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Authors: L. Neil Smith

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BOOK: The Probability Broach
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“A pair of identical gumshoes? I’ve been thinking about that. Maybe because we’re both Indians.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, I never set much store in being ‘Native American’—neolithically ignorant while the rest of the world was out inventing the wheel, gunpowder, carbon steel. Hell, if our esteemed ancestors had been able to get along with one another thirty days running, they could have thrown Pizarro and Cortez out on their hairy asses and developed a real civilization.”
“So what’s your point?”
“I don’t know exactly where our histories diverged. I’d sleep better tonight if I did. But those histories are mostly
white people’
s histories, right? I mean, George Washington got killed in the Whiskey Rebellion, that’s what Clarissa tells me.”
“And she’s correct. Right between the eyes, like he deserved!”
“Splendid. Well in my history, old George—whom
we
think pretty highly of—died in bed from a bad case of the quacks. He had a head cold and they bled him to death for it.”
“Seems only just; he was bleeding everybody else with Hamilton’s taxes.”
“All right, funny man, suppose he’d had a child
after
the Rebellion.”
“In your history? But he was an old man.”
“Never stopped Ben Franklin, did it?”
“Franklin? Oh, yes, the turncoat Federalist.”
“Okay, okay. Now George couldn’t have had another kid in
your
history, because he was dead, see? But my hypothetical kid—an extra one, from your vantage point—would have had kids of its own, right? And
they’d
have had kids. Pretty soon the whole population would be substantially different.”
Ed saw some light. “By now there’d hardly be anyone like us, with close counterparts in each world. But that just makes it harder to explain our—”
“Not at all! Look—whatever the White-Eyes were up to back East, that wouldn’t affect what
our
ancestors were doing!”
He nodded. “Not until much later, and by that time—”
“By that time our heredity—in each world—would be pretty much unaltered!” I was proud of that theory. For the first time I began to feel on top of things. The feeling was good, while it lasted.
Ed tipped the chair back again and relaxed. “That still leaves a number of things to figure out, though. For example, how you got here in the first place, and—”
“And who’s trying to fill me full of bullet holes while I’m here. I thought I’d left the bad guys behind. You got any enemies?”
He shrugged. “You thinking that the Frontenac people mistook you for me? Anything is possible, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. But couldn’t your bad guys have arrived the same way you did?”
“That’s a cheerful thought. Got any more?”
“Now that you mention it: I still don’t understand one thing … I gather that, in your capacity as an investigator, you work for the government. Why that should be so, I—”
“That’s right, the city government of Denver. What of it?”
“Cities with their own governments? Well, let it pass. Now the pistol you took in the laboratory is marked ‘government property,’ yet you find it perfectly reasonable to assume it was in the hands of its rightful owner, correct?”
“Sure, the
United States
Government—not the same thing at all. Look, I know it sounds strange—hell, it sounds pretty strange to
me
—but sometimes the interests of various governments—local, state, national—
conflict
. That’s—”
“A good indication,” he said with a sour look, “that you have too many governments!”
“Let’s skip politics. All I seem to run into lately is anarchists—and garage doors.”
Ed got up and looked at my Browning again. “I wonder about your theory, Win. About us both being Indians. You figure we’re here because changes in history reached our ancestors too late to prevent us being born?”
“That’s right—setting aside the question of
whose
history is changed.”
“Very well, but can you account for us both being detectives—or even for us having the same name? And something else: these firearms—the Utah and the Nauvoo Brownings—both invented, presumably, by John Moses Browning?”
“Yeah, what of it?”
“John Moses Browning wasn’t an Indian.”
“Damn you, Ed! Just when I’m getting things figured out, you have to confuse me with logic!”
“Not logic,” he laughed, “just the Bear facts!”
“Ugh. Well, where does that put us now?”
He thought a moment. “If we knew how your bad guys got here—assuming they’re not just local talent—that might tell us how to get you back to your own world.”
There it was again, that stomach-wrenching thought. “Wrong,” I said, unable to hold back my fears any longer. “Look, something caused this divergence, some event between the Revolution and the Whiskey Rebellion that wound up with Washington getting prematurely dead, I—”
“What are you driving at? I thought all of this was—”
“Critical!
