Dalla caught the significance of that before Vall did. At first, she was puzzled; then, in spite of herself, she was horrified and angry. Tortha Karf was explaining to Vall just where and on what paratemporal sector Kharanda was spoken.
“No possibility that this agent, Skordran Kirv, could have been mistaken. He worked for a while on Kholghoor Sector, himself; knew the language by hypno-mech and by two years’ use,” Tortha Karf was saying. “So he ordered himself back on duty, had the slaves isolated and the slave dealers arrested, and then transposed to Police Terminal to report. The SecReg Subchief, old Vulthor Tharn, confirmed him in charge at this Esaron Sector plantation, and assigned him a couple of detectives and a psychist.”
“When was this?” Vall asked.
“Yesterday. One-Five-Nine Day. About 1500 local time.”
“Twenty-three hundred Dhergabar time,” Vall commented.
“Yes. And I just found out about it. Came in in the late morning generalized report-digest; very inconspicuous item, no special urgency symbol or anything. Fortunately, one of the report editors spotted it and messaged Police Terminal for a copy of the original report.”
“It’s been a long time since we had anything like that,” Vall said, studying the glowing tip of his cigarette, his face wearing the curiously withdrawn expression of a conscious memory recall. “Fifty years ago; the time that gang kidnaped some girls from Second Level Triplanetary Empire Sector and sold them into the harem of some Fourth Level Indo-Turanian sultan.”
“Yes. That was your first independent case, Vall. That was when I began to think you’d really make a cop. One renegade First Level citizen and four or five ServSec Prole hoodlums, with a stolen fifty-foot conveyer. This looks like a rather more ambitious operation.”
Dalla got one of her own cigarettes out and lit it. Vall and Tortha Karf were talking cop talk about method of operation and possible size of the gang involved, and why the slaves had been shipped all the way from India to the west coast of North America.
“Always ready sale for slaves on the Esaron Sector,” Vall was saying. “And so many small independent states, and different languages, that outtimers wouldn’t be particularly conspicuous.”
“And with this barbarian invasion going on on the Kholghoor Sector, slaves could be picked up cheaply,” Tortha Karf added.
In spite of her determination to boycott the conversation, curiosity began to get the better of her. She had spent a year and a half on the Kholghoor Sector, investigating alleged psychic powers of the local priests. There’d been nothing to it—the prophecies weren’t precognition, they were shrewd inferences, and the miracles weren’t psychokinesis, they were sleight-of-hand. She found herself asking:
“What barbarian invasion’s this?”
“Oh, Central Asian nomadic people, the Croutha,” Tortha Karf told her. “They came down through Khyber Pass about three months ago, turned east, and hit the headwaters of the Ganges. Without punching a lot of buttons to find out exactly, I’d say they’re halfway to the delta country by now. Leader seems to be a chieftain called Llamh Droogh the Red. A lot of paratime trading companies are yelling for permits to introduce firearms in the Kholghoor Sector to protect their holdings there.”
She nodded. The Fourth Level Kholghoor Sector belonged to what was known as Indus-Ganges-Irriwady Basic Sector-Grouping—probability of civilization having developed late on the Indian subcontinent, with the rest of the world, including Europe, in Stone Age savagery or early Bronze Age barbarism. The Kharandas, the people among whom she had once done field-research work, had developed a pre-mechanical, animal-power, handcraft, edge-weapon culture. She could imagine the roads jammed with fugitives from the barbarian invaders, the conveyer hidden among the trees, the lurking slavers—
Watch it, Dalla! Don’t let the old scoundrel play on your feelings!
“Well, what do you want me to do, Chief?” Vall was asking.
“Well, I have to know just what this situation’s likely to develop into, and I want to know why Vulthor Tharn’s been sitting on this ever since Skordran Kirv reported it to him—”
“I can answer the second one now,” Vall replied. “Vulthor Tharn is due to retire in a few years. He has a negatively good, undistinguished record. He’s trying to play it safe.”
Tortha Karf nodded. “That’s what I thought. Look, Vall; suppose you and Dalla transpose from here to Police Terminal, and go to Novilan Equivalent, and give this a quick look-over and report to me, and then rocket to Zarabar Equivalent and go on with your trip to the Dwarma Sector. It may delay you eight or ten hours, but—”
“Closer twenty-four,” Vall said. “I’d have to transpose to this plantation, on the Esaron Sector. How about it, Dalla? Would you want to do that?”
She hesitated for a moment, angry with him. He didn’t want to refuse, and he was trying to make her do it for him.
“I know, it’s a confounded imposition, Dalla,” Tortha Karf told her. “But it’s important that I get a prompt and full estimate of the situation. This may be something very serious. If it’s an isolated incident, it can be handled in a routine manner, but I’m afraid it’s not. It has all the marks of a large-scale operation, and if this is a matter of mass kidnapings from one sector and transpositions to another, you can see what a threat this is to the Paratime Secret.”
“Moral considerations entirely aside,” Vall said. “We don’t need to discuss them; they’re too obvious.”
She nodded. For over twelve millennia, the people of her race and Vall’s and Tortha Karf’s had been existing as parasites on all the innumerable other worlds of alternate probability on the lateral dimension of time. Smart parasites never injure their hosts, and try never to reveal their existence.
“We could do that, couldn’t we, Vall?” she asked, angry at
