Short Fiction · Time Crime (3/3) (6/8)

“It wasn’t so bad, and I had a nice sleep. And Dalla.⁠ ⁠… Dr. Hadron, I mean⁠—”

“Dalla,” Vall’s wife corrected. “Remember what I told you?”

“Dalla, then,” Zinganna smiled. “Dalla gave me some hypno-treatment, too. I don’t feel so badly about Trod, any more.”

“Well, look, Zinganna. We’re going to have a man impersonate Councilman Salgath on a telecast. The cosmeticians are making him over now. Would you find it too painful to meet him, and talk to him?”

“No, I wouldn’t mind. I can criticize the impersonation; remember, I knew Trod very well. You know, I was his hostess, too. I met many of the people with whom he was associated, and they know me. Would things look more convincing if I appeared on the telecast with your man?”

“It certainly would; it would be a great help!” he told her enthusiastically. “Maybe you girls ought to get up, now. The telecast isn’t till 1930, but there’s a lot to be done getting ready.”

Dalla yawned. “What I get, trying to be a cop,” she said, then caught the other girl’s hands and rose, pulling her up. “Come on, Zinna; we have to get to work!”

Vall rose from behind the reading-screen in Ranthar Jard’s office, stretching his arms over his head. For almost an hour, he had sat there pushing buttons and twiddling selector and magnification-adjustment knobs, looking at the pictures the Kholghoor-Nharkan cops had taken with auto-return balls dropped over the spatial equivalent of Sohram. One set of pictures, taken at two thousand feet, showed the central square of the city. The effects of the Croutha sack were plainly visible; so were the captives herded together under guard like cattle. By increasing magnification, he looked at groups of the barbarian conquerors, big men with blond or reddish-brown hair, in loose shirts and baggy trousers and rough cowhide buskins. Many of them wore bowl-shaped helmets, some had shirts of ring-mail, all of them carried long straight swords with cross-hilts, and about half of them had pistols thrust through their belts or muskets slung from their shoulders.

The other set of pictures showed the Wizard Trader camps and conveyer heads. In each case, a wide oval had been burned out in the jungle, probably with heavy-duty heat guns. The camps were surrounded with stout wire-mesh fence: in each there were a number of metal prefab-huts, and an inner fenced slave-pen. A trail had been cut from each to a similarly cleared circle farther back in the forest, and in the centers of one or two of these circles he saw the actual conveyer domes. There was a great deal of activity in all of them, and he screwed the magnification-adjustment to the limit to scrutinize each human figure in turn. A few of the men, he was sure, were First Level Citizens; more were either Proles or outtimers. Quite a few of them were of a dark, heavy-featured, black-bearded type.

“Some of these fellows look like Second Level Khiftans,” he said. “Rush an individual picture of each one, maximum magnification consistent with clarity, to Dhergabar Equivalent to be transposed to Home Timeline. You get all the dope from Zulthran Torv?”

“Yes; Abzar Sector,” Ranthar Jard said. “I’d never have thought of that. Wonder why they used that series system, though. I’d have tried to spot my operations as completely at random as possible.”

“Only thing they could have done,” Vall said. “When we get hold of one of their conveyers, we’re going to find the control panel’s just a mess of arbitrary symbols, and there’ll be something like a computer-machine built into the control cabinet, to select the right timeline whenever a dial’s set or a button pushed, and the only way that could be done would be by establishing some kind of a numerical series. And we were trustingly expecting to locate their base from one of their conveyers! Why, if we give all those people in the pictures narco-hyps, we won’t learn the baseline designation; none of them will know it. They just go where the conveyers take them.”

“Well, we’re all set now,” Ranthar Jard said. “I have a plan of attack worked out; subject to your approval, I’m ready to start implementing it now.” He glanced at his watch. “The Salgath telecast is over, on Home Timeline, and in a little while, a transcript will be on this timeline. Want to watch it here, sir?”

The telecast screen in the living room of Tortha Karf’s town apartment was still on; in it, a girl with bright red hair danced slowly to soft music against a background of shifting color. The four men who sat in a semicircle facing it sipped their drinks and watched idly.

“Ought to be getting some sort of public reaction soon,” Tortha Karf said, glancing at his watch.

“Well, I’ll have to admit, it was done convincingly,” Zostha Olv, the Chief Interoffice Coordinator, admitted grudgingly. “I’d have believed it, if I hadn’t known the real facts.”

“Shooting it against the background of those wide windows was smart,” Lovranth Rolk said. “Every schoolchild would recognize that view of the rocketport as being on Police Terminal. And including that girl Zinganna; that was a real masterpiece!”

“I’ve met her, a few times,” Elbraz Vark, the Political Liaison Assistant, said. “Isn’t she lovely!”

