The Probability Broach, chapter 15
Ed and Win Bear are committing crimes in the name of justice. They’ve broken into the house of their archenemy John Jay Madison to find proof of his schemes. They’re both sweating bullets as they move through the darkened mansion, because what they’re doing is completely illegal in this anarcho-capitalist society. If Madison returns and catches them in the act, he has every right to shoot them on the spot.
They split up to search the place. Win’s first discovery is a room where the bad guys have built their own Probability Broach, using the plans Deejay gave to Vaughn Meiss that the villains stole when they killed him:
I drew my revolver, lifted the hook with its muzzle, and opened the door carefully. Nobody home, but it seemed very familiar: same cabinets, same tangles of wire, a replica of Deejay’s cluttered lab, and of the infernal machinery that had propelled me here.
…The sight, surrounded as I was with dormant Broach machinery, made me uneasy. If I went through a hole in this world, where would I end up?
This isn’t a surprise to him, since he saw some old foes palling around with Madison during their stakeout. It’s confirmation of what he suspected: the government thugs from his world and the Hamiltonian wannabe dictators from this one have joined forces to conquer the North American Confederacy.
After taking pictures of everything, he heads upstairs. In Madison’s private office, he meets Ed, who’s found some damning evidence:
“In the lecture-hall closet, carefully tucked into a pile of table linens – these…” Three canned reels of sixteen millimeter film lay on the desk, half concealed in a fancy napkin. I struck another match:
TF 53-9354
CLASSIFIED
MOPPING UP IN THE ATOMIC AGE
POST-STRIKE TACTICAL DEPLOYMENT
PROPERTY OF U.S. GOVERNMENT
Win recognizes them as military training films from his world. One is about how hydrogen bombs work. Another concerns “anti-guerrilla counter-insurgency”.
They’re running short on time, but there was a room off the kitchen that Madison conspicuously avoided showing them when he gave them a tour of his house. Naturally, Ed and Win both want to see what he was hiding:
Huddled on the floor between two hanging beef carcasses was a body, frozen stiff. Oddly, it didn’t seem cold in the tiny room. “What is this place?”
“Paratronic freezer. Something like a microwave oven, only the other way around. Shuts down when the door opens.”
…Ed rotated the body onto its face. Clothing and flesh were tattered at the back, as if blasted with a shotgun – nothing fatal, just messy and painful. Some of those gleaming particles wouldn’t be ice, but glass from my bedroom window. We’d found our intruder.
It’s the frozen corpse of the hitman who broke into Ed’s house at night and almost slit Win’s throat. Whether as punishment for his failure, or just to keep him from talking, Madison locked him in the freezer until he froze to death.
This is standard Hollywood-villain stuff, but what tips this scene into black comedy is the identity of the dead man:
“Tricky Dick Milhous,” Ed said, “a third-rate second-story man. He’s no assassin, just a petty crook. Nice way they paid him off. Couldn’t have been pleasant, freezing in the dark.”
Okay, that’s pretty funny.
In our world, Richard Nixon is best known for plotting to burglarize and illegally wiretap his political rivals, then when he got caught, resigning the presidency in disgrace rather than face impeachment. (Those were the days when Republicans at least pretended to believe in the law, as opposed to now, when they’ve enthusiastically embraced crime as long as it’s their guy doing it.)
L. Neil Smith pays tribute to Nixon’s rotten legacy of lawbreaking by making him a petty criminal for hire. I have to admit it’s fitting.
Ed and Win have run out of time. The discovery of Nixon’s body delayed them for too long. Ed’s defeater is no longer able to suppress Madison’s burglar alarms, which start blaring.
They make a beeline for the exit. But by the time they get outside, Madison’s private security has shown up and has the place surrounded. Rather than try to run or fight, Win pulls a Bavarian Fire Drill:
I turned the corner, strode deliberately down the sidewalk, Ed dithering along behind me for once, and right up to the front door of the Alexander Hamilton Society. Guards were milling in and out.
“Bear Brothers, consulting detectives,” I rapped. “We’re staking out a burglar. Find him yet?”
The patrol boss looked us over with a grudging smile. “Ed! Might’ve known you’d show up. Didn’t know you had a brother…”
Ed opened his mouth, I barged ahead with “Win Bear, Captain, just in from, uh, Tlingit. It’s Tricky Dick Milhous we’re looking for. Busted into a place we’re… responsible for the other night, and damn near killed a resident.”
Since these guards are on Madison’s payroll, they have a right to search his house. Ed and Win wait tensely, with Madison’s stolen training films stashed under their coats. After forty-five minutes, the guards find Nixon’s body. Madison’s alarm system locks all the doors in the house automatically when it goes off, so they assume he got trapped in the freezer after breaking in.
