Chapter II: Part 2

“That’s correct,” Dr. Harnosh replied. “There is a catch to it; a catch most people would never admit, even to themselves. Very few individuals possess the will power, the intelligence or the capacity for mental effort displayed by the subject of the case I just quoted. The average man’s interests are almost entirely on the physical side; he actually finds mental effort painful, and makes as little of it as possible. And that is the only sort of effort a discarnate individuality can exert. So, unable to endure the fifty or so years needed to make a really good reincarnation, he reincarnates in a year or so, out of pure boredom, into the first vehicle he can find, usually one nobody else wants.” Dr. Harnosh dug out the heel of his pipe and blew through the stem. “But nobody will admit his own mental inferiority, even to himself. Now, every machine operator and field hand on the planet thinks he can reincarnate as a prince or a millionaire. Politics isn’t my subject, but I’m willing to bet that since Statistical Reincarnation is an exploded psychic theory, Statisticalist Socialism has been caught in the blast area and destroyed along with it.”

* * * * *

Olirzon was in the drawing room of the hotel suite when they returned, sitting on the middle of his spinal column in a reclining chair, smoking a pipe, dressing the edge of his knife with a pocket-hone, and gazing lecherously at a young woman in the visiplate. She was an extremely well-designed young woman, in a rather fragmentary costume, and she was heaving her bosom at the invisible audience in anger, sorrow, scorn, entreaty, and numerous other emotions.

“... this revolting crime,” she was declaiming, in a husky contralto, as Verkan Vall and Marnik entered, “foul even for the criminal beasts who conceived and perpetrated it!” She pointed an accusing finger. “This murder of the beautiful Lady Dallona of Hadron!”

Verkan Vall stopped short, considering the possibility of something having been discovered lately of which he was ignorant. Olirzon must have guessed his thought; he grinned reassuringly.

“Think nothing of it, Lord Virzal,” he said, waving his knife at the visiplate. “Just political propaganda; strictly for the sparrows. Nice propagandist, though.”

“And now,” the woman with the magnificent natural resources lowered her voice reverently, “we bring you the last image of the Lady Dallona, and of Dirzed, her faithful Assassin, taken just before they vanished, never to be seen again.”

The plate darkened, and there were strains of slow, dirgelike music; then it lighted again, presenting a view of a broad hallway, thronged with men and women in bright varicolored costumes. In the foreground, wearing a tight skirt of deep blue and a short red jacket, was Hadron Dalla, just as she had looked in the solidographs taken in Dhergabar after her alteration by the First Level cosmeticians to conform to the appearance of the Malayoid Akor-Neb people. She was holding the arm of a man who wore the black tunic and red badge of an Assassin, a handsome specimen of the Akor-Neb race. Trust little Dalla for that, Verkan Vall thought. The figures were moving with exaggerated slowness, as though a very fleeting picture were being stretched out as far as possible. Having already memorized his former wife’s changed appearance, Verkan Vall concentrated on the man beside her until the picture faded.

“All right, Olirzon; what did you get?” he asked.

“Well, first of all, at Assassins’ Hall,” Olirzon said, rolling up his left sleeve, holding his bare forearm to the light, and shaving a few fine hairs from it to test the edge of his knife. “Of course, they never tell one Assassin anything about the client of another Assassin; that’s standard practice. But I was in the Lodge Secretary’s office, where nobody but Assassins are ever admitted. They have a big panel in there, with the names of all the Lodge members on it in light-letters; that’s standard in all Lodges. If an Assassin is unattached and free to accept a client, his name’s in white light. If he has a client, the light’s changed to blue, and the name of the client goes up under his. If his whereabouts are unknown, the light’s changed to amber. If he is discarnated, his name’s removed entirely, unless the circumstances of his discarnation are such as to constitute an injury to the Society. In that case, the name’s in red light until he’s been properly avenged, or, as we say, till his blood’s been mopped up. Well, the name of Dirzed is up in blue light, with the name of Dallona of Hadron under it. I found out that the light had been amber for two days after the disappearance, and then had been changed back to blue. Get it, Lord Virzal?”

Verkan Vall nodded. “I think so. I’d been considering that as a possibility from the first. Then what?”

“Then I was about and around for a couple of hours, buying drinks for people—unattached Assassins, Constabulary detectives, political workers, newscast people. You owe me fifteen System Monetary Units for that, Lord Virzal. What I got, when it’s all sorted out—I taped it in detail, as soon as I got back—reduces to this: The Volitionalists are moving mountains to find out who was the spy at Garnon of Roxor’s discarnation feast, but are doing nothing but nothing at all to find the Lady Dallona or Dirzed. The Statisticalists are making all sorts of secret efforts to find out what happened to her. The Constabulary blame the Statistos for the package bomb: they’re interested in that because of the discarnation of the three servants by an illegal weapon of indiscriminate effect. They claim that the disappearance of Dirzed and the Lady Dallona was a publicity hoax. The Volitionalists are preparing a line of publicity to deny this.”

Verkan Vall nodded. “That ties in with what you learned at Assassins’ Hall,” he said. “They’re hiding out somewhere. Is there any chance of reaching Dirzed through the Society of Assassins?”

Olirzon shook his head. “If you’re right—and that’s the way it looks to me, too—he’s probably just called in and notified the Society that he’s still carnate and so is the Lady Dallona, and called off any search the Society might be making for him.”

“And I’ve got to find the Lady Dallona as soon as I can. Well, if I can’t reach her, maybe I can get her to send word to me,” Verkan Vall said. “That’s going to take some doing, too.”

“What did you find out, Lord Virzal?” Olirzon asked. He had a piece of soft leather, now, and was polishing his blade lovingly.

“The Reincarnation Research people don’t know anything,” Verkan Vall replied. “Dr. Harnosh of Hosh thinks she’s discarnate. I did find out that the experimental work she’s done, so far, has absolutely disproved the theory of Statistical Reincarnation. The Volitionalists’ theory is solidly established.”

