by Larry Niven
Had he made any phone calls, say, to a computer, during his night of research?
Ecks brightened instantly. “Oh, sure. Constantly, all night. Okay, I've got an alibi.”
No point in telling him that such calls could have been made from anywhere. Valpredo asked, “Do you have any idea where your wife was last night?”
“No, we don't live together. She lives three hundred stories over my head. We've got an open marriage ... maybe too open,” he added wistfully.
There seemed a good chance that Raymond Sinclair was expecting a visitor last night. Did Ecks have any idea—?
“He knew a couple of women,” Ecks said. “You might ask them. Bertha Hall is about eighty, about Ray's age. She's not too bright, not by Ray's standards, but she's as much of a physical fitness nut as he is. They go backpacking, play tennis, maybe sleep together, maybe not. I can give you her address. Then there's Muriel something. He had a crush on her a few years ago. She'd be thirty now. I don't know if they still see each other or not.”
Did Sinclair know other women?
Ecks shrugged.
Who did he know professionally?
“Oh, lord, that's an endless list. Do you know anything about the way Ray worked?” He didn't wait for an answer. “He used computer setups mostly. Any experiment in his field was likely to cost millions or more. What he was good at was setting up a computer analogue of an experiment that would tell him what he wanted to know. Take, oh ... I'm sure you've heard of the Sinclair molecule chain.”
Hell, yes. We used it for towing in the Belt; nothing else was light enough and strong enough. A loop of it was nearly invisibly fine, but it would cut steel.
“He didn't start working with chemicals until he was practically finished. He told me he spent four years doing molecular designs by computer analogue. The tough part was the ends of the molecule chain. Until he got that, the chain would start disintegrating from the end points the minute you finished making it. When he finally had what he wanted, he hired an industrial chemical lab to make it for him.
“That's what I'm getting at,” Ecks continued. “He hired other people to do the concrete stuff once he knew what he had. And the people he hired had to know what they were doing. He knew the top physicists and chemists and field theorists everywhere on Earth and in the Belt.”
Like Pauline? Like Bernath Peterfi?
“Yah, Pauline did some work for him once. I don't think she'd do it again. She didn't like having to give him all the credit. She'd rather work for herself. I don't blame her.”
Could he think of anyone who might want to murder Raymond Sinclair?
Ecks shrugged. “I'd say that was your job. Ray never liked splitting the credit with anyone. Maybe someone he worked with nursed a grudge. Or maybe someone was trying to steal this latest project of his. Mind you, I don't know much about what he was trying to do, but if it worked, it would have been fantastically valuable, and not just in money.”
Valpredo was making noises like he was about finished. I said, “Do you mind if I ask a personal question?”
“Go ahead.”
“Your arm. How'd you lose it?”
“Born without it. Nothing in my genes, just a bad prenatal situation. I came out with an arm and a turkey wishbone. By the time I was old enough for a transplant, I knew I didn't want one. You want the standard speech?”
“No, thanks, but I'm wondering how good your artificial arm is. I'm carrying a transplant myself.”
Ecks looked me over carefully for signs of moral degeneration. “I suppose you're also one of those people who keep voting the death penalty for more and more trivial offenses?”
“No, I—”
“After all, if the organ banks ran out of criminals, you'd be in trouble. You might have to live with your mistakes.”
“No, I'm one of those people who blocked the second corpsicle law, kept that group from going into the organ banks. And I hunt organleggers for a living. But I don't have an artificial arm, and I suppose the reason is that I'm squeamish.”
“Squeamish about being part mechanical? I've heard of that,” Ecks said. “But you can be squeamish the other way, too. What there is of me is all me, not part of a dead man. I'll admit the sense of touch isn't quite the same, but it's just as good. And—look.”
He put a hand on my upper forearm and squeezed. It felt like the bones were about to give. I didn't scream, but it took an effort. “That isn't all my strength,” he said. “And I could keep it up all day. This arm doesn't get tired.”
He let go.
I asked if he would mind my examining his arms. He didn't. But then, Ecks didn't know about my imaginary hand.
I probed the advanced plastics of Ecks's false arm, the bone and muscle structure of the other. It was the real arm I was interested in.
When we were back in the car, Valpredo said, “Well?”
“Nothing wrong with his real arm,” I said. “No scars.”
Valpredo nodded.
But the bubble of accelerated time wouldn't hurt plastic and batteries, I thought. And if he'd been planning to lower fifty pounds of generator two stories down on a nylon line, his artificial arm had the strength for it.
* * * *
We called Peterfi from the car. He was in. He was a small man, dark-complected, mild of face, his hair straight and shiny black around a receding hairline. His eyes blinked and squinted as if the light were too bright, and he had the scruffy look of a man who has slept in his clothes. I wondered if we had interrupted an afternoon nap.
Yes, he would be glad to help the police in a murder investigation.
Peterfi's condominium was a slab of glass and concrete set on a Santa Monica cliff face. His apartment faced the sea. “Expensive, but worth it for the view,” he said, showing us to chairs in the living room. The drapes were closed against the afternoon sun. Peterfi had changed clothes. I noticed the bulge in his upper left sleeve where an insulin capsule and automatic feeder had been anchored to the bone of the arm.
