The Probability Broach (26 page)

Read The Probability Broach Online

Authors: L. Neil Smith

Tags: #Science Fiction, #General, #Fiction

BOOK: The Probability Broach
13.32Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Together, with many interruptions and not a few contradictions we recounted our North Dakota adventures: Madison confounding Congress; Burgess’s demise and Bertram’s part in it; the wild ride back to Laporte. Clarissa insisted on looking professionally at my arm. “Ouch! It’s only a bruise! Say, you’re still cold. I’d offer my cape, but as far as I know, it’s still jammed in a teleprinter back at Liberty Hall. Want my tunic?”
“Why, Win, the very shirt off your back? I guess that means we’re going steady.” Her eyes crinkled appealingly.
“Not until I get a straight answer from
somebody
around here! I’ve been trying for
weeks
to find out whether you and Ed . . I mean, nobody will tell me …” I spluttered to a finish, more confused and embarrassed than ever. Lucy began laughing, and Clarissa actually blushed this time, eyes carefully on the floor.
Ed put up a hand. “We’re not laughing at you, Win. It’s just that—”
Clarissa whirled on him. “You let
me
tell it, Edward William Bear! Win, Ed and I practically grew up together. I guess everybody assumed we’d eventually—everybody but
us,
I mean. Anyway, you came along, and I—well …”
“There we were,” mused Ed, “freezing our asses off in there, and all she could do was blubber about never seeing you again, and how worried you must be. That’s why she thought of the aluminum foil—said it’d give you a little more time to rescue us! Never stopped hoping, right up to when we heard you blow the hinges off the front door. About half an hour after
I’d
given us up for dead.”
“I hate to break this up, folks.” Forsyth stood in the doorway, his arms full of clothing. “But the boys and I have to get back. Thought you could use these.” He passed the bundle to Clarissa. I looked up at the captain, all four and a half furry feet of him. Relieved of his burden, he automatically assumed the time-honored position, hands behind, rocking back and forward on his heels—all veteran beat-cop.
“Thanks,” I said. “You guys were a welcome sight. I assume that stuff’s from upstairs. Any clues to where they’ve gone?”
“Like tourist brochures from Ganymede?” He paused. “You might take a look at the basement. Lots of stuff moved out, very recently. Heavy stuff: scratches in the floor, torn-up wiring. Took off in a hurry, I’d say.” I looked at Lucy the Theorist. She stuck out her tongue.
“Thanks, Cap.” Ed rose stiffly to his feet. “Send me your bill—a
big
one.”
“Part of the service.” He touched his cap and turned. “C’mon, you monkeys, we got work!” He paused again, looking back over his shoulder. “I saw your little set-to on the ’com. Pretty fair pistol work, especially the head shot. If we’re going to have a war with these … people—well, look for me in the front lines. I’ll be there.” He turned again and left.
“So will I,” I muttered, watching Clarissa shiver. “So will I.”
 
Despite Hamiltonian claims to the contrary, the Federalist Constitution contained no “checks and balances.” The Executive, the Congress, the Supreme Court, all were tentacles of the same octopus. All received sustenance at the same nipple. All had a single interest in common,
power.
Look for checks and balances in the marketplace: anyone who hangs out his shingle as a judge and cannot render adjudication satisfactory enough to be paid by those he judges will seek another profession or starve. And
that,
indeed, is justice.
—Professor Leon Czolgosz
Federalist Fallacies
 