“Yes, what do you think, Olirzon?” Marnik added. “They have a case on record of a man who worked up from field hand to millionaire in five reincarnations. Deliberately, that is.” He went on to repeat what Harnosh of Hosh had said; he must have possessed an almost eidetic memory, for he gave the bearded psychicist’s words verbatim, and threw in the gestures and voice-inflections.

Olirzon grinned. “You know, there’s a chance for the easy-money boys,” he considered. “‘You, too, can Reincarnate as a millionaire! Let Dr. Nirzutz of Futzbutz Help You! Only 49.98 System Monetary Units for the Secret, Infallible, Autosuggestive Formula.’ And would it sell!” He put away the hone and the bit of leather and slipped his knife back into its sheath. “If I weren’t a respectable Assassin, I’d give it a try, myself.”

Verkan Vall looked at his watch. “We’d better get something to eat,” he said. “We’ll go down to the main dining room; the Martian Room, I think they call it. I’ve got to think of some way to let the Lady Dallona know I’m looking for her.”

* * * * *

The Martian Room, fifteen stories down, was a big place, occupying almost half of the floor space of one corner tower. It had been fitted to resemble one of the ruined buildings of the ancient and vanished race of Mars who were the ancestors of Terran humanity. One whole side of the room was a gigantic cine-solidograph screen, on which the gullied desolation of a Martian landscape was projected; in the course of about two hours, the scene changed from sunrise through daylight and night to sunrise again.

It was high noon when they entered and found a table; by the time they had finished their dinner, the night was ending and the first glow of dawn was tinting the distant hills. They sat for a while, watching the light grow stronger, then got up and left the table.

There were five men at a table near them; they had come in before the stars had grown dim, and the waiters were just bringing their first dishes. Two were Assassins, and the other three were of a breed Verkan Vall had learned to recognize on any time-line—the arrogant, cocksure, ambitious, leftist politician, who knows what is best for everybody better than anybody else does, and who is convinced that he is inescapably right and that whoever differs with him is not only an ignoramus but a venal scoundrel as well. One was a beefy man in a gold-laced cream-colored dress tunic; he had thick lips and a too-ready laugh. Another was a rather monkish-looking young man who spoke earnestly and rolled his eyes upward, as though at some celestial vision. The third had the faint powdering of gray in his black hair which was, among the Akor-Neb people, almost the only indication of advanced age.

“Of course it is; the whole thing is a fraud,” the monkish young man was saying angrily. “But we can’t prove it.”

“Oh, Sirzob, here, can prove anything, if you give him time,” the beefy one laughed. “The trouble is, there isn’t too much time. We know that that communication was a fake, prearranged by the Volitionalists, with Dr. Harnosh and this Dallona of Hadron as their tools. They fed the whole thing to that idiot boy hypnotically, in advance, and then, on a signal, he began typing out this spurious communication. And then, of course, Dallona and this Assassin of hers ran off somewhere together, so that we’d be blamed with discarnating or abducting them, and so that they wouldn’t be made to testify about the communication on a lie detector.”

A sudden happy smile touched Verkan Vall’s eyes. He caught each of his Assassins by an arm.

“Marnik, cover my back,” he ordered. “Olirzon, cover everybody at the table. Come on!”

Then he stepped forward, halting between the chairs of the young man and the man with the gray hair and facing the beefy man in the light tunic.

“You!” he barked. “I mean YOU.”

The beefy man stopped laughing and stared at him; then sprang to his feet. His hand, streaking toward his left armpit, stopped and dropped to his side as Olirzon aimed a pistol at him. The others sat motionless.

“You,” Verkan Vall continued, “are a complete, deliberate, malicious, and unmitigated liar. The Lady Dallona of Hadron is a scientist of integrity, incapable of falsifying her experimental work. What’s more, her father is one of my best friends; in his name, and in hers, I demand a full retraction of the slanderous statements you have just made.”

“Do you know who I am?” the beefy one shouted.

“I know _what_ you are,” Verkan Vall shouted back. Like most ancient languages, the Akor-Neb speech included an elaborate, delicately-shaded, and utterly vile vocabulary of abuse; Verkan Vall culled from it judiciously and at length. “And if I don’t make myself understood verbally, we’ll go down to the object level,” he added, snatching a bowl of soup from in front of the monkish-looking young man and throwing it across the table.

The soup was a dark brown, almost black. It contained bits of meat, and mushrooms, and slices of hard-boiled egg, and yellow Martian rock lichen. It produced, on the light tunic, a most spectacular effect.

For a moment, Verkan Vall was afraid the fellow would have an apoplectic stroke, or an epileptic fit. Mastering himself, however, he bowed jerkily.

“Marnark of Bashad,” he identified himself. “When and where can my friends consult yours?”

“Lord Virzal of Verkan,” the paratimer bowed back. “Your friends can negotiate with mine here and now. I am represented by these Gentlemen-Assassins.”

“I won’t submit my friends to the indignity of negotiating with them,” Marnark retorted. “I insist that you be represented by persons of your own quality and mine.”

“Oh, you do?” Olirzon broke in. “Well, is your objection personal to me, or to Assassins as a class? In the first case, I’ll remember to make a private project of you, as soon as I’m through with my present employment; if it’s the latter, I’ll report your attitude to the Society. I’ll see what Klarnood, our President-General, thinks of your views.”

A crowd had begun to accumulate around the table. Some of them were persons in evening dress, some were Assassins on the hotel payroll, and some were unattached Assassins.

“Well, you won’t have far to look for him,” one of the latter said, pushing through the crowd to the table.

He was a man of middle age, inclined to stoutness; he made Verkan Vall think of a chocolate figure of Tortha Karf. The red badge on his breast was surrounded with gold lace, and, instead of black wings and a silver bullet, it bore silver wings and a golden dagger. He bowed contemptuously at Marnark of Bashad.

