N-Space

by Larry Niven

“Crusader?” His voice had changed. Now it was deep, and it sounded like something bubbling up from a tar pit.

  “Never mind. I tried to stay clear of Sinc, but it didn’t work. Sinc had a client of mine killed. Morrison, his name was. I was following Morrison’s wife, getting evidence for a divorce. She was shacking up with a guy named Adler. I had all the evidence I needed when Morrison disappeared.

  “Then I found out Adler was Sinc’s right hand.”

  “Right hand? Nothing was said of hive cultures.”

  “Huh?”

  “One more thing the prelim team will have to answer for. Continue talking. You fascinate me.”

  “I kept working on it. What could I do? Morrison was my client, and he was dead. I collected plenty of evidence against Adler, and I turned it over to the cops. Morrison’s body never turned up, but I had good corpus delicti evidence. Anyway, Sinc’s bodies never do turn up. They just disappear.

  “I turned what I had over to the cops. The case was squashed. Somehow the evidence got lost. One night I got beat up.”

  “Beat up?”

  “Almost any kind of impact,” I told him, “can damage a human being.”

  “Really!” he gurgled. “All that water, I suppose.”

  “Maybe. In my line you have to heal fast. Well, that tore it. I started looking for evidence against Sinc himself. A week ago I sent Xeroxes off to the Feds. I let one of Sinc’s boys find a couple of the copies. Bribery evidence, nothing exciting, but enough to hurt. I figured it wouldn’t take Sinc long to figure out who made them. The Xerox machine I borrowed was in a building he owns.”

  “Fascinating. I think I will make holes in the Lady of Preliminary Investigation.”

  “Will that hurt?”

  “She is not a—” gurgle. “She is a—” loud, shrill bird whistle.

  “I get it. Anyway, you can see how busy I’m going to be. Much too busy to talk about, uh, anthropology. Any minute now I’ll have Sinc’s boys all over me, and the first one I kill I’ll have the cops on me too. Maybe the cops’ll come first. I dunno.”

  “May I watch? I promise not to get in your path.”

  “Why?”

  He cocked his ear, if that was what it was. “An example. Your species has developed an extensive system of engineering using alternating current. We were surprised to find you transmitting electricity so far, and using it in so many ways. Some may even be worth imitating.”

  “That’s nice. So?”

  “Perhaps there are other things we can learn from you.”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, short stuff. This party’s bound to get rough, and I don’t want any bystanders getting hurt. What the hell am I talking about. Holes don’t hurt you?”

  “Very little hurts me. My ancestors once used genetic engineering to improve their design. My major weaknesses are susceptibility to certain organic poisons, and a voracious appetite.”

  “Okay, stay then. Maybe after it’s all over you can tell me about Mars, or wherever you came from. I’d like that.”

  “Where I come from is classified. I can tell you about Mars.”

  “Sure, sure. How’d you like to raid the fridge while we wait? If you’re so hungry all the time—Hold it.”

  Sliding footsteps.

  They were out there. A handful of them, if they were trying to keep it a secret. And these had to be from Sinc, because all the neighbors were under their beds by now.

  The martian heard it too. “What shall I do? I cannot reach human form fast enough.”

  I was already behind the easy chair. “Then try something else. Something easy.”

  A moment later I had two matching black leather footstools. They both matched the easy chair, but maybe nobody’d notice.

  The door slammed wide open. I didn’t pull the trigger, because nobody was there. Just the empty hallway.

  The fire escape was outside my bedroom window, but that window was locked and bolted and rigged with alarms. They wouldn’t get in that way. Unless—

  I whispered, “Hey! How did you get in?”

  “Under the door.”

  So that was all right. The window alarms were still working. “Did any of the tenants see you?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” I get enough complaints from the management without that. More faint rustling from outside the door. Then a hand and gun appeared for an instant, fired at random, vanished. Another hole in my walls. He’d had time to see my head, to place me. I ran low for the couch. I was getting set again, both eyes on the door, when a voice behind me said, “Stand up slow.”

