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

"I think it must be. Mr. Porter says she was wearing a blue skin-dye job." Ordaz was frowning. "He put on a most convincing act, if it was that. I think he really was not expecting any kind of trouble. He was surprised that a stranger answered, shocked when he learned of Doctor Sinclair's death, and horrified when he learned that Janice had been hurt."
With the mummy and the generator removed, the murder scene had become an empty circle of brown grass marked with random streaks of yellow chemical and outlines of white chalk.
"We had some luck," Ordaz said. "Today's date is June 4, 2124. Dr. Sinclair was wearing a calendar watch. It registered January 17, 2125. If we switched the machine off at ten minutes to ten -- which we did -- and if it was registering an hour for every seven seconds that passed outside the field, then the field must have gone on at around one o'clock last night, give or take a margin of error."
"Then if the girl didn't do it, she must have just missed the killer."
"Exactly."
"What about the elevator? Could it have been jiggered?"
"No. We took the workings apart. It was on this floor and locked by hand. Nobody could have left by elevator..."
"Why did you trail off like that?"
Ordaz shrugged, embarrassed. "This peculiar machine really does bother me, Gil. I found myself thinking, Suppose it can reverse time? Then the killer could have gone down in an elevator that was going up."
He laughed with me. I said, "In the first place, I don't believe a word of it. In the second place, he didn't have the machine to do it with. Unless ... he made his escape before the murder. Dammit, now you've got me doing it."
"I would like to know more about the machine."
"Bera's investigating it now. I'll let you know as soon as we learn anything. And _I'd_ like to know more about how the killer couldn't possibly have left."
He looked at me. "Details?"
"Could someone have opened a window?"
"No. These apartments are forty years old. The smog was still bad when they were built. Dr. Sinclair apparently preferred to depend on his air-conditioning."
"How about the apartment below? I presume it has a different set of elevators."
"Yes, of course. It belongs to Howard Rodewald, the owner of this building -- of this chain of buildings, in fact. At the moment he is in Europe. His apartment has been loaned to friends."
"There's no stairs down to there?"
"No. We searched these apartments thoroughly."
"All right. We know the killer had a nylon line, because he left a strand of it on the generator. Could he have climbed down to Rodewald's balcony from the roof?"
"Thirty feet? Yes, I suppose so." Ordaz's eyes sparked. "We must look into that. There is still the matter of how he got past the camera and whether he could have gotten inside once he was on the balcony."
"Yah."
"Try this, Gil. Another question. How did he _expect_ to get away?" He watched for my reaction, which must have been satisfying, because it _was_ a damn good question. "You see, if Janice Sinclair murdered her great-uncle, then neither question applies. If we are looking for someone else, we have to assume that his plans misfired. He had to improvise."
"Uh huh. He could still have been planning to use Rodewald's balcony. And that would mean he had a way past the camera..."
"Of course he did. The generator."
Right. If he came to steal the generator ... and he'd have to steal it regardless, because if we found it here, it would shoot his alibi sky high. So he'd leave it on while he trundled it up the stairs. Say it took him a minute; that's only an eighth of a second of normal time. One chance in eight that the camera would fire, and it would catch nothing but a streak ... "Uh oh."
"What is it?"
"He had to be planning to steal the machine. Is he really going to lower it to Rodewald's balcony by _rope_?"
"I think it unlikely," Ordaz said. "It weighed more than fifty pounds. He could have moved it upstairs. The frame would make it portable. But to lower it by rope..."
"We'd be looking for one hell of an athlete."
"At least you will not have to search far to find him. We assume that your hypothetical killer came by elevator, do we not?"
"Yah." Nobody but Janice Sinclair had arrived by the roof last night.
"The elevator was programmed to allow a number of people to enter it and to turn away all others. The list is short. Doctor Sinclair was not a gregarious man."
"You're checking them out? Whereabouts, alibis, and so forth?"
"Of course."
"There's something else you might check on," I said. But Andrew Porter came in, and I had to postpone it.
Porter came casual, in a well-worn translucent one-piece jumpsuit he must have pulled on while running for a taxi. The muscles rolled like boulders beneath the loose fabric, and his belly muscles showed like the plates on an armadillo. Surfing muscles. The sun had bleached his hair nearly white and burned him as brown as Jackson Bera. You'd think a tan that dark would cover for blood draining out of a face, but it doesn't.
"Where is she?" he demanded. He didn't wait for an answer. He knew where the 'doc was, and he went there. We trailed in his wake.
Ordaz didn't push. He waited while Porter looked down at Janice, then punched for a readout and went through it in detail. Porter seemed calmer then, and his color was back. He turned to Ordaz and said, "What happened?"
"Mr. Porter, did you know anything of Dr. Sinclair's latest project?"
"The time compressor thing? Yah. He had it set up in the living room when I got here yesterday evening -- right in the middle of that circle of dead grass. Any connection?"
"When did you arrive?"
"Oh, about six. We had some drinks, and Uncle Ray showed off his machine. He didn't tell us much about it. Just showed what it could do." Porter showed us flashing white teeth. "It _worked_. That thing can compress time! You could live your whole life in there in two months! Watching him move around inside the field was like trying to keep track of a hummingbird. Worse. He struck a match -- "
"When did you leave?"
"About eight. We had dinner at Cziller's House of Irish Coffee, and -- Listen, what _happened_ here?"
"There are some things we need to know first, Mr. Porter. Were you and Janice together for all of last evening? Were there others with you?"
"Sure. We had dinner alone, but afterward we went to a kind of party. On the beach at Santa Monica. Friend of mine has a house there. I'll give you the address. Some of us wound up back at Cziller's around midnight. Then Janice flew me home."
"You have said that you are Janice's lover. Doesn't she live with you?"
"No. I'm her steady lover, you might say, but I don't have any strings on her." He seemed embarrassed. "She lives here with Uncle Ray. Lived. Oh, _hell_." He glanced
into the 'doc. "Look, the readout said she'll be waking up any minute. Can I get her a robe?"