03-Flatlander

by Larry Niven

  “Good luck. I’m going back to Sinclair’s place.”

  “Why? The action is here.” Often enough he’d heard me talking wistfully of joining an interstellar colony. He must know how I’d feel about a better drive for the interstellar slowboats.

  “It’s like this,” I said. “We’ve got the generator, but we don’t know anything about it. We might wreck it. I’m going to have a whack at finding someone who knows something about Sinclair’s generator.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Whoever tried to steal it. Sinclair’s killer.”

  “If you say so.” But he looked dubious. He knew me too well. He said, “I understand there’s a mother hunt in the offing.”

  “Oh?”

  He smiled. “Just a rumor. You guys are lucky. When my dad first joined, the business of the ARM was mostly mother hunts. The organleggers hadn’t really got organized yet, and the Fertility Laws were new. If we hadn’t enforced them, nobody would have obeyed them at all.”

  “Sure, and people threw rocks at your father. Bera, those days are gone.”

  “They could come back. Having children is basic.”

  “Bera, I did not join the ARM to hunt unlicensed parents.” I waved and left before he could answer. I could do without the call to duty from Bera, who had done with hunting men and mothers.

  I’d had a good view of the Rodewald Building while dropping toward the roof this morning. I had a good view now from my commandeered taxi. This time I was looking for escape paths.

  There were no balconies on Sinclair’s floors, and the windows were flush to the side of the building. A cat burglar would have trouble with them. They didn’t look like they’d open.

  I tried to spot the cameras, Ordaz had mentioned as the taxi dropped toward the roof. I couldn’t find them. Maybe they were mounted in the elms.

  Why was I bothering? I hadn’t joined the ARM to chase mothers or machinery, or common murderers.

  I’d joined the ARM to hunt organleggers.

  The ARM doesn’t deal in murder per se. The machine was out of my hands now. A murder investigation wouldn’t keep me out of a mother hunt. And I’d never met the girl. I knew nothing of her beyond the fact that she was where a killer ought to be.

  Was it just that she was pretty?

  Poor Janice. When she woke up … For a solid month I’d wakened to that same stunning shock, the knowledge that my right arm was gone.

  The taxi settled. Valpredo was waiting below.

  I speculated … Cars weren’t the only things that flew. But anyone flying one of those tricky ducted-fan flycycles over a city, where he could fall on a pedestrian, wouldn’t have to worry about a murder charge. They’d feed him to the organ banks regardless. And anything that flew would leave traces anywhere but on the landing pad itself. It would crush a rosebush or a bonsai tree or be flipped over by an elm.

  The taxi took off in a whisper of air.

  Valpredo was grinning at me. “The thinker. What’s on your mind?”

  “I was wondering if the killer could have come down on the carport roof.”

  He turned to study the situation. “There are two cameras mounted on the edge of the roof. If his vehicle was light enough, sure, he could land there, and the cameras wouldn’t spot him. Roof wouldn’t hold a car, though. Anyway, nobody did it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ll show you. By the way, we inspected the camera system. We’re pretty sure the cameras weren’t tampered with. Nobody even landed here until seven this morning. Look here.” We had reached the concrete stairs that led down into Sinclair’s apartments. Valpredo pointed at a glint of light in the sloping ceiling, at heart level. “This is the only way down. The camera would get anyone coming in or out It might not catch his face, but it’d show if someone passed. It takes sixty frames a minute.”

  I went on down. A cop let me in.

  Ordaz was on the phone. The screen showed a young man with a deep tan and shock showing through the tan. Ordaz waved at me, a shushing motion, and went on talking. “Fifteen minutes? That will be a great help to us. Please land on the roof. We are still working on the elevator.”

  He hung up and turned to me. “Andrew Porter, Janice Sinclair’s lover. He tells us that he and Janice spent the evening at a party. She dropped him off at his home around one o’clock.”

  “Then she came straight home, if that’s her in the ‘doc.”