  You had to admire the guy. He’d got through the window alarms without a twitch, into the living room without a sound. He was tall, olive-skinned, with straight black hair and black eyes. His gun was centered on the bridge of my nose.

  I dropped the GyroJet and stood up. Pushing it now would only get me killed.

  He was very relaxed, very steady. “That’s a GyroJet, isn’t it? Why not use a regular heater?”

  “I like this,” I told him. Maybe he’d come too close, or take his eyes off me, or—anything. “It’s light as a toy, with no recoil. The gun is just a launching chamber for the rocket slugs, and they pack the punch of a forty-five.”

  “But, man! The slugs cost a buck forty-five each!”

  “I don’t shoot that many people.”

  “At those prices, I believe it. Okay, turn around slow. Hands in the air.” His eyes hadn’t left me for a moment.

  I turned my back. Next would be a sap—

  Something metal brushed against my head, feather-light. I whirled, struck at his gun hand and his larynx. Pure habit. I’d moved the instant the touch told me he was in reach.

  He was stumbling back with his hand to his throat. I put a fist in his belly and landed the other on his chin. He dropped, trying to curl up. And sure enough, he was holding a sap.

  But why hadn’t he hit me with it? From the feel of it, he’d laid it gently on top of my head, carefully, as if he thought the sap might shatter.

  “All right, stand easy.” The hand and gun came through the doorway, attached to six feet of clean living. I knew him as Handel. He looked like any blond brainless hero, but he wasn’t brainless, and he was no hero.

  He said, “You’re going to hate yourself for doing that.”

  The footstool behind him began to change shape.

  “Dammit,” I said, “that’s not fair.”

  Handel looked comically surprised, then smiled winningly. “Two to one?”

  “I was talking to my footstool.”

  “Turn around. We’ve got orders to bring you to Sinc, if we can. You could still get out of this alive.”

  I turned around. “I’d like to apologize.”

  “Save it for Sinc.”

  “No, honest. It wasn’t my idea to have someone else mix in this. Especially—” Again I felt something brush against the side of my head. The martian must be doing something to stop the impact.

  I could have taken Handel then. I didn’t move. It didn’t seem right that I could break Handel’s neck when he couldn’t touch me. Two to one I don’t mind, especially when the other guy’s the one. Sometimes I’ll even let some civic-minded bystander help, if there’s some chance he’ll live through it. But this…

  “What’s not fair?” asked a high, complaining voice.

  Handel screamed like a woman. I turned to see him charge into the door jamb, back up a careful two feet, try for the door again and make it.

  Then I saw the footstool.

  He was already changing, softening in outline, but I got an idea of the shape Handel had seen. No wonder it had softened his mind. I felt it softening my bones, melting the marrow, and I closed my eyes and whispered, “Dammit, you were supposed to watch.”

  “You told me the impact would damage you.”

  “That’s not the point. Detectives are always getting hit on the head. We expect it.”

  “But how can I learn anything from watching you if yo
ur little war ends so soon?”

  “Well, what do you learn if you keep jumping in?”

  “You may open your eyes.”

  I did. The martian was back to his nebbish form. He had fished a pair of orange shorts out of his pile of clothes. “I do not understand your objection,” he said. “This Sinc will kill you if he can. Do you want that?”

  “No, but—”

  “Do you believe that your side is in the right?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then why should you not accept my help?”

  I wasn’t sure myself. It felt wrong. It was like sneaking a suitcase bomb into Sinc’s mansion and blowing it up.

  I thought about it while I checked the hall. Nobody there. I closed the door and braced a chair under the knob. The dark one was still with us: he was trying to sit up.

  “Look,” I told the martian. “Maybe I can explain, maybe I can’t. But if I don’t get your word to stay out of this, I’ll leave town. I swear it. I’ll just drop the whole thing. Understand?”

  “No.”

  “Will you promise?”

  “Yes.”

  The Spanish type was rubbing his throat and staring at the martian. I didn’t blame him. Fully dressed, the martian could have passed for a man, but not in a pair of orange undershorts. No hair or nipples marked his chest, no navel pitted his belly. The hood turned a flashing white smile on me and asked, “Who’s he?”

