Dalla had turned on the telescreen again; after tuning out a dance orchestra and a comedy show, she got the image of an angry-faced man in evening clothes.
“… And I’m going to demand a full investigation, as soon as Council convenes tomorrow morning!” he was shouting. “This whole story is a preposterous insult to the integrity of the entire Executive Council, your elected representatives, and it shows the criminal lengths to which this would-be dictator, Tortha Karf, and his jackal Verkan Vall will go—”
“So long, jackal.” Dalla called to him as he went out.
He spent the half-hour transposition to Police Terminal sleeping. Paratime-transpositions and rocket-flights seemed to be his only chance to get any sleep. He was still sleepy when he sat down in front of the radio telescreen behind his duplicate of Tortha Karf’s desk and put through a call to Nharkan Equivalent. It was 0600 in India; the Sector Regional Deputy Subchief who was holding down Ranthar Jard’s desk looked equally sleepy; he had a mug of coffee in front of him, and a brown-paper cigarette in his mouth.
“Oh, hello, Assistant Verkan. Want me to call Subchief Ranthar?”
“Is he sleeping? Then for mercy’s sake don’t. What’s the present status of the investigation?”
“Well, we were dropping boomerang balls yesterday, while we had sun to mask the return-flashes. Nothing. The Croutha have taken the city of Sohram, just below the big bend of the river. Tomorrow, when we have sunlight, we’re going to start boomerang-balling the central square. We may get something.”
“The Wizard Traders’ll be moving in near there, about now,” Vall said. “The Croutha ought to have plenty of merchandise for them. Have you gotten anything more done on narrowing down the possible area?”
The deputy bit back a yawn and reached for his coffee mug.
“The experts have just about pumped these slaves empty,” he said. “The local religion is a mess. Seems to have started out as a Great Mother cult; then it picked up a lot of gods borrowed from other peoples; then it turned into a dualistic monotheism; then it picked up a lot of minor gods and devils—new devils usually gods of the older pantheon. And we got a lot of gossip about the feudal wars and faction-fights among the nobility, and so on, all garbled, because these people are peasants who only knew what went on on the estate of their own lord.”
“What did go on there?” Vall asked. “Ask them about recent improvements, new buildings, new fields cleared, new paddies flooded, that sort of thing. And pick out a few of the highest I.Q.’s from both timelines, and have them locate this estate on a large-scale map, and draw plans showing the location of buildings, fields and other visible features. If you have to, teach them mapping and sketching by hypno-mech. And then drop about five hundred to a thousand boomerang balls, at regular intervals, over the whole paratemporal area. When you locate a timeline that gives you a picture to correspond to their description, boomerang the main square in Sohram over the whole belt around it, to find Croutha with firearms.”
The deputy looked at him for a moment then gulped more coffee.
“Can do, Assistant Verkan. I think I’ll send somebody to wake up Subchief Ranthar, right now. Want to talk to him.”
“Won’t be necessary. You’re recording this call, of course? Then play it back to him. And get cracking with the slaves; you want enough information out of them to enable you to start boomerang balling as soon as the sun’s high enough.”
He broke off the connection and sent out for coffee for himself. Then he put through a call to Novilan Equivalent, in western North America.
It was 1530, there, when he got Vulthor Tharn on the screen.
“Good afternoon. Assistant Verkan. I suppose you’re calling about the slave business. I’ve turned the entire matter over to Field Agent Skordran; gave him a temporary rank of Deputy Subchief. That’s subject to your approval and Chief Tortha’s, of course—”
“Make the appointment permanent,” Vall said. “I’ll have a confirmation along from Chief Tortha directly. And let me talk to him now, if you please. Subchief Vulthor.”
“Yes, sir. Switching you over now.” The screen went into a beautiful burst of abstract art, and cleared, after a while, with Skordran Kirv looking out of it.
“Hello, Deputy Skordran, and congratulations. What’s come up since we had Nebu-hin-Abenoz cut out from under us?”
“We went in on that timeline, that same night, with an airboat and made a recon in the hills back of Careba. Scared the fear of Safar into a party of Caleras while we were working at low altitude, by the way. We found the conveyer-head site: hundred-foot circle with all the grass and loose dirt transposed off it and a pole pen, very unsanitary where about two-three hundred slaves would be kept at a time. No indications of use in the last ten days. We did some pretty thorough boomeranging on that spatial equivalent over a couple of thousand timelines and found thirty more of them. I believe the slavers have closed out the whole Esaron Sector operation, at least temporarily.”
That was what he’d been afraid of; he hoped they wouldn’t do the same thing on the Kholghoor Sector.
“Let me have the designations of the timelines on which you found conveyer heads,” he said.
“Just a moment, Chief’s Assistant; I’ll photoprint them to you. Set for reception?”
Vall opened a slide under the screen and saw that the photoprint film was in place, then closed it again, nodding. Skordran Kirv fed a sheet of paper into his screen cabinet and his arm moved forward out of the picture.
“On, sir,” he said. He and Vall counted ten seconds together, and then Skordran Kirv said: “Through to you.” Vall pressed a lever under