I don’t think I’ve ever been more depressed. While waiting for Ed’s car to wend its electronic way to us, we examined what the Federalists had left behind: their furnishings, trophies, clothes in the closets—everything except Madison’s tiny silver cups. Yet there were no signs of hasty retreat, no unfinished meals on the table, not even a dirty dish.
Every scrap of paper in the building lay in the wastebaskets, reduced to a fine white ash. They’d been through this before, in a dozen countries, and were good at it. Downstairs was a different story: tangled broken wiring, scarred woodwork, splintered crates—as if they’d made the decision to move at leisure, then gotten hurried halfway through.
“They’re rabbitted, all right.” I told Ed as we surveyed Bealls’s empty workroom. “As soon as he’s set up again, they’ll have their weapons and manpower.”
“The question is, where’s he setting up?”
“Lucy, even if we knew,” I answered bitterly, “how could we do anything about it? You people and your goddamned principles!”
She kicked at an empty carton. “I dunno. Guess I’d rather have my principles shot from under me than finish ’em off myself. We do have two real live witnesses now. We could make kidnapping charges stick this time.”
Clarissa shook her head. “I’m afraid not, Lucy. We never saw any of the real leaders, just Mikva and his two henchmen. Madison was in Gallatinopolis at the time, with several thousand reputable witnesses.”
Swell, I thought. They could set up, pull whole armies through, and no one could stop them until they started initiating force—and by then … “Wait! Madison took off before I finished with Burgess. He still owes me a duel!”
“So what?” Lucy asked. “Nobody
has
to fight a duel.”
“Yeah, but how would that look to his followers?”
Ed clapped his hands. “By Spooner, that’d throw a spanner into their plans, either way you figure it!”
“It sure would.” I mused for a long time, trying to imagine where I’d be if I were a Federalist. Suddenly I stood up. “Hey—how come I came through that hole in the park?”
“Because,” Ed said patiently, “that was the … the
coextant
point. The Confederate equivalent of Meiss’s laboratory. I thought you—”
“I do. Now, where are A-bombs going to come from in my world, the middle of Elitch’s Gardens—or U.S. government property of some kind?” I tried sitting on a packing crate, picking up splinters.
“Well, that narrows it down, Winnie, old sleuth. Your government owns only about a third of the United States, after all.”
“Three-quarters of Colorado, Lucy, mostly national parks and such. But it’d have to be somewhere with security, somewhere they normally store the weapons or could hold them safely.”
Ed’s forehead furrowed. “How about the militia?”
I laughed. “SecPol gets along with the Pentagon about as well as it does with local cops! Nice try, though. There’s even a couple of National Guard units in Fort Collins, as I recall.”
Lucy shook her head. “Fort Collins can’t be right. That freighter was heading south, out along the Greenway.”
“Which is why I think Madison’s here in Laporte! If someone’s following you, do you lead them right to your hideout? Look at this. I picked it up trying to find my way around Fort Collins.” The map was grimy and blood-stained. I unfolded it gingerly. In these late, great days of the Republic, you never know when you might want to turn Uncle Irving in for operating an unregistered Xerox machine. One advantage to a police state is that it’s easy to find the police: all maps printed in the Land of the Formerly Free are required to indicate local SecPol offices with a brand new little map symbol, a mailed fist grasping an unsheathed dagger. Yech.
“Here it is, in the center of town. The Post Office, and in the same building, SecPol. All the easier to censor your mail, m’dear. Anyway, find the coextant spot in Laporte, and we’ll find Madison and blow him full of nice juicy holes.”
Ed examined the map. “This won’t do us any good. Where’s Confederation Boulevard? Or Laporte University?”
“I can’t tell you that, Ed,” Clarissa said, over my shoulder. Her breath was warm on my cheek. I liked it a lot. “But I’ll show you the park. Where’s Meiss’s lab, Win?”
“Well, here’s CSU—see the oval drive here? That’s the Sciences Building, and—got a pencil?—right here, I’d say, is the lab.”
“Which tells us where Deejay set up the Broach!” said Clarissa.
“Yeah,” Lucy added. “And that river, the Cache La Poudre, why that’s nothing but piddling little old Slade Creek! Had a plague of a time with the water table when they started building the—”
Ed stood up abruptly. “Okay, folks, we’ve got some computing to do, and I don’t want to be caught here in case Madison comes back for his toothbrush. Besides, I want a bath and out of these filthy clothes!”
“Me, too!” shuddered Clarissa. “Lucy, I’m claiming your hottest tub for the next sixteen hours!”
Lucy grinned. “You’ve got it. Gentlemen, shall we take our leave of this House of Ill Philosophy?”
It was fine with me. I was running short of ammunition.
 
EVEN IF THE end of the world’s tapping you on the shoulder, sometimes you have to stop and say, “Screw everything-I’m going to bed.” Two days’ self-abuse—pardon the expression—were catching up with me, six G’s twice in one afternoon and a thrilling duel to the death had finished the job.
Back at Genet Place, Clarissa disappeared next door, Ed fell asleep in the bathtub over brandy and cigars, and his frail, elderly neighbor sat, map in hand, punching hell out of the Telecom. I tried to stay awake cleaning my revolver.
It didn’t work. Next thing I knew, it was my shoulder Lucy was punching hell out of. I peered dimly at the ’com pad she shoved under my nose.
“ … this display here? Wake up, youngster, it’s important! The little pulsing dots are Meiss’s lab and the SecPol office, orange and green, respectiv—”
“On a yellow background? Lucy, I’ve been sick already once today!”
“Fooey! Now here’s your Cache La Poudre ‘River,’ and Presto!—Laporte, but with the cursors still showing, everything lined up so the creek still matches, give or take, and it’s ninety-five percent that this here’s the present lurkabouts of Madison’s crew!” She fingered the map where it showed a residential area.
“That’s only four blocks from here! I’ll wake Ed. You get Clarissa! On second thought, leave her out of this. Might be dangerous. Boy I’m glad I cleaned my gun. I—”
“Hold your horsepower, sonny! You’ll wake Ed, all right, and point him toward the sack. Boy’s probably wrinkled up like a prune by now. We ain’t goin’ anyway without some sleep!”
“But Lucy, Madison will—”
“Fooey squared! Uprooting Bealls’s equipment’s gonna slow ’em down plenty. Son, at a hundred and thirty-six, a girl
really
needs her beauty sleep. Do as I say. We’ll meet at dawn, loaded for revenooers!”
I don’t put up much of a fight. Just getting Ed transferred seemed a major effort. By the time I got to my own room, the whole damn world could have blown up for all I cared.
 
