Read The Probability Broach Online

Authors: L. Neil Smith

Tags: #Science Fiction, #General, #Fiction

The Probability Broach (20 page)

BOOK: The Probability Broach
11.83Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
“Why don’t we leave them out of this, especially if there’s going to be shooting? We can deal with Lucy afterward.”
“
You
deal with her.” He inserted a copper, punching 1919. The screen rearranged itself into John Jay Madison, reclining in his smoking jacket, Oscar Burgess glowering in the background. I pushed past Ed.
“Ah,” breathed the Hamiltonian, “I wasn’t expecting so prompt a reply.”
“Can it, Madison. What do you want—before you’re shipped out to Pluto, that is? And leave your trained pit viper there out of this!”
Burgess charged the pickup, veins standing out on his cratered forehead. “Save it, asshole! You won’t be so glib when I get you back to the—”
“You and whose—”
“
Gentlemen!
” Madison said. “Oscar, the world loves a gracious winner.” He levered Burgess away and leaned back again. “I’d like to offer you fellows a truce, an essentially friendly meeting to discuss exchanging certain ‘valuable considerations.’ As you might surmise, I’m attending the Continental Congress to speak for my society. However, there’s no reason we can’t do business along the way, and it might render this whole Gallatinopolis affair unnecessary.”
Ed barged in. “That’s why you’re importing thermonuclear weapons—for purposes of a truce? We’ve
seen
your films!”
“Ah. Direct to the heart of the situation. I know you’ve seen the films: a small gift from Mr. Burgess to our organization, before the lieutenant’s entry disrupted communications. There, you see? A token of good faith: free information. At Oscar’s urging, Dr. Bealls contacted us, not long after Paratronics recruited Dr. Meiss, and in not too dissimilar a manner. Unfortunately, you had an equally disruptive effect on Dr. Bealls’s apparatus. A matter of harmonics, I’m informed. He followed you here with Oscar, or would be dead long since.
“Permit me to add that
I
argued strenuously against prosecuting you for your unexpected visit? There were others among us who—”
“Yeah,” I said, “right after you ordered a hit on Clarissa Olson!”
“I thought I’d made that clear, Lieutenant. I
won’t
be held responsible for what our less self-disciplined members may do—especially by those who willfully misunderstand our motivations. It’s
your
assumption that we intend importing these weapons, for example. I am
deeply
interested in studying the plight of your world, and are not such weapons an element in its tragic history?”
“They’re never gonna be a part of history here, Madison! Stop kidding around. What do you really want?”
He looked squarely into the camera. “Very well, to begin with, the films, immediately—and I want this Congress nonsense called off. Also, you will cease harassing me, either by further intrusions or by means of the thugs you have placed around my property.”
“Anything else—while we’re
talking
about it?”
“Since you ask, I want Paratronics to turn over its technology in full and at once. I confess to growing impatience with Dr. Bealls’s flounderings. Both of you will permanently absent yourself from North America—that’s quite a concession, considering the desires of Mr. Burgess.”
Ed shrugged. I looked at Madison again. “Don’t want much, do you? What’s in it for us?”
Madison searched for the proper euphemism. “This is rather delicate. I’d rather not discuss it over the—”
“
Spill it!
”
“As you will: wouldn’t even a pair of perfectly capable ladies be found at some disadvantage,
under a hair-dryer or in a darkened theater?
I leave you to draw your own inferences and to consider my generous offer while you have time. Good day, gentlemen.” His image vanished.
“Ed, go find Lucy! Meet you back in the bar!” I ran, skidding at the corners, until I collided with an attendant. “Look—if I wanted my hair done, where would I go?”
“Sir?” he wriggled his wristvoder.
“I got a sudden urge for an emergency fingerwave!” I displayed a silver coin.
“Up nine floors, forward to frame eighty-two. The Bower of Pulchritude.” He put his hand out.
“That’s the only pulchritude joint on this ship?”
“By no means, sir. But it’s the only one we’re paid to—I mean, it’s—”
“Up eight floors and forward to ninety-two.” I gave him the money.
“
Nine
floors, sir, eighty-two. Will there be any—”
“Yeah—call the cops. Tell ’em to meet me,
fast
! I charged up an escalator, shoving riders aside. Eight, nine, down corridors in a wake of angry shouts and cursing, past tennis courts, bowling alley, and shooting range, out into the mall.
There
was the Bower of Pulchritude. It
looked
like a bower of pulchritude.
