TIME PRIME (25 page)

“On most Europo-American Sectors, young Prince Hussein survived the gunshots that killed his grandfather when the bullet struck a medal that his grandfather had awarded him. This appears to be spurious data and legend building encouraged by the Royal advisors. However, the young Prince Hussein of Jordan has stabilized Jordan throughout most of the Subsector and appears much more modest in his ambitions than Khalid, who dreams of a great Islamic Jihad.

“Fortunately, we can ignore the Kaliphate for this mission. However, there's something very strange going on here. It's almost as if someone anticipated our questions—maybe the Organization, maybe some other party. I sent a team of our best field agents to Williamsport, home of Blake Hartley, to dig up information. It appears, up until right after the war, he was your usual ex-veteran small town lawyer. About eight years ago, he started to play the horses, or at least, that's the gossip around town. He made a couple of big killings on a horse named Assault. On August 5, 1945, he made his first big bet at the Flash Stakes. Assault started at odds of 8 to 1.

“In 1946 Assault had an uneven record, even though he won the Triple Crown. Interestingly, our man didn't wager on any of the losing races, except one which Hartley won with another horse. Later in the year, between the Pimlico Special and the Westchester Handicap races, he pulled in half a million dollars. And that's just for starters. Blake was unbeatable in 1947, winning every major race he bet upon.

“He's tried to cover all this up. But a lot of this information is based on public and private records, as well as interviews with track officials and racetrack touts. It appears that his betting went underground during the years of 1948 through 1951, when it ceased completely. By that time, Associated Enterprises was up and

running with a number of novel patents, many of them decades beyond what any other comparable Europo-American Sector has developed. Hartley's also made a lot of investments in computer firms, primarily International Business Machines, and recently took over a photographic paper company named the Haloid Company. He now owns majority stock in several companies through his umbrella conglomerate, Associated Enterprises.

“It's possible Blake Hartley is a precog, or even that most unlikely of possibilities—a time traveler! He is the primary of the many anomalies that characterize this new Belt. We are in the process of setting up a private meeting with Chairman Hartley of Associated Enterprises in a ten-day. It would be most helpful if you and Chief 's Assistant, Assistant Hadron Dalla were present for this meeting. I would highly recommend that you transpose to Hartley Prime as soon as work permits. Inspector Ranthar Jard, signing off.”

Verkan knew he wasn't making much progress towards prosecuting the Organization from his desk at Department of Paratime Police Headquarters as opposed to Inspector Ranthar on Hartley Prime. Of course, it never took very much to wrest him away from desk work, he thought wryly. Although, in this case, he had sufficient cause, enough to convince even the old taskmaster himself, Tortha Karf.

It was time to call Dalla. He keyed in her number and a few moments later she filled his view screen. “Hi, dearest. How would you like to go on a distant journey?”

“I'd love to, Vall. But is it work related?”

“Caught red-handed. Yes, there are some interesting anomalies that have popped up on the Hartley Belt. We may have need of your Psychist talents.”

“What have you found?”

“Typical small-town attorney suddenly picks the winner of every race he bets on, going from a five-figure income to a seven-figure one in two years. How does that smell to you?”

“Like Denmark, as the Bard would say. Your lucky track player wouldn't happen to be Blake Hartley—would it?”

“Great guess. Now you know why I want you along.”

“You couldn't keep me away,” she said. “Have you contacted the Rhogom Foundation about this?”

“No, and we're not going to. I know you're a Fellow of the Foundation and have your responsibilities, but this case has Departmental Top Priority. I'm not even letting Conveyer Dispatch know we're leaving. We'll take our own private conveyer.”

She saluted him. “Yes, sir. I take it you have some doubts as to internal security.”

“You nailed it. I'll see you tonight. We'll make it an early evening. Takeoff is at 0600.”

The next morning Verkan, Dalla and Verkan’s bodyguard Dalon Sath took a private conveyer to Fifth Level Police Terminal, Dhergabar Equivalent. At Pol- Term they took a rocket to Vendaran Equivalent, which was the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania equivalent on almost all Fourth Level Europo-American sectors, belts and time-lines. There was a large conveyer rotunda-head at Vendaran Equivalent with a lot of traffic going in and out. An Army Strike Team brigade had already arrived and Verkan was quickly escorted to their temporary headquarters about a half mile away from the rotunda.

The 12th Strike Team Brigade’s temporary headquarters were made out of pulse rock and still warm to the touch. Verkan was quickly ushered into the office of Colonel Sordar Kran.

“Welcome, Chief ’s Assistant Verkan. I’ve been given orders to put my brigade under your command, sir.” Sordar didn’t look happy about that, as if he didn’t trust civilians with military assets. “I was given a very short briefing, some trouble with an outtime paramilitary force. That’s all I was told, sir.”

Verkan’s rank in the Paratime Police was the equivalent of Major General in the Army, although no military man thought they were in any way equal.

He quickly briefed Colonel Sordar on his previous encounter with the Organization’s forces on First Level Abzar Sector, very little of which for security reasons had been reported in the media or anywhere else. Then he brought the Colonel up-to-date, without mentioning any specifics of their operation on Hartley Prime.

“Now, I understand why you requested a backup force, sir.”

“Colonel, I sincerely hope that the Department of Paratime Police doesn’t require the 12th’s services,” Verkan said, “because if we do, it’s going to get messy.

After all, this is a densely populated Belt; any major incursion might result in the involvement of one, two or even three competing sovereignties. I don’t believe that the Organization wants the publicity that an all-out war on Hartley would bring about. However, I know
we
don’t. On the other hand, we don’t really know who the enemy is, nor what they’re truly capable of doing.”