  “I’ll ask the questions. Who’re you?”

  “Don Domingo.” His accent was soft and Spanish. If he was worried, it didn’t show. “Hey, how come you didn’t fall down when I hit you?”

  “I said I’ll ask the—”

  “Your face is turning pink. Are you embarrassed about something?”

  “Dammit, Domingo, where’s Sinc? Where were you supposed to take me?”

  “The place.”

  “What place? The Bel Air place?”

  “That’s the one. You know, you have the hardest head—”

  “Never mind that!”

  “Okay okay. What will you do now?”

  I couldn’t call the law in. “Tie you up, I guess. After this is over, I’ll turn you in for assault.”

  “After this is over, you won’t be doing much, I think. You will live as long as they shoot at your head, but when—”

  “Now drop that!”

  The martian came out of the kitchen. His hand was flowing around a tin of corned beef, engulfing it tin and all. Domingo’s eyes went wide and round.

  Then the bedroom exploded.

  It was a fire bomb. Half the living room was in flames in an instant. I scooped up the GyroJet, stuck it in my pocket.

  The second bomb exploded in the hall. A blast of flame blew the door inward, picked up the chair I’d used to brace the door and flung it across the room.

  “No!” Domingo yelled. “Handel was supposed to wait! Now what?”

  Now we roast, I thought, stumbling back with my arm raised against the flames. A calm tenor voice asked, “Are you suffering from excessive heat?”

  “Yes! Dammit, yes!”

  A huge rubber ball slammed into my back, hurling me at the wall. I braced my arms to take up some of the impact. It was still going to knock me silly. Just before I reached it, the wall disappeared. It was the outside wall. Completely off balance, I dashed through an eight-foot hole and out into the empty night, six floors above concrete.

  I clenched my teeth on the scream. The ground came up—the ground came up—where the hell was the ground? I opened my eyes. Everything was happening in slow motion. A second stretched to eternity. I had time to see strollers turning to crane upward, and to spot Handel near a corner of the building, holding a handkerchief to his bleeding nose. Time to look over my shoulder as Domingo stood against a flaming background, poised in slow-motion in an eight-foot circle cut through the wall of my apartment.

  Flame licked him. He jumped.

  Slow motion?

  He went past me like a falling safe. I saw him hit; I heard him hit. It’s not a good sound. Living on Wall Street during November ’68, I heard it night after night during the weeks following the election. I never got used to it.

  Despite everything my belly and groin were telling me, I was not falling. I was sinking, like through water. By now half a dozen people were watching me settle. They all had their mouths open. Something poked me in the side, and I slapped at it and found myself clutching a .45 slug. I plucked another off my cheek. Handel was shooting at me.

  I fired back, not aiming too well. If the martian hadn’t been “helping” me I’d have blown his head off without a thought. As it was—anyway, Handel turned and ran.

  I touched ground and walked away. A dozen hot, curious eyes bored into my back, but nobody tried to stop me.

  There was no sign of the martian. Nothing else followed me either. I spent half an hour going through the usual contortions to shake a tail, but that was just habit. I wound up in a small, anonymous bar.

  My eyebrows were gone, giving me a surprised look. I found myself studying my reflection in the bar mirror, looking for other signs that I’d been in a fight.

  My face, never particularly handsome, has been dignified by scar tissue over the years, and my light brown hair never wants to stay in place. I had to move the part a year back to match a bullet crease in my scalp. The scars were all there, but I couldn’t find any new cuts or bruises. My clothes weren’t mussed. I didn’t hurt anywhere. It was all unreal and vaguely dissatisfying.

  But my next brush with Sinc would be for real.

  I had my GyroJet and a sparse handful of rocket slugs in one pocket. Sinc’s mansion was guarded like Fort Knox. And Sinc would be expecting me; he knew I wouldn’t run.

  We knew a lot about each other, considering we’d never met.

  Sinc was a teetotaler. Not a fanatic; there was liquor on the premises of his mansion/fort. But it had to be kept out of Sinc’s sight.

