"You spoke of a controversy over the communication alleged to have originated with this voluntarily discarnated n.o.bleman. That would suggest a difference of opinion on the manner of nature of reincarnation or the discarnate state. This difference may mark the dividing line between the different political parties. Now, to get to this Darsh place, do I have to go to Venus, as Dalla did?"

"No. The Outtime Trading Corporation has transposition facilities at Ravvanan, on the Nile, which is spatially co-existent with the city of Ghamma on the Akor-Neb Sector, where Zortan Brend is. You transpose through there, and Zortan Brend will furnish you transportation to Darsh. It"ll take you about two days, here, getting your hypno-mech indoctrinations and having your skin pigmented, and your hair turned black. I"ll notify Zortan Brend at once that you"re coming through.

Is there anything special you"ll want?"

"Why, I"ll want an abstract of the reports Dalla sent back to Rhogom Foundation. It"s likely that there is some clue among them as to whom her discoveries may have antagonized. I"m going to be a Venusian _zerfa_-planter, a friend of her father"s; I"ll want full hypno-mech indoctrination to enable me to play that part. And I"ll want to familiarize myself with Akor-Neb weapons and combat techniques. I think that will be all, chief."

The last of the tall city-units of Ghamma were sliding out of sight as the ship pa.s.sed over them--shaft-like buildings that rose two or three thousand feet above the ground in clumps of three or four or six, one at each corner of the landing stages set in series between them. Each of these units stood in the middle of a wooded park some five miles square; no unit was much more or less than twenty miles from its nearest neighbor, and the land between was the uniform golden-brown of ripening grain, crisscrossed with the threads of irrigation ca.n.a.ls and dotted here and there with st.u.r.dy farm-village buildings and tall, stacklike granaries. There were a few other ships in the air at the fifty-thousand-foot level, and below, swarms of small airboats darted back and forth on different levels, depending upon speed and direction. Far ahead, to the northeast, was the shimmer of the Red Sea and the hazy bulk of Asia Minor beyond.

Verkan Vall--the Lord Virzal of Verkan, temporarily--stood at the gla.s.s front of the observation deck, looking down. He was a different Verkan Vall from the man who had talked with Tortha Karf in the latter"s office, two days before. The First Level cosmeticists had worked miracles upon him with their art. His skin was a soft chocolate-brown, now; his hair was jet-black, and so were his eyes.

And in his subconscious mind, instantly available to consciousness, was a vast body of knowledge about conditions on the Akor-Neb sector, as well as a complete command of the local language, all hypnotically acquired.

He knew that he was looking down upon one of the minor provincial cities of a very respectably advanced civilization. A civilization which built its cities vertically, since it had learned to counteract gravitation. A civilization which still depended upon natural cereals for food, but one which had learned to make the most efficient use of its soil. The network of dams and irrigation ca.n.a.ls which he saw was as good as anything on his own paratime level. The wide dispersal of buildings, he knew, was a heritage of a series of disastrous atomic wars of several thousand years before; the Akor-Neb people had come to love the wide inter-vistas of open country and forest, and had continued to scatter their buildings, even after the necessity had pa.s.sed. But the slim, towering buildings could only have been reared by a people who had banished nationalism and, with it, the threat of total war. He contrasted them with the ground-hugging dome cities of the Khiftan civilization, only a few thousand parayears distant.

Three men came out of the lounge behind him and joined him. One was, like himself, a disguised paratimer from the First Level--the Outtime Export and Import man, Zortan Brend, here known as Brarnend of Zorda.

The other two were Akor-Neb people, and both wore the black tunics and the winged-bullet badges of the Society of a.s.sa.s.sins. Unlike Verkan Vall and Zortan Brend, who wore shoulder holsters under their short tunics, the a.s.sa.s.sins openly displayed pistols and knives on their belts.

"We heard that you were coming two days ago, Lord Virzal," Zortan Brend said. "We delayed the take-off of this ship, so that you could travel to Darsh as inconspicuously as possible. I also booked a suite for you at the Solar Hotel, at Darsh. And these are your a.s.sa.s.sins--Olirzon, and Marnik."

Verkan Vall hooked fingers and clapped shoulders with them.

"Virzal of Verkan," he identified himself. "I am satisfied to intrust myself to you."

"We"ll do our best for you, Lord Virzal," the older of the pair, Olirzon, said. He hesitated for a moment, then continued: "Understand, Lord Virzal, I only ask for information useful in serving and protecting you. But is this of the Lady Dallona a political matter?"