Clarissa wasn’t there. I made a mess demanding to know where she’d gone. When I explained, and ladies’ guns were back in their holsters all around the shop, someone said she’d mentioned buying shoes. They’d recommended the place next door. It was the only one they were paid to—
She wasn’t there. At the next place over,
I found her medikit on a chair
outside the try-on booths. I considered shoving curtains back at random, but remembered the girls in the beauty shop, the ones with the artillery. Instead, I grabbed a clerk. “Where’s the lady who belongs to this bag?”
“Bag? Oh—she left her bag.”
“You mean she’s gone?”
“Afraid so, sir. Should I be telling you this? I mean, are you—?”
“I’m a lost little boy, and she’s my mommy—I’m old for my age. What happened?”
“Well, she came in, tried on a few things. Then, while she was changing, her husband—”
“Her husband?”
“Yes, a very tall man with an accent and almost no hair. He came in to wait. Next thing I knew, the lady had collapsed. Fainted. He said it was her “condition.” Practically had to carry her out. She was quite a sight. Her eyes …” Suddenly I was very, very afraid. I asked where they’d gone.
“Their suite. Said she’d be fine if she could just lie down and—are you sure this is any of your—”
“You bet it is, honey. Whenever the cops finally get here, tell ’em I got a sudden yen to watch
Galactic Horizons
—get that? Now where would I do that on this levitating subdivision?”
“One of the Telecom lounges, I suppose. Number seventeen is the closest. I watch it myself when—” I headed back into the mall. Lounge seventeen would be about right, assuming Clarissa’d caught up with Lucy. If it wasn’t, I’d try paging her.
Lucy
was
there, but I can’t say the same for the two thugs they’d hauled out of the theater. A small crowd had gathered around the cashier’s booth, along with a medic, two security attendants, and Lucy, arms folded, gun dangling from one finger. “Miserable flea-bitten—You know I’m missing my program while you’re fiddle-farting around!”
“Now madame,” one of the official contingent pleaded, “if you’d put that away, and tell us what happened here. We must have an explanation. It’s a company rule.”
“
Stuff
your company! If two punks wanna get hurt—I’m practically an innocent bystander!” She gestured sharply with a toe at the figures on the floor.
The medic looked up and scowled. “Come on, lady—you’ve already fractured his skull! Trying for some ribs, now?”
“Lucy!” I elbowed my way through the crowd. “Kleingunther’s got Clarissa! Where’s Ed? He’s supposed to—”
“Ed ain’t here. These”—she kicked at the bleeding form again—“were lounging around when I—notice how this one matches Clarissa’s description? Anyway, they came in, sat on either side of me, and—” She aimed a kick at the other unconscious thug, but was restrained. “He had a hypo.
They were gonna stack me
! So I bopped ’em—couldn’t fire in a crowded theater.
Taxation
! They bent my front sight!” She peered along the barrel, the crowd in front melted discreetly away.
“Lucy, put that wherever you carry it, and listen! We’ve got to find Ed!” I lapelled an attendant. “We’re Congressional witnesses. One of our people has been kidnapped, and this was another attempt. Can we shake loose of here
fast
?”
I fidgeted as they blotted up the assassins and wheeled them away. “If the
lady,
” the girl said, “will leave her name and address. There were witnesses, so we can get depositions.” A few remaining bystanders mumbled assent, one frosty-haired chimp in a leisure suit shook his fist at the departing miscreants.
Lucy got stubborn, so I butted in. “Lucy Kropotkin, 628 Genet Place, Laporte! Sorry, Lucy, no time to stand on your dignity.” To the attendant: “’Com ahead and check with the president if there’s any doubt.”
“The president of what?—oh, yes, the Continental Congress.”
“With any luck,” Lucy added, “there’ll be
more
violence! Where’s Madison?”
“Suite 1919. If somebody who looks like me shows up, tell him where we went—and send troops!”
“I’ll tell my assistant. I’m coming, too!” She herded us to a metal door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY and opened it with an odd-looking key. “Hold on tight!” she ordered, pushing buttons as the stainless-steel capsule shot down, sideways, down again, and way, way up, coming to a screeching three-G halt. We tumbled out into four inches of carpet, a door across the hallway said 1932. “This way!” she whispered. I unlimbered my Smith & Wesson, wishing for something better than plastic bullets.
1919’s door was shut. I raised my foot level with the lock plate and
kicked.
And kicked again. While I was rubbing my toes, she opened the door with her passkey. We found the note lying propped on the telecom:
Lieutenant:
We enjoyed more success with Dr. Olson and Mr. Bear. Instead of wasting time—and—possibly lives—attempting to follow, reconsider my offer before Congress convenes.
M.v.R.
 
