Chapters 8
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1 1 - The Answer 30:48
The Answer by H. Beam Piper.
For a moment, after the screen door snapped and wakened him, Lee Richardson sat breathless and motionless, his eyes still closed, trying desperately to cling to the dream and print it upon his conscious memory before it faded. "'Are you there, Lee?' he heard Alexis Pitov's voice. "'Yes, I'm here. What time is it?' he asked, and then added, "'I fell asleep. I was dreaming.' It was all right. He was going to be able to remember. He could still see the slim woman with the graying blond hair, playing with the little dachshund among the new-fallen leaves on the lawn. He was glad they'd both been in this dream together. These dream glimpses were all he'd had for the last fifteen years, and they were too precious to lose.
He opened his eyes. The Russian was sitting just outside the light from the open door of the bungalow, lighting a cigarette. For a moment he could see the blocky, high-cheeked face, now pouched and wrinkled, and then the flame went out and there was only the red coal glowing in the darkness. He closed his eyes again, and the dream picture came back to him, the woman catching the little dog and raising her head as though to speak to him. Plenty of time yet. Pitoff was speaking German instead of Spanish, as they always did between themselves. They're still counting down for a minus three hours. I just phoned the launching site for a jeep. Eugenio's been there ever since dinner. They say he's running around like a cat looking for a place to have her first litter of kittens.
He chuckled. This would be something new for Eugenio Galvez, for which he could be thankful. I hope the generators don't develop any last-second bugs, he said. We'll only be a mile and a half away, and that'll be too close to fifty kilos of negamatter if the field collapses. It'll be all right, Petov assured him. The bugs have all been chased out years ago. Not out of those generators in the rocket. They're new. He fumbled in his coat pocket for his pipe and tobacco. I never thought I'd run another nuclear bomb test as long as I lived. Lee! Pitov was shocked. You mustn't call it that. It isn't that at all. It's purely a scientific experiment.
Wasn't that all any of them were? We made lots of experiments like this, back before 1969. The memories of all those other tests Each ending in an Everest-high mushroom column, rose in his mind. And the end result, the United States and the Soviet Union blasted to rubble, a whole hemisphere pushed back into the Dark Ages, a quarter of a billion dead. Including a slim woman with greying blond hair and a little red dog. And a girl from Odessa whom Alexis Petov had been going to marry. Forgive me, Alexis. I just couldn't help remembering. I suppose it's this shot we're going to make to-night. It's so much like the other ones, before—he hesitated slightly—before the auburn bomb. There! He'd come out and said it.
In all the years they'd worked together at the Instituto Argentina de Ciencia Physica, that had been unmentioned between them. The families of hanged cutthroats avoid mention of ropes and knives. He thumbed the old-fashioned American lighter and held it to his pipe. Across the veranda, in the darkness, he knew that Petov was looking intently at him. "'You've been thinking about that lately, haven't you?' the Russian asked, and then timidly, "'Was that what you were dreaming of?' "'Oh, no, thank heaven! I think about it, too, always. I suppose—he seemed relieved now that it had been brought out into the open and could be discussed. You saw it fall, didn't you? That's right. From about thirty miles away.
A little closer than we'll be to this shot to-night. I was in charge of the investigation at Auburn, until we had New York and Washington and Detroit and and Mobile and San Francisco to worry about. Then what had happened to Auburn wasn't important any more. We were trying to get evidence to lay before the United Nations. We kept at it for about twelve hours after the United Nations had ceased to exist.
I could never understand about that, Lee. I don't know what the truth is. I probably never shall. But I know that my government did not launch that missile. During the first days after yours began coming in, I talked to people who had been in the Kremlin at the time. One had been in the presence of Klezenko himself when the news of your bombardment arrived. He said that Klezenko was absolutely stunned. We always believed that your government decided upon a preventive surprise attack, and picked out a town, Auburn, New York, that had been hit by one of our first retaliation missiles, and claimed that it had been hit first. He shook his head. Auburn was hit an hour before the first American missile was launched.
I know that to be a fact. We could never understand why you launched just that one, and no more until hours began landing on you—why you threw away the advantage of surprise and priority of attack. "'Because we didn't do it, Lee!' the Russian's voice trembled with earnestness. "'You believe me when I tell you that?' "'Yes, I believe you. After all that happened, and all that you and I, and the people you worked with, and the people I worked with, and your government and mine have been guilty of, it would be a waste of breath for either of us to try to lie to the other about what happened fifteen years ago.' He drew slowly on his pipe. But who launched it, then? It had to be launched by somebody.
Don't you think I've been tormenting myself with that question for the last fifteen years? Pitov demanded. You know, there were people inside the Soviet Union—not many—and they kept themselves well hidden, who were dedicated to the overthrow of the Soviet regime. They, or some of them, Might have thought that the devastation of both our countries and the obliteration of civilization in the Northern Hemisphere would be a cheap price to pay for the ending of the rule of the Communist Party.
Could they have built an ICBM with a thermonuclear warhead in secret? he asked. There were also fanatical nationalist groups in Europe, both sides of the Iron Curtain, who might have thought our mutual destruction would be worth the risks involved. There was China and India. If your country and mine wiped each other out, they could go back to the old ways and the old traditions. Or Japan, or the Muslim states. In the end, they all went down with us. But what criminal ever expects to fall?" We have too many suspects, and the trail's too cold, Alexis. That rocket wouldn't have had to have been launched anywhere in the northern hemisphere. For instance, our friends here in the Argentine have been doing very well by themselves since El Coloso del Norte went down.
And there were the Australians, picking themselves up bargains in real estate in the East Indies at gun-point. And there were the Boers, trekking north again, in tanks instead of ox-wagons. And Brazil, with a not-too-implausible pretender to the braganza throne. Calling itself the Portuguese Empire and looking eastward. And to complete the picture, here were Professor Dr. Lee Richardson and Comrade Professor Alexis Petrovich Pitov getting ready to test a missile with a matter-annihilation warhead. No, this thing just wasn't a weapon. A jeep came around the corner, lighting the dark roadway between the bungalows, its radio on and counting down. Twenty-two minutes. Twenty-one fifty-nine. Fifty-eight.
Fifty-seven. It came to a stop in front of their bungalow, at exactly minus two hours, twenty-one minutes, fifty-four seconds. The driver called out in Spanish. "'Dr. Richardson, Dr. Pitoff, are you ready?' "'Yes, ready. We're coming.' They both got to their feet, Richardson pulling himself up reluctantly. The older you get, the harder it is to leave a comfortable chair. He settled himself beside his colleague and former enemy, and the jeep started again, rolling between the buildings of the living-quarters area and out onto the long straight road across the Pampas, toward the distant blaze of electric lights.
He wondered why he had been thinking so much, lately, about the auburn bomb. He'd questioned, at times, indignantly, of course, whether Russia had launched it. But it wasn't until to-night, until he had heard what Pitov had had to say, that he seriously doubted it. Pitov wouldn't lie about it, and Pitov would have been in position to have known the truth, if the missile had been launched from Russia. Then he stopped thinking about what was water—or blood—a long time over the dam.
The special policeman at the entrance to the launching site reminded them that they were both smoking. When they extinguished, respectively, their cigarette and pipe, he waved the jeep on and went back to his argument with a carload of tourists who wanted to get a good view of the launching.
"'There now, Lee. Do you need anything else to convince you that this isn't a weapon project?' Pitov asked. "'No. Now that you mention it, I don't.' "'You know, I don't believe I've had to show an identity card the whole time I've been here.' "'I don't believe I have an identity card,' Pitov said. "'Think of that.' The lights blazed everywhere around them, but mostly about the rocket that towered above everything else, so thick that it seemed squat. The gantry cranes had been hauled away now, and it stood alone, but it was still wreathed in thick electric cables. They were pouring enough current into that thing to light half the streetlights in Buenos Aires. When the cables were blown free by separation charges at the blast-off, the generators powered by the rocket engines had better be able to take over, because if the magnetic field collapsed, and that fifty-kilo chunk of negative proton matter came in contact with natural positive proton matter, an old-fashioned H-bomb would be a firecracker to what would happen.
Just one hundred kilos of pure two-hundred-proof MC-2.
The driver took them around the rocket, dodging assorted trucks and mobile machinery that were being hurried out of the way. The countdown was just beyond two hours, five minutes. The jeep stopped at the edge of a crowd around three more trucks, and Dr. Eugenio Galvez, the director of the Institute, Left the crowd and approached at an awkward half-run as they got down. Is everything checked, gentlemen? he wanted to know. It was this afternoon at seventeen thirty, Pidov told him, and nobody's been burning my telephone to report anything different. Are the balloons and the drone planes ready? The Air Force just finished checking. They're ready. Captain Urquiola flew one of the planes over the course and made a guidance tape.
That's been duplicated, and all the planes are equipped with copies. How's the wind? Richardson asked. Still steady. We won't have any trouble about fallout or with the balloons. Then we'd better get back to the bunker and make sure everybody there is on the job. The loudspeaker was counting down to two hours, one minute. Could you spare a few minutes to talk to the press? Eugenio Galvez asked. And perhaps say a few words for telecast. This last is most important. We can't explain too many times the purpose of this experiment. There is still much hostility, arising from fear that we are testing a nuclear weapon. The press and telecast services were well represented. There were close to a hundred correspondents from all over South America, from South Africa and Australia, even one from Ceylon.
They had three trucks, with mobile telecast pick-ups, and when they saw who was approaching, they released the two rocketry experts they had been quizzing, and pounced on the new victims. Was there any possibility that negative proton matter might be used as a weapon? Anything can be used as a weapon. You could stab a man to death with that lead pencil you're using, Petov replied. But I doubt if negamatter will ever be so used. We're certainly not working on weapons design here. We started, six years ago, with the ability to produce negative protons, reverse spin neutrons, and positrons, and the theoretical possibility of assembling them into negamatter. We have just gotten a fifty-kilogram mass of nega-iron assembled.
In those six years, we had to invent all our techniques and design all our equipment. If we'd been insane enough to want to build a nuclear weapon after what we went through up north, we could have done so from memory and designed a better—which is to say a worse—one from memory in a few days. Yes, and building a negameter bomb for military purposes would be like digging a fifty-foot shaft to get a rock to bash somebody's head in, when you could do the job better with the shovel you were digging with," Richardson added. The time, money, energy, and work we put in on this thing would be ample to construct twenty thermonuclear bombs, and that's only a small part of it. He went on to tell them about the magnetic bottle inside the rocket's warhead.
Mentioning how much electric current was needed to keep up the magnetic field that insulated the negamatter from contact with posimatter. Then what was the purpose of this experiment, Dr. Richardson? Oh, we were just trying to find out a few basic facts about natural structure. Long ago it was realized that the nucleonic particles—protons, neutrons, mesons, and so forth—must have structure of their own. Since we started constructing negative proton matter, we found out a few things about nucleonic structure—some rather odd things, including fractions of Planck's constant. A couple of the correspondents—a man from La Prensa and an Australian—whistled softly. The others looked blank. Pitov took over.
"'You see, gentlemen, most of what we learned, we learned from putting negamater atoms together.' We annihilated a few of them over there in that little concrete building. We have one of the most massive steel vaults in the world where we do that. But we assembled millions of them for every one we annihilated, and that chunk of nega-iron inside the magnetic bottle kept growing. And when you have a piece of nega-matter you don't want, you can't just throw it out on the scrap pile." We might have rocketed it into escape velocity and let it blow up in space, away from the moon or any of the artificial satellites, but why waste it? So we're going to have the rocket ejected, and when it falls, we can see by our telemetered instruments just what happens."
"'Well, won't it be annihilated by contact with atmosphere?' somebody asked. "'That's one of the things we want to find out,' Petov said." We estimate about twenty per cent loss from contact with atmosphere, but the mass that actually lands on the target area should be about forty kilos. It should be something of a spectacle coming down. You say you had to assemble it, after creating the negative protons and neutrons and the positrons. Doesn't any of this sort of matter exist in nature?" The man who asked that knew better himself, he just wanted the answer on the record. Oh, no. Not on this planet, and probably not in the galaxy. There may be whole galaxies composed of nothing but negamatter.
There may even be isolated stars and planetary systems inside our galaxy composed of negamatter, though I think that very improbable. But when Negamater and Pazamater come into contact with one another, the result is immediate mutual annihilation. They managed to get away from the press, and returned as far as the bunkers, a mile and a half away. Before they went inside, Richardson glanced up at the sky, fixing the location of a few of the more conspicuous stars in his mind. There were almost a hundred men and women inside, Each at his or her instruments—viewscreens, radar indicators, detection instruments of a dozen kinds. The reporters and telecast people arrived shortly afterward, and Eugenio Galvez took them in tow.
While Richardson and Pitov were making their last-minute rounds, the countdown progressed past minus one hour, and at minus twenty minutes, all the overhead lights went off and the small instrument operator's lights came on. Pitoff turned on a couple of viewscreens, one from a pick-up on the roof of the bunker and another from the launching pad. They sat down side by side and waited. Richardson got his pipe out and began loading it. The loudspeaker was saying, Minus two minutes. One fifty-nine. Fifty-eight. Fifty-seven. He let his mind drift away from the test, back to the world that had been smashed around his ears in the autumn of 1969. He was doing that so often now, when he should be thinking about—'Two seconds.
One second. Firing!' It was a second later that his eyes focused on the left-hand viewscreen. Red and yellow flames were gushing out at the bottom of the rocket, and it was beginning to tremble. Then the upper jets, the ones that furnished power for the generators, began firing. He looked anxiously at the meters. The generators were building up power. Finally, when he was sure that the rocket would be blasting off anyhow, the separator charges fired and the heavy cables fell away. An instant later the big missile started inching upward, gaining speed by the second, first slowly and jerkily, and then more rapidly until it passed out of the field of the pick-up. He watched the rising spout of fire from the other screen until it passed from sight.
By that time, Petov had twisted a dial and gotten another view on the left-hand screen, this time from close to the target. That camera was radar-controlled. It had fastened on to the approaching missile, which was still invisible. The stars swung slowly across the screen, until Richardson recognized the ones he had spotted at the zenith. In a moment now, the rocket, a hundred miles overhead, would be nosing down, and then the warhead would open, and the magnetic field inside would alter, and the mass of negamatter would be ejected. The stars were blotted out by a sudden glow of light. Even at a hundred miles there was enough atmospheric density to produce considerable energy release. Pitov, beside him, was muttering, partly in German and partly in Russian.
Most of what Richardson caught was figures, trying to calculate how much of the mass of unnatural iron would get down for the ground blast. Then the right-hand screen broke into a wriggling orgy of color, and at the same time— Every scrap of radio-transmitted apparatus either went out or began reporting erratically. The left-hand screen, connected by wiring to the pickup on the roof, was still functioning. For a moment, Richardson wondered what was going on, and then shocked recognition drove that from his mind as he stared at the ever-brightening glare in the sky. It was the Auburn bomb again. He was back, in memory, to the night on the shore of Lake Ontario, the party breaking up in the early hours of morning, he and Janet, and the people with whom they had been spending a vacation week standing on the lawn as the guests were getting into their cars.
And then the sudden light in the sky. The cries of surprise, and then of alarm, as it seemed to be rushing straight down upon them. He and Janet, Clutching each other and staring up in terror at the falling blaze from which there seemed no escape. Then relief, as it curved away from them and fell to the south. And then the explosion, lighting the whole southern sky.
There was a similar explosion in the screen, when the mass of nega-iron landed, a sheet of pure white light. So bright and so quick as to almost pass the limit of visibility. And then a moment's darkness, that was in his stunned eyes more than in the screen, and then the rising glow of up-drawn incandescent dust.
Before the sound waves had reached them, he had been legging it into the house. The television had been on, and it had been acting as insanely as the screen on his right now. He had called the State Police—the telephones had been working all right—and told them who he was, and they had told him to stay put, and they'd send a car for him. They did, within minutes. Janet and his host and hostess had waited with him on the lawn until it came, and after he had gotten into it, he had turned around and looked back through the rear window, and seen Janet standing under the front light Holding the little dog in her arms, flopping one of its silly little paws up and down with her hand to wave good-bye to him.
He had seen her and the dog like that every day of his life, for the last fifteen years. What kind of radiation are you getting? He could hear Alexis Pitoff asking into a phone. What? Nothing else? Oh, yes, of course. But mostly cosmic. That shouldn't last long. He turned from the phone. A devil's own dose of cosmic and some gamma. It was the cosmic radiation that put the radios and telescreens out. That's why I insisted that the drone planes be independent of radio control. They always got cosmic radiation from the micro-annihilations in the test vault. Well, now they had an idea of what produced natural cosmic rays. There must be quite a bit of negamatter and posimatter going into mutual annihilation and total energy release through the universe.
Of course, there were no detectors set up in advance around Auburn, he said. We didn't really begin to find anything out for an hour. By that time the cosmic radiation was over and we weren't getting anything but gamma. What? What has Auburn to do— The Russian stopped short. You think this was the same thing? He gave it a moment's consideration. Lee, you're crazy. There wasn't an atom of artificial negamatter in the world in 1969. Nobody had made any before us. We gave each other some scientific surprises then, but nobody surprised both of us. You and I, between us, Knew everything that was going on in nuclear physics in the world. And you know as well as I do—a voice came out of the public address speaker.
Some of the radio equipment around the target area, that wasn't knocked out by blast, is beginning to function again. There is an increasingly heavy gamma radiation, but no more cosmic rays. They were all prompt radiation from the annihilation. The gamma is secondary effect. Wait a moment. Captain Urquiola of the Air Force says that the first drone plane is about to take off. It had been two hours after the blast that the first drones had gone over what had been Auburn, New York. He was trying to remember, as exactly as possible, what had been learned from them. Gamma radiation. A great deal of gamma. But it didn't last long. It had been almost down to a safe level by the time the investigation had been called off, and, two months after there had been no more missiles, and no way of producing more, and no targets to send them against, if they'd had them, rather, he had been back at Auburn on his hopeless quest, and there had been almost no trace of radiation.
Nothing but a wide, shallow crater, almost two hundred feet in diameter, and only fifteen at its deepest, already full of water, and a circle of flattened and scattered rubble for a mile and a half all around it. He was willing to bet anything that that was what they'd find where that chunk of nega-iron had landed, fifty miles away, on the Pampas.
Well, the first drone ought to be over the target area before long, And at least one of the balloons that had been sent up was reporting its course by radio. The radios in the others were silent, and the recording counters had probably jammed in all of them. There'd be something of interest when the first drone came back. He dragged his mind back to the present, and went to work with Alexis Pitov. They were at it all night, checking, evaluating, Making sure that the masses of data that were coming in were being promptly processed for programming the computers. At each of the increasingly frequent coffee-breaks, he noticed Petov looking curiously. He said nothing, however, until long after dawn, they stood outside the bunker, waiting for the jeep that would take them back to their bungalow, and watching the line of trucks.
Argentine army engineers, locally hired laborers. Load after load of prefab huts and equipment, going down toward the target area, where they would be working for the next week.
"'Lee, were you serious?' Pitov asked. "'I mean, about this being like the one at Auburn.' It was exactly like Auburn. Even that blazing light that came rushing down out of the sky. I wondered about that at the time. What kind of a missile would produce an effect like that? Now I know. We just launched one like it. But that's impossible. I told you, between us we know everything that was happening in nuclear physics then. Nobody in the world knew how to assemble atoms of negamatter and build them into masses.
Nobody, and nothing, on this planet built that mass of negamatter. I doubt if it even came from this galaxy. But we didn't know that, then. When that negamatter meteor fell, the only thing anybody could think of was that it had been a Soviet missile. If it had hid around Leningrad or Moscow or Kharkov, who would you have blamed it on?
The End of The Answer by H.
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2 2 - Temple Trouble (part 1) 45:56
. Reading by Mark Nelson. Temple Trouble by H. Beam Piper Part One Through a haze of incense and altar smoke, Yat-Zar looked down from his golden throne at the end of the dusky, many-pillared temple. Yat-Zar was an idol, of gigantic size and extraordinarily good workmanship. He had three eyes, made of turquoises as big as door knobs, and six arms. In his three right hands, from top to bottom, he held a sword with a flame-shaped blade, a jewelled object of vaguely phallic appearance, and, by the ears, a rabbit. In his left hands were a bronze torch with burnished copper flames, a big goblet, and a pair of scales with an egg in one pan Balanced against a skull in the other. He had a long bifurcate beard made of gold wire, feet like a bird's, and other rather startling anatomical features.
His throne was set upon a stone plinth about twenty feet high, into the front of which a doorway opened. Behind him was a wooden screen, elaborately gilded and painted. Directly in front of the idol, Gullum the High Priest knelt on a big blue and gold cushion. He wore a gold-fringed robe of dark blue, and a tall conical mitre, and a bright blue false beard, forked like the idol's golden one. He was intoning a prayer, and holding up in both hands, for divine inspection and approval, a long curved knife. Behind him, about thirty feet away, stood a square stone altar. around which four of the lesser priests, in light-blue robes with less gold fringe and dark-blue false beards, were busy with the preliminaries to the sacrifice.
At considerable distance, about half-way down the length of the temple, some two hundred worshippers. A few substantial citizens in gold-fringed tunics, artisans in tunics without gold fringe, soldiers in mail hauberks and plain steel caps, One officer in ornately gilded armor, a number of peasants in nondescript smocks, and women of all classes, were beginning to prostrate themselves on the stone floor.
Gullum rose to his feet, bowing deeply to Yat-Zar, and holding the knife extended in front of him, and backed away toward the altar. As he did, one of the lesser priests reached into a fringed and embroidered sack, and pulled out a live rabbit, a big one, obviously of domestic breed, holding it by the ears, while one of his fellows took it by the hind legs. A third priest caught up a silver pitcher, while the fourth fanned the altar fire with a sheet-silver fan. As they began chanting antiphonally, Gollum turned and quickly whipped the edge of his knife across the rabbit's throat. The priest with the pitcher stepped in to catch the blood. and when the rabbit was bled, it was laid on the fire.
Gullum and his four assistants all shouted together, and the congregation shouted in response. The high priest waited as long as was decently necessary, and then, holding the knife in front of him, stepped around the prayer-cushion and went through the door under the idol into the Holy of Holies. A boy in novice's white robes met him and took the knife, carrying it reverently to a fountain for washing. Eight or ten under-priests, sitting at a long table, rose and bowed, then sat down again and resumed their eating and drinking. At another table, a half-dozen upper-priests nodded to him in casual greeting. Crossing the room, Gullam went to the triple vale in front of the house of Yat-Zar, where only the highest of the priesthood might go, and parted the curtains, passing through until he came to the great gilded door.
Here he fumbled under his robe and produced a small object, like a mechanical pencil, inserting the pointed end in a tiny hole in the door, and pressing on the other end. The door opened, then swung shut behind him, and as it locked itself, the lights came on within. Gullum removed his mitre and his false beard, Tossing them aside on a table, then undid his sash and peeled out of his robe. His regalia discarded, he stood for a moment in loose trousers and a soft white shirt, with a pistol-like weapon in a shoulder holster under his left arm. No longer Gullum the High Priest of Yat-Zar, but now Stranor Sleth, resident agent on this time-line, of the fourth-level Proto-Aryan sector for the Trans-Temporal Mining Corporation.
Then he opened a door at the other side of the ante-room and went to the anti-grav shaft, stepping over the edge and floating downward.
There were temples of Yat-Zar on every time-line of the Proto-Aryan sector, for the worship of Yat-Zar was ancient among the Hulgun people of that area of Paratyme. But there were only a few which had such installations as this, and all of them were owned and operated by Transtemporal Mining, which had the Fissionable Ores franchise for this sector. During the ten elapsed centuries since Transtemporal had begun operations on this sector, the process had become standardized. A few first-level paratimers would transpose to a selected time-line and abduct an upper priest of Yat-Zar, Preferably the high priest of the temple at Yoldav or Zerb. He would be drugged and transposed to the first level, where he would receive hypnotic indoctrination, and, while unconscious, have an operation performed on his ears which would enable him to hear sounds well above the normal audible range.
He would be able to hear the shrill sonar cries of bats, for instance, and, more important, He would be able to hear voices when the speaker used a first-level audio-frequency step-up phone. He would also receive a memory obliteration from the moment of his abduction, and a set of pseudo-memories of a visit to the heaven of Yat-Zar on the other side of the sky. Then he would be returned to his own time-line, and left on a mountain-top far from his temple, where an unknown peasant, leading a donkey, would always find him, Return him to the temple, and then vanish inexplicably. Then the priest would begin hearing voices, usually while serving at the altar. They would warn of future events, which would always come to pass exactly as foretold.
Or they might bring tidings of things happening at a distance, the news of which would not arrive by normal means for days, or even weeks. Before long, the holy man who had been carried alive to the heaven of Yat-Zar would acquire a most awesome reputation as a prophet, and would speedily rise to the very top of the priestly hierarchy. Then he would receive two commandments from Yat-Zar. The first would ordain that all lower priests must travel about from temple to temple, never staying longer than a year at any one place. This would ensure a steady influx of newcomers personally unknown to the local upper priests, and many of them would be first-level paratimers. Then there would be a second commandment.
A house must be built for Yat-Zar, against the rear wall of each temple. Its dimensions were minutely stipulated. Its walls were to be of stone, without windows, and there was to be a single door opening into the Holy of Holies, and before the walls were finished, the door was to be barred from within. A triple veil of brocaded fabric was to be hung in front of this door. Sometimes such innovations met with opposition from the more conservative members of the hierarchy. When they did, the principal objector would be seized with a sudden and violent illness. He would recover if and when he withdrew his objections.
Very shortly after the house of Yat-Zar would be completed, strange noises would be heard from behind the thick walls. Then, after a while, one of the younger priests would announce that he had been commanded in a vision to go behind the veil and knock upon the door. Going behind the curtains, he would use his door-activator to let himself in, and returned by paratime conveyor to the first level, to enjoy a well-earned vacation.
