Flatlander

by Larry Niven

  Then on to a row of six giant coffins. They were Rydeen MedTek autodocs, built long for lunie height, and I wondered: Why so many? They didn’t look used. That was a relief. I lay down in the first and went to sleep.

  I woke feeling sluggish and blurred.

  Two hours had passed. I’d picked up less than two hundred millirem, but a red blinker on the readout was telling me to drink plenty of liquids and be back in the ‘doc in twenty hours. I could picture Rydeen MedTek’s funny molecules cruising my arteries, picking up stray radioactive particles, running my kidneys and urogenital system up to warp speed, shutting down half-dead cells that might turn cancerous. Clogging my circulation.

  I used a phone to track Hecate Bauer-Stanson to the director’s office.

  She stood and turned as I came in, graceful as hell. When I try that, my feet always leave the floor. “Nunnally, this is Ubersleuth Gil Hamilton of the Amalgamated Regional Militia on Earth. Gil, Nunnally Sterne’s the duty officer.”

  Sterne was a lunie, long-headed, very dark. When he stood to shake hands, he looked eight feet tall, and maybe he was. “You’ve done us a great favor, Hamilton,” he said. “We didn’t like having the waldo tugs shut down. I’m sure Mr. Hodder will want to thank you in person.”

  “Hodder is—?”

  “Everett Hodder is the director. He’s home now.”

  “Is it still nighttime?”

  Sterne smiled. “Past noon, officially.”

  I asked, “Sterne, what do you want with radioactive sludge?”

  I’d heard that sigh everywhere on the moon. Flatlander Talk slow. Sterne said, “This isn’t exactly a secret. It just wouldn’t exactly be popular. The justification for these generators, on Earth and anywhere else, is that helium-three fusion isn’t radioactive.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “The flatlanders started lobbing these packages into Del Rey in … early last century. They—”

  “Boeing Corporation, USA, 2003 A.D.,” I said. “Supposed to be 2001, but there was some kind of legal bickering. Makes it easy to remember.”

  “R-right. They kept it up for nearly fifty years. At the end the targeting was more accurate, and that’s when they used the packages to paint that VERBOTEN sign across the crater. You must have—”

  “We saw it.”

  “It could just as easily have been COCA-COLA. Well, deuterium-tritium fusion was better than fission, but it wasn’t much cleaner. But when we finally got the helium-three plants going, it all turned around.

  “We ship He3 to Earth by the ton. When we had enough money, we built four He3 plants on the moon, too. Del Rey Crater was out of business. And that held for another fifty years.”

  “Sure.”

  “What’s finally knocked the bottom out is this new solar electric paint. Black Power, they call it. It turns sunlight into electricity, just like any solar power converter, but you spray it on. Place your cables and then spray over them. All you need is sunlight and room.

  “On Earth they’re still buying He3, and we can keep that up until your eighteen billion flatlanders start spraying the tops of their heads for power.”

  “You use it yourselves?”

  “Stet. Black Power is a great invention, but it’s so cheap that it’s no longer feasible for us to build new He3 fusion plants. You see? But running the old ones is still cheaper than the paint.”

  I nodded. Hecate was pretending she already knew all this.

  “So my job is safe. Except that He3 fusion has to be ten times hotter than D-T fusion. The plant is starting to leak heat. Fusion is running slow. We have to inject a catalyst, something to heat up the He3. Something that fissions or fuses at a lower temperature.”

  Sterne was enjoying himself. “Wouldn’t it be nice if there was something already measured out in standard units and uniform proportions, just lying around ready to pick up-”

  “Stet. I see it.”

  “This radioactive goo from Del Rey Crater works fine. It hasn’t lost much of its kick. The processor doesn’t do much more than pop off the boosters and lift off the dust.”

  “How?”

  “Magnetically. We had to build an injector system, of course, with a neutron reflector chamber. We had to install these decontamination rooms and the autodocs and a human doctor on permanent call. Nothing is simple. But the canisters—we just pop them in and let them heat up until the stuff sprays out. We’ve been using them for two years. Eventually the waldo tugs moved enough canisters that we noticed the body. Hamilton, who was she?”

