The Trigger

by Arthur C. Clarke

  'How about the team of Mr Smith and Mr Wesson?'

  To Breland's surprise, it was Colonel Harris, frowning across the circle toward Dillard, who took that rhetorical bullet for him.

  The truth is, the President's right,' she said. 'You can find yourself on the short end even when you're carrying. And being outnumbered with guns isn't any better place to be than being outnumbered without them - especially since carrying just gives them reason to shoot first.'

  Dillard spat angrily. 'Goddamn - Colonel, don't give this fascist aid and comfort.'

  'I'm not giving him anything. The truth is the truth. Speaking of which -' She looked to Breland. 'When the FBI didn't come out with its preliminary crime stats for last year at the usual time, a lot of us thought we knew the reason - they were bad, and you were trying to figure out how to clean them up.'

  Pursing his lips, Breland shook his head slowly. 'No, if anything, the numbers are too good. Even with some criminals changing tactics, the final figures should show homicide down fourteen percent, rape down at least ten, aggravated assault down nearly twenty, armed robbery down almost a full third, most of it in the commercial sector -'

  'Oh, this is pure propaganda,' Dillard said in disgust.

  'No, this is good news,' Breland shot back. 'It means we can still hope that Americans are as civilized as the people of Europe or industrial Asia or Canada. It means we found a way to change the rules and make things harder for criminals, and some of them lost their nerve, or their angle. It means the Trigger and Jammer saved a hundred thousand or so of your countrymen from becoming victims.'

  'Then why are you holding it back?' Harris demanded. 'Why hasn't this been all over the media?'

  'Because I ordered the FBI not to release anything until all the numbers were unimpeachable. Because I knew some people would be skeptical, and I don't want to help anyone convince themselves that the numbers were cooked.'

  'Well, I don't believe them, not for a minute,' a young man interjected angrily. This is the big lie, your reelection strategy -to piss on us and tell us it's raining -'

  'That's enough. Private Terrell,' Harris said sharply.

  'What?

  'This is the President of the United States. You will show respect.'

  'Respect? Oh, this is insane - I can't believe what I'm hearing. I'm supposed to respect a coward - a traitor? This man cut the heart out of the Second Amendment, and the watch captain's falling all over herself to make nice to him. It makes me want to puke,'

  'Master of Arms, escort Private Terrell to the galley area -'

  'No, it's all right,' said Breland, stepping closer. 'I want to talk to him. What's your name?'

  'Steve Terrell.' Defiance blazed in the young man's eyes.

  Breland nodded. 'You've got your facts wrong, Steve Terrell. This technology came out of the private sector, without a penny of tax money or a whisper to Washington that it was coming. It's the private sector that's been making it go. And the reason is something you don't want to admit to yourself - that most people don't want to have to be gunslingers to get by. That's not how they want to live.'

  'I'd bet even most gun owners don't want that,' someone said quietly.

  Breland went on, 'Now those people have a weapon of their own, one that turns that Winchester you're carrying into a museum piece, or at best an expensive club. Everything changes. The Bill of Rights didn't promise you eternal technological superiority for smokeless powder and the rifled barrel.'

  'It damn well did promise that I could keep my gun, so I could blow away any fascist traitor who tried to take it away from me.'

  'Is that why you're here, Mr Terrell? Are you hoping for a second chance?'

  I'm here to defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic. You were supposed to do that, too.'

  'I did,' Breland said. 'If we were the fascists you think we are, we could have taken this technology, put together a fleet of stealth helicopters and black vans, and disarmed whole cities overnight -'

  'If you were the patriots you should be, you would have grabbed up this technology and lost it at the bottom of Lake Superior.'

  'So you expect us to disarm your neighbor, but not you?' Breland asked, cocking his head. That's an interesting double standard you're setting up there. Unfortunately for you, the Supreme Court didn't go for it.'

  Terrell scowled. That decision was bought and sold by the power brokers - the elite has never wanted the common man armed.'

