Free The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith Page B

take a lot longer than that to heal up! This has gotta be the future … or heaven, if you’ll pardon my getting personal.”
    She smiled tolerantly. “Persist with this time-travel business and you’ll need something stronger than what’s in my bag over there!”
    “I could do with something stronger, about eighty proof in a tall glass. Forget time travel. Let’s talk about bullet holes, and how come mine don’t seem to be terminal.”
    She crossed the room; I enjoyed watching her do it. “Here’s your explanation.” Two plastic-covered masses, overflowing with shredded fiber. “That’s why there was enough of you left for me to work on.” I recognized the tattered remains of my Kevlar body armor. Someone had driven a tank over it while something red and squishy was inside. “Whatever this contraption is, it saved your life.”
    “That’s what it’s for. Sort of forgot I had it on. But it wasn’t designed for machine guns. How many times was I hit?”
    She frowned. “I removed—you really want to hear this?—okay, perhaps a dozen bullets, mostly fragments. And fiber. This vest was practically stitched into you. We had trouble cutting it off.”
    “That’s a relief!” I risked a peek under the covers. “I thought you’d cut off something a little more valuable—at least to me.”
    She indicated the cast on my left arm. “You have a shattered wrist and fractured humerus. The shoulder blade itself and the collarbone are in bad shape, but they’ll heal. Your right arm, I don’t see how they managed to miss. You should see Ed’s garage door!”
    “And his mother’s windows?”
    “His what? No, Lucy—Lucy Kropotkin—is Ed’s next-door neighbor. She’d be flattered, though. She thinks a lot of Ed.”
    “And so do you, apparently. I’m hurt to the quick.”
    I won’t say she actually blushed. She’s one of those naturally pink types you don’t dare take home to Father. “Yes, I do. He’s the real reason you’re still alive. He drove off your attackers.”
    “I was elsewhere at the time. You want to tell me about it?”
    “Well,” she answered, “just about the time the shooting started, Ed was on the Telecom. He’d been at it all morning, clearing things for his first real vacation in years …”
     
     
    ONE FREEMAN K. BERTRAM of Paratronics, Ltd, had a problem: someone had gotten away from a company warehouse, laden with a half-ton of valuable parts and equipment, despite a dozen of Securitech’s best plus an alarm system worth thousands of ounces.
    Ed might not be the best-known consulting detective in the land, nor the most highly paid, but he was clearly headed in that direction at an age most North Americans considered young. There were more clients than he really had time for, and although he’d worked for Paratronics, Ltd. before, and this sounded interesting, plenty of schedule-juggling had gone into shaking three vacation weeks loose. With several hundred ounces already to his credit at Mulligan’s Bank and Grill and a brand-new Neova convertible waiting in the garage, come law or high water, Ed was heading for Leadville’s summer sun and man-made snow, business be hanged.
    Could he recommend another operative, suggest security-tightening measures? Ordinarily, even this advice would cost plenty. Bertram’s stereo image sulked until his lower lip threatened to fall right out of the screen. He wasn’t used to taking no for an answer or having his gold turned down, but what could he do? Bertram made notes and promised to call back at the end of the month.
    Connection finally broken, Ed started toward the garage, following his suitcases. Locking his skis on the squat little hull, he levered himself into the cockpit. The garage door ground slowly upward: for the twentieth time that week he—
    Abruptly there was a hair-raising metallic chatter. Something else wrong with the door? Or the sportscraft? A glance at the instruments: no, wheels were down and locked under the