Flatlander - Larry Niven [103]
“Futz. Is your phone working all right?”
“Yah, it’s working well. Why?”
“Just a thought. Now, you said you were looking past a big tilted rock when you saw somebody. Which side of the rock?”
“I don’t remember.” He considered. “That’s very strange. I don’t remember. Mayor Hove?” he bellowed.
Hove was just coming up a spiral stairwell at the end of the hall. He turned, startled. “Hello, Chris, Gil. How’s the conference going?”
I said, “There’s a certain amount of friction—”
Chris interrupted. “Can you let us into your office?”
“Of course. Why?”
“I want to look out the window.” He seemed feverishly excited.
The mayor shrugged. He led the way upstairs.
His office was big, roomy. The computer terminal built into the desk hooked into the hologram wall and into two more screens. There was a foot and a half of keyboard with a rolltop cover. A hologram wall looked out on Jovian storms, seen from closer than Amalthea, swirling like a million shades of paint poured into a whirlpool. Endless storms big enough to swallow the Earth. Hovestraydt Watson must have a big ego, I thought. How else could he live and work next to that?
The picture window looked south into a blazing moonscape. Chris edged as close as he could to the window. “I can’t see it. We’ll have to go to my room.”
“What’s it all about?” the mayor asked.
“I was looking past a large boulder just before the beam burned me. I must have seen the killer to one side or the other, but I can’t—”
“Are you sure he wasn’t closer than the rock?”
Penzler screwed his eyes shut. After a moment he said, “Almost. He’d have to be a midget to show that small, that close. I wish I could be sure.”
I said, “Chris, I thought maybe you saw a reflection from a small hologram in your room or maybe from the phone screen. Is that possible?”
Chris shrugged. Mayor Hove said, “The phone would have to be on, wouldn’t it? It would have been facing Chris if it was working right. Chris, did you call anyone while you were in the tub?”
“No. And my phone system is working.”
So we went down the hall to Chris’s room, all three of us. Chris pointed out the tilted rock Alan Watson and I had investigated. We studied it for a good minute before he said, “I simply cannot remember. But he was almost twice as far as the rock.”
I called from my room. “I want to talk to Naomi Mitchison,” I told the desk sergeant, “preferably in person.”
He looked at me. “You’re not her lawyer.”
“I didn’t claim to be.”
He took his time thinking it over. “I’ll put you through to her lawyer.” He rang, waited, then said, “Mr. Boone isn’t there. His answering bug says he’s in conference with a client.”
“So let me talk to them both.”
He went into a brown study. I said, “Then put me through to Sergeant Drury, if that’s possible.”
His relief showed. He made the call. The phone screen went blank, and Laura Drury’s voice said, “Just a minute. Gil Hamilton, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I’m trying to get permission to talk to Ms. Mitchison. The desk sergeant is giving me static.”
“Let’s see, her lawyer is supposed to be with her. I’ll call him on her phone. He’s a public defender, Artemus Boone.”
“Lunie?”
“Yes. Did you learn anything from going over her course?”
“Nothing conclusive.”
The screen lighted. Laura Drury was just completing the act of zipping up a pale gold jumpsuit. I gathered the picture had caught her a split second too soon. The zipper had hesitated at her bosom, and well it might. She looked flustered; she tugged hard; the zipper went up. I repressed a smile.
“Jefferson thinks she was lying,” she said, “but he can’t tell what she was lying about.”
I thought so, too. “I’d like to know more about that trek myself,” I said. “I have to go through this Boone, is that right? If you can’t convince him, may I talk to him myself? I’d like to help her.”
“I’ll find out. Stand by.” She put me on hold.
She called back a minute later. “They won’t see you. They won’t talk to you, either. I’m sorry.”
“Futz! Is that just her lawyer’s word?”
“I think he talked to her first, off camera.”
“Thanks, Laura.” I called the phone