  Breland's stare was an indictment. 'You are much too fond of your fantasy of persecution, Steve Terrell,' he said, and turned back to the colonel. 'I did not disarm you. You can still have your guns on your own land, if that's what you and your family choose. You can still take your guns into the wilds to hunt. You can still go to the firing ranges and shooting clubs. If you live and work and play in the empty spaces of the continent, you can still lead the self-reliant life of the frontiersman. None of that's been taken away.

  'But when you come out of your private spaces and down from the hills, when you come into the villages and towns and cities where most of us live, you're going to find more and more places where your guns are neither needed nor welcome. And you're going to have to make a decision.

  'Are you going to turn away, and stay outside? Are you going to join us, and accept our rules? Or are you going to push your way in and try to make yourself and your guns the new rules? That's what I wonder when I look out from those windows back there - which choice you'll make.' He slowly surveyed the circle, trying to read the unreadable expressions in the darkness. 'When you've made it, I suppose you won't be here any longer.'

  'You're not going to be in there much longer,' someone shouted gleefully from the dark.

  'Probably not,' Breland agreed. 'And I know you won't miss me. But wherever we go from here, we're all going to keep living in the world we create with our choices. You can make that a world of individuals, with everyone looking out for his own. Or you can take a measured risk, throw in with the rest of us, and try for a community.'

  'Collectivist pap.'

  'No - it's something called teamwork,' Breland shot back. 'I know how much it can do. I'm sorry you don't. I don't think human beings were made for living alone in fear of each other. I think all of our best moments have come when we let go of that fear and come together - even though there are predators out there, and some of us will lose our gamble.'

  'You volunteering?'

  'If it comes to that,' Breland said. 'If all we think about is ourselves, what do we have? Think bigger. Kant called it the moral imperative: Act in such a way that what you do might serve as a universal law. Do you want to live in a world in which ten billion other humans follow your lead? That's the real test to apply. That's the choice we're really making.

  'And that's all I came out here to say - though I didn't know it until just now. Be sure you know what choice you're making.' His eyes sought Colonel Harris's, and he smiled a tight smile. 'Thank you for hearing me out.' She nodded acknowledgement, and he turned away.

  Inevitably, there were some in the crowd unwilling to give Breland the last word. He was followed to the edge of the park and beyond by a small coterie of detractors who shouted their challenges and imprecations from beyond the ring of Secret Service escorts.

  One young man in fatigues wasn't content to hurl words. As the President neared the gate, he came charging up from behind with a fist-sized rock clutched in each hand.

  'You think you're safe? You're not safe!' he shouted from ten meters away, then wound up and let fly.

  But by then one agent had already shifted into a blocking position, and successfully deflected the missile with his staff. It clanged harmlessly against the steel fence. At the same time, a second agent charged the attacker with his staff lowered like a lance. The agent dropped the young man with a single blow to the abdomen, then retreated to close the circle around Breland.

  That was all Breland saw - he was surrounded, pushed forward through the gate, and h
ustled across the grounds by his escorts. Charles Paugh met him on the walk, and his chiding tone was little different from those who had reproached the President on the other side of the fence.

  'Predictable. Completely predictable. You disturb hornets in their nest, and they're going to attack. I hope you satisfied your curiosity, because John Burke is going to want to throw a bag over you and lock you in the basement for a month.'

  'I still think it was worth doing,' said Breland. 'It just ended badly.' But he could not pretend that the attack had not unsettled him. 'I'm going upstairs. Tell John if he wants to spank me, he can do it in the morning.'

  'I'll tell him. - Hey, and stay away from the windows for the rest of the night, will you?'

  But John Burke did not take the hint. A half-hour later, he was on the phone with the President, asking for ten minutes. 'I want to show you something that I think might let you sleep a little easier.'

  'You have the guy?'

  'The assailant is in custody, yes.'

  'That's good enough for me.'

  'I can do better, Mr President. You won't regret it.'

  Breland relented, and shortly thereafter Burke emerged from the elevator with a memory block in his left hand. 'Your study?' he asked.

