Flatlander - Larry Niven [105]
“I knew Naomi and Itch Mitchison briefly, five years ago, when I was on Earth. We attended a few parties together. Itch wanted to know about buying mining stocks, and I got him some details.”
Naomi was moving her lips without sound. I read the words on her lips: Liar, liar.
“You believe you saw your assassin out on the moon. Could you be mistaken, or could you have missed others out there?”
Chris laughed. “I saw a human shape blazing against the dark. It was night on the moon! There could have been an army hidden in the shadows. For that matter, perhaps I only saw a pattern of reflections. I only saw it for a split second, then bang.”
Prosecution dismissed Chris and called a lunie cop I didn’t know. He testified that there was indeed a message laser missing from the weapons room. Defense tried to get him to say that the door would open only to the police. What the cop said was that the lock responded to voice and retina prints and that it was governed by the Hovestraydt City computer, the same one that operated every door and safe lock in the city, not to mention the water and air.
Prosecution then asked that Naomi’s records, beamed from Earth, be read into the record. I remembered: Naomi had been a computer programmer.
The elf woman turned with floating grace in lunar gravity. “Call Gilbert Hamilton.”
I was aware that I moved to the witness chair with a flatlander’s clumsiness, treading air and half falling at every step.
“Your name and occupation?”
“Gilbert Gilgamesh Hamilton. I’m an ARM.”
“Are you here on the moon in that capacity?”
“It’s not my regular beat,” I said, and got suppressed laughter. “I’m here for the Conference to Review Lunar Law.”
She didn’t need to go into that. The judge and three jurors were all lunies; they’d have been following the conference via the boob cube. She led me through the details of Tuesday night: the midnight call, the scene in Penzler’s room, the trek to the projection room.
Then she asked, “Are you sometimes called Gil the Arm?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I’ve got an imaginary arm.” I had to smile at the baffled looks. I explained, hoping I didn’t sound too glib.
“Returning to the projection room,” she said. “Did you search the landscape in an attempt to find any suspect who might have been overlooked?”
“For a suspect or for a discarded weapon, yes.”
“In what fashion did you search?”
“I ran my imaginary fingers through the projected moonscape.” There was a whisper of giggling from the audience. I’d expected that. “I sifted shadows, dust pools, anything big enough to hide a message laser.”
“Or a human being? Would you have found a human being, or were you, let us say, tuned only to the shape and feel of a message laser?”
“I’d have found a human being.”
She turned me over to defense.
Artemus Boone stood seven feet plus, with craggy features, a full black beard, and thick black hair. To me he looked like a wandering ghoul, but I was biased. The lunie jurors might be seeing an elongated Abe Lincoln.
“You came for the Conference to Review Lunar Law. When did it begin?”
“Yesterday.”
“Have you revised many of our laws yet?” He’d decided I was an adverse witness.
“We haven’t had time to revise anything,” I said.
“Not even regarding the holding tanks?”
Hey, weren’t our doings supposed to be secret? But nobody objected. I said, “That one may never be settled.”
“How were you chosen to represent the United Nations viewpoint, Mr. Hamilton?”
“I was a Belt miner for seven years. Now I’m an ARM. It gives me two of the three crucial viewpoints. I’m picking up the lunie viewpoint as best I can.”
“As best you can,” Boone said dubiously. “Well, then. The pleasantly convenient manner in which Naomi Mitchison has supplied us with exactly one suspect may have led us to overlook something. You were present when she was brought in. Was she carrying a weapon?”
“No.”
“You say you searched for a message laser. Just how much imaginary moonscape did you run your imaginary fingers through?”
“I searched the badlands west of the city, the area Chris Penzler could