The Probability Broach, chapter 20

The Continental Congress has ended. Win Bear and his friends spent enormous amounts of effort convincing the delegates to meet, so they could warn everyone about the imminent Hamiltonian invasion. Then, after all that work, they belatedly realized they forgot to come up with a plan for what to do about it.

John Jay Madison is gloating that they know all the details of his world-conquest plot, and there’s still nothing they can do to stop him. They have no borders to fortify; they can’t forbid anyone from entering the North American Confederacy, regardless of hostile intent; they can’t outlaw weapons. This anarcho-capitalist society is helpless to defend itself.

But, of course, there’s one thing they haven’t tried. The North American Confederacy has no laws, so it’s not illegal to just kill someone if you’re mad at them.

To that end, Win shoves through the crowd, intending to catch Madison and challenge him to a duel. But he screws it up:

I fixed my gaze on Madison and half a dozen others converging on him. Leaping the row of consoles, I strode along the table, not caring whose fingers I stomped… I braced myself, and raised a hand. Suddenly Madison was pushed aside. I struck the upraised arm of Oscar Burgess, who grinned. “Say your piece, so we can get it on, Bear!”

I ignored him. “Madison, my quarrel’s with you!”

Madison looked innocent. “Then why did you challenge Mr. Burgess?”

“What?”

“There are a thousand witnesses around us who saw it.”

Win accidentally challenged Oscar Burgess, the secret-police goon from his world who was also Win’s firearms instructor at the academy. As we saw in an earlier chapter, he found out about the Probability Broach and traveled through it to this world, where he made an alliance with Madison.

You can’t take a challenge back, and Burgess is gleefully eager for the chance, so Win reluctantly agrees to follow through. The two face off at a distance of twenty yards, and at a signal, they draw and fire:

I brought my gun to bear, too late. Over my front sight, Burgess’s muzzle blossomed brightly. A sharp bite in my right forearm, and I knew I was hit. He’d corrected faster than I’d counted on. I pulled the trigger once, twice, hoping to connect before he fired a second shot. I pulled the trigger once again.

The Smith & Wesson bucked and roared, spewing fire at Burgess. Two fist-size crimson gouts splashed his shirt-front, and his head exploded in a hazy red mist. His feet left the floor, he slammed against a desk and sank, blood obscenely pumping from his wounds, head smoking hideously where the upper half had vanished, mocked by the smoking Luger in his hand.

Win expects to see his arm blown off, but he only has a flesh wound. In a million-to-one coincidence (the kind that crops up nine times out of ten), Burgess’ bullet ricocheted off a brass button on his shirt cuff.

For plot purposes, I have no problem with that. What is problematic is that this supposedly civilized society still thinks a duel is the appropriate way to settle a dispute.

In our world, most countries outlawed dueling centuries ago, recognizing what a senseless waste of life it was. It makes perverse sense that an anarcho-capitalist world would revive this barbaric custom. (This casts a different light on the claim that the North American Confederacy has only a dozen murders per decade. Want to bet they don’t count deaths in duels as “murder”?)

In general, people want a legal system that’s oriented toward, you know, justice—examining the evidence, finding the truth, and delivering a fair result. This system offers none of that. Instead, the person with more combat prowess will almost always win, regardless of whether they’re in the right. People who enjoy violence and are good at inflicting it will dominate over those who value justice, truth and fairness.

This is regression to a medieval worldview, literally. Medieval societies practiced trial by combat because they believed that God would ensure the innocent always triumphed. It was obviously erroneous superstition in service of a might-makes-right philosophy.

In the moment of victory, Win suddenly hears gunshots behind him. He whirls around, too late, but the danger is already passed.

The shots came from Freeman K. Bertram, the corporate manager who was on Madison’s side. Madison himself made his getaway in the confusion, but one of his thugs was about to shoot Win in the back. Bertram had an attack of conscience and shot the thug first, saving Win’s life. But in exchange, he received a gruesome stomach wound:

“Win Bear!” Bertram whispered. I put an ear down to his face… trying not to look away. “Never shot a man before. Your friends… Ham—Hamilton House. It’s so cold! Cold!” He stopped talking and gurgled. I knew that sound. I closed his eyes, holding them until they’d stay shut by themselves.

Win thinks Bertram is dead, but his friends tell him to leave the man alone. An ambulance was already called before the duel began, and because the North American Confederacy has advanced medical technology, he’ll make a full recovery:

I looked at Lucy in disbelief. “He’ll be okay?”

“Will be if y’don’t put his eyes out.”

“You mean I’m going to have to kill Burgess all over again?”

“Are you kidding? Boy, you blew his head clean in half! Let me be the first to congrat—”

I didn’t hear the rest. I was busy puking in living color on a nationwide hookup.

This scene is a weird plus-one, minus-one.

As Smith has shown us, he’s an obsessed gun fetishist who thinks everyone should carry guns, including children, and bring them everywhere, including on airplanes. He claims the right to bear arms takes precedence over everything else, and that a politician’s position on guns sums up their entire political philosophy and personal character.

But, oddly enough, he doesn’t glamorize gun violence. He doesn’t treat it as satisfying and righteous when inflicted on the deserving, the way most right-wing keyboard warriors do. Even a hardened cop like Win vomits after killing a man, rather than coolly uttering a James Bond-style quip. (“Guess he really lost his head back there!”)

He probably wrote the scene for black comedy, but it’s still a realistic depiction of the traumatic aftereffects of violence. It’s an unusually sober interlude of realism in a book that’s otherwise so gung-ho about it.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

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Other posts in this series:

• The Probability Broach