Book: Time Crime

H >> H. Beam Piper >> Time Crime



Transcriber's note.

This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction Magazine
February and March 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any
evidence that the copyright on this publication was renewed.




TIME CRIME


BY H. BEAM PIPER


_First of Two Parts. The Paratime Police had a real headache this
time! Tracing one man in a population of millions is easy--compared
to finding one gang hiding out on one of billions of probability lines!_

Illustrated by Freas


[Illustration:]




ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION


Kiro Soran, the guard captain, stood in the shadow of the veranda
roof, his white cloak thrown back to display the scarlet lining. He
rubbed his palm reflectively on the checkered butt of his revolver and
watched the four men at the table.

"And ten tens are a hundred," one of the clerks in blue jackets said,
adding another stack to the pile of gold coins.

"Nineteen hundreds," one of the pair in dirty striped robes agreed,
taking a stone from the box in front of him and throwing it away. Only
one stone remained. "One more hundred to pay."

One of the blue-jacketed plantation clerks made a tally mark; his
companion counted out coins, ten and ten and ten.

Dosu Golan, the plantation manager, tapped impatiently on his polished
boot leg with a thin riding whip.

[Illustration:]

"I don't like this," he said, in another and entirely different
language. "I know, chattel slavery's an established custom on this
sector, and we have to conform to local usages, but it sickens me to
have to haggle with these swine over the price of human beings. On
the Zarkantha Sector, we used nothing but free wage-labor."

"Migratory workers," the guard captain said. "Humanitarian
considerations aside, I can think of a lot better ways of meeting the
labor problem on a fruit plantation than by buying slaves you need for
three months a year and have to feed and quarter and clothe and doctor
the whole twelve."

"Twenty hundreds of _obus_," the clerk who had been counting the money
said. "That is the payment, is it not, Coru-hin-Irigod?"

"That is the payment," the slave dealer replied.

The clerk swept up the remaining coins, and his companion took them
over and put them in an iron-bound chest, snapping the padlock. The
two guards who had been loitering at one side slung their rifles and
picked up the chest, carrying it into the plantation house. The slave
dealer and his companion arose, putting their money into a leather
bag; Coru-hin-Irigod turned and bowed to the two men in white cloaks.

"The slaves are yours, noble lords," he said.

Across the plantation yard, six more men in striped robes, with
carbines slung across their backs, approached; with them came another
man in a hooded white cloak, and two guards in blue jackets and red
caps, with bayoneted rifles. The man in white and his armed attendants
came toward the house; the six Calera slavers continued across the
yard to where their horses were picketed.

"If I do not offend the noble lords, then," Coru-hin-Irigod said, "I
beg their sufferance to depart. I and my men have far to ride if we
would reach Careba by nightfall. The Lord, the Great Lord, the Lord
God Safar watch between us until we meet again."

Urado Alatana, the labor foreman, came up onto the porch as the two
slavers went down.

"Have a good look at them, Radd?" the guard captain asked.

"You think I'm crazy enough to let those bandits out of here with two
thousand _obus_--forty thousand Paratemporal Exchange Units--of the
Company's money without knowing what we're getting?" the other
parried. "They're all right--nice, clean, healthy-looking lot. I did
everything but take them apart and inspect the pieces while they were
being unshackled at the stockade. I'd like to know where this
Coru-hin-Whatshisname got them, though. They're not local stuff. Lot
darker, and they're jabbering among themselves in some lingo I never
heard before. A few are wearing some rags of clothing, and they have
odd-looking sandals. I noticed that most of them showed marks of
recent whipping. That may mean they're troublesome, or it may just
mean that these Caleras are a lot of sadistic brutes."

"Poor devils!" The man called Dosu Golan was evidently hoping that
he'd never catch himself talking about fellow humans like that. The
guard captain turned to him.

"Coming to have a look at them, Doth?" he asked.

"You go, Kirv; I'll see them later."

"Still not able to look the Company's property in the face?" the
captain asked gently. "You'll not get used to it any sooner than now."

"I suppose you're right." For a moment Dosu Golan watched
Coru-hin-Irigod and his followers canter out of the yard and break
into a gallop on the road beyond. Then he tucked his whip under his
arm. "All right, then. Let's go see them."

The labor foreman went into the house; the manager and the guard
captain went down the steps and set out across the yard. A big
slat-sided wagon, drawn by four horses, driven by an old slave in a
blue smock and a thing like a sunbonnet, rumbled past, loaded with
newly-picked oranges. Blue woodsmoke was beginning to rise from the
stoves at the open kitchen and a couple of slaves were noisily
chopping wood. Then they came to the stockade of close-set pointed
poles. A guard sergeant in a red-trimmed blue jacket, armed with a
revolver, met them with a salute which Kiro Soran returned: he
unfastened the gate and motioned four or five riflemen into positions
from which they could fire in between the poles in case the slaves
turned on their new owners.

There seemed little danger of that, though Kiro Soran kept his hand
close to the butt of his revolver. The slaves, an even hundred of
them, squatted under awnings out of the sun, or stood in line to drink
at the water-butt. They furtively watched the two men who had entered
among them, as though expecting blows or kicks; when none were
forthcoming, they relaxed slightly. As the labor foreman had said,
they were clean and looked healthy. They were all nearly naked; there
were about as many women as men, but no children or old people.

