Jorand Rarth felt weight return as the wheels of the air-car struck the landing stage and shut down the pseudo-grav. His driver opened the rear door and asked, "What should I do with the car, boss?"
Jorand looked around as though expecting a blue Metro or green Para-cop police car to materialize on the landing stage. Yesterday afternoon he had been forced to flee his own tower just minutes before a squad of Para-time Police raided the place. Now there was a warrant for his arrest and the cover he had so elaborately devised a century ago was gone.
"The police should be able to ID it before long, so drop it off at a public tower and meet me at Constellation House in two hours. We can steal a new air-car out of the parking lot if we need one."
The driver nodded and took off. Jorand stepped into the lifthead of Hadron Tharn's penthouse; he keyed in his password and pressed his thumb on the thumblock. The lift door rose behind him to cut off the view of Dhergabar City under a winter sky as bright and blue, and as coldly unsympathetic, as Paratime Police Chief Verkan Vall's eyes.
One level down, the lift door dropped again, letting Jorand out into the maroon-carpeted entry hall of Hadron Tharn's private quarters. A robot rolled forward to take Jorand's coat. Behind it rolled another robot, holding a tray with hot spiked simmer root in a silver cup. Jorand took the cup triggering the robot's vocal circuits.
"Citizen Hadron Tharn is waiting to see you in the lounge."
Jorand mumbled an automatic thank you in return, which told more about his prole origins than he liked known. He had spent decades setting up his First Level Citizen identity and had lived it for close to a century. Maybe he'd gotten too fat and lazy. Jorand would need all his old skills and moxie to survive this fracas.
A century ago he had been the head of an underground gambling syndicate in Novilan City. While all the First Level Citizens' children become Citizens, proles had to qualify by passing an intelligence and general psych test. Proles could be adopted and made Citizens, but even so they must pass the tests. The problem was that few Proles received a First Level education.
Jorand had tried with tutors, but hadn't liked the hard work. Instead he had searched for a decade to find a compulsive gambler within the Bureau of Identification. It hadn't been easy because the Bureau of Psychological Hygiene made periodic sweeps of the Records Division of the Bureau of Identification to keep fraud to a minimum.
When Jorand had his mark hooked and gaffed, the 'disappearance' of a respectable Citizen and the substitution of Jorand's DNA record for his had been effected. No one had been the wiser for ninety-eight years-until yesterday.
Jorand didn't have the time, or the patience, to set up another false ID, so he had no other choice but to go outtime. With his usual contacts under suspicion, he would have to use his influence in the Opposition Party. Influence he had spent decades building with heavy Party donations and conscientious attendance at boring political meetings.
Jorand had also been a boss in the Organization, a criminal syndicate that had kidnapped outtime peoples and sold them at high profits on other time-lines. Since most of these outtimers had been victims of wars or famines, he'd been pleased to arrange their sale to those who could make good use of their labors. After all, the outtimers gained their lives while he gained a fair return on his investment.
Besides, none of those outtimers would face anything Jorand hadn't faced himself during his childhood on Fifth Level Industrial Sector, where his own father had sold him to a slum overlord for drug money. Jorand had been raised by a man who had bought him as a slave and raised him to second-in-command of his own theft syndicate.
Now as a member of the Organization's second level, Jorand knew just how 'involved' in the Organization many of the top politicos of the Opposition Party had become. Unfortunately, the Paratime Police had put his branch of the Organization out of business-and his boss had been detained and never heard of again. There were tales that he'd committed suicide while under Paratime Police interrogation. Recently, Jorand had heard a new rumor that the Organization was back in business, but no one had contacted him, or he wouldn't be here trying to cash in on that information-regardless of Citizen Tharn's feelings on the subject.
Fortunately, as a member of Tharn's Opposition Action Team, he hadn't even had to twist Tharn's arm for a private audience. Jorand had almost been looking forward to the day when the Action Team discovered they had a prole among their membership. Despite all their egalitarian cant, he had heard enough prole jokes to know their true sympathies. It had been his private joke, one that kept him awake through their interminable meetings. Too bad he would not be there when they learned the truth about him.
Jorand gulped the last of his simmer root as he entered the Blue Lounge. He thought of ordering another, then decided to wait since he would need a clear head for today's meeting.
"Welcome, Citizen Jorand," Hadron Tharn said, stepping lightly toward him. "I trust you had a good journey." Unfortunately, the warm greeting didn't extend to Tharn's chilly eyes.
"Except for the stratospheric winds, yes. That's why I'm late."
"It hardly matters. Would you care for another drink?"
Jorand shook his head and sat down in his usual red-leather chair. The only other person in the room was Warntha Swam, Tharn's bodyguard and who-knew-what-else. Warntha was in his usual stance, hands clasped behind his back and eyes roaming the room, and in his usual position guarding Hadron Tharn's back.
Citizen Tharn gave one of his famous grins, but the blue eyes were as icy as an arctic gale. "What can I do for you Citizen?"
Jorand didn't bother to return the smile. "I'm in trouble and I need your help."
"I'm sorry to hear that, Citizen, but why me?"
"Call it a return on a three million credit investment. I need to go out-time."
