Flatlander - Larry Niven [15]
We hadn’t thought that way in the Belt. In the Belt survival was a virtue in itself, and life was a precious thing, spread so thin among the sterile rocks, hurtling in single units through all that killing emptiness between the worlds.
So I’d had to come to Earth for my transplant.
My request had been accepted two months after I had landed. So quickly? Later I’d learned that the banks always have a surplus of certain items. Few people lose their arms these days. I had also learned, a year after the transplant had taken, that I was using an arm taken from a captured organlegger’s storage bank.
That had been a shock. I’d hoped my arm had come from a depraved murderer, someone who’d shot fourteen nurses from a rooftop. Not at all. Some faceless, nameless victim had had the bad luck to encounter a ghoul, and I had benefited thereby.
Did I turn in my new arm in a fit of revulsion? No, surprising to say, I did not. But I had joined the ARMs, once the Amalgamation of Regional Militia, now the United Nations Police. Though I had stolen a dead man’s arm, I would hunt the kin of those who had killed him.
The noble urgency of that resolve had been drowned in paperwork these last few years. Perhaps I was becoming callous, like the flatlanders—the other flatlanders around me, voting new death penalties year after year. Income-tax evasion. Operating a flying vehicle on manual controls over a city.
Was Kenneth Graham so much worse than they?
Sure he was. The bastard had put a wire in Owen Jennison’s head.
I waited twenty minutes for Julie to come out. I could have sent her a memorandum, but there was plenty of time before noon and too little time to get anything accomplished, and … I wanted to talk to her.
“Hi,” she said. “Thanks,” taking the coffee. “How went the ceremonial drunk? Oh, Isee. Mmmmm. Very good. Almost poetic.” Conversation with Julie has a way of taking shortcuts.
Poetic, right. I remembered how inspiration had struck like lightning through a mild high glow. Owen’s floating cigarette lure. What better way to honor his memory than to use it to pick up a girl?
“Right,” Julie agreed. “But there’s something you may have missed. What’s Taffy’s last name?”
“I can’t remember. She wrote it down on—”
“What does she do for a living?”
“How should I know?”
“What religion is she? Is she a pro or an anti? Where did she grow up?”
“Dammit—”
“Half an hour ago you were very complacently musing on how depersonalized all us flatlanders are except you. What’s Taffy, a person or a foldout?” Julie stood with her hands on her hips, looking up at me like a schoolteacher.
How many people is Julie? Some of us have never seen this guardian aspect. She’s frightening, the guardian. If it ever appeared on a date, the man she was with would be struck impotent forever.
It never does. When a reprimand is deserved, Julie delivers it in broad daylight. This serves to separate her functions, but it doesn’t make it easier to take.
No use pretending it wasn’t her business, either.
I’d come here to ask for Julie’s protection. Let me turn unlovable to Julie, even a little bit unlovable, and as far as Julie was concerned, I would have an unreadable mind. How, then, would she know when I was in trouble? How could she send help to rescue me from whatever? My private life was her business, her single, vastly important job.
“I like Taffy,” I protested. “I didn’t care who she was when we met. Now I like her, and I think she likes me. What do you want from a first date?”
“You know better. You can remember other dates when two of you talked all night on a couch just from the joy of learning about each other.” She mentioned three names, and I flushed.