  'Whatever.'

  Burke led the way and settled himself, control board on his lap, in the chair nearest to the media center's wallscreen. Breland stood near his favorite working chair, a well-worried leather recliner.

  This is the attack, from camera sixteen,' Burke said as a ghostly low-light image appeared on the display. 'Watch the upper left corner for the assailant - there, and now he stops to shout at you - that's Agent Frank Baines who steps in and fouls off the fastball -'

  'Good stick,' Breland said approvingly.

  'I'll tell him you said so - he'll like that, he's a Dodgers fan. Now here's the part you didn't see. That was Agent Toni Waters who laid the assailant out. The reason she did not pursue and restrain is me - my orders to the detail were that getting you inside took precedence over everything else. So the assailant had an opportunity to get his legs back under him and run -getting a little help there from a couple of buddies. I'm sure we would have found him - the dye mark from the stick goes right through clothing and deep into the skin -'

  'Wait a minute - "would have"? Didn't you say you had him in custody?'

  'I did. This is the view from camera eighteen, about ten minutes later. Those are our people, at the bottom, organizing to sweep the park - there, top center, that's what I wanted you to see.'

  Breland squinted. A clot of six people was emerging from the park, and it was apparent that one of them was being dragged along against his will. Is that our guy?'

  'That's him - David Joseph Markham.'

  'Your people in the park grabbed him, then.'

  'They didn't get a chance to,' said Burke. 'The militia grabbed him for us - citizen's arrest. That's the night commander and the sergeant-at-arms, there, bringing him out and turning him over to the agent in charge.'

  'I'll be damned -'

  'When I first saw this, I thought maybe they could see we were getting ready to roust the lot of them, and that they weren't going to be able to hide him, so they might as well surrender him. But then I heard from our agents in the park - the guy wasn't stopping, he was heading straight for Liberty Avenue, yelling for his buddies to run interference. I guess he had fewer friends there than he thought. They took him down north of the fountain.'

  'I would never have expected this,' Breland said, shaking his head. 'I wouldn't have expected any help from them.'

  Burke turned off the replay, which had frozen at the last frame. 'Well, maybe that's why Colonel Harris said what she said. I didn't quite know what it meant.'

  'What are you talking about?'

  'When she surrendered Markham, she gave the agent a message for you.' He pulled a white card from a hip pocket and squinted at the scrawled handwriting. 'She said, "I'm taking a chance on you, and Kant, and community - and hoping there's more here than fine words." I guess this is her signature here.' He dropped the card by the console and looked up. 'Who's Kant?'

  But by then, the President was no longer listening. He had turned away and was looking out the window toward the park, even though the dense leafy boughs of a sugar maple blocked his view.

  'Me, too, Colonel,' Breland said softly. 'Me, too.'

  Breland sat up alone for nearly an hour, thinking about Grover Wilman, and letting himself shake just a bit over his close call with the Liberty Militia. Now that his frustration had been displaced by a weary resignation, going into the park seemed like a damned reckless thing to have done.

  Not until he finally rose to leave the room did he touch the card Burke had brought him. He picked it up meaning to pocket it, giving it only a casual glance.

  But that glance fell on an embossed silver Q with an arrow pointing to the right. Beside it was the name Carol Westin Harris, and below that a Net address. On the back, what Burke had called her signature was an echo of the printed sign, squeezed into the lower right-hand corner.

  'What the hell - Burke!' he shouted, starting toward the door.

  By the time he reached it he was running. 'Charlie!'

  No one answered. Breland ran back into the media center and vaulted into the lounge chair in front of the wallscreen. 'Vox. Log on. Security, Post 1.' A low-resolution image of a young Marine seated at a desk flashed on the upper right quarter of the screen. 'Who is that, Corporal Mackie?' he demanded of the guard. 'Who's in the house, Corporal?'

  'Mr President, sir. You can see the gate log on channel thirty from any command node. Sending a snapshot now.'

