Flatlander - Larry Niven [120]
“Certainly.”
“I need to discuss her case confidentially.”
He sighed. “Come to my office. I’ll wait.”
I turned to Harry McCavity. “Thanks for the drink. I’ll be pleased to get drunk with you when this is all over, but just now—”
He waved that off. “Will I ever know what this was all about?”
“There’s more than one kind of crime,” I said cryptically, and left.
Artemus Boone sat behind his ancient, lovingly maintained computer terminal and propped his beard on his folded hands. “Now, what’s this all about, Mr. Hamilton?”
“I want a legal opinion on a hypothetical situation.”
“Go on.”
“A flatlander woman hires a Belt doctor to take a clone from her and grow it to term. The operation takes place on the moon. The woman returns to Earth. The child is raised in the asteroids. Four years later they meet again, on the moon. The woman is still on the moon when it all becomes public knowledge.”
Boone stared as if I’d sprouted horns. “Damnation!”
“Sure. Now, the United Nations Fertility Laws would have our hypothetical flatlander woman sterilized if she had an illegal baby. They’d sterilize the baby, too. But this particular woman still has one birthright, so she could have a baby with no problem. But what about a clone?”
Boone shook his head. He was still thunderstruck. “I don’t know. My field is lunar law.”
“Would the UN try to extradite the woman? Would the moon let them get away with it? Would they try to extradite the baby, too? Or are they both safe because the crime took place off Earth?”
“Again, I don’t know. I’d want to research this. In some legal respects the moon is part of the United Nations. Damnation! Why didn’t she discuss this with me?”
“She could have been scared to. She never mentioned any such situation?”
He smiled like a man in pain. “Never. Damnation. I’m nearly certain that the baby could not be extradited. If only she’d asked! Hamilton, is our hypothetical baby still on the moon?”
“No.”
“Good.” He stood up abruptly. “I’ll be able to give you a better answer tomorrow. Call me.”
I reached my room expecting to spend some time on the phone. Getting Budrys to tell me what went on at the conference could take up to an hour. I wanted to check Dr. For-ward’s credentials and recent movements. And Taffy’s message was waiting … I dropped onto the bed and polled my shoes off and said, “Chiron, messages.”
And Laura Drury’s image, in full pressure suit, said, “Gil, you’ll have to have dinner without me. I’m going out with a search party. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Chris Penzler’s turned up missing.”
10. THE TILTED ROCK
I wasted a few seconds cursing. The urgency I’d felt hadn’t been for Naomi Mitchison. Naomi was feeling no impatience. Death had been hunting Chris Penzler.
I called Laura’s room and got no answer. I called the police and got Jefferson.
“He left about sixteen-twenty this afternoon,” the freckled lunie told me. “He checked out a puffer.”
I said, “Idiot.”
“Right. How well do you know him? Could he think he’s playing detective?”
“Why not? Somebody wants him dead, and it bothers him. He’s not likely to be out there playing tourist.”
“Well, that’s what I thought,” Jefferson said. “I sent a search party west, to the area where Penzler testified he saw something. Laura Drury’s with them, in case you were wondering.” A trace of disapproval in his voice. What the futz? “But they haven’t found him, and they’ve been out over an hour.”
“Set the area up in the projection room and search that.”
“We have got to have another Watchbird satellite,” Jefferson said. “There used to be three. The replacement keeps getting proxmired in the budget hearings. Hamilton, we’ve been waiting for the Watchbird One to rise. Why don’t you meet me down in the projection room?”
“Good.”
Tom Reinecke and Desiree Porter were waiting outside the projection room. They’d heard Chris Penzler was missing. Jefferson wanted to tell them to go to hell until I said, “We can use some extra eyes.”
Yet again we waded out into the hologram, knee-deep in miniature