by Larry Niven
“See it? He goes up the stairs with the field on. The camera has about one chance in eight of catching him while he's moving at that speed. He wheels the machine to the edge of the roof, ties the line to it, throws the line a good distance away, pushes the generator off the roof, and steps off with it. The line falls at thirty-two feet per second squared, normal time, plus a little more because the machine and the killer are tugging down on it. Not hard, because they're in a low-inertia field. By the time the killer reaches ground, he's moving at something more than, uh, twelve hundred feet per second over five hundred ... uh, say three feet per second internal time, and he's got to pull the machine out of the way fast, because the rope is going to hit like a bomb.”
“It looks like it would work,” Porter said.
“Yah. I thought for a while that he could just stand on the bottom of the field. A little fooling with the machine cured me of that. He'd smash both legs. But he could hang on to the frame; it's strong enough.”
“But he didn't have the machine,” Valpredo pointed out.
“That's where you got cheated. What happens when two fields intersect?”
They looked blank.
“It's not a trivial question. Nobody knows the answer yet. But Sinclair did. He had to; he was finished. He must have had two machines. The killer took the second machine.”
Ordaz said, “Ahh.”
Porter said, “Who's K?”
We were settling on the carport. Valpredo knew where we were, but he didn't say anything. We left the taxi and headed for the elevators.
“That's a lot easier,” I said. “He expected to use the machine as an alibi. That's silly, considering how many people knew it existed. But if he didn't know that Sinclair was ready to start showing it to people—specifically to you and Janice—who's left? Ecks only knew it was some kind interstellar drive.”
The elevator was uncommonly large. We piled into it.
“And,” Valpredo said, “there's the matter of the arm. I think I've got that figured, too.”
“I gave you enough clues,” I told him.
* * * *
Peterfi was a long time answering our buzz. He may have studied us through the door camera, wondering why a parade was marching through his hallway. Then he spoke through the grid. “Yes? What is it?”
“Police. Open up,” Valpredo said.
“Do you have a warrant?”
I stepped forward and showed my ident to the camera. “I'm an ARM. I don't need a warrant. Open up. We won't keep you long.” One way or another.
He opened the door. He looked neater now than he had this afternoon despite informal brown indoor pajamas. “Just you,” he said. He let me in, then started to close the door on the others.
Valpredo put his hand against the door. “Hey—”
“It's okay,” I said. Peterfi was smaller than I was, and I had a needle gun. Valpredo shrugged and let him close the door.
My mistake. I had two-thirds of the puzzle, and I thought I had it all.
Peterfi folded his arms and said, “Well? What is it you want to search this time? Would you like to examine my legs?”
“No, let's start with the insulin feeder on your upper arm.”
“Certainly,” he said, and startled the hell out of me.
I waited while he took off his shirt—unnecessary, but he needn't know that—then ran my imaginary fingers through the insulin feed. The reserve was nearly full. “I should have known,” I said. “Dammit. You got six months worth of insulin from the organlegger.”
His eyebrows went up. “Organlegger?” He pulled loose. “Is this an accusation, Mr. Hamilton? I'm taping this for my attorney.”
And I was setting myself up for a lawsuit. The hell with it. “Yah, it's an accusation. You killed Sinclair. Nobody else could have tried that alibi stunt.”
He looked puzzled—honestly, I thought. “Why not?”
“If anyone else had tried to set up an alibi with Sinclair's generator, Peterfi, you would have told the police all about what it was and how it worked. But you were the only one who knew that until last night, when he started showing it around.”
There was only one thing he could say to that kind of logic, and he said it. “Still recording, Mr. Hamilton.”
“Record and be damned. There are other things we can check. Your grocery delivery service. Your water bill.”
He didn't flinch. He was smiling. Was it a bluff? I sniffed the air. Six months worth of body odor emitted in one night? By a man who hadn't taken more than four or five baths in six months? But his air-conditioning was too good.
The curtains were open now to the night and the ocean. They'd been closed this afternoon, and he'd been squinting. But it wasn't evidence. The lights: he only had one light burning now, and so what?
The big, powerful campout flashlight sitting on a small table against a wall. I hadn't even noticed it this afternoon. Now I was sure I knew what he'd used it for, but how to prove it?
Groceries ... “If you didn't buy six months worth of groceries last night, you must have stolen them. Sinclair's generator is perfect for thefts. We'll check the local supermarkets.”
“And link the thefts to me? How?”
He was too bright to have kept the generator. But come to think of it, where could he abandon it? He was guilty. He couldn't have covered all his tracks—
“Peterfi? I've got it.”
He believed me. I saw it in the way he braced himself. Maybe he'd worked it out before I did. I said, “Your contraceptive shots must have worn off six months early. Your organlegger couldn't get you that; he's got no reason to keep contraceptives around. You're dead, Peterfi.”
