Larry Niven - Flatlander

First came the routine request for a breach of privacy permit. A police officer took down the details and forwarded the request to a clerk, who saw that the tape reached the appropriate civic judge. The judge was reluctant, for privacy is a precious thing in a world of eighteen billion, but in the end he could find no reason to refuse. On November 2, 2123, he granted the permit.

The tenants rent was two weeks in arrears. If the manager of Monica Apartments had asked for eviction, he would have been refused. But Owen Jennison did not answer his doorbell or his room phone. Nobody could recall seeing him in many weeks. Apparently the manager only wanted to know that he was all right.

And so he was allowed to use his passkey, with an officer standing by.

And so they found the tenant of 1809.

And when they had looked in his wallet, they called me.

I was at my desk at ARM Headquarters, making useless notes and wishing it were lunchtime.

At this stage the Loren case was all correlate and wait. It involved an organlegging gang apparently run by a single man yet big enough to cover half the North American west coast. We had considerable data on the gangmethods of operation, centers of activity, a few former customers, even a tentative handful of namesbut nothing that would give us an excuse to act. So it was a matter of shoving what we had into the computer, watching the few suspected associates of the gang lord Loren, and waiting for a break.

The months of waiting were ruining my sense of involvement.

My phone buzzed.

I put the pen down and said, Gil Hamilton.

A small dark face regarded me with soft black eyes. I am Detective-Inspector Julio Ordaz of the Los Angeles Police Department. Are you related to an Owen Jennison?

Owen? No, were not related. Is he in trouble?

You do know him, then.

Sure I know him. Is he here, on Earth?

It would seem so. Ordaz had no accent, but the lack of colloquialisms in his speech made him sound vaguely foreign. We will need positive identification, Mr. Hamilton. Mr. Jennisons ident lists you as next of kin.

Thats funny. Iback up a minute. Is Owen dead?

Somebody is dead, Mr. Hamilton. He carried Mr. Jennisons ident in his wallet.

Okay. Now, Owen Jennison was a citizen of the Belt. This may have interworld complications. That makes it ARMs business. Wheres the body?

We found him in an apartment rented under his own name. Monica Apartments, Lower Los Angeles, room 1809.

Good. Dont move anything you havent moved already. Ill be right over.

Monica Apartments was a nearly featureless concrete block, eighty stories tall, a thousand feet across the edges of its square base. Lines of small balconies gave the sides a sculptured look above a forty-foot inset ledge that would keep tenants from dropping objects on pedestrians. A hundred buildings just like it made Lower Los Angeles look lumpy from the air.

Inside, a lobby done in anonymous modern. Lots of metal and plastic showing, lightweight comfortable chairs without arms, big ashtrays, plenty of indirect lighting, a low ceiling, no wasted space. The whole room might have been stamped out with a die. It wasnt supposed to look small, but it did, and that warned you what the rooms would be like. Youd pay your rent by the cubic centimeter.

I found the managers office and the manager, a soft-looking man with watery blue eyes. His conservative paper suit, dark red, seemed chosen to render him invisible, as did the style of his brown hair, worn long and combed straight back without a part. Nothing like this has ever happened here, he confided as he led me to the elevator banks. Nothing. It would have been bad enough without his being a Belter, but now He cringed at the thought. Newsmen. Theyll smother us.

The elevator was coffin-sized, but with the handrails on the inside. It went up fast and smooth. I stepped out into a long, narrow hallway.

What would Owen have been doing in a place like this? Machinery lived here, not people.

Maybe it wasnt Owen. Ordaz had been reluctant to commit himself. Besides, theres no law against picking pockets. You couldnt enforce such a law on this crowded planet. Everyone on Earth was a pickpocket.

Sure. Someone had died carrying Owens wallet.

I walked down the hallway to 1809.

It was Owen who sat grinning in the armchair. I took one good look at him, enough to be sure, and then I looked away and didnt look back. But the rest of it was even more unbelievable.

No Belter could have taken that apartment. I was born in Kansas, but even I felt the awful anonymous chill. It would have driven Owen bats.

I dont believe it, I said.

Did you know him well, Mr. Hamilton?

About as well as two men can know each other. He and I spent three years mining rocks in the main asteroid belt. You dont keep secrets under those conditions.

Yet you didnt know he was on Earth.

Thats what I cant understand. Why the blazes didnt he phone me if he was in trouble?

Youre 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 isnt the same in the Belt. Belters think flatlanders are all crooks. They dont 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 cant see him killing himself over it. And not here. He wouldnt have come here.

Room 1809 was a living room and a bathroom and a closet. Id 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 as long as you pushed the right buttons.