DARKNESS.
The door opened softly and closed. I reached for the forty-one in a pile of clothing beside the bed.
“Win?” Her gown whispered and I felt weight on the bed.
“Hmm?”
“I’m still cold, Win.” Before I could think of anything clever to say, she was cuddling close beside me. I sighed and laced trembling arms around her, praying I wouldn’t wake up. Together, we breathed a long time in the silence.
“Win, don’t men
ever
take the initiative where you come from?”
After a while I said, “Most of the time, Clarissa. I just sort of gave up, a long while ago.”
“That’s sad. Why did you do that? Give up, I mean—don’t stop what you’re doing now!”
I didn’t. “Well, you know I was married once. She left, and others, they didn’t stay. Just as well.”
“How—how many others, Win?”
“None of your business, nosy!”
“You’re right. I’m sorry—and that feels
good!”
So did she. “Two.”
“Mm?”
“Only two others, Clarissa.”
“And then you gave up trying? At all?”
“You were lying to me—your
hands
aren’t a bit cold.”
She giggled. “It appears you didn’t give up altogether. All those years—my, what a waste!”
“You exaggerate, dear thing, but thanks for doing it.” Then she was everything at once, firm, soft, heavy, but light in my arms. I began to roll over, but she pushed me back gently.
“Wait a minute—first time never lasts long enough … though I’d say you’re plenty long enough—second time is better.”
The bed jostled. I pulled the covers down so she could breathe. “Clarissa,” I said, blushing in the dark, “you won’t get any warmer down there.”
“You’ll make up for it later. Now hush. I won’t be able to answer for a while.” Waves of shocked pleasure coursed through me; tears in the corners of my eyes. I ran my fingers through her lovely hair, cradled her face in my hands as her head bobbed up and down.
“Great Mer-ci-ful
HEAVENS!”
The bed bounced briefly again and she laid her cheek on my shoulder. I held her close, trembling once again, tears rolling down my face. A long while later, after I had
more
than made it up to her, she sat up, kneeling beside me in the dawn light. Her enormous hazel eyes held mine, her strong slender hands were on my shoulders.
“Win, you’ve got to promise me something—”
“I’ll respect you in the morning, honest I will. God, I respect the hell out of you right now!”
“Be serious, idiot!”
“Okay, okay.”
“Win,
please
never give up again, okay?”
“Never. Not as long as you’re right here to keep me from it.”
“Right here? Don’t be silly. We’ll have to get our
own
bed, sooner or later.”
“That
I can afford,” I laughed. “It’ll have to be a pretty sturdy one.”
“I suppose so. Now I know what they mean by ‘police brutality’!”
“Yeah, but what I mean,” I said, nervous all over again, “it’ll have to last a long time—won’t it?”
“Dearest cuddly Bear, it’ll have to last until our great-great-grandchildren roll us out and bury us! Don’t you realize that yet?”
Thank you. Whoever it is up there, even if you’re not really there, thank you. “I just had to make sure, darling Doctor. It’s a deal, partner. From now on, I’ll blast ’em, and you sew ’em back together. Okay?”
“What about Ed, your other partner?”
“Let him get his own girl!” I sat up and hugged her till she squeaked. “What do y’know—the Hero gets the Girl! Now if we can manage to survive through the last thrilling—”
“Oomph! You got any of that energy left for another? …” She flopped back onto the pillow and I settled beside her, happier, I believe, than I’ve ever been in my entire life.
“Ain’t a matter of energy, lady,” I told her. “It’s a matter, at this point anyway, of inspiration—make that respiration: think you can breathe through your nose for a little while again? I’ll hold the blankets up.”
 
IT WASN’T QUITE a raid at dawn. Two people forgot to set their alarms: Lucy the indefatigable and efficient, and Win the enormously pleased and exhausted. The ’com started wailing at noon—Lucy’d finally managed to wake up. We ate hastily and girded for battle. Considering everything we’d been through, we were doing great to leave the house at two.
I strapped on my Smith & Wesson, tucked the derringer into what passes for hip pockets, and added the Browning for good measure. I thought about it for a while and added the Bowie knife to my belt.
Lucy had arrived with the mate to her Gabbet Fairfax. One was bad enough, two were even worse. The huge pistols were wearing her instead of the other way around. Still, if SecPol had issued cannons like those to its agents, I’d be looking around for a new arm this morning. Or a new incarnation.

Other books

Secret Ingredients by David Remnick
Not Your Ordinary Faerie Tale by Christine Warren
El Consejo De Egipto by Leonardo Sciascia
How to Fall by Edith Pearlman
My Man Michael by Lori Foster
Isle of Palms by Dorothea Benton Frank
Broken by Shiloh Walker