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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.
Tortha Karf looked around apprehensively, as though estimating the damage an enraged Hadron Dalla could do to his office furnishings. "Well, try to get here as soon as you can." Thalvan Dras was holding forth, when Vall returned, on one of his favorite preoccupations.
An express elevator took Verkan Vall down to one of the middle stages, where he showed his sigil to the guard outside the door of Tortha Karf's office and was admitted at once. The Paratime Police chief rose from behind his semicircular desk, with its array of keyboards and viewing-screens and communicators.
It can transpose to any other time-line, and carry with it anything inside its field, but it can't go outside its own temporal area of existence, any more than a bullet from that rifle can hit the target a week before it's fired," Verkan Vall pointed out. "Anything inside the field is supposed to be unaffected by anything outside. Supposed to be is the way to put it; it doesn't always work.
Vall pressed a lever under his screen, and a rectangle of microcopy print popped out. "That's about all I have, sir. Want me to keep my troops ready here, or shall I send them somewhere else?" "Keep them ready, Kirv," Vall told him. "You may need them before long. Call you later." He put the microcopy in an enlarger, and carried the enlarged print with him to the conveyer room.
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.
The ones who tell the suicide story saw no firearms among the Croutha; the ones who tell the kidnap story say that they all had some kind of muskets and pistols. We're making synthetic summaries of the two stories." "We're having trouble with the locals about all these strangers coming in," Gathon Dard added. "They're getting curious." "We'll have to take a chance on that," Vall said.
Unlike Verkan Vall and Zortan Brend, who wore shoulder holsters under their short tunics, the Assassins 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.
The police car had just landed: one detective had gotten out, and was helping the girl, Zinganna, who had been Salgath Trod's housekeeper and mistress, to descend. She was really beautiful. Vall thought: rather tall, slender, with dark eyes and a creamy light-brown skin. She wore a black cloak, and, under it, a black and silver evening gown. A single jewel twinkled in her black hair.
"I suppose I don't have to warn either of you that any positive statement made in the hearing of a narco-hypnotized subject " he began. "... Has the effect of hypnotic suggestion " Vall picked up after him. "... And should be avoided unless such suggestion is intended," Dalla finished. Skordran Kirv laughed, opening another, inner door, and stood aside.