ARM Read Free

of new teeth that were just coming in.
    Right. That was Sinclair.
    That brain had made miracles, and someone had smashed it with a wrought-iron rod. The interstellar drive ... that glowing Goldberg device? Or had it been still inside his head?
    I said, “We'll have to get whoever did it. We'll have to. Even so...” Even so. No more miracles.
    “We may have her already,” Julio said.
    I looked at him.
    “There is a girl in the autodoc. We think she is Dr. Sinclair's great-niece, Janice Sinclair.”
* * * *
    It was a standard drugstore autodoc, a thing like a giant coffin with walls a foot thick and a headboard covered with dials and red and green lights. The girl's face was calm, her breathing shallow. Sleeping Beauty. Her arms were in the guts of the ’doc, hidden by bulky rubbery sleeves.
    She was lovely enough to stop my breath. Soft brown hair showing around the electrode cap; small, perfect nose and mouth; smooth pale blue skin shot with silver threads...
    That last was an evening dye job. Without it the impact of her would have been much lessened. The blue shade varied slightly to emphasize the shape of her body and the curve of her cheekbones. The silver lines varied, too, being denser in certain areas, guiding the eye in certain directions: to the tips of her breasts or across the slight swell of abdominal muscle to a lovely oval navel.
    She'd paid high for that dye job. But she would be beautiful without it.
    Some of the headboard lights were red. I punched for a readout and was jolted. The ’doc had been forced to amputate her right arm. Gangrene.
    She was in for a hell of a shock when she woke up.
    “All right,” I said. “She's lost her arm. That doesn't make her a killer.”
    Ordaz asked, “If she were homely, would it help?”
    I laughed. “You question my dispassionate judgment? Men have died for less!” Even so, I thought he could be right. There was good reason to think that the killer was now missing an arm.
    “What do you think happened here, Gil?”
    “Well ... any way you look at it, the killer had to want to take Sinclair's, ah, time machine with him. It's priceless, for one thing. For another, it looks like he tried to set it up as an alibi. Which means that he knew about it before he came here.” I'd been thinking this through. “Say he made sure some people knew where he was a few hours before he got here. He killed Sinclair within range of the ... call it a generator. Turned it on. He figured Sinclair's own watch would tell him how much time he was gaining. Afterward he could set the watch back and leave with the generator. There'd be no way the police could tell he wasn't killed six hours earlier, or any number you like.”
    “Yes. But he did not do that.”
    “There was that line hanging from the switch. He must have turned it on from outside the field ... probably because he didn't want to sit with the body for six hours. If he tried to step outside the field after he'd turned it on, he'd bump his nose. It'd be like trying to walk through a wall, going from field time to normal time. So he turned it off, stepped out of range, and used that nylon line to turn it on again. He probably made the same mistake Valpredo did: he thought he could step back in and turn it off.”
    Ordaz nodded in satisfaction. “Exactly. It was very important for him—or her—to do that. Otherwise he would have no alibi and no profit. If he continued to try to reach into the field—”
    “Yah, he could lose the arm to gangrene. That'd be convenient for us, wouldn't it? He'd be easy to find. But look, Julio: the girl could have done the same thing to herself trying to help Sinclair. He might not have been that obviously dead when she got home.”
    “He might even have been alive,” Ordaz pointed out.
    I shrugged.
    “In point of fact, she came home at one-ten, in her own car, which is still in the carport. There are cameras mounted to cover the landing pad and carport. Doctor Sinclair's security was