Niven, Larry - The patchwork girl

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THE PATCHWORK GIRL

for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without permission in writing from the

publisher.

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is

purely coincidental.

An ACE Book

First Ace Punting: April 1980

First Mass Market Printing: December 1980

2468097531

Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents

1. City of Mirrors

2. View Through a Window

3. The Projection Room

4. The Cratered Lands

5. The Conference Table

6. The Lunar Law

7. Last Night and Morning After

8. The Other Crime

9. The Trading Post

10. The Tilted Rock

11. The Empty Room

12. The Traditional Elements

13. Penalties

To my father.

1. City of Mirrors

We fell east-to-west, dipping toward the Moon in the usual shallow, graceful arc. Our pilot had

turned off the cabin lights to give us a view. The sun set as we fell. I peered past Tom Reinecke

and let my eyes adjust.

It was black below. There wasn't even Earthlight; the "new" Earth was a slender sliver in the

eastern sky. The black shadows of mountains emerged from the western horizon and came toward us.

Reinecke had fallen silent.

That was a new development. Tom Reinecke had been trying to interview me even before we left

Outback Field, Australia. Thus: What was it like, out there among the flying mountains? Had I

really killed an organlegger by using psychic powers? As a man of many cultures-Kansas farm boy,

seven years mining the asteroids, five years in the United Nations Police-didn't I consider myself

the ideal delegate to a Conference to Review Lunar Law? How did I feel about what liberals called

"the organ bank problem"? Would I demonstrate my imaginary arm, please? Et cetera.

I'd admitted to being a liberal, and denied being the solar system's foremost expert on lunar law,

inasmuch as I'd never been on the Moon. Beyond that, I'd managed to get him talking about himself.

He'd never stopped.

The flatlander reporter was a small, rounded man in his early twenties, brown-haired and smooth-

shaven. Born in Australia, schooled in England, he'd never been in space.

He'd gone from journalism school straight into a job with the BBC. He'd told me about himself at

length. This young and he was on his way to the Moon! To witness deliberations that could affect

all of future history! He seemed eager and innocent. I wondered how many older, more experienced

newstapers had turned down his assignment.

Now, suddenly, he was quiet. More: he was leaving fingerprints in the hard plastic chair arms.

The black shadows of the D'Alembert Mountains were coming right at us: broken teeth in a godling's

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jaw, ready to chew us up.

We passed low over the mountains, almost between the peaks, and continued to fall. Now the land

was chewed by new and old meteorite craters. Light ahead of us became a long line of lighted

windows, the west face of Hovestraydt City. Slowing, we passed north of the city and curved

around. The city was a square border of light, and peculiar reflections flashed from within the

border: mostly greens, some reds, yellows, browns.

The ship hovered and settled east of the city at the edge of Grimalde's rim wall. No dust sprayed

around us as we touched down. Too many ships had landed here over the last century. The dust was

all gone.

Tom Reinecke let go of his chair arms and resumed breathing. He forced a smile. "Thrill a minute."

"Hey, you weren't worried were you? You can't even imagine the real problems with making this kind

of landing."

"What? What do you mean? I-"

I laughed. "Relax, I was kidding. People have been landing on the Moon for a hundred and fifty

years, and they've only had two accidents."

We fought politely for room to struggle into our pressure suits.

If Garner had given me a little more warning I would have had a skintight pressure suit made at

the taxpayers' expense. But skintight suits have to be carefully fitted, and that takes time. Luke

Garner had given me just ten days to get ready. I'd spent the time on research. I was half certain

that Gamer had picked someone else for the job, and that he or she had died or gotten sick or

pregnant.

Be that as it may: I had bought an inflated suit on the expense account. The other passengers,

reporters and Conference delegates, were also getting into inflated suits.

Half dozen people, lunies and Belters, waited to greet us when we climbed down from the airlock I

could see fairly well into the bubble helmets. Taffy wasn't among them. I recognised people I'd

seen only on phone screens. And a familiar voice: cheerful, cordial, mildly accented.

"Welcome to Hovestraydt City," said the voice of Mayor Hove Watson. "You've arrived near dinner

time by the city clocks. I hope to show you around a bit before you begin your work tomorrow." I

had no trouble picking him out of the crowd: a lunie over eight feet tall, with thinning blond

hair and a cordial smile showing through his helmet, and a flowering ash tree on his chest.

"You've already been assigned rooms, and-before I forget-the city computer's command name is

Chiron. It will be keyed to your voice. Shall we postpone introductions until we can get into

shirtsleeves?" He turned to lead the way.

So Taffy hadn't made it I wondered if she'd left a message...and how long it would be before I

reached a phone.

We trooped toward the lights a few hundred yards away.

No moondust softened our footfalls. My first look at the Moon, and I wasn't seeing much. Black

night around us and a glare of light from the city. But the sky was the sky I remembered, the

Belter's sky, stars by the hundred thousand, so hard and bright you could reach up and feel their

heat. I lagged behind to get the full effect. It was like homecoming.

