by Jerry
“I now ask the witnesses: Is it your opinion that John Bryling is at this place and pursuing this action of his own free will?”
They nodded gravely and answered in chorus. “Yes.”
The justice fixed the clerk in a stem gaze. “Are you prepared to certify that the subject’s action is both legal and voluntary?”
“I have already done so.”
The justice turned to Graham. “One of the witnesses is his own law agent. You may examine.”
“When did you make this voluntary decision?” Graham asked Bryling.
“I’ve been considering it for years. Everyone connected with our profession does.”
“You didn’t answer my question. When did you finally decide?”
“This evening.”
“This evening, in the middle of a party at which you were the host, you suddenly decided to take a suspension, and you contacted your business rival—”
“He contacted me. He said he was processing two cases; he had the necessary witnesses on hand and could do three as easily as two, and he reminded me that I’d told him long ago that someday—”
“What inducement did he offer?”
Bryling did not answer.
“What threat did he make?”
“None,” Bryling said. “It was my own decision.”
“There is no legal basis for interference,” Justice Klinger announced.
“I have one request,” Graham said. “I’d like to place the department’s own medical expert as an observer.”
“At whose expense?” Stamitz demanded.
“The department’s.”
“Then I have no objection. If he can get here within an hour, he can observe or take part or whatever he wishes.”
“Is this satisfactory to you?” the justice asked Bryling.
“I don’t see that it makes any difference,” Bryling said.
“Very well. With the department’s medical technician in attendance, the suspension can proceed. I so rule.”
He nodded perfunctorily at Graham and waddled away.
“And that,” Graham muttered, “is the best that I can do. Tomorrow, when Stamitz comes in for his hypnotic analysis, we’ll find out what really happened.”
The law agent was firm and politely contemptuous. “In return for his cooperation with the incredible whimsies of your department, inspector-commander, my client was subjected to an outrageous and illegal harassment. I have here a justice order forbidding further interference with his lawful private and professional activities. Christopher Stamitz will not appear for hypnotic analysis, and you are commanded to abandon all surveillance of his person and property.”
“I have a Pre-Murder authorization approved by three justices,” Graham said stiffly.
“Since the alleged victim has taken a suspension, he hardly needs further protection from your department.”
“Present your order to my secretary, and he will make the necessary arrangements,” Graham said. The law agent departed, and Graham slumped forward in his chair and muttered, “Beaten!”
“Three medical technicians certified that the suspension proceeded normally,” Proller observed.
Graham shook his head. “Bryling is dead.”
“The postsuspension examinations have indicated that the subject took the suspension very well.”
“No. He’s dead.”
Higher Authority glared at Proller. “Your only order,” Commissioner Jevan remarked coldly, “was to make certain that he did not fail. Did I need to explain that you were also to make certain that he did not think he had failed?”
“No, sir,” Proller said, “but at this moment all anyone knows is that something very peculiar happened. The inspector-commander’s instinct calls it murder. The tests and procedures of the medical technicians show that Bryling took a normal suspension and is in perfect health. All I want is a requisition for lab work so I can find out the truth.”
“If your tests are negative, nothing will be proved or disproved, and the inspector-commander will continue to think that he’s failed. If your tests are positive, he’ll know that he’s failed. Kindly explain to me what these tests could possibly contribute to the carrying out of your assignment.”
“But sir—”
“The inspector-commander has prevented hundreds of murders. He’ll prevent more if only his career isn’t terminated by this one ridiculous case. Your assignment, Proller, is to save the inspector-commander’s career.”
“Yes, sir.”
Stamitz scowled. “You’re Graham’s assistant. I obtained a justice order—”
Proller waved his hand indifferently. “I’m not harassing you. I just stopped by to offer my sympathy.”
“For what?”
Proller said soothingly, “After all Bryling had done to you, it must have been a terrible feeling to have to preside over a suspension that would take him completely beyond the reach of justice. Hell be laughing at you when he revives.”
“Your sympathy is wasted,” Stamitz said. “I have no feeling at all about Bryling except that I’m grateful for the business he gave me. A maximum-term suspension is a highly profitable operation.”
“I can! help wondering what hell think when he opens his eyes five hundred years from now. ‘I escaped! I have my millions compounded and Stamitz has been dust for hundreds of years and can! touch me!’ What do you think hell think?”
“I have no feeling about Bryling,” Stamitz said again. “Like I told you before, I believe in a Higher Justice. I’m satisfied to leave Bryling to that.”
“Does Higher Justice have a reach five hundred years long?” Proller asked.
Stamitz did not answer.
Proller burst into Graham’s office and exclaimed, “Stamitz has confessed!”
“I doubt that,” Graham said flatly. “Why would he?”
“To save his neck. He just took a suspension, and if that doesn’t amount to a confession—”
“Stamitz? Took a suspension?”
“Yes, sir. Obviously he was afraid we’d find out what he did; so he popped himself completely out of reach of the statute of limitations.”
“How far out of reach?”