“Klarnood, President-General of the Society of Assassins,” he announced. “Marnark of Bashad, did I hear you say that you considered members of the Society as unworthy to negotiate an affair of honor with your friends, on behalf of this nobleman who has been courteous enough to accept your challenge?” he demanded.

Marnark of Bashad’s arrogance suffered considerable evaporation-loss. His tone became almost servile.

“Not at all, Honorable Assassin-President,” he protested. “But as I was going to ask these gentlemen to represent me, I thought it would be more fitting for the other gentleman to be represented by personal friends, also. In that way—”

“Sorry, Marnark,” the gray-haired man at the table said. “I can’t second you; I have a quarrel with the Lord Virzal, too.” He rose and bowed. “Sirzob of Abo. Inasmuch as the Honorable Marnark is a guest at my table, an affront to him is an affront to me. In my quality as his host, I must demand satisfaction from you, Lord Virzal.”

“Why, gladly, Honorable Sirzob,” Verkan Vall replied. This was getting better and better every moment. “Of course, your friend, the Honorable Marnark, enjoys priority of challenge; I’ll take care of you as soon as I have, shall we say, satisfied, him.”

The earnest and rather consecrated-looking young man rose also, bowing to Verkan Vall.

“Yirzol of Narva. I, too, have a quarrel with you, Lord Virzal; I cannot submit to the indignity of having my food snatched from in front of me, as you just did. I also demand satisfaction.”

“And quite rightly, Honorable Yirzol,” Verkan Vall approved. “It looks like such good soup, too,” he sorrowed, inspecting the front of Marnark’s tunic. “My seconds will negotiate with yours immediately; your satisfaction, of course, must come after that of Honorable Sirzob.”

“If I may intrude,” Klarnood put in smoothly, “may I suggest that as the Lord Virzal is represented by his Assassins, yours can represent all three of you at the same time. I will gladly offer my own good offices as impartial supervisor.”

Verkan Vall turned and bowed as to royalty. “An honor, Assassin-President: I am sure no one could act in that capacity more satisfactorily.”

“Well, when would it be most convenient to arrange the details?” Klarnood inquired. “I am completely at your disposal, gentlemen.”

“Why, here and now, while we’re all together,” Verkan Vall replied.

“I object to that!” Marnark of Bashad vociferated. “We can’t make arrangements here; why, all these hotel people, from the manager down, are nothing but tipsters for the newscast services!”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?” Verkan Vall demanded. “You knew that when you slandered the Lady Dallona in their hearing.”

“The Lord Virzal of Verkan is correct,” Klarnood ruled. “And the offenses for which you have challenged him were also committed in public. By all means, let’s discuss the arrangements now.” He turned to Verkan Vall. “As the challenged party, you have the choice of weapons; your opponents, then, have the right to name the conditions under which they are to be used.”

Marnark of Bashad raised another outcry over that. The assault upon him by the Lord Virzal of Verkan was deliberately provocative, and therefore tantamount to a challenge; he, himself, had the right to name the weapons. Klarnood upheld him.

“Do the other gentlemen make the same claim?” Verkan Vall wanted to know.

“If they do, I won’t allow it,” Klarnood replied. “You deliberately provoked Honorable Marnark, but the offenses of provoking him at Honorable Sirzob’s table, and of throwing Honorable Yirzol’s soup at him, were not given with intent to provoke. These gentlemen have a right to challenge, but not to consider themselves provoked.”

“Well, I choose knives, then,” Marnark hastened to say.

Verkan Vall smiled thinly. He had learned knife-play among the greatest masters of that art in all paratime, the Third Level Khanga pirates of the Caribbean Islands.

“And we fight barefoot, stripped to the waist, and without any parrying weapon in the left hand,” Verkan Vall stipulated.

The beefy Marnark fairly licked his chops in anticipation. He outweighed Verkan Vall by forty pounds; he saw an easy victory ahead. Verkan Vall’s own confidence increased at these signs of his opponent’s assurance.

“And as for Honorable Sirzob and Honorable Yirzol, I chose pistols,” he added.

Sirzob and Yirzol held a hasty whispered conference.

“Speaking both for Honorable Yirzol and for myself,” Sirzob announced, “we stipulate that the distance shall be twenty meters, that the pistols shall be fully loaded, and that fire shall be at will after the command.”

“Twenty rounds, fire at will, at twenty meters!” Olirzon hooted. “You must think our principal’s as bad a shot as you are!”

The four Assassins stepped aside and held a long discussion about something, with considerable argument and gesticulation. Klarnood, observing Verkan Vall’s impatience, leaned close to him and whispered:

“This is highly irregular; we must pretend ignorance and be patient. They’re laying bets on the outcome. You must do your best, Lord Virzal; you don’t want your supporters to lose money.”

He said it quite seriously, as though the outcome were otherwise a matter of indifference to Verkan Vall.

Marnark wanted to discuss time and place, and proposed that all three duels be fought at dawn, on the fourth landing stage of Darsh Central Hospital; that was closest to the maternity wards, and statistics showed that most births occurred just before that hour.

“Certainly not,” Verkan Vall vetoed. “We’ll fight here and now; I don’t propose going a couple of hundred miles to meet you at any such unholy hour. We’ll fight in the nearest hallway that provides twenty meters’ shooting distance.”

Marnark, Sirzob and Yirzol all clamored in protest. Verkan Vall shouted them down, drawing on his hypnotically acquired knowledge of Akor-Neb duelling customs. “The code explicitly states that satisfaction shall be rendered as promptly as possible, and I insist on a literal interpretation. I’m not going to inconvenience myself and Assassin-President Klarnood and these four Gentlemen-Assassins just to humor Statisticalist superstitions.”

The manager of the hotel, drawn to the Martian Room by the uproar, offered a hallway connecting the kitchens with the refrigerator rooms; it was fifty meters long by five in width, was well-lighted and soundproof, and had a bay in which the seconds and other could stand during the firing.

