under the palace citadel, a hundred feet below ground. They’re spatially coexistent with the heavy water barriers around one of our company’s plutonium piles on the First Level, and below surface on any unoccupied timeline I know of, so we can’t transpose in to them. This palace is really a walled city inside a city. Here, I’ll show you.”

Going around the desk, he sat down and, after looking in the index-screen, punched a combination on the keyboard. A picture, projected from the microfilm-bank, appeared on the viewscreen. It was an air-view of the city of Zurb⁠—taken, the high priest explained, by infrared light from an airboat over the city at night. It showed a city of an entirely pre-mechanical civilization, with narrow streets, lined on either side by low one and two story buildings. Although there would be considerable snow in winter, the roofs were usually flat, probably massive stone slabs supported by pillars within. Even in the poorer sections, this was true except for the very meanest houses and outbuildings, which were thatched. Here and there, some huge pile of masonry would rear itself above its lower neighbors, and, where the streets were wider, occasional groups of large buildings would be surrounded by battlemented walls. Stranor Sleth indicated one of the larger of these.

“Here’s the palace,” he said. “And here’s the temple of Yat-Zar, about half a mile away.” He touched a large building, occupying an entire block; between it and the palace was a block-wide park, with lawns and trees on either side of a wide roadway connecting the two.

“Now, here’s a detailed view of the palace.” He punched another combination; the view of the City was replaced by one, taken from directly overhead, of the walled palace area. “Here’s the main gate, in front, at the end of the road from the temple,” he pointed out. “Over here, on the left, are the slaves’ quarters and the stables and workshops and store houses and so on. Over here, on the other side, are the nobles’ quarters. And this,”⁠—he indicated a towering structure at the rear of the walled enclosure⁠—“is the citadel and the royal dwelling. Audience hall on this side; harem over here on this side. A wide stone platform, about fifteen feet high, runs completely across the front of the citadel, from the audience hall to the harem. Since this picture was taken, the new temple of Muz-Azin was built right about here.” He indicated that it extended out from the audience hall into the central courtyard. “And out here on the platform, they’ve put up about a dozen of these triangles, about twelve feet high, on which the sacrificial victims are whipped to death.”

“Yes. About the only way we could get down to the dungeons would be to make an airdrop onto the citadel roof and fight our way down with needlers and blasters, and I’m not willing to do that as long as there’s any other way,” Verkan Vall said. “We’d lose men, even with needlers against bows, and there’s a chance that some of our equipment might be lost in the melee and fall into outtime hands. You say this sacrifice comes off tomorrow at sunset?”

“That would be about actual sunset plus or minus an hour; these people aren’t astronomers, they don’t even have good sundials, and it might be a cloudy day,” Stranor Sleth said. “There will be a big idol of Muz-Azin on a cart, set about here.” He pointed. “After the sacrifice, it is to be dragged down this road, outside, to the temple of Yat-Zar, and set up there. The temple is now occupied by about twenty Chuldun mercenaries and five or six priests of Muz-Azin. They haven’t, of course, got into the House of Yat-Zar; the door’s of impervium steel, about six inches thick, with a plating of collapsed nickel under the gilding. It would take a couple of hours to cut through it with our best atomic torch; there isn’t a tool on this timeline that could even scratch it. And the insides of the walls are lined with the same thing.”

“Do you think our people have been tortured, yet?” Verkan Vall asked.

“No.” Stranor Sleth was positive. “They’ll be fairly well treated, until the sacrifice. The idea’s to make them last as long as possible on the triangles; Muz-Azin likes to see a slow killing, and so does the mob of spectators.”

“That’s good. Now, here’s my plan. We won’t try to rescue them from the dungeons. Instead, we’ll transpose back to the Zurb temple from the First Level, in considerable force⁠—say a hundred or so men⁠—and march on the palace, to force their release. You’re in constant radio communication with all the other temples on this timeline, I suppose?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“All right. Pass this out to everybody, authority Paratime Police, in my name, acting for Tortha Karf. I want all paratimers who can possibly be spared to transpose to First Level immediately and rendezvous at the First Level terminal of the Zurb temple conveyer as soon as possible. Close down all mining operations, and turn over temple routine to the native under-priests. You can tell them that the upper-priests are retiring to their respective Houses of Yat-Zar to pray for the deliverance of the priests in the hands of King Kurchuk. And everybody is to bring back his priestly regalia to the First Level; that will be needed.” He turned to Brannad Klav. “I suppose you keep spare regalia in stock on the First Level?”