“I might as well be. Damn you, Hamilton! You've cost me the exemption!”
“They won't try you right away. We can't afford to lose what's in your head. You know too much about Sinclair's generator.”
“Our generator! We built it together!”
“Yah.”
“You won't try me at all,” he said more calmly. “Are you going to tell a court how the killer left Ray's apartment?”
I dug out my sketch and handed it to him. While he was studying it, I said, “How did you like going off the roof? You couldn't have known it would work.”
He looked up. His words came slowly, reluctantly. I guess he had to tell someone, and it didn't matter now. “By then I didn't care. My arm hung like a dead rabbit, and it stank. It took me three minutes to reach the ground. I thought I'd die on the way.”
“Where'd you dig up an organlegger that fast?”
His eyes called me a fool. “Can't you guess? Three years ago. I was hoping diabetes could be cured by a transplant. When the government hospitals couldn't help me, I went to an organlegger. I was lucky he was still in business last night.”
He drooped. It seemed that all the anger went out of him. “Then it was six months in the field, waiting for the scars to heal. In the dark. I tried taking that big campout flashlight in with me.” He laughed bitterly. “I gave that up after I noticed the walls were smoldering.”
The wall above that little table had a scorched look. I should have wondered about that earlier.
“No baths,” he was saying. “I was afraid to use up that much water. No exercise, practically. But I had to eat, didn't I? And all for nothing.”
“Will you tell us how to find the organlegger you dealt with?”
“This is your big day, isn't it, Hamilton? All right, why not? It won't do you any good.”
“Why not?”
He looked up at me very strangely.
Then he spun about and ran.
He caught me flat-footed. I jumped after him. I didn't know what he had in mind; there was only one exit to the apartment, excluding the balcony, and he wasn't headed there. He seemed to be trying to reach a blank wall with a small table set against it and a camp flashlight on it and a drawer in it. I saw the drawer and thought, Gun! And I surged after him and got him by the wrist just as he reached the wall
switch above the table.
I threw my weight backward and yanked him away from there ... and then the field came on.
I held a hand and arm up to the elbow. Beyond was a fluttering of violet light: Peterfi was thrashing frantically in a low-inertia field. I hung on while I tried to figure out what was happening.
The second generator was here somewhere. In the wall? The switch seemed to have been recently plastered in, now that I saw it close. Figure a closet on the other side and the generator in it. Peterfi must have drilled through the wall and fixed that switch. Sure, what else did he have to do with six months of spare time?
No point in yelling for help. Peterfi's soundproofing was too modern. And if I didn't let go, Peterfi would die of thirst in a few minutes.
Peterfi's feet came straight at my jaw. I threw myself down, and the edge of a boot sole nearly tore my ear off. I rolled forward in time to grab his ankle. There was more violet fluttering, and his other leg thrashed wildly outside the field. Too many conflicting nerve impulses were pouring into the muscles. The leg flopped about like something dying. If I didn't let go, he'd break it in a dozen places.
He'd knocked the table over. I didn't see it fall, but suddenly it was lying on its side. The top, drawer included, must have been well beyond the field. The flashlight lay just beyond the violet fluttering of his hand.
Okay. He couldn't reach the drawer, his hand wouldn't get coherent signals if it left the field. I could let go of his ankle. He'd turn off the field when he got thirsty enough.
And if I didn't let go, he'd die in there.
It was like wrestling a dolphin one-handed. I hung on anyway, looking for a flaw in my reasoning. Peterfi's free leg seemed broken in at least two places ... I was about to let go when something must have jarred together in my head.
Faces of charred bone grinned derisively at me.
Brain to hand: HANG ON! Don't you understand? He's trying to reach the flashlight!
I hung on.
Presently Peterfi stopped thrashing. He lay on his side, his face and hands glowing blue. I was trying to decide whether he was playing possum when the blue light behind his face quietly went out.
* * * *
I let them in. They looked it over. Valpredo went off to search for a pole to reach the light switch. Ordaz asked, “Was it necessary to kill him?”
I pointed to the flashlight. He didn't get it.
“I was overconfident,” I said. “I shouldn't have come in alone. He's already killed two people with that flashlight. The organleggers who gave him his new arm. He didn't want them talking, so he burned their faces off and then dragged them out onto a slidewalk. He probably tied them to the generator and then used the line to pull it. With the field on, the whole setup wouldn't weigh more than a couple of pounds.”
“With a flashlight?” Ordaz pondered. “Of course. It would have been putting out five hundred times as much light. A good thing you thought of that in time.”
“Well, I do spend more time dealing with these oddball science fiction devices than you do.”
“And welcome to them,” Ordaz said.
* * *
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Copyright © 1975 by Larry Niven
First published in Epoch, ed. Roger Elwood and Robert Silverberg, 1975
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