They repaired thither in a body, Klarnood gathering up several hotel servants on the way through the kitchen. Verkan Vall stripped to the waist, pulled off his ankle boots, and examined Olirzon’s knife. Its tapering eight-inch blade was double-edged at the point, and its handle was covered with black velvet to afford a good grip, and wound with gold wire. He nodded approvingly, gripped it with his index finger crooked around the cross-guard, and advanced to meet Marnark of Bashad.

As he had expected, the burly politician was depending upon his greater brawn to overpower his antagonist. He advanced with a sidling, spread-legged gait, his knife hand against his right hip and his left hand extended in front. Verkan Vall nodded with pleased satisfaction; a wrist-grabber. Then he blinked. Why, the fellow was actually holding his knife reversed, his little finger to the guard and his thumb on the pommel!

Verkan Vall went briskly to meet him, made a feint at his knife hand with his own left, and then side-stepped quickly to the right. As Marnark’s left hand grabbed at his right wrist, his left hand brushed against it and closed into a fist, with Marnark’s left thumb inside of it, He gave a quick downward twist with his wrist, pulling Marnark off balance.

Caught by surprise, Marnark stumbled, his knife flailing wildly away from Verkan Vall. As he stumbled forward, Verkan Vall pivoted on his left heel and drove the point of his knife into the back of Marnark’s neck, twisting it as he jerked it free. At the same time, he released Marnark’s thumb. The politician continued his stumble and fell forward on his face, blood spurting from his neck. He gave a twitch or so, and was still.

Verkan Vall stooped and wiped the knife on the dead man’s clothes—another Khanga pirate gesture—and then returned it to Olirzon.

“Nice weapon, Olirzon,” he said. “It fitted my hand as though I’d been born holding it.”

“You used it as though you had, Lord Virzal,” the Assassin replied. “Only eight seconds from the time you closed with him.”

The function of the hotel servants whom Klarnood had gathered up now became apparent; they advanced, took the body of Marnark by the heels, and dragged it out of the way. The others watched this removal with mixed emotions. The two remaining principals were impassive and frozen-faced. Their two Assassins, who had probably bet heavily on Marnark, were chagrined. And Klarnood was looking at Verkan Vall with a considerable accretion of respect. Verkan Vall pulled on his boots and resumed his clothing.

There followed some argument about the pistols; it was finally decided that each combatant should use his own shoulder-holster weapon. All three were nearly enough alike—small weapons, rather heavier than they looked, firing a tiny ten-grain bullet at ten thousand foot-seconds. On impact, such a bullet would almost disintegrate; a man hit anywhere in the body with one would be killed instantly, his nervous system paralyzed and his heart stopped by internal pressure. Each of the pistols carried twenty rounds in the magazine.

Verkan Vall and Sirzob of Abo took their places, their pistols lowered at their sides, facing each other across a measured twenty meters.

“Are you ready, gentlemen?” Klarnood asked. “You will not raise your pistols until the command to fire; you may fire at will after it. Ready. _Fire!_”

Both pistols swung up to level. Verkan Vall found Sirzob’s head in his sights and squeezed; the pistol kicked back in his hand, and he saw a lance of blue flame jump from the muzzle of Sirzob’s. Both weapons barked together, and with the double report came the whip-cracking sound of Sirzob’s bullet passing Verkan Vall’s head. Then Sirzob’s face altered its appearance unpleasantly, and he pitched forward. Verkan Vall thumbed on his safety and stood motionless, while the servants advanced, took Sirzob’s body by the heels, and dragged it over beside Marnark’s.

“All right; Honorable Yirzol, you’re next,” Verkan Vall called out.

“The Lord Virzal has fired one shot,” one of the opposing seconds objected, “and Honorable Yirzol has a full magazine. The Lord Virzal should put in another magazine.”

“I grant him the advantage; let’s get on with it,” Verkan Vall said.

Yirzol of Narva advanced to the firing point. He was not afraid of death—none of the Akor-Neb people were; their language contained no word to express the concept of total and final extinction—and discarnation by gunshot was almost entirely painless. But he was beginning to suspect that he had made a fool of himself by getting into this affair, he had work in his present reincarnation which he wanted to finish, and his political party would suffer loss, both of his services and of prestige.

“Are you ready, gentlemen?” Klarnood intoned ritualistically. “You will not raise your pistols until the command to fire; you may fire at will after it. Ready, _Fire!_”

Verkan Vall shot Yirzol of Narva through the head before the latter had his pistol half raised. Yirzol fell forward on the splash of blood Sirzob had made, and the servants came forward and dragged his body over with the others. It reminded Verkan Vail of some sort of industrial assembly-line operation. He replaced the two expended rounds in his magazine with fresh ones and slid the pistol back into its holster. The two Assassins whose principals had been so expeditiously massacred were beginning to count up their losses and pay off the winners.

Klarnood, the President-General of the Society of Assassins, came over, hooking fingers and clapping shoulders with Verkan Vall.

“Lord Virzal, I’ve seen quite a few duels, but nothing quite like that,” he said. “You should have been an Assassin!”

That was a considerable compliment. Verkan Vall thanked him modestly.

“I’d like to talk to you privately,” the Assassin-President continued. “I think it’ll be worth your while if we have a few words together.”

Verkan Vall nodded. “My suite is on the fifteenth floor above; will that be all right?” He waited until the losers had finished settling their bets, then motioned to his own pair of Assassins.

* * * * *

As they emerged into the Martian Room again, the manager was waiting; he looked as though he were about to demand that Verkan Vall vacate his suite. However, when he saw the arm of the President-General of the Society of Assassins draped amicably over his guest’s shoulder, he came forward bowing and smiling.