At that moment a mechanical maid entered, followed by a senior flight attendant and a pair of obvious newlyweds. “What’s going on here?” I demanded as the same words left the glorified room clerk’s mouth.
“If it’s any business of yours,” he answered both me and himself, “I’m making this suite available to Mr. and Mrs. Snedigar, here. Who are you, if I may—”
The security officer flagged him down. “And the previous occupants?”
“Why, Mr. Richthofen and his party took a groundward shuttle not more than five minutes ago. I arranged it myself.”
 
I am less concerned with good and evil than with freedom and non-freedom. Good and evil may both exist within a free society. But given sufficient time, all that remains under tyranny is evil.
We seek only a consistent application of the principle of liberty, without exception, without excuse, without compromise. We do not promise infallibility, but are determined, against the trend of six thousand years of human history, to make our errors on the side of individual rights.
 
—Albert Gallatin
Rule of Reason
 
Gallatinopolis, geographic and political center of North America, is a crusty little patch of buildings surrounded by an entire planet of wheat fields. A lone highway stretches from the south: Greenway 200, an emerald ribbon in a sea of gold departing northward until it’s covered with a springy mutated moss.
Our ship found mooring east of the little part-time capital. I wasn’t in a mood to enjoy the scenery—Clarissa and Ed were gone. Everything else seemed pointless. Visiting the
Palace’s
dungeon, a hastily padlocked tool crib, had proven useless. One prisoner was dead. The other was beyond saving, and beyond telling us anything. Hadn’t anyone here heard of poison in a hollow tooth? He had several week-old bullet wounds, though. Eleven-caliber Webley. I watched the son of a bitch die.
Now, Lucy chattered as the great ship made fast. “They’ll wheel a derrick in behind us and lower the whole shebang to the ground.”
I tried to help: “Why not just fly off, the same way we got on?”
“We would,” she answered, “but most of these passengers are delegates. Simpler to get rid of us all at the same time, doncha think?”
“Maybe not. If there’s any of Madison’s people still aboard, I’ll kill the bastards with my bare hands!”
“Might be more effective than that little gun of yours. Look, Winnie, prudence don’t suit me, either—Pete was the deliberate one in the family—but we gotta sit tight and see what develops first.”
“You call that a plan?”
“It’s all we got. Maybe if we beat ’em in Congress. They’re only holding Ed and Clarissa to keep us from sayin’ our piece … .”
“You’re kidding one of us, Lucy. Madison’ll waste them just for spite.”
“Hmm. We’ll think of something, son. My old cerebrum’s on autopilot right this second. By the way”—she pointed out the window—“if any of those folks down there look like ants, it’s ’cause they
are
—we’re down!”
Vast sections of wall swung outward, daylight crashed into the cool Victorian lobby, people began filing out. Minutes later, standing at a luggage carousel lowered from the ship’s belly, I replaced the plastic-tipped cartridges with 240-grainers from Ed’s bags, now piled around my feet with Clarissa’s things. I waited for Lucy to hire a taxi, but with thousands of humans, simians, and cetaceans deblimping all at once …
During the Whiskey Rebellion, it says here, government in the Old United States meant Philadelphia—convenient for rebellious farmers, less so for George Washington—but as the country expanded over the next century, it was subject to increasing pressure to move west. Many cities declined the honor vehemently, and, as suits the national style, nothing official was done. In the freewheeling post-Revision days, the capital tended to be wherever the president lived, wandering to Charlottesville, Albany, Boston, back to Philadelphia again, until it was “dumped” as Lucy is fond of saying, in the Dakota Territories, near Balta.
“
Sorry, Winnie!
” I jumped. “No cabs. Did manage to snag this wheelie frammis for the luggage.” I loaded the thing while Lucy held it upright.
“
This
is progressive, modern, space-age Gallatinopolis?” I snorted.
“This is miserable, backward,
rustic
Gallatinopolis. Ain’t it swell?”
I eventually learned not to look down at my feet: the city is preserved exactly as it was eighty-seven years ago—its chief and only industry the much-to-be-despised operation of occasional government. The place looks like a mining boom town: tarpaper shacks ready to burn given thirty seconds of warm weather and a mild breeze, streets narrow runnels of churned mud—but
frozen,
under two inches of transparent plastic. Walking on polymerized “air” is downright unnerving. The boardwalks and rough buildings are concrete under carefully maintained exteriors.
“Y’see, Winnie—that’s right, don’t look down—we didn’t locate this place to make it more accessible—
Whoops!
Almost got
me
that time!” She laughed, and seemed, despite the circumstances, younger than I’d ever seen her.
“Oh?” I asked. “How come it’s in the precise center of the continent then?”
“To make it just as inconvenient as possible to everyone! If Tucker’d had his way, the poxy thing’d be in Siberia! Government
needs
to be tiresome. Folks think twice before they agree to come up here. We’ve met only six times since the capital was moved. That’s six times too many, but anarchy takes practice. Now where’s that hotel? These streets were planned by a committee, all right!”
 