  “I think it must be. Mr. Porter says she was wearing a blue skin-dye job.” Ordaz was frowning. “He put on a most convincing act, if it was that. I think he really was not expecting any kind of trouble. He was surprised that a stranger answered, shocked when he learned of Doctor Sinclair’s death, and horrified when he learned that Janice had been hurt.”

  With the mummy and the generator removed, the murder scene had become an empty circle of brown grass marked with random streaks of yellow chemical and outlines of white chalk.

  “We had some luck,” Ordaz said. “Today’s date is June 4, 2124. Dr. Sinclair was wearing a calendar watch. It registered January 17, 2125. If we switched the machine off at ten minutes to ten—which we did—and if it was registering an hour for every seven seconds that passed outside the field, then the field must have gone on at around one o’clock last night, give or take a margin of error.”

  “Then if the girl didn’t do it, she must have just missed the killer.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What about the elevator? Could it have been jiggered?”

  “No. We took the workings apart. It was on this floor and locked by hand. Nobody could have left by elevator …”

  “Why did you trail off like that?”

  Ordaz shrugged, embarrassed. “This peculiar machine really does bother me, Gil. I found myself thinking, Suppose it can reverse time? Then the killer could have gone down in an elevator that was going up.”

  He laughed with me. I said, “In the first place, I don’t believe a word of it. In the second place, he didn’t have the machine to do it with. Unless … he made his escape before the murder. Dammit, now you’ve got me doing it.”

  “I would like to know more about the machine.”

  “Bera’s investigating it now. I’ll let you know as soon as we learn anything. And I’d like to know more about how the killer couldn’t possibly have left.”

  He looked at me. “Details?”

  “Could someone have opened a window?”

  “No. These apartments are forty years old. The smog was still bad when they were built. Dr. Sinclair apparently preferred to depend on his air-conditioning.”

  “How about the apartment below? I presume it has a different set of elevators.”

  “Yes, of course. It belongs to Howard Rodewald, the owner of this building—of this chain of buildings, in fact. At the moment he is in Europe. His apartment has been loaned to friends.”

  “There’s no stairs down to there?”

  “No. We searched these apartments thoroughly.”

  “All right. We know the killer had a nylon line, because he left a strand of it on the generator. Could he have climbed down to Rodewald’s balcony from the roof?”

  “Thirty feet? Yes, I suppose so.” Ordaz’s eyes sparked. “We must look into that. There is still the matter of how he got past the camera and whether he could have gotten inside once he was on the balcony.” “Yah.”

  “Try this, Gil. Another question. How did he expect to get away?” He watched for my reaction, which must have been satisfying, because it was a damn good question. “You see, if Janice Sinclair murdered her great-uncle, then neither question applies. If we are looking for someone else, we have to assume that his plans misfired. He had to improvise.”

  “Uh huh. He could still have been planning to use Rodewald’s balcony. And that would mean he had a way past the camera …”

  “Of course he did. The generator.”

  Right. If he came to steal the generator … and he’d have to steal it regardless, because if we
found it here, it would shoot his alibi sky high. So he’d leave it on while he trundled it up the stairs. Say it took him a minute; that’s only an eighth of a second of normal time. One chance in eight that the camera would fire, and it would catch nothing but a streak … “Uh oh.”

  “What is it?”

  “He had to be planning to steal the machine. Is he really going to lower it to Rodewald’s balcony by rope?”

  “I think it unlikely,” Ordaz said. “It weighed more than fifty pounds. He could have moved it upstairs. The frame would make it portable. But to lower it by rope …”

  “We’d be looking for one hell of an athlete.”

  “At least you will not have to search far to find him. We assume that your hypothetical killer came by elevator, do we not?”

  “Yah.” Nobody but Janice Sinclair had arrived by the roof last night.

  “The elevator was programmed to allow a number of people to enter it and to turn away all others. The list is short. Doctor Sinclair was not a gregarious man.”

  “You’re checking them out? Whereabouts, alibis, and so forth?”

  “Of course.”

  “There’s something else you might check on,” I said. But Andrew Porter came in, and I had to postpone it.

