Flatlander - Larry Niven [27]
“So-called psychic powers interest me,” Loren said. “I remembered you. And then, when I was on the verge of concluding an agreement with your Belter friend Jennison, I remembered something unusual about a crewman he had shipped with. They called you Gil the Arm, didn’t they? Prophetic. In port your drinks came free if you could use your imaginary arm to drink them.”
“Then damn you. You thought Owen was a plant, did you? Because of me! Me!”
“Breast-beating will earn you nothing, Mr. Hamilton.” Loren put steel in his voice. “Entertain me, Mr. Hamilton.”
I’d been feeling around for anything that might release me from my upright prison. No such luck. I was wrapped like a mummy in bandages too strong to break. All I could feel with my imaginary hand were cloth bandages up to my neck and a bracing rod along my back to hold me upright. Beneath the swathing I was naked.
“I’ll show you my eldritch powers,” I told Loren, “if you’ll loan me a cigarette.” Maybe that would draw him close enough …
He knew something about my arm. He knew its reach. He put one single cigarette on the edge of a small table on wheels and slid it up to me. I picked it up and stuck it in my mouth and waited hopefully for him to come light it. “My mistake,” he murmured, and he pulled the table back and repeated the whole thing with a lighted cigarette.
No luck. At least I’d gotten my smoke. I pitched the dead one as far as it would go: about two feet. I have to move slowly with my imaginary hand. Otherwise what I’m holding simply slips through my fingers.
Loren watched in fascination. A floating, disembodied cigarette, obeying my will! His eyes held traces of awe and horror. That was bad. Maybe the cigarette had been a mistake.
Some people see psi powers as akin to witchcraft and psychic people as servants of Satan. If Loren feared me, then I was dead.
“Interesting,” Loren said. “How far will it reach?”
He knew that. “As far as my real arm, of course.”
“But why? Others can reach much farther. Why not you?”
He was clear across the room, a good ten yards away, sprawled in an armchair. One hand held a drink; the other held the hypo gun. He was superbly relaxed. I wondered if I’d ever see him move from that comfortable chair, much less come within reach.
The room was small and bare, with the look of a basement. Loren’s chair and a small portable bar were the only furnishings unless there were others behind me.
A basement could be anywhere. Anywhere in Los Angeles or out of it. If it was really morning, I could be anywhere on Earth by now.
“Sure,” I said, “others can reach farther than me. But they don’t have my strength. It’s an imaginary arm, sure enough, and my imagination won’t make it ten feet long. Maybe someone could convince me it was if he tried hard enough. But maybe he’d ruin what belief I have. Then I’d have two arms, just like everyone else. I’m better off …” I let it trail away because Loren was going to take all my damn arms anyway.
My cigarette was finished. I pitched it away.
“Want a drink?”
“Sure, if you’ve got a jigger glass. Otherwise I can’t lift it.”
He found me a shot glass and sent it to me on the edge of the rolling table. I was barely strong enough to pick it up. Loren’s eyes never left me as I sipped and put it down.
The old cigarette lure. Last night I’d used it to pick up a girl. Now it was keeping me alive.
Did I really want to leave the world with something gripped tightly in my imaginary fist? Entertaining Loren. Holding his interest until—
Where was I? Where?
And suddenly I knew. “We’re at Monica Apartments,” I said. “Nowhere else.”
“I knew you’d guess that eventually.” Loren smiled. “But it’s too late. I got to you in time.”
“Don’t be so damn complacent. It was my stupidity, not your luck. I should have smelled it. Owen would never have come here of his own choice. You ordered him here.”
“And so I did. By then I already knew he was a traitor.”
“So you sent him here to die. Who was it that checked on him every day to see he’d stayed put? Was it Miller, the manager? He has to be