Time Crime | Page 7

were sleight-of-hand. She found herself asking:
"What barbarian invasion's this?"
"Oh, Central Asian nomadic people, the Croutha," Tortha Karf told her. "They came
down through Khyber Pass about three months ago, turned east, and hit the headwaters of
the Ganges. Without punching a lot of buttons to find out exactly, I'd say they're halfway
to the delta country by now. Leader seems to be a chieftain called Llamh Droogh the Red.
A lot of paratime trading companies are yelling for permits to introduce firearms in the
Kholghoor Sector to protect their holdings there."
She nodded. The Fourth Level Kholghoor Sector belonged to what was known as
Indus-Ganges-Irriwady Basic Sector-Grouping--probability of civilization having
developed late on the Indian subcontinent, with the rest of the world, including Europe, in
Stone Age savagery or early Bronze Age barbarism. The Kharandas, the people among
whom she had once done field-research work, had developed a pre-mechanical,
animal-power, handcraft, edge-weapon culture. She could imagine the roads jammed
with fugitives from the barbarian invaders, the conveyer hidden among the trees, the
lurking slavers--
Watch it, Dalla! Don't let the old scoundrel play on your feelings!
* * * * *
"Well, what do you want me to do, Chief?" Vall was asking.
"Well, I have to know just what this situation's likely to develop into, and I want to know
why Vulthor Tharn's been sitting on this ever since Skordran Kirv reported it to him--"
"I can answer the second one now," Vall replied. "Vulthor Tharn is due to retire in a few
years. He has a negatively good, undistinguished record. He's trying to play it safe."
Tortha Karf nodded. "That's what I thought. Look, Vall; suppose you and Dalla transpose
from here to Police Terminal, and go to Novilan Equivalent, and give this a quick
look-over and report to me, and then rocket to Zarabar Equivalent and go on with your

trip to the Dwarma Sector. It may delay you eight or ten hours, but--"
"Closer twenty-four," Vall said. "I'd have to transpose to this plantation, on the Esaron
Sector. How about it, Dalla? Would you want to do that?"
She hesitated for a moment, angry with him. He didn't want to refuse, and he was trying
to make her do it for him.
"I know, it's a confounded imposition, Dalla," Tortha Karf told her. "But it's important
that I get a prompt and full estimate of the situation. This may be something very serious.
If it's an isolated incident, it can be handled in a routine manner, but I'm afraid it's not. It
has all the marks of a large-scale operation, and if this is a matter of mass kidnapings
from one sector and transpositions to another, you can see what a threat this is to the
Paratime Secret."
"Moral considerations entirely aside," Vall said. "We don't need to discuss them; they're
too obvious."
She nodded. For over twelve millennia, the people of her race and Vall's and Tortha
Karf's had been existing as parasites on all the innumerable other worlds of alternate
probability on the lateral dimension of time. Smart parasites never injure their hosts, and
try never to reveal their existence.
"We could do that, couldn't we, Vall?" she asked, angry at herself now for giving in.
"And if you want to question these slaves, I speak Kharanda, and I know how they think.
And I'm a qualified and licensed narco-hypnotic technician."
"Well, that's splendid, Dalla!" Tortha Karf enthused. "Wait a moment; I'll message Police
Terminal to have a rocket ready for you."
"I'll need a hypno-mech for Kharanda, myself," Vall said. "Dalla, do you know Acalan?"
When she shook her head, he turned back to Tortha Karf. "Look; it's about a four-hour
rocket hop to Novilan Equivalent. Say we have the hypno-mech machines installed in the
rocket; Dalla and I can take our language lessons on the way, and be ready to go to work
as soon as we land."
"Good idea," Tortha Karf approved. "I'll order that done, right away. Now--"
Oddly enough, she wasn't feeling so angry, now that she had committed herself and Vall.
Come to think of it, she had never been on Police Terminal Time Line; very few people,
outside the Paratime Police, ever had. And, she had always wanted to learn more about
Vall's work, and participate in it with him. And if she'd made him refuse, it would have
been something ugly between them all the time they would be on the Dwarma Sector. But
this way--
* * * * *
The big circular conveyer room was crowded, as it had been every minute of every day

for the past ten thousand years. At the great circular desk in the center, departing or
returning police officers were checking in or out with the flat-topped cylindrical robot