Ларри Нивен - Crashlander

«Certainly.»

It was half a phone booth, just two black walls and a projection table. It would give me privacy, but I could still see out. I tapped the receiver, and a life-sized bust of Sigmund Ausfaller popped into view.

His rather vicious smile faded a little. He hadn't expected me at eye level. I thought, Sigmund, you're bothering a total stranger, sandy-haired, tanned, a foot shorter than your albino quarry. Could I get away with that?

I didn't feel lucky. I said, «Long story. Ask Ander.»

«So your name is Graynor now?»

«Braynard,» I said distinctly. «Where are you?» He'd only heard the name over a phone. «Graynor» would give the bastard Sharrol and Jeena, too.

«Where should I be?»

I saw nothing of background, just the head and torso solid projection. He could be anywhere. I suggested, «Retrieving Carlos Wu's autodoc?»

«In due course. It shouldn't be left here. Look outside, Bey. Turn left. Farther. Look up.»

He was ten floors up in a glass slab, looking down at me. Doll-sized, he was just big enough to recognize. He waved at me from the window, then turned back to his holovid phone.

«I'm right on top of you. It would take you hours to freeze yourself, perhaps days to be stowed and launched. I need only cross the street to stop you. Let us reason together, Bey.»

«You always seem to have an offer I can't refuse. Why are you picking on me, Sigmund? I told Ander everything he wanted to know.»

«I haven't heard from Ander.»

«Feather. Carlos. Pierson's puppeteers.»

«You'll still have to come home with me, Bey. You know too much, and you talk too much. Now, wait. Don't go off half-cocked. I can get you a birthright.»

«Yeah?» It was dawning on me that he might not know about Sharrol.

«One child. We have that much power if you can do something of clear public benefit. Can you return Carlos Wu to his home?»

«Carlos is dead, Sigmund.»

«Dead?»

«How did you find me?»

«You can't see it, Bey, but I'm looking at four walls of vidscreens. We scattered cameras everywhere. Then we plastered the screens all over my room. It's been — Wait one. Pray turn all screens off.» He waited an instant, looking offstage. Then, «Thank God, I can throw these things away and watch blank walls again. I've been watching three spaceport terminals and the top five restaurants and ten hotel lobbies, and when you finally showed, I couldn't believe it was you.»

«You damn well convinced yourself somehow!»

«I couldn't believe it wasn't, either. Sorry about that. Bey, are you sure about Carlos?»

«Feather blew a hole through him. But the nanotech 'doc is his last legacy, and it's UN property, and I might arrange to put that in your hands.»

«Very good. We'll have a chance to talk about puppeteers and the like on the way home.» A bell pinged. He turned around and shouted, «Pray open the door!» He turned back. «And Feather? You know, we never intended to turn her loose on an alien world. We want some weaponry back, too. And the others, Sharrol and the children?»

I set my face for the big lie. «Feather's g-»

Sigmund jumped at me, banged his face on the edge of the field, recoiled, and fell backward and out of sight.

Ander Smittarasheed stepped into view, wading through the table, short ribs deep. He was holding a familiar object. He reached down. Sigmund Ausfaller was pulled into view by his hair. Sigmund's chest was shattered, a huge hole rammed through it.

Ander was holding Feather Filip's horrible ARM weapon, the gun that had blown a hole through my own chest. He pointed it at me. «Recognize this?»

For an instant I thought I was going mad. He couldn't have that. He couldn't. It was in the apt, Sharrol's apt, hidden — Ah. Sharrol left it for me. She left me a weapon in my backpurse. Not a bad idea, but Ander must have searched my room, searched by backpurse, found it there. When?

After dinner, when I was at the hotel desk getting my key.

Ander said, «Where are you, Beowulf?»

I was still looking through Outbound's huge window. High up in that glass slab I could see a tiny figure where Ausfaller had waved at me. The back of Ander's head and shoulders.

If he turned around and looked down, he would see me. I didn't turn away. The front of me now looked less like Beowulf Shaeffer than the back. And what could Ander see in his phone? The miniature bust of a tanned stranger and nothing behind it.

I said, «I'm in my room at the Pequod. Ander, nothing was said about killing the poor flat.»

«Beowulf, we can hardly sell our wonderful nanotech machine without Sigmund knowing where we got it. The room isn't registered to anyone, and the punchgun can go with me. You haven't used the punchgun, have you? Like for robbing a droud shop?»

«No.»

«Then at worst they'll track it back to the ARM. And then maybe to you.»

My head seemed filled with fog. Did I do this? Did I find the temptation that turned Ander Smittarasheed into a thief and killer? Or was he always that?

What do I do now? Play it out. «A dead man can't send us money,» I said.

«Sigmund brought local money. It'll be in that case. It may take me a while to break the security programs, and I don't really know how much he brought.»

«Show me the case.»

«What, you think I'm lying?» He bent out of view, then rose again with a heavy silver briefcase in his fist. «Now is when you tell me where the island is.»

I gave him a longitude, the right one. «Latitude when I've got half the money.»

«I'll be in touch.»

«Wait! Ander, get rid of the punchgun.»

Ander laughed. «I think I'll keep it.»

He'd seen how I feared it. He'd keep it to intimidate me. I tried anyway. «Ander, I was wearing a v-»

He flicked off.

I waited at the phone until I saw the shape in the hotel room window stand and step out of view. Then I went back to the desk. «Are you ready to freeze me, Ms. Machti?»

White-garbed medics wanted my retina prints and a voice match. I was five feet ten and a half inches tall. The physical exam they put me through seemed perfunctory, but what could they find? Carlos Wu's autodoc had rebuilt me almost from my DNA map. I'd never been in better shape.

I wanted to view Sharrol and Jeena. The doctors let me see them. They looked all right … well, dead, but otherwise … I was nerving myself to join them.

As if I'd left myself a choice.

What a mess. Poor Sigmund.

What would the local police make of that wound? They'd never seen a corpse like that, but they'd seen a vest like that. The punchgun had torn that kind of hole through a survival vest that had belonged to a Persial January Hebert, who'd sunk out of sight a year and a half ago.

Surely they'd make the connection. They'd come looking for the reclusive Persial January Hebert. Hebert had indulged in a sudden flurry of activity: a phone call here, a hotel room at the Pequod Hotel, a dinner with Ander Smittarasheed.

Without the punchgun Ander might bluff his way through.

But the weapon would nail him, would identify him. He couldn't hold on to the gun without using it.

Would he even hesitate? A trained ARM facing colony cops? Fafnir is a «human» world. Ander was unlikely to guess how many police are kzinti.

I wondered how much damage Ander would do before it all caught up with him. There could be one fearful bloodbath if he tried to shoot his way free.

Nice for me. Ander dead was Ander silent. But –

Tens of thousands of years from now nobody would find the old ARM records of a wild hypothesis. Nobody would wonder if a trillion powerful aliens had left known space to take possession of the galactic Core. It might never matter, even if I was right … or be all to the good if I was wrong.