TIME PRIME (5 page)

On his way back to the plantation house, he saw a clump of local slaves staring curiously at the stockade, and noticed that the guards had unslung their rifles and fixed their bayonets. None of them had any idea, of course, of what had happened, but they all seemed to know, by some sort of ESP, that something was seriously wrong. It was going to get worse, too, when strangers began arriving, apparently from nowhere, at the plantation.

Verkan Vall waited until the small, dark-eyed woman across the circular table had helped herself from one of the bowls on the revolving disk in the middle, then rotated it to bring the platter of cold boar-ham around to himself.

“Want some of this, Dalla?” he asked, transferring a slice of ham and a spoonful of wine sauce to his plate.

“No, I’ll have some of the venison,” the black-haired girl beside him said. “And some of the pickled beans. We’ll be getting our fill of pork for the next month.”

“I thought the Dwarma Sector people were vegetarians,” Jandar Jard, the theatrical designer, said. “Most nonviolent peoples are, aren’t they?”

“Well, the Dwarma people haven’t any specific taboo against taking life,” Bronnath Zara, the dark-eyed woman in the brightly colored gown, told him. “They’re just utterly noncombative, nonaggressive. When I was on the Dwarma Sector, there was a horrible scandal at the village where I was staying. It seems that a farmer and a meat butcher fought over the price of a pig. They actually raised their voices and shouted contradictions at each other. That happened two years before, and people were still talking about it.”

“I didn’t think they had any money, either,” Verkan Vall’s wife, Hadron Dalla, said.

“They don’t,” Zara said. “It’s all barter and trade. What are you and Vall going to use for a visible means of support, while you’re there?”

“Oh, I have my mandolin, and I’ve learned all the traditional Dwarma songs by hypno-mech,” Dalla said. “And Transtime Tours is fitting Vall out with a bag of tools; he’s going to do repair work and carpentry.”

“Oh, good; you’ll be welcome anywhere,” Zara, the sculptress, said. “They’re always glad to entertain a singer, and for people who do the fine decorative work they do, they’re the most incompetent practical mechanics I’ve ever seen or heard of. You’re going to travel from village to village?”

“Yes. The cover-story is that we’re lovers who have left our village in order not to make Vall’s former wife unhappy by our presence,” Dalla said.

“Oh, good! That’s entirely in the Dwarma romantic tradition,” Bronnath Zara approved. “Ordinarily, you know, they don’t like to travel. They have a saying: ‘Happy are the trees, they abide in their own place; sad are the winds, forever they wander.’ But that’ll be a fine explanation.”

Thalvan Dras, the big man with the black beard and the long red coat and cloth-of-gold sash who lounged in the host’s seat, laughed. “I can just see Vall mending pots, and Dalla playing that mandolin and singing,” he said. “At least, you’ll be getting away from police work. I don’t suppose they have anything like police on the Dwarma Sector?”

“Oh, no; they don’t even have any such concept,” Bronnath Zara said. “When somebody does something wrong, his neighbors all come and talk to him about it till he gets ashamed, then they all forgive him and have a feast. They’re lovely people, so kind and gentle. But you’ll get awfully tired of them in about a month. They have absolutely no respect for anybody’s privacy. In fact, it seems slightly indecent to them for anybody to want privacy.”

One of Thalvan Dras’ human servants came into the room, coughed apologetically, and said: “A visiphone-call for His Valor, the Mavrad of Nerros.”

Vall went on nibbling his ham with wine sauce; the servant repeated the announcement a trifle more loudly.

“Vall, you’re being paged!” Thalvan Dras told him, with a touch of impatience.

Verkan Vall looked blank for an instant, then grinned. It had been so long since he had even bothered to think about that antiquated title of nobility—

“Vall’s probably forgotten that he has a title,” a girl across the table, wearing an almost transparent gown and nothing else, laughed.

“That’s something the Mavrad of Mnirna and Thalvabar never forgets,” Jandar Jard drawled, with what, in a woman, would have been cattishness. Thalvan Dras gave him a hastily repressed look of venomous anger, then said something, more to Verkan Vall than to Jandar Jard, about titles of nobility being the marks of social position and responsibility which their bearers should never forget.