We were Belters and flatlanders and lunies, and there was no problem telling us apart.

All the flatlanders, including me, were wearing inflated suits in bright primary colors. They

hampered movement, made us clumsy. Even I was having trouble.

I'd talked to the other United Nations delegates just before the flight. Jabez Stone was a cross

between tall black Watusi and long-jawed white New Englander. He'd been a prosecution lawyer

before he went into politics. He represented the General Assembly. Octavia Budrys of the Security

Council had very white skin and very black hair. She was overweight, but with the muscle tension

to carry it well. You sensed their awareness of their own power. On Earth they had walked like

rulers. Here-

Their dignity suffered. Budrys bounced like a big rubber ball. Stone fought the lower gravity with

a kind of shuffle. They veered from side to side and into each other. I heard their panting in my

earphones.

The Belters found their stride easily. Through the bubble helmets you saw Belter crests on both

men and women: hair running in a strip from forehead to nape of neck, the scalp shaved on both

sides. They wore silvered cloaks against the cold of lunar night. Under the cloaks were skin-

tights: membranous elastic cloth that would pass sweat and that fitted like a coat of paint.

Paintings glowed across their chests and bellies. A Belter's pressure suit is his real home, and

he will spend a fortune on a good torso painting. The brawny redheaded woman wearing the gold of

the Belt police had to be Marion Shaeffer. Her torso showed an eagle-clawed dragon stooping on a

tiger. A broad-shouldered black-haired man, Chris Penzler, wore a copy of a Bonnie Dalzell

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griffon, the one in the New York Metropolitan: mostly gold and bronze, with a cloudy Earth

clutched in one claw.

I had abandoned a Belter suit when I returned to Earth. The chest painting showed a great brass-

bound door opening on a lush world with two suns. I missed it.

The lunies wore skintights, but they would never be taken for Belters. They stood seven and eight

feet tall. Their suits were in bright monochrome colors, to stand out against a bright and

confusing lunar background. Their chest paintings were smaller, and generally not as good, and

tended to feature one dominant color, as Mayor Watson's ash tree painting was mostly green. The

lunies hardly walked; they flew in shallow arcs, effortlessly, and it was beautiful to watch.

One hundred and fifty-seven years after the first landing on the Earth's Moon, you could almost

believe that mankind was dividing into different species. We were three branches of humanity,

trooping toward the lights.

Most of Hovestraydt City was underground. That square of light was only the top of it. Three sides

of the square were living quarters; I had seen light spilling through windows. But the whole east

face of the city was given over to the mirror works.

We passed telescope mirrors in the polishing stage, with mobile screens to shield them. Silicate

ore stood in impressively tall conical heaps. Spindly lunies in skintights and silver cloaks

stopped work to watch us pass. They didn't smile.

Under a roof that had rock and moondust piled high atop it for meteor protection, a wide stretch

of the east face was open to vacuum. Here were big, fragile paraboloids, and lightweight telescope

assemblies for Belter ships; widgetry for polishing and silvering mirrors, and more widgetry for

measuring their curvature; garage space for wide-wheeled motorcycles, and bubble-topped busses,

and special trucks to carry lenses and radar reflectors. There were more lunies at work. I'd

expected to see amusement at the way we walked; but they weren't amused. Was that resentment I saw

within the bubble helmets?

I could guess what was bothering them. The Conference.

Tom Reinecke veered away to peer through a glass wall. I followed him. Lunie workmen were looking

this way: I was afraid he'd get in trouble.

He was looking down through thick glass. Beyond and below, an assembly line was birthing acre-

sized sheets of silvered fabric, rolling the fabric into tubes with the silvering on the inside,

sealing the ends, and folding it into relatively tiny packets.

"City of Mirrors," Tom said reflectively.

"You know it," said a woman's voice. Belt accent, specifically Confinement Asteroid. I found her

at my shoulder. Within the bubble helmet she was young and pretty, and very black. Watusi genes,

sun-blackened further in the unfiltered sunlight of space. She was almost as tall as a lunie, but

the style of her suit made her a Be1ter. I liked her torso painting. Against the pastel glow of

the Veil Nebula, a slender woman's silhouette showed in uttermost black, save for two glowing

greenish-white eyes.

"City of Mirrors. There are Hove City mirrors everywhere in space, everywhere you look," she told

us. "Not just telescopes. You know what they're doing down there? Those are solar reflectors.

They're shipped out flat. We inflate them. Then we spray foam plastic struts on them. They don't

have to be strong. We cut them up and get cylindrical mirrors for solar power."

"I've been a Belt miner," I said.

She looked at me curiously. "I'm Desiree Porter, newstaper for the Vesta Beam."

"Tom Reinecke, BBC."

"Gil Hamilton, ARM delegate, and we're being abandoned."

