The Trigger

by Arthur C. Clarke

  'And then I can leave?'

  'And then you can join us,' said Wilkins. 'You can help us put things right.'

  'How can I do that?'

  Tell us the secrets of the Trigger and the Jammer. We'll take care of the rest.'

  The secrets of the Trigger,' Horton repeated slowly.

  'Yes,' said the second man. 'How to shield an armory, and how to detect a Jammer field before you're inside it.'

  'What types of explosives are immune -' offered a third man, and others joined in.

  The true maximum range.'

  'Which of the new satellites contain the big zappers.'

  'What the UN troops are going to be using in place of gunpowder -'

  There are no secrets,' Horton said, interrupting.

  'Excuse me?' said Wilkins.

  There are no secrets. I released everything. Nothing was held back. It's all in the packet we published to the net.'

  'What about the Jammer?'

  'I didn't work on the Jammer,' Horton protested, then frowned. 'But it's no different - it's just a refinement of the Trigger. It works on the same nitrate chemistry. It must have the same attenuation curve. The electronics must be vulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse, just like the Trigger and your comset and most everything else that goes into civilization - you don't have any nukes, do you? I suppose not.'

  'You're not telling us anything that we couldn't have found in Popular Science,' the man with the crooked nose said, scowling.

  'Don't you understand? That's the point,' said Horton. There isn't anything to know that hasn't been in Popular Science. I gave it away so everyone could have it. I wasn't going to let it disappear, and I wasn't going to let it be controlled by the people who liked the status quo. If that means I'm back on your traitor list -'

  He shrugged, affecting a casualness he did not feel. If his life depended on being useful to them, there was not much cause for hope.

  'If you don't try to help resist a tyrannical government that's disarming and enslaving the people, then you are a traitor.' The speaker spat contemptuously.

  'I disarmed them first. Isn't that enough?'

  'Hell, no!' one of the men tersely. 'Our arms are what gave us a chance against them. They can replace their guns - they have all kinds of power. They can replace them with sheer numbers. They control the media, and the purse-strings, and a nation of sheeple sucking at the tit of statism. We have to have our guns, Doctor, to break their hold. We have to be able to count on our guns if we're ever going to be free again.'

  There's no way to shield an armory. We never learned how to remotely detect a Trigger field. So if that's what you expected from me, you made a mistake bringing me here.'

  'If we made a mistake, we'll correct it,' said Wilkins. 'But are you absolutely certain you have nothing for us?'

  It was a question with ominous overtones, and Horton cast frantically about for some bone to toss them. 'I can tell you that you can stop worrying about satellites. The range varies with the cube of the power, just like it says in the manual - so it's easy to make the little ones go and just this side of impossible to make something that'd work from orbit.'

  'Not even powered by a nuclear power plant?'

  'The kind we have down here, maybe. Not the kind we can put up there.'

  'So it would be possible, with enough power.'

  Horton turned his head in the direction of the voice. 'But there isn't enough power - that's the point.'

  The man's expression turned to one of disgust and contempt as he looked to Wilkins. 'How can we believe anything he says? Either he's not far enough inside to know about Pink, or he's so far inside that he's gonna lie about it.'

  Horton also looked to Wilkins. 'What is he talking about?'

  'DARPA has had an operational deuterium microfusion plant for twenty years,' the colonel said slowly, stretching his legs out.

  'Oh, that's nonsense. An Internet hoax.'

  'Hardly. It was developed for the Shark and Falcon long-duration stealth spycraft. Project Pink Drum. But they're everywhere now - key government installations, radio stations, anything they're going to need when they start the blackouts. You can detect a Pink with an old-style AM radio - you pick up an interference band at twelve-forty when you get within a couple of miles.'

  'What blackouts?'

  'It's part of the Federal pacification strategy, in case of civil disobedience.'

  As far as Horton was concerned, the conversation had abruptly veered off the road and into the deep underbrush of surrealism. 'Are you getting this from a newsfeed, or your kid's comic books?' he said, his contempt getting the better of his caution.

