Flatlander - Larry Niven [42]
I whispered, “Why is she still here if you can’t cure her?”
Doctor Hartman spoke in a normal tone. “At first we thought it was catatonic withdrawal. That we could have cured. This isn’t the first time someone has suggested moving her. She’s still here because I want to know what’s wrong with her. She’s been like this ever since they brought her in.”
She still hadn’t noticed us. The doctor talked as if she couldn’t hear us. “Do the ARMs have any idea what was done to her? If we knew that, we might be better able to treat her.”
I shook my head. “I was going to ask you. What could they have done to her?”
He shook his head.
“Try another angle, then. What couldn’t they have done to her? There were no bruises, broken bones, anything like that.”
“No internal injuries, either. No surgery was performed on her. There was the evidence of drugging. I understand they were organleggers.”
“It looks likely.” She could have been pretty, I thought. It wasn’t the lack of cosmetics or even the gaunt look. It was the empty eyes, isolated above high cheekbones, looking at nothing. “Could she be blind?”
“No. The optic nerves function perfectly.”
She reminded me of a wirehead. You can’t get a wirehead’s attention, either, when house current is trickling down a fine wire from the top of his skull into the pleasure center of his brain. But no, the pure egocentric joy of a wirehead hardly matched Charlotte’s egocentric misery.
“Tell me,” Doctor Hartman said. “How badly could an organlegger frighten a young girl?”
“We don’t get many citizens back from organleggers. I … honestly can’t think of any upper limit. They could have taken her on a tour of the medical facilities. They could have made her watch while they broke up a prospect for stuff.” I didn’t like what my imagination was doing. There are things you don’t think about, because the point is to protect the prospects, keep the Lorens and the Anubises from reaching them at all. But you can’t help thinking about them anyway, so you push them back, push them back. These things must have been in my head for a long time. “They had the facilities to partly break her up and put her back together again and leave her conscious the whole time. You wouldn’t have found scars. The only scars they can’t cure with modern medicine are in the bone itself. They could have done any kind of temporary transplant—and they must have been bored, Doctor. Business was slow. But—”
“Stop.” He was gray around the edges. His voice was weak and hoarse.
“But organleggers aren’t sadists generally. They don’t have that much respect for the stuff. They wouldn’t play that kind of game unless they had something special against her.”
“My God, you play rough games. How can you sleep nights, knowing what you know?”
“None of your business, Doctor. In your opinion, is it likely that she was frightened into this state?”
“Not all at once. We could have brought her out of it if it had happened all at once. I suppose she may have been frightened repeatedly. How long did they have her?”
“Nine days.”
Hartman looked worse yet. Definitely he was not ARM material.
I dug in my sporran for the pressure implanter. “I’d like your permission to put a tracer needle in her. I won’t hurt her.”
“There’s no need to whisper, Mr. Hamilton—”
“Was I?” Yes, dammit, I’d been holding my voice low, as if I were afraid to disturb her. In a normal voice I said, “The tracer could help us locate her in case she disappears.”
“Disappears? Why should she do that? You can see for yourself—”
“That’s the worst of it. The same gang of organleggers that got her the first time may be trying to kidnap her again. Just how good is your … security …” I trailed off. Charlotte Chambers had turned around and was looking at me.
Hartman’s hand closed hard on my upper arm. He was warning me. Calmly, reassuringly, he said, “Don’t worry, Charlotte. I’m Doctor Hartman. You’re in good hands. We’ll take care of you.”
Charlotte was half out of her chair, twisted around to search my face. I tried to