When the high priest would follow him behind the veil, after a few hours, and find that he had vanished, it would be announced as a miracle. A week later, an even greater miracle would be announced. The young priest would be returned from behind the triple veil, clad in such raiment as no man had ever seen, and bearing in his hands a strange box. He would announce that Yat-Zar had commanded him to build a new temple in the mountains, at a place to be known by the voice of the god speaking out of the box. This time there would be no doubts and no objections. A procession would set out, headed by the new revelator bearing the box, and when the clicking voice of the god spoke rapidly out of it, The site would be marked, and the work would begin.
No local labor would ever be employed on such temples. The masons and woodworkers would be strangers, coming from afar and speaking a strange tongue. And when the temple was completed, they would never be seen to leave it. Men would say that they had been put to death by the priest, and buried under the altar to preserve the secrets of the god. And there would always be an idol to preserve the secrets of the god. And there would always be an idol of Yat-Zar, obviously of heavenly origin, since its workmanship was beyond the powers of any local craftsman. The priests of such a temple would be exempt, by divine decree, from the rule of yearly travel. Nobody, of course, would have the least idea that there was a uranium mine in operation under it, shipping ore to another time-line.
The Hulgan people knew nothing about uranium, and neither did they as much as dream that there were other time-lines. The secret of paratime transposition belonged exclusively to the first-level civilization which had discovered it, and it was a secret that was guarded well. Stranor Sleth, dropping to the bottom of the antigrav-shaft, cast a hasty and instinctive glance to the right, where the freight conveyors were. One was gone, taking its cargo over hundreds of thousands of para-years to the first level. Another had just returned, empty, and a third was receiving its cargo from the robot mining machines far back under the mountain. Two young men and a girl, in first-level costumes, sat at a bank of instruments and visor screens, handling the whole operation, and six or seven armed guards, Having inspected the newly-arrived conveyor, and finding that it had picked up nothing inimical en route, were relaxing and lighting cigarettes.
Three of them, Stranor Sleth noticed, wore the green uniforms of the Paratime Police. "'When did those fellows get in?' he asked the people at the control desk, nodding toward the green-clad newcomers. "'About ten minutes ago, on the passenger conveyor,' the girl told him. The big boy's here. Branagh Clav. And a Paratime police officer. They're in your office."
Uh-huh. I was expecting that, Stranor Sleth nodded. Then he turned down the corridor to the left. Two men were waiting for him in his office. One was short and stocky, with an angry, impatient face. Branagh Clav, Trans-Temporal's vice-president in charge of operations. The other was tall and slender, with handsome and entirely expressionless features. He wore a paratime police officer's uniform, with the blue badge of hereditary nobility on his breast, and carried a sigma-ray needler in a belt holster. "'Were you waiting long, gentlemen?' Stranor Sleth asked. I was holding a sunset sacrifice up in the temple." "'No, we just got here,' Branded Klav said. This is Verkan Vall, Mavrat of Neros, special assistant to Chief Tortha of the Paratime Police.
Stranor Sleth, our resident agent here. Stranor Sleth touched hands with Verkan Vall. "'I've heard a lot about you, sir,' he said. "'Everybody working in Paratime has, of course. I'm sorry we have a situation here that calls for your presence, but since we have, I'm glad you're here in person. You know what our trouble is, I suppose.' In a general way, Verkan Vall replied. Chief Tortha and Brandenclav have given me the main outline, but I'd like to have you fill in the details. Well, I told you everything, Brandenclav interrupted impatiently. It's just that Stranor's let this blasted local king, Kerchuk, get out of control. If I—he stopped short, catching sight of the shoulder holster under Stranor Sleth's left arm.
"'Were you wearing that needler up in the temple?' he demanded. "'You're blasted right I was,' Stranor Sleth retorted. "'And any time I can't arm myself for my own protection on this time-line, you can have my resignation. I'm not getting into the same jam as those people at Zurb.' "'Well, never mind about that,' Verkan Vall intervened. "'Of course, Stranor Sleth has a right to arm himself. I wouldn't think of being caught without a weapon on this time-line myself. Now, Stranor, suppose you tell me what's been happening here, from the beginning of this trouble? It started, really, about five years ago, when Kerchuk, the king of Zerb, married this Chuldun princess, Dareth, from the country over beyond the Black Sea, and made her his queen over the heads of about a dozen daughters of the local nobility, whom he'd married previously.
Then he brought in this Chuldan scribe, Labdurg, and made him overseer of the kingdom, roughly prime minister. There was a lot of dissatisfaction about that, and for a while it looked as though he was going to have a revolution on his hands. But he brought in about five thousand Chuldan mercenaries, all archers—these hulgans can't shoot a bow worth beans—so the dissatisfaction died down. And so did most of the leaders of the disaffected group. The story I get is that this Labdurg arranged the marriage in the first place. It looks to me as though the Chuldan Epiror is intending to take over the Hulgan kingdoms, starting with Zerb. Well, these Chuldans all worship a god called Muz-Azin. Muz-Azin is a crocodile with wings like a bat, and a lot of knife-blades in his tail.
He makes this yat zar look downright beautiful. So do his habits. Muz Azin fancies human sacrifices. The victims are strung up by the ankles on a triangular frame and lashed to death with iron-barbed whips. Nasty sort of deity, but this is a nasty time-line. The people here get a big kick out of watching these sacrifices. Much better show than our bunny killing. The victims are usually criminals, or overage, or incorrigible slaves, or prisoners of war. Of course, when the Chuldons began infiltrating the palace, they brought in their crocodile god, too, and a flock of priests, and King Kurchuk let them set up a temple in the palace. Naturally, we preached against this heathen idolatry in our temples, but religious bigotry isn't one of the numerous imperfections of this sector.
Everybody's deity is as good as anybody else's. Indifferentism, I believe, is the theological term. Anyhow, on that basis things went along fairly well, till two years ago, when we had this run of bad luck." "'Bad luck!' Branaghed Clav snorted. That's the standing excuse of every incompetent." "'Go on, Stranor. What sort of bad luck?' Verkan Vall asked. "'Well—' First we had a drought, beginning in early summer that burned up most of the grain crop. Then, when that broke, we got heavy rains, and hailstorms, and floods, and that destroyed what got through the dry spell. When they harvested what little was left, it was obvious there'd be a famine, so we brought in a lot of grain by conveyor and distributed it from the temples.
Miraculous gift of Yatsar, of course. Then the main office on first level got scared about flooding this time-line with a lot of unaccountable grain, and were afraid we'd make the people suspicious, and ordered it stopped. Then Kerchuk—and I might add that the kingdom of Zurb was the hardest hit by the famine—ordered his army mobilized and started an invasion of the Jumdan country, south of the Carpathians, to get grain. He got his army chopped up, And only about a quarter of them got back with no grain. You ask me, I'd say that Labdirk framed it to happen that way. He advised Kerchuk to invade in the first place. And I mentioned my suspicion that Chombrog, the Chuldan Emperor, is planning to move in on the Hulgan Kingdoms.
Well, what would be smarter than to get Kerchuk's army smashed in advance? How did the defeat occur? Verkanval asked. Any suspicion of treachery? Nothing you could put your finger on, except that the Jumduns seem to have pretty good intelligence about Kerchuk's invasion route and battle plans. It could have been nothing worse than stupid tactics on Kerchuk's part. See, these Hulghans, and particularly the Zurb Hulghans, are spearmen. They fight in a fairly thin line, with heavy-armed infantry in front, and light infantry with throwing-spears behind. The nobles fight in light chariots, usually at the center of the line. And that's where they were at this battle of Jorm. Kerchuk himself was at the center, with his Chuldun archers massed around him.
The Jomduns use a lot of cavalry, with long swords and lances, and a lot of big chariots with two javelin men and a driver. Well, Instead of ramming into Kerchuk's center, where he had his archers, they hit the extreme left and folded it up, and then swung around behind and hit the right from the rear. All the Chuldun archers did was stand fast around the king and shoot anybody who came close to them. They were left pretty much alone. But the Hogan spearmen were cut to pieces. The battle ended with Kerchuk and his nobles and his archers making a fighting retreat, While the Jumdan cavalry were chasing the spearmen every which way, and cutting them down, or lancing them as they ran. Well, whether it was Labdorg's treachery, or Kerchuk's stupidity, in either case it was natural for the archers to come off easiest, and the Hulgan spearmen to pay the butcher's bill.
But try and tell these knuckleheads anything like that. Muz Azeen protected the Chaldans, and Yat-Zar let the Hulgans down, And that was all there was to it. The Zurb temple started losing worshippers, particularly the families of the men who didn't make it back from Jorm. If that had been all there'd been to it, though, it still wouldn't have hurt the mining operations, and we could have got by. But what really tore it was when the rabbit started to die. Stranor Sleth picked up a cigar from his desk and bit the end, spitting it out disgustedly. "'Tullaremia, of course,' he said, touching his lighter to the tip. When that hit, they started going over to Muzazine in droves. Not only at Zurb, but all over the Six Kingdoms.
You ought to have seen the house we had for sunset service this evening. About two hundred. And we used to get two thousand. It used to be all two men could do to lift the offering-box at the door afterward, and all the money we took in to-night I could put in one pocket.' The high priest used language that would have been considered unclerical even among the Hulgans.
Verkan Vall nodded. Even without the quickie hypnomech he had taken for this sector, he knew that the rabbit was domesticated among the proto-Aryan Hulgans and was their chief meat animal. Hulgan rabbits were even a minor import on the first level, and could be had at all the better restaurants in cities like Durgebar. He mentioned that. That's not the worst of it, Stranrasleth told him. See, the rabbit's sacred to Yat-Zar. Not taboo, just sacred. They have to use a specially consecrated knife to kill them. Consecrating rabbit knives has always been an item of temple revenue. And they must say a special prayer before eating them. We could have got around the rest of it, even the Battle of Jorm, punishment by Yat-Zar for the sin of apostasy, But Yadzar just wouldn't make rabbits sick.
Yadzar thinks too well of rabbits to do that, and it had not been any use claiming he would. So, there you are." "'Well, I take the attitude that this situation is the result of your incompetence,' Branadclav began, in a bully-ragging tone. "'You're not only the high priest of this temple, you're the acknowledged head of the religion in all the Hulgan kingdoms.' You should have had more hold on the people than to allow anything like this to happen." "'Hold on the people!' Stranner Sleth fairly howled, appealing to Verkin Vall. "'What does he think a religion is, on this sector, anyhow?' You think these savages dreamed up that six-armed monstrosity up there to express their yearning for higher things, or to symbolize their moral ethos, or as a philosophical escape hatch from the dilemma of causation?
They never even heard of such matters. On this sector, gods are strictly utilitarian. As long as they take care of their worshippers, they get their sacrifices. When they can't put out, they have to get out. How do you suppose these Chulduns, living in the Caucasus Mountains, got the idea of a god like a crocodile, anyhow? Why, they got it from Homran traders, people from down in the Nile Valley. They had a god once, something basically like a billy-goat, but he'd let them get licked in a couple of battles, so out he went. Why, all the deities on this sector have hyphenated names. Because there are combinations of several deities, worshipped in one person. Do you know anything about the history of this sector?"
he asked the Paratime police officer. "'Well, it develops from an alternate probability of what we call the Nilo-Mesopotamian basic sector group,' Verkan Vall said. "'On most Nilo-Mesopotamian sectors, like the Macedonian Empire sector, or the Alexandrian-Roman, or Alexandrian Punic, Or, Indo-Terranian or Europo-American, there was an Aryan invasion of Eastern Europe and Asia Minor, about four thousand elapsed years ago. On this sector, the ancestors of the Aryans came in about fifteen centuries earlier, as Neolithic savages, about the time that the Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations were first developing, and overran all Southeast Europe, Asia Minor, and the Nile Valley. They developed to the Bronze Age culture of the civilizations they overthrew, and then, more slowly, to an Iron Age culture.
About two thousand years ago, they were using hardened steel and building large stone cities, just as they do now. At that time, they reached cultural stasis. But, as for their religious beliefs, you've described them quite accurately. A god is only worshipped as long as the people think him powerful enough to aid and protect them. When they lose that confidence, he is discarded, and the god of some neighbouring people is adopted instead." He turned to Branad Clav. "'Didn't Strano report this situation to you when it first developed?' he asked. "'I know he did. He speaks of receiving shipments of grain by conveyor for temple distribution. Then why didn't you report it to Paratime Police? That's what we have a Paratime Police force for.' Well, yes, of course, but I had enough confidence in Stranner Sleth to think that he could handle the situation himself.
I didn't know he'd gone slack. Look, I can't make weather, even if my parishioners think I can, Stranner Sleth defended himself. And I can't make a great military genius out of a blockhead like Kerchook. And I can't immunize all the rabbits on this time-line against Tularemia. Even if I'd had any reason to expect a tularemia epidemic, which I hadn't, because the disease is unknown on this sector. This is the only outbreak of it anybody's ever heard of on any proto-Aryan time-line. "'No, but I'll tell you what you could have done,' Verkan Vall told him. "'When this Kerchuk started to apostatize, you could have gone to him at the head of a procession of priests, all para-timers, and all armed with energy weapons.
And pointed out his spiritual duty to him, and if he gave you any back-talk, you could have pulled out that kneeler and raid him down, and then cried, "'Behold the vengeance of Yat-Zar upon the wicked king!' I'll bet any sum at any odds that his successor would have thought twice about going over to Muz-Azine, and none of these other kings would have even thought once about it." "'Ha! That's what I wanted to do!' Stranner Sleth exclaimed. "'And who stopped me?' I'll give you just one guess." Well, it seems there was slackness here. But it wasn't Stranor Sleth who was slack, Verkan Vall commented. Well, I must say, I never thought I'd hear an officer of the Paratime Police criticizing me for trying to operate inside the Paratime Transposition Code," Branad Clav exclaimed.
Verkan Vall, sitting on the edge of Stranor Sleth's desk, aimed his cigarette at Branad Clav, like a blaster. "'Now look,' he began. "'There is one, and only one, inflexible law regarding out-time activities. The secret of paratime transposition must be kept inviolate, and any activity tending to endanger it is prohibited. That's why we don't allow the transposition of any object of extraterrestrial origin—' To any time-line on which space travel has not been developed. Such an object may be preserved, and then, after the local population begin exploring the planet from whence it came, there will be dangerous speculations and theories as to how it arrived on Terra at such an early date. I came within inches, literally, of getting myself killed not long ago, cleaning up the result of a violation of that regulation.
For the same reason, We don't allow the export to out-time natives of manufactured goods too far in advance of their local culture. That's why, for instance, you people have to hand-finish all those big yat-zar idols to remove traces of machine work. One of those things may be around a few thousand years from now, when these people develop a mechanical civilization. But as far as raying down this kerchuk is concerned, these hulgans are completely non-scientific. They wouldn't have the least idea what happened. They'd believe that Yat-Zar struck him dead, as gods on this plane of culture are supposed to do. And, if any of them noticed the needler at all, they'd think it was just a holy amulet of some kind.
But the law is the law, Branad Klav began. Verkan Vall shook his head. Branad, as I understand, You were promoted to your present position on the retirement of Salvan Marth, about ten years ago. Up to that time, you were in your company's financial department. You were accustomed to working subject to the First Level Commercial Regulations Code. Now, any law binding upon our people at home, on the First Level, is inflexible. It has to be. We found out, over fifty centuries ago, that laws have to be rigid and without discretionary powers in administration in order that people may be able to predict their effect and plan their activities accordingly. Naturally, you became conditioned to operating in such a climate of legal inflexibility.
But in paratime, the situation is entirely different. There exists, within the range of the Galdrond-Hestor paratemporal field generator, A number of time-lines of the order of ten to the hundred thousandth power—in effect, that many different worlds. In the past ten thousand years, we have visited only the tiniest fraction of these. But we have found everything from time-lines inhabited only by subhuman ape-men, to second-level civilizations which are our own equal in every respect but knowledge of paratemporal transposition, We even know of one second-level civilization which is approaching the discovery of an interstellar hyperspatial drive—something we've never even come close to. And in between are every degree of savagery, barbarism, and civilization.
Now it's just not possible to frame any single code of laws applicable to conditions on all of these. The best we can do is prohibit certain flagrantly immoral types of activity. Such as slave-trading, introduction of new types of narcotic drugs, or out-and-out piracy and brigandage. If you're in doubt as to the legality of anything you want to do out-time, go to the judicial section of the Paratime Commission and get an opinion on it. That's where you made your whole mistake. You didn't find out just how far it was allowable for you to go." He turned to Stranor Sleth again. That's the background, then. Now, tell me about what happened yesterday at Zerb. Well, a week ago, Kerchuk came out with this decree closing our temple at Zerb, and ordering his subjects to perform worship and make money offerings to Muzazeen.
The Zerb temple isn't a mask for a mine. Zerb's too far south for the uranium deposits. It's just a center for propaganda and that sort of thing. But they have a house of Yat-Zar, and a conveyor, and most of the upper priests are paratimers. Well, our man there, Tamandrav, alias Koram, defied the king's order. So, Kerchuk sent a company of Chuldan archers to close the temple and arrest the priests. Tamandrav got all his people who were in the temple at the time into the house of Yat-Zar, and transposed them back to the first level. He had orders—Stranor Sleth looked meaningly at Branad Not to resist with energy weapons, or even ultrasonic paralyzers. And while we're on the subject of letting the local yokels see too much, about fifteen of the underpriest he took to the first level were Hulgan natives.
Nothing wrong about that. They'll get memory obliteration and pseudo-memory treatment, Verkan Vall said. But he should have been allowed to needle about a dozen of those Chuldans. Teach the beggars to respect Yat-Zar in the future. Now, how about the six priests who were outside the temple at the time? All but one were paratimers. We'll have to find out about them, and get them out of Zurb. "'That'll take some doing,' Stranor Sleth said. "'And it'll have to be done before sunset to-morrow. They are all in the dungeon of the palace citadel, and Kerchak is going to give them to the priests of Muzazin to be sacrificed tomorrow evening. How'd you learn that? Verkanval asked. Oh, we have a man in Zerb, not connected with the temple, Stranor Seles said.
Name's Kranar Jirth, calls himself Kranjir, locally. He has a sword-maker's shop. employs about a dozen native journeymen and apprentices who hammer out the common blades he sells in the open market. Then he imports a few high-class alloy steel blades from the first level that'll cut through this local low-carbon armor like cheese, fits them with locally-made hilts, and sells them at unbelievable prices to the nobility. He's swordsmith to the king, picks up all the inside palace dope. Of course, he was among the first to accept the new gospel and go over to Muzazeen. He has a secret room under his shop, with his conveyor and a radio. What happened was this. These six priests were at a consecration ceremony at a rabbit ranch outside the city, and they didn't know about the raid on the temple.
On their way back, they were surrounded by Cheldon archers and taken prisoner. They had no weapons but their sacrificial knives. He threw another dirty look at Branad Clav. "'So they're due to go up on the triangles at sunset to-morrow.' "'We'll have to get them out before then,' Verkan Vall stated. "'They're our people, and we can't let them down. Even the native is under our protection, whether he knows it or not. And in the second place, if those priests are sacrificed to Muz Azine,' he told Branad Clav, "'you can shut down everything on this time-line, Pull out or disintegrate your installations, and fill in your mine tunnels. Yat-Zar will be through on this time-line, and you'll be through along with him.
And considering that your Fishnables franchise for this sector comes up for renewal next year, your company will be through in this paratime area." "'You believe that would happen?' Branad Clav asked, anxiously. "'I know it will, because I'll put through a recommendation to that effect if those six men are tortured to death to-morrow,' Verkenval replied. "'And in the fifty years that I've been in the police department, I've only heard of five such recommendations being ignored by the Commission. You know, Fourth Level Mineral Products Syndicate is after your franchise. Ordinarily, they wouldn't have a chance of getting it, but with this, maybe they will—' Even without my recommendation. This was all your fault, for ignoring Stranor Stret's proposal, and for denying those men the right to carry energy weapons."
"'Well, we were only trying to stay inside the Paratime Code,' Brennan Clav pleaded. "'If it isn't too late now, you can count on me for every cooperation.' He fiddled with some papers on the desk. "'What do you want me to do to help?' I'll tell you that in a minute. Verkanval walked to the wall and looked at the map, then returned to Stranor Sleth's desk. "'How about these dungeons?' he asked. "'How are they located, and how can we get into them?' "'I'm afraid we can't,' Stranor Sleth told him. "'Not without fighting our way in.' "'They're under a palace citadel, a hundred feet below ground.' They're spatially co-existent with the heavy water barriers around one of our company's plutonium piles, on the first level, and below surface on any unoccupied time-line I know of, so we can't transpose into them.
This palace is really a walled city inside a city. Here, I'll show you." Going around the desk, he sat down and, after looking in the index screen, punched a combination on the keyboard. A picture, projected from the microfilm bank, appeared on the viewscreen. It was an air-view of the city of Zerb, taken, the high priest explained, by infrared light from an air-boat over the city at night. It showed a city of an entirely pre-mechanical civilization, with narrow streets, lined on either side by low one- and two-story buildings. Although there would be considerable snow in winter, The roofs were usually flat, probably massive stone slabs supported by pillars within. Even in the poorer sections this was true except for the very meanest houses and outbuildings, which were thatched.
Here and there some huge pile of masonry would rear itself above its lower neighbors, and where the streets were wider, occasional groups of large buildings would be surrounded by battlemented walls. Strannor Sleth indicated one of the larger of these. "'Here's the palace,' he said. "'And here's the temple of Yad-Zar, about a half-mile away.' He touched a large building, occupying an entire block. Between it and the palace was a block-wide park, with lawns and trees on either side of a wide roadway connecting the two. "'Now here's a detailed view of the palace.' He punched another combination. The view of the city was replaced by one taken from directly overhead of the walled palace area. Here's the main gate, in front, at the end of the road from the temple, he pointed out.
Over here, on the left, are the slaves' quarters, and the stables and workshops and storehouses and so on. Over here, on the other side, are the nobles' quarters, and this, he indicated, a towering structure at the rear of the walled enclosure. is the Citadel and the Royal Dwelling. Audience Hall on this side, harem over here on this side. A wide stone platform, about fifteen feet high, runs completely across the front of the Citadel, from the Audience Hall to the harem. Since this picture was taken, the new temple of Mazazeen was built right about here. He indicated that it extended out from the Audience Hall into the central courtyard. And out here on the platform they've put up about a dozen of these triangles, about twelve feet high, on which the sacrificial victims are whipped to death.
Yes, about the only way we could get down to the dungeons would be to make an air-drop on to the citadel roof and fight our way down with needlers and blasters. And I'm not willing to do that as long as there's another way, Verkan Vall said. We'd lose men. Even with needlers against bows. And there's a chance that some of our equipment might be lost in the melee and fall into out-time hands. You say this sacrifice comes off at to-morrow, at sunset? That would be about actual sunset, plus or minus an hour. These people aren't astronomers. They don't even have good sundials. And it might be a cloudy day," Stranor Sleth said. There'll be a big idol of muzzazine on a cart, set about here. He pointed.
After the sacrifice, it has to be dragged down this road, outside, to the temple of Yat-Zar, and set up there. The temple is now occupied by about twenty Chuldun mercenaries, and five or six priests of Muzazin. They haven't, of course, got into the house of Yat-Zar, the doors of impervium steel about six inches thick, with a plating of collapsed nickel under the gilding. It would take a couple of hours to cut through it with our best atomic torch. There isn't a tool on this time-line that could even scratch it. And the insides of the walls are lined with the same thing. "'Do you think our people have been tortured yet?' Verkan Vall asked. "'No,' Stranor Sleth was positive. "'They'll be fairly well treated until the sacrifice.
The idea is to make them last as long as possible on the triangles. Muzazeen likes to see a slow killing, and so does the mob of spectators. That's good. Now, here's my plan. We won't try to rescue them from the dungeons. Instead, we'll transpose back to the Zerb temple from the first level, in considerable force, say, a hundred or so men, and march on the palace to force their release. You're in constant radio communication with all the other temples on this time-line, I suppose? Yes, certainly. All right. Pass this out to everybody. Authority, Paratime Police, in my name, acting for Tortha Karf. I want all Paratimers who can possibly be spared to transpose to First Level immediately, and rendezvous at the First Level terminal of the Zerb Temple conveyor as soon as possible.
Close down all mining operations, and turn over Temple routine to the native under-priests. You can tell them that the upper priests are retiring to the respective houses of Yadzar to pray for the deliverance of the priests in the hands of King Kurchuk. And everybody is to bring back his priestly regalia to the first level. That will be needed." He turned to Branad Klav. "'I suppose you keep spare regalia in stock on the first level?' "'Yes, of course. We keep plenty of everything in stock. Robes, mitres, false beards of different shades, everything.' And these big yat-zar idols, they're mass-produced on the first level? You have one available now? Good. I'll want some alterations made on one.
For one thing, I'll want it plated heavily, all over, with collapsed nickel. For another, I'll want it fitted with anti-grav units, and some sort of propulsion units, and a loudspeaker, and a remote control. And, Stranor, you get in touch with this sword-maker, Krannar Jirth, and alert him to cooperate with us. Tell him to start calling Zurb Temple on his radio about noon to-morrow, and keep it up till he gets an answer. Or better, tell him to run his conveyor to his first-level terminal, and bring with him an extra suit of clothes appropriate to the role of journeyman mechanic. I'll want to talk to him, and furnish him with special equipment. Got all that? Well, carry on with it. And bring your own paratimers, priests, and mining operators back with you, as soon as you've taken care of everything.
Branod, you come with me now. We're returning to first level immediately. We have a lot of work to do, so let's get started." Anything I can do to help, just call on me for it, Branod Clav promised earnestly. And, Stranor, I want to apologize. I'll admit now that I ought to have followed your recommendations when this situation first developed.