  But Wilkins did not show any sign of having taken offense. 'Even someone of your intelligence and accomplishments can be compartmentalized and propagandized - our enemies are very practiced in mind control and deception. We will help lift the fog from your eyes, Dr Horton - and when you are seeing clearly, I have no doubt that you will apply yourself and your talents to our common cause.'

  'So am I a prisoner of war, or a recruit?'

  'Which do you want to be?' Wilkins said, standing to signal the end of the audience. 'We will give you the facts - the real truth. You will make the choice.'

  As they ushered him out of the long house, Horton took notice of the time displayed on the comset's screen-blanker. With that piece of information, it would take only a few seconds' glimpse of open sky for him to gauge how far he had been moved, and in what direction - the rotation of the bowl of the sky would reveal all to those who knew how to read it.

  But the group's anxieties about being spied on from above thwarted him. The heavy canopy of leaves under which the camp was hidden yielded him only a fleeting glimpse of a tiny patch of night sky on the way back to Shelter Six.

  Horton begged a side trip to the latrine before they locked him back underground, but all he gained from it was a peek at his own face in a metal mirror. He looked haggard, haunted, and unaccountably old.

  'Do you have Dr Brohier, too?' he asked as he was led back to his tiny prison. 'Is he in another one of these holes?'

  'If I knew, I wouldn't be authorized to tell you,' one of his escorts said affably as he threw open the shelter door.

  They left his hands unbound, which was as great a mercy as the fresh layer of wood chips.

  He fell asleep to the sound of distant voices singing hymns to the glory of god.

  Monica Frances could not believe what she was reading. The weekly surveillance report on Dr Jeffrey Horton had been tendered with standard priority, even though its contents were potentially explosive. After securing her desk comset, she stormed down the corridor of Section 7 in pursuit of the report's author. It was not enough to sit there and send her sprites after Benhold Tustin -she needed to breathe fire in his face.

  She found him in the 'cave', the windowless home of the Technical Services Division and its ultrasecret data-gathering technologies. He was in a secure booth with a Techserv resource librarian, and the expression on Tustin's face when he saw her told the rest of the story: he knew how serious the problem was, and had been hoping to resolve it before it came to her attention.

  'What happened?' she demanded. 'You were supposed to maintain contact with him. That was the President's direct and explicit order.'

  'I don't know what happened. We're just not getting anything back from our pings.'

  'What does the tracings book say?'

  'No activity on any of his comm accounts. His credit card was used a few hours ago in Evanston.'

  'Chicago! He hasn't been near a city bigger than Fergus Falls for as long as we've been tracking him.'

  'I'm aware of that,' Tustin said grimly.

  'Could he have discovered our trackers?'

  'He's not supposed to be able to.'

  'Is there anything else in the tracings book?'

  'Just the GPS history for the transponders. The comset trace ends north of Eau Claire, a day and a half ago. The camper trace terminated about
sixteen hours ago, near Iron River, in the Upper Peninsula. It's just possible that those are two points on the same route'

  'So the van went to Michigan, and the debit card to Illinois?'

  'I suppose he could have sold the van -'

  To finance an irresistible craving for Chicago stuffed pizza, I suppose? Why didn't you bring this to my attention sooner?'

  'We really don't know that there's a problem -'

  She looked past him to the librarian. 'Check that Eyanston transaction - find out if it was thumbprint verified.'

  A few moments later the librarian had the answer. 'It was a no-contact purchase - gasoline and a car wash at an automated station.'

  'I'd say we have a problem, Mr Tustin. How long has it been now?'

  Tustin glanced at his watch. 'Forty-four hours, give or take.'

  She shook her head. 'We'd better go see the Director.'

  Jacob Hilger, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, studied the incident map and timeline Monica Frances had thrown together.

  This has been a strictly routine tracking job from day one, correct?'

  'Absolutely,' said Tustin. 'There's never been any interest from the White House. We've never gotten a request to get any closer. I don't even know that anyone other than Mrs Frances has ever seen our reports.'

