Flatlander - Larry Niven [123]
I called, “Chiron, phone. Get me Alan Watson.” And my nasty suspicious mind gave me:
NAKF ALAN WATSON WATS
Alan was out on the moon at the time, in the search party, looking for Chris Penzler himself. So maybe he found him. How much would Alan do for Naomi? Would he murder a stranger who had done her harm if it would buy her life?
Alan’s long black-browed face appeared On the phone screen he was easier to take; his height didn’t show. “Hello, Gil.”
An N could be a W with the first vertical botched, but an F could not be a botched S, I decided. I said, “I wondered if we can get Naomi out of Copernicus now.”
“I’ve already filed with the court. All we can do now is wait I expect they’ll revive her, but it would help if we could tell them where she actually was. Gil, where was she?”
“I should know that within a few hours.” I didn’t add that I might not tell him then.
Assume Chris didn’t recognize his killer. He couldn’t give us a name if all he saw was a pressure suit Short, medium, or lunie? Inflated or skintight? Chris hadn’t bothered to tell us. Could he have had something more specific in mind? Like a torso painting?
Lunch was a long time in the past. I had seen corpses uglier than Chris Penzler’s. Maybe I could have done something to save his life … but I still had no idea what it might be. I phoned down for a chicken and onion sandwich.
Then I put the display back on the phone screen and stared at it.
He must have known he was dying. He’d have kept it short. Unless I was overlooking some significance to NAKF, he had still run out of time or blood.
Try NAKE, then. SNAKE? But if I made the F an unfinished E, then he wasn’t writing backward. And why should he? So try
NAKF NAKED
For a torso painting? That wouldn’t help much. Naked ladies were very popular as torso paintings … in the Belt, at least.
Try something else. Picture a vindictive, dedicated killer tracking Chris across the moon, bare-assed but for his trusty laser … taking his vengeance just before internal pressure rips him apart in a gust of cold scarlet fog … no? Then how about a vehicle with a transparent bubble cockpit? Park it in shadow with the cockpit lights on, and Chris would see only the killer. But I didn’t know of any such vehicle. A custom job? And it would have shown on radar if it flew, would have left tracks if it didn’t.
I tried some other words.
My door announcer said, “Gil, are you there? It’s Laura.”
“Chiron, door open.”
She’d showered away the sweat secretions that accumulate on your skin when you’re in a pressure suit. I hadn’t. Suddenly I felt grimy. She said, “We’ve made a little progress. I thought you’d want to know.”
“What have you got?”
She sat down on the bed beside me, comfortably close. “Nobody checked out a puffer after Penzler did. Not till the search party went out. That puts our killer on foot. It would slow him down.”
“Maybe. Maybe he can get a puffer without leaving a computer record. Wouldn’t he have to do that to get at the lasers?”
“Um.”
“Or if he was a cop with the search party, that would get him the puffer and the laser, too.”
She scowled.
“Skip it. What have you got on the body?”
“Harry McCavity’s doing an autopsy outside the mirror works. The condition of the body … well, it’s freeze-dried. Harry got positively nasty when I wanted a time of death. And the tanks bled empty within half an hour, and his watch didn’t conveniently stop, either.”
“Laura, can I ask you some questions about lunar customs?”
She looked down at me. “Go ahead.”
“I already know that people here are supposed to share a bed only when they’re married to each other. What I want to know is, if two unmarried people did share a bed, would they be expected to share a bed only with each other?”
Her voice turned brittle, and she sat very straight on the bed. “What started you on this?”
“I’ve been getting some funny vibrations.” I didn’t name Jefferson.
“Yes. Well. I haven’t been bragging about the short, strong