Flatlander - Larry Niven [60]
An ARM needs empathy. He needs the ability to piece together a picture of the mind of his prey. But Bera had too much empathy. I remember his reaction when Kenneth Graham killed himself: a single surge of current through the plug in his skull and down the wire to the pleasure center of his brain. Bera had been twitchy for weeks. And the Anubis case early last year. When we realized what the man had done, Bera had been close to killing him on the spot. I wouldn’t have blamed him.
Last year Bera had had enough. He’d gone into the technical end of the business. His days of hunting organleggers were finished. He was now running the ARM laboratory.
He had to want to know what this oddball contraption was. I kept waiting for him to ask … and he watched, faintly smiling. Finally it dawned on me. He thought it was a pratical joke, something I’d cobbled together for his own discomfiture.
I said, “Bera.”
And he looked at me brightly and said, “Hey, man, what is it?”
“You ask the most embarrassing questions.”
“Right, I can understand your feeling that way, but what is it? I love it, it’s neat, but what is this that you have brought me?”
I told him all I knew, such as it was. When I finished, he said, “It doesn’t sound much like a new space drive.”
“Oho, you heard that, too, did you? No, it doesn’t. Unless—” I’d been wondering since I first saw it. “Maybe it’s supposed to accelerate a fusion explosion. You’d get greater efficiency in a fusion drive.”
“They get better than ninety percent now, and that widget looks heavy.” He reached to touch the bent silver triangle gently with long, tapering fingers. “Huh. Well, we’ll dig out the answers.”
“Good luck. I’m going back to Sinclair’s place.”
“Why? The action is here.” Often enough he’d heard me talking wistfully of joining an interstellar colony. He must know how I’d feel about a better drive for the interstellar slowboats.
“It’s like this,” I said. “We’ve got the generator, but we don’t know anything about it. We might wreck it. I’m going to have a whack at finding someone who knows something about Sinclair’s generator.”
“Meaning?”
“Whoever tried to steal it. Sinclair’s killer.”
“If you say so.” But he looked dubious. He knew me too well. He said, “I understand there’s a mother hunt in the offing.”
“Oh?”
He smiled. “Just a rumor. You guys are lucky. When my dad first joined, the business of the ARM was mostly mother hunts. The organleggers hadn’t really got organized yet, and the Fertility Laws were new. If we hadn’t enforced them, nobody would have obeyed them at all.”
“Sure, and people threw rocks at your father. Bera, those days are gone.”
“They could come back. Having children is basic.”
“Bera, I did not join the ARM to hunt unlicensed parents.” I waved and left before he could answer. I could do without the call to duty from Bera, who had done with hunting men and mothers.
I’d had a good view of the Rodewald Building while dropping toward the roof this morning. I had a good view now from my commandeered taxi. This time I was looking for escape paths.
There were no balconies on Sinclair’s floors, and the windows were flush to the side of the building. A cat burglar would have trouble with them. They didn’t look like they’d open.
I tried to spot the cameras, Ordaz had mentioned as the taxi dropped toward the roof. I couldn’t find them. Maybe they were mounted in the elms.
Why was I bothering? I hadn’t joined the ARM to chase mothers or machinery, or common murderers.
I’d joined the ARM to hunt organleggers.
The ARM doesn’t deal in murder per se. The machine was out of my hands now. A murder investigation wouldn’t keep me out of a mother hunt. And I’d never met the girl. I knew nothing of her beyond the fact that she was where a killer ought to be.
Was it just that she