“The people back of this,” Dalla said, “are definitely classifiable as criminals. They may never perform a criminal act themselves, but they give orders for and profit from such acts, and they must possess the motivation and psychology of criminals. We define people as criminals when they suffer from psychological aberrations of an antisocial character, usually paranoid—excessive egoism, disregard for the rights of others, inability to recognize the social necessity for mutual cooperation and confidence. On Home Timeline, we have universal psychological testing, for the purpose of detecting and eliminating such characteristics.”
“It seems to have failed in this case,” Tortha Karf began, then snapped his fingers. “Of course! How blasted silly can I get, when I’m not trying?”
“Yes, of course,” Verkan Vall agreed. “Find out how these people missed being spotted by psychotesting; that’ll lead us to who missed being tested adequately, and also who got into the Bureau of Psychological Hygiene who didn’t belong there.”
“I think you ought to give an investigation of the whole BuPsychHyg setup very high priority,” Dalla said. “A psychotest is only as good as the people who give it, and if we have criminals administering these tests—”
“We have our friends on Executive Council,” Tortha Karf said. “I’ll see that that point is raised when Council reconvenes.” He looked at the clock. “That’ll be in three hours, by the way. If it doesn’t accomplish another thing, it’ll put Salgath Trod in the middle. He can’t demand an investigation of the Paratime Police out of one side of his mouth and oppose an investigation of Psychological Hygiene out of the other. Now what else have we to talk about?”
“Those hundred slaves we got off the Esaron Sector,” Vall said. “What are we going to do with them? And if we locate the timeline the slavers have their bases on, we’ll have hundreds, probably thousands, more.”
“We can’t sort them out and send them back to their own timelines, even if that would be desirable,” Tortha Karf decided. “Why, settle them somewhere on the Service Sector. I know, the Paratime Transposition Code limits the Service Sector to natives of timelines below second-order barbarism, but the Paratime Transposition Code has been so badly battered by this business that a few more minor literal infractions here and there won’t make any difference. Where are they now?”
“Police Terminal, Nharkan Equivalent.”
“Better hold them there, for the time being. We may have to open a new ServSec timeline to take care of all the slaves we find, if we can locate the outtime base line these people are using—Vall, this thing’s too big to handle as a routine operation, along with our other work. You take charge of it. Set up your headquarters here, and help yourself to anything in the way of personnel and equipment you need. And bear in mind that this confidence vote is coming up in ten days—on the morning of One-Seven-Two Day. I’m not asking for any miracles, but if we don’t get this thing cleared up by then, we’re in for trouble.”
“I realize that, sir. Dalla, you’d better go back to Home Timeline, with the Chief,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do to help me, here, at present. Get some rest, and then try to wangle an invitation for the two of us to dinner at Thalvan Dras’ apartments this evening.” He turned back to Tortha Karf. “Even if he never pays any attention to business, Dras still owns Consolidated Outtime Foodstuffs,” he said. “He might be able to find out, or help us find out, how the story about those slaves leaked out of his company.”
“Well, that won’t take much doing,” Dalla said. “If there’s as much excitement on Home Timeline as I think, Dras would turn somersaults and jump through hoops to get us to one of his dinners, right now.”
Salgath Trod pushed the litter of papers and record-tape spools to one side impatiently.
“Well, what else did you expect?” he demanded. “This was the logical next move. BuPsychHyg is supposed to detect anybody who believes in looking out for his own interests first, and condition him into a pious law-abiding sucker. Well, the sacred Bureau of Sucker-Makers slipped up on a lot of us. It’s a natural alibi for Tortha Karf.”
“It’s also a lot of grief for all of us,” the young man in the wraparound tunic added. “I don’t want my psychotests reviewed by some duty-struck bigot who can’t be reasoned with, and neither do you.”
“I’m getting something organized to counter that,” Salgath Trod said. “I’m going to attack the whole scientific basis of psychotesting. There’s Dr. Frasthor Klav; he’s always contended that what are called criminal tendencies are the result of the individual’s total environment, and that psychotesting and personality-analysis are valueless, because the total environment changes from day to day, even from hour to hour—”
“That won’t do,” the nameless young man who was the messenger of somebody equally nameless retorted. “Frasthor’s a crackpot; no reputable psychologist or psychist gives his opinions a moment’s consideration. And besides, we don’t want to attack Psychological Hygiene. The people in it with whom we can do business are our safeguard; they’ve given all of us a clean bill of mental health, and we have papers to prove it. What we have to do is to make it appear that that incident on the Esaron Sector is all there is to this, and also involve the Paratime Police themselves. The slavers are all paracops. It isn’t the fault of BuPsychHyg, because the Paratime Police have their own psychotesting staff. That’s where the trouble is; the paracops haven’t been adequately testing their own personnel.”
“Now how are you going to do that?” Salgath Trod asked disdainfully.
“You’ll take the floor, the first thing tomorrow, and utilize these new revelations about the Wizard Traders. You’ll accuse the Paratime Police of being the Wizard Traders themselves. Why not? They have their own paratemporal transposition equipment shops on Police Terminal, they have facilities for manufacturing duplicates of
