The Probability Broach
I kicked him hard, just to make sure, then lifted his unconscious bulk—something unpleasant twanged inside my lower torso—and propped him on the console. He mumbled something before I got a hand over his mouth, fell awkwardly against me, and slid. His jacket caught—there was a click, a whining rumble from across the room. More pilot lights winked on.
At the door, five million flashbulbs were going off at once. Someone crouched there, machine pistols spraying the room with death. Bullets whistled past me, shattering on the concrete wall, metal shards and paint chips raining down. “No! No!” Bealls screamed from the hallway.
My forty-one roared and bucked, roared again. The machine gunner was blasted out the door, blood streaming in his wake like crepe-paper ribbons, and slammed into the wall behind. His head met the bricks like a ripe melon dropped on a concrete floor. I pocketed the captured automatic, shifted the revolver to my right. Four slugs left. More company through the door, guns blazing—Bealls was still yelling in the background. I fired—saw things shatter, people fall—and ran for the fire exit, plunging into darkness. Bullets buzzed and pinged behind me. I scrambled down a passageway, feeling dizzy, twisted. Instead of stairs, I found blue sky. I was at the bottom of a freshly excavated hole—like a grave.
Gunfire puffed the earth around me—a stinging slap numbed my right foot. Green grass and sunshine—I was out and running hard. Flopping prone, I leveled my forty-one on the hole in the ground, then remembered with a curse that the gun was empty. I rolled, groping for the automatic, crawling backward as I fumbled—
The earth rose with a deafening roar, heaved and buckled, ripped me from the ground. I landed hard but never let the Smith & Wesson go.
V: Over the Rainbow
A sophisticated society doesn’t lack customs, it simply has so many they all cancel out. It may be considered a measure of civilization how long a hypothetical “Man from Mars” can wander around without running afoul of the gendarmes or getting burned at the stake for violating some taboo.
—Admiral R. A. Heinlein
Conquest of the Bering Straits
After what seemed a long, long time, I sat up on the grass, my insides whirling crazily. I was never really unconscious, just preoccupied. Movie and TV people have the wrong idea about being “knocked out.” Most times a heavy blow simply crushes your skull, and you’re dead. I shook my head and was instantly very sorry. Some explosion! The whole building was gone without a trace.
I was sitting at the foot of a tall hedge. I tried to focus, but it was like driving tenpenny nails into my brain, so I gave up for a while. All around me through the fuzziness, lumpy green entities swayed gently in a warm breeze. Patches of sunlight, painfully bright, illuminated many gaudily colored figures, their mouths dark Os of surprise or curiosity, but they were far too hazy, miles away down a dark tunnel of pain.
I simply sat, torn and bleeding, on the warm damp ground, surprised as hell at being alive. After a while, habit took over: I emptied the forty-one, found a speed-loader, restocked the revolver, and holstered it. The automatic went back heavy into my coat pocket. It seemed a pretty fair day’s work.
I levered myself onto my hands and knees and stayed in that position, panting. Then I rose heavily, aching in every tormented muscle. Bolts of lightning stabbed through my eyeballs, each followed by a wave of nausea and the drumming of dull pain. I staggered, tripping once or twice but staying upright. By the time I reached the nearest park bench, passing out was an attractive prospect.
I risked another peek. Through my personal haze, the scene was tranquil, bearing no relationship to the meat grinder I’d just been through: a broad emerald lawn and a five-foot hedge stretched endlessly in the distance. On the other side, a corrugated metal shack showed robin’s-egg blue. The air was warm, heavy with the scent of dark earth and growing things, dappled with sunshine and shade amid small groves of enormous trees; benches and sidewalks somehow tinted tones of red, orange, or yellow. My own—not concrete as I’d supposed—was a heavy, resilient rubber, pale lemon in color.
A hundred yards away, a silvery fountain feathered high into the air. A band played lively unfamiliar music, while children, dressed outlandishly, tossed an ordinary Frisbee. A dog barked, chasing the floating disk from child to child. They might as well have been the Seven Dwarves—my picture of their world was dim and fuzzy. Shivering in sweat, I had only the faintest interest in staying alive. My ears thrummed mocking counterpoint to the cheerful music from the bandstand.
