Time Crime | Page 2

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