“Yes, of course; we keep plenty of everything in stock. Robes, miters, false beards of different shades, everything.”

“And these big Yat-Zar idols: they’re mass-produced on the First Level? You have one available now? Good. I’ll want some alterations made on one. For one thing, I’ll want it plated heavily, all over, with collapsed nickel. For another, I’ll want it fitted with antigrav units and some sort of propulsion-units, and a loudspeaker, and remote control.

“And, Stranor, you get in touch with this swordmaker, Crannar Jurth, and alert him to cooperate with us. Tell him to start calling Zurb temple on his radio about noon tomorrow, and keep it up till he gets an answer. Or, better, tell him to run his conveyer to his First Level terminal, and bring with him an extra suit of clothes appropriate to the role of journeyman-mechanic. I’ll want to talk to him, and furnish him with special equipment. Got all that? Well, carry on with it, and bring your own paratimers, priests and mining operators, back with you as soon as you’ve taken care of everything. Brannad, you come with me, now. We’re returning to First Level immediately. We have a lot of work to do, so let’s get started.”

“Anything I can do to help, just call on me for it,” Brannad Klav promised earnestly. “And, Stranor, I want to apologize. I’ll admit, now, that I ought to have followed your recommendations, when this situation first developed.”

By noon of the next day, Verkan Vall had at least a hundred men gathered in the big room at the First Level fissionables refinery at Jarnabar, spatially coexistent with the Fourth Level temple of Yat-Zar at Zurb. He was having a little trouble distinguishing between them, for every man wore the fringed blue robe and golden miter of an upper-priest, and had his face masked behind a blue false beard. It was, he admitted to himself, a most ludicrous-looking assemblage; one of the most ludicrous things about it was the fact that it would have inspired only pious awe in a Hulgun of the Fourth Level Proto-Aryan Sector. About half of them were priests from the Transtemporal Mining Corporation’s temples; the other half were members of the Paratime Police. All of them wore, in addition to their temple knives, holstered sigma-ray needlers. Most of them carried ultrasonic paralyzers, eighteen-inch batonlike things with bulbous ends. Most of the Paratime Police and a few of the priests also carried either heat-ray pistols or neutron-disruption blasters; Verkan Vall wore one of the latter in a left-hand belt holster.

The Paratime Police were lined up separately for inspection, and Stranor Sleth, Tammand Drav of the Zurb temple, and several other high priests were checking the authenticity of their disguises. A little apart from the others, a Paratime Policeman, in high priest’s robes and beard, had a square box slung in front of him; he was fiddling with knobs and buttons on it, practicing. A big idol of Yat-Zar, on antigravity, was floating slowly about the room in obedience to its remote controls, rising and lowering, turning about and pirouetting gracefully.

“Hey, Vall!” he called to his superior. “How’s this?”

The idol rose about five feet, turned slowly in a half-circle, moved to the right a little, and then settled slowly toward the floor.

“Fine, fine, Horv,” Verkan Vall told him, “but don’t set it down on anything, or turn off the antigravity. There’s enough collapsed nickel-plating on that thing to sink it a yard in soft ground.”

“I don’t know what the idea of that was,” Brannad Klav, standing beside him, said. “Understand, I’m not criticizing. I haven’t any right to, under the circumstances. But it seems to me that armoring that thing in collapsed nickel was an unnecessary precaution.”

“Maybe it was,” Verkan Vall agreed. “I sincerely hope so. But we can’t take any chances. This operation has to be absolutely right. Ready, Tammand? All right; first detail into the conveyer.”

He turned and strode toward a big dome of fine metallic mesh, thirty feet high and sixty in diameter, at the other end of the room. Tammand Drav, and his ten paratimer priests, and Brannad Klav, and ten Paratime Police, followed him in. One of the latter slid shut the door and locked it; Verkan Vall went to the control desk, at the center of the dome, and picked up a two-foot globe of the same fine metallic mesh, opening it and making some adjustments inside, then attaching an electric cord and closing it. He laid the globe on the floor near the desk and picked up the hand battery at the other end of the attached cord.