Her teeth flashed like lightning in a black sky. "Gil the Arm! I know about you!" She looked where

I was pointing, and added, "Yah, we'll talk later. I want to interview you."

We jumped to join the last of the line as it cycled through the airlock.

We crowded into different elevators and rejoined on the sixth level, the dining facility. Mayor

Watson again took the lead. You couldn't get lost, following Mayor Watson. Eight feet two inches

tall, topped with ash blond hair and a nose like the prow of a ship, and a smile that showed a

good many very white teeth.

By now we were talking away like old friends...some of us, anyway. Clay and Budrys, the other UN

delegates, still had to keep all their attention on their feet; and they still bounded too high.

And I got my first look at the Garden, but I didn't get a chance to study it till we were seated.

We were three delegates from the United Nations, three from the Belt, and four representing the

Moon itself, plus Porter and Reinecke, and Mayor Watson as our host. The dining hall was crowded

and the noise level was high. Mayor Watson was out of earshot, at the other end of the table. He'd

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tried to mix us up a little. The reporters seemed to be interviewing each other, and liking what

they learned. I found myself between Chris Penzler, Fourth Speaker for the Belt, and a Tycho Dome

official named Bertha Carmody. She was intimidating, seven feet three, with a spreading crown of

tightly curled white hair, a strong jaw and a penetrating voice.

The Garden ran vertically through Hovestraydt City: a great pit lined with ledges. A bedspring-

shaped ramp ran up the center, and narrower ramps fed into it at all levels, including this one.

The plants that covered the ledges were crops, but that didn't keep them from being pretty. Melons

hung along one ledge. A ledge of glossy green ground cover turned out to be raspberries and

strawberries. There were ledges of ripe corn and unripe wheat and tomatoes. The orange and lemon

trees lower down were blooming,

Chris Penzler caught me gaping. "Tomorrow," he said. "You're seeing it by sunlamps now. By

daylight ifs quite beautiful."

I was surprised. "Didn't you just get here? Like the rest of us?"

"No, I've been here a week. And I was here at the first Conference twenty years ago. They've dug

the city deeper since. The Garden too." Penzler was a burly Belter nearing fifty. His immense,

sloping shoulders made his otherwise acceptable legs look spindly. He must have spent much of his

life in free fall. His Belter crest was still black, but it had thinned on top to leave an

isolated tuft on his forehead. His brows formed a single furry black ridge across his eyes.

I said, "I'd think direct sunlight would kill plants."

When Penzler started to answer, Bertha Carmody rode him down. "Direct sunlight would. The convex

mirrors on the roof thin the sunlight and spread it about. We set more mirrors at the bottom of

the pit, and the sides, to direct the sunlight everywhere. Every city on the Moon uses essentially

the same system." She refrained from adding that I should have done my research before I came; but

I could almost hear her thinking it.

Lunies were bringing us plates and food. Special service. The other diners were all getting their

own from a ledge, buffet style. I plied my chopsticks. They had splayed ends, and they worked

better than a spoon and fork in low gravity. Dinner was mostly vegetables, roughly Chinese in

approach, and quite good. When I found chicken meat I turned again to the Garden. There were birds

flying between the ledges, though most had settled for the night Pigeons and chickens. Chickens

fly very well in low gravity.

A dark-haired young man was talking to the Mayor.

I admit to being abnormally curious; but how could I help but stare? The kid was the Mayor's

height, a couple of inches over eight feet, and even thinner. Age hard to estimate; say eighteen

plus-or-minus three. They looked like Tolkien elves. Elvish king and elvish prince in well-

mannered disagreement. They were not enjoying their inaudible conversation, and they cut it short

as quickly as possible.

My eyes followed the kid back to his table. A table for two across the width of the Garden. His

companion was an extraordinarily beautiful woman...a flatlander. As he sat down the woman darted a

look of pure poison in our direction.

For an instant our eyes locked.

It was Naomi Home!

She knew me. Our eyes held...and we broke the lock and went back to eating. It had been fourteen

years since I last felt the urge to talk to Naomi Home, and I didn't have it now.

We ended with melon and coffee. Most of us were heading for the elevator when Chris Penzler took

my arm. "Look down into the Garden," he said.

I did. It was another nine stories to the bottom; I counted. A tree was growing down there. Its

top was only two levels below us. The ramp spiraled down around the trunk.

"That redwood," Chris said, "was planted when Hovestraydt City was first occupied. It' s much

taller now than it was when I first came. They transplant it whenever they dig the Garden deeper."

We turned away. I asked, "What's it going to be like, this Conference?"

"Less hectic than the last one, I hope. Twenty years ago we carved out the general body of law

that now rules the Moon." He frowned. "I have my doubts. Some of the lunar citizenry think we are

meddling in their internal affairs."

"They've got a point"

"Of course they do. We face other opportunities for embarrassment, too. The holding tanks were

expensive. Worse, the lunar delegates are in a position to claim that they serve no useful

purpose."