Here and there, other people were dancing, talking in small groups, lying in pairs under leafy canopies, moving gently with the music. They wore a bewildering variety of costumes: bright swirly cloaks, skirts or kilts, trousers and tunics—riots of color strewn like shining flowers across the forested lawn. Hunched and feeble in my tattered suit, I clutched miserably at some hostile stranger’s pistol in my pocket. My knees and elbows were caked with mud.
A hand on my shoulder—I started. A dark, pretty girl in orange bellbottoms stood behind me. “Are you all right?” she asked, almost apologetically. Before I could reply, she slipped gracefully around the end of the bench. A sheathed dagger, needle slim, hung from a jewelled chain around her tanned and slender waist.
“Been hurt worse before,” I managed to croak. All this conversation was tiring. “Could you point me back toward the Sciences Building?” I was beginning to understand: the Enquirer’s headline would read, POLICEMAN THROWN HUNDREDS OF FEET BY EXPLOSION, LIVES! with a thumbnail sketch of my service record, duly exaggerated, and an account of how, while sailing through the air, I’d found Jesus.
The young lady looked dubious, but willing to let me pick my own handbasket. “You mean the university?” she pointed down a tinted pathway through the trees. I could see another sunlit space beyond, perhaps the slightest hint of moving traffic. Make that headline . HUNDREDS OF YARDS … ! “Across Confederation Boulevard, at the edge—why, you’re bleeding!”
Just like a movie heroine. I didn’t want to hear about it—you can do amazing things seriously injured, as long as you don’t know. “I really think I’ll be all right,” I lied, and found a Kleenex, dabbing at the worst parts. The web of my thumb, where I’d kept the other guy’s gun from going off, was split back half an inch. I wadded the bloody tissue into the fist and said, “Gotta get going. Police business.”
“If you’re sure,” she said. “Please be careful.”
“Thanks. I’ll try.” Stifling any further stoic repartee, I lurched painfully to my feet, plodded in the direction indicated. A hundred yards and a century later, I stopped at another bench, cheery pastel pink, and lowered myself wearily, wondering if I’d ever get up again.
I didn’t seem seriously damaged, just sore, and incredibly tired. Pilots have fallen miles, sans parachute, and survived. Maybe I’d qualify for a Guinness record when this was all over—a brightening thought, somehow. I started humming an old railroad song and reached into my coat pocket. “Last week a premature blast went off / And a mile in the air went Big Jim Goff / And DRILL, ye tarriers, DRILL!”
The pistol I’d confiscated was a sweetheart:
THE BROWNING ARMS COMPANY
MORGAN, UTAH & MONTREAL P.Q.
MADE IN BELGIUM
“The next time payday comes around / Jim Goff a dollar short was found . . .” I’ve always admired the Browning P-35, despite its lack of authoritative stomp. Impeccably designed and made to last for generations, it’s no more powerful than an issue .38 but carries an impressive fourteen cartridges.
“‘What for? says he, then this reply …” On the other side, stamped in neat, tiny letters, was something that started me wondering exactly what I’d do when I found my way back to the university:
CALIBRE 9MM PARABELLUM
PROPERTY OF U.S. GOVERNMENT SECURITY
POLICE
‘“Yer docked fer the time you was up in the sky!’ /And DRILL, ye tarriers, DRILL!”
Wobbling the rest of the way across the park, I really
wanted someplace to lie down and curl up, maybe suck my thumb a little. I wasn’t really hurt: cuts and bruises—large bruises—and a grisly furrow in the heel of my right shoe where a passing slug had left splinters of copper and lead.
I labored along, people staring at me a little, and me staring right back. Whatever the local ordinances were, I saw more low-slung handguns, more dirks and daggers, than in a dozen B-westerns and swashbucklers spliced together reel to reel. I found myself grabbing convulsively at my left armpit more than once. Fort Collins sure had changed!
