The Probability Broach (23 page)

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Authors: L. Neil Smith

Tags: #Science Fiction, #General, #Fiction

BOOK: The Probability Broach
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I shifted painfully. “Lucy, may I make a suggestion?”
She looked at me, mildly surprised. “Say on, MacDuff!”
“Well, didn’t you say these delegates represent nine-tenths of the country?”
“Quit fidgeting, boy. You feel all right?”
“No!
What percentage, do you suppose, is watching this clambake?” Now she had me doing it.
A predatory gleam dawned in her eyes. “It just might work! But it’ll take time. Hold on a second.”
“What do you think I’ve
been
doing?”
“Shush now!” She punched more buttons. “Running a cross-check: individuals
represented
at this palaver, versus stockholders.” The Telecom burped:
ESTIMATED RUN-TIME:
FOUR MINUTES, THIRTY-TWO SECONDS
 
“You dash down to Jenny and Olongo. Tell ’em what we’re up to.” It felt more like sloshing than dashing. I crossed the great floor self-consciously, but I needn’t have worried: as the wrangling continued down front, I noticed delegates napping, several reading books or their electronic counterparts, and at least two poker games along my route to the rostrum. Someone was working a complicated 3-D crossword in his display, others were walking around, chatting, eating dinner. And I was heading down front, instead of out back where I needed to go.
I reached Jenny. “Lucy’s onto something.” She punched Lucy’s combo, the screen read PRIVACY and faded out. “She needs about five minutes.” I explained the idea.
Jenny snapped her fingers. “Didn’t think of that!” She leaned over to whisper briefly in Olongo’s furry ear.
“Madame President!”
“Yes, Mr. Vice President?”
“I move a five-minute recess. I have to go to the john.”
“SECOND!!” I found myself running wildly for the door.
Jenny didn’t wait for an assenting vote. Slam! “This committee stands recessed for”—she must have seen my rapidly receding back—“make that … make that
ten
minutes. Personal privilege of the vice president!”
And Win Bear, too.
 
