Flatlander - Larry Niven [63]
“There are some things we need to know first, Mr. Porter. Were you and Janice together for all of last evening? Were there others with you?”
“Sure. We had dinner alone, but afterward we went to a kind of party. On the beach at Santa Monica. Friend of mine has a house there. I’ll give you the address. Some of us wound up back at Cziller’s around midnight. Then Janice flew me home.”
“You have said that you are Janice’s lover. Doesn’t she live with you?”
“No. I’m her steady lover, you might say, but I don’t have any strings on her.” He seemed embarrassed. “She lives here with Uncle Ray. Lived. Oh, hell.” He glanced into the ‘doc. “Look, the readout said she’ll be waking up any minute. Can I get her a robe?”
“Of course.”
We followed Porter to Janice’s bedroom, where he picked out a peach-colored negligee for her. I was beginning to like the guy. He had good instincts. An evening dye job was not the thing to wear on the morning of a murder. And he’d picked one with long, loose sleeves. Her missing arm wouldn’t show so much.
“You call him Uncle Ray,” Ordaz said.
“Yah. Because Janice did.”
“He did not object? Was he gregarious?”
“Gregarious? Well, no, but we liked each other. We both liked puzzles, you understand? We traded murder mysteries and jigsaw puzzles. Listen, this may sound silly, but are you sure he’s dead?”
“Regrettably, yes. He is dead, and murdered. Was he expecting someone to arrive after you left?”
“Yes.”
“He said so?”
“No. But he was wearing a shirt and pants. When it was just us, he usually went naked.”
“Ah.”
“Older people don’t do that much,” Porter said. “But Uncle Ray was in good shape. He took care of himself.”
“Have you any idea whom he might have been expecting?”
“No. Not a woman; not a date, I mean. Maybe someone in the same business.”
Behind him, Janice moaned.
Porter was hovering over her in a flash. He put a hand on her shoulder and urged her back. “Lie still, love. We’ll have you out of there in a jiffy.”
She waited while he disconnected the sleeves and other paraphernalia. She said, “What happened?”
“They haven’t told me yet,” Porter said with a flash of anger. “Be careful sitting up. You’ve had an accident.”
“What kind of—? Oh!”
“It’ll be all right.”
“My arm!”
Porter helped her out of the ‘doc. Her arm ended in pink flesh two inches below the shoulder. She let Porter drape the robe around her. She tried to fasten the sash, quit when she realized she was trying to do it with one hand.
I said, “Listen, I lost my arm once.”
She looked at me. So did Porter.
“I’m Gil Hamilton. With the UN Police. You really don’t have anything to worry about. See?” I raised my right arm, opened and closed the fingers. “The organ banks don’t get much call for arms. You probably won’t even have to wait. I didn’t. It feels just like the arm I was born with, and it works just as well.”
“How did you lose it?” she asked.
“Ripped away by a meteor,” I said.
Ordaz said to her, “Do you remember how you lost your own arm?”
“Yes.” She shivered. “Could we go somewhere where I could sit down? I feel a bit weak.”
We moved to the living room. Janice dropped onto the couch a bit too hard. It might have been shock, or the missing arm might be throwing her balance off. I remembered. She said, “Uncle Ray’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“I came home and found him that way. Lying next to that time machine of his, and the back of his head all bloody. I thought maybe he was still alive, but I could see the machine was going; it had that violet glow. I tried to get hold of the poker. I wanted to use it to switch the machine off, but I couldn’t get a grip. My arm wasn’t just numb; it wouldn’t move. You know, you can try to wiggle your toes when your foot’s asleep, but … I could get my hands on the handle of the damn poker, but when I tried to pull, it just slid off.”
“You kept trying?”
“For a while. Then … I backed away to think it over. I wasn’t about to waste any time with Uncle Ray maybe dying in there. My arm felt stone dead … I guess it was, wasn’t it?” She shuddered.