"Not from our side," Verkan Vall told him. "The Lady Dallona is a scientist, entirely nonpolitical. The Honorable Brarnend is a business man; he doesn"t meddle with politics as long as the politicians leave him alone. And I"m a planter on Venus; I have enough troubles, with the natives, and the weather, and blue-rot in the _zerfa_ plants, and poison roaches, and javelin bugs, without getting into politics. But psychic science is inextricably mixed with politics, and the Lady Dallona"s work had evidently tended to discredit the theory of Statistical Reincarnation."

"Do you often make understatements like that, Lord Virzal?" Olirzon grinned. "In the last six months, she"s knocked Statistical Reincarnation to splinters."

"Well, I"m not a psychic scientist, and as I said, I don"t know much about Terran politics," Verkan Vall replied. "I know that the Statisticalists favor complete socialization and political control of the whole economy, because they want everybody to have the same opportunities in every reincarnation. And the Volitionalists believe that everybody reincarnates as he pleases, and so they favor continuance of the present system of private ownership of wealth and private profit under a system of free compet.i.tion. And that"s about all I do know. Naturally, as a land-owner and the holder of a t.i.tle of n.o.bility, I"m a Volitionalist in politics, but the socialization issue isn"t important on Venus. There is still too much unseated land there, and too many personal opportunities, to make socialism attractive to anybody."

"Well, that"s about it," Zortan Brend told him. "I"m not enough of a psychicist to know what the Lady Dallona"s been doing, but she"s knocked the theoretical basis from under Statistical Reincarnation, and that"s the basis, in turn, of Statistical Socialism. I think we"ll find that the Statisticalist Party is responsible for whatever happened to her."

Marnik, the younger of the two a.s.sa.s.sins, hesitated for a moment, then addressed Verkan Vall:

"Lord Virzal, I know none of the personalities involved in this matter, and I speak without wishing to give offense, but is it not possible that the Lady Dallona and the a.s.sa.s.sin Dirzed may have gone somewhere together voluntarily? I have met Dirzed, and he has many qualities which women find attractive, and he is by no means indifferent to the opposite s.e.x. You understand, Lord Virzal--"

"I understand all too perfectly, Marnik," Verkan Vall replied, out of the fullness of experience. "The Lady Dallona has had affairs with a number of men, myself among them. But under the circ.u.mstances, I find that explanation unthinkable."

Marnik looked at him in open skepticism. Evidently, in his book, where an attractive man and a beautiful woman were concerned, that explanation was never unthinkable.

"The Lady Dallona is a scientist," Verkan Vall elaborated. "She is not above diverting herself with love affairs, but that"s all they are--a not too important form of diversion. And, if you recall, she had just partic.i.p.ated in a most significant experiment: you can be sure that she had other things on her mind at the time than pleasure jaunts with good-looking a.s.sa.s.sins."

The ship was pa.s.sing around the Caucasus Mountains, with the Caspian Sea in sight ahead, when several of the crew appeared on the observation deck and began preparing the shielding to protect the deck from gunfire. Zortan Brend inquired of the petty officer in charge of the work as to the necessity.

"We"ve been getting reports of trouble at Darsh, sir," the man said.

"Newscast bulletins every couple of minutes: rioting in different parts of the city. Started yesterday afternoon, when a couple of Statisticalist members of the Executive Council resigned and went over to the Volitionalists. Lord Nirzav of Shonna, the only n.o.bleman of any importance in the Statisticalist Party, was one of them; he was shot immediately afterward, while leaving the Council Chambers, along with a couple of a.s.sa.s.sins who were with him. Some people in an airboat sprayed them with a machine rifle as they came out onto the landing stage."

The two a.s.sa.s.sins exclaimed in horrified anger over this.

"That wasn"t the work of members of the Society of a.s.sa.s.sins!" Olirzon declared. "Even after he"d resigned, the Lord Nirzav was still immune till he left the Government Building. There"s too blasted much illegal a.s.sa.s.sination going on!"

"What happened next?" Verkan Vall wanted to know.

"About what you"d expect, sir. The Volitionalists weren"t going to take that quietly. In the past eighteen hours, four prominent Statisticalists were forcibly discarnated, and there was even a fight in Mirzark of Bashad"s house, when Volitionalist a.s.sa.s.sins broke in; three of them and four of Mirzark"s a.s.sa.s.sins were discarnated."