"Chris, I'm a last-minute replacement. I only had ten days to bone up."

"Ah. Well, the first Conference was twenty years ago. It wasn't easy finding compromises between

three ways of life. You flatlanders saw no reason why lunar law shouldn't send all felons to the

organ banks. Belt law is considerably more lenient. The death penalty is so damned permanent.

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Suppose it turns out that you broke up the wrong person?"

"I know about the holding tanks," I said.

"They were our most important point of compromise."

"Six months, isn't it? The convict stays in suspended animation for six months before they break

him up. If the conviction is reversed, he's revived."

"That's right. What you may not know," Chris said, "is that no convict has been revived in the

past twenty years. The Moon had to pay half the cost of the holding tanks...well, we could have

made them pay the whole bill. And there were some bugs in the prototypes. We know four convicts

died and had to be broken up at once, and half the organs were lost."

We crowded into the elevator with the rest. We lowered our voices. "And all for nothing?"

"By lunie standards, yes. But how diligently were the rights of the convicts guarded? Well. As I

say, the Conference may be more hectic than one would hope."

We all got off on zero level. I gathered that few lunies wanted to live on the surface. These

rooms were mostly for transients. I left Penzler at his door and walked two down to my own.

2. View Through a Window

Wherever you go in space, shirtsleeve environments tend to be cramped. My room was bigger than I

expected. There was a bed, narrow but long, and a table with four collapsed chairs, and a tub.

There was a phone screen, and I made for that.

Taffy wasn't in, but she'd left a message. She wore a paper surgical coverall and sounded a bit

breathless. "Gil, I can't meet you. You'll get in about ten minutes after I go on duty. I get off

at the usual ungodly hour, in this case 0600, city time. Can you meet me for breakfast? Ten past

six, in oh-fifty-three, in the north face on zero level. There's room service. Isn't Garner

lovely?"

The picture smiled enchantingly, and froze. Chiron asked, "Will there be an answer, sir?" and

beeped.

I was still feeling ruffled and mean. I had to force the eager smile. "Chiron, message. Ten past

six, your room.

I'll come to you by Earthlight, though Hell should bar the way." Called off the phone and lost the

smile.

Lucas Garner was in his hundred-and-seventies. He had a face to scare babies. He was confined to a

wheelchair because half his spinal cord had died of old age. He delegated a lot of authority, but

he led the United Nations Police-still called the Amalgamated Regional Militia, the ARM-and he was

my boss. And for getting me this chance to see Taffy again after two and a half months of

separation ... yeah, Garner was lovely.

Taffy and I had been roommates for three years when she got this chance to practice surgery on the

Moon. Exchange program. It wasn't something she could turn down: too useful to her career, and too

much fun. They'd been rotating her among the lunar cities. She'd been in Hovestraydt City almost

two weeks now.

She'd taken to dating a lunie GP, McCavity by name. I refuse to admit that that irritated me; but

the way her schedule had messed up our first meeting did. So did the thought of the Conference

meeting, tomorrow at nine thirty. I'd heard angry voices at dinner. Clay and Budrys hadn't

mastered the art of walking yet, and it would affect their tempers.

And my own feet kept getting tangled.

What I needed was a soak in a hot bath.

The bathtub was strange. It was right out in the open, next to the bed, with a view of the phone

screen and the picture window. It wasn't long, but it stood four feet high, with a rim that curved

inward, and the back rose six feet before curving over. The overflow drain was only halfway up. I

started water running, then watched, fascinated. The water looked like it was actively flying to

escape.

I tried some commands. The door lock, the closet lock, the lights all responded to my voice and

the Chiron command. The water closet lock was manual.

Presently the bath was full to the overflow line. I got in, carefully, and stretched out. The

water dipped in a meniscus around me, reluctant to wet me, until I added soap.

I played with the water, jetting it up between my hands, watching it slowly rise and slowly fall

back. I stopped when I'd got too much on the ceiling and it was dripping back in fat globules. I

was feeling a lot better. I found tiny holes under me and tried calling, "Chiron, activate spa?'

Water and air bubbles churned around me, battering muscles strained by low gravity walking. The

phone rang.

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"Taffy?" I called, "Chiron, spa off. Answer phone." The screen rotated to face me. It was Naomi.

In low gravity her long, soft golden hair floated around her with every motion. Her cheekbones

were high in an oval face. She was made up in recent flatlander style, so that her blue eyes were

patterns on the wing of a great gaudy butterfly. Her mouth was small, her face just a touch fuller

than I remembered.

Her body was still athletic, tall and slender by flatlander standards. Her dress was soft blue,

and it clung to her as if by static electricity. She'd changed in fourteen years, but not much ...

not enough.

It was unrequited love, and it had lasted half of a spring and all of summer, until the day I

invested my scanty fortune to loft myself from Earth and outfit myself as an asteroid miner. The

scar on my heart had healed over. Of course it had. But I'd known her across a crowded restaurant.