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3 2 - Temple Trouble (part 2) 36:58
. Reading by Mark Nelson. Temple Trouble by H. Beam Piper Part Two By noon of the next day, Verkan Vall had at least a hundred men gathered in the big room at the First Level Fishnables refinery at Jernabar, spatially co-existent with the Fourth Level Temple of Yat-Zar at Zurb. He was having a little trouble distinguishing between them. For every man wore the fringed blue robe and gold mitre of an upper priest, and had his face masked behind a blue false beard. It was, he admitted to himself, a most ludicrous-looking assemblage. One of the most ludicrous things about it was the fact that it would have inspired only pious awe in a hulgin of the fourth-level proto-Aryan sector. About half of them were priests from the transtemporal mining corporation's temples.
The other half were members of the Paratime Police. All of them wore, in addition to their temple knives, holstered sigma-ray needlers. Most of them carried ultrasonic paralyzers, eighteen-inch baton-like things with bulbous ends. Most of the Paratime Police, and a few of the priests, also carried either heat-ray pistols or neutron-disruption blasters. Verk and Voll wore one of the latter in a left-hand belt holster. The Paratime police were lined up separately for inspection, and Stranor Sleth, Tamandrav of the Zerb temple, and several other high priests were checking the authenticity of their disguises. A little apart from the others, a Paratime policeman, in high priest's robes and beard, had a square box slung in front of him.
He was fiddling with the knobs and buttons on it, practicing. A big idol of Yat Zar, on antigravity, was floating slowly about the room in obedience to its remote controls, rising and lowering, turning about and pirouetting gracefully. "'Hey, Val,' he called to his superior, "'how's this?' The idol rose about five feet, turned slowly in a half-circle, moved to the right a little, and then settled down slowly toward the floor. "'Fine, fine, Horv,' Verkan Vall told him. But don't set it down on anything, or turn off the antigravity. There's enough collapsed nickel plating on that thing to sink it a yard in soft ground. "'I don't know what the idea of that was,' Brennan Clav, standing beside him, said.
"'Understand, I'm not criticizing. I haven't any right to under the circumstances. But it seems to me that armoring that thing in collapsed nickel was an unnecessary precaution.' "'Maybe it was,' Verkan Vall agreed. I sincerely hope so. But we can't take any chances. This operation has to be absolutely right. Ready, Temmond? All right. First detail into the conveyor. He turned and strode toward a big dome of fine metallic mesh, thirty feet high and sixty in diameter, at the other end of the room. Temmond Drave and his ten paratimer priests And Branaghd Klav and ten Paratime police followed him in. One of the latter slid shut the door and locked it. Verkan Vall went to the control desk, at the center of the dome, and picked up a two-foot globe of the same fine metallic mesh, opened it, and, making some adjustments inside, then attaching an electric cord and closing it.
He laid the globe on the floor near the desk, and picked up the hand-battery at the other end of the attached cord. Not taking any chances at all, are you? Brannad Klav asked, watching the operation with interest. I never do, unnecessarily. There are too many necessary chances that have to be taken in this work. Verkan Vall pressed the button on the hand-battery. The globe on the floor flashed and vanished. Yesterday, Five paratimers were arrested. Any or all of them could have had door activators with them. Stranor Sleth says that they were not tortured, but that is a purely inferential statement. They may have been, and the use of the activator may have been extorted from one of them. So, I want to look at the inside of that conveyor chamber before we transpose into it.
He laid the hand-battery, with the loose dangling wire that had been left behind, on the desk. Then lit a cigarette. The others gathered around, smoking and watching, careful to avoid the place from which the globe had vanished. Thirty minutes passed, and then, in a queer iridescence, the globe reappeared. Verkinval counted ten seconds and picked it up, taking it to the desk and opening it to remove a small square box. Then he slid into a space under the desk and flipped a switch. Instantly, a view-screen lit up, and a three-dimensional picture appeared—the interior of a big room, a hundred feet square, and some seventy in height. There was a big desk and a radio—tables, couches, chairs, and an arms-rack full of weapons at one end.
A remarkably clean, sixty-foot circle on the concrete floor, outlined in faintly luminous red. "'How about it?' Verkan Vall asked Temmendrav. Anything wrong?" The Zerb High Priest shook his head. Just as we left it, he said. Nobody's been inside since we left. One of the policemen took Verkan Vall's place at the control desk, and threw the master switch after checking the instruments. Immediately the paratemporal transposition field went on with a humming sound that mounted to a high scream, then settled to a steady drone. The mesh dome flickered with a cold iridescence, and vanished. And they were looking into the interior of a great Fishnables refinery plant, operated by paratimers on another first-level time-line.
The structural details altered, from time-line to time-line, as they watched. Buildings appeared and vanished. Once, for a few seconds, they were inside a cool insulating bubble in the midst of molten lead. Tamandrav jerked a thumb at it before it vanished. That always bothers me, he said. Bad place for the field to go weak. I'm fussy as an old hen about inspection of the conveyor on account of that. Don't blame you, Verkan Vall agreed. Probably the cooling system of a breeder pile. They passed more swiftly, now, across the second level and the third. Once they were in the midst of a huge land battle, With great tank-like vehicles spouting flame at one another. Another moment was spent in an air bombardment.
On any time-line, this section of East Europe was a natural battleground. Once a great procession marched toward them, carrying red banners and huge pictures of a coarse-faced man with a black mustache. Verkan Vall recognized the environment as fourth-level Europo-American sector. Finally, as the transposition rate slowed, they saw a clutter of miserable thatched huts, in the rear of a granite wall of a fourth-level Hulgan temple of Yat-Zar, a temple not yet infiltrated by transtemporal mining corporation agents. Finally, they were at their destination. The dome around them became visible, and an overhead green light flashed slowly on and off. Verkan Vall opened the door and stepped outside, his needler drawn.
The house of Yat-Zar was just as he had seen it in the picture photographed by the automatic reconnaissance conveyor. The others crowded outside after him. One of the regular priests pulled off his mitre and beard and went to the radio, putting on a head-set. Verkan Vall and Tamandrav snapped on the visiscreen Getting a view of the Holy of Holies outside. There were six men there, seated at the upper priest's banquet table, drinking from golden goblets. Five of them wore the black robes with green facings which marked them as priests of Muzzazin. The sixth was an officer of the Chaldun archers, in gilded mail and helmet. Why, those are the sacred vessels of the temple! Tem and Drav cried, scandalized.
Then he laughed in self-ridicule. I'm beginning to take this stuff seriously myself. Time I put in for a long vacation. I was actually shocked at the sacrilege. Well, let's overtake the infidels in their sins, Verkan Vall said. Paralyzers will be good enough. He picked up one of the bulb-headed weapons and unlocked the door. Taman Drav and another of the priests of the Zerb temple following, and the others crowding behind. They passed out through the vales, and burst into the Holy of Holies. Verkan Vall pointed the bulb of his paralyzer at the six seated men and pressed the button. Other paralyzers came into action, and the whole sextet were knocked senseless. The officer rolled from his chair and fell to the floor in a clatter of armor.
Two of the priests slumped forward on the table. The others merely sank back in their chairs, dropping their goblets. "'Give each one of them another dose to make sure,' Verkan Vall directed a couple of his own men. "'Now, Tammond, any other way into the main temple beside that door?' "'Up those steps,' Tammondrav pointed. "'There's a gallery along the side. We can cover the whole room from there.' "'Take your men and go up there. I'll take a few through the door. There'll be about twenty archers out there, and we don't want any of them loosing any arrows before we can knock them out.' "'Three minutes be time enough?' "'Easily.' "'Make it two,' Temendrav said." He took his priests up the stairway and vanished into the gallery of the temple.
Verkan Vall waited until one minute had passed, and then— Followed by Branad Clav and a couple of Paratime policemen, he went under the plinth and peered out into the temple. Five or six archers, in steel caps and sleeveless leather jackets sewn with steel rings, were gathered around the altar, cooking something in a pot on the fire. Most of the others, like veteran soldiers, were sprawled on the floor, trying to catch a short nap, except a half-dozen who were crouched in a circle, playing some game with dice, an almost universal military practice. The two minutes were up. He aimed his paralyzer at the men around the altar and squeezed the button, swinging it from one to another and knocking them down with a bludgeon of inaudible sound.
At the same time, Teman Drave and his detail were stunning the gamblers. Stepping forward and to one side, Verkan Vall, Branad Klav, and the others took care of the sleepers on the floor. In less than thirty seconds, every Chaldun in the temple was incapacitated. "'All right. Make sure none of them come out of it prematurely,' Verkan Vall directed. "'Get their weapons, and be sure nobody has a knife or anything hidden on him. Who has the syringe and the sleep-drug ampoules?' "'Somebody had,' it developed. Who was still on the first level, to come up with the second conveyor-load? Verkin Vall swore. Something like this always happened on any operation involving more than a half-dozen men. Well, some of you stay here, patrol around, and use your paralyzers on anybody who even twitches a muscle.
Ultrasonics were nice, effective, humane police weapons, but they were unreliable. The same dose that would keep one man out for an hour would paralyze another for more than ten or fifteen minutes. And be sure none of them are playing possum. He went back through the door under the plinth, glancing up at the decorated wooden screen, and wondering how much work it would take to move the new Yat-Zar in from the conveyors. The five priests and the archer-captain were still unconscious. One of the policemen was searching them. "'Here's the sort of weapons these priests carry,' he said, holding up a short iron mace with a spiked head. "'Carry them on their belts.' He tossed it on the table, and began searching another knocked-out hierophant.
"'Like this—hey, look at this, will you?' He drew his hand from under the left side of the senseless man's robe and held up a sigma-ray needler. Verkan Vall looked at it and nodded grimly. "'Had it in a regular shoulder holster,' the policeman said, handing the weapon across the table. "'What do you think?' "'Find anything else funny on him?' "'Wait a minute.' The policeman pulled open the robe and began stripping the priest of Mazazine. Verkan Vall came around the table to help. There was nothing else of a suspicious nature. "'Could have got it from one of the prisoners.' But I don't like the familiar way he's wearing that holster," Verkenvall said. Has the conveyor gone back yet? When the policeman nodded, he continued.
When it returns, take him to the first level. I hope they bring up the sleep-drug with the next load. When you get him back, take him to Durga-Bar by straddle-rocket immediately, and make sure he gets back alive. I want him questioned under narco-hypnosis, by a regular Paratime Commission psychotechnician, In the presence of Chief Tortha Karf and some responsible commission official, this is going to be hot stuff. Within an hour, the whole force was assembled in the temple. The wooden screen had presented no problem. It slid easily to one side. The big idol floated on antigravity in the middle of the temple. Verkan Vall was looking anxiously at his watch. It's about two hours to sunset, he said to Stranor Sleth.
But as you pointed out, these Hulgens aren't astronomers, and it's a bit cloudy. I wish Krannar Jirth would call in with something definite. About twenty minutes passed. Then the man at the radio came out into the temple. "'Okay,' he called. The man at Krannar Jirth's called in. Krannar Jirth contacted him with a midget radio he has up his sleeve. He's in the palace courtyard now. They haven't brought out the victims yet. But Kerchuk has just been carried out on his throne to that platform in the front of the Citadel. Big crowd gathering on the inner courtyard. More in the streets outside. Palace gates are wide open. That's it, Verkanval cried. Form up! The parade's starting. Branaghd, you and Tammond, and Stranor and I in front.
About ten men with paralyzers a little behind us. Then Yat-Zar, about ten feet off the ground, and then the others. "'Forward! Ho!' They emerged from the temple and started down the broad roadway toward the palace. There was not much of a crowd at first. Most of Zerb had flocked to the palace earlier, the lucky ones in the courtyard and the latecomers outside. Those whom they did meet stared at them in open-mouthed amazement. And then some, remembering their doubts and blasphemies, Began howling for forgiveness. Others, a substantial majority, realizing that it would be upon King Kurchuk that the real weight of Yat-Zar's six hands would fall, took to their heels, trying to put as much distance as possible between them and the palace before the blow fell.
As the procession approached the palace gates, the crowds grew thicker, made up of those who had been unable to squeeze themselves inside. The panic was worse here, too. A good many were trampled and hurt in the rush to escape, and it became necessary to use paralyzers to clear away. That made it worse. Everybody was sure that Yat-Zar was striking sinners dead left and right. Fortunately, the gates were high enough to let the god through without losing altitude appreciably. Inside, the mob surged back, clearing away across the courtyard. It was only necessary to paralyze a few here, and the levitated idol and its priestly attendants advanced toward the stone platform, where the king sat on his throne, flanked by court functionaries and black-robed priests of Mazazine.
In front of this, a rank of Chuldan archers had been drawn up. "'Horv, move Yat-Zar forward about a hundred feet and up about fifty,' Verkenval directed. "'Quickly.' As the six-armed anthropomorphic idol rose, and moved closer toward its Sarian rival, Verkan Vall drew his needler, scanning the assemblage around the throne anxiously. "'Where is the wicked king?' a voice thundered, the voice of Stranor Sleth speaking into a midget radio tuned to the loudspeaker inside the idol. "'Where is the blasphemer and desecrator Karchuk?' "'There's Labdurg, in the red tunic, beside the throne,' Tammondrav whispered. "'And that's Gramdur, the Muzazeen high priest, beside him.'" Verkan Vall nodded, keeping his eyes on the group on the platform.
Gramdur, the high priest of Muzazeen, was edging backward and reaching under his robe. At the same time, an officer shouted an order. and the Chulden archers drew arrows from their quivers and fitted them to their bow-strings. Immediately the ultrasonic paralyzers of the advancing paratimers went into action, and the mercenaries began dropping. "'Lay down your weapons, fools,' the amplified voice boomed at them. "'Lay down your weapons, or you shall surely die. Who are you miserable wretches to draw bows against me?' At first a few, then all of them, the Cheldons lowered or dropped their weapons, and began edging away to the sides. At the center, in front of the throne, most of them had been knocked out.
Verkan Vall was still watching the Muzazine high priest intently. As Gramdur raised his arms, there was a flash and a puff of smoke from the front of Yat-Zar, the paint over the collapsed nickel was burned off, But otherwise the idol was undamaged. Verkan Vall swung up his needler and rayed Gromdur dead. As the man in the green-faced black robes fell, a blaster clattered on the stone platform. "'Is that your puny best, Muzazine?' the booming voice demanded. "'Where is your high priest now?' "'Horf, face Yat-Zar toward Muzazine,' Verkan Vall said over his shoulder. drawing his blaster with his left hand. Like all first-level people, he was ambidextrous, although, like all paratimers, he habitually concealed the fact while outtime.
As the levitated idol swung slowly to look down upon its enemy on the built-up cart, Verkan Vall aimed his blaster and squeezed. In a spot less than a millimeter in diameter on the crocodile idol's side, A certain number of neutrons in the atomic structure of the stone from which it was carved broke apart, becoming, in effect, atoms of hydrogen. With a flash and a bang, the idol burst and vanished. Yatszar gave a dirty laugh and turned his back on the cart, which was now burning fiercely, facing King Kurchuk again. "'Get your hands up, all of you,' Verkan Vall shouted, in the first-level language. Swinging the stubby muzzle of the blaster and the knob-tipped twin tubes of the needler to cover the group around the throne.
Come forward before I start blasting. Labdurg raised his hands and stepped forward. So did two of the priests of At-Tsar. They were quickly seized by Paratime policemen, who swarmed up on to the platform and disarmed. All three were carrying sigma-ray needlers, and Labdurg had a blaster as well. King Kurchuk was clinging to the arms of his throne, a badly frightened monarch trying desperately not to show it. He was a big man, heavy-shouldered, black-bearded, under ordinary circumstances he would probably have cut an imposing figure, in his gold-washed mail and his golden crown. Now his face was a dirty gray, and he was biting nervously at his lower lip. The others on the platform were in even worse state.
The Hulgan nobles were grouped together, trying to dissociate themselves from both the king and the priests of Mazazin. The latter were staring in a daze at the blazing cart from which their idol had just been blasted, and the dozen men who were to have done the actual work of the torture sacrifice had all dropped their whips and were fairly gibbering in fear. Yat-Zar, manipulated by the robed had taken a position directly above the throne, and was lowering slowly. Kerchuk stared up at the massive idol descending toward him, his knuckles white as he clung to the arms of his throne. He managed to hold out until he could feel the weight of the idol pressing on his head. Then, with a scream, he hurled himself from the throne and rolled forward almost to the edge of the platform.
Yat-Zar moved to one side. swung slightly and knocked the throne toppling, and then settled down on the platform. To Kerchuk, who was rising cautiously on his hands and knees, the big idol seemed to be looking at him in contempt. "'Where are my holy priests, Kerchuk?' Stranner Steath demanded into a sleeve hidden radio. "'Let them be brought before me, alive and unharmed. Or it shall be better for you had you never been born. The six priests of Yat-Zar, it seemed, were already being brought onto the platform by one of Kerchuk's nobles. This noble, whose name was Yorzak, knew a miracle when he saw one, and believed in being on the side of a god with the heaviest artillery. As soon as he had seen Yat-Zar coming through the gate without visible means of support, He had hastened to the dungeons with a half a dozen of his personal retainers, and ordered the release of the six captives.
He was now escorting them onto the platform, assuring them that he had always been a faithful servant of Yat-Zar and had been deeply grieved at his sovereign's apostasy.
"'Hear my word, Kerchuk,' Stranor Sleth continued through the loudspeaker in the idle. "'You have sinned most vilely against me, and were I a cruel god, your fate would be such as no man has ever before suffered. But I am a merciful god. Behold, you may gain forgiveness in my sight. For thirty days you shall neither eat meat nor drink wine, nor shall you wear gold nor fine raiment, And each day shall you go to my temple, and beseech me for my forgiveness. And on the thirty-first day you shall set out, barefoot and clad in the garb of a slave, and journey to my temple that is in the mountains over above Yoldav, and there will I forgive you, after you have made sacrifice to me. I, Yat-Zar, have spoken."
The king started to rise, babbling thanks. "'Rise not before me until I have forgiven you,' Yatzar thundered. "'Creep out of my sight upon your belly, wretch!' The procession back to the temple was made quietly and sedately along an empty roadway. Yatzar seemed to be in a kindly humour. The people of Zerb had no intention of giving him any reason to change his mood. The priests of Muzazin and their torturers had been flung into the dungeon. Yorzuk, appointed regent for the duration of Kerchuk's penance, had taken control and was employing Hulgun spearmen and hastily converted Chuldun archers to restore order and, incidentally, purge a few of his personal enemies and political rivals. The priests, with the three prisoners who had been found carrying first-level weapons among them, and Yat-Zar, floating triumphantly in front, entered the temple.
A few of the devout, who sought admission after them, were told that elaborate and secret rites were being held to cleanse the profaned altar, and sent away. Verkan Vall and Branad-Klav and Stranor Sleth were in the conveyor chamber, with the Paratime policemen and the extra priests. Along with them were the three prisoners. Verkan Vall pulled off his false beard and turned to face these. He could see that they all recognized him. Now, he began, you people are in a bad jam. You've violated the Paratime Transposition Code, the Commercial Regulation Code, and the First Level Criminal Code, all together. If you know what's good for you, you'll start talking. I'm not saying anything till I have legal advice," the man who had been using the local alias of Labderg replied.
And if you're through searching me, I'd like to have my cigarettes and lighter back. Smoke one of mine for a change, Verkenwald told him. I don't know what's in yours besides tobacco. He offered his case and held a light for the prisoner before lighting his own cigarette. I'm going to be sure you get back to First Level alive. The former overseer of the kingdom of Zerb shrugged. "'I'm still not talking,' he said. "'Well, we can get it all out of you by narco-hypnosis, anyhow,' Verkan Vall told him. "'Besides, we got that man of yours who was here at the temple when we came in. He's being given a full treatment, as a presumed out-time native found in possession of first-level weapons. If you talk now, it'll go easier with you.' The prisoner dropped the cigarette on the floor and tramped it out.
"'Anything you cops get out of me, you'll have to get the hard way,' he said. "'I have friends on the first level who'll take care of me.' "'I doubt that. They'll have their hands full taken care of themselves after this gets out.' Verkenwald turned to the two in the black robes. "'Either of you want to say anything?' When they shook their heads, he nodded to a group of his policemen. They were hustled into the conveyor. "'Take them to the first-level terminal, and hold them till I come in. I'll be along with the next conveyor-load.' The conveyor flashed and vanished. Brannad Clav stared for a moment at the circle of concrete floor from whence it had disappeared. Then he turned to Verkan Vall.
"'I still can't believe it,' he said. "'Why, those fellows were first-level paratimers. So was that priest, Gromdur, the one you raid? Yes, of course. They worked for your rivals, the Fourth Level Mineral Products Syndicate, the outfit that was trying to get your proto-Aryan Sector Fissionables franchise away from you. They operate on this sector already, have the petroleum franchise for the Chaldun Country, east of the Caspian Sea. They export to some of these internal combustion engine sectors, like Europo-American. You know, most of the wars they've been fighting lately on the Europo-American sector have been, at least in part, motivated by rivalry for oil fields. But now that the Europo-Americans have begun to release nuclear energy, fissionables have become more important than oil.
In less than a century, it's predicted that atomic energy will replace all other forms of power. Mineral Products Syndicate wanted to get a good source of supply for uranium, And your proto-Aryan sector franchise was worth grabbing. I had considered something like this as a possibility when Stranor here mentioned that tularemia was normally unknown in Eurasia on this sector. That epidemic must have been started by imported germs. And I knew that mineral products has agents at the court of the Chaldan Emperor, Chambrog. They have to, to protect their oil wells on his eastern frontiers. I spent most of last night checking up on some stuff by video transcription from Paratime Commission's microfilm library at Dergabar.
I found out, for one thing, that while there is a King Kurchuk of Zurb on every time-line for a hundred para-years on either side of this one, this is the only time-line in which he married a Princess Dareth of Chaldan, and it's the only time-line in which there is any trace of a Chaldan scribe named Labdurg. That's why I went to all the trouble of having that yatzar plated with collapsed nickel. If there were disguised paratimers among the muzzazine party at Kerchuk's court, I expected one of them to try to blast our idol when we brought it into the palace. I was watching Gromdor and Labdorg in particular. As soon as Gromdor used his blaster, I needled him. After that, it was easy. Was that why you insisted on sending that automatic viewer on ahead?
Yes. There was a chance that they might have planted a bomb in the house of Yat-Zar here. I knew they'd either do that, or let the place entirely alone. I suppose they were so confident of getting away with this that they didn't want to damage the conveyor, or the conveyor chamber. They expected to use them, themselves, after they took over your company's franchise. Well, what's going to be done about it by the Commission, Bronan Klav wanted to know? Plenty. The Syndicate will probably lose their paratime license. Any of its officials who had guilty knowledge of this will be dealt with according to law. You know, this was a pretty nasty business. You are telling me, Stranos Slath exclaimed, did you get a look at those whips they were going to use on our people?
pointed iron barbs a quarter-inch long braided into them, all over the lash-ends. Yes. Any punitive action you are thinking about taking on these priests of Muzazeen, the natives, I mean, will be ignored on the first level. And that reminds me, you'd better work out a line of policy pretty soon. Well, as for the priests and the torturers, I think I'll tell Yorzuc to have them sold to the Bungans, to the east. They're always in the market for galley-slaves, Stranor Sleth said. He turned to Branod Clav. And I want six gold crowns made up as soon as possible. Strictly Hulgan design, with yat-zar religious symbolism, very rich and ornate, all slightly different. When I give Kerchuk absolution, I'll crown him at the altar in the name of yat-zar.
Then I'll invite in the other five Hulgan kings, Lecture them on their religious duties, and make them confess their secret doubts, forgive them, and crown them, too. From then on, they can all style themselves as ruling by the will of Yat-Zar. And from then on, you'll have all of them eating out of your hand," Verkan Vall concluded. You know, this will probably go down in Hulgun history as the reformation of Gullum the Holy. I've always wondered whether the theory of the divine right of kings was invented by the kings to establish their authority over the people, or by the priests to establish their authority over the kings. It works about as well one way as the other. "'What I can't understand is this,' Brennaud Klav said.
"'It was entirely because of my respect for the Paratime Code, That I kept Stranor Sleth from using fourth-level weapons, and other techniques to control these people, with a show of apparent miraculous powers. But this fourth-level mineral products syndicate was operating in violation of the Paratime Code by invading our franchise area. Why didn't they fake up a supernatural reign of terror to intimidate these natives?
Exactly because they were operating illegally," Verkanval replied. Suppose they had started using needlers and blasters and antigravity and nuclear energy around here. The natives would have thought it was the power of muzzazine, of course. But what would have you thought? You'd have known as soon as they'd tried it that first-level paratimers were working against you, and you'd have laid the facts before the commission. and this time-line would have been flooded with Paratime police. They had to conceal their operations not only from the natives, as you do, but also from us. So, they didn't dare make public their use of first-level techniques. Of course, when we came marching into the palace with that idol on antigravity, they knew at once what was happening.
I have an idea that they only tried to blast that idol to create a diversion which would permit them to escape. If they could get out of the palace, they'd have made their way in disguise to the nearest mineral products syndicate conveyor and transposed out of here. I realize that they could best delay us by blasting our idol, and that's why I had it plated with collapsed nickel. I think that where they made their mistake was in allowing Kerchuk to have those priests arrested, and insisting on sacrificing them to Muzzeen. If it hadn't been for that, the Paratime Police wouldn't have been brought into this at all. Well, Stranner, you'll want to get back to your temple, and Brannad and I want to get back to the first level.
I'm supposed to take my wife to a banquet in Durgebar to-night, and with the fastest strato-rocket, I'll just barely make it. by H. Beam Piper.