JENNY GAVELED CONGRESS back to order. “The Chair recognizes Lucy Kropotkin, of the Gallatinist Party!”
“Madame President, we strenuously protest!”
“That’s nice, Mr. Bertram, but the Chair still recognizes Mrs. Kropotkin.”
Lucy stood. “Madame President, as a
stockholder
in Paratronics, Ltd.”—I looked at the certificate on her desk: one share, purchased from a Dr. Featherstone-Haugh, still warm from the facsimile printer—“I’d like a straw poll of my fellow stockholders, concerning disposition of these records, which, after all, are
our
private property.” Bertram and Madison were frantic at their keyboards. I smiled and shot them a bird.
Jenny asked, “Is a majority of stockholders present?”
“No, Madame President, but there’s a majority represented by
delegates
here. If the Secretary will display the data I’ve just transferred to him.” A number of delegates’ names turned blue, numbers trailing behind them indicating shares held by their constituents.
Jenny handed over to Olongo, stepped down, and was recognized. “Mr. Bertram, I’m prepared to move adjournment, just long enough for an impromptu stockholders’ meeting here and now. I believe all that’s required is a majority of stockholders who—”
“Woman!”
Bertram rose, face flushed, trembling with fury. “You can’t pull this quasilegal nonsense on me—us!”
Jenny smiled sweetly. “Oh yes I can, and afterward, your stockholders will likely want a new chairman of the board, won’t they?”
“All right, all right!” Bertram collapsed into himself like a worn-out concertina, burying his face in his hands. Madison caught Kleingunther’s eye. The butler nodded, patting a bulge under his left armpit. Bertram was about to discover that politics wasn’t fun anymore.
The room darkened once again. Crude internal combustion engines, pushing rubber tires along grease-stained asphalt, carried rigid stick figures, naked of human dignity or the means of self-defense. I’d been adjusted out of my own culture. Would I ever be able to return? There was Vaughn Meiss, alive, unaware of being observed through a keyhole in time. Deejay and Ooloorie described the first contact as we watched it being made, then covered Meiss’s decision to construct his own half of an improved Broach.
“But apparently,” Deejay reported, “his work was being duplicated. These United States have a long, brutal history of internal and international warfare, often employing weapons only a Prussian might consider wholesome.”
“Meiss had once developed such weaponry,” Ooloorie continued. “It’s difficult conveying to a free people how this involved him with an absolute authority, of which he came to live in mortal terror, even after he’d resigned. His work had been in secret, in a ferment of paranoia, and failure to perceive that not letting one’s real defensive capabilities be known, is a principal cause of war.” In the flickering screen light, I could just see someone joining Madison and his cohorts, someone I thought I knew.
“There are many secret police forces,” Deejay explained, “responsible for ferreting out enemy secrets, preventing their own from being discovered. One such, covertly keeping watch on Meiss, began duplicating his Broach. At the time Meiss was murdered, they’d gotten far enough to pass small objects into this world … and contact certain people here.” I was sure now who’d joined Madison. I didn’t like the implications of his sudden availability.
“That secret agency,” Jenny took up the narrative, “established liaison with the only advocate of tyranny left in North America.” She pointed an accusing finger. “John Jay Madison of the Alexander Hamilton Society, formerly known as the Federalist Party!”
Madison leaped to his feet. “I reject this calumny! These fanatics have distorted their personal antipathies—which might better be satisfied decently in the courts or upon the field of honor—into a ludicrous fairy tale! These Gallatinist monsters have waged their war of lies upon my inoffensive compatriots for two centuries!” He slapped his weapon. “By Almighty God, I swear I’ll end it now!”
I unsnapped my safety strap. Jenny faced Madison unflinchingly. “Sir, you’ll have ample opportunity to reply in due course. But I am telling the truth, and no threat,
on this Earth or any other,
can frighten me into doing less. Do you understand me?”
“Be warned, then, young woman. You are gambling with your life!”
“Up yours, Manfred, with a prickly pear.!”
Lucy shouted. Madison jerked his head in our direction, the entire room burst into laughter.
“The Chair,” Olongo said, blowing his nose, “will now examine …” He peered at a slip of paper. “ … Captain Edward William Bear, late of the United States Police Force.”
 
