“How long do you think I’d get away with that?” Salgath Trod demanded.  “I can only stretch parliamentary immunity so far.  Sooner or later, I’d have to make formal charges to a special judicial committee, and that would mean narco-hypnosis, and then it would all come out.”

“You’ll have proof,” the young man said.  “We’ll produce a couple of these Kharandas whom Verkan Vall didn’t get hold of.  Under narco-hypnosis, they’ll testify that they saw a couple of Wizard Traders take their robes off.  Under the robes were Paratime Police uniforms.  Do you follow me?”

Salgath Trod made a noise of angry disgust.

“That’s ridiculous!  I suppose these Kharandas will be given what is deludedly known as memory obliteration, and a set of pseudo-memories; how long do you think that would last?  About three ten-days.  There is no such thing as memory obliteration; there’s memory-suppression, and pseudo-memory overlay.  You can’t get behind that with any quickie narco-hypnosis in the back room of any police post, I’ll admit that,” he said.  “But a skilled psychist can discover, inside of five minutes, when a narco-hypnotized subject is carrying a load of false memories, and in time, and not too much time, all that top layer of false memories and blockages can be peeled off.  And then where would we be?”

“Now wait a minute, Councilman.  This isn’t just something I dreamed up,” the visitor said.  “This was decided upon at the top.  At the very top.”

“I don’t care whose idea it was,” Salgath Trod snapped.  “The whole thing is idiotic, and I won’t have anything to do with it.”

The visitor’s face froze.  All the respect vanished from his manner and tone; his voice was like ice cakes grating together in a winter river.

“Look, Salgath; this is an Organization order,” he said.  “You don’t refuse to obey Organization orders, and you don’t quit the Organization.  Now get smart, big boy; do what you’re told to.”  He took a spool of record tape from his pocket and laid it on the desk.  “Outline for your speech; put it in your own words, but follow it exactly.”  He stood watching Salgath Trod for a moment.  “I won’t bother telling you what’ll happen to you if you don’t,” he added.  “You can figure that out for yourself.”

With that, he turned and went out the private door.  For a while, Salgath Trod sat staring after him.  Once he put his hand out toward the spool, then jerked it back as though the thing were radioactive.  Once he looked at the clock; it was just 1600.

* * * * *

The green aircar settled onto the landing stage; Verkan Vall, on the front seat beside the driver, opened the door.

“Want me to call for you later, Assistant Verkan?” the driver asked.

“No thank you, Drenth.  My wife and I are going to a dinner-party, and we’ll probably go night-clubbing afterward.  Tomorrow morning, all the anti-Management commentators will be yakking about my carousing around when I ought to be battling the Slave Trust.  No use advertising myself with an official car, and giving them a chance to add, ’at public expense.’”