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4 3 - Flight From Tomorrow 56:10
Flight from Tomorrow by H. Beam Piper But yesterday a whole planet had shouted, Hail Hradska! Hail the leader! Today they were screaming, Death to Hradska! Kill the tyrant! The palace, where Hradska, surrounded by his sycophants and guards, had lorded it over a solar system, was now an inferno. Those who had been too closely identified with the dictator's rule to hope for forgiveness were fighting to the last, seeking only a quick death in combat. One by one, their isolated points of resistance were being wiped out. The corridors and chambers of the huge palace were thronged with rebels, loud with their shouts, And with the rasping hiss of heatbeams and the crash of blasters, reeking with the stench of scorched plastic and burned flesh, of hot metal and charred fabric.
The living quarters were overrun. The mobs smashed down walls and tore up floors in search of secret hiding-places. They found strange things. The space ship that had been built under one of the domes, In readiness for flight to the still-loyal colonies on Mars, or the asteroid belt, for instance. But Hradska himself they could not find. At last the search reached the new tower, which reared its head five thousand feet above the palace, the highest thing in the city. They blasted down the huge steel doors, cut power from the energy screens. They landed from anti-grav cars on the upper levels. But except for barriers of metal and concrete and energy, they met with no opposition. Finally, they came to the spiral stairway which led up to the great metal sphere which capped the whole structure.
General Zarvas, the army commander who had placed himself at the head of the revolt, stood with his foot on the lowest step, his followers behind him. There was Prince Bervani, the leader of the old nobility. and Gorzesko Orm, the merchant, and between them stood Tab, the chieftain of the mutinous slaves. There were clerks, laborers, poor but haughty nobles, and wealthy merchants who had long been forced to hide their riches from the dictators' tax-gatherers, and soldiers and spacemen. "'You'd better let some of us go first, sir,' a blood-stained bandage about his head, His uniform in rags suggested. You don't know what might be up there. The general shook his head. I'll go first. Zarvas Paul was not the man to send subordinates into danger ahead of himself.
To tell the truth, I'm afraid we won't find anything at all up there. You mean—Gorzesko Orm began—the time machine, Zarvas Paul replied. If he's managed to get it finished, the great mind only knows where he may be now, or when. He loosened the blaster in his holster and started up the long spiral. His followers spread out below. Sharpshooters took position to cover his ascent. Prince Bhavani and Taub the slave started to follow him. They hesitated as each motioned to the other to precede him. Then the noblemen followed the general, his blaster drawn, and the brawny slave behind him.
The door at the top was open, and Zarvas Paul stepped through, but there was nothing in the great spherical room except a raised dais some fifty feet in diameter, its polished metal top strangely clean and empty. And a crumpled heap of burned cloth and charred flesh That had, not long ago, been a man. An old man with a white beard and the seven-pointed star of the learned brothers on his breast advanced to meet the armed intruders. "'So he is gone, Kradzizago,' Zarvas Paul said, holstering his weapon. "'Gone in the time-machine, to hide in yesterday or to-morrow. And you let him go?' The old one nodded. He had a blaster, and I had none. He indicated the body on the floor. Zoldyjarv had no blaster either, but he tried to stop Hradska.
See, he squandered his life as a fool squanders his money, getting nothing for it. And a man's life is not money, Zarvas Paul. I do not blame you, Kradzizago, General Zarvas said. But now you must get to work and build us another time machine so that we can hunt him down. Does revenge mean so much to you, then?"
The soldier made an impatient gesture. Revenge is for fools, like that pack of screaming beasts below. I do not kill for revenge. I kill because dead men do no harm. Ratzka will do us no more harm. The old scientist replied. He is a thing of yesterday, of a time long past and half lost in the mists of legend. No matter. As long as he exists at any point in space-time, Hradska is still a threat. Revenge means much to Hradska. He will return for it, when we least expect him. The old man shook his head. No, Zarvas Paul. Horadzka will not return.
Horadzka holstered his blaster, threw the switch that sealed the time machine, put on the antigrav unit, and started the time-shift unit. He reached out and set the destination dial for the mid-fifty-second century of the atomic era. That would land him in the Ninth Age of Chaos, following the Two-Century War, And the collapse of the world theocracy. A good time for his purpose, the world would be slipping back into barbarism, and yet possess the technologies of former civilizations. A hundred little nation-states would be trying to regain social stability, competing and warring with one another. Hradska glanced back over his shoulder at the cases of books, record spools, tridimensional pictures, and scale models.
These people of the past would welcome him and his science of the future, would make him their leader. He would start in a small way, by taking over the local feudal or tribal government, would arm his followers with weapons of the future. Then he would impose his rule upon neighboring tribes, or princedoms, or communes, or whatever, and build a strong sovereignty. From that he envisioned a world empire, a solar system empire. Then he would build time machines, many time machines. He would recruit an army such as the universe had never seen, a swarm of men from every age in the past. At that point he would return to the hundredth century of the atomic era to wreak vengeance upon those who had risen against him.
A slow smile grew on Hradska's thin lips as he thought of the tortures with which he would put Zarvas Paul to death. He glanced up at the great disk of the indicator and frowned. Already he was back to the year 7500, A.E., and the temporal displacement had not begun to slow. The disk was turning even more rapidly—7000, 6000, 5500. He gasped slightly. Then he had passed his destination. He was now in the fortieth century, but the indicator was slowing. The hairline crossed the thirtieth century, the twentieth, the fifteenth, the tenth. He wondered what had gone wrong, but he had recovered from his fright by this time. When this insane machine stopped, as it must around the first century of the atomic era, he would investigate— He made repairs, then shift forward to his target point.
Ratska was determined upon the fifty-second century. He had made a special study of the history of that period, had learned the language spoken then, and he understood the methods necessary to gain power over the natives of that time.
The indicator disc came to a stop in the first century. He switched on the magnifier and leaned forward to look. He had emerged into normal time in the year ten of the atomic era, a decade after the first uranium pile had gone into operation, and seven years after the first atomic bombs had been exploded in warfare. The altimeter showed that he was hovering at eight thousand feet above ground level. Slowly, he cut out the antigrav, Letting the time machine down easily. He knew that there had been no danger of materializing inside anything. The new tower had been built to put it above anything that had occupied that space-point at any moment within history, or legend, or even the geological knowledge of man.
What lay below, however, was uncertain. It was night. The visiscreen showed only a star-dusted, moonless sky. and dark shadows below. He snapped another switch. For a few microseconds, a beam of intense light was turned on, automatically photographing the landscape under him. A second later, the developed picture was projected upon another screen. It showed only wooded mountains and a barren, brush-grown valley. The time machine came to rest with a soft jar and a crashing of broken brushes that was audible through the sound pickup. Radska pulled the main switch. There was a click as the shielding went out and the door opened. A breath of cool night air drew into the hollow sphere. Then there was a loud bang inside the mechanism, and a flash of blue-white light Which turned to pinkish flame with a nasty crackling.
Curls of smoke began to rise from the square black box that housed the time-shift mechanism, and from behind the instrument board. In a moment, everything was glowing hot. Driblets of aluminum and silver were running down from the instruments. Then the whole interior of the time-machine was afire. There was barely time for Hradzka to leap through the open door. The brush outside impeded him, and he used his blaster to clear a path for himself away from the big sphere, which was now glowing faintly on the outside. The heat grew in intensity, and the brush outside was taking fire. It was not until he had gotten two hundred yards from the machine that he stopped, realizing what had happened. The machine, of course, had been sabotaged.
That would have been young Zoldy, Whom he had killed, or that old billy-goat, Kradzky Zago, the latter, most likely. He cursed both of them, for having marooned him in this savage age, at the very beginning of atomic civilization, with all his printed and recorded knowledge destroyed. Oh, he could still gain mastery over these barbarians. He knew enough to fashion a crude blaster, or a heat-beam gun, or an atomic-electric conversion unit. But without his books and records, he could never build an anti-grav unit, and the secret of the temporal shift was lost. For time is not an object, or a medium which can be traveled along. The time machine was not a vehicle. It was a mechanical process of displacement within the space-time continuum.
And those who constructed it Knew that it could not be used with the sort of accuracy that the dials indicated. Hradska had ordered his scientists to produce a time machine, and they had combined the possible displacement within the space-time continuum with the sort of fiction the dictator demanded, for their own well-being. Even had there been no sabotage, his return to his own time was nearly of zero probability. The fire, spreading from the time machine, was blowing toward him. He observed the wind direction and hurried around out of the path of the flames. The light enabled him to pick his way through the brush, and, after crossing a small stream, he found a rutted road and followed it up the mountainside until he came to a place where he could rest concealed until morning.
It was broad daylight when he woke. and there was a strange throbbing sound. Hrazka lay motionless under the brush where he had slept, his blaster ready. In a few minutes a vehicle came into sight, following the road down the mountainside. It was a large thing, four-wheeled, with a projection in front which probably housed the engine and a cab for the operator. The body of the vehicle was simply an open rectangular box. There were two men in the cab, and about twenty or thirty more crowded into the box body. These were dressed in faded and nondescript garments of blue and gray and brown. All were armed with crude weapons—axes, bill-hooks, long-handled instruments with serrated edges, and what looked like broad-bladed spears.
The vehicle itself, which seemed to be propelled by some sort of chemical explosion engine, was dingy and mud-splattered. The men in it were ragged and unshaven. Hradzka snorted in contempt. They were probably warriors of the local tribe, going to the fire in the belief that it had been started by raiding enemies. When they found the wreckage of the time machine, They would no doubt believe that it was the chariot of some god and drag it home to be venerated. A plan of action was taking shape in his mind. First, he must get clothing of the sort worn by these people, and find a safe hiding-place for his own things. Then, pretending to be deaf-mute, he would go among them to learn something of their customs and pick up the language.
When he had done that— He would move on to another tribe or village, able to tell a credible story for himself. For a while, it would be necessary for him to do menial work, but in the end, he would establish himself among these people. Then he would gather around him a faction of those who were dissatisfied with whatever conditions existed, organize a conspiracy, make arms for his followers, and start his program of power seizure. The matter of clothing was attended to shortly after he had crossed the mountain and descended into the valley on the other side. Hearing a clinking sound some distance from the road, as of metal striking stone, Hradska stole cautiously through the woods until he came within sight of a man who was digging with a mattock, uprooting small bushes of a particular sort, with rough gray bark and three-pointed leaves.
When he had dug one up, he would cut off the roots and then slice away the root-bark with a knife, putting it into a sack. Horadzka's lip curled contemptuously. The fellow was gathering the stuff for medicinal use. He had heard of the use of roots and herbs for such purposes by the ancient savages. The blaster would be no use here. It was too powerful, and would destroy the clothing that the man was wearing. He unfastened a strap from his belt and attached it to a stone to form a hand-loop, then inched forward behind the lone herb-gatherer. When he was close enough, he straightened and rushed forward, swinging the improvised weapon. The man heard him and turned, too late. After undressing his victim, Hradska used the mattock to finish him and then to dig a grave.
The fugitive buried his own clothes with the murdered man, and donned the faded blue shirt, rough shoes, worn trousers, and jacket. The blaster he concealed under the jacket, and he kept a few other hundredth-century gadgets. These he would hide somewhere, closer to his center of operations. He had kept, among other things, a small box of food-concentrate capsules, and in one pocket of the newly acquired jacket He found a package containing food. It was rough and unappetizing fare, slices of cold-cooked meat between slices of some cereal substance. He ate these before filling in the grave, and put the paper wrappings in with the dead man. Then, his work finished, he threw the maddock into the brush and set out again, grimacing disgustedly and scratching himself.
The clothing he had appropriated was verminous.
Crossing another mountain, he descended into a second valley, and for a time lost his way among a tangle of narrow ravines. It was dark by the time he mounted a hill and found himself looking down another valley, in which a few scattered lights gave evidence of human habitations. Not wishing to arouse suspicion by approaching these in the night-time, He found a place among some young evergreens where he could sleep. The next morning, having breakfasted on a concentrate capsule, he found a hiding-place for his blaster in a hollow tree. It was in a sufficiently prominent position so that he could easily find it again, and at the same time unlikely to be discovered by some native. Then he went down into the inhabited valley.
He was surprised at the ease at which he established contact with the natives. The first dwelling which he approached, a cluster of farm buildings at the upper end of the valley, gave him shelter. There was a man, clad in the same sort of rough garments Hradzka had taken from the body of the herb-gatherer, and a woman in a faded and shapeless dress.
The man was thin and work-bent, the woman short and heavy. Both were past middle age.
He made inarticulate sounds to attract their attention, then gestured to his mouth and ears to indicate his assumed affliction. He rubbed his stomach to portray hunger. Looking about, he saw an axe sticking in a chopping block and a pile of wood near it, probably the fuel used by these people. He took up the axe, split up some of the wood, Then repeated the hunger signs. The man and the woman both nodded, laughing. He was shown a pile of tree limbs, and the man picked up a short billet of wood and used it like a measuring roll, to indicate that all the wood was to be cut to that length. Hradska fell to work, and, by mid-morning, he had all the wood cut. He had seen a circular stone, mounted on a trestle with a metal axle through it, and judged it to be some sort of a grinding wheel, since it was fitted with a foot-pedal and a rusty metal can was set above it to spill water onto the grinding edge.
After chopping the wood, he carefully sharpened the axe, handing it to the man for inspection. This seemed to please the man. He clapped Hradska on the shoulder, making commendatory sounds.
It required considerable time and ingenuity to make himself a more or less permanent member of the household. Horadzka made a survey of the farmyard, noting the sorts of work that would normally be performed on the farm, and he pantomimed this work in its simpler operations. He pointed to the east, where the sun would rise, and to the zenith, and to the west. He made signs indicative of eating, and of sleeping, and of rising, and of working. At length he succeeded in conveying his meaning. There was considerable argument between the man and the woman, but his proposal was accepted, as he expected that it would. It was easy to see that the work of the farm was hard for this aging couple. Now, for a place to sleep and a little food, They were able to acquire a strong and intelligent slave.
In the days that followed, he made himself useful to the farm-people. He fed the chickens and the livestock, milked the cow, worked in the fields. He slept in a small room at the top of the house, under the eaves, and ate with the man and woman in the farm-house kitchen. It was not long before he picked up a few words which he had heard his employers using. and related them to the things or acts spoken of. And he began to notice that these people, in spite of the crudities of their own life, enjoyed some of the advantages of fairly complex civilization. Their implements were not handcraft products, but showed machine workmanship. There were two objects hanging on hooks on the kitchen wall, which he was sure were weapons.
Both had wooden shoulder-stocks, and wooden forepieces. They had long tubes extending to the front, and triggers like blasters. One had double tubes mounted side by side, and double triggers. The other had an octagonal tube mounted over a round tube, and a loop extension on the trigger guard. Then there was a box on the kitchen wall, with a mouthpiece and a cylindrical tube on a cord. Sometimes a bell would ring out of the box, And the woman would go to this instrument, take down the tube and hold it to her ear, and talk into the mouthpiece. There was another box from which voices would issue, of people conversing, or of orators, or of singing, and sometimes instrumental music. None of these were objects made by savages.
These people probably traded with some fairly high civilization. They were not illiterate, He found printed matter indicating the use of some phonetic alphabet, and paper pamphlets containing printed reproductions of photographs, as well as verbal text. There was also a vehicle on the farm, powered, like the one he had seen on the road, by an engine in which a hydrocarbon liquid fuel was exploded. He made it his business to examine this minutely, and to study its construction and operation Until he was thoroughly familiar with it. It was not until the third day after his arrival that the chickens began to die. In the morning, Horozka found three of them dead when he went to feed them, and the rest drooping unhealthily.
He summoned the man and showed him what he had found. The next morning, they were all dead, and the cow was sick. She gave bloody milk that evening, And the next morning she lay in her stall and would not get up. The man and the woman were also beginning to sicken, though both of them tried to continue their work. It was the woman who first noticed that the plants around the farmhouse were withering and turning yellow.
The farmer went to the stable with Hrazga and looked at the cow. Shaking his head, he limped back to the house, and returned carrying one of the weapons from the kitchen, the one with the single trigger and the octagonal tube. As he entered the stable, he jerked down and up on the loop extension of the trigger guard, then put the weapon to his shoulder and pointed it at the cow. It made a flash and roared louder even than a hand-blaster, and the cow jerked convulsively and was dead. The man then indicated by signs that Hradska was to drag the dead cow out of the stable, dig a hole, and bury it. This Hradska did, carefully examining the wound in the cow's head. The weapon, he decided, was not an energy weapon, but a simple solid missile projector.
By evening, neither the man nor the woman were able to eat, and both seemed to be suffering intensely. The man used the communicating instrument on the wall, probably calling on his friends for help. Rautska did what he could to make them comfortable, cooked his own meal, washed the dishes as he had seen the woman doing, and tidied up the kitchen. It was not long before people, men and women whom he had seen on the road, or who had stopped at the farmhouse while he had been there, began arriving, some carrying baskets of food. And shortly after Hradska had eaten, a vehicle like the farmer's, but in better condition and of better quality, arrived and a young man got out of it and entered the house carrying a leather bag.
He was apparently some sort of a scientist. He examined the man and his wife, asked many questions, and administered drugs. He also took samples for blood tests and urinalysis. This, Hradska considered, was another of the many contradictions he had encountered among these people. This man behaved like an educated scientist, and seemingly had nothing in common with the peasant herb-gatherer on the mountainside. The fact was that Hradska was worried. The strange death of the animals, the blight which had smitten the trees and vegetables around the farm, and the sickness of the farmer and his wife, all mystified him. He did not know of any disease which would affect plants and animals and humans.
He wondered if some poisonous gas might not be escaping from the earth near the farmhouse. However, he had not himself been affected. He also disliked the way in which the doctor and the neighbor seemed to be talking about him. While he had come to a considerable revision of his original opinion about the culture level of these people, It was not impossible that they might suspect him of having caused the whole thing by witchcraft. At any moment they might fall upon him and put him to death. In any case, there was no longer any use in his staying here, and it might be wise if he left at once. Accordingly, he filled his pockets with food from the pantry and slipped out of the farmhouse. Before his absence was discovered, he was well on his way down the road.
That night, Radska slept under a bridge across a fairly wide stream. The next morning, he followed the road until it came to a town. It was not a large place. There were, perhaps, four or five hundred houses and other buildings in it. Most of these dwellings were like the farmhouse where he had been staying, but some were much larger, and seemed to be places of business. One of these latter was a concrete structure with wide doors at the front. Inside, he could see men working on the internal combustion vehicles which seemed to be in almost universal use. Horozka decided to obtain employment here. It would be best, he decided, to continue his pretense of being a deaf-mute. He did not know whether a world language were in use at this time or not, and even if not, The pretense of being a foreigner unable to speak the local dialect might be dangerous.
So he entered the vehicle repair shop and accosted a man in a clean shirt who seemed to be issuing instructions to the workers, going into his pantomime of the homeless mute seeking employment. The master of the repair shop merely laughed at him, however. Ratska became more insistent in his manner, Making signs to indicate his hunger and willingness to work. The other men in the shop left their tasks and gathered around. There was much laughter and unmistakable ribald and derogatory remarks. Ratzka was beginning to give up hope of getting employment here when one of the workmen approached the master and whispered something to him. The two of them walked away, conversing in low voices. Hradzka thought he understood the situation.
No doubt the workman, thinking to lighten his own labor, was urging that the vagrant be employed, for no other pay than food and lodging. At length, the master assented to his employees' urgings. He returned, showing Hradzka a hose and a bucket and sponges and cloths, and sent him to work cleaning the mud from one of the vehicles. Then, After seeing that the work was being done properly, he went away, entering a room at one side of the shop. About twenty minutes later, another man entered the shop. He was not dressed like any of the other people whom Hradska had seen. He wore a gray tunic and breeches, polished black boots, and a cap with a visor and a metal insignia on it. On a belt, he carried a holstered weapon, like a blaster.
After speaking to one of the workers, who pointed Hradska out to him, he approached the fugitive and said something. Hradska made gestures at his mouth and ears and made gargling sounds. The newcomer shrugged and motioned him to come with him, at the same time producing a pair of handcuffs from his belt and jingling them suggestively. In a few seconds, Hradska tried to analyze the situation and estimate its possibilities. The newcomer was a soldier, or, more likely, a policeman, since monocles were part of his equipment. Evidently, since the evening before, a warning had been made public by means of communicating devices such as he had seen at the farm, advising people that a man of his description, pretending to be a death-mute, should be detained and the police notified.
It had been for that reason that the workman had persuaded his master to employ Hradska. No doubt he would be accused of causing the conditions at the farm by sorcery. Hradska shrugged and nodded, then went to the water-tap to turn off the hose he had been using. He disconnected it, coiled it, and hung it up, and then picked up the water-bucket. Then, without warning, he hurled the water into the policeman's face Sprang forward, swinging the bucket by the bail, and hit the man on the head. Releasing his grip on the bucket, he tore the blaster, or whatever it was, from the holster. One of the workers swung a hammer, as though to throw it. Hrazka aimed the weapon at him and pulled the trigger. The thing belched fire and kicked back painfully in his hand, and the man fell.
He used it again to drop the policeman Then thrust it into the waistband of his trousers and ran outside. The thing was not a blaster at all, he realized, only a missile projector, like the big weapons at the farm, utilizing the force of some chemical explosion. The policeman's vehicle was standing outside. It was a small, single-seat, two-wheeled affair. Having become familiar with the principles of these hydrocarbon engines from examination of the vehicle on the farm, and accustomed as he was to far more complex mechanisms than this crude affair, Haradzka could see at a glance how to operate it. Springing onto the saddle, he kicked away the folding support and started the engine. Just as he did, the master of the repair shop ran outside, one of the small hand-weapons in his hand, and fired several shots.
They all missed, but Hradska heard the whining sound of the missiles passing uncomfortably close to him.
It was imperative that he recovered the blaster he had hidden in the hollow tree at the head of the valley. By this time, there would be a concerted search under way for him, and he needed a better weapon than the solid missile projector he had taken from the policeman. He did not know how many shots the thing contained, but if it propelled solid missiles by chemical explosion, there could not have been more than five or six such charges in the cylindrical part of the weapon which he had assumed to be the charge-holder. On the other hand, his blaster, a weapon of much greater power, contained enough energy for five hundred blasts, and with it were eight extra energy capsules Giving him a total of four thousand five hundred blasts.
Handling the two-wheeled vehicle was no particular problem. Although he had never ridden on anything of the sort before, it was child's play compared to controlling a hundredth-century stratorocket, and Hradska was a skilled rocket pilot. Several times he passed vehicles on the road, the passenger vehicles with enclosed cabins, and cargo vehicles piled high with farm produce. Once he encountered a large number of children, gathered in front of a big red building with a flagstaff in front, from which a queer flag, with horizontal red and white stripes, and a white-spotted blue device in the corner flew. They scattered off the road in terror at his approach. Fortunately, he hit none of them, for at the speed at which he was traveling, such a collision would have wrecked his light vehicle.
As he approached the farm where he had spent the past few days, he saw two passenger vehicles standing by the road. One was a black one, similar to the one in which the physician had come to the farm, and the other was white with black trimmings, and bore the same device he had seen on the cap of the policeman. A policeman was sitting in the driver's seat of this vehicle, and another policeman was standing beside it. Breathing smoke with one of the white paper cylinders these people used. In the farmyard, two men were going about with a square black box. To this box, a tube was connected by a wire, and they were passing the tube about over the ground. The policeman who was standing beside the vehicle saw him approach, and blew his whistle, then drew the weapon from his belt.
Hradzka, who had been expecting some attempt to halt him, had let go the right-hand steering handle and drawn his own weapon. As the policeman drew, he fired at him. Without observing the effect of the shot, he sped on. Before he had rounded the bend above the farm, several shots were fired after him. A mile beyond, he came to the place where he had hidden the blaster. He stopped the vehicle and jumped off, plunging into the brush and racing toward the hollow tree. Just as he reached it, he heard a vehicle approach and stop, and the door of the police vehicle slam. Ratzka's fingers found the belt of his blaster. He dragged it out and buckled it on, tossing away the missile weapon he had been carrying.
Then, crouching behind the tree, he waited. A few moments later, he caught a movement in the brush toward the road. He brought up the blaster, aimed, and squeezed the trigger. There was a faint bluish glow at the muzzle, and a blast of energy tore through the brush, smashing the molecular structure of everything that stood in the way. There was an involuntary shout of alarm from the direction of the road. At least one of the policemen had escaped the blast. Radska holstered his weapon and crept away for some distance, keeping under cover, then turned and waited for some sign of the presence of his enemies. For some time, nothing happened. He decided to turn Hunter against the men who were hunting him.
He started back in the direction of the road, making a wide circle, flitting silently from rock to bush and from bush to tree, stopping often to look and listen.
This finally brought him upon one of the policemen, and almost terminated his flight at the same time. He must have grown overconfident and careless. Suddenly a weapon roared, and a missile smashed through the brush inches from his face. The shot had come from his left, and a little to the rear. Whirling, he blasted four times, in rapid succession, then turned and fled for a few yards, dropped and crawling behind a rock. When he looked back— He could see wisps of smoke rising from the shattered trees and brushes which had absorbed the energy output of his weapon, and he caught a faint odor of burned flesh. One of his pursuers, at least, would pursue him no longer. He slipped away, down into the tangle of ravines and hollows in which he had wandered the day before his arrival at the farm.
For the time being, he felt safe. And finally confident that he was not being pursued, he stopped to rest. The place where he stopped seemed familiar, and he looked about. In a moment he recognized the little stream, the pool where he had bathed his feet, the clump of seedling pines under which he had slept. He even found the silver foil wrapping from the food-concentrate capsule. But there had been a change since the night when he had slept here. Then the young pines had been green and alive. Now they were blighted, and their needles had turned brown. Hradzka stood for a long time, looking at them. It was the same blight that had touched the plants around the farmhouse. And here, among the pine needles on the ground, lay a dead bird.