  A woman usually shared his rooms. Sinc’s taste was excellent. He changed his women frequently. They never left angry, and that’s unusual. They never left poor, either.

  I’d dated a couple of Sinc’s exes, letting them talk about Sinc if they cared to. The consensus:

  Sinc was an all-right guy, a spender, inventive and enthusiastic where it counted.

  And neither particularly wanted to go back.

  Sinc paid well and in full. He’d bail a man out of jail if the occasion arose. He never crossed anyone. Stranger yet, nobody ever crossed him. I’d had real trouble learning anything about Sinc. Nobody had wanted to talk.

  But he’d crossed Domingo. That had caught us both by surprise.

  Put it different. Someone had crossed Domingo. Domingo had been waiting for rescue, not bombs. So had I. It was Sinc’s policy to pull his boys out if they got burned.

  Either Domingo had been crossed against Sinc’s orders, or Sinc was serious about wanting me dead.

  I meet all kinds of people. I like it that way. By now I knew enough about Sinc to want to know more, much more. I wanted to meet him. And I was damn glad I’d shaken the martian, because…

  Just what was it that bugged me about the martian?

  It wasn’t the strangeness. I meet all kinds. The way he shifted shape could throw a guy, but I don’t bug easy.

  Manners? He was almost too polite. And helpful.

  Much too helpful.

  That was part of it. The lines of battle had been drawn…and then something had stepped in from outer space. He was deus ex machina, the angel who descends on a string to set everything right, and incidentally to ruin the story. Me tackling Sinc with the martian’s help was like a cop planting evidence. It was wrong. But more than that, it seemed to rob the thing of all its point, so that nothing mattered.

  I shrugged angrily and had another drink. The bartender was trying to close. I drank up fast and walked out in a clump of tired drunks.

  My car had tools I could use, but by now there’d be a bomb under the hood. I
caught a cab and gave him an address on Bellagio, a couple of blocks from Sinc’s place, if you can number anything in that area in “blocks.” It’s all hills, and the streets can drive you nuts. Sinc’s home ground was a lumpy triangle with twisted sides, and big. It must have cost the Moon to landscape. One afternoon I’d walked past it, casing it. I couldn’t see anything except through the gate. The fence was covered by thick climbing ivy. There were alarms in the ivy.

  I waited till the taxi was gone, then loaded the GyroJet and started walking. That left one rocket slug still in my pocket.

  In that neighborhood there was something to duck behind every time a car came by. Trees, hedges, gates with massive stone pillars. When I saw headlights I ducked, in case Sinc’s boys were patrolling. A little walking took me to within sight of the ivy fence. Any closer and I’d be spotted.

  So I ducked onto the property of one of Sinc’s neighbors.

  The place was an oddity: a rectangular pool with a dinky poolhouse at one end, a main house that was all right angles, and, between the two, a winding brook with a small bridge across it and trees hanging over the water. The brook must have been there before the house, and some of the trees too. It was a bit of primal wilderness that jarred strangely with all the right angles around it. I stuck with the brook, naturally.

  This was the easy part. A burglary rap was the worst that could happen to me.

  I found a fence. Beyond was asphalt, streetlamps, and then the ivy barrier to Sinc’s domain.

  Wire cutters? In the car. I’d be a sitting duck if I tried to go over. It could have been sticky, but I moved along the fence, found a rusty gate, and persuaded the padlock to open for me. Seconds later I was across the street and huddled against the ivy, just where I’d taken the trouble to hunt out a few of the alarms.

  Ten minutes later I went over.

  Sitting duck? Yes. I had a clear view of the house, huge and mostly dark. In the moment before I dropped, someone would have had a clear view of me, too, framed by lamplight at the top of the fence.

  I dropped between inner and outer fence and took a moment to think. I hadn’t expected an inner fence. It was four feet of solid brick topped by six feet of wiring; and the wiring had a look of high voltage.

  Now what?

  Maybe I could find something to short out the fence. But that would alert the house just as I was going over. Still, it might be the best chance.