The Probability Broach, chapter 17

Ed and Win Bear are traveling via airship to the Continental Congress to inform this world of the Hamiltonian threat. En route, they learn that the villainous John Jay Madison has sent his thugs to kidnap their friends Clarissa and Lucy, to use as
leverage at the upcoming congressional session.

Win arrives too late to help Clarissa. So he hurries back to the theater where Lucy was watching a movie, hoping he’s in time to rendezvous with Ed:

Lucy was there, but I can’t say the same for the two thugs they’d hauled out of the theater. A small crowd had gathered around the cashier’s booth, along with a medic, two security attendants, and Lucy, arms folded, gun dangling from one finger.

… “Now madame,” one of the official contingent pleaded, “if you’d put that away, and tell us what happened here. We must have an explanation. It’s a company rule.”

“Stuff your company! If two punks wanna get hurt—I’m practically an innocent bystander!” She gestured sharply with a toe at the figures on the floor.

The medic looked up and scowled. “Come on, lady—you’ve already fractured his skull! Trying for some ribs, now?”

I’ll admit this scene is funny. There’s obvious comedy in Lucy, an old lady (albeit a war veteran), not just clobbering two thugs, but doing it so casually that she’s more annoyed about missing her show than by this attempted kidnapping.

But Ed was supposed to be coming to her rescue. Win asks Lucy where he is:

“Ed ain’t here. These”—she kicked at the bleeding form again—”…came in, sat on either side of me, and—” She aimed a kick at the other unconscious thug, but was restrained. “He had a hypo. They were gonna stick me! So I bopped ’em—couldn’t fire in a crowded theater. Taxation! They bent my front sight!” She peered along the barrel, the crowd in front melted discreetly away.

This is very responsible of Lucy, and I agree. Even in a self-defense situation, you can’t just whip out your gun and start shooting in a dark, crowded theater.

In that environment, if gunfire suddenly erupted, no one would know who was shooting at whom. People would panic. It’s virtually guaranteed that at least some people would leap to the conclusion that it was a mass-shooting spree, draw their own guns, and start firing at whoever they think the shooter is. In this heavily armed society, that would provoke a deadly chain reaction, as yet more people panic and return fire at that person, presuming them to be the attacker—and so on.

You can imagine the pandemonium. People would be shot by pure accident, or knocked down and trampled in the sudden crowd crush as everyone tried to escape at the same time. It would be a horrific mass casualty event. The theater would be carpeted with bodies by the time it was all over.

So yes, I can commend Lucy for staying cool-headed in the heat of the moment. Here’s the problem: Does everyone in this society exercise the same level of self-control?

Because for the North American Confederacy to work, that has to be the case.

Otherwise, every public place and every crowded scene would be susceptible to sudden explosions of violence. When everyone is armed at all times, it only takes one angry, unstable, or panic-prone person to overreact to a real or imagined threat. (And how many disturbed people might there be on the street, in a society where there’s no such thing as court-ordered treatment or involuntary commitment for even the most severe cases of mental illness?)

This goes to show that firearms don’t protect people from all possible danger, as gun nuts believe. Indeed, they make everyday life far more dangerous. That chain reaction of panic and carnage I described would be sure to ensue in any situation where a mystery bullet is fired.

Those mass casualty events should be a regular feature of life in the NAC. L. Neil Smith doesn’t have any explanation for why they’re not, other than to assume that everyone in this society is almost superhumanly cool and calm in a crisis.

The battered thugs are hauled away. Ed can’t be found, so Win and Lucy head to suite 1919, the place Madison proposed for a meeting. They come with guns ready, but the room is empty. There’s no one there—just a note:

Lieutenant:

We enjoyed more success with Dr. Olson and Mr. Bear. Instead of wasting time—and possibly lives—attempting to follow, reconsider my offer before Congress convenes.

M.v.R.

While they’re reading the note, a clerk arrives to tidy up the room for its next occupants. When they ask where the previous occupants went, the clerk says: “Mr. Richthofen and his party took a groundward shuttle not more than five minutes ago. I arranged it myself.”

L. Neil Smith would never have admitted it, but his own writing shows why his utopia doesn’t work.

As I wrote last week, in an anarcho-capitalist world, you’re responsible for your own safety. The problem is that no one can realistically defend themselves all the time against a resourceful and determined enemy. You might get lucky once—Lucy did in this chapter, and Clarissa in an earlier chapter—but if the bad guys can afford to keep trying, your luck is eventually going to run out.

Smith proved that point himself, by having Clarissa talk about how guns are the great equalizer that levels the playing field, then having her get kidnapped offscreen. Now he reinforces the point by having Ed Bear get captured too.

Remember, Ed is a private investigator who’s used to dealing with dangerous criminals, so we can assume he’s appropriately paranoid about his own safety. Also, unlike Lucy and Clarissa, he knew the bad guys were coming. He should’ve been as well prepared as anyone in this world could be. Yet he still got taken hostage without firing a shot.

Throughout this book, the demands of storytelling clash with the demands of political ideology, and this chapter is the most blatant example. Smith wants to convince us that statism causes crime and violence, whereas anarchy produces peace and prosperity. He tells us that his anarcho-capitalist world is peaceful and safe, to the point that crime is virtually unknown.

However, if he were consistent about this, this novel would be too boring to read. To keep it exciting, he added these action scenes—home invasions, shootouts, car chases. They’re the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine palatable. But he doesn’t seem to recognize that having those scenes undercuts the central premise of his philosophy.

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Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Other posts in this series:

• The Probability Broach