Maybe they were all dressed up for some kind of fair. I didn’t recognize the costume period. Most people, including some cops I know, are frightened by weapons of all kinds, knives worse than guns, for some silly reason. These must all be toys, part of the celebration. I tried looking closer without being nosy—not my jurisdiction, after all—but the effort still brought tears. There hadn’t been a hardware collection like this since the Crusades were catered. Women and children sporting arms right along with the men. But wait. Were they children, waddling like circus midgets, even brushing the ground with an occasional knuckle?
If only the fog of weariness and pain would—can you have a migraine in a dream? Mud- and blood-splattered from collar to ankles, amid all this resplendent sartorialism, I was about as attractive and dignified as a Larimer Street wino. I’d even managed to split a crotch seam.
At last I reached a low, meandering wall of multicolored brick, more bewildered than ever. The street was a broad ribbon of sea-green crabgrass full of traffic, not a single vehicle even remotely familiar. There wasn’t a wheel in sight.
I’d once ridden an English hovercraft, admired the same sort of ground effect machine on Puget Sound before Ralph Nader shut it down. This wasn’t the same at all: these whispered along, quiet as an usher in church. I was beginning to get an idea that I was more than lost, I was profoundly misplaced.
Maybe I’d been hurt and was wandering around with amnesia.
That old Greer Garson flick—Random Harvest?—real people have spent years like that, building new lives, families, then coming back in shock to their original personalities. This world around me was some artist’s conception of Tomorrowland. Had I spent the last twenty years being someone else? It would explain the age I felt right now! Had decades passed between the lab explosion and whatever happened in the park, and now, after some second stress or injury, was I myself again? Random Harvest—Ronald Colman was the guy.
Across the street, a three-story Edwardian building had a low wall around it, too, and a large bronze sign:
LAPORTE CITY UNIVERSITY, LTD.
EST. A.L. 117
117 A.L.? They don’t start a new calendar every election year. What had happened here while I was out to lunch? And where the hell was here, anyway? All I wanted was to crawl off somewhere and lie down for a couple of months. I was through detectiving. Let someone else do it.
I guess I came pretty close to flipping out at that moment. That I didn’t, I attribute not to any sterling qualities, but simply to well-worn habits of mind and, perhaps, a dollop of shock-induced euphoria.
If I could just find someplace to start, some loose thread to pick until this whole mystery began to unravel—before I did. Do you just walk up and ask someone, “Excuse me, what year is this?”
I could always call the cops. They might want my badge and gun for their museum. Hell, they might want me for their—hold it! I was still carrying that badge, and the .41 caliber weight swinging against my ribs wasn’t a grilled-cheese sandwich. I was still wearing my faithful old gray suit, my second-best tie, and everything else I’d put on in Denver this morning. However I’d gotten into this mess, it wasn’t via any twenty-year amnesic vacation.
So much for the Random Harvest theory. A glance down the sidewalk, and there it was, my first sensible idea for the day—lower and wider than I was used to, with tinted panes in a wrought-iron latticework, and a fancy Kremlinesque spire pointing skyward:
TELECOM
Whatever that meant. Nothing orients you faster in strange territory than browsing through the phone book. There wasn’t any door. I took two steps down into the booth and the street noises went away. It also seemed cooler inside, but I could tolerate an air-conditioned phone booth if the Secretary of Energy could.
No phone book. Just like back home. No telephone, either: just a simple matte-finished panel like sandblasted Corning-ware. Underneath was a keyboard. I plunked myself down on the broad upholstered bench and abruptly the screen had letters on it:
-NEED ASSISTANCE?—
The Grand Combined Director of
Greater Paporte!
Gray, Bell, & Acme Communications Systems
which changed in a few moments to:
INSTRUCTIONS: Please enter party you wish to ’com. Number will be indicated by a pulsing cursor dot. Enter A for Accept and remit payment. For information, please enter 0 for Operator. For free map displays, enter Map plus address desired. Thank you for choosing our services.
Gray Telecom System, Ltd.
Bell Telephone Co., Ltd.
