Paratime series

The Paratime series written by H. Beam Piper consists of several short stories, one novella, and one novel; they deal with an advanced civilization that is able to travel between parallel universes with alternate histories, and uses that ability to trade for goods and services their own, exhausted Earth cannot provide. Specifically, the Paratime series deals with the Paratime Police, the organization that protects the secret of paratime travel.

tories in the Paratime Series

These stories were written by Piper:

• "Police Operation" ("Astounding Science Fiction Magazine", July 1948)
• "The Last Enemy" ("Astounding Science Fiction Magazine," August, 1950)
• "Temple Trouble" ("Astounding Science Fiction Magazine", April, 1951)
• "Time Crime" (novella) ("Astounding Science Fiction Magazine, February and March 1955")
• "Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen" (novel) (Analog Science Fiction, 1965) in two parts: "Gunpowder God" and "Down Styphon!"

A sequel to Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, "Great Kings' War", was written by Roland J. Green and John F. Carr.

The Paratime Levels

In Piper's Paratime universe, there are an infinite number of timelines, but in each timeline, events occurred differently. They are grouped into five Levels, based on the probabilities of success of an attempt by Martians to colonize Earth 75,000 to 100,000 years ago.

First Level

This is the level of complete success of the Martian colonization. However, in this level are several sectors of several thousand timelines each:

Home Timeline

Home Timeline, and its associated Fifth Level Commercial, Fifth Level Passenger, Industrial Sector, Service Sector, timelines, is the home of the Paratime civilization. This is the only known timeline with paratime travel capacity, and protection of the Paratime Secret is the highest priority.

Venus and Mars are also colonized by the Home Timeline (or in the case of Mars, reclaimed), and paratime transport exists there as well.

Dwarma Sector

The Dwarma sector is one where paratime travel was never discovered, and the Martian colonists settled down into a subsistence agriculture economy to survive. The culture is pacifistic and nonaggressive, though Dwarma peoples eat meat. One major event people remembered for years is when a farmer and trader contradicted themselves on the price of a pig; they raised their voices and shouted at each other. Verkan Vall and Dalla Hadron were planning a vacation in the Dwarma Sector when it was interrupted by the discovering of a paratemporal slave-trading ring in "Time Crime".

Abzar Sector

The Abzar sector is one where the survivors exhausted the resources of Earth and exterminated each other in a series of wars. Some timelines were used as a hideout of a crime organization that traded slaves across timelines.

econd Level

In the Second Level, the colony succeeded, but there were intermittent periods of dark ages between civilizations.

The Akor-Neb civilization of "Last Enemy" is Second Level; its technology is almost identical to the Home Timeline.

The Jak-Hakka civilization follows an ideology of "Dictatorship of the Chosen," it has been used as an example of political structures the Home Timeline wishes to avoid.

Khiftian Sector

The Khiftian sector is one whose cultures are brutal and violent. Their cities are low domes, for protection against nuclear blasts; the priesthood of Fasif punishes blasphemy with torture; and an example of Khiftian craftsmanship seen in "Time Crime" is a whip, the tip of which can be heated by a nuclear battery to 200 degrees Celsius.

Third Level

Third Level timelines, as Piper described them, were "A few survivors—a shipload or so—were left to shift for themselves while the parent civilization on Mars died out. They lost all vestiges of their original Martian culture, even memory of their extraterrestrial origin." Some Third Level timelines have developed space travel; the Calera civilization developed space travel before it developed the germ theory of disease and suffered a great setback when Venusian microbial life killed off most of the population.

Fourth Level

The Fourth Level is the level of highest probability: the survivors lost all concept of their Martian origins and believe themselves to have developed on Earth.

Nilo-Mesopotamian

The Nilo-Mesopotamian cluster of sectors, including the Macedonian Empire Sector, the Alexandrian-Roman, Alexandrian-Punic, Indo-Turanian and Europo-American, there was an Aryan invasion of Eastern Europe and Asia Minor about four thousand elapsed years ago.

Aryan-Transpacific

In the Aryan-Transpacific sector, the Aryans moved east, through Asia into North America (the Minor Land Mass); one timeline in Aryan-Transpacific is the setting of "Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen".

