Flatlander - Larry Niven [7]
But not Owen. After he got that meteor scar, I never saw him wear a shirt. Not just in the Ceres domes but anywhere there was air to breathe. He just had to show that scar.
A cool blue mood settled on me, and I remembered …
… Owen Jennison lounging on a corner of my hospital bed, telling me of the trip back. I couldn’t remember anything after that rock had sheared through my arm.
I should have bled to death in seconds. Owen hadn’t given me the chance. The wound was ragged; Owen had sliced it clean to the shoulder with one swipe of a com laser. Then he’d tied a length of fiberglass curtain over the flat surface and knotted it tight under my remaining armpit. He told me about putting me under two atmospheres of pure oxygen as a substitute for replacing the blood I’d lost. He told me how he’d reset the fusion drive for four gees to get me back in time. By rights we should have gone up in a cloud of starfire and glory.
“So there goes my reputation. The whole Belt knows how I rewired our drive. A lot of ’em figure if I’m stupid enough to risk my own life like that, I’d risk theirs, too.”
“So you’re not safe to travel with.”
“Just so. They’re starting to call me Four Gee Jennison.”
“You think you’ve got problems? I can just see how it’ll be when I get out of this bed. ‘You do something stupid, Gil?’ The hell of it is, it was stupid.”
“So lie a little.”
“Uh huh. Can we sell the ship?”
“Nope. Gwen inherited a third interest in it from Cubes. She won’t sell.”
“Then we’re effectively broke.”
“Except for the ship. We need another crewman.”
“Correction. You need two crewmen. Unless you want to fly with a one-armed man. I can’t afford a transplant.”
Owen hadn’t tried to offer me a loan. That would have been insulting even if he’d had the money. “What’s wrong with a prosthetic?”
“An iron arm? Sorry, no. I’m squeamish.”
Owen had looked at me strangely, but all he’d said was, “Well, we’ll wait a bit. Maybe you’ll change your mind.”
He hadn’t pressured me. Not then and not later, after I’d left the hospital and taken an apartment while I waited to get used to a missing arm. If he thought I would eventually settle for a prosthetic, he was mistaken.
Why? It’s not a question I can answer. Others obviously feel differently; there are millions of people walking around with metal and plastic and silicone parts. Part man, part machine, and how do they themselves know which is the real person?
I’d rather be dead than part metal. Call it a quirk. Call it, even, the same quirk that makes my skin crawl when I find a place like Monica Apartments. A human being should be all human. He should have habits and possessions peculiarly his own, he should not try to look like or behave like anyone but himself, and he should not be half robot.
So there I was, Gil the Arm, learning to eat with my left hand.
An amputee never entirely loses what he’s lost. My missing fingers itched. I moved to keep from barking my missing elbow on sharp corners. I reached for things, then swore when they didn’t come.
Owen had hung around, though his own emergency funds must have been running low. I hadn’t offered to sell my third of the ship, and he hadn’t asked.
There had been a girl. Now I’d forgotten her name. One night I had been at her place waiting for her to get dressed—a dinner date—and I’d happened to see a nail file she’d left on a table. I’d picked it up. I’d almost tried to file my nails but remembered in time. Irritated, I had tossed the file back on the table—and missed.
Like an idiot I’d tried to catch it with my right hand.
And I’d caught it.
I’d never suspected myself of having psychic powers. You have to be in the right frame of mind to use a psi power. But who had ever had a better opportunity than I did that night, with a whole section of brain