Time Crime | Page 6

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.
"No possibility that this agent, Skordran Kirv, could have been mistaken. He worked for
a while on Kholghoor Sector, himself; knew the language by hypno-mech 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."
"When was this?" Vall asked.
"Yesterday. One-Five-Nine Day. About 1500 local time."
"Twenty-three hundred Dhergabar time," Vall commented.
"Yes. And I just found out about it. Came in in the late morning generalized report-digest;
very inconspicuous item, no special urgency symbol or anything. Fortunately, one of the
report editors spotted it and messaged Police Terminal for a copy of the original report."
"It's been a long time since we had anything like that," Vall said, studying the glowing tip
of his cigarette, his face wearing the curiously withdrawn expression of a conscious
memory recall. "Fifty years ago; the time that gang kidnaped some girls from Second
Level Triplanetary Empire Sector and sold them into the harem of some Fourth Level
Indo-Turanian sultan."
"Yes. That was your first independent case, Vall. That was when I began to think you'd
really make a cop. One renegade First Level citizen and four or five ServSec Prole
hoodlums, with a stolen fifty-foot conveyer. This looks like a rather more ambitious
operation." Dalla got one of her own cigarettes out and lit it. Vall and Tortha Karf were
talking cop talk about method of operation and possible size of the gang involved, and
why the slaves had been shipped all the way from India to the west coast of North

America.
"Always ready sale for slaves on the Esaron Sector," Vall was saying. "And so many
small independent states, and different languages, that outtimers wouldn't be particularly
conspicuous."
"And with this barbarian invasion going on on the Kholghoor Sector, slaves could be
picked up cheaply," Tortha Karf added.
In spite of her determination to boycott the conversation, curiosity began to get the better
of her. She had spent a year and a half on the Kholghoor Sector, investigating alleged
psychic powers of the local priests. There'd been nothing to it--the prophecies weren't
precognition, they were shrewd inferences, and the miracles weren't psychokinesis, they