Ларри Нивен - Crashlander

Elevators led to the roof. Admissions was here, and a line of the big transfer booths, and a transparent roof with an awesome view up into the sea forest. I stepped into a booth and inserted my card. The random walk began.

A shopping mall, high up above a central well. Booths in a line, just inside a big water lock. A restaurant; another; an apartment building. I was jumping every second and a half.

Nobody noticed me flicking in; would they notice how quickly I flicked out? Nobody gets upset at a random walk unless the kids do it often enough to tie up circuits. But they might remember an adult. How long before someone called the police?

A dozen kzinti, lying about in cool half darkness gnawing oddly shaped bones, rolled to a defensive four-footed crouch at the sight of me. I couldn't help it: I threw myself against the back wall. I must have looked crazed with terror when the random walk popped me into a Solarico Omni center. I was trying to straighten my face when the jump came. Hey — A travel terminal of some kind; I turned and saw the dirigible, like an underpressured planet, before the scene changed — Her!

Beyond a thick glass wall, the seaweed forest swarmed with men and women wearing fins: farmers picking spheres that glowed softly in oil-slick colors. I waited my moment and snatched my card out of the slot. Was it really — I tapped quickly to get an instant billing, counted two back along the booth numbers. I couldn't use the jimmied card for this, so I'd picked up a handful of coins. Her?

Solarico Omni, top floor. I stepped out of the booth, and saw the gates that would stop a shoplifter, and a stack of lockers.

For the first time I had second thoughts about the way I was dressed. Nothing wrong with the clothes, but I couldn't carry a mucking great package of diving gear into a shopping center, with a stunner so handy. I pushed my backpurse into a locker and stepped through the gates.

The whole complex was visible from the rim of the central well. It was darker down there than I was used to. Pacifica citizens must like their underwater gloom, I thought.

Two floors down, an open fast-food center: wasn't that where I'd seen her? She was gone now. I'd seen only a face, and I could have been wrong. At least she'd never spot me, not before I was much closer.

But where was she? Dressed how? Employee or customer? It was midmorning: she couldn't be on lunch break. Customer, then. Only, Shashters kept poor track of time.

Three floors down, the sports department. Good enough. I rode down the escalator. I'd buy a spear gun or another stunner, shove everything into the bag that came with it. Then I could start window shopping for faces.

The Sports Department aisles were pleasantly wide. Most of what it sold was fishing gear, a daunting variety. There was skiing equipment too. And hunting, it looked like: huge weapons built for hands bigger than a baseball mitt. The smallest was a fat tube as long as my forearm, with a grip no bigger than a kzinti kitten's hand. Oh, sure, kzinti just love going to humans for their weapons. Maybe the display was there to entertain human customers.

The clerks were leaving me alone to browse. Customs differ. What the tanj was that?

Two kzinti in the aisle, spaced three yards apart, hissing the Hero's Tongue at each other. A handful of human customers watched in some amusement. There didn't seem to be danger there. One wore what might be a loose dark blue swimsuit with a hole for the tail. The other (sleeveless brown tunic) took down four yards of disassembled fishing rod. A kzinti clerk?

The corner of my eye caught a clerk's hands (human) opening the case and reaching in for that smaller tube, with a grip built for a kzin child. Or a man — My breath froze in my throat. I was looking into Feather's horrible ARM weapon. I looked up into the clerk's face.

It came out as a whisper. «No, Sharrol, no no no. It's me. It's Beowulf.»

She didn't fire. But she was pale with terror, her jaw set like rock, and the black tube looked at the bridge of my nose.

I eased two inches to the right, very slowly, to put myself between the tube and the kzin cop. That wasn't a swimsuit he was wearing: it was the same sleeve less, legless police uniform I'd seen at breakfast.

We were eye to eye. The whites showed wide around her irises. I said, «My face. Look at my face. Under the beard. It's Bey, love. I'm a foot shorter. Remember?»

She remembered. It terrified her.

«I wouldn't fit. The cavity was built for Carlos. My heart and lungs were shredded, my back was shattered, my brain was dying, and you had to get me into the cavity. But I wouldn't fit, remember? Sharrol, I have to know.» I looked around quickly. An aisle over, kzinti noses came up, smelling fear. «Did you kill Feather?»

«Kill Feather.» She set the tube down carefully on the display case. Her brow wrinkled. «I was going through my pockets. It was distracting me, keeping me sane. I needed that. The light was wrong, the gravity was wrong, the Earth was so far away —»

«Shh.»

«Survival gear, always know what you have, you taught me that.» She began to tremble. «I heard a sonic boom. I looked up just as you were blown backward. I thought I must be c-crazy. I couldn't have seen that.»

It was my back that felt vulnerable now. I felt all those floors behind and above me, all those eyes. The kzin cop had lost interest. If there was a moment for Feather Filip to take us both, this was it.

But the ARM weapon was in Sharrol's hands –

«But Carlos jumped into the boat and roared off, and Feather screamed at him, and you were all blood and sprawled out like — like dead — and I, I can't remember.»

«Yes, dear.» I took her hand, greatly daring. «But I have to know if she's still chasing us.»

She shook her head violently. «I jumped on her back and cut her throat. She tried to point that tube at me. I held her arm down, she elbowed me in the ribs, I hung on, she fell down. I cut her head off. But Bey, there you were, and Carlos was gone and the kids were too, and what was I going to do?» She came around the counter and put her arms around me and said, «We're the same height. Futz!»

I was starting to relax. Feather was nowhere. We were free of her. «I kept telling myself you must have killed her. A trained ARM psychotic, but she didn't take you seriously. She couldn't have guessed how quick you'd wake up.

«I fed her-into the organics reservoir.»

«Yeah. There was nowhere else all that biomass could have come from. It had to be Feather —»

«And I couldn't lift your body, and you wouldn't fit anyway. I had to cut off your h-h-«She pulled close and tried to push her head under my jaw, but I wasn't tall enough any more. «Head. I cut as low as I could. Tanj, we're the same height. Did it work? Are you all right?»

«I'm fine. I'm just short. The 'doc rebuilt me from my DNA, from the throat down, but it built me in Fafnir gravity. Good thing, too, I guess.»

«Yeah.» She was trying to laugh, gripping my arms as if I might disappear. «There wouldn't have been room for your feet. Bey, we shouldn't be talking here. That kzin is a cop, and nobody knows how good their hearing is. Bey, I get off at sixteen hundred.»

«I'll shop. We're both overdue on life gifts.»

«How do I look? How should I look?»

I had posed us on the roof of the Pequod, with the camera looking upward past us into the green seaweed forest. I said, «Just right. Pretty, cheerful, the kind of woman a man might drown himself for. A little bewildered. You didn't contact me because you got a blow to the head. You're only just healing. You ready? Take one, now.» I keyed the vidcamera.

Me: «Wilhelmin, Toranaga, I hope you're feeling as good as we are. I had no trouble finding Milcenta once I got my head on straight —»