It took some time for him to admit to himself the implications of vegetation, the chickens, the cow, the farmer and his wife, had all sickened and died. He had been in this place, and now, when he had returned, he found that death had followed him here, too.
During the early centuries of the atomic era, he knew, there had been great wars, The stories of which had survived even to the hundredth century. Among the weapons that had been used, there had been artificial plagues and epidemics, caused by new types of bacteria developed in laboratories, against which the victims had possessed no protection. Those germs and viruses had persisted for centuries, and gradually had lost their power to harm mankind. Suppose, now, that he had brought some of them back with him, to a century before they had been developed. Suppose, that was, that he were a human plague-carrier. He thought of the vermin that had infested the clothing he had taken from the man he had killed on the other side of the mountain.
They had not troubled him after the first day. There was a throbbing mechanical sound somewhere in the air. He looked about. And finally identified its source. A small aircraft had come over the valley from the other side of the mountain and was circling lazily overhead. He froze, shrinking back under a pine tree. As long as he remained motionless he would not be seen, and soon the thing would go away. He was beginning to understand why the search for him was being pressed so relentlessly. As long as he remained alive, He was a menace to everybody in the first-century world. He got out his supply of food concentrates, saw that he had only three capsules left, and put them away again. For a long time he sat under the dying tree, chewing on a twig and thinking.
There must be some way in which he could overcome, or even utilize, his inherent deadliness to these people. He might find some isolated community, conceal himself near it, invade it at night, and infect it, and then, when everybody was dead, move in and take it for himself. But was there any such isolated community? The farmhouse where he had worked had been fairly remote, yet its inhabitants had been in communication with the outside world, and the physician had come immediately in response to their call for help.
The little aircraft had been circling overhead, directly above the place where he lay hidden. For a while, Hradska was afraid it had spotted him, and was debating the advisability of using his blaster on it. Then it banked, turned, and went away. He watched it circle over the valley on the other side of the mountain, and got to his feet. Almost at once there was a new sound, a multiple throbbing, At a quick, snarling tempo that hinted at enormous power, growing louder each second. Hradska stiffened and drew his blaster. As he did, five more aircraft swooped over the crest of the mountain and came rushing down toward him. Not aimlessly, but as though they knew exactly where he was. As they approached, the leading edges of their wings sparkled with light.
Branches began flying from the trees about him. And there was a loud hammering noise. He aimed a little in front of them and began blasting. A wing flew from one of the aircraft, and it plunged downward. Another came apart in the air, a third burst into flames. The other two zoomed upward quickly. Horadzka swung his blaster after them, blasting again and again. He hit a fourth with a blast of energy, knocking it to pieces. And then the fifth was out of range. He blasted at it twice, but without effect. A hand-blaster was only good for a thousand yards at the most. Holstering his weapon, he hurried away, following the stream and keeping under the cover of trees. The last of the attacking aircraft had gone away, but the little scout plane was still circling about, well out of blaster range.
Once or twice, Horadzka was compelled to stay hidden for some time, not knowing the nature of the pilot's ability to detect him. It was during one of these waits that the next phase of attack developed. It began, like the last one, with a distant roar that swelled in volume until it seemed to fill the whole world. Then, fifteen or twenty thousand feet out of blaster range, the new attacker swept into sight. There must have been fifty of them, huge tapered things with wide-spread wings, flying in close formation, wave after V-shaped wave. He stood and stared at them, amazed. He had never imagined that such aircraft existed in the first century. Then a high-pitched screaming sound cut through the roar of the propellers, and for an instant he saw countless small specks in the sky falling downward.
The first bomb-salvo landed in the Young Pines, where he had fought against the first air attack. Great gouts of flame shot upward, and smoke and flying earth and debris. Hradska turned and started to run. Another salvo fell in front of him. He veered to the left and plunged on through the undergrowth. Now the bombs were falling all about him, deafening him with their thunder. Shaking him with concussion. He dodged, frightened, as the trunk of a tree came crashing down beside him. Then something hit him across the back, knocking him flat. For a moment he lay stunned, then tried to rise. As he did, a searing light filled his eyes and a wave of intolerable heat swept over him. Then darkness. Kradzizago repeated.
"'Hradska will not return. The time-machine was sabotaged.' "'So? By you?' the soldier asked. The scientist nodded. "'I knew the purpose for which he intended it. Hradska was not content with having enslaved a whole solar system. He hungered to bring tyranny and serfdom to all the past and all the future as well. He wanted to be master not only of the present, but of the centuries that were and were to be as well. I never took part in politics, Zarvas Paul. I had no hand in this revolt. But I could not be party to such a crime as Hradska contemplated when it lay within my power to prevent it. The machine will take him out of our space-time continuum, or back to a time when this planet was a swirling cloud of flaming gas.
Zarbos Paul asked. Kradzi Zago shook his head. No, the unit is not powerful enough for that. It would only take him about ten thousand years into the past. But then, when it stops, the machine will destroy itself. It may destroy Horatska with it or he may escape. But if he does, he will be left stranded ten thousand years ago, when he can do us no harm. Actually, it did not operate as he imagined. And there is an infinitely small chance that he could have returned to our time in any event. But I want to ensure against even so small a chance."
We can't be sure of that, Zarvas Paul objected. He may know more about the machine than you think, enough more to build another like it. So you must build me a machine, and I'll take back a party of volunteers and hunt him down. That would not be necessary. And you would only share his fate." Then, apparently changing the subject, Kratzi Zago asked, "'Tell me, Zarvas Paul, have you never heard the legends of the deadly radiations?' General Zarvas smiled. "'Who has not? Every cadet at the officers' college dreams of rediscovering them, to use as a weapon, but nobody ever has. We hear these tales of how, in the early days, atomic engines and piles and fission bombs emitted particles which were utterly deadly, which would make anything with which they came in contact deadly, which would bring a horrible death to any human being.
But these are only myths. All the ancient experiments have been duplicated time and again, and the deadly radiation effect has never been observed. Some say that it is a mere old wives' terror tale, Some say that the deaths were caused by fear of atomic energy, when it was still unfamiliar. Others contend that the fundamental nature of atomic energy has altered by the degeneration of fissionable matter. For my own part, I'm not enough of a scientist to have an opinion." The old one smiled wanly. None of these theories are correct. In the beginning of the atomic era, the deadly radiations existed. They still exist. But they are no longer deadly, because all life on this planet has adapted itself to such radiations, and all living things are now immune to them.
And Hradska has returned to a time when such immunity did not exist? But would that not be to his advantage? Remember, General, that man has been using atomic energy for ten thousand years. Our whole world has become drenched with radioactivity. The planet, the seas, the atmosphere, and every living thing are all radioactive now. Radioactivity is as natural to us as the air we breathe. Now, you remember hearing of the great wars of the first centuries of the atomic era, in which whole nations were wiped out, leaving only hundreds of survivors out of millions. You no doubt think that such tales are products of ignorant and barbaric imagination. But I assure you, they are literally true. It was not the blast effect of a few bombs that created such holocausts, but the radiations released by the bombs.
And those who survived to carry on the race were men and women whose systems resisted the radiations, and they transmitted to their progeny that power of resistance. In many cases, their children were mutants. Not monsters, although there were many of them, too, which did not survive, but humans who were immune to radioactivity. An interesting theory, Krasi Zago, the soldier commented, and one which conforms both to what we know of atomic energy and to the ancient legends. Then would you say that those radiations are still deadly to the non-immune? Exactly. And Hradska, his body emitting those radiations, has returned to the first century of the atomic era, to a world without immunity." General Zarva's smile vanished.
"'Man!' he cried in horror. "'You have loosed a carrier of death among those innocent people of the past!' Krodzky Zago nodded. "'That is true. I estimate that Hradska will probably cause the death of a hundred or so people. Before he is dealt with. But dealt with he will be. Tell me, General, if a man should appear now, out of nowhere, spreading a strange and horrible plague wherever he went, what would you do?" "'Why, I'd hunt him down and kill him,' General Zarvas replied. Not for anything he did, but for the menace he was. And then I'd cover his body with a mass of concrete bigger than this palace." "'Precisely,' cried Skizago, smiled. "'And the military commanders and the political leaders of the first century were no less ruthless or efficient than you.
You know how atomic energy was first used. There was an ancient nation, upon the ruins of whose cities we have built our own, which was famed for its idealistic humanitarianism. Yet that nation, treacherously attacked—' "'Created the first atomic bombs in self-defense, and used them. It is among the people of that nation that Horatska has emerged.' "'But would they recognize him as the cause of the calamity he brings among them?' "'Of course. He will emerge at the time when atomic energy is first being used. They will have detectors for the deadly radiations—detectors we know nothing of to-day, for a detection instrument must be free from the thing it is intended to detect.' And to-day everything is radioactive.
It will be a day or so before they discover what is happening to them, and not a few will die in that time, I fear. But once they have found out what is killing their people, Horatska's days—no, his hours—will be numbered." "'A mass of concrete bigger than this palace,' Taub the slave repeated General Sarva's words. "'The ancient spaceport.' Prince Bravani clapped him on the shoulder. "'Tob, man! You've hid it!' "'You mean,' cried Zizago, began. "'Yes. You all know of it. It stood for nobody knows how many millennia, and nobody's ever decided what it was, to begin with, except that somebody, once, filled a valley with concrete. Level from mountaintop to mountaintop!' The accepted theory is that it was done for a firing stand for the first moon rocket.
But, gentlemen, our friend Taubes explained it. It's the tomb of Hradska, and it's been the tomb of Hradska for ten thousand years before Hradska was born. .
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5 4 - Police Operation (part 1) 24:35
Police Operation by H. Beam Piper Part One John Strawmeyer stood, an irate figure in faded overalls and sweat-whitened black shirt, apart from the others, his back to the weathered farm buildings and the line of yellowing woods and the cirrus-streaked blue October sky. He thrust out a work-gnarled hand, accusingly. "'That there heifer was worth two hundred, two hundred and fifty dollars,' he clamored. "'And that there dog was just like one of the family. And now look at him. I don't like to use profane language, but Youne's got to do something about this.' Steve Parker, the district game protector, aimed his Laika at the carcass of the dog and snapped the shutter. "'We're doing something about it,' he said shortly.
Then he stepped ten feet to the left and edged around the mangled heifer, choosing an angle for his camera shot. The two men in gray whipcords of the State Police, seeing that Parker was through with the dog, moved in and squatted to examine it. The one with the triple chevrons on his sleeves took it by both four feet and flipped it over on its back. It had been a big brute, of nondescript breed, with a rough black-and-brown coat. Something had clawed it deeply about the head. Its throat was slashed transversely several times, and it had been disemboweled by a single slash that had opened its belly from breastbone to tail. They looked at it carefully, and then went to stand beside Parker while he photographed the dead heifer.
Like the dog, it had been talon-raked on either side of the head, And its throat had been slashed deeply several times. In addition, flesh had been torn from one flank in great strips. "'I can't kill a bear out of season, no,' Strawmeyer continued his plaint. "'But a bear comes and kills my stock and my dog, and that there's all right. That's the kind of deal a farmer always gets in this state. I don't like to use profane language.' Then don't, Parker barked at him impatiently. Don't use any kind of language. Just put it in your claim and shut up. He turned to the men in whipcords and gray stetsons. You boys seen everything? he asked. Then let's go. They walked briskly back to the barnyard, Strawmire following them, still vociferating about the wrongs of the farmer at the hands of a cynical and corrupt state government.
They climbed into the state police car, the sergeant and the private in front, and Parker into the rear, laying his camera on the seat beside a Winchester carbine. "'Weren't you pretty short with that fellow back there, Steve?' the sergeant asked, as the private started the car. "'Not too short.' "'I don't like to use profane language,' Parker mimicked the bereaved heifer owner, and then he went on to specify—' I'm morally certain that he shot at least four illegal deer in the last year. When and if I ever get anything on him, he's going to be sorrier for himself than he is now. They're the characters that always beef their heads off, the sergeant agreed. You think that whatever did this was the same as the others?
Yes. The dog must have jumped it while it was eating at the heifer. Some superficial scratches about the head, and deep cuts on the throat or belly. The bigger the animal, the farther front the big slashes occur. Evidently, something grabs them by the head with front claws, and slashes with hind claws. That's why I think it's a bobcat. "'You know,' the private said, "'I saw a lot of wounds like that during the war. My outfit landed on Mindanao, where the guerrillas had been active. And this looks like bolo work to me. The surplus stores are full of machetes and jungle knives, the sergeant considered. I think I'll call up Doc Winters at the county hospital and see if all his squirrel fodder is present and accounted for.
But most of the livestock was eaten at, like the heifer, Parker objected. By definition, nuts have abnormal tastes. The sergeant replied. Or the eating might have been done later, by foxes. I hope so. That'll let me out, Parker said. Ha! Listen to the man, the private howled, stopping the car at the end of the lane. He thinks a nut with a machete and a Tarzan complex is just good, clean fun. Which way, now? Well, let's see. The sergeant had unfolded a quadrangle sheet. The game protector leaned forward to look at it over his shoulder. The sergeant ran a finger from one to another of a series of variously colored crosses, which had been marked on the map. "'Monday night, over here on Copperhead Mountain.
That cow was killed,' he said. "'The next night, about ten o'clock, that sheep flock was hit, on this side of Copperhead, right about here. Early Wednesday night,' That mule got slashed up in the woods back of the Weston farm. It was only slightly injured. Must have kicked the watsit and got away. But the watsit wasn't too badly hurt, because a few hours later it hit that turkey flock on the Reimer farm. And last night it did that. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the Strawmire farm. See? Following the ridges, working toward the southeast, Avoiding open ground, killing only at night. Could be a bobcat at that.
Or, Jinx's maniac with the machete, Parker agreed. Let's go up by Hinman's Gap and see if we can see anything. They turned after a while into a rutted dirt road, which deteriorated steadily into a grass-grown track through the woods. Finally they stopped, and the private backed off the road. The three men got out, Parker with his Winchester, the sergeant checking the drum of a Thompson, and the private pumping a buckshot shell into the chamber of a riot gun. For half an hour they followed the brush-grown trail beside the little stream. Once they passed a dark gray commercial model jeep back to one side. Then they came to the head of the gap. A man wearing a tweed coat Tan field boots and khaki breeches was sitting on a log, smoking a pipe.
He had a bolt-action rifle across his knees, and a pair of binoculars hung from his neck. He seemed about thirty years old, and any Bobby Soxer's idol of the screen would have envied him the handsome regularity of his strangely immobile features. As Parker and the two state policemen approached, he rose, slinging his rifle, and greeted them. "'Sergeant Haynes, isn't it?' he asked pleasantly. "'Are you gentlemen out hunting the critter, too?' "'Good afternoon, Mr. Lee. I thought that was your jeep I saw down the road a little.' The sergeant turned to the others. "'Mr. Richard Lee, staying at the old Kinchwater Place, the other side of Rudder's Fort. This is Mr. Parker, the district game protector, and Private Zinkowski.' He glanced at the rifle.
Are you out hunting for it, too?" Yes. I thought I might find something up here. What do you think it is?" I don't know," the sergeant admitted. It could be a bobcat. Canada Lynx. Jink here has a theory that it's some escapee from the paper-doll factory with a machete. Me? I hope not. But I'm not ignoring the possibility. The man with the matinee idol's face nodded. It could be a lynx. I understand they're not unknown in this section. We paid bounties on two in this county in the last year, Parker said.
Odd rifle you have there. Mind if I have a look at it? Not at all. The man who had been introduced as Richard Lee unslung and handed it over. The chamber's loaded, he cautioned. "'I never saw one like this,' Parker said. "'Foreign?' "'I think so. I don't know anything about it. It belongs to a friend of mine, who loaned it to me. I think the action's German, or Czech. The rest of it's a custom job, by some West Coast gun-maker. It's chambered for some ultra-velocity wildcat load.' The rifle passed from hand to hand. The three men examined it in turn, commenting admiringly. "'You find anything, Mr. Lee?' the sergeant asked, handing it back. "'Not a trace.' The man called Lee slung the rifle and began to dump the ashes from his pipe.
"'I was along the top of this ridge for about a mile on either side of the gap, and down the other side as far as Hindman's Run. I didn't find any tracks. Or any indication of where it had made a kill. The game protector nodded, turning to Sergeant Haynes. "'There's no use us going any farther,' he said. Ten to one, it followed that line of woods back of Strawmire's, and crossed over to the other ridge. "'I think our best bet would be the hollow at the end of Lowry's run. What do you think?' The sergeant agreed. The man called Richard Lee began to refill his pipe methodically. "'I think I shall stay here for a while, but I believe you're right. Lowry's Run, or across Lowry's Gap into Coon Valley,' he said.
After Parker and the state policemen had gone, the man whom they had addressed as Richard Lee returned to his log and sat smoking, his rifle across his knees. From time to time he glanced at his wrist-watch and raised his head to listen. At length, faint in the distance, he heard the sound of a motor starting. Instantly he was on his feet. From the end of the hollow log on which he had been sitting he produced a canvas musette-bag. Walking briskly to a patch of damp ground beside the little stream, he leaned the rifle against a tree and opened the bag. First, he took a pair of gloves of some greenish rubber-like substance and put them on, drawing the long gauntlets up over his coat-sleeves. Then he produced a bottle and unscrewed the cap.
Being careful to avoid splashing his clothes, he went about pouring a clear liquid upon the ground in several places. Where he poured, white vapors rose, and twigs and grass crumbled into brownish dust. After he had replaced the cap and returned the bottle to the bag, he waited for a few minutes, then took a spatula from the musette and dug where he had poured the fluid, prying loose four, black, irregular-shaped lumps of matter, which he carried to the running water and washed carefully, before wrapping them and putting them in the bag, along with the gloves. Then he slung bag and rifle, and started down the trail to where he had parked the jeep.
Half an hour later, after driving through the little farming village of Rudder's Fort, he pulled into the barnyard of a run-down farm and backed through the open doors of the barn. He closed the double doors behind him and barred them from within. Then, He went to the rear wall of the barn, which was much closer the front than the outside dimensions of the barn would have indicated. He took from his pocket a black object like an automatic pencil. Hunting over the rough plank wall, he found a small hole and inserted the pointed end of the pseudo-pencil, pressing on the other end. For an instant, nothing happened. Then, A ten-foot square section of the wall receded two feet and slid noiselessly to one side.
The section which had slid inward had been built of three-inch steel, massed by a thin covering of boards. The wall around it was two-foot concrete, similarly camouflaged. He stepped quickly inside.
Fumbling at the right side of the opening, he found a switch and flicked it. Instantly, the massive steel plate slid back into place with a soft, oily click. As it did, lights came on within the hidden room, disclosing a great semi-globe of some fine metallic mesh, thirty feet in diameter and fifteen in height. There was a sliding door at one side of this. The man called Richard Lee opened and entered through it, closing it behind him. Then, He turned to the center of the hollow dome, where an armchair was placed in front of a small desk below a large instrument panel. The gauges and dials on the panel, and the levers and switches and buttons on the desk control board, were all lettered and numbered with characters not of the Roman alphabet or the Arabic notation.
And within instant reach of the occupant of the chair, a pistol-like weapon lay on the desk. It had a conventional index finger trigger and a hand-fit grip. But instead of a tubular barrel, two slender parallel metal rods extended about four inches forward of the receiver, joined together at what would correspond to the muzzle by a streamlined knob of some light blue ceramic or plastic substance. The man, with the handsome, immobile face, deposited his rifle and musette on the floor beside the chair and sat down. First, he picked up the pistol-like weapon and checked it. And then he examined the many instruments on the panel in front of him. Finally, he flicked a switch on the control board. At once, a small humming began from some point overhead.
It wavered and shrilled and mounted in intensity, and then fell to a steady monotone. The dome about him flickered with a queer, cold iridescence, and slowly vanished. The hidden room vanished, and he was looking into the shadowy interior of a deserted barn. The barn vanished. Blue sky appeared above, streaked with wisps of high cirrus cloud. The autumn landscape flickered unreally. Buildings appeared and vanished. and other buildings came and went in a twinkling. All around him half-seen shapes moved briefly and disappeared. Once the figure of a man appeared inside the circle of the dome. He had an angry, brutal face, and he wore a black tunic piped with silver and black breeches and polished black boots, and there was an insignia composed of a cross and thunderbolt on his cap.
He held an automatic pistol in his hand. Instantly, the man at the desk snatched up his own weapon and thumbed off the safety. But before he could lift and aim it, the intruder stumbled and passed outside the force field which surrounded the chair and instruments. For a while, there were fires raging outside, and for a while, the man at the desk was surrounded by a great hall, with a high, vaulted ceiling, through which figures flitted and vanished. For a while, there were vistas of deep forests, always set in the same background of mountains, and always under the same blue cirrus-laced sky. There was an interval of flickering blue-white light, of unbearable intensity. Then the man at the desk was surrounded by the interior of vast industrial works.
The moving figures around him slowed and became more distinct. For an instant, the man in the chair grinned as he found himself looking into a big washroom, where a tall, blond girl was taking a shower-bath, and a pert little redhead was vigorously drying herself with a towel.
The dome grew visible, coruscating with many-colored lights, and then the humming died, and the dome became a cold and inert mesh of fine white metal. A green light above flashed on and off, slowly. He stabbed a button and flipped a switch, then got to his feet, picking up his rifle and musette, and fumbling under his shirt for a small mesh bag, from which he took an inch-wide disk of blue plastic. Unlocking a container on the instrument panel, He removed a small roll of solidograph film, which he stowed in his bag. Then he slid open the door and emerged into his own dimension of space-time.
Outside was a wide hallway with a pale green floor, paler green walls, and a ceiling of greenish-off-white. A big hole had been cut to accommodate the dome, and across the hallway a desk had been set up, and at it sat a clerk in a pale blue tunic, who was just taking the audio plugs of a music box out of his ears. A couple of policemen in green uniforms, with ultrasonic paralyzers dangling by thongs from their left wrists, and holstered sigma-ray needlers, like the one on the desk inside the dome, were kidding with some girls in vivid orange and scarlet and green smocks. One of these, in bright green, was a duplicate of the one he had seen rubbing herself down with a towel. "'Here comes your boss, man,' one of the girls told the cops as he approached.
They both turned and saluted casually. The man who had lately been using the name of Richard Lee responded to their greeting and went to the desk. The policemen grasped their paralyzers, drew their needlers, and hurried into the dome. Taking the disk of blue plastic from his packet, he handed it to the clerk at the desk, who dropped it into a slot in the voter in front of him. Instantly, a mechanical voice responded. Verkan Vall, Blue Seal Noble, Hereditary Mavrad of Neros, Special Chiefs Assistant, Paratime Police, Special Assignment, Subject to no orders below those of Tortha Karf, Chief of Paratime Police. To be given all courtesies and cooperation within the Paratime Transposition Code and the Police Powers Code.
Further particulars? The clerk pressed the No button. The blue sigil fell out of the release slot, and was handed back to its bearer, who was drawing up his left sleeve. "'You'll want to be sure I'm your Verkan Vall, I suppose?' he said, extending his arm. Yes, quite, sir. The clerk touched his arm with a small instrument, which swabbed it with antiseptic, drew a minute blood sample, and medicated the needle prick, all in one almost painless operation. He put the blood sample on a slide, and inserted it at one side of a comparison microscope, nodding. It showed the same distinctive permanent colloid pattern, As the sample he had ready for comparison. The colloid pattern given in infancy by injection to the man in front of him, to set him apart from all the myriad other Verkenvalls on every other probability line of paratime.
Right, sir, the clerk nodded. The two policemen came out of the dome, their needlers holstered and their vigilance relaxed. They were lighting cigarettes as they emerged. "'It's all right, sir,' one of them said. "'You didn't bring anything in with you this trip.' The other cop chuckled. "'Remember that fifth-level wild man who came in on the freight conveyor at Jandar last month?' he asked. If he was hoping that some of the girls would want to know what wild man, it was a vain hope. With a blue-seal mavrat around, what chance did a couple of ordinary coppers have?' The girls were already converging on Verkan Vall. "'When are you going to get that monstrosity out of our restroom?' the little red-head in green coveralls was demanding.
"'If it wasn't for that thing, I'd be taking a shower right now.' "'You were just finishing one about fifty paraseconds off when I came through,' Verkan Vall told her." The girl looked at him in obviously feigned indignation. "'Why, you—you parapeeper!' Verkenvall chuckled and turned to the clerk. "'I want a strato-rocket and pilot for Dergabar, right away. Call Dergabar Paratime Police Field and give them my E.T.A. Have an air-taxi meet me, and have the chief notified that I'm coming in. Extraordinary report. Keep a guard over the conveyor. I think I'm going to need it again soon.' He returned to the little redhead. "'Want to show me the way out of here, to the rocket field?' he asked. Outside, on the open landing-field, Verkan Vall glanced up at the sky, then looked at his watch.
It had been twenty minutes since he had backed the jeep into the barn on that distant other time-line. The same delicate lines of white cirrus were etched across the blue above. The constancy of the weather, even across two hundred thousand peri-years of perpendicular time, never failed to impress him. The long curve of the mountains was the same, and they were modeled with the same autumn colors. But where the little village of Rudder's Fort stood on that other line of probability, the white towers of an apartment city rose, the living quarters of the plant personnel.
End of Police Operation, Part One.
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6 4 - Police Operation (part 2) 42:58
Police Operation by H. Beam Piper Part Two The rocket that was to take him to headquarters was being hoisted with a crane and lowered into the firing stand, and he walked briskly toward it, his rifle and musette slung. A boyish-looking pilot was on the platform, opening the door of the rocket. He stood aside for Verkan Vall to enter, Then followed and closed it, dogging it shut while his passenger stowed his bag and rifle, and strapped himself into a seat. "'Dirgabar Commercial Terminal, sir?' the pilot asked, taking the adjoining seat at the controls. "'Paratime Police Field, back of the Paratime Administration Building.' "'Right, sir. Twenty seconds to blast, when you are ready.' "'Ready now.' Verkan Vall relaxed.