  “We’ll find out. Sterne, when this leaks out—” I saw his theatrical wince. “Sorry—”

  “Don’t say leak.”

  “Nothing gets attention like a murder. Then the media will all be looking at a fusion plant that was supposed to be radiation-free that you guys have got running radioactive. We can keep that half-secret for a day or two while we thrash around and you work on your story. If you’ll do the same.”

  Sterne looked puzzled. “It was all fairly public, but … yes. Be glad to.”

  Hecate said, “We need phones.”

  We bought water bottles from a dispenser wall in the technicians’ lounge. The lounge had a recycler booth, too. Hecate hadn’t gotten nearly the dose I had, but we were both taking in water and funny molecules, and we’d be needing the recycler a lot.

  There were four phones. We settled ourselves under the eyes of curious techs and turned on privacy dampers. I called the Los Angeles ARM.

  A message light was blinking on Hecate’s phone. I watched her ignore it while she talked rapid-fire in mime.

  I waited.

  It always takes forever to connect, and you never learn the problem. No satellite in place? Lightning sends its own signals? Someone left a switch point turned off? Muslim Sector is tapping ARM communications, badly? Sometimes a local government tries that.

  But a perfect multiracial androgynous image was inviting me to speak my needs.

  I tapped in Jackson Bera’s code. I got Jackson explaining that he wasn’t there.

  “Got a locked room for you, Jackson,” I told the hologram. “See if Garner has an interest. I need an ancient pressure suit identified. We think it was made on Earth. I can’t send the suit itself; it’s radioactive as hell.” I faxed him the videotape I’d taken in Del Rey Crater, dead woman, footprints, and all.

  That should get their attention.

  Hecate was still occupied. Given a free moment, I called Taffy in Hovestraydt City. “Hi, love, the lu—”

  “I’m off performing surgery,” the recording cried wildly. “The villagers say I’m mad, but this day I have created life! If you want the heeheehee patient to call back, leave your vital stats at the chime.”

  Bong! I said, “Love, the lunie law has me halfway around the moon looking at something interesting. Sorry about tomorrow. I can’t give you a time frame or a number. If the monster wants a mate, I’ll look around.”

  Hecate had been watching me as she talked. Now she rang off, grinning. “You’ll get your view of Del Rey,” she told me. “None of the sputniki are handy, but I got a Belt miner to do the job for a break in his customs fee. He’ll do a low pass over Del Rey. Forty minutes from now.”

  “Good.”

  “And I’ve got another bugful of men coming here. We can send the Mark Twenty-nine back with one of them. Who was that?”

  “My highly significant other.”

  She lifted an eyebrow. “You have others of lesser significance?”

  I lied to keep things simple. “No, we’re lockstepped.”

  “Ah. Next?”

  “I sent what we’ve got on the suit to the ARM. If we’re lucky, I’ll get Luke Garner’s attention. He’s old enough to recognize that suit. And your message light’s doing back flips.”

  She tapped acknowledge. A male head and shoulders spoke to her, then fizzed out. Hecate said, “Shreve Development wants to talk to me. Want in?”

  “Is that the guy who loaned us—”


  “I expect it’s Yonnie’s boss.” She dialed and got a lunie computer construct who put her straight through.

  He was a beanpole lunie, young but balding, his fringe of black hair a tightly coiled ruff. “Lawman Bauer-Stanson? I’m Hector Sanchez. Are you currently in possession of a piece of Shreve Development property?”

  Hecate said, “Yes. We arranged the loan through Ms. Kotani, your chief of security, but I’m sure she—”

  “Yes, of course, of course. She consulted my office, all most proper, and if I’d been available, I’d have done just what Ms. Kotani—but Mr. Shreve is extremely upset. We’d like the device back at once.”

  This was starting to feel peculiar. Hecate hesitated, looking at me. I opened the conference line and said, “Shall we decontaminate the device first?”

  Faced by two talking heads, he became flustered. “Decontaminate? For what?”

  “I’m not at liberty—I’m Gil Hamilton, by the way, with the ARM. Happened to be available. I’m not at liberty to discuss details, but let’s say that there was a spacecraft involved, and citizens of Earth, and—” I let a stutter develop. “I-if we hadn’t had the, the device, it would have been an impossible situation. Impossible. But some r-radioactive material got tracked inside the S-shreveshield— Is that how you pronounce it?”