“Well, what can I do for you? I don't believe you mentioned who had been murdered.”
Valpredo told him
He was shocked. “Oh, my. Ray Sinclair. But there's no telling how this will affect—” and he stopped suddenly.
“Please go on,” said Valpredo.
“We were working on something together. Something revolutionary.”
“An interstellar drive?”
He was startled. He debated with himself, then said, “Yes. It was supposed to be secret.”
We admitted to having seen the machine in action. How did a time compression field serve as an interstellar drive?
“That's not exactly what it is,” Peterfi said. Again he debated with himself. Then, “There have always been a few optimists around who thought that just because mass and inertia have always been associated in human experience, it need not be a universal law. What Ray and I have done is to create a condition of low inertia You see—”
“An inertialess drive!”
Peterfi nodded vigorously at me. “Essentially yes. Is the machine intact? If not—”
I reassured him on that point.
“That's good. I was about to say that if it had been destroyed, I could recreate it. I did most of the work of building it. Ray preferred to work with his mind, not with his hands.”
Had Peterfi visited Sinclair last night?
“No. I had dinner at a restaurant down the coast, then came home and watched the holo wall. What times do I need alibis for?” he asked jokingly.
Valpredo told him. The joking look turned into a nervous grimace. No, he'd left the Mail Shirt just after nine; he couldn't prove his whereabouts after that time.
Had he any idea who might have wanted to murder Raymond Sinclair?
Peterfi was reluctant to make outright accusations. Surely we understood. It might be someone he had worked with in the past or someone he'd insulted. Ray thought most of humanity were fools. Or we might look into the matter of Ray's brot
her's exemption.
Valpredo said, “Edward Sinclair's exemption? What about it?”
“I'd really prefer that you get the story from someone else. You may know that Edward Sinclair was refused the right to have children because of an inherited heart condition. His grandson has it, too. There is some question as to whether he really did the work that earned him the exemption.”
“But that must have been forty to fifty years ago. How could it figure in a murder now?”
Peterfi explained patiently. “Edward had a child by virtue of an exemption to the Fertility Laws. Now there are two grandchildren. Suppose the matter came up for review? His grandchildren would lose the right to have children. They'd be illegitimate. They might even lose the right to inherit.”
Valpredo was nodding. “Yah. We'll look into that, all right.”
I said, “You applied for an exemption yourself not long ago. I suppose your, uh—”
“Yes, my diabetes. It doesn't interfere with my life at all. Do you know how long we've been using insulin to handle diabetes? Almost two hundred years! What does it matter if I'm a diabetic? If my children are?”
He glared at us, demanding an answer. He got none.
“But the Fertility Laws refuse me children. Do you know that I lost my wife because the board refused me an exemption? I deserved it. My work on plasma flow in the solar photosphere— Well, I'd hardly lecture you on the subject, would I? But my work can be used to predict the patterns of proton storms near any G-type star. Every colony world owes something to my work!”
That was an exaggeration, I thought. Proton storms afflicted mainly asteroidal mining operations. “Why don't you move to the Belt?” I asked. “They'd honor you for your work, and they don't have Fertility Laws.”
“I get sick off Earth. It's biorhythms; it has nothing to do with diabetes. Half of humanity suffers from biorhythm upset.”
I felt sorry for the guy. “You could still get the exemption. For your work on the inertialess drive. Wouldn't that get you your wife back?”
“I ... don't know. I doubt it. It's been two years. In any case, there's no telling which way the board will jump. I thought I'd have the exemption last time.”
“Do you mind if I examine your arms?”
He looked at me. “What?”
“I'd like to examine your arms.”
“That seems a most curious request. Why?”
“There seems a good chance that Sinclair's killer damaged his arm last night. Now, I'll remind you that I'm acting in the name of the UN Police. If you've been hurt by the side effects of a possible space drive, one that might be used by human colonists, then you're concealing evidence in a—” I stopped, because Peterfi had stood up and was taking off his tunic.
He wasn't happy, but he stood still for it. His arms looked all right. I ran my hands along each arm, bent the joints, massaged the knuckles. Inside the flesh I ran my imaginary fingertips along the bones.
Three inches below the shoulder joint the bone was knotted. I probed the muscles and tendons...
“Your right arm is a transplant,” I said. “It must have happened about six months ago.”
He bridled. “You may not be aware of it, but surgery to reattach my own arm would show the same scars.”
“Is that what happened?”
Anger made his speech more precise. “Yes. I was performing an experiment, and there was an explosion. The arm was nearly severed. I tied a tourniquet and got to a ’doc before I collapsed.”
“Any proof of this?”
“I doubt it. I never told anyone of this accident, and the ’doc wouldn't keep records. In any case, I think the burden of proof would be on you.”
“Uh huh.”
Peterfi was putting his tunic back on. “Are you quite finished here? I'm deeply sorry for Ray Sinclair's death, but I don't see what it could possibly have to do with my stupidity of six months ago.”
I didn't, either. We left.
Back in the car. It was seventeen-twenty; we could pick up a snack on the way to Pauline Urthiel's place. I told Valpredo, “I think it was a transplant. And he didn't want to admit it. He must have gone to an organlegger.”