Counting seconds subconsciously. The rocket trembled, and Verkan Vall felt himself being pushed gently back against the upholstery. The seats and the pilot's instrument panel in front of them swung on gimbals, and the finger of the indicator swept slowly over a ninety-degree arc as the rocket rose and leveled. By then, the high cirrus clouds Verkan Vall had watched from the field were far below. They were well into the stratosphere. There would be nothing to do now, for the three hours in which the rocket sped northward across the pole and southward to Durga Bar. The navigation was entirely in the electronic hands of robot controls. Verkan Vall got out his pipe and lit it. The pilot lit a cigarette.
"'Out-time item?' "'Yes. Fourth probability level. Typical of the whole paratime belt I was working in.' Verkin Vall handed it over for inspection. "'The bowl's natural briar-root. The stem's a sort of plastic made from the sap of certain tropical trees. The little white dot is the maker's trademark. It's made of elephant tusk.' "'Sounds pretty crude to me, sir.' The pilot handed it back. Nice workmanship, though. Looks like good machine production. Yes. The sector I was on is really quite advanced, for an electrochemical civilization. That weapon I brought back with me, that solid missile projector, is typical of most fourth-level culture. Moving parts machined to the closest tolerances, and interchangeable with similar parts of all similar weapons.
The missile is a small bolt of copper-alloy-coated lead, propelled by expanding gases from the ignition of some nitrocellulose compound. Most of their scientific advance occurred within the past century, and most of that in the past forty years. Of course, the life expectancy on that level is only about seventy years. "'Hum! I'm seventy-eight, last birthday,' the boyish-looking pilot snorted. Their medical science must be mostly witchcraft." Until quite recently, it was, Verkenwald agreed. Same story there as in everything else. Rapid advancement in the past few decades, after thousands of years of cultural inertia.
You know, sir, I don't really understand this paratime stuff, the pilot confessed. I know that all time is totally present, and that every moment has its own past-future line of event sequence, and that all events in spacetime occur according to maximum probability. But I just don't get this alternate probability stuff at all. If something exists, it's because it's the maximum probability effect of prior causes. Why does anything else exist on any other timeline? Verkan Vall blew smoke at the air renovator. A lecture on paratime theory would nicely fill in the three-hour interval until the landing at Dergabar. At least this kid was asking intelligent questions. Well, you know the principle of time passage, I suppose, he began.
Yes, of course. Rogam's doctrine. The basis of most of our psychical science. We exist perpetually at all moments within our life span. Our extra-physical ego component passes from the ego existing at one moment to the ego existing at the next. During unconsciousness, the EPC is time-free. It may detach and connect at some other moment with the ego existing at that time point. That's how we precog. We take an auto-hypno, and recover memories brought back from the future moment and buried in the subconscious mind. That's right, Verkenwald told him. And even without the auto-hypno, a lot of precognitive matter leaks out of the subconscious and into the conscious mind, usually in distorted forms, or else inspires instinctive acts, the motivation for which is not brought to the level of consciousness.
For instance, Suppose you're walking along North Promenade, in Durga Bar, and you come to the Martian Palace Café, and you go in for a drink, and meet some girl, and strike up an acquaintance with her. This chance acquaintance develops into a love affair, and, a year later, out of jealousy, she raise you half a dozen times with a needler. "'Just about happened to a friend of mine not long ago,' the pilot said. Go on, sir. Well, in the microsecond or so before you die, or afterward, for that matter, because we know that the extra-physical component survives physical destruction, your EPC slips back a couple of years, and reconnects at some point pastward of your first meeting with this girl, and carries with it memories of everything up to the moment of detachment, all of which are indelibly recorded in your subconscious mind.
So, when you re-experience the event of standing outside the Martian palace with a thirst, you go on to the Starway, or Nergal's, or some other bar. In both cases, on both timelines, you follow the line of maximum probability. In the second case, your subconscious future memories are an added causal factor.
And when I backslip after I've been needled, I generate a new timeline, is that it?" Verkan Vall made a small sound of impatience. No such thing, he exclaimed. It's semantically inadmissible to talk about the total presence of time with one breath, and about generating new timelines with the next. All timelines are totally present in perpetual coexistence. The theory is that the EPC passes from one moment on one timeline to the next moment on the next timeline, so that the true passage of the EPC from moment to moment is a two-dimensional diagonal. So, in the case we're using, the event of your going into the Martian palace exists on one timeline, and the event of your passing along to the Starway exists on another, but both are events in real existence.
Now, What we do in paratime transposition is to build up a hyper-temporal field to include the time-line we want to reach, and then shift over to it. Same point in the plenum, same point in primary time, plus primary time elapsed during mechanical and electronic lag in the relays, but a different line of secondary time. Then why don't we have past-future time-travel on our own time-line? the pilot wanted to know. That was a question every paratimer has to answer, every time he talks paratime to the laity. Verkan Vall had been expecting it. He answered patiently. The Galdron-Hestor field generator is like every other mechanism. It can operate only in the area of primary time in which it exists.
It can transpose to any other time-line, and carry with it anything inside its field. But it can't go outside its own temporal area of existence. Any more than a bullet from that rifle can hit a target a week before it's fired," Verkenvall pointed out. Anything inside the field is Supposed to be unaffected by anything outside. Supposed to be is the way to put it. It doesn't always work. Once in a while, something pretty nasty gets picked up in transit." He thought briefly of the man in the black tunic. That's why we have armed guards at terminals. Suppose you pick up a blast from a nucleotide bomb, the pilot asked, or something red-hot, or radioactive. We have a monument at Paratime Police Headquarters in Durgebar, bearing the names of our own personnel who didn't make it back.
It's a large monument. Over the past ten thousand years, it's been inscribed with quite a few names.
You can have it. I'll stick to rockets," the pilot replied. Tell me another thing, though. What's all this about levels and sectors and belts? What's the difference? Purely arbitrary terms. There are five main probability levels, derived from the five possible outcomes of the attempt to colonize this planet 75,000 years ago. We're on the first level, complete success, and colony fully established. The fifth level is the probability of complete failure. No human population established on this planet And indigenous quasi-human life evolved indigenously. On the fourth level, the colonists evidently met with some disaster, and lost all memory of their extraterrestrial origin, as well as all extraterrestrial culture.
As far as they know, they are an indigenous race. They have a long prehistory of Stone Age savagery. Sectors are areas of paratime on any level in which the prevalent culture has a common origin and common characteristics. They are divided, more or less, arbitrarily into subsectors. Belts are areas within subsectors where conditions are the result of recent alternate probabilities. For instance, I've just come from the Europo-American sector of the fourth level. An area of about ten thousand peri-years in depth, in which the dominant civilization developed on the north-west continent of the major landmass, and spread from there to the minor landmass. The line on which I was operating is also part of a sub-sector of about three thousand peri-years depth, and a belt developing from one of several probable outcomes of a war concluded about three elapsed years ago.
On that time-line, the field at the Hagraban Synthetics Works, where we took off, is part of an abandoned farm. On the side of Hagraban City is a little farming village. Those things are there, right now, both in primary time and in the plenum. They are about two hundred and fifty thousand perigeers perpendicular to each other, and each is of the same general order of reality. The red light overhead flashed on. The pilot looked into his visor and put his hands to the manual controls, in case of failure of the robot controls. The rocket landed smoothly, however. There was a slight jar as it was grappled by the crane and hoisted upright, the seats turning in their gimbals. Pilot and passenger unstrapped themselves and hurried through the refrigerated outlet and away from the glowing hot rocket.
An air-taxi, emblazoned with the device of the Paratime Police, was waiting. Verkan Vall said good-bye to the rocket pilot, and took his seat beside the pilot of the air-cab. The latter lifted his vehicle above the building level, and then set it down on the landing stage of the Paratime Police building in a long, side-swooping glide. An express elevator took Verkenwald down to one of the middle stages, where he showed his sigil to the guard outside the door of Tortha Karff's office, and was admitted at once. The Paratime police chief rose from behind his semicircular desk with its array of keyboards and viewing screens and communicators. He was a big man, well past his two-hundredth year. His hair was iron-gray, and thinning in front, he had begun to grow thick at the waist, and his calm features bore the lines of middle age.
He wore the dark green uniform of the Paratime Police. "'Well, Vol,' he greeted, "'everything secure?' "'Not exactly, sir.' Verkan Vol came around the desk, deposited his rifle and bag on the floor, and sat down in one of the spare chairs. I'll have to go back again. So? His chief lit a cigarette and waited. I traced Gavran Sarn. Verkinval got out his pipe and began to fill it. But that's only the beginning. I have to trace something else. Gavran Sarn exceeded his paratime permit, and took one of his pets along. A Venusian nighthound. Tortha Karf's expression did not alter. It merely grew more intense. He used one of the short, semantically ugly terms, which serve in place of profanity, as the emotional release of a race that has forgotten all the taboos and terminologies of supernaturalistic religion and sex inhibition.
"'You're sure of this, of course?' It was less a question than a statement. Verkan Vall bent and took cloth-wrapped objects from his bag, unwrapping them and laying them on the desk. They were casts, in hard black plastic, of the footprints of some large three-toed animal. "'What do these look like, sir?' he asked. Tortha Karf fingered them and nodded. Then he became as visibly angry as a man of his civilization and culture level ever permitted himself. "'What does that fool think we have a paratime code for?' he demanded. "'It's entirely illegal to transpose any extraterrestrial animal or object to any time-line on which space travel is unknown. I don't care if he is a green seal, Thavrad.' He'll face charges when he gets back for this."
He was a green seal, Thavrad, Verkanval corrected. And he won't be coming back.
I hope you didn't have to deal summarily with him, Torthokarf said. With his title and social position, and his family's political importance, that might make difficulties. Not that it wouldn't be all right with me, of course. But we never seem to be able to make either the management or the public realize the extremities to which we are forced at times," he sighed. We probably never shall.
Verkan Vall smiled faintly. Oh, no, sir. Nothing like that. He was dead before I transposed to that time-line. He was killed when he wrecked a self-propelled vehicle he was using. One of those fourth-level automobiles. I posed as a relative, and tried to claim his body for the burial ceremony observed on that cultural level, but was told that it had been completely destroyed by fire when the fuel tank of his automobile burned. I was given certain of his effects which had passed through the fire. I found his sigil concealed inside what appeared to be a cigarette case. He took a green disk from the bag and laid it on the desk. There's no question. Gavran Sarn died in the wreck of that automobile.
And the Nighthound? It was in the car with him, but it escaped. You know how fast those things are. I found that track," he indicated one of the black casts, in some dried mud near the scene of the wreck. As you see, the cast is slightly defective. The others were fresh this morning, when I made them. And what have you done so far? I rented an old farm near the scene of the wreck and installed my field generator there. It runs through to the Hagreban Synthetics Works, about a hundred miles east of Thalna Jarvizar. I have my this-line terminal in the girls' restroom at the Durable Plastics Factory. Handle that on a local police-power writ. Since then, I've been hunting for the nighthound. I think I can find it, but I'll need some special equipment and a hypnomech indoctrination.
That's why I came back." "'Has it been attracting any attention?' Tortha Karf asked, anxiously. "'Killing cattle in the locality, causing considerable excitement. Fortunately, it's a locality of forested mountains and valley farms, rather than a built-up industrial district.' Local police and wild game protection officers are concerned. All the farmers excited and going armed. The theory is that it's either a wildcat of some sort, or a maniac armed with a cutlass. Either theory would conform, more or less, to the nature of its depredations. Nobody has actually seen it." That's good," Tortha Karf was relieved. You'll have to go and bring it out, or kill it and obliterate the body. You know why, as well as I do."
Certainly, sir," Verkenwald replied. In a primitive culture, things like this would be assigned supernatural explanations, and embedded in the locally accepted religion. But this culture, while nominally religious, is highly rationalistic in practice. Typical lag effect. Characteristic of all expanding cultures. And this Europo-American sector really has an expanding culture. A hundred and fifty years ago, the inhabitants of this particular time-line didn't even know how to apply steam power. Now they've begun to release nuclear energy, in a few crude forms." Tortha Karf whistled softly. That's quite a jump. There's a sector that'll be in for trouble in the next few centuries. That is realized locally, sir.
Verkenvold concentrated on relighting his pipe for a moment, then continued. I would predict space travel on that sector within the next century. Maybe the next half-century, at least to the moon. And the art of taxidermy is very highly developed. Now, suppose some farmer shoots that thing, what would he do with it, sir? Tortha Karf grunted. Nice logic, Vol. On a most uncomfortable possibility. He'd have it mounted, and it'd be put in a museum somewhere. And as soon as the first spaceship reaches Venus, and they find those things in a wild state, they'll have the mounted specimen identified. Exactly. And then, instead of beating their brains about where their specimen came from, they'll begin asking when it came from.
They're quite capable of such reasoning, even now.
A hundred years isn't a particularly long time, Tortha Karf considered. I'll be retired, then, but you'll have my job, and it'll be your headache. You'd better get this cleaned up now, while it can be handled. What are you going to do?" I'm not sure now, sir. I want a hypnomech indoctrination first," Verkin Vall gestured toward the communicator on the desk. May I? he asked. Certainly, Tortha Karp slid the instrument across the desk. Anything you want. Thank you, sir. Verkin Vall snapped on the code index. Found the symbol he wanted, and then punched it on the keyboard. Special Chief's Assistant Verkan Vall, he identified himself, speaking from the office of Tortha Karf, Chief Paratime Police.
I want a complete hypnomech on Venusian nighthounds. Emphasis on Wild State. Special emphasis domesticated nighthounds reverted to Wild State in terrestrial surroundings. Extra special emphasis, hunting techniques, applicable to same. The word nighthound will do for trigger symbol. He turned to Tortha Karf. Can I take it here? Tortha Karf nodded, pointing to a row of booths along the far wall of the office. Make set-up for wired transmission. I'll take it here. Very well, sir, in fifteen minutes. A voice replied out of the communicator. Verkenvall slid the communicator back. By the way, sir, I had a hitchhiker on the way back. Carried him about a hundred or so para-years. Picked him up about three hundred para-years after leaving my other-line terminal.
Nasty-looking fellow, in a black uniform. Looked like one of those private army stormtroopers you find all through that sector. Armed and hostile. I thought I'd have to ray him, but he blundered outside the field almost at once. I have a record if you'd care to see it.
Yes, put it on, Tortha Karf gestured toward the solidograph projector. It's set for miniature reproduction here on the desk. That'll be all right? Verkan Vall nodded, getting out the film and loading it into the projector. When he pressed a button, a dome of radiance appeared on the desk-top, two feet in width and a foot in height. In the middle of this appeared a small solidograph image of the interior of the conveyor, showing the desk and the control board and the figure of Verkan Vall seated at it. The little figure of the stormtrooper appeared, pistol in hand. The little Verkan Vall snatched up his tiny needler. The stormtrooper moved into one side of the dome and vanished. Verkan Vall flipped a switch and cut out the image.
"'Yes. I don't know what causes that. But it happens now and then,' Tortha Kharf said. "'Usually at the beginning of a transposition. I remember when I was just a kid, about a hundred and fifty years ago—a hundred and thirty-nine, to be exact. I picked up a fellow on the fourth level—' Just about where you're operating, and dragged him a couple of hundred para-years. I went back to find him and return him to his own time-line, but before I could locate him, he'd been arrested by the local authorities as a suspicious character, and got himself shot trying to escape. I felt badly about that, but—Tortha Kaurf shrugged. Anything else happen on the trip? I ran through a belt of intermittent nucleonic bombing on the second level.
Verkenval mentioned an approximate paratime location. Ugh, that kift in civilization. By courtesy so called, Torthekar pulled a wry face. I suppose the intra-family enmities on the Hvadka dynasty have reached critical mass again. They'll fool around till they blast themselves back to the Stone Age.
Intellectually, they're about there now. I had to operate in that sector once. Oh, yes, another thing. This rifle. Verkenvall picked it up, emptied the magazine, and handed it to his superior. The supplies office slipped up on this. It's not appropriate to my line of operation. It's a lovely rifle. But it's about two hundred percent in advance of existing arms design on my line. It excited the curiosity of a couple of police officers and a game protector, who should be familiar with the weapons of their own timeline. I evaded by disclaiming ownership or intimate knowledge, and they seemed satisfied. But it worried me.
Yes, that was made in our duplicating shops here in Durga Bar. Tortha Kharf carried it to a photographic bench, behind his desk. "'I'll have it checked while you're taking your hypnomech. Want to exchange it for something authentic?' "'Why, no, sir. It's been identified to me, and I'd excite less suspicion with it than I would if I abandoned it and mysteriously acquired another rifle. I just wanted a check and supplies worn to be more careful in the future.' Tortha Karf nodded approvingly. The young Mavrad of Neros was thinking as a paratimer should. "'What's the designation of your line again?' Verkan Vall told him. It was a short numerical term of six places, but it expressed a number of the order of ten to the fortieth power, exact to the last digit.
Tortha Karf repeated it into his steno-memograph, with explanatory comment.
There seems to be quite a few things going wrong in that area, he said. Let's see now. He punched the designation on a keyboard. Instantly it appeared on a translucent screen in front of him. He punched another combination, and at the top of the screen, under the number, there appeared—Events. Past elapsed five years. He punched again, below this line appeared the subheading. Events involving Paratime Transposition. Another code combination added a third line. Attracting public notice among inhabitants.
He pressed the start button. The headings vanished to be replaced by page after page of print, succeeding one another on the screen as the two men read. They told strange and apparently disconnected stories, of unexplained fires and explosions, of people vanishing without trace, of unaccountable disasters to aircraft. There were many stories of an epidemic of mysterious, disk-shaped objects seen in the sky, singly or in numbers. To each account was appended one or more reference numbers. Sometimes Tortha Karf, or Verkan Vall, would punch one of these, and read, on an adjoining screen, the explanatory material referred to. Finally, Tortha Karf leaned back and lit a fresh cigarette. "'Yes, indeed, Vall.
Very definitely we will have to take action in the matter of the runaway nighthound of the late Gavron Sarn,' he said. I'd forgotten that that was the timeline onto which the Ardraeth expedition launched those anti-grav disks. If this extraterrestrial monstrosity turns up, on the heels of that flying saucer business, everybody above the order of intelligence of a Cretan will suspect some connection." What really happened in the Ardraeth matter? Verkinval inquired. I was on the third level, on that Luverian Empire operation at the time. That's right. You missed that. Well, it was one of these joint-operation things. The Paratime Commission and the Space Patrol were experimenting with a new technique for throwing a spaceship into Paratime.
They used the cruiser Ardraith, Kalzarn Jan commanding. Went into space about half-way to the moon and took up orbit, keeping on the sunlit side of the planet to avoid being observed. That was all right. But then Captain Kalzarn ordered away a flight of anti-grav disks, fully manned, to take pictures, and finally authorized a landing in the western mountain range, northern continent, minor landmass. That's when the trouble started. He flipped the run-back switch till he had recovered the page he wanted. Verkan Vall read of a fourth-level aviator, in his little air-screw-drive craft, Citing nine high-flying saucer-like objects. That was how it began, Tortha Karp told him. Before long, as other incidents of the same sort occurred, our people on that line began sending back to know what was going on.
Naturally, from the different descriptions of these saucers, they recognized the objects as anti-grav landing disks from a spaceship. So I went to the commission and raised atomic blazes about it, and the Ardraff was ordered to confine operations to the lower areas of the fifth level. Then our people on that time-line went to work with corrective action. Here." He wiped the screen and then began punching combinations. Page after page appeared, bearing accounts of people who had claimed to have seen the mysterious disks, And each report was more fantastic than the last. "'The standard smother-out technique,' Verkenvall grinned. "'I only heard a little talk about the flying saucers, and all of that was in a joke.
In that order of culture, you can always discredit one true story by setting up ten others, palpably false, parallel to it.' Wasn't that the timeline the Tharmax Trading Corporation almost lost their paratime license on? That's right, it was. They bought up all the cigarettes, and caused a conspicuous shortage after fourth-level cigarettes had been introduced on this line and had become popular. They should have spread their purchases over a number of lines, and kept them within the local supply-demand frame. And they also got into trouble with the local government for selling unrationed petrol and automobile tires. We had to send in a special operations group, and they came closer to having to engage in out-time local politics than I care to think of."
Tortha Karf quoted a line from a currently popular song about the sorrows of a policeman's life.
Trying to keep our traders and sociological observers and tourists and plain idiots like the late Gavron Sarn out of trouble. Trying to prevent panics and disturbances and dislocations of local economy as a result of our operations. Trying to keep out of out-time politics. And, at all times, at all costs and hazards, By all means, guarding the secret of paratime transposition. Sometimes I wish Galdron Karf and Hester Grom had strangled in their cradles."
Verkan Vall shook his head. "'No, chief,' he said. "'You don't mean that. Not really,' he said. "'We've been paratiming for the past ten thousand years. When the Galderon-Hesthorpe transtemporal field was discovered, our ancestors had pretty well exhausted the resources of this planet. We had a world population of half a billion, and it was all they could do to keep alive. After we began paratime transposition, our population climbed to ten billion, and there it stayed for the last eight thousand years. Just enough of us to enjoy our planet, and the other planets of our system to the fullest. Enough of everything for everybody, that nobody needs to fight anybody for anything. We've tapped the resources of those other worlds on other timelines—a little here, a little there—and not enough to really hurt anybody.
We've left our mark in a few places. The Dakota Badlands and the Gobi on the fourth level, for instance. But we've done no great damage to any of them."
"'Except the time they blew up half the southern island continent over about five hundred peri-years on the third level,' Tortha Karf mentioned. "'Regrettable accident, to be sure,' Verkan Vall conceded. "'And look how much we've learned from the experiences of those other timelines.' During the crisis, after the Fourth Interplanetary War, we might have adopted Palnar Sarn's Dictatorship of the Chosen scheme, if we hadn't seen what an exactly similar scheme had done on the Jakhaka civilization, on the Second Level. When Palnar Sarn was told about that, he went into paratime to see for himself, and when he returned, he renounced his proposal in horror. Tortha Karf nodded. He wouldn't be making any mistake in turning his post over to the Mavrad of Neros on his retirement.
"'Yes, Val, I know,' he said. "'But when you've been at this desk as long as I have, you'll have a sour moment or two, now and then, too.' A blue light flashed over one of the booths across the room. Verkan Val got to his feet, Removing his coat and hanging it on the back of his chair, and crossed the room, rolling up his left shirt-sleeve. There was a relaxer chair in the booth, with a blue plastic helmet above it. He glanced at the indicator screen to make sure he was getting the indoctrination he called for, and then sat down in the chair and lowered the helmet over his head, inserting the ear-plugs and fastening the chin-strap. Then, He touched his left arm with an injector which was lying on the arm of the chair, and at the same time flipped the starter switch.
Soft, slow music began to chant out of the earphones. The insidious fingers of the drug blocked off his senses one by one. The music diminished, and the words of the hypnotic formula lulled him to sleep. He woke, hearing the lively strains of dance music. For a while he lay relaxed. Then he snapped off the switch, took out the ear-plugs, removed the helmet, and rose to his feet.
Deep in his subconscious mind was the entire body of knowledge about the Venusian nighthound. He mentally pronounced the word, and at once it began flooding into his conscious mind. He knew the animal's evolutionary history, its anatomy, its characteristics, Its dietary and reproductive habits, how it hunted, how it fought its enemies, how it eluded pursuit, and how best it could be tracked down and killed. He nodded. Already, a plan for dealing with Gavron Sarn's renegade pet was taking shape in his mind. He picked up a plastic cup from the dispenser, filled it from a cooler tap with amber-colored spiced wine, and drank. Tossing the cup into the disposal bin. He placed a fresh injector on the arm of the chair, ready for the next user of the booth.
Then he emerged, glancing at his fourth-level wristwatch and mentally translating to the first-level time-scale. Three hours had passed. There had been more to learn about his quarry than he had expected. Tortha Karf was sitting behind his desk, smoking a cigarette. It seemed as though he had not moved since Verkan Vall had left him. Though the special agent knew that he had dined, attended several conferences, and done many other things.
"'I checked up on your hitchhiker, Vall,' the chief said. "'We won't bother about him. He's a member of something called the Christian Avengers, one of those typical Europo-American race and religious hate groups.' He belongs in a belt that is the outcome of the Hitler victory of nineteen forty, whatever that was—something unpleasant, I dare say. We don't owe him anything. People of that sort should be stepped on, like cockroaches.
And he won't make any more trouble on the line where you dropped him than they have there already. It's in a belt of complete social and political anarchy. Somebody probably shot him as soon as he emerged, because he wasn't wearing the right sort of uniform. 1940 what, by the way? Elapsed years since the birth of some religious leader, Verkenvall explained. And did you find out about my rifle? Oh, yes. It's reproduction of something that's called a Sharps Model 37 235 Electrospeed Express. Made on an adjoining paratime belt by a company that went out of business sixty-seven years ago, elapsed time, on your line of operation. What made the difference was the second war between the states. I don't know what that was, either.
I'm not too well up on fourth-level history. But whatever. Your line of operation didn't have it. Probably just as well for them. Though they very likely had something else, as bad or worse. I put in a complaint to supplies about it, and you got some more ammunition and reloading tools. Now tell me what you're going to do about this nighthound business."
Tortha Karf was silent for a while, after Verkan Vall had finished. "'You're taking some awful chances, Vall,' he said at length. "'The way you plan doing it, the advantages will all be with the nighthound.' Those things can see as well at night as you can in daylight. I suppose you know that, though. You're the nighthound specialist now."