“Larnorm, I want you to put five of your best Assassins to guarding the approaches to the Lord Virzal’s suite,” Klarnood told him. “I’ll send five more from Assassins’ Hall to replace them at their ordinary duties. And I’ll hold you responsible with your carnate existence for the Lord Virzal’s safety in this hotel. Understand?”

“Oh, yes, Honorable Assassin-President; you may trust me. The Lord Virzal will be perfectly safe.”

In Verkan Vall’s suite, above, Klarnood sat down and got out his pipe, filling it with tobacco lightly mixed with _zerfa_. To his surprise, he saw his host light a plain tobacco cigarette.

“Don’t you use _zerfa_?” he asked.

“Very little,” Verkan Vall replied. “I grow it. If you’d see the bums who hang around our drying sheds, on Venus, cadging rejected leaves and smoking themselves into a stupor, you’d be frugal in using it, too.”

Klarnood nodded. “You know, most men would want a pipe of fifty percent, or a straight _zerfa_ cigarette, after what you’ve been through,” he said.

“I’d need something like that, to deaden my conscience, if I had one to deaden,” Verkan Vall said. “As it is, I feel like a murderer of babes. That overgrown fool, Marnark, handled his knife like a cow-butcher. The young fellow couldn’t handle a pistol at all. I suppose the old fellow, Sirzob, was a fair shot, but dropping him wasn’t any great feat of arms, either.”

Klarnood looked at him curiously for a moment. “You know,” he said, at length, “I believe you actually mean that. Well, until he met you, Marnark of Bashad was rated as the best knife-fighter in Darsh. Sirzob had ten dueling victories to his credit, and young Yirzol four.” He puffed slowly on his pipe. “I like you, Lord Virzal; a great Assassin was lost when you decided to reincarnate as a Venusian land-owner. I’d hate to see you discarnated without proper warning. I take it you’re ignorant of the intricacies of Terran politics?”

“To a large extent, yes.”

“Well, do you know who those three men were?” When Verkan Vall shook his head, Klarnood continued: “Marnark was the son and right-hand associate of old Mirzark of Bashad, the Statisticalist Party leader. Sirzob of Abo was their propaganda director. And Yirzol of Narva was their leading socio-economic theorist, and their candidate for Executive Chairman. In six minutes, with one knife thrust and two shots, you did the Statisticalist Party an injury second only to that done them by the young lady in whose name you were fighting. In two weeks, there will be a planet-wide general election. As it stands, the Statisticalists have a majority of the seats in Parliament and on the Executive Council. As a result of your work and the Lady Dallona’s, they’ll lose that majority, and more, when the votes are tallied.”

“Is that another reason why you like me?” Verkan Vall asked.

“Unofficially, yes. As President-General of the Society of Assassins, I must be nonpolitical. The Society is rigidly so; if we let ourselves become involved, as an organization, in politics, we could control the System Government inside of five years, and we’d be wiped out of existence in fifty years by the very forces we sought to control,” Klarnood said. “But personally, I would like to see the Statisticalist Party destroyed. If they succeed in their program of socialization, the Society would be finished. A socialist state is, in its final development, an absolute, total, state; no total state can tolerate extra-legal and para-governmental organizations. So we have adopted the policy of giving a little inconspicuous aid, here and there, to people who are dangerous to the Statisticalists. The Lady Dallona of Hadron, and Dr. Harnosh of Hosh, are such persons. You appear to be another. That’s why I ordered that fellow, Larnorm, to make sure you were safe in his hotel.”

“Where is the Lady Dallona?” Verkan Vall asked. “From your use of the present tense, I assume you believe her to be still carnate.”

Klarnood looked at Verkan Vall keenly. “That’s a pretty blunt question, Lord Virzal,” he said. “I wish I knew a little more about you. When you and your Assassins started inquiring about the Lady Dallona, I tried to check up on you. I found out that you had come to Darsh from Ghamma on a ship of the family of Zorda, accompanied by Brarnend of Zorda himself. And that’s all I could find out. You claim to be a Venusian planter, and you might be. Any Terran who can handle weapons as you can would have come to my notice long ago. But you have no more ascertainable history than if you’d stepped out of another dimension.”

That was getting uncomfortably close to the truth. In fact, it _was_ the truth. Verkan Vall laughed.

“Well, confidentially,” he said, “I’m from the Arcturus System. I followed the Lady Dallona here from our home planet, and when I have rescued her from among you Solarians, I shall, according to our customs, receive her hand in marriage. As she is the daughter of the Emperor of Arcturus, that’ll be quite a good thing for me.”

Klarnood chuckled. “You know, you’d only have to tell me that about three or four times and I’d start believing it,” he said. “And Dr. Harnosh of Hosh would believe it the first time; he’s been talking to himself ever since the Lady Dallona started her experimental work here. Lord Virzal, I’m going to take a chance on you. The Lady Dallona is still carnate, or was four days ago, and the same for Dirzed. They both went into hiding after the discarnation feast of Garnon of Roxor, to escape the enmity of the Statisticalists. Two days after they disappeared, Dirzed called Assassins’ Hall and reported this, but told us nothing more. I suppose, in about three or four days, I could re-establish contact with him. We want the public to think that the Statisticalists made away with the Lady Dallona, at least until the election’s over.”

Verkan Vall nodded. “I was pretty sure that was the situation,” he said. “It may be that they will get in touch with me; if they don’t, I’ll need your help in reaching them.”

“Why do you think the Lady Dallona will try to reach you?”

“She needs all the help she can get. She knows she can get plenty from me. Why do you think I interrupted my search for her, and risked my carnate existence, to fight those people over a matter of verbalisms and political propaganda?” Verkan Vall went to the newscast visiplate and snapped it on. “We’ll see if I’m getting results, yet.”

