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

Sinclair's apartments were roomy and comfortable and occupied the entire top floor. The lower floor was the laboratory where Sinclair had produced his miracles. I went through it with Valpredo. It wasn't that impressive. It looked like an expensive hobby setup. These tools would assemble components already fabricated, but they would not build anything complex.
Except for the computer terminal. That was like a little womb, with a recline chair inside a 360-degree wraparound holovision screen and enough banked controls to fly the damn thing to Alpha Centauri.
The secrets there must be in that computer! But I didn't try to use it. We'd have to send an ARM programmer to break whatever fail-safe codes Sinclair had put in the memory banks.
The truck arrived. We dragged Sinclair's legacy up the stairs to the roof in one piece. The parts were sturdily mounted on their frame, and the stairs were wide and not too steep.
I rode home in the back of the truck. Studying the generator. That massive piece of silver had something of the look of _Bird in Flight_: a triangle operated on by a topology student with wires at what were still the corners. I wondered if it was the heart of the machine or just a piece of misdirection. Was I really riding with an interstellar drive? Sinclair could have started that rumor himself to cover whatever this was. Or ... there was no law against his working two projects simultaneously.
I was looking forward to Bera's reaction.
Jackson Bera came upon us moving it through the halls of ARM Headquarters. He trailed along behind us. Nonchalant. We pulled the machine into the main laboratory and started checking it against the holos I'd taken in case something had been jarred loose. Bera leaned against the doorjamb, watching us, his eyes gradually losing interest until he seemed about to go to sleep.
I'd met him three years ago, when I had returned from the asteroids and joined the ARM. He was twenty then, and two years an ARM, but his father and grandfather had both been ARMs. Much of my training had come from Bera. And as I learned to hunt men who hunt other men, I had watched what it was doing to him.
An ARM needs empathy. He needs the ability to piece together a picture of the mind of his prey. But Bera had too much empathy. I remember his reaction when Kenneth Graham killed himself: a single surge of current through the plug in his skull and down the wire to the pleasure center of his brain. Bera had been twitchy for weeks. And the Anubis case early last year. When we realized what the man had done, Bera had been close to killing him on the spot. I wouldn't have blamed him.
Last year Bera had had enough. He'd gone into the technical end of the business. His days of hunting organleggers were finished. He was now running the ARM laboratory.
He _had_ to want to know what this oddball contraption was. I kept waiting for him to ask ... and he watched, faintly smiling. Finally it dawned on me. He thought it was a practical joke, something I'd cobbled together for his own discomfiture.
I said, "Bera."
And he looked at me brightly and said, "Hey, man, what is it?"
"You ask the most embarrassing questions."
"Right, I can understand your feeling that way, but what _is_ it? I love it, it's neat, but what is this that you have brought me?"
I told him all I knew, such as it was. When I finished, he said, "It doesn't sound much like a new space drive."
"Oho, you heard that, too, did you? No, it doesn't. Unless -- " I'd been wondering since I first saw it. "Maybe it's supposed to accelerate a fusion explosion. You'd get greater efficiency in a fusion drive."
"They get better than ninety percent now, and that widget looks _heavy_." He reached to touch the bent silver triangle gently with long, tapering fingers. "Huh. Well, we'll dig out the answers."
"Good luck. I'm going back to Sinclair's place."
"Why? The action is here." Often enough he'd heard me talking wistfully of joining an interstellar colony. He must know how I'd feel about a better drive for the interstellar slowboats.
"It's like this," I said. "We've got the generator, but we don't know anything about it. We might wreck it. I'm going to have a whack at finding someone who knows something about Sinclair's generator."
"Meaning?"
"Whoever tried to steal it. Sinclair's killer."
"If you say so." But he looked dubious. He knew me too well. He said, "I understand there's a mother hunt in the offing."
"Oh?"
He smiled. "Just a rumor. You guys are lucky. When my dad first joined, the business of the ARM was _mostly_ mother hunts. The organleggers hadn't really got organized yet, and the Fertility Laws were new. If we hadn't enforced them, nobody would have obeyed them at all."
"Sure, and people threw rocks at your father. Bera, those days are _gone_."
"They could come back. Having children is basic."
"Bera, I did not join the ARM to hunt unlicensed parents." I waved and left before he could answer. I could do without the call to duty from Bera, who had done with hunting men and mothers.
* * * *
I'd had a good view of the Rodewald Building while dropping toward the roof this morning. I had a good view now from my commandeered taxi. This time I was looking for escape paths.
There were no balconies on Sinclair's floors, and the windows were flush to the side of the building. A cat burglar would have trouble with them. They didn't look like they'd open.
I tried to spot the cameras Ordaz had mentioned as the taxi dropped toward the roof. I couldn't find them. Maybe they were mounted in the elms.
Why was I bothering? I hadn't joined the ARM to chase mothers or machinery or common murderers.
I'd joined the ARM to hunt organleggers.
The ARM doesn't deal in murder per se. The machine was out of my hands now. A murder investigation wouldn't keep me out of a mother hunt. And I'd never met the girl. I knew nothing of her beyond the fact that she was where a killer ought to be.
Was it just that she was pretty?
Poor Janice. When she woke up ... For a solid month I'd wakened to that same stunning shock, the knowledge that my right arm was gone.
The taxi settled. Valpredo was waiting below.
I speculated ... Cars weren't the only things that flew. But anyone flying one of those tricky ducted-fan flycycles over a city, where he could fall on a pedestrian, wouldn't have to worry about a murder charge. They'd feed him to the organ banks regardless. And anything that flew would leave traces anywhere but on the landing pad itself. It would crush a rosebush or a bonsai tree or be flipped over an elm.
The taxi took off in a whisper of air.
Valpredo was grinning at me. "The thinker. What's on your mind?"
"I was wondering if the killer could have come down on the carport roof."
He turned to study the situation. "There are two cameras mounted on the edge of the roof. If his vehicle was light enough, sure, he could land there, and the cameras wouldn't spot him. Roof wouldn't hold a car, though. Anyway, nobody did it."
"How do you know?"
"I'll show you. By the way, we inspected the camera system. We're pretty sure the cameras weren't tampered with. Nobody even landed here until seven this morning. Look here." We had reached the concrete stairs that led down into Sinclair's apartments. Valpredo pointed at a glint of light in the sloping ceiling, at heart level. "This is the only way down. The camera would get anyone coming in or out. It might not catch his face, but it'd show if someone passed. It takes sixty frames a minute."
I went on down. A cop let me in.
Ordaz was on the phone. The screen showed a young man with a deep tan and shock showing through the tan. Ordaz waved at me, a shushing motion, and went on talking. "Fifteen minutes? That will be a great help to us. Please land on the roof. We are still working on the elevator."
He hung up and turned to me. "Andrew Porter, Janice Sinclair's lover. He tells us that he and Janice spent the evening at a party. She dropped him off at his home around one o'clock."
"Then she came straight home, if that's her in the 'doc."