At that distance a stranger would barely have known her for a flatlander.

She smiled, a bit nervously. "Gil. I saw you at dinner. Do you remember me?"

"Naomi Home. Hi."

"Hi. Naomi Mitchison now. What are you doing on the Moon, Gil?" She sounded a bit breathless.

She'd always talked like that, eager to get the words out, as if someone might interrupt.

"Conference to Review Lunar Law. I represent the ARM. How about you?"

"I'm sightseeing. My life kind of came apart awhile back... I remember now, you were on the news.

You'd caught some kind of organlegging kingpin-"

"Anubis."

"Right" Pause. "Can we meet for a drink?"

I'd already made that decision. "Sure, we'll squeeze it in somewhere. I don't know just how busy

I'll be. See, I actually came here following my ex-roommate. She's a surgeon on loan to the

hospital here. Between Taffy's weird hours and the Conference itself-"

"You're likely to meet yourself in the halls. Yes, I see."

"But I'll call you. Hey, who was your date?"

She laughed. "Alan Watson. He's Mayor Hove's son. I don't think the Mayor approves of his dating a

flatlander. Lunies are a bit prudish, don't you think?"

"I haven't had a chance to find out I can't seem to guess a lunie's age-"

"He's nineteen." She was teasing me a little. "They can't tell our ages either. He's nice, Gil,

but he's very serious. Like you were."

"Uh huh. Okay, I'll leave a message if I get loose. Would you object to a foursome? For dinner?"

"Sounds good. Chiron, phone off"

I scowled at the blank screen. I had an erection under the water. She still affected me that way.

She couldn't have seen it; the camera angle was wrong. "Chiron, activate spa," I said, and the

evidence disappeared in bubbles.

Strange. She thought it was funny that a man would want to take her to bed. I'd told myself that,

fourteen years ago, but I don't think I believed it. I'd thought it was me.

And, strange: Naomi was clearly relieved when I told her about Taffy. So why had she called? Not

because she wanted a date!

I stood up in the tub. A half-inch sheath of water came up with me. I scraped most of it back into

the tub with the edges of my hands, then toweled myself off from the top down.

The picture window was jet black but for a small glowing triangle.

"Chiron, lights off," I said. Blind, I took a chair and waited for my eyes to adjust Gradually the

view took form. Starlight glazed the battered lands to the west. Dawn was creeping down the

highest peak. A floating mountain seemed to flame among the stars. I watched until I saw a second

peak come alight. Then I set the alarm and went to bed.

"Phone call, Mr. Hamilton," a neuter voice was saying. "Phone call, Mr. Hamilton. Phone c-"

"Chiron, answer phone!" I had trouble sitting up.

There was a broad strap across my chest; I unfastened it.

The phone screen showed Tom Reinecke, and Desiree Porter bending low to put her face next to his.

"It better be good," I said.

"It's not good, but it's not dull," Tom said. "Would an ARM be interested in the attempted murder

of a Conference delegate?"

I rubbed my eyes. "He would. Who?"

"Chris Penzler. Fourth Speaker for the Belt"

"Does nudity offend you?"

Desiree laughed. Tom said, "No. It bothers lunies."

"Okay. Tell me about it" I got up and started putting clothes on while they talked. The screen and

camera rotated to follow me.

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'We're next to Penzler's room," Desiree said. "At least Tom is. The walls are thin. We heard a

kind of godawful slosh-thump and sort of a feeble scream. We went and pounded on his door. No

answer. I stayed while Tom phoned the lunie cops."

"I phoned them, then Marion Sheaffer," Tom said. "She's a Belter too, the goldskin delegate. Okay,

she showed up, then the cops, and they talked the door open. Penzler was face up in his bathtub

with a big hole in his chest He was still alive when they kicked us out"

"My fault," Desiree said. "I took some pictures."

I had my clothes on and hair brushed. "I'll be there. Chiron, phone off"

Penzler's door was closed. Desiree said, "They've got my camera. Can you get it back for me?"

"I'll try." I pushed the bell.

"And the pictures?"

"I'll try."

Marion Shaeffer was in uniform. She was my height, muscular, with broad shoulders and heavy

breasts. Her ancestors would have been strong farm wives. Her deep tan ended sharply at the throat

"Come in, Hamilton, but stay out of the way. It's not really your territory.

"Nor yours."

"He's one of my people."

Chris Penzler's room was much like mine. It seemed crowded. Three of the six people present were

lunies, and that made a difference. I got an impression of too many elbows flashing in my personal

space. One was a redheaded, heavily freckled lunie policeman in orange marked with black. He was

working the phone. The blond man in informal pajamas was just watching, and he was Mayor Watson

himself. The third was a doctor, and he was working on Penzler.