  “Yes, perfect.”

  “So we need to know, Mr. Sanchez. We sprayed any dust off with an oxygen tank, but n-now what? Shall we run it through decontamination at Helios Power One? Or just return it as is? For that matter, may we turn it off? Or are there neutrons trapped in that field just waiting to be sprayed everywhere?”

  Sanchez took a moment to collect himself. Thinking hard. Mr. Shreve—what would he want? It seemed their experiment had been used to clean up after a spacecraft accident involving celebrity flatlanders! Just as well that it was being hushed up. Witnesses might still remember a two-wheeled thing moving safely through radioactive debris. Meanwhile this ARM, this flatlander seemed scared spitless by the Mark Twenty-nine.

  Ultimately Shreve Development would want the tale told. What they didn’t want was noses poking into their experimental shield generator for details of construction.

  Hector Sanchez said, “Turn it off. That’s quite safe. We’ll do our own decontamination.”

  “Police lemmy okay?”

  “I … don’t think so. We’ll send a vehicle. Where are you?”

  Hecate took over. “We’ll bring it to Helios Power One. We’re a bit busy now, so give us two or three hours to get it there.”

  She clicked off and looked at me. “‘May we turn it off?’”

  “Playing dumb.”

  “Convincing. The accent helps. Gil, what’s on your mind?”

  “Standard practice. Hold something back. It lets a perp display guilty knowledge.”

  “Uh huh. You may find that’s harder on the moon. There aren’t so many of us, and communications are sacred. You can be dead a thousand ways because someone didn’t speak, or didn’t listen, or couldn’t. But be that as it may, what’s on your mind? Is this another talent?”

  “Hunch, Hecate. Something funny’s going on. Sanchez doesn’t seem to know what it is. He’s just worried. But this Mr. Shreve must be the Shreveshield Shreve, the inventor himself, the way Sanchez is acting. What does he want?”

  “He’s supposed to be retired, Gil. But if there was a radioactive spill somewhere—”

  “That’s what I mean. Something radioactive, he’d want the Mark Twenty-nine, but he’d want it right now. He doesn’t He’d want it where the spill happened, but no, he doesn’t He’ll come get it at Helios Power One. Maybe it’s more a matter of where he doesn’t want the Mark Twenty-nine.”

  She mulled it over. “Suppose his man gets here and the Mark Twenty-nine hasn’t arrived yet?”

  I liked it. “Somebody might get upset.”

  “I’ll fix it. Next?”

  I stretched. “It’ll be a while before we have anything to look at. Let’s see if there’s a commissary.”

  “You scout out dinner,” she said. “I’ll make their widget vanish, and then I want to check on the corpse.”

  There was no commissary and no restaurant, either. There was a coin-operated dispenser wall in the lounge. I glanced into the greenhouse: dead of night.

  So we bought handmeals from the dispenser and took them into the greenhouse.

  An artificial full Earth glowed overhead. The stars weren’t flaming, but something about them … ah. They were color-coded, beep red for Mars, brighter red for Aldebaran, violet for Sirius …

  Lunies try to turn their greenhouses into gardens, and there are always individual touches. There were fruits and vegetables to be picked as dark surprises from a hill sculpted into a shadowy sitting Buddha.

  Hecate reported, “The body is en route. John Ling got us two waldo tugs. The second one is keeping the first in view. That way there’s a camera watching the corpse at all times.” She stopped to spit cherry seeds. “Good man. And Nunnally Sterne says he’s set aside one of the handling rooms for an autopsy. We’ll do it through leaded glass, with waldos.”

  I was carving a pear the size of a melon, partly by feel. “What do you think we’ll find?”

  “What am I offered?”

  “Well, radiation, of course, or a leak. No gunshot or stab wounds or concussions—I’d have found that.”

  “Psi powers are notoriously undependable,” she said.

  I didn’t take offense, because of course she was right. I said, “I can generally count on mine. They’ve saved my life more than once. They’re just limited.”

  “Tell me.”