  The list of people in the White House filled the entire right-hand side of the screen. 'No, dammit, just staff - executive branch. Where's Charlie Paugh?'

  'Gone, sir.'

  'Burke?'

  'Captain Milton has the watch tonight, sir.'

  'Mrs Tallman? Oh, hell, I sent her home, she was having company for dinner. Is there anyone over in clerical? In the library? What time is it, anyway?'

  'I show an imaging technician in the clerical suite, no one in the library. It's oh-two-ten hours, sir.'

  Breland waved a hand impatiently. 'Vox. Close and clear.' He pondered for a moment. 'Vox. Net search. Quote - Futurians -dose quote.'

  Twenty minutes of brute-force Net-sifting turned up a comedy ensemble, a keyboard trio, two groups of science fiction fans (The New Futurians and The New Original Futurians) and one of dead writers (but not including Sturgeon, the one Wendell Schrock had mentioned), two novels, a 2-D film, a VR adventure game, and a superhero comic book series - none of which seemed to be associated with the Q-and-arrow symbol.

  That he found on several of the sites devoted to Sturgeon, along with some appealing quotes on the subjects of love, reason, and world peace. But there were no ties to Schrock or Harris, no mention of an Alliance for a Humanist Future - which had no presence on the Net at all, which Breland found baffling. And even the high-powered Net agents supplied for his account by the National Information Office couldn't connect Wendell Schrock and Carol Westin Harris.

  The hell with etiquette, Breland thought, and placed a call to Schrock. It took another toy from the NIO's toolkit to punch through the analyst's messaging system and force his phone to ring.

  'What's going on? Who is this?' Schrock demanded sleepily.

  'I need to talk you, Wendell,' said Breland. 'Vox. Send video.'

  'Mr President.' Surprise was audible in Schrock's voice.

  Breland reached out and held Harris's card in front of the close-up lens. 'I had an unexpected favor done for me tonight,' he began.

  'Yes, I heard,' Schrock said.

  'What - you say you heard? How?'

  'There were at least three minicams in the park, Mr President. It's a top story on the overnight news.'

  'Son of a bitch -'

  At that moment, incoming video put Schrock's tousled-hair countenance on the wallsc
reen. 'It's actually playing fairly well, sir. Also, I heard about it from Carol, in meetspace.'

  'She is one of you, then. Is this what we talked about before? Is this the help you said might be there?'

  'No, sir. You were just damned lucky.'

  Breland glanced away, gave his head a little shake, and then looked up again. 'Wendell, I really would be grateful for an explanation. Who are you? You know, there's no flipping way to enter that symbol of yours in a Net search.'

  Schrock laughed lightly. 'You just have to know how. All right, an explanation. There's no creed or charter I can quote from, so you'll have to settle for the Gospel according to Wendell. I'll tell you how it was, and then I'll tell you what's changed in the last two days.

  'The Futurians were born on the Net, and couldn't exist without it. The Net is where the founders met and where today's mem-bers keep in touch and do most of their work. It happened that way because the Net is drowning in ignorance, misinformation, hostility, quackery, propaganda, credulous pseudoscience, ration-alization, and just plain sloppy thinking. Futurians are people who find that all dismaying, because we think we can reach a little higher, ask a little more of ourselves and each other.'

  'You said something about that after you briefed me.'

  Scrock nodded. 'We think there's a spark of reason in every human being - and in its light you can catch a glimpse of the commonality of humankind and the road to our future.'

  'I may have to steal that.'

  'Please do. So to belong, you don't have to say you believe A, or not-A - just that you know there's a rational way to choose between them. Being a Futurian means making a commitment to ask the next question, to keep an open mind, to test ideas -especially the comfortable and appealing ones that so often slip past the logical defenses. We profess an irrational faith in the power of reason. Passion may take us farther, but reason takes us higher. So we try to be the friends of reason wherever and however we can.'

  'How many of you are there?'

  'Not many. A few million who know they're members. Optimistically, a few billion who don't - like you.'