The Trigger

  The LifeShield gives us a means to disarm a threat without taking up arms ourselves. The LifeShield protecting the Capitol is but one of nearly five hundred which are already in use at govern-ment and military facilities around the world. The LifeShield is also the secret technology behind America's humanitarian campaign to rid the world of land mines and the unexploded munitions of the twentieth century's wars.

  That is only the beginning of what we can and will do with this miracle of science. But I want to say something first about what we will not do.

  'We will not touch the Second Amendment. We will not take a single gun from any rightful owner. There will be no LifeShields in the woods - game hunters may continue to hunt as they always have. There will be no LifeShields in the gun clubs and on the ranges - sport shooters will continue to plink and pull to their heart's content. We will not come into your house and carry away the firearm in your nightstand - much as we might wish otherwise, the burden of personal defense remains with you.

  'But we will do everything we can to make your children safer. We will work to make the streets outside your homes safer. We will make a start at erasing this shameful stain from the fabric of American society. Forty thousand dead! We can do better. We must do better.'

  It would have been an applause line, but Breland did not wait for it. The red blots across the map of the nation had begun to fade when Breland first spoke the Trigger's new name. Now they vanished completely, and were replaced by a large and unfamiliar symbol superimposed over the center of the map - a stylized white dove with outstretched, sheltering wings on a United Nations blue circle.

  Tomorrow morning, sites which are already protected by the LifeShield will bear this sign prominently at every entrance. This is not the dove of peace - like the real bird, this dove is aggressive in the defense of its territory. This dove is both a warning to aggressors, and a protector of innocents. And she will become a familiar, and - I hope and believe - a welcome sight.

  This morning, I instructed the directors of the LifeShield project to expand the existing production facilities so that they can deliver a total of fifteen thousand units by the end of this year. I intend that we use them to keep guns and bombs out of places where they plainly do not belong.

  'We'll put them in urban schools, so your children and their teachers will have a shield against gang violence and adolescent rage. There will be no more massacres like the one at Henry Ford High.

  'We'll put them in post offices and courthouses and government buildings, so you can open your mail and conduct your business without fear of terrorism. There will be no more tragedies like Oklahoma City or Austin.

  'We'll put them in airports - in time aboard the planes themselves - so you can travel freely and in confidence. There will be no more Flight Two-Oh-Nines.

  'We're going to allocate one tenth of the production - a tithe, if you will - for churches and temples and synagogues, so that they may enjoy the protection of both god and science. There will be no repeats of the Beth El bombing.

  '- And by the way, the cost of these units has already been paid by a generous gift from an anonymous donor - not a single tax dollar will be diverted for this use.

  'I also have decided to give samples and the specifications for the LifeShield to our friends around the world - to begin with, Great Britain, Canada, Israel, Germany, and Japan.

  'We'll keep looking for ways to use the LifeShield here at home. There is no intrinsic right for anyone to carry a bomb or a firearm onto Federal public property, whether it's the highways and bridges of the Interstate system or our national parks, monuments, and museums.

  To support these efforts, we'll continue to expand production, until we reach the point where we've run out of ideas and built a surplus of spares. At the same time, we will mount an aggressive research project aimed at reducing the size and cost of the LifeShield, so that placements which aren't possible now become possible in the future.

  Those are some of the things we're going to do.

  'Now - here's what you can do.

  'First, you can help us think of more ways to save more lives. A national toll-free number and a free Web site have been set up to take your suggestions for public placements.' As he spoke, the routings appeared on the display behind him. 'We want your knowledge of your own neighborhoods, your passion for your families and your community, and your compassion for your fellow citizens to help guide us.

  'Second, you can ask your governors, your mayors, your legislators to participate in Life Assist. This is our plan to sublicense production of the LifeShield to state and local governments, so they can take steps to provide you locally with the same quality of security that we intend to provide in the Federal sphere.

  'Finally, beginning six months from now, some of you will be able to buy a LifeShield yourself from a licensed manufacturer, and use it to create your own sanctuary.

  'At first, sales will be limited to the owners of large multifamily housing, such as apartment buildings; financial institutions, such as banks; public accommodations, such as hotels; retail establishments, such as malls; and commercial properties, such as office towers. I want those owners to be able to offer a firearm-free environment to their tenants, their clients, their customers, and their employees - to use it in their advertising and their recruiting. Nothing will help spread the blessings of the LifeShield faster or farther than old-fashioned competitive American capitalism.

  'But we will lift that restriction as quickly as we can, and reduce the price as often as we can. I look forward to the day when the LifeShield symbol is as commonplace as an auto-club sticker or a credit-card logo, when a gun-free environment is no longer a saleable curiosity, but a basic expectation, like air conditioning or handicapped accessibility.

  'I want to be very clear about something - tomorrow is not the first day of the Utopian States of America. The LifeShield will not make us a more moral people, or resolve the conflicts which all too often explode into violence. It's not a magic wand that will erase homicide or suicide or stupidity or cupidity overnight. It's not a guarantee - it's only a tool that we can use to build a better society. We'll have to work hard and grow fast. We'll have to accept some compromises and make some adjustments in order to make that society real.

