As the detective led the slave out a door at the other side of the room, the psychist came over to the long table, handing over a card and lighting a cigarette.

“Suicide story,” he said to one of the girls, who took the card.

“Anything new?”

“Some minor details about the sale to the Caleras on this time line.  I think we’ve about scraped bottom.”

“You can’t say that,” Phrakor Vuln objected.  “The very last one may give us something nobody else had noticed.”

Another subject was sent out.  The interrogator came over to the table.

“One of the kidnap-story crowd,” he said.  “This one was right beside that Croutha who took the shot at the wild pig or whatever it was on the way to the Wizard Traders’ camp.  Best description of the guns we’ve gotten so far.  No question that they’re flintlocks.”  He saw Verkan Vall.  “Oh, hello, Assistant Verkan.  What do you make of them?  You’re an authority on outtime weapons, I understand.”

“I’d have to see them.  These people simply don’t think mechanically enough to give a good description.  A lot of peoples make flintlock firearms.”

He started running over, in his mind, the paratemporal areas in which gunpowder but not the percussion-cap was known.  Expanding cultures, which had progressed as far as the former but not the latter.  Static cultures, in which an accidental discovery of gunpowder had never been followed up by further research.  Post-debacle cultures, in which a few stray bits of ancient knowledge had survived.

Another interrogator came over, and then the fourth.  For a while they sat and talked and drank coffee, and then the next quartet of slaves, two men and two women, were brought in.  One of the women had been badly blistered by the electric whips of the Wizard Traders; in spite of reassurances, all were visibly apprehensive.

“We will not harm you,” one of the psychists told them.  “Here; here is medicine for your hurts.  At first, it will sting, as good medicines will, but soon it will take away all pain.  And here is wine for you to drink.”

A couple of detectives approached, making a great show of pouring wine and applying ointment; under cover of the medication, they jabbed each slave with a hypodermic needle, and then guided them to seats at the four tables.  Vall and Dalla went over and stood behind one of the psychists, who had a small flashlight in his hand.

“Now, rest for a while,” the psychist was saying.  “Rest and let the good medicine do its work.  You are tired and sleepy.  Look at this magic light, which brings comfort to the troubled.  Look at the light.  Look ... at ... the ... light.”

They moved to the next table.

“Did you have hand in the fighting?”

“No, lord.  We were peasant folk, not fighting people.  We had no weapons, nor weapon-skill.  Those who fought were all killed; we held up empty hands, and were spared to be captives of the Croutha.”