They'd wheeled up a mobile autodoc, a heavy, dauntingly complex machine armed with scalpels,

surgical lasers, clamps, hypos, suction tubes, sensor fingers ending in tiny bristles, all mounted

on a huge adjustable stand. That took up mom too. The lunie was hard at work monitoring the

keyboard and screen set into the 'doc, sometimes typing rapid-fire commands with his long, fragile-

looking fingers.

Penzler was on his back on the bed. The bed was wet with water and blood. A pressure bottle was

feeding blood into Penzler's arm; you can't use gravity feed on the Moon. We watched as the

autodoc finished spraying foam over Penzler, until it covered him from his chin to his navel.

I swore under my breath, but I couldn't really claim they should have waited for me.

"Here." Marion Schaeffer elbowed me in the ribs and handed me three holograms. "The reporters took

pictures. Good thing. Nobody else had a camera."

The first picture showed Penzler on the bed. His whole chest was an ugly deep red, beginning to

blister around the edges, but burned worse than that in the center. White and black showed where a

charred hole had been burned deep into the bone of the sternum, an inch wide and an inch deep. The

wound must have been sponged out before the picture was taken.

The second holo showed him face up in bloody bathwater. The wounds were the same, and he looked

dead.

The third was a shot through the picture window, taken over the rim of the tub.

"I don't get this," I said.

Penzler turned his head a bare minimum and looked at me with suffering eyes. "Laser. Shot me

through the window."

"Most laser wounds don't spread like this. The wound would be narrower and deeper ... wouldn't it,

doctor?'

The doctor jerked his chin down and up without looking around. But Penzler made a strong effort to

face me. The doctor stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

"Laser. I saw. Stood up in the tub. Saw someone out there on the Moon." Penzler stopped to pant a

bit, then, "Red light Blast bounced me back in the water. Laser!"

"Chris, did you see only one person?"

"Yah," he grunted.

Mayor Watson spoke for the first time. "How? It's night out there. How could you see anything?"

"I saw him," Penzler said thickly. "Three hundred, four hundred meters. Past the big tilted rock"

I asked, "What was he? Lunie, Belter, flatlander? What was he wearing?"

"Couldn't see. It happened too fast I stood up, I looked out, then flash. I thought... for a

second ... I couldn't tell."

"Let him rest now," the doctor said.

Nuts. Penzler should have seen that much. Not that it would prove anything. A Belter could wear a

pressure suit. A flatlander could get a skintight made, though you'd expect to find records. A

lunie ... well, there exist short lunies; shorter than, for instance, Desiree Porter, who was a

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Belter.

I stepped past the tub to reach the window. The tub was still fill of pink water. Penzler would

have bled to death, or drowned, if Tom and Desiree hadn't acted so quickly.

I looked out on the Moon.

Dawn had crawled down the peaks to touch their bases.

Most of the lowlands were still puddles of black, and the shadow of Hovestraydt City seemed to

stretch away forever. Out of the city's shadows a hundred and ninety yards away to left of center,

was a massive monolith that could be Penzler's "big tilted rock". It was the shape of an elongated

egg, and smooth. Perhaps the surface had been polished by the blast that made Grimalde Crater.

"It's a wonder he saw anything at all," I said. "Why didn't the killer just keep to the shadows?

The sun wasn't up yet."

Nobody answered. Penzler was unconscious now. The doctor patted his shoulder and said, "Three or

four days, the foam will start to peel off He can come to me then and I'll remove it It'll be

longer than that before the bone heals, though."

He turned to us. "It was close. A few minutes later and he would have been dead. The beam charred

part of the sternum and cooked tissue underneath. I had to replace parts of his esophagus, the

superior vena cava, some mesentery ... scrape out the charred bone and fill it full of pins... it

was a mess. On Earth he wouldn't move for a week, and then he'd want a wheelchair."

I asked, "Suppose the beam had been three inches lower?"

"Heart cooked, pleural cavity ruptured. Are you Gil Hamilton?" He stuck out a hand. "I believe we

have a friend in common. I'm Harry McCavity."

I smiled and shook his hand (carefully, fighting temptation; those long fingers did look fragile).

My thoughts were only mildly malicious. Doctor McCavity wasn't with Taffy either tonight

McCavity had fluffy brown hair and a nose like an eagle's beak He was short for a lunie, but he

still looked like he'd grown up on a stretch rack Only lunies look like that Belters raise their

children in great bubble-structures spun up to an Earth gravity, places like Confinement and

Farmer's Asteroid. McCavity was handsome in an elvish, eery fashion. In no way did he seem

freakish.

"Weird," he said. "Do you know what saved his life?"

He jerked a long thumb at the bathtub. "He stood up, and a lot of water came up with him. The

laser beam plowed into the water. Live steam exploded all over his chest, but it saved his life

too. The water spread the beam. It didn't go deep enough to kill him right away. The steam

explosion threw him back in the tub, so the killer didn't get a second chance."