  'But they are, I believe, lesser compromises than the ones we are already making - think of all the places that you've become accustomed to metal detectors, bag searches, armed guards, and of all the times you've found yourself afraid. They're trivial adjustments beside the adjustments of the forty thousand families each year that are losing a father, a mother, a child, a sibling, a spouse.

  'Benjamin Franklin warned us, "They that can give up essential liberties to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." The ghost of Franklin can rest easy, because the LifeShield defies that old equation of trading liberty for safety. We can and we will have more of both. That is the promise of the LifeShield, and that is my promise to you.

  'Thank you - and bless you all.'

  The standing ovation which followed was unprecedented in the history of Congress - or, at the very least, unsurpassed within the memories of the longest-tenured observers who witnessed it. It had no detectable partisan tilt, and went on for more than ten minutes, continuing even after Breland left the dais - whereupon he was immediately surrounded and nearly overwhelmed by the glad-handing Senate and House leadership and other front-benchers. All the formal etiquette of the chamber had vanished in the burst of enthusiasm that filled it.

  Then Senator Grover Wilman appeared from nowhere, and bent his shoulder to the task of clearing a path for the President. With Wilman's help, Breland slowly made his way up the center aisle to the double doors and the more practiced assistance of his Secret Service detail. In Breland's wake, with throngs jamming the aisles and the floor, the Vice President abandoned parliamentary procedure and unilaterally gaveled the session closed.

  Aimee Rochet and Aron Goldstein were waiting for Breland in
his limousine. The latter was beyond words, but clasped the President's hand fervently with both hands and thanked him with eyes bright with tears.

  'That was - well, that was incredible, sir,' said Rochet, removing her eyescreens. The share we were guaranteed, we bought that, but the ratings - the numbers kept going up from start to finish, as if people were calling their friends and saying, "Are you watching this?" I was wrong, Mr President. I was wrong, and you were right.'

  Breland settled back into the cushions with an exhausted smile. I'm afraid it's much too early to be sure of that, Mrs Rochet. But thank you, all the same.'

  'I mean it sincerely,' she said, leaning forward toward the vehi-cle's communications center. 'Is there any particular feed you'd like to monitor, sir? For the reaction and analysis?'

  'Leave it off, please,' he said. 'If all they're talking about is my little Mexican standoff with the major, I don't want to know about it until tomorrow.'

  'It'll be less frothy in the morning,' she agreed. 'I'll have a real solid sense of how it played and where it's going by, say, ten o'clock. Can we meet then?'

  'Put it together. I'll be there,' the President said, and closed his eyes.

  There was no sleep that night for most of Aimee Rochet's staff. If they weren't monitoring and analyzing the public dialogue, they were doing their best to shape it.

  Immediately after the speech, the Stand-Ups were the busiest, making themselves available for push interviews on the newsfeeds and snap debates in the virtual town halls.

  As the night wore on and the formal postmortems ended, the burden shifted to the Sit-Downs, who'd begun working the Undernet message boards and public chat rooms hours before the speech. With their flags of allegiance discreetly furled and their anonymity protected by sprites, aliases, and the NSA's best smoke and mirrors, the Sit-Downs seeded and highlighted the themes Rochet wanted to see emerge.

  To that end, Rochet kept tabs on an evolving list of headers, taglines, and catchphrases that were playing and propagating well. 'Our kids don't belong on battlefields' and variants headed the list, with the technically inaccurate 'This isn't gun control - it's bullet control' and the ungrammatically blunt 'dead people don't need rights and got no freedoms' strong early contenders.

  The observer-analysts carried the freight through the wee hours of the night, tabulating and classifying, watching for the crystallization points where discussion hardened into argument and opinions began to break toward both extremes. That was when the uncertainty collapsed - almost as though it were part of a quantum wave function - and the minority and majority positions became defined.

  True to her promise, by ten o'clock the next morning, Rochet had an extensive report prepared for Breland and the other prin-cipals at the meeting - Nolby, Stepak, Attorney General Doran

  Douglas, FBI Director Edgar Mills, and National Security Advisor Anson Tripp.

  'We have an extremely dynamic situation this morning,' she said. 'High profile, high investment, record high deviations. Seventy million touches on the suggestion site - and one out of ten left a message.'

  'It's going to be a long, long time before we have seven million Triggers,' said Nolby.

  'Most of the messages aren't suggestions - they're expressions of support. I'm mailing each of you a summary and excerpts so you can see what the up side looks like. The numbers are excellent for women generally, married-with-children, and men over forty.'

  'And the down side?' asked Breland.

  'Something that emerged very early was a high uncertainty value where geopolitics were concerned. You didn't say much about military affairs, foreign relations - you gave them a full diet of domestic. But the audience included our men and women in uniform, our veterans, and all of their associates - people who know enough about military matters to ask hard questions.'

  'The same sort of questions we've been asking for the last year, I imagine,' said Tripp.

  'Not having been privy to those conversations, I'll leave that analysis to others,' said Rochet. 'But we're going to need a fast follow-up to speak directly to those issues -'

  'How fast?' asked Breland.