Suppose time travel is possible, Ed, not sideways time travel, but the good old-fashioned linear, back-and-forth kind. Suppose somebody went back—maybe Vaughn Meiss, maybe the government—and killed the wrong dinosaur or his own grandfather! Suppose history has been fouled up for good!”
“What do you mean?”
“All along, I’ve been assuming that I traveled to get here. Suppose Meiss’s machine just sort of held me in place while my own world was ripped out from under me and yours slipped in to take its place! Ed, I’m really scared! How do I know that whatever change in history
created
your world didn’t
destroy
mine?”
 
Listen t’me, kid, ‘n’ listen tight. Y’won’t do yerself no good goin’ t’pieces every time y’fill some train robber fulla holes. Wasn’t you made ’im try fer our payroll, he decided that fer ‘imself. You mighta shot ’im, but the way I see it, it was his finger on
your
trigger, all along. Look, we’re th’ best Wells-Mulligan’s got: anybody’d break intuh our boxcar’s just committin’ suicide. An’ everybody’s gotta right t’commit suicide, ain’t they, kid?
—Mike Morrison as “Singin’ Sandy”
in
Lone Star Gunmen
 
I had a hard time sleeping that night. I was exhausted, and not only from exertion and gunshot wounds. Clarissa’s wonderful machines were healing me at a rate that taxed my reserves and made me ravenous about every forty-five minutes. But sleepy I was not. Lying around in bed all day wired up like Donovan’s brain is not exactly conducive to a solid night’s hibernation.
I’m not the warm-milk type, and booze has never helped me sleep. This anarchist’s Disneyland apparently hadn’t any prescription laws. Ed’s medicine cabinets contained everything from aspirin to morphine. Ironically, the dozen plastic bottles Clarissa had left contained mostly vitamin E, bone meal, and ascorbic acid tabs the size of my badge. For inducing sleep, she preferred using a cross between voodoo and electronics she called electronarcosis. But it wasn’t working very well for me.
Lying restlessly in the dark, I tried arguing Ed’s terminal out of something to read. Then I heard it: a humming, soft but unmistakable. I might have slept through it. I turned. In the dim backlight of distant street lamps, I could make out a shadow against the windowpane.
My Smith & Wesson lay on the bureau, but I’d insisted on keeping the derringer under my pillow, and that made me mad. It was likely to ruin my hand, and all I needed now was another set of Basset coils. Nevertheless, I reached slowly behind my head, found the tiny, inadequate handle, and cocked the contraption under the pillow. One shot. I’d better make it a good close one.
The window, hinged at the top, opened outward. A shadow silently threw its leg over the sill. One step across the floor, two, three. Starlight glinted on naked steel.
He was on me! A huge knife swung in a glittering arc and I twisted the gun to bear as his blade tangled in the wiring around me, skittered along the cast on my arm, and was deflected. The derringer went off in a blinding explosion, missing his face by a handspan. I dropped the gun from stinging fingers, grabbing at his wrist. He jerked it back—I let him, pushing the razor-sharp edge toward his face. It caught under his jaw, pivoting where it bit, slicing flesh and corded muscle, spraying us both with blood. He fought the blade as it trembled a quarter-inch from his carotid, both of us weakening fast in the deadlock. I heard bones breaking in his wrist.
Suddenly he let go, ripped himself from my failing grasp, and dived head-first out the window as—
Slap! Slap!
The glazing dissolved in a million crystalline shards.
The lights came on. Ed slumped against the door frame, a spidery wisp of smoke drifting from the muzzle of his .375. I sagged back into the sweat-soaked bed; Clarissa’s careful circuitry a dangling ruin. The bloody knife lay on the blanket, millimeters from my shaking, gun-bruised hand. Ed’s glance traveled from my blood-streaked face to the foot-long blade. “Don’t you know better than to try shaving in the dark?”
“The gore belongs to the other guy.” I mopped my face with the sheet. There was dampness lower down, too—trust my bladder in a crisis. “Think you hit him?”