That jab, Vall thought, following the servant out of the room, had been a mistake on Jard’s part. A music-drama, for which he had designed the settings, was due to open here in Dhergabar in another ten days. Thalvan Dras would cherish spite, and a word from the Mavrad of Mnirna and Thalvabar would set a dozen critics to disparaging Jandar’s work. On the other hand, maybe it had been smart of Jandar Jard to antagonize Thalvan Dras; for every critic who bowed slavishly to the wealthy nobleman, there were at least two more who detested him unutterably, and they would rush to Jandar Jard’s defense, and in the ensuing uproar, the settings would get more publicity than the drama itself.

In the visiphone booth, Vall found a girl in a green blouse, with the Paratime Police insignia on her shoulder, looking out of the screen. The wall behind her was pale green striped in gold and black.

“Hello, Eldra,” he greeted her.

“Hello, Chief ’s Assistant: I’m sorry to bother you, but the Chief wants to talk to you. Just a moment, please.”

The screen exploded into a kaleidoscopic flash of lights and colors, then cleared again. This time, a man looked out of it. He was well into middle age, close to his three hundredth year. His hair, a uniform iron-gray, was beginning to thin in front, and he was acquiring the beginnings of a double chin. His name was Tortha Karf, Chief of Paratime Police, and Verkan Vall’s superior.

“Hello, Vall. Glad I was able to locate you. When are you and Dalla leaving?”

“As soon as we can get away from this luncheon, here. Oh, say an hour. We’re taking a rocket to Zarabar, and transposing from there to Passenger Terminal Sixteen, and from there to the Dwarma Sector.”

“Well, Vall, I hate to bother you like this,” Tortha Karf said, “but I wish you’d stop by Headquarters on your way to the rocketport. Something’s come up—it may be a very nasty business—and I’d like to talk to you about it.”

“Well, Chief, let me remind you that this vacation, which I’ve had to postpone four times already, has been overdue for four years,” Vall said.

“Yes, Vall, I know. You’ve been working very hard, and you and Dalla are entitled to a little time together. I just want you to look into something, before you leave.”

“It’ll have to take some fast looking. Our rocket blasts off in two hours.”

“It may take a little longer; if it does, you and Dalla can transpose to Police Terminal and take a rocket for Zarabar Equivalent, and transpose from there to Passenger Sixteen. It would save time if you brought Dalla with you to Headquarters.”

“Dalla won’t like this,” Vall understated.

“No. I’m afraid not.” Tortha Karf looked around apprehensively, as though estimating the damage an enraged Hadron Dalla could do to his office furnishings. “Well, try to get here as soon as you can.”

Thalvan Dras was holding forth, when Vall returned, on one of his favorite preoccupations. “... Reason I’m taking such an especially active interest in this year’s Arts Exhibitions; I’ve become disturbed at the extent to which so many of our artists have been content to derive their motifs, even their techniques, from outtime art.” He was using his vocowriter, rather than his conversational, voice. “I yield to no one in my appreciation of outtime art—you all know how devotedly I collect objects of art from all over paratime—but our own artists should endeavor to express their artistic values in our own artistic idioms.”

Vall bent over his wife’s shoulder.

“We have to leave, right away,” he whispered.

“But our rocket doesn’t blast off for two hours—”

Thalvan Dras had stopped talking and was looking at them in annoyance.

“I have to go to Headquarters before we leave. It’ll save time if you come along.”

“Oh, no, Vall!” She looked at him in consternation. “Was that Tortha Karf calling?” She replaced her plate on the table and got to her feet.

“I’m dreadfully sorry, Dras,” he addressed their host. “I just had a call from Tortha Karf. A few minor details that must be cleared up, before I leave Home Time Line. If you’ll accept our thanks for a wonderful luncheon—”

“Why, certainly, Vall. Brogoth, will you call—” He gave a slight chuckle. “I’m so used to having Brogoth Zaln at my elbow that I’d forgotten he wasn’t here. Wait. I’ll call one of the servants to have a car for you.”

