Flatlander

by Larry Niven

  It wasn’t me that had stopped her, I think. It was the display.

  NAKF

  NARF NAKE NARE MAKF MAKE MARE WAKF

  WAKE WARE

  NAKF NAOMI

  NAKF WATS

  NAKED SNAKE SNARE WAKEN

  “See anything?”

  “Beware?”

  I said, “He’d have to add on at both ends.”

  “That applies to Ms and Ws, too. Oh, I see. If he missed a stroke right at the beginning—”

  “Yeah. Do lunies tend to put nudes in their torso paintings?”

  “No.”

  “Do lunies use any kind of vehicle with a lot of glass in it? A full bubble cockpit? Do the Belters at the trading post?”

  “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “NAKED. And now I’m stuck. Futz. Maybe he was trying to describe a torso painting.”

  Laura said, “He must have got away from the killer. Maybe he ducked into the shadows and tied a tourniquet and kept going. Otherwise it’s too easy for the killer. A second swipe with the laser cuts him in half.”

  “Maybe. What’s your point?”

  “He knew he’d die when he took the tourniquet off. He would have thought it through in detail before he wrote any message.” She studied the screen. She reached past me and typed:

  NaKF

  “Chemistry. Sodium, potassium, flourine.”

  “What does it mean? What do you do with those three elements?”

  “I don’t know. Gil—”

  The door announcer said, “Room service.”

  Laura yelped. In an instant she was behind the door, flattened against the wall. I stared. Then I went to the door, called it open, stepped into the hall, took the tray, said, “Thank you. Good night,” and closed the door in the bemused waiter’s face.

  Laura exhaled.

  I was trying not to laugh. I took a huge bite out of a sandwich and spoke around it. “I need a bath almost as much as I need food. I’m hoping you’ll stay; I’m just telling you.”

  “I’ll do your back,” Laura said.

  “Good.”

  11. THE EMPTY ROOM

  I was half-awake. My mind, idling in neutral, played word games.

  NAKF LAURA DRURY DESK COP NAKF

  I couldn’t make it fit.

  Laura’s foot was hooked under mine. When she tried to turn over, I came fully awake. I worked my foot free, and she rolled just to the edge of the bed.

  NAKF … DRURY … what the hell was I doing?

  Properly horrified, I pushed the whole topic way down to the bottom of my mind and left it there. But I couldn’t get back to sleep. I finally moved to the foot of the bed and said, “Chiron, low volume. Chiron, messages.”

  Taffy looked good, brisk and happy. “I like Marxgrad,” she said. “I like the people. I’m brushing up on my medical Russian, but everyone speaks enough English for social purposes. I miss you mostly at night.

  “I hope you haven’t changed your mind about having children. I can find the time starting a year from now. We do have a problem. Neither of us intends to drop his career, right? And we’re both subject to emergency calls. That could be tough on children.”

  Another complication I hadn’t dealt with yet.

  “So think it over,” the recording said. “We may want to go into a multiple marriage. Think about the people we know. Is there anyone we can both stand to live with for the first, oh, five to ten years? For instance, how do Lila and Jackson Bera feel about children? Do you know? Think it over and then call me. My love to you and Harry,” she said, and was gone.

  Laura was watching me. She started to say something, but the next message beat her to it.

  The picture was fuzzy. Two men and a laughing little blond girl floated in free fall at skew angles. The man holding the little girl’s hand was a rotund, cheerful man with thick white hair. The other was short and dark and very round of face, partly or wholly Eskimo, I guessed. I didn’t know any of them.

  “I am Howard de Campo, called Antsie, citizen of Vesta,” the smiling Eskimo said. “You called to be informed of the motions of Mrs. Naomi Mitchison during certain hours. From 2250 Tuesday to 0105 Wednesday the lady in question was in Chili Bird, visiting I and my passenger, Dr. Raymond Q. Forward. The purpose of the visit is secret, but we will tell if necessary, of course. If you have to know more, call us at Confinement, please.” The picture blinked out.