“Good actress, too,” Tortha Karf said. “It’s not easy to impersonate yourself.”

“Well, Kostran Galth did a fine job of acting, too,” Lovranth Rolk said. “That was done to perfection⁠—the distinguished politician, supported by his loyal mistress, bravely facing the disgraceful end of his public career.”

“You know, I believe I could get that girl a booking with one of the big theatrical companies. Now that Salgath’s dead, she’ll need somebody to look after her.”

“What sharp, furry ears you have, Mr. Elbraz!” Zostha Olv grunted.

The music stopped as though cut off with a knife, and the slim girl with the red hair vanished in a shatter of many colors. When the screen cleared, one of the announcers was looking out of it.

“We interrupt the program for an important newscast of a sensational development in the Salgath affair,” he said. “Your next speaker will be Yandar Yadd⁠—”

“I thought you’d managed to get that blabbermouth transposed to PolTerm,” Zostha said.

“He wouldn’t go.” Tortha Karf replied. “Said it was just a trick to get him off Home Timeline during the Council crisis.”

Yandar Yadd had appeared on the screen as the pickup swung about.

“… Recording ostensibly made by Councilman Salgath on Police Terminal Timeline, and telecast on Home Timeline an hour ago. Well, I don’t know who he was, but I now have positive proof that he definitely was not Salgath Trod!”

“We’re sunk!” Zostha Olv grunted. “He’d never make a statement like that unless he could prove it.”

“… Something suspicious about the whole thing, from the beginning,” the newsman was saying. “So I checked. If you recall, the actor impersonating Salgath gestured rather freely with his hands, in imitation of a well-known mannerism of the real Salgath Trod; at one point, the ball of his right thumb was presented directly to the pickup. Here’s a still of that scene.”

He stepped aside, revealing a viewscreen behind him; when he pressed a button, the screen lighted; on it was a stationary picture of Kostran Galth as Salgath Trod, his right hand raised in front of him.

“Now watch this. I’m going to step up the magnification, slowly, so that you can be sure there’s no substitution. Camera a little closer, Trath!”

The screen in the background seemed to advance, until it filled the entire screen. Yandar Yadd was still talking, out of the picture; a metal-tipped pointer came into the picture, touching the right thumb, which grew larger and larger until it was the only thing visible.

“Now here,” Yandar Yadd’s voice continued. “Any of you who are familiar with the ancient science of dactyloscopy will recognize this thumb as having the ridge-pattern known as a ‘twin loop.’ Even with the high degree of magnification possible with the microgrid screen, we can’t bring out the individual ridges, but the pattern is unmistakable. I ask you to memorize that image, while I show you another right thumb print, this time a certified photocopy of the thumb print of the real Salgath Trod.” The magnification was reduced a little, a card was moved into the picture, and it was stepped up again. “See, this thumb print is of the type known as a ‘tented arch.’ Observe the difference.”

“That does it!” Zostha Olv cried. “Karf, for the first and last time, let me remind you that I opposed this lunacy from the beginning. Now, what are we going to do next?”

“I suggest that we get to Headquarters as soon as we can,” Tortha Karf said. “If we wait too long, we may not be able to get in.”

Yandar Yadd was back on the screen, denouncing Tortha Karf passionately. Tortha went over and snapped it off.

“I suggest we transpose to PolTerm,” Lovranth Rolk said. “It won’t be so easy for them to serve a summons on us there.”

“You can go to PolTerm if you want to,” Tortha Karf retorted. “I’m going to stay here and fight back, and if they try to serve me with a summons, they’d better send a robot for a process server.”

“Fight back!” Zostha Olv echoed. “You can’t fight the Council and the whole Management! They’ll tear you into inch bits!”

“I can hold them off till Vall’s able to raid those Abzar Sector bases,” Tortha Karf said. He thought for a moment. “Maybe this is all for the best, after all. If it distracts the Organization’s attention⁠—”

“I wish we could have made a boomerang-ball reconnaissance,” Ranthar Jard was saying, watching one of the viewscreens, in which a film, taken from an airboat transposed to an adjoining Abzar sector timeline, was being shown. The boat had circled over the Ganges, a mere trickle between wide, deeply cut banks, and was crossing a gullied plain, sparsely grown with thornbush. “The base ought to be about there, but we have no idea what sort of changes this gang has made.”

“Well, we couldn’t: we didn’t dare take the chance of it being spotted. This has to be a complete surprise. It’ll be about like the other place, the one the slaves described. There won’t be any permanent buildings. This operation only started a few months ago, with the Croutha invasion; it may go on for four or five months, till the Croutha have all their surplus captives sold off. That country,” he added, gesturing at the screen, “will be flooded out when the rains come. See how it’s suffered from flood-erosion. There won’t be a thing there that can’t be knocked down and transposed out in a day or so.”