IN 138 A.L., Prussia decided to emulate North America by confederating Europe—even if it didn’t want to be confederated. In brief campaigns, the other German states, France, Benelux, and the Italies were gobbled up. Spain and Portugal fell to fifth channelists, and England, as usual, was in trouble.
An agitated Congress assembled, the first since 1900, a disheartening sight to Europeans who’d come begging for assistance: even the assembly hall was roughed out of pine planks. The Old World was mystified at the vital barbarity of the New, but they had good reason to ask for help: Scandinavia was threatened by a Czar emboldened by the Prussian distraction, the Finns fighting a gallant but futile guerrilla war against the Cossacks; two great barge fleets stood ready to invade England—under Hamiltonian leadership, the Irish were preparing their final revenge.
By a substantial margin, Congress voted strict neutrality. There was ample precedent: this nation had avoided wars in 1812, 1860, 1898, and ended its 1845 engagement with Mexico in four virtually bloodless weeks. Yet it surprised no one—except, again, the Europeans—when a volunteer force gathered to make the fabled Thousand Airship Flight, and many a delegate who’d demanded official neutrality boarded those dirigibles, some never to return.
The war lasted one hundred days. The exhausted Hamiltonians, already being nibbled to death by native Thomas Paine Brigades, couldn’t comprehend the fresh, disorderly, leaderless Americans, unwilling to surrender—unable, even if they’d wanted to. The aerolift volunteers were better clothed, better fed than peasant-conscriptees, who’d only recently traded their pitchforks for clumsy Prussian bolt-actions, and fell before the machine pistols Confederates had lived with all their lives. A German officer complained, in an unfinished letter, that these American devils only shot their enemies between the eyes. He was found shot, perhaps by coincidence, between the eyes.
Wherever they went, Confederates left anarchy behind. Gallatin’s ideas carried them fully as far as the force of their arms; enemy and friendly nationals alike learned quickly. Many a nobleman returned home to find his castle turned into a resort hotel by some local enterpriser. The Germanies and Italies remained fragmented. Spain fractured into a dozen polities. Brittany seceded from France. Armed at Prussian expense, Eire returned to her ancient tribal anarchy. The Balkans sub-subdivided until every village was a nation.
England held on. Scotland, Wales, the Isles of Wight and Man departed. Skye and Mull promptly seceded from Scotland, and Oxford University erected customs barriers. The formerly United Kingdom began to resemble a badly done jigsaw until it established a Gallatinist Parliament, and the perplexed king was persuaded to add “Anarch of the Commonwealth” to his titles. Ireland was gone, but Normandy was petitioning for annexation.
In 1918, amid the aftershocks, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck. Nearly four hundred Confederate airships had somehow survived the war. Stocked, again at private expense, they flew around the globe dispensing a new and powerful medication to the disease-ridden planet.
 
WE FINALLY FOUND our lodgings, across the street from Liberty Hall, and were graciously ensconced in the third-floor “penthouse.” It was a good thing our accommodations had been reserved. All over the tiny capital lobby floors were being rented by the square foot, and people were sleeping in hovercars. I looked at the large, inviting bed and thought of Clarissa. For a man of my age, I was doing a lot of crying these days.
Gallatinopolis was never intended to be large. Except for the Quadrennial, a sort of political skeleton crew meeting every four years to select a president, the city had remained quiet after the War in Europe, stirring again briefly in 1933 with the ascension of President Chodorov, who filled the vacancy created when President Mencken shot his own vice president in a duel, only to be gunned down by the veep’s irate mother.
Accommodations disposed of, Lucy and I crossed over to the assembly hall, passing through its doors beneath the foot-high letters:
THIS IS LIBERTY HALL
YOU CAN SPIT ON THE MAT AND CALL THE CAT A BASTARD
—Fleet Admiral His Grace A. B. Chandler
 