  'What about that?' Hilger asked, looking to the project security supervisor.

  'He's right. By the time we located and tagged Dr Horton, Dr Brohier already had the Jammer operational and had brought in Dr Bennington-Hastings. The other shoe never dropped. We kept up with Dr Horton anyway, just in case.'

  'How?'

  'Piggyback transponders on the global-position circuits in Dr Horton's camper and comset. Our agents did a black-box swap on the van and replaced the comset with a doctored dupe. At every tenth refresh, we received a location report. And we could ping the transponders at any time for a real-time fix.'

  'So long as the parent systems have power,' Tustin added.

  'Did you ever have a data blackout before?'

  'Just one, on the camper, about seven hours long. But that same day he had an emergency road service call and a repair bill for a new alternator.'

  Pursing his lips, Hilger shook his head. 'I can't see the same scenario here.'

  'No, sir,' said Frances. 'I think someone's grabbed him.'

  'I read it the same way. Do you have anyone in the field on this yet?'

  'Three teams - one in Chicago, one en route to a trace in the U.P., and one heading for Dr Horton's last known fixed location in northern Wisconsin.' Frances glanced at the clock. 'They should be arriving on site just about now.'

  'They won't find Horton,' Hilger quietly predicted.

  'Probably not, sir. But maybe they can find something that'll lead us in the right direction.'

  'Finding the camper would be a good start. Who's coordinating on the ground?'

  'Captain Whalen, with the Crequamegon Forest team.'

  'How about on the water?'

  'Excuse me?'

  Hilger traced the serpentine Lake Superior shoreline of northern Wisconsin with a fingertip. 'Look where he was. This is the gateway to the Atlantic - not a single security checkpoint between here and Europe, or Africa, or South America. Dr Horton could have been put on any boat bigger than a Boston Whaler that put out from any dock along here in the last two days. And he could have been moved to any other boat since.'

  'Or to a float plane,' said Tustin.

  'Bite your tongue. It'll be hard enough if he's still on the water. You'd better bring the Coast Guard in, have them get some people to the Soo Locks fast, try to keep the cork in the bottle. And in the meantime, get with the National Reconnaissance Office to see what they can tell us about traffic on the lake.' Hilger sighed. 'Summer on the Great Lakes. We may need to call in the whole Section.'

  'Are you going to notify the White House?' Frances asked.

  Grimacing, the director said, 'Let's see if we can't find out what's happened first. Let's wait for the first reports from the field.'

  The first reports were in by midnight, and the story they told brought a reluctant and unhappy Jacob Hilger to the White House gates. He showed his ID to the scanner and his face to the security detail and was directed to the East Wing gym - a former staff office Breland had had outfitted with Nautilus gear, a treadmill, and a rowing machine.

  Before Hilger reached the gym, he passed through two more Secret Service checkpoints and was joined by Chief of Staff Charles Paugh. 'Leaving Amanda to fend for herself with the new baby tonight, eh, Jacob?' Paugh said cheerfully. 'How is Gavin?'

  'Growing like a weed,' Hilger said. 'Do you ever go home, Charlie?'

  'Why would I? I have a closet under the stairs, a bedroll, and my very own flashlight - plus I know where the State dinner leftovers are kept. Here we are, right through here.'

  They found the President sitting on the end of the back bench, mopping up perspiration with a small towel. His gray Philadelphia Phillies workout jersey was soaked almost to his waist.

  'Has either of you gentlemen noticed that once you're north of forty, you end up just as tired and twice as sore doing half as much?' Breland asked, dabbing at the side of his neck. 'I don't know how Ryan and Spahn played as long as they did.'

  'I don't know who Ryan and Spahn are,' said Paugh. 'Did either one of them have a decent jump shot?'

  'Heathen,' said Breland. 'Jacob, what do you have for me?'

  'Jeffrey Horton has disappeared. It looks like he's been abducted.'

  Breland let the towel drop to the floor. 'The hell you say. What happened?'