“If needed, we’re only an hour away, sir. The general has transferred another ten Strike Team Brigades to Pol-Term; they’ll be quartered around Vendaran Equivalent for quick transposition in case trouble develops on any of the other time-lines in the Hartley Belt.”

“Excellent, Colonel.”

After his meeting with the Strike Team commander, they made the half-hour long conveyer journey to the Hartley Belt. While in transit, he and Dalla discussed Blake Hartley.

“I’d like to be there when you meet with Hartley,” Dalla said.

“I want you with me. We’ve got a private meeting set-up about selling him a semiconductor patent that we have pending. I’m supposed to be Dr. Verkan, one of the engineers working for the Regency Division of the Industrial Development Engineering Associates. Regency is working on the first practical transistor radio and plan to bring it out before the end of the year. It’s something Ranthar’s team cooked up; it’s just the kind of thing to pique Hartley’s interest—if he’s who we think he is.”

“That should hook him if he truly has precognitive abilities. Did it occur to you that if he’s a true precog, we might be able to mine information out of him that would be helpful to the Force?”

Vall made a big grin. “Could be...”

Dalla lightly punched him on the shoulder. “You big lug. Who knows what he could tell us...”

“Almost anything he could
tell
us would make our job easier: if there’s going to be a war it would be a big help to know when to pull our operatives off the Hartley Belt.”

“What if he’s a time traveler?” Dalla asked. “That might be more problematic.”

“I’ll believe it when he’s given us solid data we can verify. It would certainly shake things up back on First Level. We’ve been working on linear time travel for over twelve thousand years; it would make a lot of people unhappy to discover some outtimer had worked up a time machine in his basement!”

“Still, think of all the things we could learn.”

“Or all the new headaches that would come with it,” added Verkan.

Verkan and Dalla were welcomed at the temporary rotunda-head by Ranthar Jard and Kostran Galth.

“We’ve got the 12th Strike Team on call at Police Terminal,” Verkan informed them. “They’re only a message ball away. However, I don’t want to bring them in except under dire circumstances.”

“Understood,” Ranthar replied. “Blake Hartley has his Associated Enterprises headquarters here. He still maintains a residence in Williamsport, but for logistical reasons operates out of Philadelphia. Associated Enterprises is making a big splash locally; they finished the new sixty-story Associated Tower in the Penn Center. They and their subsidiaries are now Pennsylvania’s biggest employer. He’s also making a lot of political contacts with the Republican Party, this Belt’s version of Management Party.”

“Is there any evidence that he’s either working with or aware of the Organization or their mining activities?”

Ranthar shook his head. “I’m not sure how the Organization discovered this Belt, but I doubt they know the divarication trigger. If they did, the Hartley reflections would already be under their control. It took the Department a million manhours of Survey Division research time to discover Blake Hartley Prime.”

“How does Blake Hartley factor in on the other Europo-American Sectors, like Hispano-Columbian?” Vall asked.

“We’ve found reflections of Hartley Prime on about half of our trial timelines. We know his father was named Herbert Hartley and he had two children, one who died at birth, and Blake Orr Hartley who was born on April 18, 1911. Blake is reported to have died of the flu at age eight during the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 on about half of the Europo-American and Kaliphate Subsector time-lines.” 

“That doesn’t rule out the time traveler theory, then,” Dalla offered.

“Not completely. On most time-lines, the surviving Blake married Amanda Florence Coleridge on March 14, 1927; they had one child, a son Allan Hartley born July 18, 1932 in Williamsport.”

“What happened to Amanda?” Dalla asked.

“She died in an automobile accident in 1942. Drunk driver ran her over as she was crossing a Williamsport downtown street. Died instantly.” Dalla shuddered.

Vall put his arm around her. Sometimes it was easy to forget how fragile human life was on these primitive Fourth Level sectors.

Ranthar continued, “Blake, with the help of a housekeeper, one Eileen Stauber, has raised young Allan by himself. On every Europo-American and Kaliphate timeline we’ve visited, the young Allan Hartley reflections follow the cultural norms for growth and education, although they are certainly in the top ten percentile. However, on the Hartley Belt, the boy is extremely precocious; he graduates from high school at fifteen years of age and by eighteen has a Bachelors in Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It only took him another year to get his Masters. At nineteen Allan goes to work for his father at the Blake Institute of Engineering Research in State College, Pennsylvania. Of course, we know who put up the money for that. The son is considered a local genius, according to his fellow engineers, who teasingly refer to him as Young Edison.”

“Is the son brilliant because he’s recycling the father’s precognitions, or is he a precog, too?” Dalla asked.

“Good question,” Vall said. “This is something we can broach after you hypomech the father, Dalla.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” she replied, her eyes sparkling.

“What about the Organization?” Vall asked, “ Are there any cells on this time-line?” 

Ranthar paused to fill his pipe with tobacco. He used a local lighter in a metal case to ignite it, then said, “We found a big open-pit uranium mining operation in the Namib Desert some thirty miles from Swakopmund, Trust Territory of South-West Africa. It was discovered in 1928, but not mined until the Vanadium Corporation started operations about five years go. Rössing Uranium Mine’s a massive operation, employing three to four thousand employees. They have their own refining and processing plant at Rössing and have pretty much depleted all the surface ore. The uranium deposits at Namib really have only been mined superficially in either the Europo-American or Kaliphate subsectors, which is a red flag and points to Organization infiltration of this Belt.

“Due to Rössing’s distance from any population centers and the cultural backwardness of the indigenes, this site is just about perfect for outtime extraction work. So far, this mining operation is the only evidence of Organization activity anywhere on Hartley Prime.”

“That’s a relief,” Vall said. “If the Wizard Traders are big enough to have multiple operations going on throughout a Belt even this size—well, by Blaxthakka’s Beard, I don’t have to tell you what kind of trouble that might be for the Force.”