“Consolidated Outtime Foodstuffs let a gang of reporters in, today. I think they’re afraid somebody will accuse them of complicity, and they want to get their side of it before the public. All our crowd are off that Time line except a couple of detectives at the plantation.”
“I know.” He smiled; Dalla was thinking of the Paratime Police as “our crowd” now. “How about this dinner at Dras’ place?”
“Oh, that was easy.” She shifted position again. “I just called Dras up and told him that our vacation was off, and he invited us before I could begin hinting. What are you going to wear?”
“Short-jacket greens; I can carry a needler with that uniform, even wear it at the table. I don’t think it’s smart for me to run around unarmed, even on Home Timeline. Especially on Home Timeline,” he amended. “When’s this affair going to start, and how long will Rendarra take to get that goo off you?”
Salgath Trod left his aircar at the top landing stage of his apartment building and sent it away to the hangars under robot control; he glanced about him as he went toward the antigrav shaft. There were a dozen vehicles in the air above; any of them might have followed him from the Paratime Building. He had no doubt that he had been under constant surveillance from the moment the nameless messenger had delivered the Organization’s ultimatum. Until he delivered that speech, the next morning, or manifested an intention of refusing to do so, however, he would be safe. After that—
Alone in his office, he had reviewed the situation point by point, and then gone back and reviewed it again; the conclusion was inescapable. The Organization had ordered him to make an accusation which he himself knew to be false; that was the first premise. The conclusion was that he would be killed as soon as he had made it. That was the trouble with being mixed up with that kind of people—you were expendable, and sooner or later, they would decide that they would have to expend you. And what could you do?
To begin with, an accusation of criminal malfeasance made against a Management or Paratime Commission agency on the floor of Executive Council was tantamount to an accusation made in court; automatically, the accuser became a criminal prosecutor, and would have to repeat his accusation under narco-hypnosis. Then the whole story would come out, bit by bit, back to its beginning in that first illegal deal in Indo-Turanian opium, diverted from trade with the Khiftan Sector and sold on Second Level Luvarian Empire Sector, and the deals in radioactive poisons, and the slave trade. He would be able to name few names—the Organization kept its activities too well compartmented for that—but he could talk of things that had happened, and when, and where, and on what paratemporal areas.
No. The Organization wouldn’t let that happen, and the only way it could be prevented would be by the death of Salgath Trod, as soon as he had made his speech. All the talk of providing him with corroborative evidence was silly; it had been intended to lead him more trustingly to the slaughter. They’d kill him, of course, in some way that would be calculated to substantiate the story he would no longer be able to repudiate. The killer, who would be promptly rayed dead by somebody else, would wear a Paratime Police uniform, or something like that. That was of no importance, however; by then, he’d be beyond caring.
One of his three ServSec Prole servants—the slim brown girl who was his housekeeper and hostess, and also his mistress—admitted him to the apartment. He kissed her perfunctorily and closed the door behind him.
“You’re tired,” she said. “Let me call Nindrandigro and have him bring you chilled wine; lie down and rest until dinner.”
“No, no; I want brandy.” He went to a cellaret and got out a decanter and goblet, pouring himself a drink. “How soon will dinner be ready?”
The brown girl squeezed a little golden globe that hung on a chain around her neck; a tiny voice, inside it, repeated: “Eighteen twenty-three ten, eighteen twenty-three eleven, eighteen twenty-three twelve—”
“In half an hour. It’s still in the robo-chef,” she told him.
He downed half the goblet-full, set it down, and went to a painting, a brutal scarlet and apple-green abstraction, that hung on the wall. Swinging it aside and revealing the safe behind it, he used his identity-sigil, took out a wad of Paratemporal Exchange Bank notes and gave them to the girl.
“Here, Zinganna; take these, and take Nindrandigro and Calilla out for the evening. Go where you can all have a good time, and don’t come back till after midnight. There will be some business transacted here, and I want them out of this. Get them out of here as soon as you can; I’ll see to the dinner myself. Spend all of that you want to.”
The girl riffled through the wad of banknotes. “Why, thank you, Trod!” She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him enthusiastically. “I’ll go tell them at once.”
“And have a good time, Zinganna; have the best time you possibly can,” he told her, embracing and kissing her. “Now, get out of here; I have to keep my mind on business.”
When she had gone, he finished his drink and poured another. He drew and checked his needler. Then, after checking the window-shielding and activating the outside viewscreens, he lit a cheroot and sat down at the desk, his goblet and his needler in front of him, to wait until the servants were gone.
There was only one way out alive. He knew that, and yet he needed brandy, and a great deal of mental effort, to steel himself for it. Psycho-rehabilitation was a dreadful thing to face. There would be almost a year of unremitting agony, physical and mental, worse than a Khiftan torture rack. There would be the shame of having his