The plate lighted, and a handsome young man in a gold-laced green suit was speaking out of it:

“... where he is heavily guarded by Assassins. However, in an exclusive interview with representatives of this service, the Assassin Hirzif, one of the two who seconded the men the Lord Virzal fought, said that in his opinion all of the three were so outclassed as to have had no chance whatever, and that he had already refused an offer of ten thousand System Monetary Units to discarnate the Lord Virzal for the Statisticalist Party. ‘When I want to discarnate,’ Hirzif the Assassin said, ‘I’ll invite in my friends and do it properly; until I do, I wouldn’t go up against the Lord Virzal of Verkan for ten million S.M.U.’”

Verkan Vall snapped off the visiplate. “See what I mean?” he asked. “I fought those politicians just for the advertising. If Dallona and Dirzed are anywhere near a visiplate, they’ll know how to reach me.”

“Hirzif shouldn’t have talked about refusing that retainer,” Klarnood frowned. “That isn’t good Assassin ethics. Why, yes, Lord Virzal; that was cleverly planned. It ought to get results. But I wish you’d get the Lady Dallona out of Darsh, and preferably off Terra, as soon as you can. We’ve benefited by this, so far, but I shouldn’t like to see things go much further. A real civil war could develop out of this situation, and I don’t want that. Call on me for help; I’ll give you a code word to use at Assassins’ Hall.”

* * * * *

A real civil war was developing even as Klarnood spoke; by mid-morning of the next day, the fighting that had been partially suppressed by the Constabulary had broken out anew. The Assassins employed by the Solar Hotel—heavily re-enforced during the night—had fought a pitched battle with Statisticalist partisans on the landing stage above Verkan Vall’s suite, and now several Constabulary airboats were patrolling around the building. The rule on Constabulary interference seemed to be that while individuals had an unquestionable right to shoot out their differences among themselves, any fighting likely to endanger nonparticipants was taboo.

Just how successful in enforcing this rule the Constabulary were was open to some doubt. Ever since arising, Verkan Vall had heard the crash of small arms and the hammering of automatic weapons in other parts of the towering city unit. There hadn’t been a civil war on the Akor-Neb Sector for over five centuries, he knew, but then, Hadron Dalla, Doctor of Psychic Science, and intertemporal trouble-carrier extraordinary, had only been on this sector for a little under a year. If anything, he was surprised that the explosion had taken so long to occur.

One of the servants furnished to him by the hotel management approached him in the drawing room, holding a four-inch-square wafer of white plastic.

“Lord Virzal, there is a masked Assassin in the hallway who brought this under Assassins’ Truce,” he said.

Verkan Vall took the wafer and pared off three of the four edges, which showed black where they had been fused. Unfolding it, he found, as he had expected, that the pyrographed message within was in the alphabet and language of the First Paratime Level:

Vall, darling:

Am I glad you got here; this time I really _am_ in the
middle, but good! The Assassin, Dirzed, who brings this, is
in my service. You can trust him implicitly; he’s about the
only person in Darsh you can trust. He’ll bring you to where I
am.

Dalla

P.S. I hope you’re not still angry about that musician. I
told you, at the time, that he was just helping me with an
experiment in telepathy.

D.

Verkan Vall grinned at the postscript. That had been twenty years ago, when he’d been eighty and she’d been seventy. He supposed she’d expect him to take up his old relationship with her again. It probably wouldn’t last any longer than it had, the other time; he recalled a Fourth Level proverb about the leopard and his spots. It certainly wouldn’t be boring, though.

“Tell the Assassin to come in,” he directed. Then he tossed the message down on a table. Outside of himself, nobody in Darsh could read it but the woman who had sent it; if, as he thought highly probable, the Statisticalists had spies among the hotel staff, it might serve to reduce some cryptanalyst to gibbering insanity.

The Assassin entered, drawing off a cowl-like mask. He was the man whose arm Dalla had been holding in the visiplate picture; Verkan Vall even recognized the extremely ornate pistol and knife on his belt.

“Dirzed the Assassin,” he named himself. “If you wish, we can visiphone Assassins’ Hall for verification of my identity.”

“Lord Virzal of Verkan. And my Assassins, Marnik and Olirzon.” They all hooked fingers and clapped shoulders with the newcomer. “That won’t be needed,” Verkan Vall told Dirzed. “I know you from seeing you with the Lady Dallona, on the visiplate; you’re ‘Dirzed, her faithful Assassin.’”

Dirzed’s face, normally the color of a good walnut gunstock, turned almost black. He used shockingly bad language.

“And that’s why I have to wear this abomination,” he finished, displaying the mask. “The Lady Dallona and I can’t show our faces anywhere; if we did, every Statisticalist and his six-year-old brat would know us, and we’d be fighting off an army of them in five minutes.”

“Where’s the Lady Dallona, now?”

“In hiding, Lord Virzal, at a private dwelling dome in the forest; she’s most anxious to see you. I’m to take you to her, and I would strongly advise that you bring your Assassins along. There are other people at this dome, and they are not personally loyal to the Lady Dallona. I’ve no reason to suspect them of secret enmity, but their friendship is based entirely on political expediency.”

“And political expediency is subject to change without notice,” Verkan Vall finished for him. “Have you an airboat?”

“On the landing stage below. Shall we go now, Lord Virzal?”

“Yes.” Verkan Vall made a two-handed gesture to his Assassins, as though gripping a submachine-gun; they nodded, went into another room, and returned carrying light automatic weapons in their hands and pouches of spare drums slung over their shoulders. “And may I suggest, Dirzed, that one of my Assassins drives the airboat? I want you on the back seat with me, to explain the situation as we go.”

Dirzed’s teeth flashed white against his brown skin as he gave Verkan Vall a quick smile.

“By all means, Lord Virzal; I would much rather be distrusted than to find that my client’s friends were not discreet.”

There were a couple of hotel Assassins guarding Dirzed’s airboat, on the landing stage. Marnik climbed in under the controls, with Olirzon beside him; Verkan Vall and Dirzed entered the rear seat. Dirzed gave Marnik the co-ordinate reference for their destination.