Yes, but they're accustomed to Venus hotland marshes. It's been dry weather for the last two weeks, all over the northeastern section of the northern continent. I'll be able to hear it, long before it gets close to me. And I'll be wearing an electric headlamp. When I snap that on, it'll be dazzled for a moment.
Well, as I said, you're the nighthound specialist. There's the communicator. Order anything you need. He lit a fresh cigarette from the end of the old one before crushing it out. But be careful, Val. It took me close to forty years to make a paratimer out of you. I don't want to have to repeat the process with somebody else before I can retire.
End of Police Operation Part Two
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7 4 - Police Operation (part 3) 23:08
Police Operation by H. Beam Piper Part Three The grass was wet as Verkan Vall, who reminded himself that here he was called Richard Lee, crossed the yard from the farmhouse to the ramshackle barn in the early autumn darkness. It had been raining that morning when the straddle rocket from Durgabar had landed him at the Hagraban Synthetic Works, on the first level. Unaffected by the probabilities of human history, the same rain had been coming down on the old Kinchwalter farm, near Rudder's Fort, on the fourth level, and it had persisted all day in a slow, deliberate drizzle. He didn't like that. The woods would be wet, muffling his quarry's footsteps, and cancelling his only advantage over the night-prowler he hunted.
He had no idea, however, of postponing the hunt. If anything, the rain had made it all the more imperative that the nighthound be killed at once. At this season, a falling temperature would speedily follow. The nighthound, a creature of the hot Venus marshes, would suffer from the cold, and, taught by years of domestication to find warmth among human habitations, it would invade some isolated farmhouse, Or worse, one of the little valley villages. If it were not killed to-night, the incident he had come to prevent would certainly occur. Going to the barn, he spread an old horse-blanket on the seat of the jeep, laid his rifle on it, and then backed the jeep outside. Then he took off his coat, removing his pipe and tobacco from the pockets, and spread it on the wet grass.
He unwrapped a package and took out a small plastic spray-gun he had brought with him from the first level, aiming it at the coat and pressing the trigger until it blew itself empty. A sickening, rancid fetter tainted the air. The scent of the giant poison-roach of Venus, the one creature for which the night-hound bore an inborn, implacable hatred.
It was because of this compulsive urge to attack and kill the deadly poison-roach that the first human settlers on Venus, long millennia ago, had domesticated the ugly and savage nighthound. He remembered that the Gavron family derived their title from their vast Venus hotlands estates, that Gavron Sarn, the man who had brought this thing to the fourth level, had been born on the inner planet. When Verkenwald donned that coat, he would become his own living bait for the murderous fury of the creature he sought. At that moment, mastering his queasiness and putting on the coat, he objected less to that danger than to the hideous stench of the scent. To obtain which, a valuable specimen had been sacrificed at the Durgebar Museum of Extraterrestrial Zoology the evening before.
Carrying the wrapper and the spray gun to an outside fireplace, he snapped his lighter to them and tossed them in. They were highly inflammable, blazing up and vanishing in a moment. He tested the electric headlamp on the front of his cap, checked his rifle, drew the heavy revolver, an authentic product of his line of operation, and flipped the cylinder out and in again. Then he got into the jeep and drove away. For half an hour, he drove quickly along the valley roads. Now and then he passed farmhouses, and dogs, puzzled and angered by the alien scent his coat bore, barked furiously. At length he turned into a back road, and from this to the barely discernible trace of an old log road. The rain had stopped, and in order to be ready to fire in any direction at any time, He had removed the top of the jeep.
Now he had to crouch below the windshield to avoid overhanging branches. Once three deer, a buck and two does, stopped in front of him and stared for a moment, then bounded away in a flutter of white tails.
He was driving slowly now, laying behind him a reeking trail of scent. There had been another stock killing the night before, while he had been on the first level. The locality of the latest depredation had confirmed his estimate of the beast's probable movements, and indicated where it might be prowling to-night. He was certain that it was somewhere near. Sooner or later, it would pick up the scent.
Finally, he stopped, snapping out his lights. He had chosen this spot carefully, while studying the geological survey map that afternoon. He was on the grade of an old railroad line, now abandoned and its track long removed, which had served the logging operations of fifty years ago. On one side, the mountain slanted sharply upward. On the other, it fell away sharply. If the Nighthound were below him, it would have to climb that forty-five-degree slope, and could not avoid dislodging loose stones or otherwise making a noise. He would get out on that side. If the nighthound were above him, the jeep would protect him when it charged. He got to the ground, thumbing off the safety of his rifle. And an instant later, he knew that he had made a mistake which could easily cost him his life.
A mistake from which neither his comprehensive logic Nor his hypnotically acquired knowledge of the beast's habits had saved him. As he stepped to the ground, facing toward the front of the jeep, he heard a low, whining cry behind him, and a rush of padded feet. He whirled, snapping on the headlamp with his left hand and thrusting out his rifle pistol-wise in his right. For a split second he saw the charging animal, Its long, lizard-like head split in a toothy grin, its talon-tipped forepaws extended. He fired, and the bullet went wild. The next instant, the rifle was knocked from his hand. Instinctively, he flung up his left arm to shield his eyes. Claus raked his left arm and shoulder. Something struck him heavily along the left side, and his cap-light went out as he dropped and rolled under the jeep.
Drawing in his legs and fumbling under his coat for the revolver. In that instant, he knew what had gone wrong. His plan had been entirely too much of a success. The nighthound had winded him as he had driven up the old railroad grade, and had followed. Its best running speed had been just good enough to keep it a hundred or so feet behind the jeep, and the motor noise had covered the padding of its feet. In the few moments between stopping the little car and getting out, the nighthound had been able to close the distance and spring upon him. It was characteristic of first-level mentality that Verkenvall wasted no moments on self-reproach or panic. While he was still rolling under his jeep, his mind had been busy with plans to retrieve the situation.
Something touched the heel of one boot, and he froze his leg into immobility. At the same time, trying to get the big smith and wesson free. The shoulder holster, he found, was badly torn, though made of the heaviest skirting leather, and the spring which retained the weapon in place had been wrenched and bent until he needed both hands to draw. The eight-inch slashing-claw of the nighthound's right intermediary limb had raked him. Only the instinctive motion of throwing up his arm And the fact that he wore the revolver in a shoulder holster had saved his life. The nighthound was prowling around the jeep, whining frantically. It was badly confused. It could see quite well, even in the close darkness of the starless night.
Its eyes were of a nature capable of perceiving infrared radiations as light. There were plenty of these. The jeep's engine, lately running on four-wheel drive, was quite hot. Had he been standing alone, especially on this raw, chilly night, Verkenwald's own body heat would have lighted him up like a jack-o'-lantern. Now, however, the hot engine above him masked his own radiations. Moreover, the poison roach scent on his coat was coming up through the floorboard and mingling with the scent on the seat. Yet, the nighthound couldn't find the two-and-a-half-foot insect-like thing that should have been producing it. Verkan Vall lay motionless, wondering how long the next move would be in coming. Then he heard a thud above him, followed by a furious tearing as the nighthound ripped the blanket and began rending at the seat-cushion.
"'Hope it gets a pawful of seat-springs.' Verkan Vall commented, mentally. He had already found a stone about the size of his two fists, and another slightly smaller, and had put one in each of the side pockets of the coat. Now he slipped his revolver into his waist-belt and writhed out of the coat, shedding the ruined shoulder holster at the same time. Wriggling on the flat of his back, He squirmed between the rear wheels, until he was able to sit up behind the jeep. Then, swinging the weighted coat, he flung it forward, over the nighthound and the jeep itself, at the same time drawing his revolver. Immediately, the nighthound, lured by the sudden movement of the principal source of the scent, jumped out of the jeep and bounded after the coat, and there was considerable noise in the brush on the lower side of the railroad grade.
At once, Verkenvall swarmed into the jeep and snapped on the lights. His stratagem had succeeded beautifully. The stinking coat had landed on the top of a small bush, about ten feet in front of the jeep, and ten feet from the ground. The nighthound, erect on its haunches, was reaching out with its front paws to drag it down, and slashing angrily at it with its single-clawed intermediary limbs. Its back was to Verkan Vall. His sights clearly defined by the lights in front of him, the paratimer centered them on the base of the creature's spine, just above its secondary shoulders, and carefully squeezed the trigger. The big .357 Magnum bucked in his hand and belched flame and sound—if only these fourth-level weapons weren't so confoundedly boisterous—and the nighthound screamed and fell.
Re-cocking the revolver, Verkan Vall waited for an instant, then nodded in satisfaction. The beast's spine had been smashed, and its hindquarters, and even its intermediary fighting limbs, had been paralyzed. He aimed carefully for a second shot, and fired into the base of the thing's skull. It quivered and died.
Getting a flashlight, He found his rifle, sticking muzzled down in the mud a little behind and to the right of the jeep, and swore briefly in the local fourth-level idiom. For Verkenvall was a man who loved good weapons, be they sigma-ray needlers, neutron disruption blasters, or the solid-missile projectors of the lower levels. By this time, he was feeling considerable pain from the claw wounds he had received. He peeled off his shirt, and tossed it over the hood of the jeep. Tortha Karf had advised him to carry a needler, or a blaster, or a neurostat-gun, but Verkan Vall had been unwilling to take such arms on to the fourth level. In event of mishap to himself, it would be all too easy for such a weapon to fall into the hands of some one able to deduce from it scientific principles too far in advance for the general fourth-level culture.
But there had been one first-level item which he had permitted himself. Mainly because, suitably packaged, it was not readily identified as such. Digging a respectable fourth-level leatherette case from under the seat, he opened it and took out a pint bottle with a red poison label, and a towel. Saturating the towel with the contents of the bottle, he rubbed every inch of his torso with it, So as not to miss even the smallest break made in his skin by the septic claws of the nighthound. Whenever the lotion-soaked towel touched raw skin, a pain like the burn of a hot iron shot through him. Before he was through, he was in agony. Satisfied that he had disinfected every wound, he dropped the towel and clung weakly to the side of the jeep.
He grunted out a string of English oaths, and capped them with an obscene Spanish blasphemy he had picked up among the fourth-level inhabitants of his island home of Neros to the south, and a thundering curse in the name of Maga, fire-god of Duel, in a third-level tongue. He even mentioned Fasif, great god of Kift, in a manner which would have gotten him an acid bath if the Kiftan priests had heard him. He alluded to the Baroque amatory practices of the third-level Ilyala people, and soothed himself in the classic Dar-Helma tongue with one of those rambling, genealogical insults favored in the Indo-Terranian sector of the fourth level.
By this time, the pain had subsided to an overall smarting itch. He'd have to bear with that until his work was finished and he could enjoy a hot bath. He got another bottle out of the first aid kit, a flat pint labeled Old Overholt, containing a locally manufactured specific for inward and subjective wounds, and medicated himself copiously from it, corking it and slipping it into his hip pocket against future need. He gathered up the ruined shoulder holster and threw it under the back seat. He put on his shirt. Then he went and dragged the dead night-hound onto the grade by its stumpy tail. It was an ugly thing, weighing close to two hundred pounds, with powerfully muscled hind legs which furnished the bulk of its motive power, and sturdy three-clawed front legs.
Its secondary limbs, about a third of the way back from its front shoulders, were long and slender. Normally, they were carried folded closely against the body, and each was armed with a single curving claw. The revolver bullet had gone in at the base of the skull and emerged under the jaw. The head was relatively undamaged. Verkan Vall was glad of that. He wanted that head for the trophy room of his home on Neros. Grunting and straining, he got the thing into the back of the jeep. And flung his almost shredded tweed coat over it.
A last look around assured him that he'd left nothing unaccountable or suspicious. The brush was broken where the nighthound had been tearing at the coat. A bear might have done that. There were splashes of the viscid stuff the thing had used for blood, but they wouldn't be there long. Terrestrial rodents liked nighthound blood, and the woods were full of mice. He climbed in under the wheel, backed, turned, and drove away.
Inside the paratime transposition dome, Verkan Vall turned from the body of the nighthound, which he had just dragged in, and considered the inert form of another animal, a stump-tailed, tuft-eared, tawny Canada lynx. That particular animal had already made two paratime transpositions. Captured in the vast wildlands of Fifth Level, North America, it had been taken to the First Level and placed in the Durgebar Zoological Gardens. And then, requisitioned on authority of Tortha Karf, it had been brought to the Fourth Level by Verkan Vall. It was almost at the end of all its travels. Verkan Vall prodded the supine animal with the toe of his boot. It twitched slightly. Its feet were cross-bound with straps, but when he saw that the narcotic was wearing off, Verkenwald snatched a syringe, parted the fur at the base of its neck, and gave it an injection.
After a moment, he picked it up in his arms and carried it out to the jeep. "'All right, Pussycat,' he said, placing it under the rear seat. "'This is a one-way ride. The way you're doped up, it won't hurt a bit.' He went back and rummaged in the debris of the long-deserted barn. He picked up a hoe, and discarded it as too light. An old ploughshare was too unhandy. He considered a great bar from a heating furnace, and then he found the pole-axe, lying among a pile of worm-eaten boards. Its handle had been shortened at some time to about twelve inches, converting it into a heavy hatchet. He weighed it, and tried it on a block of wood. And then, making sure that the secret door was closed, he went out again and drove off.
An hour later he returned. Opening the secret door, he carried the ruined shoulder holster and the straps that had bound the bobcat's feet and the axe, now splotched with blood and tawny cat-hairs, into the dome. Then he closed the secret room and took a long drink from the bottle on his hip. The job was done. He would take a hot bath and sleep in the farmhouse till noon. And then he would return to the first level. Maybe Tortha Karf would want him to come back here for a while. The situation on this time-line was far from satisfactory, even if the crisis threatened by Gavran Sarn's renegade pet had been averted. The presence of a chief's assistant might be desirable. At least, he had a right to expect a short vacation.
He thought of the little redhead at the Hagraban Synthetics Works. What was her name? Something Kara. Morven Kara, that was it. She'd be coming off shift about the time he'd make first level, tomorrow afternoon.
The claw wounds were still smarting vexatiously. A hot bath and a night's sleep. He took another drink, lit his pipe, picked up his rifle, and started across the yard to the house.
Private Zinkowski cradled the telephone and got up from the desk, stretching. He left the orderly room and walked across the hall to the recreation room, where the rest of the boys were loafing. Sergeant Haynes, in a languid gin-rummy game with Corporal Connor, a sheriff's deputy, And a mechanic from the service station down the road looked up. "'Well, Sarge, I think we can write off those stock killings,' the private said. "'Yeah?' the sergeant's interest quickened. "'Yeah. I think the Watsits had it. I just got a buzz from the railroad cops at Logan's Port. It seems a track-walker found a dead bobcat on the Logan River ranch, about a mile or so below M.M.Y. Signal Tower.' Looks like it tangled with that night freight upriver, and came off second best.
It was near chopped a hamburger. M.M.Y. Signal Tower. That's right below Yoder's Crossing, the sergeant considered. The Strawmire Farm, night before last? The Amrine Farm last night? Yeah. That would be about right. That'll suit Steve Parker. Bobcats aren't protected, so it's not his trouble. And they're not a violation of state law, so it's none of our worry," Connor said. Your deal, isn't it, Sarge? Yeah. Wait a minute. The sergeant got to his feet. I promised Sam Kane, the A.P. man at Logansport, that I'd let him in on anything new. He got up and started for the phone.
Phantom killer! He blew an impolite noise.
Well, it was just a lot of excitement while it lasted, the deputy sheriff said. Just like that flying saucer thing.
The End of Police Operation by H. Beam Piper.
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8 5 - Graveyard of Dreams 55:09
Graveyard of Dreams by H. Beam Piper.
Standing at the armor glass front of the observation deck, And watching the mountains rise and grow on the horizon, Con Maxwell gripped the metal handrail with painful intensity, as though trying to hold back the airship by force. Thirty minutes, twenty-six and a fraction of the Terran minutes he had become accustomed to, until he'd have to face it. Then, realizing that he never, in his own thoughts, addressed himself as Sir, he turned. I beg your pardon? It was the first officer, wearing a Terran Federation Space Navy uniform of forty years, or about ten regulation changes, ago. That was the sort of thing he had taken for granted before he had gone away. Now he was noticing it everywhere. Thirty minutes out of Litchfield, sir," the ship's officer repeated.
You'll go off by the midship gangway, on the starboard side. Yes, I know. Thank you. The first mate held out the clipboard he was carrying. Would you mind checking over this, Mr. Maxwell? You are a baggage list. Certainly. He glanced at the slip of paper. Velices, eighteen and twenty-five kilos, two. Trunks, seventy-five and seventy kilos, two. Micro-bookcase, one-fifty kilos, one. The last item fanned up a little flicker of anger in him. Not at any person, even himself, but at the situation in which he found himself and the futility of the whole thing.
Yes, that's everything. I have no hand luggage. Just this stuff. He noticed that this was the only baggage list under the clip. The other papers were all freight and express manifests. Not many passengers left aboard, are there? You're the only one in first class, sir," the mate replied. About forty farm laborers on the lower deck. Everybody else got off at the other stops. Litchfield's the end of the run. You know anything about the place? I was born there. I've been away at school for the last five years. On Balder? Tara. University of Montevideo. Once, Kahn would have said it almost boastfully. The mate gave him a quick look of surprised respect, then grinned and nodded. "'Of course. I should have known.
You're Rodney Maxwell's son, aren't you?' "'Your father's one of our regular freight shippers. Been sending out a lot of stuff lately.' He looked as though he would have liked to continue the conversation, but said, "'Sorry. I've got to go. Lot of things to attend to before landing.' He touched the visor of his cap and turned away. The mountains were closer when Kahn looked forward again, and he glanced down. Five years and two space voyages ago, seen from the after-deck of this ship, or one of her sisters, the woods had been green with new foliage, and the wine-melon fields had been in pink blossom. He tried to picture the scene sliding away below instead of drawing in toward him, as though to force himself back to a moment of the irretrievable past.
But the moment was gone, and with it the eager excitement and the half-formed anticipations of the things he would learn and accomplish on Terra. The things he would learn, Micro Bookcase, One. One of the steel trunks was full of things he had learned and accomplished, too. Maybe they, at least, would have some value. The woods were autumn-tinted now, and the fields were bare and brown. They had gotten the crop in early this year, for the fields had all been harvested. Those workers below must be going out for the wine-pressing. That extra hands were needed for that meant a big crop, and yet it seemed that less land was under cultivation than when he had gone away. He could see squares of low brush among the new forests that had grown up in the last forty years, and the few stands of original timber looked like hills above the second growth.
Those trees had been standing when the planet had been colonized. That had been two hundred years ago, at the middle of the seventh-century atomic era. The name of the planet, Poitem, told that. The Sur Romanticist Movement, when the critics and professors were re-discovering James Branch Cabell.
Funny how much was coming back to him now. Things he had picked up from the minimal liberal arts and general humanities courses he had taken, and then forgotten, in his absorption with the science and tech studies. The first extrasolar planets, As they had been discovered, had been named from Norse mythology. Odin and Baldr, and Thor, Ullr and Freyja, Bifrost and Asgard and Niflheim. When the Norse names ran out, the discoverers had turned to other mythologies, Celtic and Egyptian, and Hindu and Assyrian. And by the middle of the seventh century they were naming planets for almost anything. Anything, that is, but actual persons. Their names were reserved for stars, like Alpha Gartner, the son of Poitain, and Beta Gartner, a buckshot-sized pink glow in the southeast, and Gamma Gartner, out of sight on the other side of the world.
All named for old Genji Gartner, the scholarly and half-piratical adventurer whose ship had been the first to approach the three stars and discover that each of them had planets. Forty-two planets in all, from a couple of methane giants on gamma to airless little things with one-sixth Terran gravity. Alpha-2 had been the only one in the tri-system with an oxygen atmosphere and life. So Gartner had landed on it, and named it Poitem, and the settlement that had grown up around the first landing site had been called Storacenda. Thirty years later, Genji Gartner died there, after seeing the camp grow to a metropolis, and was buried under a massive monument.
Some of the other planets had been rich in metals, and mines had been opened, and atmosphere-domed factories and processing plants built. None of them could produce anything but hydroponic and tissue culture foodstuffs, and natural foods from Poitem had been less expensive. even on the planets of gamma and beta. So, Bois-tem had concentrated on agriculture, and grown wealthy at it. Then, within fifty years of Genji Gartner's death, the economics of interstellar trade overtook the tri-system, and the mines and factories closed down. It was no longer possible to ship the output to a profitable market, in the face of the growing self-sufficiency of the colonial planets, And the irreducibly high cost of space freighting.
Below, the brown fields and the red and yellow woods were merging into a ten-mile-square desert of crumbling concrete. Empty and roofless sheds, and warehouses and barracks, brush-choked parade grounds and landing fields, airship docks, and even a spaceport. They were more recent. Dating from Poitoum's second brief and hectic prosperity, when the Terran Federation's Third Fleet Army Force had occupied the Gartner Tri-System during the System States War. Millions of troops had been stationed on or routed through Poitoum. Tens of thousands of spacecraft had been based on the Tri-System. The mines and factories had reopened for war production. The Federation had spent trillions of sauls on Poitoum, piling up mountains of stores and arms and equipment, left the face of the planet cluttered with installations.
Then, ten years before anybody had expected it, the rebellious system-states alliance had collapsed, and the war had ended. The Federation armies had gone home, taking with them the clothes they stood in, their personal weapons, and a few souvenirs. Everything else had been left behind. Even the most expensive equipment was worth less than the cost of removal. Ever since, Poitem had been living on salvage. The uniform the officer was wearing was forty years old, and it was barely a month out of the original packing. On Terra, Kahn had told his friends that his father was a prospector, and let them interpret that as meaning an explorer for, say, uranium deposits. Rodney Maxwell found plenty of uranium, but he got it by taking apart the warheads of missiles.
The old replacement depot, or classification center, or training area, or whatever it had been, vanished under the ship now, and it was all forest back to the mountains, with an occasional cluster of deserted buildings. From one or two threads of blue smoke rose, bands of farm-tramps camping on their way from harvest to wine-pressing. Then the eastern foothills were out of sight, and he was looking down on the granite spines of the calder range. The valley beyond was sloping away, and widening out in the distance. It was time he began thinking of what to say when he landed. He would have to tell them, of course. He wondered who would be at the dock to meet him, besides his family. Lynn Fawsey, he hoped.
Or did he? Her parents would be with her, and Kurt Fawsey would take the news hardest of any of them, and be the first to blame him because it was bad. The hopes he had built for Lynn and himself would have to be held in abeyance till he saw how her father would regard him now. But, however any of them took it, he would have to tell them the truth.
The ship swept on, tearing through the thin puffs of cloud at ten miles a minute. Six minutes to landing. Five. Four. Then he saw the river bend, glinting redly through the haze in the sunlight. Litchfield was inside it, and he stared, waiting for the first glimpse of the city. Three minutes, and the ship began to cut speed and lose altitude. The hot jets had stopped firing, and he could hear the whine of the coal-jet rotors. Then he could see Litchfield, dominated by the airport building, so thick that it looked squat for all its height, like a candle stump in a puddle of its own grease. The other buildings under the carapace of terraces and landing stages seemed to have flowed away from it.
And there was the yellow block of the distilleries, and High Garden Terrace, and the mall. At first, in the distance, it looked like a living city. Then, second by second, the stigmata of decay became more and more evident. Terraces empty were littered with rubbish. Gardens untended and choked with wild growth. Windows staring blindly. Walls splotched with lichens, and grimy where the rains could not wash them. For a moment, he was afraid that some disaster, unmentioned in his father's letters, had befallen. Then he realized that the change had not been in Litchfield, but in himself. After five years, he was seeing it as it really was. He wondered how his family and his friends would look to him now.
Or Lynn. The ship was coming in over the mall. He could see the cracked paving, sprouting grass, the statues askew on their pedestals, the waterless fountains. He thought for an instant that one of them was playing, and then he saw that what he had taken for spray was dust blowing from the empty basin. There was something about dusty fountains, something he had learned at the university. Oh, yes, one of the second-century Martian colonial poets, Eyrarsson or somebody like that. The fountains are dusty in the graveyard of dreams, the hinges are rusty and swing with tiny screams. There was more to it, but he couldn't remember. Something about empty gardens under an empty sky. There must have been colonies inside the Sol system before the interstellar era, that hadn't turned out any better than Poitem.
Then he stopped trying to remember as the ship turned toward the airport building, and a couple of tugs—terran Federation contra-gravity tanks, with derrick booms behind, and push-poles where the guns had been—came up to bring her down. He walked along the starboard promenade to the gangway, which the first mate and a couple of airmen were getting open. Most of the population of top-level Litchfield was in the crowd on the dock. He recognized old Colonel Zareff, with his white hair and plum-brown skin, and Tom Brangwen, the town marshal, red-faced and bulking above the others. It took a few seconds for him to pick out his father and mother, and his sister Flora, and then to realize that the handsome young man beside Flora was his brother, Charlie.
Charlie had been thirteen when Conn had gone away. And there was Kurt Fawzi, the mayor of Litchfield, and there was Lynn beside him, her red-lipped face tilted upward with a cloud of bright hair behind it. He waved to her, and she waved back, jumping in excitement, and then everybody was waving, and they were pushing his family to the front and making way for them.
The ship touched down lightly, and gave a lurch as she went off contra-gravity, and they got the gangway open, and the steps swung out, and he started down toward the people who had gathered to greet him. His father was wearing the same black best suit he had worn when they had parted five years ago. It had been new then. Now it was shabby, and had acquired a permanent wrinkle across the right hip over the pistol butt. Charlie was carrying a gun, too. The belt and holster looked as though he had made them himself. His mother's dress was new, and so was Flora's, probably made for the occasion. He couldn't be sure just which of the Terran Federation's services had provided the material, but Charlie's shirt was Medical Service Sterilon.
