Flatlander - Larry Niven [4]
“Did he ever have visitors?”
The man’s eyebrows went up. We’d drifted in the direction of his office, and I was close enough to read the name on the door: JASPER MILLER, MANAGER. “Of course not,” he said. “Anyone would have noticed that something was wrong.”
“You mean he took the room for the express purpose of dying? You saw him once and never again?”
“I suppose he might … no, wait.” The manager thought deeply. “No. He registered on a Thursday. I noticed the Belter tan, of course. Then on Friday he went out. I happened to see him pass.”
“Was that the day he got the droud? No, skip it; you wouldn’t know that. Was it the last time you saw him go out?”
“Yes, it was.”
“Then he could have had visitors late Thursday or early Friday.”
The manager shook his head very positively.
“Why not?”
“You see, Mr., uh …”
“Hamilton.”
“We have a holo camera on every floor, Mr. Hamilton. It takes a picture of each tenant the first time he goes to his room and then never again. Privacy is one of the services a tenant buys with his room.” The manager drew himself up a little as he said this. “For the same reason, the holo camera takes a picture of anyone who is not a tenant. The tenants are thus protected from unwarranted intrusions.”
“And there were no visitors to any of the rooms on Owen’s floor?”
“No, sir, there were not.”
“Your tenants are a solitary bunch.”
“Perhaps they are.”
“I suppose a computer in the basement decides who is and is not a tenant.”
“Of course.”
“So for six weeks Owen Jennison sat alone in his room. In all that time he was totally ignored.”
Miller tried to turn his voice cold, but he was too nervous. “We try to give our guests privacy. If Mr. Jennison had wanted help of any kind, he had only to pick up the house phone. He could have called me, or the pharmacy, or the supermarket downstairs.”
“Well, thank you, Mr. Miller. That’s all I wanted to know. I wanted to know how Owen Jennison could wait six weeks to die while nobody noticed.”
Miller swallowed. “He was dying all that time?”
“Yah.”
“We had no way of knowing. How could we? I don’t see how you can blame us.”
“I don’t, either,” I said, and brushed by. Miller had been close enough, so I had lashed out at him. Now I was ashamed. The man was perfectly right. Owen could have had help if he’d wanted it.
I stood outside, looking up at the jagged blue line of sky that showed between the tops of the buildings. A taxi floated into view, and I beeped my clicker at it, and it dropped.
* * *
I went back to ARM Headquarters. Not to work—I couldn’t have done any work, not under the circumstances—but to talk to Julie.
Julie. A tall girl, pushing thirty, with green eyes and long hair streaked red and gold. And two wide brown forceps marks above her right knee, but they weren’t showing now. I looked into her office through the one-way glass and watched her at work.
She sat in a contour couch, smoking. Her eyes were closed. Sometimes her brow would furrow as she concentrated. Sometimes she would snatch a glance at the clock, then close her eyes again.
I didn’t interrupt her. I knew the importance of what she was doing.
Julie. She wasn’t beautiful. Her eyes were a little too far apart, her chin too square, her mouth too wide. It didn’t matter. Because Julie could read minds.
She was the ideal date. She was everything a man needed. A year ago, the day after the night I killed my first man, I had been in a terribly destructive mood. Somehow Julie had turned it into a mood of manic exhilaration. We’d run wild through a supervised anarchy park, running up an enormous bill. We’d hiked five miles without going anywhere, facing backward on a downtown slidewalk. At the end we’d been utterly fatigued, too tired to think … But two weeks ago it had been a warm, cuddly, comfortable night. Two people happy with each other, no more than that. Julie was what you needed, anytime, anywhere.
Her male harem must have been the largest in history. To pick up on the thoughts of a male ARM, Julie had to be in love with him. Luckily