Other sectors

The Proto Aryan Sector had the Aryan migration occur 1500 years later than in our sector, where the presence of established Sumerian and Nile civilzations inhibited their migration.

Near our timeline are timelines where there was a Second War Between the States, as well as a band where racial-based fascism rules North America as a result of a Nazi victory in 1940.

Fifth Level

The Fifth Level are those where the colonization failed or never took place; they are empty of indigenous human life.

Travelling through Timelines

The means of traveling through timelines is a conveyor using the Ghaldron-Hesthor field-generator. Conveyors are fixed in place, which means that as they travel through timelines, they may end up inside nuclear reactors or other hazards or be caught in warfare (a common activity on at least one timeline in nearly every trip, Paratimers note). Weakening of the transposition field is a concern of Paratimers.

Because there are so many timelines and many conveyors, it is possible for two conveyors to "cross" each other and end up with mutually weakened fields. In this case, objects from the outside may penetrate the conveyor. Often these objects are alive. If they are people, they face two choices: be shot or have their memory obliterated. The Paratime Secret is more important than one outtimer's life. Sometimes they stumble out of the conveyor onto another timeline: this could have happened to British diplomat Benjamin Bathurst in "He Walked Around the Horses" (Note: This "could" is almost a certainty since the details of the story of such an occurrence that Tortha Karf tells in "Police Operation" match exactly the events in this story) or to the stranger on the train in "Crossroads of Destiny" as it did to Pennsylvania State Police officer Calvin Morrison in "Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen". In those cases, the Paratime Police try to return them to their home timelines with memory obliteration. In other cases, such as a "Christian Avenger" of the Hitler-victory timeline, they decided he's better off dead and will let the locals do the job.

The Home Timeline

The people of the Home Timeline, overall, believe themselves to be scientific rationalists and atheists. Their calendar numbers days of the year rather than months.

The Home Timeline's capital city apparently is Dhergabar, as is the home of many of its prominent scientific and cultural institutions.

The government of the Home Timeline, the "Management", is a parliamentary system.

The Service Sectors

Many of the inhabitants of the Service Sector, as well as servants and low-status workers in Home Timeline, are Fourth Level tribesmen from primitive cultures who are recruited by the tribe to work. They are not mistreated, but they do not have Citizen status, which can be granted through adoption into a Citizen family. At least two divisions of soldiers are stationed in Service Sector to deal with riots and rebellion.

The Paratime Secret and the Paratime Police

To supervise Paratime, the Paratime Commission exists; to enforce the Paratime Code, the Paratime Police exists.

There is only one law that is totally inviolate: no one from outside the Home Timeline civilization must ever know about paratime travel. The Paratime Transposition Code sets out legal penalties for this, as well as other crimes involving paratime, such as kidnapping and enslavement. Paratime Police officers are authorized to use extrajudiciary means, such as assassination, of both Home Time residents or outtimes, to protect the secret if necessary. This action is at the agent's discretion.

Another method to protect the Paratime Secret involves spreading uncertainty and doubt about accounts of encountering paratimers. In the case of pre-scientific cultures, this is easier; actions can be explained as acts of the gods. In our timeline, the Paratime Police have spread stories which are implausible when investigated; however, the number of stories to investigate lessens the chance of detecting the truth.

Headquarters for the Paratime Police is at the city of Dhergabar, which is located on the Indian subcontinent. There is also a separate timeline that is exclusively for the use of the Paratime Police; they can locate conveyors wherever necessary there, or commandeer private property to locate a temporary conveyor.

In many timelines, business agents working from the Home Timeline hold a reserve commission as Paratime officers, and are expected to activate their powers when needed.

The Chief of the Paratime Police at the beginning of the series is Tortha Karf. Special Chief's Assistant Verkan Vall, is the protagonist of most of the Paratime stories.

Characters in the Paratime Series

Verkan Vall

Verkan Vall was born on the island of Nerros (Cuba) in the Home Timeline some time in the late 1800s; in "Last Enemy", he noted he was eighty when he and Dalla Hadron were first married. He is described as having "handsome regularity of his strangely immobile features." He is a member of the nobility of the Home Timeline, able to style himself His Valor, the Mavrad of Nerros, though he does not and often forgets he has a title. (This indicates that a mavrad is approximately equivalent to a duke.)

