03-Flatlander

by Larry Niven

  “What’s it all about?” the mayor asked.

  “I was looking past a large boulder just before the beam burned me. I must have seen the killer to one side or the other, but I can’t—”

  “Are you sure he wasn’t closer than the rock?”

  Penzler screwed his eyes shut. After a moment he said, “Almost. He’d have to be a midget to show that small, that close. I wish I could be sure.”

  I said, “Chris, I thought maybe you saw a reflection from a small hologram in your room or maybe from the phone screen. Is that possible?”

  Chris shrugged. Mayor Hove said, “The phone would have to be on, wouldn’t it? It would have been facing Chris if it was working right. Chris, did you call anyone while you were in the tub?”

  “No. And my phone system is working.”

  So we went down the hall to Chris’s room, all three of us. Chris pointed out the tilted rock Alan Watson and I had investigated. We studied it for a good minute before he said, “I simply cannot remember. But he was almost twice as far as the rock.”

  I called from my room. “I want to talk to Naomi Mitchison,” I told the desk sergeant, “preferably in person.”

  He looked at me. “You’re not her lawyer.”

  “I didn’t claim to be.”

  He took his time thinking it over. “I’ll put you through to her lawyer.” He rang, waited, then said, “Mr. Boone isn’t there. His answering bug says he’s in conference with a client.”

  “So let me talk to them both.”

  He went into a brown study. I said, “Then put me through to Sergeant Drury, if that’s possible.”

  His relief showed. He made the call. The phone screen went blank, and Laura Drury’s voice said, “Just a minute. Gil Hamilton, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I’m trying to get permission to talk to Ms. Mitchison. The desk sergeant is giving me static.”

  “Let’s see, her lawyer is supposed to be with her. I’ll call him on her phone. He’s a public defender, Artemus Boone.”

  “Lunie?”

  “Yes. Did you learn anything from going over her course?”

  “Nothing conclusive.”

  The screen lighted. Laura Drury was just completing the act of zipping up a pale gold jumpsuit. I gathered the picture had caught her a split second too soon. The zipper had hesitated at her bosom, and well it might. She looked flustered; she tugged hard; the zipper went up. I repressed a smile.

  “Jefferson thinks she was lying,” she said, “but he can’t tell what she was lying about.”

  I thought so, too. “I’d like to know more about that trek myself,” I said. “I have to go through this Boone, is that right? If you can’t convince him, may I talk to him myself? I’d like to help her.”

  “I’ll find out. Stand by.” She put me on hold.

  She called back a minute later. “They won’t see you. They won’t talk to you, either. I’m sorry.”

  “Futz! Is that just her lawyer’s word?”

  “I think he talked to her first, off camera.”

  “Thanks, Laura.” I called the phone off. I debated schemes for getting through to her anyway and gave up on them. I didn’t really have a lot to say to Naomi.

  6. THE LUNAR LAW

  The committee met again at 0800. I’d had breakfast with Taffy, but the rest of us were sipping and munching when Bertha Carmody called us to order.

  Charles Ward asked for the floor. “It strikes me that our differences are all concerned with matters of the lunar law and the manner in which it is enforced. Is this the case?”

  He got noises signifying agreement. “Then let me remind you all,” said that frail dark beanpole, “that the trial of Naomi Mitchison for the attempted murder of Chris Penzler begins in one hour. Some of us are likely to be called as witnesses. Mr. Penzler, in particular, is still recovering from his wounds. His mind is likely to be on the trial.”

  Chris nodded and winced in pain. “You may be right. I wouldn’t be concentrating.”

  Ward spread his hands wide. “Then in the interests of actually observing lunar justice in action, why don’t we all adjourn to the courtroom?”

  We voted eight to two in favor. We adjourned to the courtroom.

  The courtroom was a place of beauty. Its design was standard: high podium for the judge, rails separating the spectators from the accused and the jury. It was the thousand-year-old English courtroom design, originally intended to protect the accused from the victim’s family. But one whole wall was glass, and it overlooked the Garden.