I remembered how the water had sheathed me when I stood up in the tub. But-"Would it spread that

much? Mayor, could the glass in the window cut some of the light?"

The Mayor shook his head. "He said red light. The window wouldn't stop red light. It filters raw

sunlight, but mainly in the blue and ultraviolet and X-ray range."

'We ought to let him sleep," McCavity said. We followed him out.

The corridor was high because lunies are high, and wide for a touch of luxury. Windows looked down

into the Garden.

The newstapers were waiting. Desiree Porter confronted Marion Shaeffer. "I'd like my camera back,

please."

Shaeffer handed over the bulky, two-handed instrument.

"And my holos?"

She jerked a thumb at the freckled, seven-foot-high lunie cop. "Captain Jefferson's got 'em.

They're evidence."

Tom Reinecke confronted Harry McCavity. "Doctor, what is Chris Penzler's condition? Is it murder

or attempted murder?"

McCavity smiled. "Attempted. He'll be all right. He should rest tomorrow, but I think he'll be

well enough to attend the Conference afterward. Mayor, are you through with me? I'm tired."

Captain Jefferson said, "We'll need your evidence on the nature of the wound, but not just now."

McCavity waved and departed, leaping down the corridor like a frog, both feet pushing at the floor

at the same time.

Mayor Hove Watson watched him go. His face was puzzled, thoughtful. He came to himself with a

start. "What about it, Gil? What would the ARM be doing, if this were Los Angeles?"

"Nothing. Murder isn't ARM business, unless it involves organlegging or esoteric technology. I've

investigated some murders, though. Mainly we'd by to track the weapon."

'We'll do that. Chris said red light. That probably means it was a message laser, and they're

guarded. The police use them for weapons as well as senders."

"Guarded how?" I noticed that both newstapers were listening quietly.

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"The locks are controlled by the same computer that operates your own apartment, including the

door lock. It's a different program, of course."

"Okay. What about opportunity? There was a killer out on the Moon. He can't stay out forever."

Mayor Hove turned to the lunie cop. "We have no secrets, Jefferson."

"Yessir. We were lucky," Jefferson told us. "First, it's city night and lunar night. Well, pre-

dawn. Most of the population is in their apartments, and we can account for some of the rest. One

flatlander tourist is out on the Moon, and nobody else as far as we can tell. We're checking the

night shift at the mirror works. If it were daylight we'd have hundreds of suspects. Second, the

Watchbird Two satellite rose ten minutes ago. I've had the projection room made ready for us."

"Very good." Mayor Hove rubbed his eyes. "Proceed with your investigations, Captain. Detectives

Hamilton and Shaeffer may accompany you if they wish. The reporters ... well, use your own

judgment" He dropped his voice to tell me, "I thought if politic to let Mr. Penzler see me

concerned in his behalf, but I'd be of no more use here..." And he jumped off down the corridor.

The rest of us followed Jefferson to an elevator.

3. The Projection Room

The projection room was a big box let into Levels Six and Seven, underground, in the south side.

The police had a projection going when we arrived. They were wading knee deep in miniature lunar

landscape.

I think the newstapers were jolted. I know I was.

Jefferson beamed at us. "The Watchbird Two satellite is just over us now. It sends us a picture

and we project it in real time."

He waded out into the Moon, and we followed, thigh deep and a hundred feet tall. I could see my

feet through the flat stone surface of Grimalde Crater, if I concentrated.

Dawn had fully arrived. The sun glared on the eastern horizon, not far below the crescent Earth.

The crater-pocked landscape west of us was all glaring ridges and black shadow. Hovestraydt City

was a doll house. Tiny figures in bright orange skintights with police insignia were leaving an

airlock in the south face, on the road that led across the badlands to the Belt Trading Post.

Someone was walking toward them down the middle of the mad. I bent close above the doll-figure,

looking for details. An inflate suit, sky blue, shorter than the approaching Iunie cops. Blond

hair in the bubble helmet.

I heard a satisfied, "Ah." When I turned, Marion Shaeffer added, "1 was pretty sure it would be a

flatlander."

Penzler's room be second from the end in the west face. I picked it out, then traced a line to a

tilted rock like an elongated egg. Past that point it was mostly shadows. I saw nobody anywhere in

that whole stretch of moonscape, save for a sky blue suit and four orange ones, converging.

'We seem to have only one suspect," Captain Jefferson said. "Even a puffer wouldn't take a killer

out of range that fast"

Shaeffer asked, "Puffer?"

"Basically two wheels and a motor and a saddle. We use them a lot"

"Ah. What about a spacecraft?"

"We checked, of course. The only spacecraft in the vicinity came nowhere near here."

I was thinking along different lines. "What's a message laser look like? Our little blue suspect

doesn't seem to be carrying anything."

"We'd see it. A message laser is about yay long-" Jefferson's hands were a yard, or meter, apart.

"-and masses nine kilos."

"Well, those shadows could hide anything. Mind if I feel around in there? I might turn up the

weapon."