“Why would he do that? It's not that tough to get an arm from the public organ banks.”
I chewed that. “You're right. But if it was a normal transplant, there'll be a record. Well, it could have happened the way he said it did.”
“Uh huh.”
“How about this? He was doing an experiment, and it was illegal. Something that might cause pollution in a city or even something to do with radiation. He picked up radiation burns in his arm. If he'd gone to the public organ banks, he'd have been arrested.”
“That would fit too. Can we prove it on him?”
“I don't know. I'd like to. He might tell us how to find whoever he dealt with. Let's do some digging: maybe we can find out what he was working on six months ago.”
* * * *
Pauline Urthiel opened the door the instant we rang. “Hi! I just got in myself. Can I make you drinks?”
We refused. She ushered us into a smallish apartment with a lot of fold-into-the-ceiling furniture. A sofa and coffee table were showing now; the rest existed as outlines on the ceiling. The view through the picture window was breathtaking. She lived near the top of Lindstetter's Needle, some three hundred stories up from her husband.
She was tall and slender, with a facial structure that would have been effeminate on a man. On a woman it was a touch masculine. The well-formed breasts might be flesh or plastic but were surgically implanted in either case.
She finished making a large drink and joined us on the couch. And the questions started.
Had she any idea who might have wanted Raymond Sinclair dead?
“Not really. How did he die?”
“Someone smashed in his skull with a poker,” Valpredo said. If he wasn't going to mention the generator, neither was I.
“How quaint.” Her contralto turned acid. “His own poker, too, I presume. Out of his own fireplace rack. What you're looking for is a traditionalist.” She peered at us over rim of her glass. Her eyes were large, the lids decorated in semipermanent tattoos as a pair of flapping UN flags. “That doesn't help much, does it? You might try whoever was working with him on whatever his latest project was.”
That sounded like Peterfi, I thought. But Valpredo said, “Would he necessarily have a collaborator?”
“He generally works alone at the beginning. But somewhere along the line he brings in people to make the hardware. He never made anything real by himself. It was all just something in a computer bank. It took someone else to make it real. And he never gave credit to anyone.”
Then his hypothetical collaborator might have found out how little credit he was getting for his work, and— But Urthiel was shaking her head. “I'm talking about a psychotic, not someone who's really been cheated. Sinclair never offered anyone a share in anything he did. He always made it damn plain what was happening. I knew what I was doing when I set up the FyreStop prototype for him, and I knew what I was doing when I quit. It was all him. He was using my training, not my brain. I wanted to do something original, something me.”
Did she have any idea what Sinclair's present project was?
“My husband would know. Larry Ecks, lives in this same building. He's been dropping cryptic hints, and when I want more details, he has this grin—” She grinned herself suddenly. “You'll gather I'm interested. But he won't say.”
Time for me to take over or we'd never get certain questions asked. “I'm an ARM. What I'm about to tell you is secret,” I said. And I told her what we knew of Sinclair's generator. Maybe Valpredo was looking at me disapprovingly, maybe not.
“We know that the field can damage a human arm in a few seconds. What we want to know,” I said, “is whether the killer is now wandering around with a half-decayed hand or arm—or foot, for that—”
She stood and pulled the upper half of her body stockin
g down around her waist.
She looked very much a real woman. If I hadn't known—and why would it matter? These days the sex change operation is elaborate and perfect. Hell with it; I was on duty. Valpredo was looking nonchalant, waiting for me.
I examined both of her arms with my eyes and my three hands. There was nothing. Not even a bruise.
“My legs, too?”
I said, “Not if you can stand on them.”
Next question. Could an artificial arm operate within the field?
“Larry? You mean Larry? You're out of your teeny mind.”
“Take it as a hypothetical question.”
She shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. There aren't any experts on inertialess fields.”
“There was one. He's dead,” I reminded her.
“All I know is what I learned watching the Gray Lensman show in the holo wall when I was a kid.” She smiled suddenly. “That old space opera.”
Valpredo laughed. “You, too? I used to watch that show in study hall on a little pocket phone. One day the principal caught me at it.”
“Sure. And then we outgrew it. Too bad. Those inertialess ships ... I'm sure an inertialess ship wouldn't behave like those did. You couldn't possibly get rid of the time compression effect.” She took a long pull on her drink, set it down, and said, “Yes and no. He could reach in, but—you see the problem? The nerve impulses that move the motors in Larry's arm, they're coming into the field too slowly.”
“Sure.”
“But if Larry closed his fist on something, say, and reached into the field with it, it would probably stay closed. He could have brained Ray with—no, he couldn't. The poker wouldn't be moving any faster than a glacier. Ray would just dodge.”
And he couldn't pull a poker out of the field, either. His fist wouldn't close on it after it was inside. But he could have tried and still left with his arm intact, I thought.
Did Urthiel know anything of the circumstances surrounding Edward Sinclair's exemption?
“Oh, that's an old story,” she said. “Sure, I heard about it. How could it possibly have anything to do with, with Ray's murder?”
“I don't know,” I confessed. “I'm just thrashing around.”