State of War

into the rifle box.

Every round he carried in his revolvers or speedloaders was as close to exactly the same size and weight as he could make them. It didn’t matter if they all shot a hair high or a hair low, as long as they all went to the same place. Consistency, that was the key. An old silhouette shooter had showed him that, and it worked.

Finally, because rimfire ammo could sometimes go bad, oil or lube seeping into them, he changed the rounds in his guns and speedloaders once a week, and the old ones went into the rifle box.

Of course, a snub-nose revolver wasn’t going to be a tack-driver at any kind of range, no matter how good a shooter you were. Still and all, it didn’t have to be. All he needed to be able to do was hit somebody in the head at seven yards, which was the longest range of most gunfights. The FBI used to say, “Three shots, three feet, three seconds,” was the average shoot-out.

Out to seven yards, he could point-shoot heads all day long pretty damn quick, yeah. But just in case, when he was working on the action, he’d kept the spurs on the Rugers’ hammers. That way he could cock ’em for single- action if he had to. Given just a little time to aim, he could hit that same target at twenty-five yards single-action, holding one gun two-handed, nine times out of ten. At fifty yards, the head shot simply wasn’t going to happen except by luck, but he could put them all into a torso at that range. The.22s might not be a manstopper to the body, but six hits would give a man something real serious to think about. There weren’t too many gunfights at fifty yards anyhow.

Back at the firing line, he reset himself. Taking a deep breath, he drew and cooked ’em off…

Six for six.

He smiled. Damn, he was good.

At least, he was good when the targets weren’t shooting back. He was going to have to do something about that soon, yeah, or else stop looking at himself every time he passed a mirror. Pretty soon, yeah.

4

Washington, D.C.

Howard and Tyrone were in the den. Howard was reading the paper. Ty was in the lounger, VR goggles on his head, surfing the web.

In the kitchen, Nadine was fixing supper. She yelled something at him, but he didn’t catch it.

“What?” he called out.

She came into the den, a spatula in one hand, an oven mitt on the other. “I asked you if you wanted part of a beer,” she said.

They did that sometimes, split a beer while she was cooking.

He smiled at her and shook his head. “No, thanks, babe, you go ahead.” He knew she would drink half the bottle, then put the rest back in the fridge. If he didn’t drink it, it would go flat. Big party animals, the Howards. Whoowhoo.

Nadine went back into the kitchen.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” Tyrone said. He took off his goggles and laid them on his chest, but kept the chair almost fully reclined.

Howard put the paper down. At Ty’s age, when he wanted to talk, it was clear the decks and stand by or lose the opportunity. “Always a good idea, thinking,” Howard said, grinning. “About anything in particular?”

“That TANSTAAFL stuff.”

Howard nodded. He wasn’t sure of the term’s origin. He’d first read it in a science fiction story by Robert A. Heinlein when he’d been a boy: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. It referred, if he recalled correctly, to the old “Free Lunch” signs that were common a long time ago in local pubs and bars. Usually something like boiled eggs in pickle juice, or other snack-y food, given away to patrons. Well, it was free to the extent that you didn’t have to pay for it as long as you were buying beers. It was actually a kind of loss-leader for the bars to get the drinkers to stop in.

Not all that long ago, Las Vegas used to offer terrific meals at ridiculously low prices, too. They knew that if they got you into their casinos, and kept you there with free drinks, they would get your money, either at the tables or from the slot machines. At least that way, when you went home broke, you could tell everybody how good and cheap the food was. It was like cheap advertising: Yeah, I lost my butt at the tables, but I ate great, and it was only like five bucks for a salad, steak, potatoes, and dessert.

He’d told Tyrone about the concept a while ago, trying to get the boy to see things from a different, more grown-up, perspective. “What about it?” he asked.

“Well,” Tyrone said, “according to what I’ve read, it’s one of those capitalist things. Robber barons and industrialists didn’t want anybody putting hands into their pockets in any way, shape, or form, no regulations, nothing.”

Howard nodded. “That’s probably true.”

“Pure capitalism doesn’t work, Dad, ’cause it screws the workers,” Tyrone said. His voice was becoming louder, more passionate. “If some rich guy owns a big factory, he can hire ten-year-olds to work eighteen hours a day and pay them almost nothing.”

Howard nodded again. He thought he could see where his son was headed. “Yes, that was how it used to be, a long time ago, back at the beginning of the Industrial Age or so.”

Tyrone sat up, his goggles falling into his lap. “So all regulation isn’t bad, then, is it? Without them, we’d have no unions, no Social Security, no welfare.”

“I never said all regulation was bad. I’m a Republican, not a Libertarian.”

Tyrone grinned, as if he had just won a major point. He said, “Right. So sometimes private industry needs to be held accountable, for the greater good of society.”

Howard was right. He definitely saw where this was going. He merely nodded, though. He had to give the boy points for getting his groundwork set up.

Tyrone picked up the goggles and held them in one hand, using them to point at his father. “So if some guy, for instance, came up with a cure for cancer and he decided to sell it for a hundred thousand dollars a pop, it might be in the public interest to regulate that.”

Howard folded his paper and set it aside. “To a point, I’ll agree with that.”

“But, see, Dad, that’s the whole thing: If you could save ten thousand lives by giving the cure away for free, or only charging a buck or something, wouldn’t that be valid?”

Howard shook his head. “Maybe — as long as you didn’t put the guy who came up with the cure out of business. We’ve gone over this before, Ty, but let me say it again. Suppose this guy borrowed and spent, oh, say, ten million dollars researching, developing, and producing this cure. Even if his production cost per dose is fairly low, he still has to repay those loans, and that will drive up the amount of money he needs to keep his doors open. Are you saying it’s right to take the cure away from him and have him go belly up? That the people who invested their money in this guy should lose what they put in, for the greater good of society?”

Tyrone shrugged. “If they can afford to invest beaucoup bucks somewhere, why not?”

“What if they can’t afford it? Let’s say Social Security goes into the toilet — which is very possible before I get old enough to draw it — and all I’ve got to live on is my military pension. Let’s also say I’ve invested my money cautiously, and this rock-solid pharmaceutical company that comes up with the cancer cure is where a big chunk of my money went. I’m golden, I can quit work at sixty and live nicely for the rest of my life. But ten years after I retire, you take the cure away from them, they go bankrupt, and there I am all of a sudden, seventy years old, sitting in a cardboard box, eating dog food because my investments got co-opted. Is that fair?”

Tyrone shook his head. “No, of course not, Dad,” he said. “But if the choice is you sitting in a box and eating dog food or someone you love dying of a disease because they couldn’t afford the cure, which would you go for?”

Howard smiled. He really was getting a lot sharper, his son.

“Ty, in communism, which is a really unworkable philosophy, the saying is, ‘From each according to his