Tom and Desiree grinned at each other. Shaeffer stared. Jefferson said, "What? What did you say?"

The newstapers laughed outright Desiree said, "He's Gil the Arm. Haven't you ever heard of Gil the

Arm?"

"He's got an imaginary arm," Tom added.

With impressive restraint Jefferson said, "Oh?"

"Combination of psychic powers," I told him. "I lost my arm to a meteor, asteroid mining.

Eventually I came back to Earth and got it replaced from the organ banks. But before that happened

I found out that I've got a couple of the recognised psi powers. Esper sense: I can feel around

inside a closed box, and reach through a wall and feel out the wiring behind it. Psychokinesis: I

can move things with my mind, if they're not too heavy. But it's all limited by my imagination. As

if I had a ghost arm and hand."

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I didn't bother to add that psychic powers are notoriously undependable. What gave me confidence,

this time, was that I was already trying it running my imaginary hand lightly over the smooth

surface of the Grimalde plain, feeling its texture-cooled magma, cracked everywhere, the cracks

filled by moondust-then plunging my hand in and running the ghostly rock between my fingers like

water.

Hard rock here; pools of moondust in the rough land beyond Grimalde's rim wall; here beneath the

dust, an oxygen tank split down the middle by internal pressure. "It'd help if I knew what a

message laser looks like," I added. Captain Jefferson used his belt phone to summon someone with a

message laser. "While we're waiting," he said, "maybe you'd like to feel around in here?" He

patted at the southeast corner of the hologram city.

I reached into the wall. I found a small room, cramped, lined with racks. The only door felt

thick, massive. It opened into the mirror works, in vacuum. I found varied equipment on the racks:

armored inflated suits, personal jet packs, a heavy two-handed cutting torch. I described what I

was finding. My audience could be expected to include skeptics.

And I tried not to think about what was actually happening; my own disembodied sense of touch

reaching through rock walls to roam through a locked room seven floors above me. If I stopped

believing, it couldn't happen.

The racks held a score of thing like bulky rifles.

I pinched one between my thumb and two fingers. Rifle-stock frame, compact excitation barrel,

tingle of battery power, and a scope just big enough to feel as a bump. The message laser felt

both light and heavy, no mass at all, yet impossible to move.

A cop came in carrying the real thing. I held it in my hands, and ran my imaginary hand over it,

then through it. There was a dimmer switch, and a cord that would plug into a pressure suit's

microphone.

You could talk with it. I wouldn't have been surprised either way. Calling a deadly police weapon

a "message laser" could have been no more than good public relations.

I waded west into the choppy cratered land our would-be-killer must have fired from. The

newstapers and lunie cops were watching me intently. God knows what they expected to see. I swept

my imaginary hand back and forth through the landscape, like sifting intangible sand. The killer

might well have dumped his weapon into a dust pool. He might equally well be hiding in one of

those shadows, I thought, with a stock of air tanks and spare batteries. I sifted them.

Pools and lakes of shadow felt very cold, and showed nothing, though I could feel the shapes of

the rocks. Once I felt something like a twelve-foot artillery shell smashed against a crater rim.

I asked Jefferson about it. He said it was probably from the rescue attempt after the Blowout

eighteen years ago. It would have held water or air.

There was a high ridge, a crater wall. I felt around in the shadows behind it. The killer couldn't

have been placed further back than this. The ridge would have blocked him, and it was already

further than Chris Penzler's "three hundred, four hundred meters".

I turned and went back over the same territory again. By now I was feeling foolish. No laser, no

hidden killer, and the beginning of a headache.

The neon orange dolls had collected the blue doll and were going through the airlock I waded back

to where the others waited. I said, "I quit."

The others didn't hide their disappointment Then Desiree brightened and said, "You'll have to

testify, won't you? No weapon and no other suspect"

"I guess I will. Let's go see who they've got."

The desk sergeant was a lunie woman with rounded oriental features and big boobs.

Forgive me! Later I got to know Laura Drury fairly well; but I was seeing her for the first time,

and I admit I stared. On her spare, attenuated frame her attractive, ample breasts became her

dominant feature. You don't picture a Tolkien elf that way.

We stopped in the doorway, not wanting to interfere. Sergeant Drury asked, "Is this your first

visit to the Moon, Ms. Mitchison?"

And I went numb.

Naomi's eyes flicked to us and away. It was the desk sergeant who concerned her. She knew she was

in trouble, and it made her voice brittle. "No, I was at the museum in Mare Tranquilitatis four

years ago."

"Did you see much of the Moon then?"

The shock was getting through to me. One suspect had been in position to fire through Chris

Penzler's window. I would have to testify that nobody was hiding out there in the shadows. I'd

eliminated everyone but Naomi.

It was insane. What could Naomi have to do with Chris Penzler? But I remembered a vindictive glare

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Niven, Larry - The patchwork girl

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