  Mirrors caught the raw lunar sunlight and diffused it down upon dozens of ledges of plants, down along the great redwood to its long, tangled roots. The air was full of wings. No plant grew that didn’t have a use, but the prettiest plants, artichokes and apple trees and so forth, were the most accessible, and the dancing fountains weren’t only for irrigation, and the winding paths weren’t only for the farmers. The Garden was designed for pleasure.

  I thought how terrible it must be to look out on the Garden and wait to be condemned to death.

  Naomi was watching the Garden. Her golden hair was piled high in a coiled arrangement that must have represented hours of work. She had taken particular care with dress and cosmetics. The butterfly tattoo was gone. She seemed composed, with terror hiding underneath. When her lunie lawyer whispered to her, her answers were curt. She must know that if she started screaming, they would fill her full of tranquilizers.

  Was she guilty? My judgment would never be impartial where Naomi was concerned.

  Chris Penzler thought she was. He watched Naomi’s eyes while he gave his testimony. “I was taking a bath. I stood up and reached for a towel. I thought I saw something outside the window, a man or a woman. Then there was a flare of red light. It struck me in the chest, threw me back in the water, and knocked me unconscious.”

  The prosecuting lawyer was a pale blond woman over seven feet tall, massing no more than I do. She had an elfish triangular face, quite lovely, quite perfect, and quite without human weakness. She asked, “What color was the suit? Did it have markings on it?”

  Penzler shook his head. “I didn’t have time to see.”

  “But you saw only one person.”

  “Yes,” he said, and looked at Naomi.

  She probed. “Was it a local? We tend to be taller and thinner.”

  Chris didn’t laugh, though others did. “I don’t know. It was less than a second, then … it was like being run through with a red-hot jousting lance.”

  “How far away?”

  “Three to four hundred meters. I can’t judge distances here.”

  “Would Naomi Mitchison have any reason to hate you?”

  “I’ve wondered about that” Chris hesitated, then said, “Four years ago Mrs. Mitchison applied for emigration to the Belt. Her application was turned down.” Again he hesitated. “By me.”

  Naomi’s surprise and anger were obvious.

  Prosecution asked, “Why?”

  “I knew her. She wasn’t qualified. The Belt environment kills careless people. She would have been a danger to herself and everyone around her.” Chris Penzler’s ears and neck were quite pink.

  Prosecution was through with him. Naomi’s lawyer cross-examined him briefly. “You say you knew Mrs. Mitchison. How well?”

  “I knew Naomi and Itch Mitchison briefly, five years ago, when I was on Earth. We attended a few parties together. Itch wanted to know about buying mining stocks, and I got him some details.”

  Naomi was moving her lips without sound. I read the words on her lips: Liar, liar.

  “You believe you saw your assassin out on the moon. Could you be mistaken, or could you have missed others out there?”

  Chris laughed. “I saw a human shape blazing against the dark. It was night on the moon! There could have been an army hidden in the shadows. For that matter, perhaps I only saw a pattern of reflections. I only saw it for a split second, then bang.”

  Prosecution dismissed Chris and c
alled a lunie cop I didn’t know. He testified that there was indeed a message laser missing from the weapons room. Defense tried to get him to say that the door would open only to the police. What the cop said was that the lock responded to voice and retina prints and that it was governed by the Hovestraydt City computer, the same one that operated every door and safe lock in the city, not to mention the water and air.

  Prosecution then asked that Naomi’s records, beamed from Earth, be read into the record. I remembered: Naomi had been a computer programmer.

  The elf woman turned with floating grace in lunar gravity. “Call Gilbert Hamilton.”

  I was aware that I moved to the witness chair with a flatlander’s clumsiness, treading air and half falling at every step.

  “Your name and occupation?”

  “Gilbert Gilgamesh Hamilton. I’m an ARM.”

  “Are you here on the moon in that capacity?”