  So I told her a story, and we ate the pear and the handmeals, and a quiet descended.

  Taffy and I aren’t exactly lockstepped. But Taffy and I and Harry McCavity, her lunie surgeon, and Laura Drury, my lunie cop, are lockstepped, and Taffy and I are affianced to become pregnant someday. I used to like a complicated love life, but I’ve started to lose that. So the dark and quiet companionship began to feel ominous, and I said, just to be saying something, “She could have been poisoned.”

  Hecate laughed.

  I persisted. “What if you murder someone, then freeze-dry her, then toss her three kilometers in lunar gravity? You don’t expect anyone’ll find her, not in Del Rey, but if someone did—”

  “Tossed how? A little portable mass driver on the rim?”

  “Damn.”

  “Would you have found bruising?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And then she made the footprints?”

  Double damn. “If we had specs on our mass driver, we’d know how accurate it was. Maybe the footprints were already there and the killer just fired the body at where they ended. Then again, there aren’t any portable mass drivers.”

  Hecate was laughing. “All right, who made the footprints?”

  “Your turn.”

  “She walked in,” Hecate said. “Trick was to erase any footprints that led in from the rim.”

  “Blast from an oxygen tank?”

  “A lemmy doesn’t carry that much oxygen. A serious spacecraft would. A spacecraft could just spray the whole area with the rocket motor, but … Gil, a ship could just land in the crater, push her out, and take off. You said so yourself.”

  I nodded. “That’s starting to look like it. Besides, why would anyone walk into Del Rey Crater?”

  “What if the killer persuaded her she was wearing a rad-shielded suit?”

  Riiight. Still too many possibilities. “What if there was something valuable hidden in there? A bank heist. A dime disk with ARM secret weapons on it.”

  “A secret map of the vaults under the Face on Mars.”

  “Down comes a lemmy to pick it up. Back goes a lemmy with the copilot left behind.”

  “How long ago? If it was forty or fifty years, say, your lemmy wouldn’t even have a Shreveshield. It’d be a suicide mission.”

  Which narrowed the window a little. Hmm …

>   “I never tried lockstepped,” Hecate Bauer-Stanson said.

  “Well, it’s easier with four. And we’re constantly being moved around, so getting together is a hobby in itself.”

  “Four?”

  I stood. “Hecate, I need the recycler again.”

  “And I’ve probably got message lights.”

  * * *

  The phones were signaling messages for both of us. Hecate punched hers up while I used the recycler. When I came out, she was beckoning frantically. I moved to her shoulder.

  “This is Lawman Bauer-Stanson,” she said.

  The construct said, “Please hold for Maxim Shreve.”

  Maxim Shreve was seated in a diagnostic chair, a reclining traveler with an extended neck rest for his greater length. Old and sick, I judged, holding himself together by little more than will. “Lawman Bauer-Stanson, we need the Mark Twenty-nine back at once. My associates tell me that, it has not reached Helios Power One.”

  “Haven’t they—? Will you hold while I try to find out?” Hecate punched hold and glared at me. “The Mark Twenty-nine’s under a tarp with dirt on it. We can’t uncover it because Hector Sanchez has landed a cargo shell in plain view of it. What do I say now?”

  I said, “It isn’t loaded yet. Your man has a lemmy flying around the site looking for more casualties. Tell him that, but don’t admit there’s been a crash.”

  She mulled it over for a moment, then put Shreve back on.

  The old man was standing, dark and skeletally gaunt: Baron Samedi. Travel chair or no, in lunar gravity he could loom. The instant Hecate appeared, he was raging.

  “Lawman Bauer-Stanson, Shreve Development has never been in trouble with the law. We’re not only a good corporate citizen, we’re one of Luna City’s major sources of income! Ms. Kotani cooperated with your office when you expressed a need. I presume that need is over. What must I do to get the Mark Twenty-nine back quickly?”

  I’d figured that out, but it wasn’t a thing to be broadcast.

  Hecate said, “Sir, the device hasn’t even been loaded yet. My man on the spot is still searching for casualties, but her police vehicle is too big to get inside the, uh—” Hecate allowed herself a bit of agitation. “—site. Sir, lives may depend on your device. Are lives at stake at your end?”