"Larry Niven - The Long ARM of Gil Hamilton" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

"You're an ARM," said Ordaz. "An operative in the United Nations
Police."
He had a point. Owen was as honorable as any man I knew; but honor isn't
the same in the Belt. Belters think flatlanders are all crooks. They don't
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.
Owen could have been doing something that would look honest to him but
not to me.
"He could have been in something sticky," I admitted. "But I can't see
him killing himself over it. And...not here. He wouldn't have come here."
1809 was a living room and a bathroom and a closet. I'd 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 didn't 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.
"It's a small room," said Ordaz, "but not too small. Millions of people
live this way. In any case, a Belter would hardly be a claustrophobe."
"No. Owen flew a singleship before he joined us. Three months at a
stretch, in a cabin so small you couldn't stand up with the airlock closed.
Not claustrophobia, but -- " I swept my arm about the room. "What do you see
that's his?"
Small as it was, the closet was nearly empty. A set of street clothes, a
paper shirt, a pair of shoes, a small brown overnight case. All new. The few
items in the bathroom medicine chest had been equally new and equally
anonymous.
Ordaz said, "Well?"
"Belters are transients. They don't own much, but what they do own, they
guard. Small possessions, relics, souvenirs. I can't believe he wouldn't have
had something."