Flatlander - Larry Niven [82]
I threw my weight backward and yanked him away from there … and then the field came on.
I held a hand and arm up to the elbow. Beyond was a fluttering of violet light: Peterfi was thrashing frantically in a low-inertia field. I hung on while I tried to figure out what was happening.
The second generator was here somewhere. In the wall? The switch seemed to have been recently plastered in, now that I saw it close. Figure a closet on the other side and the generator in it. Peterfi must have drilled through the wall and fixed that switch. Sure, what else did he have to do with six months of spare time?
No point in yelling for help. Peterfi’s soundproofing was too modern. And if I didn’t let go, Peterfi would die of thirst in a few minutes.
Peterfi’s feet came straight at my jaw. I threw myself down, and the edge of a boot sole nearly tore my ear off. I rolled forward in time to grab his ankle. There was more violet fluttering, and his other leg thrashed wildly outside the field. Too many conflicting nerve impulses were pouring into the muscles. The leg flopped about like something dying. If I didn’t let go, he’d break it in a dozen places.
He’d knocked the table over. I didn’t see it fall, but suddenly it was lying on its side. The top, drawer included, must have been well beyond the field. The flashlight lay just beyond the violet fluttering of his hand.
Okay. He couldn’t reach the drawer; his hand wouldn’t get coherent signals if it left the field. I could let go of his ankle. He’d turn off the field when he got thirsty enough.
And if I didn’t let go, he’d die in there.
It was like wrestling a dolphin one-handed. I hung on anyway, looking for a flaw in my reasoning. Peterfi’s free leg seemed broken in at least two places … I was about to let go when something must have jarred together in my head.
Faces of charred bone grinned derisively at me.
Brain to hand: HANG ON! Don’t you understand? He’s trying to reach the flashlight!
I hung on.
Presently Peterfi stopped thrashing. He lay on his side, his face and hands glowing blue. I was trying to decide whether he was playing possum when the blue light behind his face quietly went out.
I let them in. They looked it over. Valpredo went off to search for a pole to reach the light switch. Ordaz asked, “Was it necessary to kill him?”
I pointed to the flashlight. He didn’t get it.
“I was overconfident,” I said. “I shouldn’t have come in alone. He’s already killed two people with that flashlight. The organleggers who gave him his new arm. He didn’t want them talking, so he burned their faces off and then dragged them out onto a slidewalk. He probably tied them to the generator and then used the line to pull it. With the field on, the whole setup wouldn’t weigh more than a couple of pounds.”
“With a flashlight?” Ordaz pondered. “Of course. It would have been putting out five hundred times as much light. A good thing you thought of that in time.”
“Well, I do spend more time dealing with these oddball science fiction devices than you do.”
“And welcome to them,” Ordaz said.
PATCHWORK GIRL
1. CITY OF MIRRORS
We fell east to west, dipping toward the moon in the usual shallow, graceful arc. Our pilot had turned off the cabin lights to give us a view. The sun set as we fell. I peered past Tom Reinecke and let my eyes adjust.
It was black below. There wasn’t even Earthlight; the “new” Earth was a slender sliver in the eastern sky. The black shadows of mountains emerged form the western horizon and came toward us.
Reinecke had fallen silent.
That was a new development. Tom Reinecke had been trying to interview me even before we left Outback Field, Australia. Thus:
What was it like out there among the flying mountains? Had I really killed an organlegger by using psychic powers? As a man of