  “It’s not my regular beat,” I said, and got suppressed laughter. “I’m here for the Conference to Review Lunar Law.”

  She didn’t need to go into that. The judge and three jurors were all lunies; they’d have been following the conference via the boob cube. She led me through the details of Tuesday night: the midnight call, the scene in Penzler’s room, the trek to the projection room.

  Then she asked, “Are you sometimes called Gil the Arm?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ve got an imaginary arm.” I had to smile at the baffled looks. I explained, hoping I didn’t sound too glib.

  “Returning to the projection room,” she said. “Did you search the landscape in an attempt to find any suspect who might have been overlooked?”

  “For a suspect or for a discarded weapon, yes.”

  “In what fashion did you search?”

  “I ran my imaginary fingers through the projected moonscape.” There was a whisper of giggling from the audience. I’d expected that. “I sifted shadows, dust pools, anything big enough to hide a message laser.”

  “Or a human being? Would you have found a human being, or were you, let us say, tuned only to the shape and feel of a message laser?”

  “I’d have found a human being.”

  She turned me over to defense.

  Artemus Boone stood seven feet plus, with craggy features, a full black beard, and thick black hair. To me he looked like a wandering ghoul, but I was biased. The lunie jurors might be seeing an elongated Abe Lincoln.

  “You came for the Conference to Review Lunar Law. When did it begin?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Have you revised many of our laws yet?” He’d decided I was an adverse witness.

  “We haven’t had time to revise anything,” I said.

  “Not even regarding the holding tanks?”

  Hey, weren’t our doings supposed to be secret? But nobody objected. I said, “That one may never be settled.”

  “How were you chosen to represent the United Nations viewpoint, Mr. Hamilton?”

  “I was a Belt miner for seven years. Now I’m an ARM. It gives me two of the three crucial viewpoints. I’m picking up the lunie viewpoint as best I can.”

  “As best you can,” Boone said dubiously. “Well, then. The pleasantly convenient manner in which Naomi Mitchison has supplied us with exactly one suspect may have led us to overlook something. You were present when she was brought in. Was she carrying a weapon?”

  “No.”

  “You say you searched for a message laser. Just how much imaginary moonscape did you run your imaginary fingers through?”

  “I searched the badlands west of the city, the area Chris Penzler could have seen from his bathtub. I searched as far as the western peaks and some of the far slopes.”

  “You found no weapon?”

  “None.”

  “Psychic powers have always been undependable, haven’t they? Science was reluctant even to recognize their existence, and the law was slow in allowing psychics to testify. Tell me, Mr. Hamilton: If your unusual talent missed finding a message laser, could you not have overlooked a man?”

  “It’s possible, certainly.”

  Defense was through with me. The cold-eyed elf woman asked me, “What if the gun had been broken up and the pieces discarded? Would you have found it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  They let me go, and I sat down.

  Prosecution called an expert witness, an oriental-seeming man who turned out to be a lunie cop. He was actually shorter than I am. He testified that he had examined Naomi’s pressure suit and found it to be working satisfactorily. In the course of tests he had worn the suit outside. “It was a tight fit,” he said.

  “Did you notice anything else?”

  “I noticed the smell. The suit is some years old, and the molecular filter badly needs cleaning. After some hours of wear certain fatigue poisons build up in the recycled air, and it begins to smell.”

  They called Octavia Budrys, and I started to catch on.

  “The police handed me a pressure suit,” she said, “and told me to gear up. I did. I suppose they chose me because I’m not used to space. I barely know how to put on a pressure suit.”

  “Did you notice anything?”

  “Yes, there was a faint chemical smell, not so much unpleasant as, well, ominous. I would have had it repaired before I tried to wear it outside.”

  The killer fired as soon as Chris Penzler stood up in his tub. He’d already waited a good long while. Why not wait a moment longer while Penzler got out?

  Because the smell in Naomi Mitchison’s suit made her think her air supply was going bad. She was afraid to wait.