  I'll tell you what I can, which is less than we'd like to know,' said Hilger. 'Two days ago, Dr Horton had a secured conversation with someone who was spoofing a DOD account. We don't know who he was talking to or what was said, but it appears-that shortly afterward, he packed up and drove to Hayward Municipal Airport. Something happened there.'

  'How do you know?'

  'From that point on, the traces for Dr Horton's comset and his camper separate until they're about twenty-five kilometers apart, heading south on US Fifty-Three toward Eau Claire.'

  'Two vehicles.'

  'Presumably - and no telling if Horton himself was in either of them. The trace for the comset vanishes around Chippewa Falls. The trace for the camper continues east to Wausau, then back north again into Michigan.'

  'Wausau? That takes us pretty close to Tigerton, doesn't it?' asked Paugh.

  'Yes, we noticed that.'

  Tigerton?' asked Breland.

  'Former home of the Posse Comitatus,' said Hilger. 'If they still existed, they'd definitely be on the list of usual suspects.'

  'Are we sure that they don't?'

  'Well - the JATF should be able to tell you better than I can,'

  Hilger said, looking uncomfortable. 'What we do know is that the camper was abandoned on a dirt road on the edge of the Ottawa National Forest. It had been stripped, and someone had tried to bum what was left with an incendiary bomb - the smoke attracted a Forest Service ranger, which is how we got our hands on it so quickly.'

  'A bomb? Not a match in the gas tank?'

  'No - military-issue magnesium flare, probably with a timer or a fuse, so they're long gone when it goes up. We had to take a serial number off the rear axle to identify it as Horton's.'

  'Jesus,' said Breland.

  'I need to know how far you want us to go with this,' said Hilger. 'We really don't have the expertise or the authority to do criminal investigations - though we're ready to support one with all the domestic intelligence assets we have. But somebody else needs to take the point.'

  Breland looked to Paugh. 'What options are there? FBI?'

  'Going by the book, we should give it to the FBI,' the chief of staff agreed. 'But their rule book is the thickest, which means they can't always move the fastest. What's at stake - Horton's life, or some larger national security interest? What good is he to whoever grabbed him? What does he kno
w?'

  'Not very much,' Hilger said. 'By his own choice, he's been out of the loop for some time. Besides, most of the Trigger material has effectively been declassified already, thanks to those Terabyte people giving away the store. I'd judge the national security risk slight.'

  'But would whoever grabbed him necessarily know that?' Breland asked.

  'They might. They knew enough to get Horton's private address and flag codes, and to spoof a secure DOD commlink. That's the real national security issue here - that whoever grabbed him had help from someone inside the Pentagon's comm net. That's reason enough to go hard at this.'

  'Dr Horton's life is reason enough,' Breland said sharply. 'He may not have been kidnapped for information. There's more than a few people who might want revenge.'

  'If you want revenge, you kill him nasty and then leave the body where it'll be found,' Paugh said grimly.

  'And what's to say that's not where this is going?' asked Breland. 'What are the other options, Charlie?'

  'Army Intelligence could take it on the strength of the DOD penetration. For that matter, so could the CIA, if we're willing to pretend to know that the penetration was foreign, not domestic.'

  'If it was your brother - or your son - and your first consideration was finding him and getting him back safely -'

  Paugh and Hilger exchanged glances. 'I'd want to keep it all as quiet as possible, so as not to spook them,' said Hilger. 'Zero public profile, completely compartmentalized within the intelligence and law enforcement communities. I'd say Unit Thirteen - the Special Forces Unified Command domestic counterterrorism team. We plug them in with Defense Intelligence, CIA, National Recon Office, NSA, and give them their head. Odds are that they might have a list of likely suspects already in hand.'

  'What will it take to get that started?'

  'General Stepak can coordinate,' said Paugh. 'Everyone we want involved already reports to him, except the Company - and that can be worked out.'

  'All right. If I have to sign something, get it drawn up.'

  'That can be taken care of later,' said Paugh.

  'I have a question -' Hilger began.

  'Go.'