We paused at a sign in the rough-paneled hallway promising THE JEFFERSONBURGER—IT’LL SET YOU FREE and, with understandable trepidation, elbowed our way into the crowded snack bar.
“Third time Congress met,” Lucy said around the greasy fringes of her lunch, “I only just made it. Always liked politics. Just perverse, I guess. After the war, Pete and me tried ranching the Matto Grosso, but between Jivaros and the soldier ants … Finally got ourselves a little stretch behind the Admiralty range, settled down carving out uranium. Antarctica’s downright homey, compared to Brazil—no poison darts! Damn sight better off than those first Moonsteaders in seventy-three!”
1949?
“There we were, rich as Croesus, an’ getting richer, when the Czar up and claim-jumped the whole bloody continent! Kinda stupid, seein’ as Russian nationals didn’t amount to a full one percent of the population—refugees, at that. Troops came about three weeks later. Pete got kinda shot up, so I herded our old hoverbuggy clear to Tierra del Fuego—dodgin’ Russky war subs, Pete all feverishlike beside me, and all we had left in the world piled on the back seat.”
Piotr Kropotkin, bloodsoaked bandages and all, addressed the Congress. Antarctica was a bonanza of coal, oil, other minerals. Its colonies were popular. America outfitted another volunteer expedition.
The Czar declared war, attacking Alaska, occupied the Kingdom of Hawaii, and invaded Japan, shattering her centuries-old isolation. The Confederate hoverfleet, a small-but-deadly 250-mile-per-hour navy, won decisively at the Bering Strait. Their imperial dynasty murdered by the Czarists, the Japanese adopted a strange quasi-Gallatinism, with feudal undertones that still confuse political scientists. Another political mystery is the precise nature of Hamiltonian involvement with the Czar—why were they allowed to maintain their regime in Hawaii, finally overthrown when massive numbers of occupying Russian troops were reassigned south?
On the ice, attrition had had its way with the first Siberian waves. Now troops came from the warmer Motherland, lacking the preparation and technology for an environment that made the Steppes seem tropical. North Americans in heated spacesuits simply led them where they could die most efficiently.
By 1958, the real war was being waged by advertising people. Broadcasts into the Russian homeland told serfs that their lives were their own, and disputed the fatherly intentions of a ruler who’d let them perish by the millions. Fusion-powered space-planes rained propaganda into the streets of Saint Petersburg. In the meantime, Lunar colonists constructed Sequoyah I, history’s most powerful wireless transmitter. Fusion-potent, it modulated Russian bedsprings, lightbulb filaments, and tooth fillings, singing the praises of well-ordered anarchy, and hissing the vile Czar from moonrise to moonset.
Angrily brandished agricultural implements and machine tools leavened by aerodropped Confederate weapons overwhelmed the Russian government. Czar Rasputin IV vanished; rumor often places him in Argentina or some other remote corner of the System. Today, the hoe and spanner symbolize the birth of Russian liberty.
The war was over, the last significant nation-state on Earth destroyed.
 
THE ROUGH-HEWN corridor was filled with milling people. Elaborate wrought-iron sconces illuminated portraits between the gift shops and storefronts.
The first, G. Washington, that hated tyrant, hung in a frame no less distinguished than any other. Beneath it a cuspidor was bolted to the floor. Gallatin, Genêt, Jefferson, Monroe, Calhoun—Sequoyah and Osceola in their turbans. Jeff Davis, Gifford Swansea, Arthur Downing, Harriet Beecher, massive bearded Lysander Spooner. Jean-Baptiste Huang, Frederick Douglass, Benjamin Tucker, his face benign as we passed, Nock, Mencken, Chodorov, Lane, Rand, LeFevre—and suddenly an empty frame with a small brass plate:
BOOK: The Probability Broach
11.83Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Compromising Positions by Susan Isaacs
When Night Falls by Airicka Phoenix
Thunder Canyon Homecoming by Brenda Harlen
Zane Grey by The Heritage of the Desert
La muerte de lord Edgware by Agatha Christie
Black Wind by Clive Cussler
Tale for the Mirror by Hortense Calisher