A BIT NERVOUS, I got up and walked slowly to the dais, detouring to approach the Hamiltonians. Sure enough, there was Oscar Burgess, sneering at me. I glanced at the SecPol agent. “Stay out of this, slime! Madison, I want my friends back, quick, in good condition—Hold it, Kleingunther, or you won’t leave this room attached to your nuts!” I shoved Burgess back, gave Kleingunther an elbow in the eye, and snatched their leader’s lower lip, digging in with my thumb. “And Madison,” I warned, watching blood seep up around my thumbnail, “I’ve got no more scruples about initiated force than you do. So think about it, while you’ve got a chance!”
I let go, wiped my hand on Burgess’s shirt, and pointedly turned my back on them (not without a nervous qualm or two), continuing on in a widening circle of shocked silence.
Someone brought me a chair. I sat on its edge, letting my holster dangle within easy reach. “Captain Bear,” Olongo asked, brown eyes twinkling down at me, “you’re from this other Earth we’ve been discussing, an important police official there?”
“Well, yes and no,” I answered, thinking about Perry Mason. “I’m from the other Earth, all right, but as for being important, I’m afraid you’ve been misled. It’s lieutenant, not captain. (Why does everybody here seem to be Captain something-or-other?) And I work for the city government—don’t look so shocked!—of Denver, sort of similar to Laporte, only farther south.”
“Mr. Vice President!” Madison again, his diction a little worse for wear. “I demand the right to cross-examine this psychopath! Or have we Hamiltonians lost every vestige of our—”
“Ask anything you wish, Mr. Madison. But you’re out of order, and will have to wait your turn. Please carry on, Jenny.”
“Thank you, Mr. Vice President. Lieutenant … Win? Is it true that you, and others, were physically attacked in an attempt to keep the Probability Broach under government control?”
“Well, I can’t exactly testify to their motives—”
“And these attacks continued in our world?”
“Yes. Two good friends of mine, who tended my wounds, took my risks, helped me orient—they’re
gone!
For all I know,
they’re—You’re gonna get yours, you scummy bastards! Do you hear me? Are you listening, you
—”
Olongo rested a kindly paw on my shoulder. “Please calm yourself, Lieutenant. You’re making reference to someone in this room. Mr. John Jay Madison. Isn’t one of his companions from your own world?”
I breathed deeply, wiping my eyes with a corner of my poncho. “Yes, Oscar Burgess, over there with Madison. He’s Denver Chief of Station for the Federal Security Police. They kidnapped my friends, to keep me from testifying.”
Olongo addressed the assembly. “Any more questions, before we move on?”
Madison came charging down the aisle. “Isn’t it true you’re a charlatan? An ordinary, third-rate commercial peeper, covering up thefts from a client whose trust you’ve also rewarded by implicating him in this fantasy of yours? Speak up! The nation must understand the
depths
of your depravity!”
I sat it out while Olongo hammered down the crowd. The gavel suddenly snapped, its head bounced across the floor, landing at Madison’s feet. The gorilla drew his sidearm and went right on pounding. “Order! Order! There’ll be
quiet
in this room, or I’ll start awarding extra navels!” He turned the weapon in his fist, but kept it pointed aloft. “Who’s first?” Someone tittered, Olongo cracked a hideously fanged grin, and holstered the piece. “Lieutenant, would you care to answer this
gentleman?”
I struggled not to get angrier. “Mr. Vice President, in the place I come from—in my history, George Washington defeated the Whiskey Rebellion. Just as there were two George Washingtons, in your world where he was executed, and in mine where he died in bed, there are two Edward William Bears—
and Madison’s perfectly aware of it.
The Edward Bear in your world, a man I’ve come to regard as a brother, is a detective in Laporte. I met him—”
“Just a moment,” Madison interrupted. “If there are two of you, why not simply
produce
this superfluous Edward Bear for us?”
“Because, you son of a bitch, he’s one of the people you kidnapped aboard the
San Francisco Palace!
There were also two Manfred von Richthofens, you know. The one in my world got what he deserved!”
Madison affected an exaggerated gesture of tolerant amusement. “Honestly, ladies and gentlemen, is there no length to which these lunatics will spin their fantasies? I have no more questions, Mr. Bear, or whoever you are. Try to get some professional help, soon.” He waltzed back to his desk before I could plant my boot where it might do the most good.
 
OTHER DELEGATES WANTED answers, too. Bit by bit, I managed to tell the whole story, then Lucy was called for corroboration. I sat, clenching and unclenching my fists, as she told of Clarissa’s disappearance. Whatever else happened, I was deciding to kill Madison before this was all over, or be killed myself. I didn’t really care which.
Past midnight, when I was beyond feeling tired, they showed more film—sixteen millimeter, this time. Before Madison could finish screaming protestations, the Seventh Continental Congress sat, stricken by a horror they’d never imagined possible.
The old films were grainy, scratched with age and many reproductions: over a large industrial city, a single B-29, a steel cylinder dropping from its belly. A flash, smoke billowing 50,000 feet, forming the poisonous mushroom of death. Then Nagasaki.
Then bigger, better bombs, fission giving way to fusion, kilotons to megadeaths. Years passed: Japanese cities, Pacific islands, Nevada, the Sahara, the Negev. Finally that hideous night in my world when the Soviets delivered their ultimatum to China, a last “humane” demonstration: a searing flash in the dark that left a jagged crack from pole to pole, visible across the surface of the moon. The Chinese surrendered the next morning.
Freeman K. Bertram rose in something like terrified dignity, as pale as the screen the films had finished running on. He sidled carefully from behind the Hamiltonians, avoiding contact as if they were contagious, and crossed the floor to Jenny and Olongo.

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