“I doubt it.” He examined the empty window frame, leaning outward for a moment. “He left his ladder behind. Wait a minute … something here just below the sill.” He held up a plastic box the size of a cigarette pack, hanging from a skein of wires. “A defeater. Damps the vibrations caused by forced entry. Complicated, and very expensive. Only the second one I’ve seen since—”
“If that thing makes a humming sound, he should demand his money back. That’s what gave him away.”
“Excess energy has to be given off somewhere—heat or sonics. Maybe it just wasn’t his day.”
I snorted, surveying the shambles. “You didn’t see him lying on the ground out there?”
“No. Missed him by a mile. He probably picked up a fanny full of splinters, though.” He nodded toward the shattered window.
I grinned. There was an odd, oily gleam around the edges of the frame. Maybe just an odd effect of the light. “How’d he survive the fall?” I looked again. The amoeboid glistening was still there.
“Simple, with ten-foot juniper bushes packed around the base of the house. Think you’ll be all right if I look around a bit?”
I hesitated. “Before you go out … it’s the sheets—I’ve kind of embarrassed myself, it seems.”
He didn’t laugh. “My fault, really. I considered putting on extra security, but decided the autodefenses would be enough. Now I’ve let you get attacked again, in my own home.”
“It all worked out okay, didn’t it?”
He shook his lowered head. “You don’t understand,” he said softly, “You’re my guest, ill and gravely wounded—and not, as it appears, adequately—”
“You didn’t invite me to bleed all over your driveway! You saved my life then, and showed up just in time tonight. The sheets will wash, but all this bullshit
won’t!”
He breathed deeply. “Nevertheless, I’ll hear nothing more about charity. I’ve shown how much my charity is worth!” He started for the door, but the knife caught his eye and he paused, then reached for it.
“Fingerprints!” I hollered, “Don’t screw up the evidence!” I flipped a corner of the blanket over and picked it up by the blade. The damned thing was almost a short sword, fully eighteen inches from pommel to point, razor-sharp to the hilt and halfway along the back. It must have weighed two pounds.
“Fingerprints?” Ed protested. “What kind of evidence is that?”
I sat, trying to take it in. “Look—our worlds may have differences, but this ain’t one of ’em! No two fingerprints are—”
“I’ve heard that theory, but what good does it do? We still have to catch the culprit, and if he’s already caught, what’s the point?”
“Jesus Christ! Don’t you people keep any kind of records, licenses,
anything
that uses fingerprints for identification?”
“People wouldn’t stand for such a thing. I wouldn’t.”
Anarchy has its drawbacks, especially for cops. “Suppose we lift these prints—then we could prove we’d caught the right guy!”
Ed considered. “Provided individual fingerprints really are unique. Can you prove that?”
It was my turn to consider. I’d always taken it for granted: millions of prints on file with the FBI, no two sets alike. But if the feds ever ran across a set of ringers, they’d never tell. They might even rub out the poor slob with the duplicate digits! It’s a sad world. “I never heard of anyone
dis
proving it. Get me some talcum powder and Scotch tape.”
“What’s Scotch tape?”
“Grr! Some sort of transparent sticky ribbon, like for wrapping packages. I hate to start giving lessons, but it looks like you could use this one.”
“There’s probably a thing or two we could teach you, as well,” he said good-naturedly.
“I’m learning every minute. Don’t forget the clean sheets.” He left me wondering how we’d get all the wires back into place. Clarissa was going to be one upset cookie. I glanced at the window. Something definitely odd going on there. Seemed like more glass, now, than Ed’s autopistol had left.
Ed came back, a bundle under one arm and a satisfied look on his face. “I checked around a bit. The bushes under this window are pretty flat. Couldn’t have been a comfortable landing. There’s a faint trail of broken glass halfway to the street—quite invisible, I had to use instruments. No blood, though.”
I laughed. “Don’t feel too bad. I missed him at six inches!” I pointed to the derringer lying on the floor, realizing for the first time that my fingers weren’t broken.
Ed picked up the little gun, looked it over with disbelief, and put it on the bookcase. “Window’s coming along fine,” he said, running a finger over the edges. “I’ve called Professional Protectives. They’re sending a team over. Where do you want this stuff?”
I took the talcum powder. “Hope I haven’t lost my touch since I saw this in
Crimestopper’s Textbook.