  Porter came casual, in a well-worn translucent one-piece jumpsuit he must have pulled on while running for a taxi. The muscles rolled like boulders beneath the loose fabric, and his belly muscles showed like the plates on an armadillo. Surfing muscles. The sun had bleached his hair nearly white and burned him as brown as Jackson Bera. You’d think a tan that dark would cover for blood draining out of a face, but it doesn’t.

  “Where is she?” he demanded. He didn’t wait for an answer. He knew where the ‘doc was, and he went there. We trailed in his wake.

  Ordaz didn’t push. He waited while Porter looked down at Janice, then punched for a readout and went through it in detail. Porter seemed calmer then, and his color was back. He turned to Ordaz and said, “What happened?”

  “Mr. Porter, did you know anything of Dr. Sinclair’s latest project?”

  “The time compressor thing? Yah. He had it set up in the living room when I got here yesterday evening—right in the middle of that circle of dead grass. Any connection?”

  “When did you arrive?”

  “Oh, about six. We had some drinks, and Uncle Ray showed off his machine. He didn’t tell us much about it. Just showed what it could do.” Porter showed us flashing white teeth. “It worked. That thing can compress time! You could live your whole life in there in two months! Watching him move around inside the field was like trying to keep track of a hummingbird. Worse. He struck a match—”

  “When did you leave?”

  “About eight. We had dinner at Cziller’s House of Irish Coffee, and—Listen, what happened here?”

  “There are some things we need to know first, Mr. Porter. Were you and Janice together for all of last evening? Were there others with you?”

  “Sure. We had dinner alone, but afterward we went to a kind of party. On the beach at Santa Monica. Friend of mine has a house there. I’ll give you the address. Some of us wound up back at Cziller’s around midnight. Then Janice flew me home.”

  “You have said that you are Janice’s lover. Doesn’t she live with you?”

  “No. I’m her steady lover, you might say, but I don’t have any strings on her.” He seemed embarrassed. “She lives here with Uncle Ray. Lived. Oh, hell.” He glanced into the ‘doc. “Look, the readout said she’ll be waking up any minute. Can I get her a robe?”

  “Of course.”

  We followed Porter to Janice’s bedroom, where he picked out a peach-colored negligee for her. I was beginning to like the guy. He had good instincts. An evening dye job was not the thing to wear on the morning of a murder. And he’d picked one with long, loose sleeves. Her missing arm wouldn’t show so much.

  “You call him Uncle Ray,” Ordaz said.

  “Yah. Because Janice did.”

  “He did not object? Was he gregarious?”

  “Gregarious? Well, no, but we liked each other. We both liked puzzles, you understand? We traded murder mysteries and jigsaw puzzles. Listen, this may sound silly, but are you sure he’s dead?”

  “Regrettably, yes. He is dead, and murdered. Was he expecting someone to arrive after you left?”

  “Yes.”

  “He said so?”

  “No. But he was wearing a shirt and pants. When it was just us, he usually went naked.”

  “Ah.”

  “Older people don’t do that much,” Porter said. “But Uncle Ray was in good shape. He took care of himself.”

  “Have you any idea whom he might have been expecting?”

  “No. Not a woman; not a date, I mean. Maybe someone in the same business.”

  Behind him, Janice moaned.

  Porter was hovering over her in a flash. He put a hand on her shoulder and urged her back. “Lie still, love. We’ll have you out of there in a jiffy.”

  She waited while he disconnected the sleeves and other paraphernalia. She said, “What happened?”

  “They haven’t told me yet,” Porter said with a flash of anger. “Be careful sitting up. You’ve had an accident.”

  “What kind of—? Oh!”

  “It’ll be all right.”

  “My arm!”

  Porter helped her out of the ‘doc. Her arm ended in pink flesh two inches below the shoulder. She let Porter drape the robe around her. She tried to fasten the sash, quit when she realized she was trying to do it with one hand.

  I said, “Listen, I lost my arm once.”

  She looked at me. So did Porter.