  'By the end of the day, if at all possible. And I'd recommend you consider someone with solid ties to the uniformed side of the Potomac - we want that face credibility working for us. General Stepak would be my suggestion, though anyone from the Joint Chiefs would meet the requirements.'

  'With your permission, sir, I'll get together with General Madison and work it out,' said Stepak, looking to Breland.

  'Fine.'

  Rochet nodded approvingly. 'I have some data you should look at. General - perhaps when we're done here,' she said. 'Now, we come to the major action points - three hard areas, and one soft one.

  The first hard area is a self-inflicted wound. You've raised public expectations dramatically, Mr President. You've also made them look at something that they don't want to see, and told them that their world is a nastier and more dangerous place than they previously cared to notice. From this point forward, we're going to be fighting to live up to those expectations.

  'Everything that happens will be measured against the ideals you've identified yourself with instead of against yesterday's realities, and there's a very real danger of a Gorbachev scenario -where instead of getting the credit for progress you get the blame when it doesn't happen fast enough to suit them. There's a number of things we can do to work on that, but it'll take a total team effort to keep every run-of-the-mill shooting from coming back on you as an accusation of failure.'

  'Consider me eluded,' said Breland. 'Continue.'

  'Yes, sir,' Rochet said. 'The second hard area was completely predictable - the Second Amendment crowd isn't buying your reassurances. They think you're after their guns. The most immoderate voices think you've sold your soul to the internationalist left, and that this is the opening round of the fight they've been expecting for fifty years - the Federal government trying to disarm the American people before surrendering sovereignty to the Secretary General of the United Nations. There's a lot of talk about mounting armed resistance, though there's been substantially more shouting than shooting so far.'

  'Has there been shooting?'

  'I'd classify the incidents we're monitoring as individual shows of defiance,' said the FBI Director. 'No deaths or injuries.'

  'How many incidents?'

  'Sixty-three - two-thirds of them west of the Mississippi.'

  'I wouldn't be surprised if either the moderate elements or the ammunition manufacturers are in court before the day's out, looking for an injunction against the Trigger - I mean, the Life-Shield,' said Attorney General Douglas. 'But we're already preparing responses to the anticipated grounds. I doubt that anyone'll be able to hold up the program for more than a week or so, if that.'

  'My biggest concern is that we keep these conspiracy theories contained on the fringes, where they're preaching to the converted,' said Rochet. 'We have to be very conscious to avoid missteps which might seem to give these charges any validity.'

  'Good luck,' said Mills. 'These people will believe what they want to believe, with or without what passes for evidence with them. Besides - they might be right. We might be after their guns, if the heavy weapons that've been disappearing from military arsenals for the last ten years are ending up in their hands. There's no good reason anyone living in Iowa or Idaho needs an antitank rocket or a SAW.'

  Breland had heard enough on that subject. The third area?' he asked Rochet.

  'Criminal opportunism,' she said. 'Crime rates, murder rates, might actually get worse rather than better in the short term, once the LifeShield becomes a credible threat to their ambitions.'

  'People are openly talking about this?' Breland asked. 'About running out and killing someone while they still can?'

  'Enough to light the storm lamps,' she said. '"Don't delay -off the bitch today." Saw that one myself, in a misogyny chat room.'

  'Free speech is wasted on some people,' Stepak said with
open disgust.

  The FBI Director leaned forward and rested his crossed arms on the edge of the table. 'Staying on point - if I'd armed myself with some sort of aggression in mind - knocking off a bank, settling a score, whatever - I might be rushed into acting now if I thought I could lose my opportunity later. It's completely plausible.'

  'Use 'em or lose 'em,' said Tripp, nodding agreement. 'We could be looking at this in the international arena as well.'

  'How do we handle it?' asked Nolby. This is not just a matter of perceptions - this is a real threat.'

  'Maximum vigilance, immediate response, assured consequences,' said Mills. 'We beat the bad actors to the draw as early, as often, and as publicly as possible, until the word gets around that this just isn't a good time to test the system.'

  'Which might be exactly what the conspiracy fringe needs to sell their hokum to Mr and Mrs America,' Rochet pointed out. 'I won't presume to tell anyone here their business, but I can tell you that those newsclips of police in black combat gear breaking down doors doesn't help us with the public.'

  'We'll come back to this,' said Breland. 'You said there was a soft spot?'

  'Yes, Mr President - a big one, right in the middle. There's a lot of residual skepticism. You kept talking about the dragon, but in the end, you didn't show them a dragon, or even one good snort of fire from behind the rocks. They don't have to understand how the Shield works, but they're going to need to know that it does.'

  'Which brings us to the question of the day,' said Breland. 'Weighing all the factors, do we want to go ahead with the Chicago demonstration?'

  'It's not a demonstration to the Chicago police department,' said the attorney general. There've been six people killed by the Cabrini Green snipers, including a paramedic and a police sergeant. The snipers have been using the media to taunt the authorities. It's going to end in blood, on a live national feed, unless we give them an alternative.'

  I'll take that as your nonbinding recommendation in favor of proceeding,' said Breland. 'Let me hear from the rest of you.'