by a detective, had already beenplaced in the interview room. The detective nodded to Vall, tried tosuppress a grin when he saw Dalla behind him, and went out. Vall sawhis wife and the prisoner seated, and produced his cigarette case,handing it around.
"You're Zinganna; you're of the household of Councilman Salgath Trod,aren't you?" he asked.
"Housekeeper and hostess," the girl replied. "I am also his mistress."
Vall nodded, smiling. "Which confirms my long-standing respect forCouncilman Salgath's exquisite taste."
"Why, thank you," she said. "But I doubt if I was brought here toreceive compliments. Or was I?"
"No, I'm afraid not. Have you heard the newscasts of the past fewhours concerning Councilman Salgath?"
She straightened in her seat, looking at him seriously.
"No. I and Nindrandigro and Calilla spent the evening on ServSecOne-Six-Five. Councilman Salgath told me that he had some business andwanted them out of the apartment, and wanted me to keep an eye onthem. We didn't hear any news at all." She hesitated. "Has anything... serious ... happened?"
Vall studied her for a moment, then glanced at Dalla. There existedbetween himself and his wife a sort of vague, semitelepathic, rapport;they had never been able to transmit definite and exact thoughts, butthey could clearly prehend one another's feelings and emotions. He wasconscious, now, of Dalla's sympathy for the Proletarian girl.
"Zinganna, I'm going to tell you something that is being kept from thepublic," he said. "By doing so, I will make it necessary for us todetain you, at least for a few days. I hope you will forgive me, but Ithink you would forgive me less if I didn't tell you."
"Something's happened to him," she said, her eyes widening and herbody tensing.
"Yes, Zinganna. At about 2010, this evening," he said, "CouncilmanSalgath was murdered."
"Oh!" She leaned back in the chair, closing her eyes. "He's dead?"Then, again, statement instead of question: "He's dead!"
For a long moment, she lay back in the chair, as though trying toreorient her mind to the fact of Salgath Trod's death, while Vall andDalla sat watching her. Then she stirred, opened her eyes, looked atthe cigarette in her fingers as though she had never seen it before,and leaned forward to stuff it into an ash receiver.
"Who did it?" she asked, the Stone Age savage who had been herancestor not ten generations ago peeping out of her eyes.
"The men who actually used the needlers are dead," Vall told her. "Ikilled a couple of them myself. We still have to find the men whoplanned it. I'd hoped you'd want to help us do that, Zinganna."
He side-glanced to Dalla again; she nodded. The relationship betweenZinganna and Salgath Trod hadn't been purely business with her; therehad been some real affection. He told her what had happened, and whenhe reached the point at which Salgath Trod had called Tortha Karf toconfess complicity in the slave trade, her lips tightened and shenodded.
"I was afraid it was something like that," she said. "For the last fewdays, well, ever since the news about the slave trade got out, he'sbeen worried about something. I've always thought somebody had somekind of a hold over him. Different times in the past, he's done thingsso far against his own political best interests that I've had tobelieve he was being forced into them. Well, this time they tried toforce him too far. What then?"
Vall continued the story. "So we're keeping this hushed up, for awhile. The way we're letting it out, Salgath Trod is still alive, onPolice Terminal, talking under narco-hypnosis."
She smiled savagely. "And they'll get frightened, and frightened mendo foolish things," she finished. She hadn't been a politician'smistress for nothing. "What can I do to help?"
"Tell us everything you can," he said. "Maybe we can be able to takesuch actions as we would have taken if Salgath Trod had lived to talkto us."
"Yes, of course." She got another cigarette from the case Vall hadlaid on the table. "I think, though, that you'd better give me anarco-hypnosis. You want to be able to depend on what I'm going totell you, and I want to be able to remember things exactly."
Vall nodded approvingly and turned to Dalla.