“Four hundred ninety-nine years and eight months.”
“You blithering idiot!” Graham leaped to his feet and paced the floor excitedly. “That’s not a confession, that’s an admission of failure! It proves the suspension was perfectly in order. Stamitz will be out just long enough ahead of Bryling to plan a murder. Since he invented the suspension process, the gullible scientists of the future will no doubt let him study its results, and he’ll have great fun working with the team reviving Bryling!”
“Then—you were wrong about Bryling being murdered?”
“I was, and it’s the kind of mistake I don’t mind making,” Graham said jubilantly. “I want you to place official information with Stamitz’s medical records. The technicians who revive him should notify the authorities that Stamitz underwent suspension in order to commit murder. And you can close our file.”
“Yes, sir. For what official reason?”
Graham smiled. “The principals are no longer in this jurisdiction.”
The lab technician held only a grade-two rank, and he was tom between a desire to pull off a complicated analysis all by himself and a fear that he’d be skinned for unauthorized use and/or waste of government property. He said, “I ran all the tests again. It’s got to be mercury-base compound M 4939.”
“If it’s an industrial compound, where would Stamitz get ahold of it?”
“A research chemist of his stature could manufacture it in his sleep, and he had all the necessary chemicals.”
Proller nodded thoughtfully. “He had the chemicals, and because that compound was once in common use, there’d be a quantity of medical literature concerning its toxic effects.”
“For anything as complicated as a suspension, he’d need specific information.”
“In the past two years h
e’s used large numbers of experimental animals,” Proller said. “He was licensed for work on a new suspension process.”
“So how did he manage to fool three medical technicians and not you?”
“The technicians ran their own tests on each batch of fix as it was prepared. I swiped a few of Stamitz’s test tubes, and when he wasn’t looking, I took samples of each batch after he’d pumped it into Bryling. The poison was in the final batch. Obviously he managed to add it after the technicians completed their tests.”
“So we have a murder to report.”
“There hasn’t been a murder,” Proller said. “The contrary—Bryling is in perfect health.”
“His life is in danger, then. Someone ought to do Something.”
Proller shook his head. “As long as he’s in suspension, he’s perfectly safe. When he’s revived, whenever it is, he’ll have only a few minutes to live after his bodily processes start again, and most of it will be excruciating.”
“Then someone should get a justice order and have him pumped out.”
“He’s in deep freeze. You can’t pump out any of him unless you thaw out all of him, and that means reviving him. It wouldn’t help anyway—the poison has already reached his vital organs, and he went under just before the effects could be detected. Didn’t I tell you Stamitz experimented with animals for two years? When he’s revived, he’ll live just long enough to die—painfully.”
“How the devil did Stamitz get Bryling into his shop in the first place?”
Proller smiled wryly. “He had help—from us! He paid Manellow to make a social call, and Inspector-Commander Graham took the bait against his better judgment, which he had to do, and gave Bryling massive protection against the hand weapon Manellow didn’t sell and Stamitz wouldn’t have used anyway. All the protection accomplished was to scare Bryling half to death. Then Stamitz placed a scrambled call to Bryling and said, ‘I have a quantity of hand weapons and men who can use them. They’re watching you right now.’
And Bryling, who had just been listening to four companies of police clomp around in the forest near his terrace, probably came close to expiring on the spot. Stamitz gave him a choice of coming in at once for a maximum-term suspension or dying immediately.”
“Sure,” the technician said. “Why didn’t he just run for cover?”
“The assassins in the forest would have shot him before he got to the house. He did just what Stamitz told him to—stayed in sight and made no false moves while notifying his law agent and ordering out his craft. Then he flew straight to Stamitz’s office because Stamitz told him he’d be followed, and of course he was—by a whole police fleet. Once he got there, he knew weapons would be pointing at him from concealment; so even when the police came, he made no attempt to escape. He’s been deathly afraid of Stamitz for years—it shows in everything he did. He’d be certain Stamitz would use a hand weapon if he had one, and the police told him Stamitz had one. He thought the only alternative to instant death was a suspension, and once he’d accepted that, of course he took the suspension voluntarily. He wanted it as quickly as possible.”
“Why’d Stamitz take a suspension?”
“To have the supreme pleasure of watching Bryling die. Why else? For a time I thought I’d talked him into it, but that was before you finished your analysis. You’ve done a splendid piece of work, and I’m sorry I have to tear it up; but if Inspector-Commander Graham sees it, he’ll know he’s had his first PreMurder failure.”
“We ought to do something” the technician said stubbornly.
Proller shook his head. “No. Nothing at all, and I’m ignoring Graham’s order to place information with Stamitz’s medical records. Look, we don’t know—yet—what the natural mortality may be on long suspensions. Neither man may survive to be revived.”
“That’s so,” the technician agreed.
“And either man may die shortly after revival due to the after effects of the five-hundred-year suspension.”
“Maybe so, but a man was murdered, or is being murdered, or is going to be murdered. Shouldn’t Commissioner Jevan decide something like this?”
