Flatlander Read online

  So it comes about that Gil the ARM lives and works in the 2120s of the “known space” line of history, whose story bulks at a million words as of this writing, including stories by other authors (within the Man-Kzin Wars volumes) and a half-written novel, The Ringworld Throne. Most of these novels and short stories take place in human space, thirty light-years across, but lines of development include the Ringworld (200 light-years galactic north) and the galactic core (33,000 light-years toward Sagitarius.) For crime stories set later in “known space,” see the Beowulf Shaeffer stories in Crashlander.

  Five sociological stories that are also crime stories took place along another timeline, the world of JumpShift, Inc., and “Flash Crowd.” The assumption is that teleportation was perfected in the 1980s, and by the 1990s a network of instant-transportation booths has spread across the world. Alibis disappear, and a new kind of killer appears. He’s the guy who would otherwise have moved away by now. Instead he finds himself living next door (effectively) to his boss and his business rival and his ex-spouse and the guy who has owed him thirty bucks for six years and denies it. Where can he go? So he kills.

  Footfall, written with Jerry Pournelle, includes a murder puzzle among the alien invaders of Earth, though the Herdmaster’s Advisor isn’t even dead until a hundred thousand words into the book. By then you should know the fithp well enough to guess who, and how, and why.

  Ten years after my first try, with several crime/sf stories in print, I was ready to have another look at “ARM.”

  “ARM” looked bad. I had to rewrite from scratch. I saved what I could: some nice descriptions, including the surreal murder scene, a couple of characters, and the strongest bones in the plot skeleton. I took out some verbal thrashing about in bizarre restaurants. Gil the ARM replaced Lucas Garner onstage. I took out an irrelevant nightmare, and a coin-operated surgeon device capable of implanting the bud of a new organ: wrong era, and it made things too easy for the killer. I took out the FyreStop device, which killed by suppressing chemical reactions: a fun thing, but unnecessary, and it complicated the bejeesus out of the plot. Losing that cost me three or four suspects, and good riddance.

  (But look for excellent handling of the FyreStop idea in The D.A.G.G.E.R. Affair, an old Man from U.N.C.L.E. story by David McDaniel.)

  When I showed the result to Jerry Pournelle, he made me rewrite it. He also showed me where the organleggers came in.

  In general, then, I corrected the flaws John Campbell and Frederick Pohl had pointed out. I wish Campbell had lived to see “ARM.”

  How likely is Gil Hamilton’s future?

  I don’t see how we can avoid the crowding or the rigid, dictatorial population control without the blessing of a major war or plague. As for the conquest of the solar system, one can hope. And as for the UN organ banks …

  One of my oldest stories, “The Jigsaw Man” laid out the basis of the organ bank problem. If Jeffrey Dahmer had been executed in a hospital, disassembled like a jigsaw puzzle, he could have saved as many lives as he took. So can any adult who has committed a capital crime. Or any child whose crime is deemed to be adultlike … and hey, kids are committing a lot of murders these days, and wouldn’t you rather have a fifteen-year-old’s organs than an elderly Charles Manson’s? If that approach still leaves the Red Cross needing whole blood and patients crying for eyes and kidneys, then Rush Limbaugh and John Bobbitt are constantly violating principles of political correctness. And what about the guy who thinks he can ruin a wetlands just because he paid for the land?

  Where do we stop?

  Ever since publication of “The Jigsaw Man,” letters have been flowing in. They come with clippings and photocopies of newspapers stories. An army of readers (the Reluctant Donor Irregulars?) seems ready to alert me to developments regarding transplants and organ banks.

  One tells of an interschool debating competition. The question: Shall condemned criminals be executed by dismantling, the parts to be reserved for organ transplants? The reader who informed me was horrified: the majority voted yes.

  You can watch the future fanning out in three directions. Transplanted organs succeed more often and the patients live longer, but prosthetic, devices seem to be improving even faster. You don’t need a knee transplant; the artificial version is better. Your artificial heart could survive you.

  The third choice isn’t generating news, but it’s important. Clone and grow your own replacement organs! Rejection wouldn’t be a problem. You would have to grow what you need before it’s urgent, and if you didn’t prepare … then your need for a new liver is no act of God, but your own damned fault. Now whom shall we break up?

  One evening last month, I got a phone call from George Scithers. He followed up with newspaper clippings. India has been disassembling condemned criminals for transplants since 1964.

  The practice is informal. Donor has been condemned to death. Method: bullet in the neck. Afterward the doctors can have him. But the executioner shoots badly, so the organs are taken while Donor still lives.

  Transplants are usually rejected because the Indian doctors don’t bother much with matching types. But, by God, they’re fresh. And you can’t blame Larry Niven for pointing out the possibilities.

  They’re doing it in China, too. A photocopied page in my mail tells me how to get a brochure on the subject from Human Rights Watch, Publicity Department. “Discusses evidence demonstrating that China’s heavy reliance on executed prisoners as a source of transplant organs entails a wide range of human rights and medical ethics violations.”

  Organlegging in our own cities is today’s news: unwilling donors found bleeding in the streets, kidneys and hearts missing.

  Meanwhile, Bill Rotsler’s quadruple-bypass operation moved veins from his legs into his heart. No rejection problem. My own knee is healing nicely from an operation that didn’t involve scalpels, just a laser to burn out a torn meniscus. The woman undergoing physical therapy on the stationary bike next to me is doing fine as her flesh heals around a fully artificial knee. Stay tuned. We’re shaping the future now.

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