  “By God, you were right,” Laura said. “I could probably even guess the crime.”

  “They haven’t admitted anything,” I said. But the blond, blue-eyed little girl must have been included deliberately. She was Naomi at age four.

  Laura said, “‘Love to you and Harry.’ No lunie could ever have said that.”

  “She meant it.”

  “Suppose she’d known I was listening?”

  “Would you object to my telling her someday?”

  “Please don’t,” Laura said. She controlled it well, but the idea upset her. “Are you thinking of having children by Taffy Grimes?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about us?”

  I hadn’t thought of that at all. “I wouldn’t be here to act like a father. And I’ll be sterile for another four months. Anyway, would my genes be right?”

  “I didn’t mean … never mind.” She rolled over and came into my arms. The rest of our conversation was nonverbal. But what had she meant?

  * * *

  Shaeffer and Quifting had called Ceres to ask that a third Belter be chosen and sent to the moon as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, the conference would continue without Chris Penzler.

  A nervous urgency was apparent while we were still involved with coffee and rolls. Charles Ward tried to assure us, before anyone else had suggested the possibility, that Chris had not been murdered by local terrorists bent on disrupting or exterminating the conference. The other lunies were quick to agree. Sure. Where were they getting their data?

  Just before 0900 I phoned the mayor’s office from the conference room. “You’ve heard about Chris Penzler?”

  “Yes. A very sticky situation, Gil.” The mayor was perturbed, and it showed. “We’re doing all we can, of course. I imagine this will disrupt the conference.”

  “We’ll see. That might have been the whole idea. Has Naomi Mitchison been released from the holding tanks?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Releasing a convict from a holding tank isn’t done by a wave of the hand. The medical—”

  “Mayor, your holding tanks aren’t that different from the ones on the slowboats, the interstellar colony ships. Crew members go in and out of the holding tanks a dozen times during any trip.”

  Hove’s eyes flicked past my shoulder. I glanced back and found that I had an audience. Several conference members were following our conversation. That was all to the good, I thought.

  Hove was saying, “You know nothing about the medical complexities. Furthermore, Mrs. Mitchison is a convicted criminal. Reversal of her sentence will not be accomplished by a wave of the hand, either.”

  “In that case, I’m going to raise some hell,” I said.

  “How do you mean that?”

  I said, “The proceedings of the conference have been confidential so far—”

  “And should be!” Bertha Carmody barked in my ear.

  “Futz, Bertha, this is at the heart of what’s been blocking us all along! Mayor, there’s some question as to whether your law gives adequate protection to the defendant. Trials are over almost before they begin, and in twenty years not one sentence has been reversed. Naomi Mitchison’s trial is the first to be investigated by outsiders. We now have evidence that someone else wanted Chris Penzler dead all along. Your son has filed to obtain Mrs. Mitchison’s release. But when a committee member, me, checks with the mayor of Hovestraydt City, it turns out the conviction isn’t even under review!”

  “Damn it, Gil, the conviction is under review, right now!”

  “Goo
d. How long would you expect it to take?”

  “I have no idea. A reversal may have to wait until the new investigation is over.”

  “Fine. In the meantime, get her out of the holding tank.”

  “Why? Chris’s death may be unrelated to the first attempt.”

  “Granted. I won’t try to guess the odds. I’ll put it to you that Naomi is likely innocent—”

  “Likely is too strong a word.”

  “—and a possible witness. Aside from that, the committee may want to call her to testify firsthand on how she’s been treated. We’ve examined exactly two trials under lunar jurisprudence, and the other one … ah—”

  “Matheson and Company,” Stone put in helpfully.

  “Yeah. That one looks kind of funny, too. And Naomi is still in a holding tank waiting to be broken up. How will all of this look to the newstapers?”

  Bertha roared, “These proceedings are confidential! Hamilton, how can you think of exposing our deliberations to the news media?”