“Now, what sort of a place is this, where we’re going?” Verkan Vall asked. “And who’s there whom we may or may not trust?”

“Well, it’s a dome house belonging to the family of Starpha; they own a five-mile radius around it, oak and beech forest and underbrush, stocked with deer and boar. A hunting lodge. Prince Jirzyn of Starpha, Lord Girzon of Roxor, and a few other top-level Volitionalists, know that the Lady Dallona’s hiding there. They’re keeping her out of sight till after the election, for propaganda purposes. We’ve been hiding there since immediately after the discarnation feast of the Lord Garnon of Roxor.”

“What happened, after the feast?” Verkan Vall wanted to know.

“Well, you know how the Lady Dallona and Dr. Harnosh of Hosh had this telepathic-sensitive there, in a trance and drugged with a _zerfa_-derivative alkaloid the Lady Dallona had developed. I was Lord Garnon’s Assassin; I discarnated him, myself. Why, I hadn’t even put my pistol away before he was in control of this sensitive, in a room five stories above the banquet hall; he began communicating at once. We had visiplates to show us what was going on.

“Right away, Nirzav of Shonna, one of the Statisticalist leaders who was a personal friend of Lord Garnon’s in spite of his politics, renounced Statisticalism and went over to the Volitionalists, on the strength of this communication. Prince Jirzyn, and Lord Girzon, the new family-head of Roxor, decided that there would be trouble in the next few days, so they advised the Lady Dallona to come to this hunting lodge for safety. She and I came here in her airboat, directly from the feast. A good thing we did, too; if we’d gone to her apartment, we’d have walked in before that lethal gas had time to clear.

“There are four Assassins of the family of Starpha, and six menservants, and an upper-servant named Tarnod, the gamekeeper. The Starpha Assassins and I have been keeping the rest under observation. I left one of the Starpha Assassins guarding the Lady Dallona when I came for you, under brotherly oath to protect her in my name till I returned.”

The airboat was skimming rapidly above the treetops, toward the northern part of the city.

“What’s known about that package bomb?” Verkan Vall asked. “Who sent it?”

Dirzed shrugged. “The Statisticalists, of course. The wrapper was stolen from the Reincarnation Research Institute; so was the case. The Constabulary are working on it.” Dirzed shrugged again.

The dome, about a hundred and fifty feet in width and some fifty in height, stood among the trees ahead. It was almost invisible from any distance; the concrete dome was of mottled green and gray concrete, trees grew so close as to brush it with their branches, and the little pavilion on the flattened top was roofed with translucent green plastic. As the airboat came in, a couple of men in Assassins’ garb emerged from the pavilion to meet them.

“Marnik, stay at the controls,” Verkan Vall directed. “I’ll send Olirzon up for you if I want you. If there’s any trouble, take off for Assassins’ Hall and give the code word, then come back with twice as many men as you think you’ll need.”

Dirzed raised his eyebrows over this. “I hadn’t known the Assassin-President had given you a code word, Lord Virzal,” he commented. “That doesn’t happen very often.”

“The Assassin-President has honored me with his friendship,” Verkan Vall replied noncommittally, as he, Dirzed and Olirzon climbed out of the airboat. Marnik was holding it an unobtrusive inch or so above the flat top of the dome, away from the edge of the pavilion roof.

The two Assassins greeted him, and a man in upper-servants’ garb and wearing a hunting knife and a long hunting pistol approached.

“Lord Virzal of Verkan? Welcome to Starpha Dome. The Lady Dallona awaits you below.”

Verkan Vall had never been in an Akor-Neb dwelling dome, but a description of such structures had been included in his hypno-mech indoctrination. Originally, they had been the standard structure for all purposes; about two thousand elapsed years ago, when nationalism had still existed on the Akor-Neb Sector, the cities had been almost entirely under ground, as protection from air attack. Even now, the design had been retained by those who wished to live apart from the towering city units, to preserve the natural appearance of the landscape. The Starpha hunting lodge was typical of such domes. Under it was a circular well, eighty feet in depth and fifty in width, with a fountain and a shallow circular pool at the bottom. The storerooms, kitchens and servants’ quarters were at the top, the living quarters at the bottom, in segments of a wide circle around the well, back of balconies.

“Tarnod, the gamekeeper,” Dirzed performed the introductions. “And Erarno and Kirzol, Assassins.”

Verkan Vall hooked fingers and clapped shoulders with them. Tarnod accompanied them to the lifter tubes—two percent positive gravitation for descent and two percent negative for ascent—and they all floated down the former, like air-filled balloons, to the bottom level.

“The Lady Dallona is in the gun room,” Tarnod informed Verkan Vall, making as though to guide him.

“Thanks, Tarnod; we know the way,” Dirzed told him shortly, turning his back on the upper-servant and walking toward a closed door on the other side of the fountain. Verkan Vall and Olirzon followed; for a moment, Tarnod stood looking after them, then he followed the other two Assassins into the ascent tube.

“I don’t relish that fellow,” Dirzed explained. “The family of Starpha use him for work they couldn’t hire an Assassin to do at any price. I’ve been here often, when I was with the Lord Garnon; I’ve always thought he had something on Prince Jirzyn.”

He knocked sharply on the closed door with the butt of his pistol. In a moment, it slid open, and a young Assassin with a narrow mustache and a tuft of chin beard looked out.

“Ah, Dirzed.” He stepped outside. “The Lady Dallona is within; I return her to your care.”

Verkan Vall entered, followed by Dirzed and Olirzon. The big room was fitted with reclining chairs and couches and low tables; its walls were hung with the heads of deer and boar and wolves, and with racks holding rifles and hunting pistols and fowling pieces. It was filled with the soft glow of indirect cold light. At the far side of the room, a young woman was seated at a desk, speaking softly into a sound transcriber. As they entered, she snapped it off and rose.

