Last Enemy | Page 5

develop a civilization of their own here. The Akor-Neb civilization is of a fairly high
culture-order, even for Second Level. An atomic-power, interplanetary culture;
gravity-counteraction, direct conversion of nuclear energy to electrical power, that sort of
thing. We buy fine synthetic plastics and fabrics from them." He fingered the material of
his smartly-cut green police uniform. "I think this cloth is Akor-Neb. We sell a lot of
Venusian zerfa-leaf; they smoke it, straight and mixed with tobacco. They have a single
System-wide government, a single race, and a universal language. They're a dark-brown
race, which evolved in its present form about fifty thousand years ago; the present
civilization is about ten thousand years old, developed out of the wreckage of several
earlier civilizations which decayed or fell through wars, exhaustion of resources, et cetera.
They have legends, maybe historical records, of their extraterrestrial origin."
Tortha Karf nodded. "Pretty good, for consciously acquired knowledge," he commented.
"Well, our luck's run out, on that sector; we have troubles there, now. I want you to go
iron them out. I know, you've been going pretty hard, lately--that nighthound business, on
the Fourth Level Europo-American Sector, wasn't any picnic. But the fact is that a lot of
my ordinary and deputy assistants have a little too much regard for the alleged sanctity of
human life, and this is something that may need some pretty drastic action."
"Some of our people getting out of line?" Verkan Vall asked.
"Well, the data isn't too complete, but one of our people has run into trouble on that
sector, and needs rescuing--a psychic-science researcher, a young lady named Hadron
Dalla. I believe you know her, don't you?" Tortha Karf asked innocently.
"Slightly," Verkan Vall deadpanned. "I enjoyed a brief but rather hectic
companionate-marriage with her, about twenty years ago. What sort of a jam's little Dalla
got herself into, now?"
"Well, frankly, we don't know. I hope she's still alive, but I'm not unduly optimistic. It
seems that about a year ago, Dr. Hadron transposed to the Second Level, to study alleged
proof of reincarnation which the Akor-Neb people were reported to possess. She went to

Gindrabar, on Venus, and transposed to the Second Paratime Level, to a station
maintained by Outtime Import & Export Trading Corporation--a zerfa plantation just east
of the High Ridge country. There she assumed an identity as the daughter of a planter,
and took the name of Dallona of Hadron. Parenthetically, all Akor-Neb family-names are
prepositional; family-names were originally place names. I believe that ancient Akor-Neb
marital relations were too complicated to permit exact establishment of paternity. And all
Akor-Neb men's personal names have -irz- or -arn- inserted in the middle, and women's
names end in -itra- or -ona. You could call yourself Virzal of Verkan, for instance.
"Anyhow, she made the Second Level Venus-Terra trip on a regular passenger liner, and
landed at the Akor-Neb city of Ghamma, on the upper Nile. There she established contact
with the Outtime Trading Corporation representative, Zortan Brend, locally known as
Brarnend of Zorda. He couldn't call himself Brarnend of Zortan--in the Akor-Neb
language, zortan is a particularly nasty dirty-word. Hadron Dalla spent a few weeks at his
residence, briefing herself on local conditions. Then she went to the capital city, Darsh, in
eastern Europe, and enrolled as a student at something called the Independent Institute for
Reincarnation Research, having secured a letter of introduction to its director, a Dr.
Harnosh of Hosh.
"Almost at once, she began sending in reports to her home organization, the Rhogom
Memorial Foundation of Psychic Science, here at Dhergabar, through Zortan Brend. The
people there were wildly enthusiastic. I don't have more than the average intelligent--I
hope--layman's knowledge of psychics, but Dr. Volzar Darv, the director of Rhogom
Foundation, tells me that even in the present incomplete form, her reports have opened
whole new horizons in the science. It seems that these Akor-Neb people have actually
demonstrated, as a scientific fact, that the human individuality reincarnates after physical
death--that your personality, and mine, have existed, as such, for ages, and will exist for
ages to come. More, they have means of recovering, from almost anybody, memories of
past reincarnations.
[Illustration: ]
"Well, after about a month, the people at this Reincarnation Institute realized that this
Dallona of Hadron wasn't any ordinary student. She probably had trouble keeping down
to the local level of psychic knowledge. So, as soon as she'd learned their techniques, she
was allowed to undertake experimental work of her own. I imagine she let herself out on
that; as soon as she'd mastered the standard Akor-Neb methods of recovering memories
of past reincarnations, she began refining and developing them more than the local yokels
had been able to do in the past thousand years. I can't tell you