Vall serves as a general troubleshooter for Chief Tortha Karf and is assigned to cases that require special attention from the Paratime Police. In "Police Operation", he has to hunt down a Venusian night-hound that escaped onto our timeline; in "Temple Trouble", he must rescue Home Level paratimers from torture and execution; in "Last Enemy", he must locate researcher Dalla Hadron; and in "Time Crime", he is in charge of an investigation to track down a large criminal organization of slave traders.

Vall is a crack shot with either hand (like most Paratimers, he is ambidextrous) and learned knife fighting from the Third Level Khanga pirates of the Caribbean Islands, who were reputed to be the best fighters in all paratime.

In "Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen", Vall investigates the wounding of a Paratime Policeman by Calvin Morrison and determines whether or not Calvin should die or live. He decides that Morrison is no threat to the Paratime Secret, though he must have deduced it. Vall takes occasional service with the Morrison-led army of Hos-Hostigos as a colonel of scouts.

Hadron Dalla

Hadron Dalla is a psychical researcher and has been married to Verkan Vall twice. On the home timeline, she is a member of Rhogom Memorial Foundation of Psychic Science in Dhergabar. Dalla traveled to the Akor-Neb sector to continue research, where she discovered evidence that human consciousness survives the body and reincarnation is a scientific fact; this research led to a major upset of Akor-Neb politics and societal structure, and forced Verkan Vall to retrieve her lest the Paratime Secret be disclosed (see "Last Enemy").

Dalla (as she is referred to in the stories; we do not know if this is a peculiarity of Home Timeline culture or paternalism on Piper's part) remarries Vall. Before they can go on a vacation on the Dwarma sector, Vall is called to investigate a gang of paratime slave traders; Dalla goes along with him on the investigation. Her skills as a psychic researcher and investigator are highly valuable to the investigation, and she becomes a member of the Paratime Police.

Dalla goes with Verkan to the kingdom of Hos-Hostigos in "Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen", serving as a second pair of eyes and a companion to Princess Rylla, who becomes Morrison's wife.

Tortha Karf

At the beginning of the series, Torpha Karf is a man entering his middle ages at 290; he is beginning to run to fat and have gray hair.

Karf comes from a family of Paratime Police; his grandfather had problems with the Spanish Inquisition on the Europo-American line. As a member of the Paratime Police, Karf inadvertently picked up Benjamin Bathurst, who was shot by local authorities before he could be recovered. See "He Walked Around The Horses" for the details of what happened to Benjamin Bathurst from the viewpoint of the inhabitants of the timeline he was transported to.

Karf has a farm in Fifth Level Sicily where he goes for recreation and where he plans to retire.

The Influence of Piper's Paratime on Other Art

Piper himself was not well known as an author. His suicide in 1964 prevented further works in the series from coming out after "Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen". However, Ace Science Fiction republished many of his works in the later 1980s, where they influenced a new generation of readers. Roland J. Green and John F. Carr wrote a sequel to "Kalvan", "Great King's War". Carr also wrote "Kalvan Kingmaker" and "Siege of Tarr-Hostigos", and is currently working on "Queen Rylla’s Crown", a sequel to "Siege".

There are many memic similarities between Piper's Paratime and Harry Turtledove's "Crosstime Traffic" series:

• The home timeline faces a crisis of resources until travel to other timelines is established.
• The secret that there is a culture capable of traveling through timelines is carefully kept. However, in Turtledove's universe, there is no Paratime Police; the Crosstime Traffic Company is self-policing. Inhabitants of the local timelines who learn the secret are taken back to the Home Timeline for resettlement, instead of mental alteration or execution. Turtledove also notes that other timelines that have come close to learning paratime travel on their own have had their work sabotaged.
• The home timeline trades manufactured goods for agricultural goods or minerals in less advanced timelines; in Piper's universe, several corporations operate plantations or mines outtime. These include the Outtime Trading Corporation, in "Last Enemy",
• Slavery across timelines is a serious crime, though a potentially lucrative trade.

Other works influenced heavily by Piper's Paratime include the "G.O.D., Inc." trilogy by Jack Chalker, and Michael Kurland's "Perchance" (first volume of the not-yet-continued "Elsewhen" series).

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