“He already has. He gave me my orders, and I’m following them. I’m also thinking that the inspector-commander himself called Bryling a monster. He stole Stamitz’s company and his scientific processes, maneuvered him into bankruptcy, got him fined and imprisoned for doing private research on the processes he developed himself, and ruined his family in ways too obnoxious to mention—all without breaking a law. He even made Stamitz lease back his own stolen processes in order to operate a marginal business, and then Bryling tried to ruin him a second time by price cutting. All that, and the law is still on Bryling’s side. What do you think?”
“I get you. A murder five hundred years in the future is nothing to lose sleep over, especially when the victim is a skunk like Bryling. In this case you and I will be the Higher Authority and tear up the records.”
“Not ‘Higher Authority’,” Proller said with a smile. “Higher Justice.”
INCONSTANT MOON
Larry Niven
I
I was watching the news when the change came, like a flicker of motion at the corner of my eye. I turned toward the balcony window. Whatever it was, I was too late to catch it.
The moon was very bright tonight.
I saw that, and smiled, and turned back. Johnny Carson was just starting his monologue.
When the first commercials came on I got up to reheat some coffee. Commercials came in strings of three and four, going on midnight. I’d have time.
The moonlight caught me coming back. If it had been bright before, it was brighter now. Hypnotic. I opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the balcony.
The balcony wasn’t much more than a railed ledge, with standing room for a man and a woman and a portable barbecue set. These past months the view had been lovely, especially around sunset. The Power and Light Company had been putting up a glass-slab style office building. So far it was only a steel framework of open girders. Shadow-blackened against a red sunset sky, it tended to look stark and surrealistic and hellishly impressive.
Tonight . . .
I had never seen the moon so bright, not even in the desert. Bright enough to read by, I thought, and immediately, but that’s an illusion. The moon was never bigger (I had read somewhere) than a quarter held nine feet away. It couldn’t possibly be bright enough to read by.
It was only three-quarters full!
But, glowing high over the San Diego Freeway to the west, the moon seemed to dim even the streaming automobile headlights. I blinked against its light, and thought of men walking on the moon, leaving corrugated footprints. Once, for the sake of an article I was writing, I had been allowed to pick up a bone-dry moon rock and hold it in my hand . . .
I heard the show starting again, and I stepped inside. But, glancing once behind me, I caught the moon growing even brighter—as if it had come from behind a wisp of scudding cloud.
Now its light was brain-searing, lunatic.
The phone rang five times before she answered.
“Hi,” I said. “Listen—”
“Hi,” Leslie said sleepily, complainingly. Damn. I’d hoped she was watching television, like me.
I said, “Don’t scream and shout, because I had a reason for calling. You’re in bed, right? Get up and . . . can you get up?”
“What time is it?”
“Quarter of twelve.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“Go out on your balcony and look around.”
“Okay.”
The phone clunked. I waited. Leslie’s balcony faced north and west, like mine, but it was ten stories higher, with a correspondingly better view. Through my own window, the moon burned like a textured spotlight.
“Stan? You there?”
“Yah. What do you think of it?”
“It’s gorgeous. I’ve never seen anything like it. What could make the moon light up like that?”
“I don’t know, but isn’t it gorgeous?”
“You’re supposed to be the native.” Leslie had only moved out here a year ago.
“Listen, I’ve never seen it like this. But there’s an old legend,” I said. “Once every hundred years the Los Angeles smog rolls away for a single night, leaving the air as clear as interstellar space. That way the gods can see if Los Angeles is still there. If it is, they roll the smog back so they won’t have to look at it.”
“I used to know all that stuff. Well, listen, I’m glad you woke me up to see it, but I’ve got to get to work tomorrow.”
“Poor baby.”
“That’s life. ‘Night.”
“ ‘Night.”
Afterward I sat in the dark, trying to think of someone else to call. Call a girl at midnight, invite her to step outside and look at the moonlight . . . and she may think it’s romantic or she may be furious, but she won’t assume you called six others.
So I thought of some names. But the girls who belonged to them had all dropped away over the past year or so, after I started spending all my time with Leslie. One could hardly blame them. And now Joan was in Texas and Hildy was getting married, and if I called Louise I’d probably get Gordie too. The English girl? But I couldn’t remember her number. Or her last name.
Besides, everyone I knew punched a time clock of one kind or another. Me, I worked for a living, but as a freelance writer I picked my hours. Anyone I woke up tonight, I’d be ruining her morning. Ah, well . . .
The Johnny Carson Show was a swirl of gray and a roar of static when I got back to the living room. I turned the set off and went back out on the balcony.
The moon was brighter than the flow of headlights on the freeway, brighter than Westwood Village off to the right. The Santa Monica Mountains had a magical pearly glow. There were no stars near the moon. Stars could not survive that glare.
I wrote science and how-to articles for a living. I ought to be able to figure out what was making the moon do that. Could the moon be suddenly larger?
. . . Inflating like a balloon? No. Closer, maybe. The moon, falling?