"Larry Niven - Death by Ecstasy UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

DEATH BY ECSTASY

FIRST CAME THE routine request for a Breach of Privacy permit. A police officer took down the details and forwarded the request to a clerk, who saw that the tape reached the appropriate civic judge. The judge was reluctant, for privacy is a precious thing in a world of eighteen billion; but in the end he could find no reason to refuse. On November 2nd, 2123, he granted the permit.
The tenantТs rent was two weeks in arrears. If the manager of Monica Apartments had asked for eviction he would have been refused.
But Owen Jennison just did not answer his doorbell or his room phone. Nobody could recall seeing him in many weeks. Apparently the manager wanted to know that he was all right.
And so he was allowed to use his passkey, with an officer standing by.
And so they found the tenant of 1809.
And when they looked in his wallet, they called me.
I was at my desk in ARMТs Headquarters, making useless notes and wishing it were lunchtime.
At this stage the Loren case was all correlate-and-wait. It involved an organlegging gang, apparently run b~y a single man, yet big enough to cover half the North American west coast. We had considerable data on the gangЧmethods of operation, centers of activity, a few former customers, even a tentative handful of names
Чbut nothing that would give us an excuse to act. So it was a matter of shoving what we had into the computer, watching the few suspected associates of the ganglord Loren, and waiting for a break.
The months of waiting were ruining my sense of involvement.
My phone buzzed.
I put the pen down and said, УGil Hamilton.Ф
A small dark face regarded me with soft black eyes. УI am Detective-Inspector Julio Ordaz of the Los Angeles Police Department. Are you related to an Owen Jennison?Ф
УOwen? No, weТre not related. Is he in trouble?Ф
УYou do know him, then.Ф
УSure I know him. Is he here, on Earth?Ф
УIt would seem so.Ф Ordaz had no accent, but the lack of colloquialisms in his speech made him sound vaguely foreign. УWe will need positive identification, Mr. Hamilton. Mr. JennisonТs ident lists you as next of kin.Ф
УThatТs funny. I . . Back in a minute. WhatТs happened? Is Owen dead?Ф
УSomebody is dead, Mr. Hamilton. He carried Mr. JennisonТs ident in his wallet.Ф
УOkay. Now, Owen Jennison was a citizen of the Belt. This may have interworid complications. That makes it ARMТs business. WhereТs the body?Ф
УWe found him in an apartment rented under his own name. Monica Apartments, Lower Los Angeles, room 1809.Ф
УGood. DonТt move anything you havenТt moved already. IТll be right over.Ф

Monica Apartments was a nearly featureless concrete block, eighty stories tall, a thousand feet across the edges of its square base. Lines of small balconies gave the sides a sculptured look, above a forty-foot inset ledge that would keep tenants from drop-
ping objects on pedestrians. A hundred buildings just like it made Lower Los Angeles look lumpy from the air.
Inside was a lobby done in anonymous modern. Lots of metal and plastic showing; lightweight, comfortable chairs without arms; big ash trays; plenty of indirect lighting; a low ceiling; no wasted space. The whole room might have been stamped out with a die. It wasnТt supposed to look small, but it did, and that warned you what the rooms would look like.
I found the managerТs office and the manager, a soft-looking man with watery-blue eyes. His conservative paper suit, dark red, seemed chosen to render him invisible, as did the style of his brown hair, worn long and combed straight back without a part. УNothing like this has ever happened here,Ф he confided as he led me to the elevator banks. УNothing. It would have been bad enough without his being a Belter, but nowЧФ He cringed at the thought. УNewsmen. TheyТll smother us.Ф
The elevator was coffin-sized, but with the handrails on the inside. It went up fast and smooth. I stepped out into the long, narrow hallway.
What would Owen have been doing in a place like this? Machinery lived here, not people.
Maybe it wasnТt Owen. Ordaz had been reluctant to commit himself. Besides, thereТs no law against picking pockets. You couldnТt enforce such a law on this crowded planet. Everyone on Earth was a pickpocket.
Sure. Someone had died carrying OwenТs wallet.
I walked down the hallway to 1809.

It was Owen who sat grinning in the armchair. I took one good look at him, enough to be sure, and then I looked away and didnТt look back. But the rest of it was even more unbelievable.
No Belter could have taken that apartment. I was born in Kansas; but even I felt the awful anonymous chill. It would have driven Owen bats.
УI donТt believe it,Ф I said.
УDid you know him well, Mr. Hamilton?Ф
УAbout as well as two men can know each other. He and I spent three years mining rocks in the main asteroid belt. You donТt keep secrets under those conditions.Ф
УYet you didnТt know he was on Earth.Ф
УThatТs what I canТt understand. Why the blazes didnТt he phone me if he was in trouble?Ф
УYouТre an ARM,Ф said Ordaz. УAn operative in the United Nations Police.Ф
He had a point. Owen was as honorable as any man I knew; but honor isnТt the same in the Belt. Belters think flatlanders are all crooks. They donТt understand that to a flatlander, picking pockets is a game of skill. Yet a Belter sees smuggling as the same kind of game, with no dishonesty involved. He balances the thirty percent tariff against possible confiscation of his cargo, and if the odds are right he gambles.
УOwen could have been doing something sticky,Ф I admitted. УBut I canТt see him killing himself over it. And. . . not here. He wouldnТt have come here.Ф
1809 was a living room and a bathroom and a closet. IТd glanced into the bathroom, knowing what I would find. It was the size of a comfortable shower stall. An adjustment panel outside the door would cause it to extrude various appurtenances in memory plastic, to become a washroom, a shower stall, a toilet, a dressing room, a steam cabinet. Luxurious in everything but size, if you pushed the right buttons.
The living room was more of the same. A King bed was invisible behind a wall. The kitchen alcove, with basin and oven and grill and toaster, would fold into another wall; the sofa, chairs and tables would vanish into the floor. One tenant and three guests would make a crowded cocktail party, a cozy dinner gathering, a closed poker game. Card table, dinner table, coffee table were all there, surrounded by the appropriate chairs; but only one set at a time would emerge from the floor. There was no refrigerator, no freezer, no bar. If a tenant needed food or drink, he phoned down, and the supermarket on the third floor would send it up.
The tenant of such an apartment had his comfort. But he owned nothing. There was room for him; there was none for his possessions. This was one of the inner apartments. An age ago there would have been an air shaft; but air shafts took up expensive room. The tenant didnТt even have a window. He lived in a comfortable box.
Just now the items extruded were the overstuffed reading armchair, two small side tables, a footstool, and the kitchen alcove. Owen Jennison sat grinning in the armchair. Naturally he grinned.
Little more than dried skin covered the natural grin of his skull.