Flatlander - Larry Niven [16]
I thought about it, standing there in the corridor. Funny: I’ve faced the guardian Julie on other occasions, and it has never occurred to me to just walk out of the unpleasant situation. Later I think of that. At the time I just stand there, facing the guardian/judge/teacher. I thought about Taffy …
“She’s nice,” I said. “Not depersonalized. Squeamish, even. She wouldn’t make a good nurse. She’d want to help too much, and it would tear her apart when she couldn’t. I’d say she was one of the vulnerable ones.”
“Go on.”
“I want to see her again, but I won’t dare talk shop with her. In fact … I’d better not see her till this business of Owen is over. Loren might take an interest in her. Or … she might take an interest in me, and I might get hurt … have I missed anything?”
“I think so. You owe her a phone call. If you won’t be dating her for a few days, call her and tell her so.”
“Check.” I spun on my heel, spun back. “Finagle’s jest! I almost forgot. The reason I came here—”
“I know; you want a time slot. Suppose I check on you at oh nine forty-five every morning?”
“That’s a little early. When I get in deadly danger, it’s usually at night.”
“I’m off at night. Oh nine forty-five is all I’ve got. I’m sorry, Gil, but it is. Shall I monitor you or not?”
“Sold. Nine forty-five.”
“Good. Let me know if you get real proof Owen was murdered. I’ll give you two slots. You’ll be in a little more concrete danger then.”
“Good.”
Taffy wasn’t home, of course, and I didn’t know where she worked or even what she did. Her phone offered to take a message. I gave my name and said I’d call back.
And then I sat there sweating for five minutes.
It was half an hour to noon. Here I was at my desk phone. I couldn’t decently see any way to argue myself out of sending a message to Homer Chandrasekhar.
I didn’t want to talk to him, then or ever. He’d chewed me out but good last time I’d seen him. My free arm had cost me my Belter life, and it had cost me Homer’s respect. I didn’t want to talk to him even on a one-way message, and I most particularly didn’t want to have to tell him Owen was dead.
But someone had to tell him.
And maybe he could find out something.
And I’d put it off nearly a full day.
For five minutes I sweated, and then I called long distance and recorded a message and sent it off to Ceres. More accurately, I recorded six messages before I was satisfied. I don’t want to talk about it.
I tried Taffy again; she might come home for lunch. Wrong.
I hung up wondering if Julie had been fair. What had we bargained for, Taffy and I, beyond a pleasant night? And we’d had that and would have others, with luck.
But Julie would find it hard not to be fair. If she thought Taffy was the vulnerable type, she’d taken her information from my own mind.
Mixed feelings. You’re a kid, and your mother has just laid down the law. But it is a law, something you can count on … and she is paying attention to you … and she does care … when, for so many of those outside, nobody cares at all.
“Naturally I thought of murder,” Ordaz said. “I always consider murder. When my sainted mother passed away after three years of the most tender care by my sister Maria Angela, I actually considered searching for evidence of needle holes about the head.”
“Find any?”
Ordaz’s face froze. He put down his beer and started to get up.
“Cool it,” I said hurriedly. “No offense intended.” He glared a moment, then sat down half-mollified.
We’d picked an outdoor restaurant on the pedestrian level. On the other side of a hedge (a real live hedge, green and growing and everything) the shoppers were carried past in a steady one-way stream. Beyond them a slidewalk carried a similar stream in the opposite direction. I had the dizzy feeling that it was we who were moving.
A waiter like a bell-bottomed chess pawn produced steaming dishes of chili from its torso, put them precisely in