A shame that he was noticing and thinking of such things at a time like this, He clasped his father's hand and kissed his mother and Flora. Everybody was talking at once, saying things that he heard only as happy sounds. His brother's words were the first that penetrated as words. "'You did know me,' Charlie was accusing. "'Don't deny it. I saw you standing there wondering if I was Forrest's new boyfriend or what.' "'Well, how in Niflheim do you expect me to?' "'You've grown up since the last time I saw you. You're looking great, kid.' He caught the gleam of Lynn's golden hair behind Charlie's shoulder, and pushed him gently aside. "'Lynn! Kahn, you look just wonderful!' Her arms were around his neck, and she was kissing him.
"'Am I still your girl, Kahn?' He crushed her against him and returned her kisses, assuring her that she was. He wasn't going to let it make a bit of difference how her father took the news, if she didn't. She babbled on. You didn't get mixed up with any of those girls on Tara, did you? If you did, don't tell me about it. All I care about is that you are back. Oh, Con, you don't know how much I missed you. Mother, Dad, doesn't he look just splendid? Kurt Fawzi, a little thinner, His face more wrinkled, his hair greyer, shook his hand. "'I'm just as glad to see you as anybody, Con,' he said, "'even if I'm not being as demonstrative about it as Lynn.' "'Judge, what do you think of our returned wanderer?' "'Friends, shake hands with him, but save the interview for the news for later.
"'Professor, here's one student Litchfield Academy won't need to be ashamed of.' He shook hands with them. Old Judge Ledoux, Franz Veltrin, the newsman, Professor Kelton, a dozen others, some of whom he had not thought of in five years. They were all cordial and happy. How much, he wondered, because he was their neighbor, Con Maxwell, Rodney Maxwell's son, home from Tara, and how much because of what they hoped he would tell them. Kurt Fawzi, edging him out of the crowd, was the first to voice that. "'Khan, what did you find out?' he asked breathlessly. "'Do you know where it is?' Khan hesitated, looking about desperately. This was no time to start talking to Kurt Fawzi about it. His father was turning toward him from one side, and from the other Tom Brangwen and Colonel Zareff were approaching more slowly, the older man leaning on a silver-headed cane.
"'Don't bother him about it now, Kurt.' Rodney Maxwell scolded the mayor. He's just gotten off the ship. He hasn't had time to say hello to everybody yet. But, Rod, I've been waiting to hear what he's found out ever since he went away, Fozzie protested in a hurt tone. Brangwen and Colonel Zareff joined them. They were close friends, probably because neither of them was a native of Poitem. The town marshal had always been reticent about his origins, but Khan guessed it was Hathor. Brangwen's heavy-muscled body, and his ease and grace in handling it, mark him as a man of a heavy-gravity planet. Besides, Hathor had a permanent cloud envelope, and Tom Brangwen's skin had turned boiled lobster red under the dim orange sunlight of Alpha Gartner.
Old Clem Zarif never hesitated to tell anybody where he came from. He was from Ashmodai, one of the System States planets, and he had commanded a division that had been blasted down to about regimental strength in the Alliance Army. "'Hello, boy,' he croaked, extending a trembling hand. "'Glad you're home. We all missed you.' "'We sure did, Khan,' the town marshal agreed. Clasping Khan's hand as soon as the old man had released it. Find out anything definite? Kurt Fawzi looked at his watch. Khan, we've planned a little celebration for you. We only had since day before yesterday, when the spaceship came into radio range, but we're having a dinner party for you at Santa's this evening. You couldn't have done anything I'd have liked better, Mr.
Fawzi. I'd have to have a meal at Senta's before really feeling that I'd come home. Well, here's what I have in mind. It'll be three hours till dinner's ready. Suppose we all go up to my office in the meantime. It'll give the ladies a chance to go home and fix up for the party, and we can have a drink, and a talk." "'You want to do that, Con?' his father asked, a trifle doubtfully. "'If you'd rather go home first—' Something in his father's voice and manner disturbed him vaguely. However, he nodded agreement. After a couple of drinks, he'd be better able to tell them. "'Yes, indeed, Mr. Fawzi,' Kahn said. "'I know you're all anxious, but it's a long story. This'll be a good chance to tell you.' Fawzi turned to his wife and daughter, interrupting himself to shout instructions to a couple of dock-hands, who were floating the baggage off the ship on a contragravity lifter.
Khan's father had sent Charlie off with a message to his mother and Flora. Khan turned to Colonel Zareff. I noticed extra workers coming out from the hiring agencies in Storacenda, and the crop was all in across the calders. Big wine pressing this year? Yes, we're up to our necks in melons, the old planter grumbled. Gehenna of a big crop. Price'll drop like a brick of collapsium, and this time next year we'll be using brandy to wash our feet in. If you can't get good prices, hang on to it and age it. I wish you could see what the bars on Terra charge for a drink of ten-year-old Poitem. This isn't Terra, and we aren't selling it by the drink. Only place we can sell, Brandy, is at the Storacinda spaceport, and we have to take what the trading-ship captains offer.
You've been on a rich planet for the last five years, Khan. You've forgotten what it's like to live in a poorhouse. And that's what Poitam is. Things'll be better from now on, Clem, the mayor said, putting one hand on the old man's shoulder and the other on Khan's. Our boy's home. With what he can tell us, we'll be able to solve all our problems. Come on, let's go up and hear about it. They entered the wide doorway of the warehouse on the dock-level floor of the airport building and crossed to the lift. About a dozen others had joined them, all the important men of Litchfield. Inside, Kurt Fawzi's laborers were floating out cargo for the ship, casks of brandy, of course, and a lot of boxes and crates painted light blue and marked with the wreathed globe of the Terran Federation and the gold triangle of the Third Fleet Army Force.
and the eight-pointed red star of ordnance service. Long cases of rifles, square boxes of ammunition, machine-guns, crated autocannon and rockets. "'Where'd that stuff come from?' Kahn asked his father. "'You dig it up?' His father chuckled. "'That happened since the last time I wrote you. Remember the big underground headquarters complex in the Calders?' Everybody thought it had been cleaned out years ago. You know, it's never a mistake to take a second look at anything that everybody believes. I found a lot of sealed-off sections over there that had never been entered. This stuff's from one of the Headquarters defense armories. I have a gang getting the stuff out. Charlie and I flew in after lunch, and I'm going back the first thing tomorrow.
But— There's enough combat equipment on hand to outfit a private army for every man, woman, and child on Poitoum, Kahn objected. Where are we going to sell this? Store sent to spaceport. The tramp freighters are buying it for newly colonized planets that haven't been industrialized yet. They don't pay much, but it doesn't cost much to get it out, and I've been clearing about three hundred sols a ton on the spaceport docks. That's not bad, you know. Three hundred sols a ton. A lifter went by, stacked with cases of M504 submachine guns. Unloaded, one of them weighed six pounds, and even a used one was worth a hundred sols. Kahn started to say something about that, but then they came to the lift and were crowding on to it.
He had been in Kurt Fawzi's office a few times, always with his father, and he remembered it as a dim, quiet place of genteel conviviality and rambling conversations, with deep, comfortable chairs and many ash-trays. Fawzi's warehouse and brokerage business, and the airline agency, and the government, such as it was, of Litchfield, combined made few demands on his time, and did not prevent the office from becoming a favored loafing center for the town's elders. The lights were bright only over the big table that served, among other things, as a desk, and the walls were almost invisible in the shadows. As they came down the hallway from the lift, everybody had begun speaking more softly. Voices were never loud or excited in Kurt Fawzi's office.
Tom Brangwen went to the table, taking off his belt and holster and laying his pistol aside. The others, crowding into the room, added their weapons to his.
That was something else Khan was seeing with new eyes. It had been five years since he had carried a gun, and he was wondering why any of them bothered. A gun was what a boy put on to show that he had reached manhood, and a man carried for the rest of his life out of habit. Why, there wouldn't be a shooting a year in Litchfield. If you didn't count the farm-tramps and drifters, who kept to the lower level, or camped in the empty buildings at the edge of town. Or maybe that was it. Maybe Litchfield was peaceful because everybody was armed. It certainly wasn't because of anything the planetary government at Storacenda did to maintain order.
After divesting himself of his gun, Tom Brangwen took over the bartending. Getting out glasses and filling a pitcher of brandy from a keg in the corner. "'Everybody supplied?' Fawzi was asking. "'Well, let's drink to our returned emissary. We're all anxious to hear what you've found out, Con. Gentlemen, here's to our friend, Con Maxwell. Welcome home, Con.' "'Well, it's wonderful to be back, Mr. Fawzi.' No, let's not have any of this Mr. Foolishness. You're one of the gang now. And drink up, everybody. We have plenty of brandy, even if we don't have anything else. You telling us, Kurt? somebody demanded. One of the distillery company. The name would come back to Kahn in a moment. When this crop gets pressed and fermented— When I start pressing, I don't know where in Gehenna I'm going to vat the stuff till it ferments.
Colonel Zareff said. Or why? You won't be able to handle all of it. Now, now," Fozzie reproved, let's not start moaning about our troubles. Not the day Khan's come home. Not when he's going to tell us how to find a Third Fleet Army Force brain.
You did find out what the brain is, didn't you, Khan? Brangwen asked anxiously. That set half a dozen of them off at once. They had all sat down after the toast. Now they were fidgeting in their chairs, leaning forward, looking at Kahn fixedly. What did you find out, Kahn? It's still here on Poitam, isn't it? Did you find out where it is?
He wanted to tell them in one quick sentence and get it over with. He couldn't. Any more than he could force himself to squeeze the trigger of a pistol he knew would blow up in his hand. "'Wait a minute, gentlemen,' he finished the brandy, and held out the glass to Tom Brangwen, nodding toward the pitcher. Even the first drink had warmed him, and he could feel the constriction easing in his throat, and the lump at the pit of his stomach dissolving.
I hope none of you expect me to spread out a map and show you the cross on it, where the brain is. I can't. I can't even give the approximate location of the thing."
Much of the happy eagerness drained out of the faces around him. Some of them were looking troubled. Colonel Zareff was gnawing the bottom of his mustache, and Judge Ledoux's hand shook as he tried to relight his cigar. Kahn stole a quick side-glance at his father. Rodney Maxwell was watching him, curiously, as though wondering what he was going to say next. "'But it is still here on Poitoum,' Fozzie questioned. "'They didn't take it away when they evacuated, did they?' Kahn finished his second drink. This time he picked up the pitcher and refilled for himself. "'I'm going to have to do a lot of talking.' He said, and it's going to be thirsty work. I'll have to tell you the whole thing from the beginning, and if you start asking questions at random, you'll get me mixed up and I'll miss the important points."
By all means, Judge Ledoux told him, give it in your own words, in what you think is the proper order. Thank you, Judge. Khan drank some more brandy, hoping he could get his courage up without getting drunk. After all, they had a right to a full report. All of them had contributed something toward sending him to Terra.
The main purpose in my going to the university was to learn computer theory in practice. It wouldn't do any good for us to find the brain if none of us were able to use it. Well, I learned enough to be able to operate, program, and service any computer in existence. and train assistants. During my last year at the university, I had a part-time paid job programming the big positron-neutrino-photon computer in the astrophysics department. When I graduated, I was offered a position as instructor in positronic computer theory. "'You never mention that in your letters, son,' his father said. It was too late for any letter except one that would come on the same ship I did. Besides, it wasn't very important.
I think it was—there was a catch in old Professor Kelton's voice—one of my boys, from the Academy, offered a place on the faculty of the University of Montevideo, Ontario. He poured himself a second drink, something he almost never did. Kahn means it wasn't important because it didn't have anything to do with the brain, Fawzi explained, and then looked at Kahn expectantly. All right. Now he'd tell them. I went over all the records of the Third Fleet Army Forces occupation of Poitoum that are open to the public. On one pretext or another, I got permission to examine the non-classified files that aren't open to public examination. I even got a few peeps at some of the stuff that's still classified secret.
I have maps and plans of all the installations that were built on this planet, literally thousands of them, many still undiscovered. Why, we haven't more than scratched the surface of what the Federation left behind here. For instance, all the important installations exist in duplicate, some even in triplicate, as a precaution against Alliance space attack. Space attack! Colonel Zareff was indignant. There never was a time when the Alliance could have taken the offensive against Poitain, even if an offensive outside our space area had been part of our policy. We just didn't have the ships. It took over a year to move a million and a half troops from Ashmodai to Marduk, and the fleet that was based on Amaterasu was blasted out of existence in the spaceports and in orbit.
Hell, at the time of the surrender, we didn't have—they weren't taking chances on that, Colonel. But the point I want to make is that, with everything I did find, I never found, in any official record, a single word about the giant computer we call the Third Fleet Army Force Brain.
For a time— The only sound in the room was the tiny, insectile humming of the electric clock on the wall. Then Professor Kelton set his glass on the table, and it sounded like a hammer blow. "'Nothing, Con?' Kurt Fawzi was incredulous, and for the first time frightened. The others were exchanging uneasy glances. "'But you must have—a thing like that—' Of course, it would have been one of the closest secrets during the war, somebody else said. But in forty years you'd expect something to leak out. Why, during the war it was all through the Third Force. Even the Alliance knew about it. That's how Clem heard of it. Well, Khan couldn't just walk into the secret files and read whatever he wanted to, just because he couldn't find anything.
"'Don't tell me about security,' Clem Zareff snorted. "'Certainly they still have it classified. Staff brass had rather lose an eye than declassify anything.' "'If you'd seen the lengths our staff went to—' "'Hell, we lost battles because the staff wouldn't release information the troops in the field needed.' "'I remember once—' "'But there was a brain,' Judge Ledoux was saying. To reassure himself and draw agreement from the others. It was capable of combining data, and scanning and evaluating all its positronic memories, and forming association patterns, and reasoning with absolute perfection. It was more than a positronic brain. It was a positronic supermind. We'd have won the war except for the brain.
We had ninety systems, a hundred and thirty inhabited planets, A hundred billion people, and we were on the defensive in our own space area. Every move we made was known and anticipated by the Federation. How could they have done that without something like the brain?" Kahn, from what you've heard of computers, how large a volume of space would you say the brain would have to occupy? Professor Kelton asked. Professor Kelton was the most unworldly of the lot. Yet— He was asking the most practical question. Well, the astrophysics computer I worked with at the university occupies a total of about one million cubic feet, Kahn began. This was his chance. They'd take anything he told them about computers as gospel.
It was only designed to handle problems in astrophysics. The brain, being built for space war, Would have to handle any such problem. And if half the stories about the brain are anywhere near true, it handled any other problem—mathematical, scientific, political, economic, strategic, psychological, even philosophical and ethical—well, I'd say that a hundred million cubic feet would be the smallest even conceivable. They all nodded seriously. They were willing to accept that, Or anything else, except one thing. "'Lots of places on this planet where a thing that size could be hidden,' Tom Brangwen said, undismayed. "'A planet's a mighty big place.' "'It could be underwater, in one of the seas,' Piet Dawes, the banker suggested.
"'An underwater dome city wouldn't be any harder to build than a dome city on a poison-atmosphere planet like Tubalcain.' "'It might even be on Tubalcain,' a melon-planter said. Or Hiawatha, or even one of the Beta or Gamma planets. The Third Force was occupying the whole Tri-System, you know." He thought for a moment. If I'd been in charge, I'd have put it on one of the moons of Pantagruel. But that's clear out in the Alpha System, Judge Ledoux objected. We don't have a spaceship on the planet. Certainly nothing with a hyperdrive engine. And it would take a lifetime to get out to the gamma system and back on reaction drive."
Khan put his empty brandy-glass on the table and sat erect. A new thought had occurred to him, chasing out of his mind all the worries and fears he had brought with him all the way from Terra. "'Then we'll have to build a ship,' he said calmly. "'I know when the Federation evacuated Poitem, They took every hyperdrive ship with them. But they had plenty of shipyards and spaceports on this planet, and I have maps showing the locations of all of them, and barely a third of them have been discovered so far. I'm sure we can find enough hulks and enough hyperfield generator parts to assemble a ship or two, and I know we'll find the same or better on some of the other planets." And here's another thing," he added.
When we start looking into some of the Dome City plants on Tubalcain and Hiawatha and Maruna and Koshai, we may find the plant, or plants, where the components for the brain were fabricated. And if we do, we may find records of where they were shipped. And that'll be it." "'You're right,' Professor Kelton cried, quivering with excitement. "'We've been hunting at random for the brain. So it would only be an accident if we found it. We'll have to do this systematically, and with Khan to help us... Khan, why not build a computer? I don't mean another brain. I mean a computer to help us find the brain. We can. But we may not even need to build one. When we get out to the industrial planets, we may find one ready except for perhaps some minor alterations.
But how are we going to finance all this? Clem Zarif demanded querulously. We're poorer than snakes, and even one hyperdrive ship's going to cost like a henna. I've been thinking about that, Clem, Fawzi said. If we can find material at these shipyards Kahn knows about, most of our expense will be labor. Well, haven't we ten workmen competing for every job? They don't really need money— Only the things money can buy. We can raise food on the farms, and provide whatever else they need out of Federation supplies." Sure. As soon as it gets around that we're really trying to do something about this, everybody'll want in on it," Tom Brangwen predicted. And I have no doubt that the planetary government at Storsenda will give us assistance, once we show that this is a practical and productive enterprise.
Judge Ledoux put in. I have some slight influence with the President, and I'm not too sure we want the government getting into this, Kurt Fawzi replied. Give them half a chance, and that gang at Storocendal squeeze us right out. We can handle this ourselves, Wrangwen agreed. And when we get some kind of a ship, and get out to the other two systems, or even just to Tubalcain or Hiawatha, first thing you know, We'll be the planetary government." Well, now, Tom," Fawzi began piously, the brain is too big a thing for a few of us to try to monopolize. It'll be for all Poitimes. Of course, it's only proper that we, who are making the effort to locate it, should have the direction of that effort.
While Fawzi was talking, Rodney Maxwell went to the table, Rummaged his pistol out of the pile and buckled it on. The mayor stopped short. "'You leaving us, Rod?' "'Yes. It's getting late. Conn and I are going for a little walk. We'll be at Senta's in half an hour. The fresh air will do both of us good, and we have a lot to talk about. After all, we haven't seen each other for over five years.' They were silent, however, until they were away from the airport building. and walking along High Garden Terrace in the direction of the Mall. Khan was glad. His own thoughts were weighing too heavily within him. I didn't do it. I was going to do it every minute. I was going to do it, and I didn't. And now it's too late."
That was quite a talk you gave them, son, his father said. They believed every word of it. A couple of times I even caught myself starting to believe it. Khan stopped short. His father stopped beside him and stood looking at him. "'Why didn't you tell them the truth?' Rodney Maxwell asked. The question angered Khan. It was what he had been asking himself. "'Why didn't I just grab a couple of pistols off the table and shoot the lot of them?' he retorted. It would have killed them quicker, and wouldn't have hurt as much. His father took the cigar from his mouth, and inspected the tip of it.
The truth must be pretty bad, then. There is no brain. Is that it, son? There never was one. I'm not saying that only because I know it would be impossible to build such a computer. I'm telling you what the one man in the galaxy who ought to know told me. The man who commanded the Third Force during the war. Fox Travis? I didn't know he was still alive. You actually talked to him? Yes. He's on Luna, keeping himself alive at low gravity. It took me a couple of years, and I was afraid he'd die before I got to him, but I finally managed to see him. What did he tell you? That no such thing as the brain ever existed.
They started walking again, more slowly, toward the far edge of the terrace, with the sky red and orange in front of them. The story was all through the Third Force, but it was just one of those wild tales that get started, nobody knows how, among troops. The High Command never denied or even discouraged it. It helped morale, and letting it leak to the enemy was good psychological warfare.
Clem Zareff says that everybody in the Alliance Army heard of the brain, his father said. That was why he came here in the first place. He puffed thoughtfully on his cigar. You said a computer like the brain would be an impossibility. Why? Wouldn't it be just another computer, only a lot bigger and a lot smarter? Dad, computer men don't like to hear computers called smart, Kahn said. They aren't. The people who build them are smart. A computer only knows what's fed into it. They can hold more information in their banks than a man can in his memory. They can combine it faster. They don't get tired or absent-minded. But they can't imagine. They can't create. And they can't do anything a human brain can't."
"'You know, I'd wondered about just that,' said his father." And none of the histories of the war even as much as mentioned the brain. And I couldn't see why, after the war, they didn't build dozens of them to handle all these galactic political and economic problems that nobody seems able to solve. A thing like the brain wouldn't only be useful for war. The people here aren't trying to find it for war purposes.
You didn't mention any of these doubts to the others, did you? They were just doubts. You knew for sure, and you couldn't tell them. I'd come home intending to tell them there was no brain, tell them to stop wasting their time hunting for it, and start trying to figure out the answers themselves. But I couldn't. They don't believe in the brain as a tool to use. It's a machine god that they can bring all their troubles to. You can't take a thing like that away from people without giving them something better.
I noticed you suggested building a spaceship, and agreed with the professor about building a computer. What was your idea? To take their minds off hunting for the brain and keep them busy? Khan shook his head. I'm serious about the ship. Ships. You and Colonel Zareff gave me that idea. His father looked at him in surprise. "'I never said a word in there, and Clem didn't even once mention.' "'Not in Kurt's office. Before we went up from the docks. There was Clem moaning about a good year for melons as though it were a plague, and you selling arms and ammunition by the ton. Why, on Terra, or Baldur, or Ullr!' A glass of our brandy brings more than those freighter captains give us for a cask. And what do you think a colonist on a grandma, or sect, or hatchiman, who has to fight for his life against savages and wild animals, would pay for one of those rifles and a thousand rounds of ammunition?"
His father objected. We can't base the whole economy of a planet on brandy. Only about ten per cent of the arable land on Poitem will grow wine-melons. And if we started exporting Federation salvage the way you talk of, we'll be selling pieces instead of job-lots. We'll net more, but—that's just to get us started. The ships will be used, after that, to go to Tubalcain and Hiawatha and the planets of the Beta and Gamma systems. What I want to see is the mines and factories re-opened, People employed. Wealth being produced.
And where'll we sell what we produce? Remember, the mines closed down because there was no more market. No more interstellar market, that's true. But there are a hundred and fifty million people on Poitem. That's a big enough market, and a big enough labor force to exploit the wealth of the Gartner tri-system. We can have prosperity for everybody on our own resources. Just what do we need that we have to get from the outside now? His father stopped again and sat down on the edge of a fountain. The same one, possibly, from which Khan had seen dust blowing as the airship had been coming in.
Khan, that's a dangerous idea. That was what brought on the System States War. The Alliance planets took themselves outside the Federation economic orbit, and the Federation crushed them. Khan swore impatiently. You've been listening to old Clem Zarath ranting about the Lost Cause and the greedy Terran robber barons holding the galaxy in economic serfdom while they piled up profits. The Federation didn't fight that war for profits. There weren't any profits to fight for. They fought it because if the system states had won, half of them would be at war among themselves now. Make no mistake about it. Politically, I'm all for the Federation. But economically, I want to see our people exploiting their own resources for themselves, instead of grieving about the lost interstellar trade, and bewailing bumper crops, and searching for a mythical robot god.
You think, if you can get something like that started, that they'll forget about the brain?" his father asked skeptically. That crowd up in Kurt Fawzi's office? Niflheim, no. They'll go on hunting for the brain as long as they live, and every day they'll be expecting to find it tomorrow. That'll keep them happy. But they're all old men. The ones I'm interested in are the boys of Charlie's age. I'm going to give them too many real things to do. Building ships, exploring the rest of the Tri-System, Opening mines and factories, producing wealth, for them to get caught in that empty old dream.
He looked down at the dusty fountain on which his father sat. That ghost dream haunts this graveyard. I want to give them living dreams that they can make come true.
Khan's father sat in silence for a while, his cigar-smoke red in the sunset. If you can do all that, Conn... You know, I believe you can. I'm with you, as far as I can help. And we'll have a talk with Charlie. He's a good boy, Conn, and he has a lot of influence among the other youngsters." He looked at his watch. We'd better be getting along. You don't want to be late for your own coming-home party.
Rodney Maxwell slid off the edge of the fountain to his feet. Hitching at the gun belt under his coat. Have to dig out his own gun and start wearing it, Kahn thought. A man simply didn't go around in public without a gun in Litchfield. It wasn't decent. And he'd be spending a lot of time out in the brush, where he'd really need one. First thing in the morning, he'd unpack that trunk and go over all those maps. There were half a dozen spaceports and maintenance shops and shipyards Within a half day by airboat, none of which had been looted. He'd look them all over. That would take a couple of weeks. Pick the best shipyard and concentrate on it. Kurt Fawzi be the man to recruit labor. Professor Kelton was a scholar, not a scientist.
He didn't know beans about hyperdrive engines, but he knew how to do library research.
They came to the edge of the High Garden Terrace at the escalator. long motionless, its moving parts rusted fast, that led down to the mall, and at the bottom of it was Senta's, the tables under the open sky. A crowd was already gathering. There was Tom Brangwen, and there was Kurt Fawzie and his wife and Lynn. And there was Senta herself, fat and dumpy, in one of her preposterous red-and-purple dresses, bustling about, Bubbling happily one moment and screaming invective at some laggard waiter the next.
The dinner, Khan knew, would be the best he had eaten in five years, and afterward they would sit in the dim glow of Beda Gartner, sipping coffee and liqueurs, smoking and talking and visiting back and forth from one table to another, as they always did in the evenings at Senta's. Another bit from Iverson's poem came back to him. We sit in the twilight, the shadows among, and we talk of the happy days when we were brave and young. That was for the old ones, for Colonel Zareff and Judge Ledoux and Dolph Kelton, and maybe even for Tom Brangwen and Franz Veltrin, and for his father, but his brother Charlie and the boys of his generation would have a future to talk about. And so would he and Lynn Fawzi.
End of Graveyard of Dreams by H. Beam Piper.