  I said, “All right, Bertha. I’ll stick to my opinions on the Mitchison case.”

  “I hope that that will not be necessary,” the mayor said. “I intend to order Naomi Mitchison revived at once. She will be returned here under arrest to play her part in the investigation into Chris Penzler’s death. Is that satisfactory, Mr. Hamilton?”

  “Yes. Thank you.” I called off the phone, and Bertha called the meeting to order.

  When we broke for lunch, I suited up and headed for the mirror works. I found Harry McCavity just outside the air lock, waiting for it to cycle.

  “I’m beat,” he said. “It’s been a long night. Morning, Gil … no, let me show you something first, and then I’m for bed.”

  He led me through the mirror works. “Penzler died from loss of blood,” he said. “He was wearing a skintight suit. Cutting his hand off didn’t release the pressure on his skin. But the blood must have jetted like a fire hose.”

  “He used it to write with.”

  “Drury told me. He’d have had to write fast.”

  Penzler’s corpse was outside, in vacuum, under a silvered canopy to keep it cold. The dry remains had been sliced to obtain cross sections. They looked like petrified wood. Penzler’s skintight pressure suit was next to it, opened along the back and spread like a pelt. The golden griffin glowed on its chest.

  Harry picked up Chris’s hand, a withered brown claw with four inches of wrist attached. He held it against the severed forearm. What with the shrinking of the flesh, it was hard to tell whether they belonged together. “Look at the bones,” he said.

  The ends of the bones were quite smooth and fitted perfectly.

  “And here.” He picked up the right glove from the pressure suit. “His hand was in it. Now look.” He held it against the sliced fabric of the pressure suit’s forearm.

  There was almost no material missing. The laser had sliced through cleanly, at very high energy density, and no thicker than a fishing leader. Even laser beams spread with distance. “They must have been close together when it happened,” I said.

  “Too right. Penzler and his killer couldn’t have been more than three feet apart.”

  “Huh.” I tried to scratch my head through the helmet. “Harry, I don’t know what it means yet.”

  We went back inside, and Harry headed for his bed. I called Artemus Boone and got him to join me for lunch.

  We moved down the buffet table collecting dollops and samples of everything in sight. The food on Boone’s plate became a precariously balanced cone with a hard-boiled pigeon’s egg at the apex. He lowered it to the table slowly with both hands.

  “It’s not bad,” he told me. “It’s only complicated. I could argue either way: that Mrs. Mitchison is subject only to the lunar law or only to United Nations law, whichever she likes.”

  “So?”

  “United Nations law would sterilize her, I think. She is both the father and the mother. One could argue that she has used two birthrights. Sterilization wouldn’t stop her from growing another clone, so she might not object. For the same reason, the law might demand the right to execute her, but I think I could block that”

  “How sure are you?”

  “Not very. UN law isn’t my home turf. I’d rather work within lunar law. As for the child, she can’t be extradited, but she should never visit Earth.”

  “What’s the position under lunar law?”

  “Lunar law includes nothing like your fertility quotas. Women who bear children without previous marriage are on their own unless the father sues for his rights … well, that doesn’t apply. But de Campo and Mrs; Mitchison have violated lunar medical restrictions. I’d think we want to stand trial here, then claim double jeopardy before the UN.”

  “She’d be safe then?”

  “Up to a point.” Boone coughed delicately. “The lady’s attitude toward men might hamper her popularity with a jury. And there is still the matter of an attempted murder charge.”

  “Yeah. I need to talk about the murder,” I said, “and I’ve run out of people to talk with. Have you got some free time?”

  “Some. You don’t propose to solve both crimes yourself this afternoon, do you?”

  “Why not?”

  Boone smiled. “Why indeed? For my defense of Mrs. Mitchison I needed a suspect other than Mrs. Mitchison. My main obstacle was your testimony.”

  “I can’t change it. There wasn’t anyone else out on the moon and no message laser.”

  “Well?”

