"Niven, Larry - ARM 1 - ARM" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

I studied the single-throw switch welded to the plastic frame next to the batteries. A length of nylon line dangled from the horizontal handle. It looked like someone had tugged the switch on from outside the field by using the line, but he'd have had to hang from the ceiling to tug it off that way.
"I see why you couldn't send it over to ARM Headquarters. You can't even touch it. You stick your arm or your head in there for a second, and that's ten minutes without a blood supply."
Ordaz said, "Exactly."
"It looks like you could reach in there with a stick and flip that switch off."
"Perhaps. We are about to try that." He waved at the man with the fishing pole. "There was nothing in this room long enough to reach the switch. We had to send -- "
"Wait a minute. There's a problem."
He looked at me. So did the cop with the fishing pole.
"That switch could be a self-destruct. Sinclair was supposed to be a secretive bastard. Or the field might hold considerable potential energy. Something might go blooey."
Ordaz sighed. "We must risk it. Gil, we have measured the rotation of the dead man's wristwatch. One hour per seven seconds. Fingerprints, footprints, laundry marks, residual body odor, stray eyelashes, all disappearing at an hour per seven seconds." He gestured, and the cop moved in and began trying to hook the switch.
"Already we may never know just when he was killed," Ordaz said.
The tip of the pole wobbled in large circles, steadied beneath the switch, made contact. I held my breath. The pole bowed. The switch snapped up, and suddenly the violet glow was gone. Valpredo reached into the field, warily, as if the air might be red hot. Nothing happened, and he relaxed.
Then Ordaz began giving orders, and quite a lot happened. Two men in lab coats drew a chalk outline around the mummy and the poker. They moved the mummy onto a stretcher, put the poker in a plastic bag, and put it next to the mummy.
I said, "Have you identified that?"
"I'm afraid so," Ordaz said. "Raymond Sinclair had his own autodoc -- "
"_Did_ he? Those things are expensive."
"Yes. Raymond Sinclair was a wealthy man. He owned the top two floors of this building and the roof. According to records in his 'doc, he had a new set of bud teeth implanted two months ago." Ordaz pointed to the mummy, to the skinned-back dry lips and the buds of new teeth that were just coming in.
Right. That was Sinclair.
That brain had made miracles, and someone had smashed it with a wrought-iron rod. The interstellar drive ... that glowing Goldberg device? Or had it been still inside his head?
I said, "We'll have to get whoever did it. We'll _have_ to. Even so..." Even so. No more miracles.
"We may have her already," Julio said.
I looked at him.
"There is a girl in the autodoc. We think she is Dr. Sinclair's great-niece, Janice Sinclair."
* * * *
It was a standard drugstore autodoc, a thing like a giant coffin with walls a foot thick and a headboard covered with dials and red and green lights. The girl's face was calm, her breathing shallow. Sleeping Beauty. Her arms were in the guts of the 'doc, hidden by bulky rubbery sleeves.
She was lovely enough to stop my breath. Soft brown hair showing around the electrode cap; small, perfect nose and mouth; smooth pale blue skin shot with silver threads...
That last was an evening dye job. Without it the impact of her would have been much lessened. The blue shade varied slightly to emphasize the shape of her body and the curve of her cheekbones. The silver lines varied, too, being denser in certain areas, guiding the eye in certain directions: to the tips of her breasts or across the slight swell of abdominal muscle to a lovely oval navel.
She'd paid high for that dye job. But she would be beautiful without it.
Some of the headboard lights were red. I punched for a readout and was jolted. The 'doc had been forced to amputate her right arm. Gangrene.
She was in for a hell of a shock when she woke up.
"All right," I said. "She's lost her arm. That doesn't make her a killer."
Ordaz asked, "If she were homely, would it help?"
I laughed. "You question my dispassionate judgment? Men have died for less!" Even so, I thought he could be right. There was good reason to think that the killer was now missing an arm.
"What do you think happened here, Gil?"
"Well ... any way you look at it, the killer had to want to take Sinclair's, ah, time machine with him. It's priceless, for one thing. For another, it looks like he tried to set it up as an alibi. Which means that he knew about it before he came here." I'd been thinking this through. "Say he made sure some people knew where he was a few hours before he got here. He killed Sinclair within range of the ... call it a generator. Turned it on. He figured Sinclair's own watch would tell him how much time he was gaining. Afterward he could set the watch back and leave with the generator. There'd be no way the police could tell he wasn't killed six hours earlier, or any number you like."
"Yes. But he did not do that."
"There was that line hanging from the switch. He must have turned it on from outside the field ... probably because he didn't want to sit with the body for six hours. If he tried to step outside the field after he'd turned it on, he'd bump his nose. It'd be like trying to walk through a wall, going from field time to normal time. So he turned it off, stepped out of range, and used that nylon line to turn it on again. He probably made the same mistake Valpredo did: he thought he could step back in and turn it off."
Ordaz nodded in satisfaction. "Exactly. It was very important for him -- or her -- to do that. Otherwise he would have no alibi and no profit. If he continued to try to reach into the field -- "
"Yah, he could lose the arm to gangrene. That'd be convenient for us, wouldn't it? He'd be easy to find. But look, Julio: the girl could have done the same thing to herself trying to _help_ Sinclair. He might not have been that obviously dead when she got home."
"He might even have been alive," Ordaz pointed out.
I shrugged.
"In point of fact, she came home at one-ten, in her own car, which is still in the carport. There are cameras mounted to cover the landing pad and carport. Doctor Sinclair's security was thorough. This girl was the only arrival last night. There were no departures."
"From the roof, you mean."
"Gil, there are only two ways to leave these apartments. One is from the roof, and the other is by elevator, from the lobby. The elevator is on this floor, and it was turned off. It was that way when we arrived. There is no way to override that control from elsewhere in this building."
"So someone could have taken it up here and turned it off afterward ... or Sinclair could have turned it off before he was killed ... I see what you mean. Either way, the killer has to be still here." I thought about that. I didn't like its taste. "No, it doesn't fit. How could she be bright enough to work out that alibi, then dumb enough to lock herself in with the body?"
Ordaz shrugged. "She locked the elevator before killing her uncle. She did not want to be interrupted. Surely that was sensible? After she hurt her arm, she must have been in a great hurry to reach the 'doc."
One of the red lights turned green. I was glad for that. She didn't look like a killer. I said half to myself, "Nobody looks like a killer when he's asleep."
"No. But she is where a killer ought to be. _Que lastima_."
We went back to the living room. I called ARM Headquarters and had them send a truck.
The machine hadn't been touched. While we waited, I borrowed a camera from Valpredo and took pictures of the setup in situ. The relative positions of the components might be important.
The lab men were in the brown grass, using aerosol sprays to turn fingerprints white and give a vivid yellow glow to faint traces of blood. They got plenty of fingerprints on the machine, none at all on the poker. There was a puddle of yellow in the grass where the mummy's head had been and a long yellow snail track ending at the business end of the poker. It looked like someone had tried to drag the poker out of the field after it had fallen.