The rabbit peered impudently from beneath the gnarled surface root of a lemon tree just downhill from Tortha Karf. Tortha could have sworn it also wiggled its ears at him.
Tortha reached for his needler, then remembered he was unarmed except for the muzzle-loading pistol from Kalvan's Time-Line he'd brought out for target practice after lunch. It was primed and loaded and maybe he could hit the rabbit with it; on the other hand, he hadn't had much practice. If the bullet kept going, it might reach the workers in the nearest grove before it fell to the ground. Solid projectile weapons weren't like needlers or beam weapons; those solid projectiles could bounce.
The workers would probably forgive him for accidentally shooting one of them, or maybe even doing it on purpose. They didn't think of Tortha Karf as quite a god perhaps, but certainly as the sort of hero entitled to a whim or two now and then. Considering their history, this wasn't altogether surprising. The Altides were descended from a Madagascar tribe on the Afro-Sinic Sector of the Yangtzee-Mekong Basic Sector Grouping. Tortha Karf's father had found them suffering not only from famine but also from slave raiders let loose by a civil war in China that kept the Chinese Imperial Fleet's patrol squadrons at home. Bringing them to Fifth Level Agricultural Sector as a work force for the Tortha family estate had earned their enduring, if not necessarily eternal, gratitude.
That was all the more reason for being careful with his shooting. An early lesson for any Paracop was not to take advantage of people's hospitality, women or superstitions for his own pleasure. One seldom knew when their patience was going to run out until it was much too late. Even if you escaped the people you abused, you were apt to become careless, then some other outtimer would save the Paratime Police Bureau of Internal Control the trouble of putting you up on charges.
Tortha Karf firmly put away both temptation and the pistol, then noticed he'd forgotten to turn off the recorded message playing on the portable recorder perched on top of the picnic basket. He played it back and listened to Verkan Vall's description of the latest crisis on Fourth Level Europo-American, where a number of penetrated subsectors were getting thoroughly embroiled in a war in a place called locally Viet Nam. A map showed it as part of the coastline on the southeast corner of the Major Northern Land Mass.
"The situation in Europo-American has grown worse since our last conversation, increasing the possibility that this war could finally trigger a full scale nuclear slugfest. Even if this doesn't happen, suspicion of anything unusual will increase and internal surveillance has become much more efficient throughout these subsectors since the Second Global War. There are also authors making fortunes with stories of aliens from space dropping in unannounced, making abductions and spying on the world. All we need is for the KGB or the CIA or the Vatican to start taking them seriously. Our dis-information program has been a great success to date, but increasing technological development in the areas of communications and electronics may hamper our present operations and force us to curtail future commercial operations.
"The odds definitely favor our having to pull out of other Fourth Level Europo-American, Hispano-Colombian Subsectors as well. The commercial interests that opposed you twenty years ago are going to make an even bigger stink now, so I'm not going to rush into things. I'm going to recommend that the Paratime Commission appoint a study group to analyze the whole Europo-American Sector, with representatives from everybody who thinks they have something useful to say.
"That will make it a committee much to big to do anything except talk, of course. However, nobody will be able to claim he didn't get a chance to be heard. Also, if we keep an eye on them, we may learn who are the real idiots and who, or who cannot, be trusted. I'm going to give Dalla the main responsibility for watching the Europo-American Study Group. I'm afraid that means she and I won't be going outtime this year, but she sees why."
Tortha Karf hoped Vall was right; a discontented Dalla could give the new Paratime Chief a full-time job he didn't need.
"I have to be in a position to spend at least the first two months of the campaign on Kalvan's Time-Line. Otherwise, I'll seem to be a man who ran out on his friends when they were in danger. Even if somebody doesn't shoot me for that, I'll certainly lose command of the Mounted Rifles and access to Kalvan."
The screen flickered into a map of the theater of the coming Great Kings' War. There were two red blobs, one in northern Ktemnos and one around Harphax City, facing one large blue blob in southern Hos-Hostigos. And a number of blue spots etched all the way back to Hostigos Town. "About forty thousand men for Kalvan, slightly less than twenty-five thousand for Kaiphranos and about the same for the Styphoni army in Hos-Ktemnos." With three opponents to every two of his own men, the odds didn't look good for Kalvan, although he was victorious with worse odds in the war against Nostor.
Suddenly a blue line lanced out from Beshta almost to Harphax City and then back again. Vall's voice explained:
"The armies would already be moving if they were of normal size, which on Kalvan's Time-Line for a major army would mean at most ten to twelve thousand men on a side. However, thanks to all the snow from the Winter of the Wolves most of the roads-they're all dirt roads on Aryan Transpacific except for main thoroughfares in the capital cities-have been washed out and a few are out-and-out running rivers-or sewers, depending upon the population density. It's only within the past few days that the roads have begun to dry out-although not enough for heavy wagon traffic."