"Radd's right," the captain told the new manager. "They're not local.
Much darker skins, and different face-structure; faces wedge-shaped
instead of oval, and differently shaped noses, and brown eyes instead
of black. I've seen people like that, somewhere, but--"

He fell silent. A suspicion, utterly fantastic, had begun to form in
his mind, and he stepped closer to a group of a dozen-odd, the manager
following him. One or two had been unmercifully lashed, not long ago,
and all bore a few lash-marks. Odd sort of marks, more like
burn-blisters than welts. He'd have to have the Company doctor look at
them. Then he caught their speech, and the suspicion was converted to
certainty.

"These are not like the others: they wear fine garments, and walk
proudly. They look stern, but not cruel. They are the real masters
here; the others are but servants."

He grasped the manager's arm and drew him aside.

"You know that language?" he asked. When the man called Dosu Golan
shook his head, he continued: "That's Kharanda; it's a dialect spoken
by a people in the Ganges Valley, in India, on the Kholghoor Sector of
the Fourth Level."

Dosu Golan blinked, and his face went blank for a moment.

"You mean they're from outtime?" he demanded. "Are you sure?"

"I did two years on Fourth Level Kholghoor with the Paratime Police,
before I took this job," the man called Kiro Soran replied. "And
another thing. Those lash-marks were made with some kind of an
electric whip. Not these rawhide quirts the Caleras use."

It took the plantation manager all of five seconds to add that up. The
answer frightened him.

"Kirv, this is going to make a simply hideous uproar, all the way up
to Home Time Line main office," he said. "I don't know what I'm going
to do--"

"Well, I know what I have to do." The captain raised his voice, using
the local language: "Sergeant! Run to the guardhouse, and tell
Sergeant Adarada to mount up twenty of his men and take off after
those Caleras who sold us these slaves. They're headed down the road
toward the river. Tell him to bring them all back, and especially
their chief, Coru-hin-Irigod, and him I want alive and able to answer
questions. And then get the white-cloak lord Urado Alatena, and come
back here."

"Yes, captain." The guards were all Yarana people; they disliked
Caleras intensely. The sergeant threw a salute, turned, and ran.

"Next, we'll have to isolate these slaves," Kiro Soran said. "You'd
better make a full report to the Company as soon as possible. I'm
going to transpose to Police Terminal Time Line and make my report to
the Sector-Regional Subchief. Then--"

"Now wait a moment, Kirv," Dosu Golan protested. "After all, I'm the
manager, even if I am new here. It's up to me to make the decisions--"

Kiro Soran shook his head. "Sorry, Doth. Not this one," he said. "You
know the terms under which I was hired by the Company. I'm still a
field agent of the Paratime Police, and I'm reporting back on duty as
soon as I can transpose to Police Terminal. Look; here are a hundred
men and women who have been shifted from one time-line, on one
paratemporal sector of probability, to another. Why, the world from
which these people came doesn't even exist in this space-time
continuum. There's only one way they could have gotten here, and
that's the way we did--in a Ghaldron-Hesthor paratemporal
transposition field. You can carry it on from there as far as you
like, but the only thing it adds up to is a case for the Paratime
Police. You had better include in your report mention that I've
reverted to police status; my Company pay ought to be stopped as of
now. And until somebody who outranks me is sent here, I'm in complete
charge. Paratime Transposition Code, Section XVII, Article 238."

The plantation manager nodded. Kiro Soran knew how he must feel; he
laid a hand gently on the younger man's shoulder.

"You understand how it is, Doth; this is the only thing I can do."

"I understand, Kirv. Count on me for absolutely anything." He looked
at the brown-skinned slaves, and lines of horror and loathing appeared
around his mouth. "To think that some of our own people would do a
thing like this! I hope you can catch the devils! Are you transposing
out, now?"

"In a few minutes. While I'm gone, have the doctor look at those
whip-injuries. Those things could get infected. Fortunately, he's one
of our own people."

"Yes, of course. And I'll have these slaves isolated, and if Adarada
brings back Coru-hin-Irigod and his gang before you get back, I'll
have them locked up and waiting for you. I suppose you want to
narco-hypnotize and question the whole lot, slaves and slavers?"

The labor foreman, known locally as Urado Alatena, entered the
stockade.

"What's wrong, Kirv?" he asked.

The Paratime Police agent told him, briefly. The labor foreman
whistled, threw a quick glance at the nearest slaves, and nodded.

"I knew there was something funny about them," he said. "Doth, what a
simply beastly thing to happen, two days after you take charge here!"

"Not his fault," the Paratime Police agent said. "I'm the one the
Company'll be sore at, but I'd rather have them down on me rather than
old Tortha Karf. Well, sit on the lid till I get back," he told both
of them. "We'll need some kind of a story for the locals. Let's
see--Explain to the guards, in the hearing of some of the more
talkative slaves, that these slaves are from the Asian mainland, that
they are of a people friendly to our people, and that they were
kidnaped by pirates, our enemies. That ought to explain everything
satisfactorily."

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 ham and wine sauce; the servant repeated the
announcement a trifle more loudly.

[Illustration:]

"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 insigne 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,
and he was 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 aircab," 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-by,
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 aircab. 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-by, 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. Cigarettes?"

She 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.

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