“Don’t bother; we’ll take an air-cab,” Vall told him.

“But you simply can’t take a public cab!” The black-bearded nobleman was shocked at such an obscene idea. “I will have a car ready for you in a few minutes.”

“Sorry, Dras; we have to hurry. We’ll get a cab on the roof. Good-bye, everybody; sorry to have to break away like this. See you all when we get back.”

Hadron Dalla watched dejectedly as the green crags and escarpments of the Paratime Building loomed above the city in front of them, and began slipping under the air-cab. She felt like a prisoner recaptured at the moment when attempted escape was about to succeed.

“I knew it,” she said. “I knew he’d find something. He’s trying to break things up between us, the way he did twenty years ago.”

Vall crushed out his cigarette and said nothing. That hadn’t been true, and she knew it as well as he did. There had been many other factors involved in the disintegration of their previous marriage, most of them of her own contribution. But that had been twenty years ago, she told herself. This time it would be different, if only—

“Really, Vall, he’s never liked me,” she went on. “He’s jealous of me, I think. You’re to be his successor when he retires, and he thinks I’m not a good influence—”

“Oh, rubbish, Dalla! The Chief has always liked you,” Vall replied. “If he didn’t, do you think he’d always be inviting us to that farm of his on Fifth Level Sicily? It’s just that this job of ours has no end; something’s always turning up outtime.”

The music that the cab had been playing died away. “Paratime Building, just below,” it said in a light feminine voice. “Which landing stage, please?”

Vall leaned forward and punched at the buttons in front of him. Something in the cab’s electronic brain gave a rapid series of clicks as it shifted from the general Paratime Building beam to the beam of the Paratime Police landing stage, then it said, “Thank you.” The building below seemed to rotate upward toward them as it settled down. Then the antigrav-field snapped off, the cab door popped open, and the cab said: “Good-bye, now. Ride with me again sometime.”

They crossed the landing stage, entered the antigrav shaft, and floated downward; at the end of a hallway below, Vall opened the door of Tortha Karf ’s office and ushered her through ahead of him. Tortha Karf, inside the semicircle of his desk, was speaking into a recording phone as they approached. He shut off the machine and waved, a cigarette in his hand.

“Come on back and sit down,” he invited. “Be with you in a moment.” Then he switched on the phone again and went on talking—something about prompter evaluation and transmission of reports and less reliance on robot equipment. “Sign that up, my personal order, and see it’s transmitted to everybody down to and including Sector Regional Subchief level,” he finished, then hung up the phone and turned to them.

“Sorry about this,” he said. “Sit down, if you please. Cigarette?”

Dalla shook her head and sat down in one of the chairs behind the desk; she started to relax and then caught herself and sat erect, her hands on her lap.

“This won’t interfere with your vacation, Vall,” Tortha Karf was saying. “I just need a little help before you transpose out.”

“We have to catch the rocket for Zarabar in an hour and a half,” Dalla reminded him.

“Don’t worry about that; if you miss the commercial rocket, our police rockets can give it an hour’s start and pass it before it gets to Zarabar,” Tortha Karf said. Then he turned to Vall.

“Here’s what’s happened,” he said. “One of our field agents on detached duty as guard captain for Consolidated Outtime Foodstuffs on a fruit plantation in western North America, Third Level Esaron Sector, was looking over a lot of slaves who had been sold to the plantation by a local slave dealer. He heard them talking among themselves—in Kharanda.”

Dalla caught the significance of that before Vall did. At first, she was puzzled; then, in spite of herself, she was horrified and angry. Tortha Karf was explaining to Vall just where and on what paratemporal sector Kharanda was spoken.

“No possibility that this agent, Skordran Kirv, could have been mistaken. He worked for a while on Kholghoor Sector himself; knew the language by hypnomech and by two years’ use,” Tortha Karf was saying. “So he ordered himself back on duty, had the slaves isolated and the slave dealers arrested, and then transposed to Police Terminal to report. The SecReg Subchief, old Vulthor Tharn, confirmed him in charge at this Esaron Sector plantation, and assigned him a couple of detectives and a psychist.”