Time Crime | Page 3

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."