ARM (9 page)

The big, powerful campout flashlight sitting on a small table against a wall. I hadn't even noticed it this afternoon. Now I was sure I knew what he'd used it for, but how to prove it?

Groceries ... “If you didn't buy six months worth of groceries last night, you must have stolen them. Sinclair's generator is perfect for thefts. We'll check the local supermarkets.”

“And link the thefts to me? How?”

He was too bright to have kept the generator. But come to think of it, where could he abandon it? He was
guilty
. He couldn't have covered
all
his tracks—

“Peterfi? I've got it.”

He believed me. I saw it in the way he braced himself. Maybe he'd worked it out before I did. I said, “Your contraceptive shots must have worn off six months early. Your organlegger couldn't get you that; he's got no reason to keep contraceptives around. You're dead, Peterfi.”

“I might as well be. Damn you, Hamilton! You've cost me the exemption!”

“They won't try you right away. We can't afford to lose what's in your head. You know too much about Sinclair's generator.”

“Our generator! We built it together!”

“Yah.”

“You won't try me at all,” he said more calmly. “Are you going to tell a court how the killer left Ray's apartment?”

I dug out my sketch and handed it to him. While he was studying it, I said, “How did you like going off the roof? You couldn't have
known
it would work.”

He looked up. His words came slowly, reluctantly. I guess he had to tell someone, and it didn't matter now. “By then I didn't care. My arm hung like a dead rabbit, and it stank. It took me three minutes to reach the ground. I thought I'd die on the way.”

“Where'd you dig up an organlegger that fast?”

His eyes called me a fool. “Can't you guess? Three years ago. I was hoping diabetes could be cured by a transplant. When the government hospitals couldn't help me, I went to an organlegger. I was lucky he was still in business last night.”

He drooped. It seemed that all the anger went out of him. “Then it was six months in the field, waiting for the scars to heal. In the dark. I tried taking that big campout flashlight in with me.” He laughed bitterly. “I gave that up after I noticed the walls were smoldering.”

The wall above that little table had a scorched look. I should have wondered about that earlier.

“No baths,” he was saying. “I was afraid to use up that much water. No exercise, practically. But I had to eat, didn't I? And all for nothing.”

“Will you tell us how to find the organlegger you dealt with?”

“This is your big day, isn't it, Hamilton? All right, why not? It won't do you any good.”

“Why not?”

He looked up at me very strangely.

Then he spun about and ran.

He caught me flat-footed. I jumped after him. I didn't know what he had in mind; there was only one exit to the apartment, excluding the balcony, and he wasn't headed there. He seemed to be trying to reach a blank wall with a small table set against it and a camp flashlight on it and a drawer in it. I saw the drawer and thought,
Gun!
And I surged after him and got him by the wrist just as he reached the wall switch above the table.

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.

Copyright © 1975 by Larry Niven

First published in Epoch, ed. Roger Elwood and Robert Silverberg, 1975

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