“I wish you’d let me go along,” Ranthar Jard worried.

“We can’t do that, either,” Vall said. “Somebody’s got to be in charge here, and you know your own people better than I do. Beside, this won’t be the last operation like this. Next time, I’ll have to stay on Police Terminal and command from a desk; I want firsthand experience with the outtime end of the job, and this is the only way I can get it.”

He watched the four police-girls who were working at the big terrain board showing the area of the Police Terminal timeline around them. They had covered the miniature buildings and platforms and towers with a fine mesh, at a scale-equivalent of fifty feet; each intersection marked the location of a three-foot conveyer ball, loaded with a sleep-gas bomb and rigged with an automatic detonator which would explode it and release the gas as soon as it rematerialized on the Abzar Sector. Higher, on stiff wires that raised them to what represented three thousand feet, were the disks that stood for ten hundred-foot conveyers; they would carry squads of Paratime Police in aircars and thirty-foot air boats. There was a ring of big two-hundred-foot conveyers a mile out; they would carry the armor and the airborne infantry and the little two-man scooters of the air-cavalry, from the Service and Industrial Sectors. Directly over the spatial equivalent of the Kholghoor Sector Wizard Traders’ conveyers was the single disk of Verkan Vall’s command conveyer, at a represented five thousand feet, and in a half-mile circle around it were the five news service conveyers.

“Where’s the ship-conveyer?” he asked.

“Actually it’s on antigrav about five miles north of here,” one of the girls said. “Representationally, about where Subchief Ranthar’s standing.”

Another girl added a few more bits to the network that represented the sleep-gas bombs and stepped back, taking off her earphones.

“Everything’s in place, now, Assistant Verkan,” she told him.

“Good. I’m going aboard, now,” he said. “You can have it, Jard.”

He shook hands with Ranthar Jard, who moved to the switch which would activate all the conveyers simultaneously, and accepted the good wishes of the girls at the terrain board. Then he walked to the mesh-covered dome of the hundred-foot conveyer, with the five news service conveyers surrounding it in as regular a circle as the buildings and towers of the regular conveyer heads would permit. The members of his own detail, smoking and chatting outside, saw him and started moving inside; so did the news people. A public-address speaker began yelping, in a hundred voices all over the area, warning those who were going with the conveyers to get aboard. He went in through a door, between two aircars, and on to the central control-desks, going up to a visiscreen over which somebody had crayoned “Novilan E.Q.” It gave him a view, over the shoulder of a man in the uniform of a field agent third class, of the interior of a conveyer like his own.

“Hello, Assistant Verkan,” a voice came out of the speaker under the screen, as the man moved his lips. “Deputy Skordran! Here’s Chief’s Assistant Verkan, now!”

Skordran Kirv moved in front of the screen as the operator got up from his stool.

“Hello, Vall; we’re all set to move out as soon as you give the word,” he said. “We’re all in position on antigrav.”

“That’s smart work. We’ve just finished our gas-bomb net,” Vall said. “Going on antigrav now,” he added, as he felt the dome lift. “I hope you won’t be too disappointed if you draw a blank on your end.”

“We realize that they’ve closed out the whole Esaron Sector,” Skordran Kirv, eight thousand odd miles away, replied. “We’re taking in a couple of ships; we’re going to make a survey all up the coast. There are a lot of other sectors where slaves can be sold in this area.”

In the outside viewscreen, tuned to a slowly rotating pickup on the top of a tower spatially equivalent with a room in a tall building on Second Level Triplanetary Empire Sector, he could see his own conveyer rising vertically, with the news conveyers following, and the troop conveyers, several miles away, coming into position. Finally, they were all placed; he reported the fact to Skordran Kirv and then picked up a handphone.

“Everybody ready for transposition?” he called. “On my count. Thirty seconds.⁠ ⁠… Twenty seconds.⁠ ⁠… Fifteen seconds.⁠ ⁠… Five seconds.⁠ ⁠… Four seconds.⁠ ⁠… Three seconds.⁠ ⁠… Two seconds.⁠ ⁠… One second, out!”

All the screens went gray. The inside of the dome passed into another space-time continuum, even into another kind of space-time. The transposition would take half an hour; that seemed to be the time needed to build up and collapse the transposition field, regardless of the paratemporal distance covered. The dome above and around them vanished; the bare, tower-forested, building-dotted world of Police Terminal vanished, too, into the uniform green of the uninhabited Fifth Level. A planet could take pretty good care of itself, he thought, if people would only leave it alone. Then he began to see the fields and villages of Fourth Level. Cities appeared and vanished, growing higher and vaster as they went across the more civilized Third Level. One was under air attack⁠—there was almost never a paratemporal transposition which did not run through some scene of battle.