Hadron Dalla wore the same costume Verkan Vall had seen on the visiplate: he recognized her instantly. It took her a second or two to perceive Verkan Vall under the brown skin and black hair of the Lord Virzal of Verkan. Then her face lighted with a happy smile.

“Why, Va-a-a-ll!” she whooped, running across the room and tossing herself into his not particularly reluctant arms. After all, it had been twenty years—“I didn’t know you, at first!”

“You mean, in these clothes?” he asked, seeing that she had forgotten, for the moment, the presence of the two Assassins. She had even called him by his First Level name, but that was unimportant—the Akor-Neb affectionate diminutive was formed by omitting the -_irz_- or -_arn_-. “Well, they’re not exactly what I generally wear on the plantation.” He kissed her again, then turned to his companions. “Your pardon, Gentlemen-Assassins; it’s been something over a year since we’ve seen each other.”

Olirzon was smiling at the affectionate reunion; Dirzed wore a look of amused resignation, as though he might have expected something like this to happen. Verkan Vall and Dalla sat down on a couch near the desk.

“That was really sweet of you, Vall, fighting those men for talking about me,” she began. “You took an awful chance, though. But if you hadn’t, I’d never have known you were in Darsh—Oh-oh! That was why you did it, wasn’t it?”

“Well, I had to do something. Everybody either didn’t know or weren’t saying where you were. I assumed, from the circumstances, that you were hiding somewhere. Tell me, Dalla; do you really have scientific proof of reincarnation? I mean, as an established fact?”

“Oh, yes; these people on this sector have had that for over ten centuries. They have hypnotic techniques for getting back into a part of the subconscious mind that we’ve never been able to reach. And after I found out how they did it, I was able to adapt some of our hypno-epistemological techniques to it, and—”

“All right; that’s what I wanted to know,” he cut her off. “We’re getting out of here, right away.”

“But where?”

“Ghamma, in an airboat I have outside, and then back to the First Level. Unless there’s a paratime-transposition conveyor somewhere nearer.”

“But why, Vall? I’m not ready to go back; I have a lot of work to do here, yet. They’re getting ready to set up a series of control-experiments at the Institute, and then, I’m in the middle of an experiment, a two-hundred-subject memory-recall experiment. See, I distributed two hundred sets of equipment for my new technique—injection-ampoules of this _zerfa_-derivative drug, and sound records of the hypnotic suggestion formula, which can be played on an ordinary reproducer. It’s just a crude variant of our hypno-mech process, except that instead of implanting information in the subconscious mind, to be brought at will to the level of consciousness, it works the other way, and draws into conscious knowledge information already in the subconscious mind. The way these people have always done has been to put the subject in an hypnotic trance and then record verbal statements made in the trance-state; when the subject comes out of the trance, the record is all there is, because the memories of past reincarnations have never been in the conscious mind. But with my process, the subject can consciously remember everything about his last reincarnation, and as many reincarnations before that as he wishes to. I haven’t heard from any of the people who received these auto-recall kits, and I really must—”

“Dalla, I don’t want to have to pull Paratime Police authority on you, but, so help me, if you don’t come back voluntarily with me, I will. Security of the secret of paratime transposition.”

“Oh, my eye!” Dalla exclaimed. “Don’t give me that, Vall!”

“Look, Dalla. Suppose you get discarnated here,” Verkan Vall said. “You say reincarnation is a scientific fact. Well, you’d reincarnate on this sector, and then you’d take a memory-recall, under hypnosis. And when you did, the paratime secret wouldn’t be a secret any more.”

“Oh!” Dalla’s hand went to her mouth in consternation. Like every paratimer, she was conditioned to shrink with all her being from the mere thought of revealing to any out-time dweller the secret ability of her race to pass to other time-lines, or even the existence of alternate lines of probability. “And if I took one of the old-fashioned trance-recalls, I’d blat out everything; I wouldn’t be able to keep a thing back. And I even know the principles of transposition!” She looked at him, aghast.

“When I get back, I’m going to put a recommendation through department channels that this whole sector be declared out of bounds for all paratime transposition, until you people at Rhogom Foundation work out the problem of discarnate return to the First Level,” he told her. “Now, have you any notes or anything you want to take back with you?”

She rose. “Yes; just what’s on the desk. Find me something to put the tape spools and notebooks in, while I’m getting them in order.”

He secured a large game bag from under a rack of fowling pieces, and held it while she sorted the material rapidly, stuffing spools of record tape and notebooks into it. They had barely begun when the door slid open and Olirzon, who had gone outside, sprang into the room, his pistol drawn, swearing vilely.

“They’ve double-crossed us!” he cried. “The servants of Starpha have turned on us.” He holstered his pistol and snatched up his submachine-gun, taking cover behind the edge of the door and letting go with a burst in the direction of the lifter tubes. “Got that one!” he grunted.

“What happened, Olirzon?” Verkan Vall asked, dropping the game bag on the table and hurrying across the room.

“I went up to see how Marnik was making out. As I came out of the lifter tube, one of the obscenities took a shot at me with a hunting pistol. He missed me; I didn’t miss him. Then a couple more of them were coming up, with fowling pieces; I shot one of them before they could fire, and jumped into the descent tube and came down heels over ears. I don’t know what’s happened to Marnik.” He fired another burst, and swore. “Missed him!”

“Assassins’ Truce! Assassins’ Truce!” a voice howled out of the descent tube. “Hold your fire, we want to parley.”

“Who is it?” Dirzed shouted, over Olirzon’s shoulder. “You, Sarnax? Come on out; we won’t shoot.”

The young Assassin with the mustache and chin beard emerged from the descent tube, his weapons sheathed and his clasped hands extended in front of him in a peculiarly ecclesiastical-looking manner. Dirzed and Olirzon stepped out of the gun room, followed by Verkan Vall and Hadron Dalla. Olirzon had left his submachine-gun behind. They met the other Assassin by the rim of the fountain pool.