This should stick where his hands left an oily residue. Then we’ll pick the powder up with some tape, and—”
Ed held up a hand. “Sounds kind of messy. Wouldn’t it be simpler to let the Telecom do it?” He picked up the clipboard and pulled loose a little knob that trailed a fine, retracting cable. He passed the knob over the surface of the knife handle. “Now we’ve got a permanent record. Want to see?”
I nodded dumbly. The wall lit up, showing the six-inch handle expanded to six feet, its entire surface visible on the screen.
“Now we’ll try a little contrast enhancement.” The image began to
unravel
a millimeter at a time, replaced, line by line, in sharper detail. Dust particles, minute scratches began to disappear. Most of the prints were smeared, except for a beauty at the back, near the guard. “More ultraviolet,” Ed said to himself, and the smears began to fade. Along each pristine ridge, individual pore-prints could now be discerned.
“Okay, genius, I’m impressed. What about the overlapping ones?”
More adjustments. The prints moved and separated like an animated movie title, arraying themselves like an FBI reference card. This seemed to satisfy Ed. “Now let’s do the alarm defeater.” He picked it up by its wires and let the Telecom look it over. Images were duly refined and placed below those from the knife, each paired with its identical mate, proving, unnecessarily, that our intruder had handled both objects.
However, at the bottom of the screen was a third row. “Where somebody else handled the defeater. Probably me.” He scanned his fingers and let the camera snap back. The bottom row shifted and danced, identified Ed’s thumb and forefinger marks, leaving four strange prints. Ed looked highly pleased. “You know what, Win? I’ll bet whoever owns these prints hired our knife-wielding friend.”
“Or sold him the defeater, Sherlock. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
“No comment.” Ed grinned. “You want your bed changed?” He reached for the bedclothes he’d brought with the useless powder and tape.
“Yes—and don’t remind me there’s another use for that talcum! What about all this gadgetry?”
“I think we can hook you back up again. Clarissa left instructions in the ’com. I’d hate to wake her at this hour. Slide into this chair while I straighten things out.”
“Ed, is there anything that Telecom of yours won’t do? Must be a hell of an expensive rig.”
“It came with the house, like the plumbing and the auto-valet. But it won’t change this bed, worse luck.” He opened a wall panel and chucked the damp bedding inside. I sat in the chair, wiping the toad-sticker with a pillowcase. The blood was dry and flaked off easily.
“At least,” Ed said, tucking in the last corner, “you’ve won yourself a handsome Rezin.” He levered me back into bed and began attaching wires.
“Resin? What are you talking about?”
“The blade. It’s a Rezin.”
“Looks like steel, but if it’s some fancy Confederate epoxy—”
“Are we speaking the same language?” Ed looked exasperated. “R-E-Z-I-N. Named after the inventor, Rezin Bowie of Tennessee.” He sorted cables, looping them back over their supports.
“Any relation to Jim Bowie?” I asked, examining the wicked “false” edge along the back of the knife.
He thought for a moment. “His brother, I believe—one of the Alamo victors, and later President of the Republic of Texas?”
I laughed. “The way I heard it, Bowie’s side lost at the Alamo. Although the delay cost Santa Anna the war.”
“It cost Santa Anna his
life.
And any big knife sharpened half way up the back is called a Rezin. Quite a promoter, that Bowie fellow.”
“So I’ve got myself a genuine Rezin. Spoils of war, and all that?”
“You think its former owner will come back and claim it? Besides, it’s the custom.”
I looked at the heavy brass guards projecting from the handle. “Guess I’ll have somebody cut these off, though.”
“For plague’s sake, why?”
“Considering all I know about knife fighting, it’ll make it easier to remove when somebody takes it away and shoves it up my ass.”
 
TOMORROW WE’D TACKLE our mysteries one by one. With two attacks catching me flat-footed (pardon the expression) in twenty-four hours, how I got here would have to wait until we found out who was putting the hit on me, and why. Maybe it was just a case of mistaken machine gun, and they were really after Ed. Somehow I doubted that. On the other hand, if it was me they were after, they might know how I’d gotten here, and by implication, how to get back. On the third hand (
third
hand?) I had a lot to learn about detecting in the North American Confederacy.
BOOK: The Probability Broach
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