Warntha visibly tensed. "The only reason I'm not having you thrown out of here," Tharn said, "is that you've been extremely helpful in the past. I don't know what your problem is, but I suggest you go elsewhere for its solution."
"My rooms have just been sealed by the Paratime Police and by now I suspect I must be high up on their most-wanted list."
"You have my sympathies, of course." Tharn held both hands out to express his helplessness. "However, my brother-in-law, Verkan Vail and I have an unspoken accord; he doesn't ask me for favors and I don't ask him for any."
"Citizen Tharn, let us get to the heart of the problem. I have been one of the heads of the Organization, or Wizard Traders as the Paracops call it, for about thirty years. Don't look so shocked; I can name a dozen prominent Opposition Party members who are equally involved."
Hadron Tharn nodded, his face expressionless.
"If the Paratime Police pick me up, the lid will be blown off what's left of the Organization and the Opposition Party. Really it is in both our interests to see me disappear from Home Time-Line." Jorand saw a stealthy look slip between Warntha and his master and added, "My driver has a message ball he's to take to Verkan Vail if I don't leave this tower according to schedule."
"Where do you get these ideas?"
"Because, like you, I've found that the simplest solution to most problems is often the most elegant-in this case, my disappearance. Therefore, I've taken certain precautions, just as you would have done."
Hadron Tharn leaned back in his chair, his forehead furrowed in what appeared to be concentrated thought. He remained frozen for some time until he sat up abruptly. "I don't have as much access to Paratemporal Transposition as you seem to think, but we do have one operation where you might fit in."
During the height of the Wizard Trader's operation, Jorand would have had his choice of thousands of time-lines to hide on, but now he was forced to take whatever crumb Tharn threw his way. At best it was a vast improvement over psycho-rehabilitation, a year of unremitting physical and mental agony, the ignominy of having his private thoughts probed and twisted by Mentalists and finally the horror of emerging as someone who would not be Jorand Rarth.
"What is it?" he asked.
"You've heard of Kalvan's Time-Line?"
"Who hasn't? We've talked this time-line to death at the Action Meetings. What about it?"
"Kalvan's Time-Line has become Verkan's major political vulnerability, one the Opposition Party intends to exploit. One way we can force Verkan's hand is by making life difficult for his outtime friend, Great King Kalvan. If things get sticky enough for Kalvan, Verkan might commit a breach of the Paratime Code-and then we will have him."
Right, thought Jorand, a scandal big enough to break Management Party's stranglehold on the Executive Council. Sweeping reforms inside the Paratime Police would help many of the commercial houses who felt constrained in their theft of outtime resources. It was enough to make an honest thief wonder who the real crooks were.
"So where do I fit into all of this?"
Hadron Tharn leaned forward, locking eyes. "Rarth, I could use a trusted agent I can send to Kalvan's Time-Line to oversee a very important operation. Last year was a very good one for King Kalvan. He defeated probably the largest army in his time-line's history. Now he's built up his army to the point where only the most concerted effort will root him out of his so-called Great Kingdom of Hos-Hostigos.
"Fortunately for us, the opposition has some good leaders, Archpriest Roxthar, Prince Lysandros of Hos-Harphax, and Grand Master Soton of the Zarthani Knights. They are planning a major counter-attack, but need help. Kalvan has either killed or recruited most of the available mercenaries in the Five Kingdoms and the national armies aren't that strong yet on this time-line.
"But the picture isn't all bad. On the west coast there are a number of city-states who have built up formidable armies after a millennium of constant warfare. Now, for the first time in centuries, they have a great leader in one of the city-states, Antiphon. A leader who has become strong enough to conquer most of the others. The problem is that he is unstable and unpredictable, more a Hitler than an Alexander. Like Hitler, this leader-Dyzar-suffered from an untreated case of syphilis, which has left him with delusions of grandeur, a homicidal temper, and massive mood swings-"
Jorand stifled a grin as he realized that this description might equally cover Hadron Tharn himself, who on occasion had been known to scream and berate his cohorts for hours. "What do you mean, suffered?"
"A month ago my agents used a neuro-prophylactic on Dyzar and were able to stabilize his condition. Due to the primitive conditions, the advanced stage of the disease, and the lack of a fully trained medico, they were not able to restore normal emotional functions. In the end they were forced to use the rejuvenation treatment to insure he survived the treatment. Dyzar should live a long and painful life."
"You used rejuvenation formula on an outtimer! Next to the Paratime Secret that's the most heavily guarded invention we have. We could all be brain wiped for this-"
Hadron Tharn smiled a most unpleasant smile. "That is why we need an agent of utmost discretion for this job. One who will not be particular about a lengthy and somewhat primitive assignment."
And someone very expendable, thought Jorand to himself. Unfortunately, for him, there were no other choices. "What is it you want me to do?"
"First, we will put you under narco-hypnosis and give you a pseudo-memory overlay as a Dorg merchant-they're not well known in the Five Kingdoms. Then we will put you in charge of the contact team that is to meet and lead the Ros-Zarthani army. We want you to prepare the Ros-Zarthani for their role in the war against King Kalvan."
"Why not," Jorand answered. It wasn't as if he had any place else to go.