Last Enemy

The title is a reference to 1 Corinthians 15:26, “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” (KJV) It made its first appearance in August 1950, in Astounding Science Fiction magazine (now Analog).

The Statisticalist party believes that reincarnation is a statistically random event, and as such private property and wealth should be socialized to give everyone an equal opportunity.

And now that she has mysteriously disappeared, Tortha Karf, the Chief of Paratime Police, sends his special assistant, Verkan Vall, to the Second Level Akor-Neb Sector to find her and bring her back before she can be forcibly discarnated (i.e., murdered).

Arriving in the provincial city of Ghamma, Vall, travelling under the pseudonym of Lord Virzal of Verkan, makes contact with the local representative of the Outtime Export and Import Company, and acquires a pair of Assassin bodyguards named Olirzon and Marnik.

When Vall and the Assassins go to a restaurant, they find themselves sitting next to a table that contains three Statisticalists who are loudly denouncing Dalla’s work and disappearance as a politically inspired hoax.

The next day, as the Earth of the Akor-Neb Sector descends into civil war, Verkan Vall receives a sealed message written in the alphabet and language of the First Paratime Level.

It seems that Prince Jirzyn has changed his mind, and now wishes Lady Dallona dead –- Dalla’s experiments are beginning to bear more unexpected fruit.

Besieged in an underground level of the hunting lodge, Vall and Dalla and their Assassin-bodyguards fight for their lives; their only hope being that when the shooting had started Marnik had been able to go to Klarnood for the help that he had promised.

On their trip back to the First Level city of Dhergabar, Dalla expresses her regret at the forces she has released in the Akor-Neb Sector, but Vall assures her that she can only see the surface of the immediate situation, and that it is impossible to know what the long-term results will be.