door and pressing on the other end. The door opened, then
swung shut behind him, and as it locked itself, the lights came on
within. Ghullam removed his miter and his false beard, tossing them
aside on a table, then undid his sash and peeled out of his robe. His
regalia discarded, he stood for a moment in loose trousers and a soft
white shirt, with a pistollike weapon in a shoulder holster under his
left arm--no longer Ghullam the high priest of Yat-Zar, but now
Stranor Sleth, resident agent on this time-line of the Fourth Level
Proto-Aryan Sector for the Transtemporal Mining Corporation. Then he
opened a door at the other side of the anteroom and went to the
antigrav shaft, stepping over the edge and floating downward.

* * * * *

There were temples of Yat-Zar on every time-line of the Proto-Aryan
Sector, for the worship of Yat-Zar was ancient among the Hulgun people
of that area of paratime, but there were only a few which had such
installations as this, and all of them were owned and operated by
Transtemporal Mining, which had the fissionable ores franchise for
this sector. During the ten elapsed centuries since Transtemporal had
begun operations on this sector, the process had become standardized.
A few First Level paratimers would transpose to a selected time-line
and abduct an upper-priest of Yat-Zar, preferably the high priest of
the temple at Yoldav or Zurb. He would be drugged and transposed to
the First Level, where he would receive hypnotic indoctrination and,
while unconscious, have an operation performed on his ears which would
enable him to hear sounds well above the normal audible range. He
would be able to hear the shrill sonar-cries of bats, for instance,
and, more important, he would be able to hear voices when the speaker
used a First Level audio-frequency step-up phone. He would also
receive a memory-obliteration from the moment of his abduction, and a
set of pseudo-memories of a visit to the Heaven of Yat-Zar, on the
other side of the sky. Then he would be returned to his own time-line
and left on a mountain top far from his temple, where an unknown
peasant, leading a donkey, would always find him, return him to the
temple, and then vanish inexplicably.

Then the priest would begin hearing voices, usually while serving at
the altar. They would warn of future events, which would always come
to pass exactly as foretold. Or they might bring tidings of things
happening