Flatlander - Larry Niven [26]
There was something of the bird about him. He was tall and slender, small-boned, and his triangular face reached a point at the chin. His wild, silken blond hair had withdrawn from his temples, leaving a sharp widow’s peak. He wore impeccably tailored wool street shorts in orange and brown stripes. Smiling brightly, with his arms folded and his head cocked to one side, he stood waiting for me to speak.
And I recognized him. Owen had taken a holo of him somewhere.
“Where am I?” I groaned, trying to sound groggy. “What time is it?”
“Time? It’s already morning,” my captor said. “As for where you are, I’ll let you wonder.”
Something about his manner … I took a guess and said, “Loren?”
Loren bowed, not overdoing it. “And you are Gilbert Hamilton of the United Nations. Police. Gil the Arm.”
Had he said Arm or ARM? I let it pass. “I seem to have slipped.”
“You underestimated the reach of my own arm. You also underestimated my interest.”
I had. It isn’t much harder to capture an ARM than any other citizen if you catch him off guard and if you’re willing to risk the men. In this case his risk had cost him nothing. Cops use hypo guns for the same reason organleggers do. The men I’d shot, if I’d hit anyone in those few seconds of battle, would have come around long ago. Loren must have set me up in these bandages, then left me under “Russian sleep” until he was ready to talk to me.
The electrodes were the “Russian sleep.” One goes on each eyelid, one on the nape of the neck. A small current goes through the brain, putting you right to sleep. You get a full night’s sleep in an hour. If it’s not turned off, you can sleep forever.
So this was Loren.
He stood watching me with his head cocked to one side, birdlike, with his arms folded. One hand held a hypo gun, rather negligently, I thought.
What time was it? I didn’t dare ask again, because Loren might guess something. But if I could stall him until 0945, Julie could send help …
She could send help where?
Finagle in hysterics! Where was I? If I didn’t know that, Julie wouldn’t know, either!
And Loren intended me for the organ banks. One crystalline sliver would knock me out without harming any of the delicate, infinitely various parts that made me Gil Hamilton. Then Loren’s doctors would take me apart.
In government operating rooms they flash-burn the criminal’s brain for later urn burial. God knows what Loren would do with my brain. But the rest of me was young and healthy. Even considering Loren’s overhead, I was worth more than a million UN marks on the hoof.
“Why me?” I asked. “It was me you wanted, not just any ARM. Why the interest in me?”
“It was you who were investigating the case of Owen Jennison. Much too thoroughly.”
“Not thoroughly enough, dammit!”
Loren looked puzzled. “You really don’t understand?”
“I really don’t.”
“I find that highly interesting,” Loren mused. “Highly.”
“All right, why am I still alive?”
“I was curious, Mr. Hamilton. I hoped you’d tell me about your imaginary arm.”
So he’d said Arm, not ARM. I bluffed anyway. “My what?”
“No need for games, Mr. Hamilton. If I think I’m losing, I’ll use this.” He wiggled the hypo gun. “You’ll never wake up.”
Damn! He knew. The only things I could move were my ears and my imaginary arm, and Loren knew all about it! I’d never be able to lure him into reach.
Provided that he knew all about it.
I had to draw him out.
“Okay,” I said, “but I’d like to know how you found out about it. A plant in the ARMs?”
Loren chuckled. “I wish it were so. No. We captured one of your men some months ago, quite by accident. When I realized what he was, I induced him to talk shop with me. He was able to tell me something about your remarkable arm. I hope you’ll tell me more.”
“Who was it?”
“Really, Mr. Hamil—”
“Who was it?”
“Do you really expect me to remember the name of every donor?”
Who had gone into Loren’s organ banks? Stranger, acquaintance, friend? Does the manager of a slaughterhouse remember