Niven, Larry - The Patchwork Girl.pdf - Larry Niven - przemosta

The Patchwork Girl

Cover

THE PATCHWORK GIRL

except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without permission in writing from the

publisher.

All characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

is purely coincidental.

An ACE Book

First Ace Punting: April 1980

First Mass Market Printing: December 1980

2468097531

Manufactured in the United States of America

THE PATCHWORK GIRL

Contents

1. City of Mirrors

2. View Through a Window

3. The Projection Room

4. The Cratered Lands

5. The Conference Table

6. The Lunar Law

7. Last Night and Morning After

8. The Other Crime

9. The Trading Post

10. The Tilted Rock

11. The Empty Room

12. The Traditional Elements

13. Penalties

THE PATCHWORK GIRL

To my father.

THE PATCHWORK GIRL

1. City of Mirrors

We fell east-to-west, dipping toward the Moon in the usual shallow, graceful arc. Our pilot

had turned off the cabin lights to give us a view. The sun set as we fell. I peered past Tom

Reinecke and let my eyes adjust.

It was black below. There wasn’t even Earthlight; the “new” Earth was a slender sliver in

the eastern sky. The black shadows of mountains emerged from the western horizon and

came toward us.

Reinecke had fallen silent.

That was a new development. Tom Reinecke had been trying to interview me even before

we left Outback Field, Australia. Thus: What was it like, out there among the flying moun-

tains? Had I really killed an organlegger by using psychic powers? As a man of many cul-

tures-Kansas farm boy, seven years mining the asteroids, five years in the United Nations Po-

lice-didn’t I consider myself the ideal delegate to a Conference to Review Lunar Law? How

did I feel about what liberals called “the organ bank problem”? Would I demonstrate my ima-

ginary arm, please? Et cetera.

I’d admitted to being a liberal, and denied being the solar system’s foremost expert on lun-

ar law, inasmuch as I’d never been on the Moon. Beyond that, I’d managed to get him talking

about himself. He’d never stopped.

The flatlander reporter was a small, rounded man in his early twenties, brown-haired and

smooth-shaven. Born in Australia, schooled in England, he’d never been in space.

He’d gone from journalism school straight into a job with the BBC. He’d told me about him-

self at length. This young and he was on his way to the Moon! To witness deliberations that

could affect all of future history! He seemed eager and innocent. I wondered how many older,

more experienced newstapers had turned down his assignment.

Now, suddenly, he was quiet. More: he was leaving fingerprints in the hard plastic chair

arms.

The black shadows of the D’Alembert Mountains were coming right at us: broken teeth in

a godling’s jaw, ready to chew us up.

We passed low over the mountains, almost between the peaks, and continued to fall. Now

the land was chewed by new and old meteorite craters. Light ahead of us became a long line

of lighted windows, the west face of Hovestraydt City. Slowing, we passed north of the city

and curved around. The city was a square border of light, and peculiar reflections flashed

from within the border: mostly greens, some reds, yellows, browns.

The ship hovered and settled east of the city at the edge of Grimalde’s rim wall. No dust

sprayed around us as we touched down. Too many ships had landed here over the last cen-

tury. The dust was all gone.

Tom Reinecke let go of his chair arms and resumed breathing. He forced a smile. “Thrill a

minute.”

“Hey, you weren’t worried were you? You can’t even imagine the real problems with mak-

ing this kind of landing.”

“What? What do you mean? I—”

I laughed. “Relax, I was kidding. People have been landing on the Moon for a hundred

and fifty years, and they’ve only had two accidents.”

We fought politely for room to struggle into our pressure suits.

If Garner had given me a little more warning I would have had a skintight pressure suit

made at the taxpayers’ expense. But skintight suits have to be carefully fitted, and that takes

time. Luke Garner had given me just ten days to get ready. I’d spent the time on research. I

was half certain that Gamer had picked someone else for the job, and that he or she had died

or gotten sick or pregnant.

Be that as it may: I had bought an inflated suit on the expense account. The other passen-

gers, reporters and Conference delegates, were also getting into inflated suits.

Half dozen people, lunies and Belters, waited to greet us when we climbed down from the

airlock I could see fairly well into the bubble helmets. Taffy wasn’t among them. I recognised

people I’d seen only on phone screens. And a familiar voice: cheerful, cordial, mildly accen-

ted.

“Welcome to Hovestraydt City,” said the voice of Mayor Hove Watson. “You’ve arrived

near dinner time by the city clocks. I hope to show you around a bit before you begin your

work tomorrow.” I had no trouble picking him out of the crowd: a lunie over eight feet tall, with

thinning blond hair and a cordial smile showing through his helmet, and a flowering ash tree

on his chest. “You’ve already been assigned rooms, and-before I forget-the city computer’s

command name is Chiron. It will be keyed to your voice. Shall we postpone introductions until

we can get into shirtsleeves?” He turned to lead the way.

So Taffy hadn’t made it I wondered if she’d left a message…and how long it would be be-

fore I reached a phone.

We trooped toward the lights a few hundred yards away.

No moondust softened our footfalls. My first look at the Moon, and I wasn’t seeing much.

Black night around us and a glare of light from the city. But the sky was the sky I re-

membered, the Belter’s sky, stars by the hundred thousand, so hard and bright you could

reach up and feel their heat. I lagged behind to get the full effect. It was like homecoming.

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