Acme Communications, Ltd.
Now there was something: a polite phone company! Three polite companies, and the service argued Messrs. Gray, Bell, and Acme might be bucking pretty lively competition.
I could have tried the local fuzz, but I figured I owed the thrill to my alma mater. The screen hadn’t mentioned Long Distance, so I examined the keyboard. It wasn’t laid out like a typewriter, but at this point, I felt lucky they were the same letters. It was back to hunt and peck after years of perfecting my own two-finger method. Finally, I decided on O.
So help me, an animated drawing answered, a pleasantly stereotypical old-timey operator, crisply pretty in a high-collared blouse and headset—like Betty Crocker’s kid sister. “May I help you?”
I’d never talked to a cartoon before, but this seemed like the day for it. “Could you give me Long Distance? The Denver Police, two-six-six, two-four-two-one. And reverse the charges. This is Lieutenant Win Bear.”
“One moment, please Lieutenant Bear.” The screen blanked, then she reappeared. “I’m sorry, we have no records for a Denver Police in either local or trunkline memories. Are you sure you’re using the correct name?”
That stopped me. “What do you mean? Try ‘Denver, City, and County of.”’
Her face registered good-natured exasperation. “I’m very sorry, sir. I’ve accessed 36,904 listings: but no ‘Denver, City and County of.”’
The 3-D display made it almost irresistible to try strangling her cute little cartoon neck. But something catastrophic had resulted in a brand-new calendar. Hell, Denver could be in a different country by now! “Hold on! How far away—if that’s the way to put it—is your directory good for?” Back home you still can’t dial lots of places—try calling Moscow for a little excitement at the FBI’s expense.
She hesitated. “Sir, we list over seven billion individuals and organizations currently contracting with some twelve thousand telecommunications companies on this planet, the Moon, Mars, and Ceres Central. I am confident to sixteen decimals that there is no ‘Denver, City and County of’ in the known solar system. May I be of further assistance, or would you prefer a live operator?”
There was a definite “asshole” at the end of that sentence. “No,” I answered dizzily, “that’s enough.” The screen returned to NEED ASSISTANCE? I certainly did—oxygen and a saline drip. So much for The Next Best Thing to Being There.
Okay, Denver was obliterated. They’d finally Pushed the Button, and at least 117 years ago, judging by the university sign. Ragnarok’s a pretty good reason to start a new calendar. Yet this society had pulled through it, recovered without a scar. Hey! People are on Mars!
But where did that leave me? All my friends must be dead. I was my folks’ only kid. I had no close relatives or descendants I was aware of. Jesus, with Denver gone, did anyone I know have any descendants? Maybe the local cops could recommend
a nice rubber room for my declining years.
Wait a minute! This was no way for Sergeant Billy Bear’s son Winnie to be thinking! There must be something I could do, if only looking up Otis Bealls’s great-grandson to punch him in the nose.
Maybe that wasn’t such a screwy idea: Bealls might be long dead. That explosion might not have been in Meiss’s lab, but IT—the opening remarks of World War III! On the other hand, he could have lived long enough to pinch the nurses in some postwar wrinkle-ranch. One way or another, my explosion would surely rate some footnote in his family history.
I typed out BEALLS, OTIS. The screen displayed something like a regular phonebook page with a glowing orange cursor dot wiggling up and down the margin. Beallses, about sixty of them, but no Otis. I stared at the list, wondering how to ask someone, “Pardon me, did you have an ancestor named Otis, back before the End of the World?” The cursor dot slide-whistled up and down the page uncertainly.
Then, in the right-hand column across from the Beallses, it caught me, right between the eyes:
BEAR, EDWARD W., Consulting Detective
626 E. Genêt PI.
ACMe 9-4223
I wouldn’t have taken a million “metric ounces” not to dial that number. Seeing your own distinctive name and more-or-less correct profession in a strange city’s directory is interesting, but not that rare: five years after he was killed, my Dad was still getting mail for another Tech Sergeant Bill Bear. But on a Picturephone, possibly decades in the future?