The Lost Libraries Archive (The Erik Midgard Case Files Volume 2)

Chapter 9

IX

Professor Wei'To's office was the only convenient one with a long range communications module built into the deskcom. I got Uzume to let me in again and give me the password for it. This was one conversation I did not feel like conducting over a small screen or with everyone else listening in.

Viking Weapons Systems, Ltd was a Free Mars defence manufacturer. It was run by a retired army officer, Colonel Abraham Thor, who had been a guest at the Time Traveller's Ball. While we were there investigating the prince's murder, he had revealed himself to me as a member of the Cult of the Hierophants.

Time travel - and its conclusive evidence of cause and effect - had largely killed off most traditional religions in the early 25th century. Most people in the Solar System now turned to the High Church of Evolution, in its orthodox or reformist branches, for spiritual solace, but in the early days, there were people who had gone in the opposite direction and started worshiping time itself. The Cult of the Hierophants - though tiny in terms of membership - was the largest and longest lasting of the groups that had appeared.

Thor had actually taken a serious personal risk in revealing his religious affiliation to a ChronOps officer. Due to the number of times members of the Cult had been caught misusing time engines to try to experience famous time loops and paradoxes in person (though thankfully they'd never tried to create their own like the Cult of Infinity) I could have revoked his time ship license on the spot. However, I hadn't and, as Thor had produced what turned out to be a key piece of evidence for the investigation, I had mentioned him in my own report, but advised there was no need to take any action against him. But now that one of his company's products had turned up in a time and place it was not meant to be, that was no longer the case.

The Professor's deskcom was easy to use, but it still took nearly fifteen minutes of being passed around between secretaries and junior management executives - during which I enjoyed the pleasure of sitting in a dead man's office and knowing that I could be next if I didn't get back to HQ soon - before Colonel's Thor grey and grizzly, but very civilised face appeared on the screen behind his own desk.

"Detective Midgard," he said. "How good to see you. Though I'm sorry to say I had a feeling you might be calling."

"Really?" I said. If he did - somehow - know something about the murder already, Free Mars's special circumstances treaty with ChronOps was not going to protect him this time.

"You have my condolences, of course," said Colonel Thor. "This must be a difficult time."

"What?" I said. "What are you talking about?"

"The incident at ChronOps headquarters this morning," said Thor. He frowned. "You are aware of it, Detective?"

"Oh, for the love of Darwin!" I rested my forehead on my hand, fighting down the urge to put my fist through the screen.

"Detective?"

"Yes, I'm aware. I was in the middle of it," I said. "How do you know about it?"

"My brethren in ChronOps, of course," said Thor.

I sighed outloud this time, as I should have guessed. Another thing Thor had revealed to me at the ball was that there apparently members of the Hierophants inside ChronOps. If it was true, they could only be there because they'd found a way around the recruitment screening process. We did not need officers who believed time was alive and conscious and had plans of its own working to enforce the solar system's temporal travel laws.

After the ball, when I had revealed this part of Thor's disclosures to the chief, Commander Horus had discreetly, but immediately called in the head of internal security and ordered him to run a full check of all personnel. A week later, the head of internal security had come back to report he couldn't find anyone with even the slightest suggestion of secretly being a hierophant. Horus had immediately had him and his entire team confined to quarters on suspicion of being the Hierophants themselves and had called in an independent investigative team from the Tranquillity City police to run full checks on them. It had taken them less than a day to conclude the head of internal security and his team were all innocent. Horus had then detained the Tranquillity team on suspicion of being another group of hierophants, but they had complained to the Solar Union authorities, the ChronOps officers union had also complained about the internal security team being detained without charge and Horus had been forced to release all of them. We finished the exercise no closer to finding the cultists than when we started and Horus had spent the last three months yelling at anyone who so much as mentioned the cult in his presence. He was going to be delighted to learn the genuine hierophants were apparently still inside ChronOps, with impenetrable cover stories, and were passing information on our worst ever security breach to their fellow religionists.