Time Crime

others, inability to recognize the social necessity formutual cooeperation and confidence. On Home Time Line, we haveuniversal psychological testing, for the purpose of detecting andeliminating such characteristics."

  "It seems to have failed in this case," Tortha Karf began, thensnapped his fingers. "Of course! How blasted silly can I get, when I'mnot trying?"

  "Yes, of course," Verkan Vall agreed. "Find out how these peoplemissed being spotted by psychotesting; that'll lead us to _who_ missedbeing tested adequately, and also who got into the Bureau ofPsychological Hygiene who didn't belong there."

  "I think you ought to give an investigation of the whole BuPsychHygsetup very high priority," Dalla said. "A psychotest is only as goodas the people who give it, and if we have criminals administeringthese tests--"

  "We have our friends on Executive Council," Tortha Karf said. "I'llsee that that point is raised when Council re-convenes." He looked atthe clock. "That'll be in three hours, by the way. If it doesn'taccomplish another thing, it'll put Salgath Trod in the middle. Hecan't demand an investigation of the Paratime Police out of one sideof his mouth and oppose an investigation of Psychological Hygiene outof the other. Now what else have we to talk about?"

  ]

  "Those hundred slaves we got off the Esaron Sector," Vall said. "Whatare we going to do with them? And if we locate the time line theslavers have their bases on, we'll have hundreds, probably thousands,more."

  "We can't sort them out and send them back to their own time lines,even if that would be desirable," Tortha Karf decided. "Why, settlethem somewhere on the Service Sector. I know, the ParatimeTransposition Code limits the Service Sector to natives of time linesbelow second-order barbarism, but the Paratime Transposition Code hasbeen so badly battered by this business that a few more minor literalinfractions here and there won't make any difference. Where are theynow?"

  "Police Terminal, Nharkan Equivalent."

  "Better hold them there, for the time being. We may have to open a newServSec time line to take care of all the slaves we find, if we canlocate the outtime base line these people are using--Vall, thisthing's too big to handle as a routine operation, along with our otherwork. You take charge of it. Set up your headquarters here, and helpyourself to anything in the way of personnel and equipment you need.And bear in mind that this confidence vote is coming up in tendays--on the morning of One-Seven-Two Day. I'm not asking for anymiracles, but if we don't get this thing cleared up by then, we're infor trouble."

  "I realize that, sir. Dalla, you'd better go back to Home Time Line,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 invitationfor 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 tobusiness, Dras still owns Consolidated Outtime Foodstuffs," he said."He might be able to find out, or help us find out, how the storyabout those slaves leaked out of his company."

  "Well, that won't take much doing," Dalla said. "If there's as muchexcitement on Home Time Line as I think, Dras would turn somersaultsand 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 oneside impatiently.

  "Well, what else did you expect?" he demanded. "This was the logicalnext move. BuPsychHyg is supposed to detect anybody who believes inlooking out for his own interests first, and condition him into apious law-abiding sucker. Well, the sacred Bureau of Sucker-Makersslipped 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 thewrap-around tunic added. "I don't want my psychotests reviewed by someduty-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 calledcriminal tendencies are the result of the individual's totalenvironment, and that psychotesting and personality-analysis arevalueless, because the total environment changes from day to day, evenfrom hour to hour--"

  "That won't do," the nameless young man who was the messenger ofsomebody equally nameless retorted. "Frasthor's a crackpot; noreputable psychologist or psychist gives his opinions a moment'sconsideration. And besides, we don't want to attack PsychologicalHygiene. The people in it with whom we can do business are oursafeguard; they've given all of us a clean bill of mental health, andwe have papers to prove it. What we have to do is to make it appearthat that incident on the Esaron Sector is all there is to this, andalso involve the Paratime Police themselves. The slavers are allparacops. It isn't the fault of BuPsychHyg, because the ParatimePolice have their own psychotesting staff. That's where the troubleis; 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 thesenew revelations about the Wizard Traders. You'll accuse the ParatimePolice of being the Wizard Traders themselves. Why not? They havetheir own paratemporal transposition equipment shops on PoliceTerminal, they have facilities for manufacturing duplicates of anykind of outtime items, like the firearms, for instance, and they knowwhich time lines on which sectors are being exploited by legitimateparatime traders and which aren't. What's to prevent a gang ofunscrupulous paracops from moving in on a few unexploited Kholghoortime lines, buying captives from the Croutha, and shipping them to theEsaron Sector?"

  "Then why would they let a thing like this get out?" Salgath Trodinquired.

  "Somebody slipped up and moved a lot of slaves onto an exploitedEsaron time line. Or, rather, Consolidated Outtime Foodstuffsestablished a plantation on a time line they were shipping slaves to.Parenthetically, that's what really did happen; the mistake our peoplemade was in not closing out that time line as soon as ConsolidatedFoodstuffs moved in," the young man said.

  "So, this Skordran Kirv, who is a dumb boy who doesn't know what thescore is, found these slaves and blatted about it to this Golzan Doth,and Golzan reported it to his company, and it couldn't be hushed up,so now Tortha Karf is trying to scare the public with ghost storiesabout a gigantic paratemporal conspiracy, to get more appropriationsand more power."

  "How long do you think I'd get away with that?" Salgath Trod demanded."I can only stretch parliamentary immunity so far. Sooner or later,I'd have to make formal charges to a special judicial committee, andthat would mean narco-hypnosis, and then it would all come out."

  "You'll have proof," the young man said. "We'll produce a couple ofthese Kharandas whom Verkan Vall didn't get hold of. Undernarco-hypnosis, they'll testify that they saw a couple of WizardTraders take their robes off. Under the robes were Paratime Policeuniforms. Do you follow me?"

  Salgath Trod made a noise of angry disgust.

  "That's ridiculous! I suppose these Kharandas will be given what isdeludedly known as memory obliteration, and a set of pseudo-memories;how long do you think that would last? About three ten-days. There isno such thing as memory obliteration; there's memory-suppression, andpseudo-memory overlay. You can't get behind that with any quickienarco-hypnosis in the back room of any police post, I'll admit that,"he said. "But a skilled psychist can discover, inside of five minutes,when a narco-hypnotized subject is carrying a load of false memories,and in time, and not too much time, all that top layer of falsememories and blockages can be peeled off. And then where would we be?"

  "Now wait a minute, Councilman. This isn't just something I dreamedup," the visitor said. "This was decided upon at the top. At the verytop."

  "I don't care whose idea it was," Salgath Trod snapped. "The wholething is idiotic, and I won't have anything to do with it."

  The visitor's face froze. All the respect vanished from his manner andtone; his voice was like ice cakes grating together in a winter river.
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  "Look, Salgath; this is an Organization order," he said. "You don'trefuse to obey Organization orders, and you don't quit theOrganization. Now get smart, big boy; do what you're told to." He tooka spool of record tape from his pocket and laid it on the desk."Outline for your speech; put it in your own words, but follow itexactly." He stood watching Salgath Trod for a moment. "I