ARM by Larry Niven Read Free Book Online Page A

the couch. And the questions started.
    Had she any idea who might have wanted Raymond Sinclair dead?
    “Not really. How did he die?”
    “Someone smashed in his skull with a poker,” Valpredo said. If he wasn't going to mention the generator, neither was I.
    “How quaint.” Her contralto turned acid. “His own poker, too, I presume. Out of his own fireplace rack. What you're looking for is a traditionalist.” She peered at us over rim of her glass. Her eyes were large, the lids decorated in semipermanent tattoos as a pair of flapping UN flags. “That doesn't help much, does it? You might try whoever was working with him on whatever his latest project was.”
    That sounded like Peterfi, I thought. But Valpredo said, “Would he necessarily have a collaborator?”
    “He generally works alone at the beginning. But somewhere along the line he brings in people to make the hardware. He never made anything real by himself. It was all just something in a computer bank. It took someone else to make it real. And he never gave credit to anyone.”
    Then his hypothetical collaborator might have found out how little credit he was getting for his work, and— But Urthiel was shaking her head. “I'm talking about a psychotic, not someone who's really been cheated. Sinclair never offered anyone a share in anything he did. He always made it damn plain what was happening. I knew what I was doing when I set up the FyreStop prototype for him, and I knew what I was doing when I quit. It was all him. He was using my training, not my brain. I wanted to do something original, something me .”
    Did she have any idea what Sinclair's present project was?
    “My husband would know. Larry Ecks, lives in this same building. He's been dropping cryptic hints, and when I want more details, he has this grin—” She grinned herself suddenly. “You'll gather I'm interested. But he won't say.”
    Time for me to take over or we'd never get certain questions asked. “I'm an ARM. What I'm about to tell you is secret,” I said. And I told her what we knew of Sinclair's generator. Maybe Valpredo was looking at me disapprovingly, maybe not.
    “We know that the field can damage a human arm in a few seconds. What we want to know,” I said, “is whether the killer is now wandering around with a half-decayed hand or arm—or foot, for that—”
    She stood and pulled the upper half of her body stocking down around her waist.
    She looked very much a real woman. If I hadn't known—and why would it matter? These days the sex change operation is elaborate and perfect. Hell with it; I was on duty. Valpredo was looking nonchalant, waiting for me.
    I examined both of her arms with my eyes and my three hands. There was nothing. Not even a bruise.
    “My legs, too?”
    I said, “Not if you can stand on them.”
    Next question. Could an artificial arm operate within the field?
    “Larry? You mean Larry ? You're out of your teeny mind.”
    “Take it as a hypothetical question.”
    She shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. There aren't any experts on inertialess fields.”
    “There was one. He's dead,” I reminded her.
    “All I know is what I learned watching the Gray Lensman show in the holo wall when I was a kid.” She smiled suddenly. “That old space opera.”
    Valpredo laughed. “You, too? I used to watch that show in study hall on a little pocket phone. One day the principal caught me at it.”
    “Sure. And then we outgrew it. Too bad. Those inertialess ships ... I'm sure an inertialess ship wouldn't behave like those did. You couldn't possibly get rid of the time compression effect.” She took a long pull on her drink, set it down, and said, “Yes and no. He could reach in, but—you see the problem? The nerve impulses that move the motors in Larry's arm, they're coming into the field too slowly.”
    “Sure.”
    “But if Larry closed his fist on something, say, and reached into the field with it, it would probably stay closed. He could