"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 a.s.sa.s.sins 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 a.s.sa.s.sin 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 b.u.t.t of his pistol. In a moment, it slid open, and a young a.s.sa.s.sin 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 a.s.sa.s.sins. 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-a.s.sa.s.sins; 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 a.s.sumed, from the circ.u.mstances, 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 Inst.i.tute, 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 pa.s.s 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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!"

"a.s.sa.s.sins" Truce! a.s.sa.s.sins" 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 a.s.sa.s.sin 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 a.s.sa.s.sin by the rim of the fountain pool.

"Lady Dallona of Hadron," the Starpha a.s.sa.s.sin began. "I and my colleagues, in the employ of the family of Starpha, have received orders from our clients to withdraw our protection from you, and to discarnate you, and all with you who undertake to protect or support you." That much sounded like a recitation of some established formula; then his voice became more conversational. "I and my colleagues, Erarno and Kirzol and Harnif, offer our apologies for the barbarity of the servants of the family of Starpha, in attacking without declaration of cessation of friendship. Was anybody hurt or discarnated?"

"None of us," Olirzon said. "How about Marnik?"

"He was warned before hostilities were begun against him," Sarnax replied. "We will allow five minutes until--"

Olirzon, who had been looking up the well, suddenly sprang at Dalla, knocking her flat, and at the same time jerking out his pistol. Before he could raise it, a shot banged from above and he fell on his face.

Dirzed, Verkan Vall, and Sarnax, all drew their pistols, but whoever had fired the shot had vanished. There was an outburst of shouting above.

"Get to cover," Sarnax told the others. "We"ll let you know when we"re ready to attack; we"ll have to deal with whoever fired that shot, first." He looked at the dead body on the floor, exclaimed angrily, and hurried to the ascent tube, springing upward.

Verkan Vall replaced the small pistol in his shoulder holster and took Olirzon"s belt, with his knife and heavier pistol.

"Well, there you see," Dirzed said, as they went back to the gun room.

"So much for political expediency."

"I think I understand why your picture and the Lady Dallona"s were exhibited so widely," Verkan Vall said. "Now, anybody would recognize your bodies, and blame the Statisticalists for discarnating you."

"That thought had occurred to me, Lord Virzal," Dirzed said. "I suppose our bodies will be atrociously but not unidentifiably mutilated, to further enrage the public," he added placidly. "If I get out of this carnate, I"m going to pay somebody off for it."

After a few minutes, there was more shouting of: "a.s.sa.s.sins" Truce!"

from the descent tube. The two a.s.sa.s.sins, Erarno and Kirzol, emerged, dragging the gamekeeper, Tarnod, between them. The upper-servant"s face was b.l.o.o.d.y, and his jaw seemed to be broken. Sarnax followed, carrying a long hunting pistol in his hand.

"Here he is!" he announced. "He fired during a.s.sa.s.sins" Truce; he"s subject to a.s.sa.s.sins" Justice!"

He nodded to the others. They threw the gamekeeper forward on the floor, and Sarnax shot him through the head, then tossed the pistol down beside him. "Any more of these people who violate the decencies will be treated similarly," he promised.

"Thank you, Sarnax," Dirzed spoke up. "But we lost an a.s.sa.s.sin: discarnating this lackey won"t equalize that. We think you should retire one of your number."

"That at least, Dirzed; wait a moment."

The three a.s.sa.s.sins conferred at some length. Then Sarnax hooked fingers and clapped shoulders with his companions.