Tortha laughed, remembering a few such 'streams' in his own forays on Second and Fourth Level 'barbarian' time-lines.
"On top of that, there still isn't enough forage to support either army advancing as a single body. That's the one advantage Kalvan has. With his better discipline and staff work he can probably maneuver two armies independently without losing touch with each other, that is, when he learns about the army in Hos-Ktemnos. I've already figured a way of leaking the information without letting anyone know it's coming from me."
Tortha Karf winced. It was one minus already just for a Paratime Police Chief to have an outtime 'friend,' but it was something else again to aid that friend with supplies-which Verkan was already doing-or intelligence. At the moment it didn't add up to a violation of the Paratemporal Code, but it skirted the line too close for Tortha's peace of mind, besides providing useful ammunition for the new Chief's enemies-who would multiply geometrically the moment he closed Fourth Level Europo-American.
What Vall hadn't taken into account, as Dalla had so determinedly pointed out, was the faddish nature of Home Time Line society-for the past few years Europo-American, Hispano-Columbian Subsector was it! He remembered a few years back when every child under the age of twelve had a coonskin cap and a hula-hoop! Millions of flat screen TVs had been imported along with drive-in theaters. And the music! Scratch and racket he called it! About two years ago they'd had to squelch a ring of kidnappers from Home Time Line who were abducting this Presley boy from other subsectors where he hadn't become a famous singer, having him play in underground dives and 'hops'-as they called them! What next?
Every century or so Home Time Line adopted the 'culture' of an 'interesting' Belt or Subsector. He remembered during his youth when Second Level Gorphyx Sector with its 'spaceships' and 'spacemen' had been all the rage. They'd even 'imported' a few of these ships and traveled to other stars, but the cost was prohibitive and there wasn't anything really interesting in space. It was much cheaper and easier to travel sideways through Paratime…
The one big disadvantage was that First Level was in danger of becoming a society of mimics, adopting other cultures to the point of losing their own. This decade everyone wanted to ape Europo-American manners, dialogue and sometimes even social manners. This faddish fever had gotten worse as he'd gotten older-he wondered if it was the price they paid for 'living' off of these outtimers. When was the last time he'd seen a First Level art show or entertainment worth viewing that wasn't based on some outtime work or its re-interpretation?
Paratemporal theorist, Ulton Dorth, contended it was it another symptom of First Level cultural decadence, which along with the unnecessary dependency upon 'personal servants,' or proles, had weakened the very fabric of their ten thousand year-old society. Tortha wondered where it would all end; fortunately, it wasn't his problem anymore.
Verkan's voice continued, "However, the roads are now dry enough so that the cavalry carrying their own rations can move fast. Kalvan had Harmakros send two thousand Mobile Force cavalry under Count Phrames into Hos-Harphax. They were to loot and burn anything belonging to King Kaiphranos or Styphon' House, scout out the land, fight only if they had to and above all keep moving.
"Phrames did a good job. He stayed out seven days, because he overran a supply dump and the band of Harphaxi cavalry holding it. With the extra supplies, he was able to swing west, outrun two Lances of Zarthani Knights and make it back losing only a hundred men and two hundred horses. He seems to have raised the very Styphon on the way. Our people in Hos-Harphax said you could see the smoke of his fires from the walls of the city.
"This should tickle up something in Hos-Harphax, but it's too soon to say exactly what. We are definitely having a problem getting intelligence from our agents there. Grand Master Soton is there trying to whip the Harphaxi Royal Army into shape, and is also installing some rudimentary notions of security; he's the one who also came up with the secret mobilization in Ktemnos. We wouldn't have known about that one ourselves if we hadn't just managed to get a man into Balph.
"We have two of our people working in Harphax City taverns frequented by mercenaries, and two more passing themselves off as sutlers. The second pair will move out with the army, when and if. We're not getting much information from the University people; most of them are up to their eyebrows in work at the Foundry. The only two who aren't are Professor Baltrov Eldra and Director Talgran Dreth, who are back on Home Time Line assembling this year's team of scholars.
"So I'm going to send out Inspector Ranthar Jard to join both the Royal Foundry and the Mounted Rifles as a Zygrosi friend of mine. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that he can still keep his eyes and ears open and his mouth shut better than most. He's also remarkably hard to kill.
"He'll reach Hostigos Town in about a ten-day with some Grefftscharrer brass for casting and a message from me. I'll follow in less than a moon with a full-scale caravan of food and military stores from one of our Control Time-Lines. That should land me in Hostigos before the shooting really starts, but after Ranthar Jard's had time to look around and ask a few questions. I hope he doesn't find anything that requires official action. Apart from the dividing the University team, when they'll need to be guarding each others' backs, Danthor Dras could easily make something out of any hint of scandal. He's going to be broadcasting a series of lectures on Styphon House Subsector, Kalvan's Time-Line, using all his favorite visual effects. Anything he says about the Paracops will have an audience of several hundred million. We can just as well do without that, thank you…"