John Carr - Kalvan Kingmaker

"The Hostigi breed good fighters; I'd be proud to fight by their side and include them in any host."

Sarmoth's eyes opened wide. "They're heretics!"

"Maybe. But before that they're soldiers, and damn good ones at that! We lost two Lances at Chothros Heights and another three at the Battle of Phyrax. And we could use every man jack of them against these nomads, curse and blast it!"

Soton blew out a cloud of tobacco smoke that momentarily obscured his head. "You look like a fighter not a messenger-am I right?"

"Yes, sir. Commander Sytomanes wanted someone fast and I've been called the best horseman in the Twelfth Lance."

Soton looked him over from crown to toe. "I believe you might be. Would you rather return to Tarr-Syklos, or kill some nomads?"

"Kill nomads, Sir!"

Soton gave a wide mouthed smile that showed off the yellowed-wedges of his tobacco stained teeth. "Then I'll see to it that you're transferred to the Fifteenth. You can fight by my side. I promise you more blood than you'll see in any slaughterhouse this side of Balph!"

Paratime Police Chief Verkan Vail watched while the trees and scrub brush of Fourth Level flickered through the wavering silver sheen of the Ghaldron-Hesthor transposition-field, as the transtemporal conveyer carried him toward Fourth Level Aryan-Transpacific, Kalvan Time-Line. The civilized Second and Third Levels were behind him now. Once in a while Verkan caught flickering glimpses of Fourth Level-buildings, airports, occasionally a raging battle. Fourth Level was the high-probability level of all the inhabited Paratime Levels. There the First Colony had come to complete disaster fifty thousand years ago, losing all knowledge of its origins. It was the most barbaric level, as well as the largest. Its cultures ranged from idol worshippers on Indo-Turanian to the nuclear priesthood on some time-lines in the Europo-American, Hispano-Columbian Subsector.

The conveyer was now entering the low-level probability Fifth Level, where nature not man was triumphant. The only humans were Service and Industrial Sectors proles and their First Level overseers who labored there to keep heavy and light industry off First Level, Home Time-Line. On Fifth Level only the mountains remained constant. Occasionally, a large beast could be made out, while several times large pools of water, appeared and disappeared. There was always a bit of variability between time-lines, sometimes nothing more than trees growing in different spots, other times bodies of water flowing in otherwhen deserts.

The Service Sector Proles were not indigenous to the Fifth Level, but were brought from time-lines of near savagery, which they voluntarily left for a better life. The Paratime Transpositional Code limited the colonization of Service Sector time-lines to natives below second-order barbarism. The Serv-Sec Proles were the ones who did most of the administrative and record keeping for Home Time-Line. The proles who were dumped in the Fifth Level, Industrial Sectors, where the machines and robots of First Level were manufactured, were at the bottom rung of the Service Sector. Here were the survivors of Paratime screw-ups, when policy or criminal mistakes had made it necessary to transplant entire tribes and sometimes nations to protect them from their hostile neighbors, or to protect the Paratime secret. No matter-it seemed-how diligently the undermanned and overworked Paratime Police worked, there were always new bodies to fill another industrial time-line on Fifth Level.

Few, on First Level, realized the majority of these uncountable timelines had never been visited by Home Timeliners, even after twelve thousand years of parasitism upon Second, Third, and Fourth level time-lines. First Level Para-topographers had described less than one tenth of one percent of all the 'known' time-lines. In actuality it was an impossible job and most current Paratime theorists did not believe they would ever completely map this near infinity of diverging time-lines.

In theory the transposition field was impenetrable; however when two craft going in the opposite direction interpenetrated, other objects and life forms could and did pass through. It was why unscheduled trips like Verkan's were limited to the highest echelon of the Paratime Police. It was also Paratime Policy to have a weapon drawn just in case the hitchhiker was dangerous, or a threat to the Paratime secret. Most human pickups were killed immediately and disposed of back at the conveyer head. Only a few escaped, and even fewer flourished in their new 'homes.'

His friend Kalvan, who ruled an unruly kingdom on Fourth Level Aryan Transpacific, was the exception. There, Great King Kalvan, formerly Corporal Calvin Morrison of the Pennsylvania State Police, had accidentally boarded a conveyer in Europo-American, Hispano-Columbian as a Paratemporal hitchhiker, and was bumped off on Aryan-Transpacific,

Styphon's House Subsector. This was an even ruder and deadlier culture than Pennsylvania, ruled by a mafia of priests who worshipped a god named Styphon. Styphon's theocracy only held their power because they held the secret of how to make "fireseed"-or gunpowder.

Kalvan not only survived, he had prospered. In less than a year, he'd married a princess, founded an empire, broken Styphon's House's monopoly of gunpowder and more than held his own against the worst that band of priestly tyrants could throw against him. Styphon's House had met him with the unholy Holy Host, the largest army ever assembled on that backward time-line, and he had destroyed it.

Kalvan's intervention into local politics had created a new time-line. In many ways Kalvan's Time-Line was unique. It was the first time in First Level history when Paratime observers had been present at the start of a new subsector, identified from the exact point of divarication. The Paratimers had been close before, the President John F. Kennedy assassination, only a few years earlier, had been the critical event in the formation of the Europo-American, Kennedy Subsector. The Kennedy assassination, while newsworthy, had not been considered a divarication event until months later. The Kalvan split had been discovered as it happened: Verkan Vail himself had been on-hand, when the very conveyer that former Pennsylvania State Trooper Calvin Morrison had stumbled onto and exited on Aryan Transpacific, had arrived at the Fifth Level conveyer-head rotunda.

Because of growing instability between the two competing nuclear-powered sovereignties, the Kennedy Subsector was far too dangerous to risk intensive study and monitoring. Kalvan's Time-Line, on the other hand, was technologically backward so there was little danger to outtimers. The Dhergabar University had sent out a Kalvan Study Team to survey Kalvan Prime, as they called it, and other teams to study as many of the nearby Styphon's House Subsector 'control' time-lines as possible.

True, there were some-mostly do-gooders and professors who'd never traveled outtime-who still believed it was Home Time-Line's duty to colonize these barren time-lines, even here on Fifth Level. Or worse, that it was their duty to spread the 'benefits' of First Level civilization and Psycho Hygiene. Worlds without number, thought Verkan, only a politician or do-gooder would think they could be tamed in even ten thousand lifetimes.

Finally the conveyer came to rest outside a white marble villa. Solid mesh appeared overhead, out of the iridescence, and Verkan holstered his sigma-ray needier. He opened the door and saw two lovely prole girls, draped in white togas, tending flowers in the garden. So much for ex-Chief Tortha Karf's solitude, he thought!

Verkan watched with amusement as a small brown, long-eared 'beast' scurried through the flowers, causing the girls to squeal in assumed outrage. It appeared that Tortha was losing in his attempt to rid his hideaway, known on Fourth Level, Europo-American as Sicily, of its indigenous rabbit population. He caught the girls' coy glances in his direction, and was glad his wife, Dalla, wasn't along. Jealousy, along with overwork, had brought an end to their first marriage and, while Dalla was less possessive these days, the sight of two half-naked serving girls ogling Verkan would not be taken lightly. A catfight would not be the proper introduction for the bad news he had to share with his former boss and the ex-Paratime Police Chief.