  “I’m Gil Hamilton. With the UN Police. You really don’t have anything to worry about. See?” I raised my right arm, opened and closed the fingers. “The organ banks don’t get much call for arms. You probably won’t even have to wait. I didn’t. It feels just like the arm I was born with, and it works just as well.”

  “How did you lose it?” she asked.

  “Ripped away by a meteor,” I said.

  Ordaz said to her, “Do you remember how you lost your own arm?”

  “Yes.” She shivered. “Could we go somewhere where I could sit down? I feel a bit weak.”

  We moved to the living room. Janice dropped onto the couch a bit too hard. It might have been shock, or the missing arm might be throwing her balance off. I remembered. She said, “Uncle Ray’s dead, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “I came home and found him that way. Lying next to that time machine of his, and the back of his head all bloody. I thought maybe he was still alive, but I could see the machine was going; it had that violet glow. I tried to get hold of the poker. I wanted to use it to switch the machine off, but I couldn’t get a grip. My arm wasn’t just numb; it wouldn’t move. You know, you can try to wiggle your toes when your foot’s asleep, but … I could get my hands on the handle of the damn poker, but when I tried to pull, it just slid off.”

  “You kept trying?”

  “For a while. Then … I backed away to think it over. I wasn’t about to waste any time with Uncle Ray maybe dying in there. My arm felt stone dead … I guess it was, wasn’t it?” She shuddered. “Rotting meat. It smelled that way. And all of a sudden I felt so weak and dizzy, like I was dying myself. I barely made it into the ‘doc.”

  “Good thing you did,” I said. The blood was leaving Porter’s face again as he realized what a close thing it had been.

  Ordaz said, “Was your great-uncle expecting visitors last night?”

  “I think so.”

  “Why do you think so?”

  “I don’t know. He just—acted that way.”

  “We are told that you and some friends reached Cziller’s House of Irish Coffee around midnight. Is that true?”

  “I guess so. We had some drinks, then I took Drew home and came home myself.”

  “Straight home?”

  “Yes.” She shiver
ed. “I put the car away and went downstairs. I knew something was wrong. The door was open. Then there was Uncle Ray lying next to that machine! I knew better than to just run up to him. He’d told us not to step into the field.”

  “Oh? Then you should have known better than to reach for the poker.”

  “Well, yes. I could have used the tongs,” she said as if the idea had just occurred to her. “It’s just as long. I didn’t think of it. There wasn’t time. Don’t you understand? He was dying in there, or dead!”

  “Yes, of course. Did you interfere with the murder scene in any way?”

  She laughed bitterly. “I suppose I moved the poker about two inches. Then, when I felt what was happening to me, I just ran for the ‘doc. It was awful. Like dying.”

  “Instant gangrene,” Porter said.

  Ordaz said, “You did not, for example, lock the elevator?”

  Damn! I should have thought of that.

  “No. We usually do when we lock up for the night, but I didn’t have time.”

  Porter said, “Why?”

  “The elevator was locked when we arrived,” Ordaz told him.

  Porter ruminated that. “Then the killer must have left by the roof. You’ll have pictures of him.”

  Ordaz smiled apologetically. “That is our problem. No cars left the roof last night Only one car arrived. That was yours, Miss Sinclair.”

  “But,” Porter said, and he stopped.

  “What happened was this,” Ordaz said. “Around five-thirty this morning, the tenants in—” He stopped to remember. “—in 36A called the building maintenance man about a smell as of rotting meat coming through the air-conditioning system. He spent some time looking for the source, but once he reached the roof, it was obvious. He—”

  Porter pounced. “He reached the roof in what kind of vehicle?”

  “Mr. Steeves says that he took a taxi from the street. There is no other way to reach Dr. Sinclair’s private landing pad, is there?”

  “No. But why would he do that?”

  “Perhaps there have been other times when strange smells came from Dr. Sinclair’s laboratory. We will ask him.”

  “Do that.”

  “Mr. Steeves followed the smell through the doctor’s open door. He called us. He waited for us on the roof.”