H Beam Piper Paratime

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Dallona of Hadron. Parenthetically, all Akor-Neb family-names are
prepositional; family-names were originally place names. I believe that
ancient
Akor-Neb marital relations were too complicated to permit exact establishment
of paternity. And all Akor-Neb men's personal names have irz-or-arn inserted
in the middle, and women's names end in
-itra- or-ona
. You could call yourself
Virzal of Verkan, for instance.
"Anyhow, she made the Second Level Venus-Terra trip on a regular passenger
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liner, and landed at the Akor-Neb city of Ghamma, on the upper Nile. There she
established contact with the Outtime Trading Corporation representative,
Zortan
Brend, locally known as Bramend of Zorda. He couldn't call himself Brarnend of
Zortan in the Akor-Neb language, zortan is a particularly nasty dirty-word.
Hadron Dalla spent a few weeks at his residence, briefing herself on local
conditions. Then she went to the capital city, Darsh, in eastern Europe, and
enrolled as a student at something called the Independent Institute for
Reincarnation Research, having secured a letter of introduction to its
director, a
Dr. Harnosh of Hosh.
"Almost at once, she began sending in reports to her home organization, the
Rhogom Memorial Foundation of Psychic Science, here at Dhergabar, through
Zortan Brend. The people there were wildly enthusiastic. I don't have more
than the average intelligent I hope lay-man's knowledge of psychics, but Dr.
Volzar Darv, the director of Rhogom Foundation, tells me that even in the
present incomplete form, her reports have opened whole new horizons in the
science. It seems that these Akor-Neb people have actually demonstrated, as a
scientific fact, that the human individuality reincarnates after physical
death
that your personality, and mine, have existed, as such, for ages, and will
exist for ages to come. More, they have means of recovering, from almost
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memories of past reincarnations.
"Well, after about a month, the people at this Reincarnation Institute
realized that this Dallona of Hadron wasn't any ordinary student. She probably
had trouble keeping down to the local level of psychic knowledge. So, as soon
as she'd learned their techniques, she was allowed to undertake experimental
work of her own. I imagine she let herself out on that; as soon as she'd
mastered the standard
Akor-Neb methods of recovering memories of past reincarnations, she began
refining and developing them more than the local yokels had been able to do in
the past thousand years. I can't tell you just what she did, because I don't
know the subject, but she must have lit things up properly. She got quite a
lot of local publicity; not only scientific journals, but general newscasts.
"Then, four days ago, she disappeared, and her disappearance seems to have
been coincident with an unsuccessful attempt on her life. We don't know as
much about this as we should; all we have is Zortan Brend's account.
"It seems that on the evening of her disappearance, she had been attending the
voluntary discarnation feast suicide party of a prominent nobleman named
Garnon of Roxor. Evidently when the Akor-Neb people get tired of their current
reincarnation they invite in their friends, throw a big party, and then do
themselves in in an atmosphere of general conviviality. Frequently they take
poison or inhale lethal gas; this fellow had his personal trigger man shoot
him through the head. Dalla was one of the guests of honor, along with this
Harnosh of Hosh. They'd made rather elaborate preparations, and after the
shooting they got a detailed and apparently authentic spirit-communication
from the late
Garnon. The voluntary discarnation was just a routine social event, it seems,
but the communication caused quite an uproar, and rated top place on the
System-
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wide newscasts, and started a storm of controversy.
"After the shooting and the communication, Dalla took the officiating gun
artist, one
Dirzed
, into her own service. This
Dined was spoken of as a generally respected member of something called the
Society of Assassins, and that'll give you an idea of what things are like on
that sector, and why I don't want to send anybody who might develop
trigger-finger cramp at the wrong moment. She and
Dirzed left the home of the gentleman who had just had himself discarnated,
presumably for Dalla's apartment, about a hundred miles away. That's the last
that's been heard of either of them.
"This attempt on Dalla's life occurred while the pre-mortem revels were still
going on. She lived in a six-room apartment, with three servants, on one of
the upper floors of a three-thousand-foot tower Akor-Neb cities are built
vertically, with considerable interval between units and while she was at this
feast, a package was delivered at the apartment, ostensibly from the
Reincarnation Institute and made up to look as though it contained record
tapes.
One of the servants accepted it from a service employee of the apartments. The
next morning, a little before noon, Dr. Harnosh of Hosh called her on the
visiphone and got no answer; he then called the apartment manager, who entered
the apartment. He found all three of the servants dead, from a lethal-gas bomb
which had exploded when one of them had opened this package. However, Hadron
Dalla had never returned to the apartment, the night before."
Verkan Vail was sitting motionless, his face expressionless as he ran Tortha
Karf's narrative through the intricate semantic and psychological processes of
the
First Level mentality. The fact that Hadron Dalla had been a former wife of
his had been relegated to one corner of his consciousness and contained there;
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not a fact that would, at the moment, contribute to the problem or to his
treatment of it.
"The package was delivered while she was at this suicide party," he
considered.
"It must, therefore, have been sent by somebody who either did not know she
would be out of the apartment, or who did not expect it to function until
after her return. On the other hand, if her disappearance was due to hostile
action, it was the work of somebody who knew she was at the feast and did not
want her to reach her apartment again. This would seem to exclude the sender
of the package bomb."
Tortha Karf nodded. He had reached that conclusion, himself.
"Thus," Verkan Vail continued, "if her disappearance was the work of an enemy,
she must have two enemies, each working in ignorance of the other's plans."
"What do you think she did to provoke such enmity?"
"Well, of course, it just might be that Dalla's normally complicated love-life
had got a little more complicated than usual and short-circuited on her,"
Verkan Vail said, out of the fullness of personal knowledge, "but I doubt
that, at the moment.
I would think that this affair has political implications."
"So?" Tortha Karf had not thought of politics as an explanation. He waited for
Verkan Vail to elaborate.
"Don't you see, chief?" the special assistant asked. "We find a belief in
reincarnation on many time-lines, as a religious doctrine, but these people
accept it as a scientific fact. Such acceptance would carry much more
conviction; it
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would influence a people's entire thinking. We see it reflected in their
disregard for death suicide as a social function, this Society of Assassins, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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