“Not taking any chances at all, are you?” Brannad Klav asked, watching this operation with interest.

“I never do, unnecessarily. There are too many necessary chances that have to be taken, in this work.” Verkan Vall pressed the button on the hand battery. The globe on the floor flashed and vanished. “Yesterday, five paratimers were arrested. Any or all of them could have had door-activators with them. Stranor Sleth says they were not tortured, but that is a purely inferential statement. They may have been, and the use of the activator may have been extorted from one of them. So I want a look at the inside of that conveyer-chamber before we transpose into it.”

He laid the hand battery, with the loose-dangling wire that had been left behind, on the desk, then lit a cigarette. The others gathered around, smoking and watching, careful to avoid the place from which the globe had vanished. Thirty minutes passed, and then, in a queer iridescence, the globe reappeared. Verkan Vall counted ten seconds and picked it up, taking it to the desk and opening it to remove a small square box. This he slid into a space under the desk and flipped a switch. Instantly, a viewscreen lit up and a three-dimensional picture appeared⁠—the interior of a big room a hundred feet square and some seventy in height. There was a big desk and a radio; tables, couches, chairs and an arms-rack full of weapons, and at one end, a remarkably clean sixty-foot circle on the concrete floor, outlined in faintly luminous red.

“How about it?” Verkan Vall asked Tammand Drav. “Anything wrong?”

The Zurb high priest shook his head. “Just as we left it,” he said. “Nobody’s been inside since we left.”

One of the policemen took Verkan Vall’s place at the control desk and threw the master switch, after checking the instruments. Immediately, the paratemporal-transposition field went on with a humming sound that mounted to a high scream, then settled to a steady drone. The mesh dome flickered with a cold iridescence and vanished, and they were looking into the interior of a great fissionables refinery plant, operated by paratimers on another First Level timeline. The structural details altered, from timeline to timeline, as they watched. Buildings appeared and vanished. Once, for a few seconds, they were inside a cool, insulated bubble in the midst of molten lead. Tammand Drav jerked a thumb at it, before it vanished.

“That always bothers me,” he said. “Bad place for the field to go weak. I’m fussy as an old hen about inspection of the conveyer, on account of that.”

“Don’t blame you,” Verkan Vall agreed. “Probably the cooling system of a breeder-pile.”

They passed more swiftly, now, across the Second Level and the Third. Once they were in the midst of a huge land battle, with great tanklike vehicles spouting flame at one another. Another moment was spent in an air bombardment. On any timeline, this section of East Europe was a natural battleground. Once a great procession marched toward them, carrying red banners and huge pictures of a coarse-faced man with a black mustache⁠—Verkan Vall recognized the environment as Fourth Level Europo-American Sector. Finally, as the transposition-rate slowed, they saw a clutter of miserable thatched huts, in the rear of a granite wall of a Fourth Level Hulgun temple of Yat-Zar⁠—a temple not yet infiltrated by Transtemporal Mining Corporation agents. Finally, they were at their destination. The dome around them became visible, and an overhead green light flashed slowly on and off.

Verkan Vall opened the door and stepped outside, his needler drawn. The House of Yat-Zar was just as he had seen it in the picture photographed by the automatic reconnaissance-conveyer. The others crowded outside after him. One of the regular priests pulled off his miter and beard and went to the radio, putting on a headset. Verkan Vall and Tammand Drav snapped on the visiscreen, getting a view of the Holy of Holies outside.

There were six men there, seated at the upper-priests’ banquet table, drinking from golden goblets. Five of them wore the black robes with green facings which marked them as priests of Muz-Azin; the sixth was an officer of the Chuldun archers, in gilded mail and helmet.

“Why, those are the sacred vessels of the temple!” Tammand Drav cried, scandalized. Then he laughed in self-ridicule. “I’m beginning to take this stuff seriously, myself; time I put in for a long vacation. I was actually shocked at the sacrilege!”

“Well, let’s overtake the infidels in their sins,” Verkan Vall said. “Paralyzers will be good enough.”