All in all, Ed and Win’s burglary was a success. They found the proof they needed and got away clean. They know Madison’s guards will report everything to him, including the fact that Ed and Win were at the scene. But even if Madison discovers what they took, he won’t be able to contradict their story without tipping his hand. (Win imagines the conversation: “And if it isn’t a burglar, Mr. Madison, what’s he doing here?”)
But when they get in the car, they get unwelcome news:
The Telecom lit up, Lucy’s worried face crammed in the focus beside Forsyth’s. “Get back here quick, boys! While you were doin’ it to them, they’ve gone an’ done it to Clarissa!”
The villains weren’t idle, as Ed and Win assumed. While they were stealing from Madison, he sent his thugs after their friend Clarissa Olson, the doctor who treated Win. It’s enough to make you think there might be some advantage to having dedicated law enforcement, instead of having to guess which of your friends might get attacked next and then hiring private security to protect them!
Image credit: Joe Haupt, released under CC BY 2.0 license
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The sight, surrounded as I was with dormant Broach machinery, made me uneasy. If I went through a hole in this world, where would I end up?
Either in an even more ridiculous alt-history timeline than Smith’s NAC/world, or in a timeline where overthrowing the US Constitution actually gets the results any non-delusional adult would expect. Neither of which Ed, Win, or anyone else would want.
“Paratronic freezer. Something like a microwave oven, only the other way around…”
Rarely has any one novel so eloquently encapsulated its own ridiculousness in a single line. If a copy of this book is ever put in a time-capsule, one should make sure this line is highlighted and bookmarked.
Richard Nixon would’ve been about 67 when Smith published Probability Broach – a little past prime time for even second-rate burglaries…
Standby for the appearance of other contemporary political figures! (It’s not until the sequels that the Clintons show up – complete with Ed not liking them even though he’s from a timeline where they probably never existed)
In an online discussion recently, Seanan McGuire pointed out that given the random fluctuations of which sperm gets to the egg, most alt.worlds probably wouldn’t have counterparts of people in other timelines. I find that kind of a silly argument — it’s more fun if we meet counterparts — but after two centuries of divergence, alt.Richard Nixon is a lot to swallow. Let alone that he’s also known as “Tricky Dick.” Does Win, who’d recognize the name, have any thoughts or does this just pass him by.
I suspect that if Smith has an alt.Nixon appearing in his NAC alt-verse, it’s most likely because Smith himself had a bee up his ass about him, as he clearly did about Hamilton and Lincoln; so he had to punish his fantasy versions of them in his own fantasy world. So why would Smith have a grudge against Nixon? It could be because Nixon was a crook; or it could be because Nixon signed off on a huge amount of the Democrat-led Big Gummint regulations libertarians hate so much.
I’m surprised that we haven’t seen an alt.FDR in the NAC. Maybe he shows up later, as a Neo-Hamiltonian Communist* malcontent who wants to use the broach to conquer and impose librul regulations on ALL the ‘verses, because he’s upset that The Magic of the Marketplace didn’t cure his polio or something…?
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
* Are there Marxists or Communists in this alt-verse?
Good point. Nixon created the EPA and took us off the gold standard
According to a favorite story of Congressman John Dingell, Nixon was ready to sign a universal health care package but the Democrats didn’t bring it to the floor because they felt it wasn’t quite good enough. Congressman Dingell said it was one of his most deeply regretted mistakes. Because as soon a Reagan was elected, it was clear that the goal of state-sponsored health care was off the table for the foreseeable future.
How would Ed know Nixon in the “libertarian paradise” when there’s no way to verify identity and givn his description, Nixon has no notoriety?
I’m increasingly envisioning Smith’s CSA as a North Korea, constantly blasting propaganda about how great and rich it is and how utterly it destroyed the rest of the world; all the will holding its people in the most abject of bondage, apart from a tiny few in the leader’s good graces.
PS: I gotta say that wristwatch pic is about the ugliest caricature of Nixon I’ve ever seen. Which is saying something, considering how ugly he was IRL…
“How would Ed know Nixon in the “libertarian paradise” when there’s no way to verify identity and given his description, Nixon has no notoriety?”
I had originally assumed that as a detective, he might recognize repeat offenders by looks alone, but of course in the CSA, there can’t be any repeat offenders – stalwart home owners will deal with burglars on the first attempt, or even if one luckily gets through, the victim will hire Ed to catch the crook and extract justice. We’re told that there is not and can not be any criminal class in the CSA, yet here Nixon is.
The description of Nixon reminds me of a line from one Dynomutt cartoon describing the villain as “a third-rate second story man.”