  I wasn’t convinced. Any given killer might have lost patience, waiting in lunar discomfort while Chris wallowed in his tub. But it was a point against Naomi.

  The court broke for lunch. After lunch the defense called Naomi Mitchison.

  Boone kept it short. He asked Naomi if she had stolen a message laser and tried to kill Chris Penzler with it. She swore she hadn’t. He asked her what she was doing during the period in question. She told the court more or less what she’d told us, adding details. She swore that she had never had any reason to dislike Chris Penzler until now.

  Boone mentioned that he might have further questions and turned her over to the prosecution.

  The elf woman did not waste our time.

  “On September 6, 2121, did you apply for emigration to the asteroid belt society?”

  “I did.”

  “Why?”

  “Things had gone all wrong,” Naomi said. “I wanted out.”

  “How did they go wrong?”

  “My husband tried to kill me. I got to one of the bathrooms, locked the door, and went out the window. He killed our little girl and then himself. That was in June.”

  “Why did he do it?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve thought about it. I don’t know.”

  “Let me see if I can help,” the elf woman said. “The records show that Itch Mitchison was a professional comedian. The basis of his humor was an image that used to be called macho: a man who expects sexual exclusivity from his woman and who expects of himself unlimited potency and attractiveness to women. Was that the case?”

  “More or less.”

  “What was he like in his private life?”

  “Pretty much the same. Some of that was a put-on, but I think that’s the way he was.”

  “You had a little girl?”

  “Miranda. Born January 4, 2117. She was four and a half years old when Itch killed her.” Her calm had cracked.

  “Had you and your husband applied for a second child?”

  “Yes. But by then Itch’s grandmother was in the organ banks. She … is this necessary?”

  “No. It will be read into the record.”

  “Just say she went crazy, then. The Fertility Board decided it was congenital. They had his record of asthma trouble, childhood diseases … The upshot was that I could have children but Itch
couldn’t, and he bloody well didn’t want me to. We talked about my using artificial insemination. He got terribly angry. That old macho image wasn’t just about seduction; did you know that?” Brittle laughter. “When you sire a lot of babies, then you’re macho.”

  “Was your love life affected by these developments?”

  “It was killed dead. And he did have that congenital tendency. Eventually he … he snapped.”

  “Three months later you applied to the Belt.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Chris Penzler blocked you.”

  “I didn’t know that. I never had reason to hate Chris Penzler,” she said. “I didn’t know why my application was turned down. But that vindictive bastard had reason to hate me! He made a pass at me once, and I slapped him down good!”

  “Physically? Did you actually strike him?”

  “No, of course not. I told him to go to hell. I told him that if he ever came near me again I’d tell Itch. Itch would have knocked him silly. That’s macho, too.”

  I guessed she’d made a point in her favor. Lunies wouldn’t be familiar with open marriages.

  The elf woman thought differently. “Very well, Mr. Penzler made indecent proposals to you, a married woman. Surely that might be reason for you to hate and despise him? Especially after what later happened to your marriage.”

  Naomi shook her head. “He didn’t cause that.”

  The prosecution dismissed her and called Alan Watson.

  * * *

  Of the team that had tried to follow Naomi’s ill-timed attempt to play tourist, four were called as witnesses. They did Naomi little good. Naomi had led them straight to the scene of the crime. Her knowledge of the terrain was spotty at best. The best reason for believing her was that she would have had to be crazy to lie.

  I ate dinner alone and went back to my room. It was my mind that was exhausted; I’d had no exercise, yet I felt like sleeping for a week. But I checked my phone before I dropped off.

  I had messages from Taffy and from Desiree Porter.

  Taffy and Harry were both free Friday. They planned to explore the shops of the Belt Trading Post. Would I like to join them? Feel free to add a friend, female preferred. I phoned back, but Taffy wasn’t in and neither was Harry. I left a message: Sorry, I was tied up in the conference and a murder trial.