"You know, something is going to have to be done about that, too,"

Olirzon said to Marnik. "It"s getting to a point where these political faction fights are being carried on entirely between members of the Society. In Ghamma alone, last year, thirty or forty of our members were discarnated that way."

"Plug in a newscast visiplate, Karnil," Zortan Brend told the petty officer. "Let"s see what"s going on in Darsh now."

In Darsh, it seemed, an uneasy peace was being established. Verkan Vall watched heavily-armed airboats and light combat ships patrolling among the high towers of the city. He saw a couple of minor riots being broken up by the blue-uniformed Constabulary, with considerable shooting and a ruthless disregard for who might get shot. It wasn"t exactly the sort of policing that would have been tolerated in the First Level Civil Order Section, but it seemed to suit Akor-Neb conditions. And he listened to a series of angry recriminations and contradictory statements by different politicians, all of whom blamed the disorders on their opponents. The Volitionalists spoke of the Statisticalists as "insane criminals" and "underminers of social stability," and the Statisticalists called the Volitionalists "reactionary criminals" and "enemies of social progress." Politicians, he had observed, differed little in their vocabularies from one time-line to another.

This kept up all the while the ship was pa.s.sing over the Caspian Sea; as they were turning up the Volga valley, one of the ship"s officers came down from the control deck, above.

"We"re coming into Darsh, now," he said, and as Verkan Vall turned from the visiplate to the forward windows, he could see the white and pastel-tinted towers of the city rising above the hardwood forests that covered the whole Volga basin on this sector. "Your luggage has been put into the airboat, Lord Virzal and Honorable a.s.sa.s.sins, and it"s ready for launching whenever you are." The officer glanced at his watch. "We dock at Commercial Center in twenty minutes; we"ll be pa.s.sing the Solar Hotel in ten."

They all rose, and Verkan Vall hooked fingers and clapped shoulders with Zortan Brend.

"Good luck, Lord Virzal," the latter said. "I hope you find the Lady Dallona safe and carnate. If you need help, I"ll be at Mercantile House for the next day or so; if you get back to Ghamma before I do, you know who to ask for there."

A number of a.s.sa.s.sins loitered in the hallways and offices of the Independent Inst.i.tute of Reincarnation Research when Verkan Vall, accompanied by Marnik, called there that afternoon. Some of them carried submachine-guns or sleep-gas projectors, and they were stopping people and questioning them. Marnik needed only to give them a quick gesture and the words, "a.s.sa.s.sins" Truce," and he and his client were allowed to pa.s.s. They entered a lifter tube and floated up to the office of Dr. Harnosh of Hosh, with whom Verkan Vall had made an appointment.

"I"m sorry, Lord Virzal," the director of the Inst.i.tute told him, "but I have no idea what has befallen the Lady Dallona, or even if she is still carnate. I am quite worried; I admired her extremely, both as an individual and as a scientist. I do hope she hasn"t been discarnated; that would be a serious blow to science. It is fortunate that she accomplished as much as she did, while she was with us."

"You think she is no longer carnate, then?"

"I"m afraid so. The political effects of her discoveries--" Harnosh of Hosh shrugged sadly. "She was devoted, to a rare degree, to her work.

I am sure that nothing but her discarnation could have taken her away from us, at this time, with so many important experiments still uncompleted."

Marnik nodded to Verkan Vall, as much as to say: "You were right."

"Well, I intend acting upon the a.s.sumption that she is still carnate and in need of help, until I am positive to the contrary," Verkan Vall said. "And in the latter case, I intend finding out who discarnated her, and send him to apologize for it in person. People don"t forcibly discarnate my friends with impunity."

"Sound att.i.tude," Dr. Harnosh commented. "There"s certainly no positive evidence that she isn"t still carnate. I"ll gladly give you all the a.s.sistance I can, if you"ll only tell me what you want."

"Well, in the first place," Verkan Vall began, "just what sort of work was she doing?" He already knew the answer to that, from the reports she had sent back to the First Level, but he wanted to hear Dr.

Harnosh"s version. "And what, exactly, are the political effects you mentioned? Understand, Dr. Harnosh, I am really quite ignorant of any scientific subject unrelated to _zerfa_ culture, and equally so of Terran politics. Politics, on Venus, is mainly a question of who gets how much graft out of what."

Dr. Harnosh smiled; evidently he had heard about Venusian politics.

"Ah, yes, of course. But you are familiar with the main differences between Statistical and Volitional reincarnation theories?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: ]