"Can you handle this, yourself?" he asked. "There's an audio-visualrecorder on now; here's everything you need." He opened the drawers inthe table to show her the narco-hypnotic equipment. "And the phone hasa whisper mouthpiece; you can call out without worrying about yourmessage getting into Zinganna's subconscious. Well, I'll see you whenyou're through; you bring Zinganna to Police Terminal; I'll probablybe there."
He went out, closing the door behind him, and went down the hall,meeting the officer who had taken charge of the butler and housemaid.
"We're having trouble with them, sir," he said. "Hostile. Yellingabout their rights, and demanding to see a representative ofProletarian Protective League."
Vall mentioned the Proletarian Protective League with unflatteringvulgarity.
"If they don't cooeperate, drag them out and inject them and questionthem anyhow," he said.
The detective-lieutenant looked worried. "We've been taking a prettyhigh hand with them as it is," he protested. "It's safer to kill aCitizen than bloody a Prole's nose; they have all sorts of laws toprotect them."
"There are all sorts of laws to protect the Paratime Secret," Vallreplied. "And I think there are one or two laws against murderingmembers of the Executive Council. In case P.P.L. makes any trouble,they aren't here; they have faithfully joined their beloved master inhis refuge on PolTerm. But one or both of them work for theOrganization."
"You're sure of that?"
"The Organization is too thorough not to have had a spy in Salgath'shousehold. It wasn't Zinganna, because she's volunteered to talk to usunder narco-hyp. So who does that leave?"
"Well, that's different; that makes them suspects." The lieutenantseemed relieved. "We'll pump that pair out right away."
When he got back to Tortha Karf's office, the Chief was awake, anddoodling on his notepad with his multicolor pen. Vall looked at thepad and winced; the Chief was doodling bugs again--red ants with blacklegs, and blue-and-green beetles. Then he saw that the psychist,Nentrov Dard, was drinking straight 150-proof palm-rum.
"Well, tell me the worst," he said.
"Our boy's memory-obliterated," Nentrov Dard said, draining his glassand filling it again. "And he's plastered with pseudo-memories a footthick. It'll be five or six ten-days before we can get all that stuffpeeled off and get him unblocked. I put him to sleep and had himtransposed to Police Terminal. I'm going there, myself, tomorrowmorning, after I've had some sleep, and get to work on him. If you'rehoping to get anything useful out of him in time to head off thisCouncil crisis that's building up, just forget it."
"And that leaves us right back with our old friends, the WizardTraders," Tortha Karf added. "And if they've decided to suspendactivities on the Kholghoor Sector, too--" He began drawing a big blueand black spider in the middle of the pad.
Nentrov Dard crushed out his cigar, drank his rum, and got to hisfeet.
"Well, good night, Chief; Vall. If you decide to wake me up before1000, send somebody you want to get rid of in a hurry." He walkedaround the deck and out the side door.
"I hope they don't," Vall said to Tortha Karf. "Really, though, Idoubt if they do. This is their chance to pick up a lot of slavescheaply; the Croutha are too busy to bother haggling. I'm goingthrough to PolTerm, now; when Dalla and Zinganna get through, tellthem to join me there."
* * * * *
On Police Terminal, he found Kostran Galth, the agent who had beenselected to impersonate Salgath Trod. After calling Zulthran Torv, themathematician in charge of the Computer Office and giving him theEsaron time-line designations and Nentrov Dard's ideas about them, hespent about an hour briefing Kostran Galth on the role he was to play.Finally, he undressed and went to bed on a couch in the rest roombehind the office.
It was noon when he woke. After showering, shaving and dressinghastily, he went out to the desk for breakfast, which arrived while hewas pu
tting a call through to Ranthar Jard, at Nharkan Equivalent.
"Your idea paid off, Chief's Assistant," the Kholghoor SecReg Subchieftold him. "The slaves gave us a lot of physical description data onthe estate, and told us about new fields that had been cleared, and adam this Lord Ghromdour was building to flood some new rice-paddies.We located a belt of about five parayears where these improvements hadbeen made: we