  “I keep thinking in terms of mirrors. Boone, I wish to hell I could put a mirror out there. That way the killer and the weapon could both be somewhere else.”

  Boone had been eating, talking between mouthfuls. He had a voracious appetite for so lean a man. He chewed and thought, swallowed, and said, “But the mirror would have to be in place.”

  “Remember how Chris acted when we asked him what kind of pressure suit the killer was wearing? He sweated. He dithered. He said he might have seen an optical illusion.”

  “A terrible experience. He might have blocked the memory.

  “Sure. Then six days later he left us a dying message. Do you know about that?”

  “N A K F. Meaningless.”

  “I’ve been assuming he died before he could finish. What was he trying to tell us? NAKED?”

  “On the moon?” Boone smiled.

  “Naked to vacuum,” I said. “Chris stood up in his bath and saw someone out on the moon without a pressure suit. Don’t you see? He was looking in a mirror.”

  “But what was he seeing? Himself?”

  “No. He saw the killer. The killer must have been in one of the other apartments. Poor Chris, he must have thought he was going crazy. No wonder he wouldn’t talk about it.”

  Boone ate quietly for a time. Then he said, “Mrs. Mitchison was on the second floor. We tend to put offworlders on the ground floor. Were all the ground floor apartments full? This is something we can check, but you see the implications. The killer is not a native.”

  That didn’t fit my other assumptions, but— “Yeah, check those records. You’ve got the authority.”

  “I will.” Boone smiled. “Now tell me why the mirror wasn’t found by the police when they searched for an abandoned message laser.”

  “What about a mirror in low orbit? Mirrors don’t have to be opaque to radar. A plane mirror with the right rotation might give the killer a couple of minutes to pick his shot. And we know he was hurried.”

  Boone snorted. “Ridiculous. An orbiting mirror would have had to be large enough for the killer to see Penzler and vice versa. It would probably have been in sunlight, since the assault took place just before dawn. Anyone could have seen it blazing like a beacon.”

  “All right, it’s a stupid suggestion, but it’s the best I’ve got. If we can put a disappearing mirror out there, we’ve cleared Naomi, haven’t we?”

  “Absolutely. I think we have enough to get her out of the holding tank now pending a
second trial.”

  “Get together with the mayor,” I told him. “I expect he’s inclined to be reasonable.”

  “Good.” Boone went back to eating. He had nearly finished that huge plate.

  I said, “A mirror can be a thin film stretched on a frame, can’t it? If the killer was a lunie cop, he could just pull it apart and stash it. Penzler said three hundred to four hundred meters from his window, but the mirror would be only half that far … hey. That tilted rock was 190 meters away. And everyone else would be searching in the wrong place.”

  “Tilted rock?”

  “Futz, yes! There’s a big boulder out there 190 meters from his window. Chris thought he was looking past it, but he couldn’t say which side. The mirror was probably propped on the rock!”

  Boone’s deep-set eyes seemed to withdraw further. He ate steadily while he thought. Then, “Very good. Did you have a particular suspect in mind?”

  I knew of a policewoman who had been involved in yesterday’s search for Chris Penzler. I knew she had a liking for flatlanders. In her love affairs (plural or singular?) she was possessive in a fashion more typical of lunie than flatland custom. She might have involved herself with Chris Penzler, then been rejected by him, at least by her own standards.

  She was thoroughly familiar with the Hovestraydt City computer from age ten. If Naomi could have taken a message laser without leaving a record, why not Laura Drury? She could get into an empty apartment the same way.

  A lunie cop could have committed the later, successful murder. The moon was swarming with them. The killer could have joined the swarm before or after the murder, given that we didn’t have an exact time of death.

  But Laura had been at the desk the night Penzler was shot in his bath. Hadn’t she? When had she come on duty? Would she have had time to go outside for a folding mirror? The killer had been in a hurry that night …

  “Hamilton?”

  “Sorry. Yeah, I’ve got suspects, but I still don’t have a disappearing mirror.”