'No, not at all -'
Trent heard the denial, but discounted it, confident that a more oblique and face-saving appeal was coming.
'- I welcome your challenge - in fact, I've asked the Attorney General to do what she can to expedite the progress of the case through the lower courts. I want all the uncertainties resolved as soon as possible.'
'She's not telling you you can expect to win, is she? If she is, fire her - she's obviously incompetent.' Trent tossed his hand dismissively.
Unexpectedly, disconcertingly, Breland smiled. 'I'll tell her you said so. But the fact is that I'm well acquainted with the arguments she's going to present in Baltimore on Tuesday, and I don't see how your side can prevail.'
Trent crossed his arms over his chest. 'You're baiting me.'
'Not at all. You obviously expected this meeting to be adversarial. But when it comes to the Second Amendment, we're on the same side.'
With a hot flush climbing his neck and quick anger balling his fists, Trent sprang up from the couch. 'You're a bald-faced liar, Mr President - and you must think I'm a fool.'
'On the contrary. I think you're a dedicated advocate of personal liberty, and a vigilant defender of the Second Amendment -'
'Don't compound your insults with empty flattery,' Trent said with cold fury.
'- But your world view is, I'm afraid, out of date,' Breland persisted. There's nothing in the Second Amendment to guarantee that arms technology would or should stand still. There were no selective-fire automatics, no laser sights, no centerfire cartridges in the eighteenth century. The NAR isn't defending the right to bear flintlocks and black powder - you want Americans to have all the benefits of two hundred fifty years of refinement and invention. Am I right?'
'Yes - while you want to deny us those benefits. You want us disarmed and compliant -'
'You're missing my point, Mr Trent. Disarming someone is a violent act -'
'Exactly. And this is violence against sixty million gun owners, and two and a half centuries of democracy.'
Breland gestured toward the couch behind the NAR president. 'Please, Mr Trent - if you would hear me out.'
Liking the sound of what he took for anxious pleading, Trent settled back into the cushions. 'Only because I'm curious about how you've deluded yourself into expecting victory.'
'Because the LifeShield - or the Trigger, as it's also known -is a weapon,' Breland said softly. 'And the Second Amendment protects private ownership of it just as strongly as it protects ownership of rifles and handguns. We'll win because you can't use the Second Amendment to privilege one class of arms over another. You have a right to your firearms. Your neighbor has a right to a LifeShield. And it's no business of the courts if your neighbor's weapon turns out to trump yours.'
The audacity, the arrogance of Breland's tactics left Trent blinking and momentarily speechless. 'You're shifting the ground. There are no LifeShields in private hands,' he sputtered. They're all in the hands of the Federal Bureau of Intimidation, and the Central Interference Agency, and the fascist gun-grabbing police forces you're making out of our armed services. This isn't about individual rights - it's about the government trampling individual rights. It's about you murdering Loretta Welch's husband.'
That's beneath you, Mr Trent,' Breland said, but without evident rancor. That was a screw-up, a tragic concatenation of mistakes. You know as well as I do that the courts have never used the Constitution to limit how the Federal government can equip its armies - or how government at any level can equip its police. Armies and police exist to apply force. Sometimes that power is misused. I understood this to be the reason you call gun ownership the "First Freedom".'
'It's exactly that,' said Trent challengingly. 'A man who can't defend himself, who can't protect his home and his family, has nothing - no rights, no freedom, no property.'
Then help bring Ms power to those people,' Breland said. 'We're standing on the cusp between yesterday and tomorrow.
We can't change that - neither you nor I. That's why I asked you here - to make sure that you understand that it's out of our hands. No man - not even a president - stands against history.'
'I don't see it that way at all,' said Trent lightly. 'You've lost twenty points in three days - and I've gained half a million members. You're defending the slaughter of innocents, and I'm defending the Constitution. You think people are afraid of guns - I know they're more afraid of their government. And we've analyzed the firearm death statistics - your plan can't possibly prevent more than ten percent of those deaths. You've overpromised, and we're going to make sure the nation knows it.'
He chuckled, a sign his confidence had returned full force. 'How many factories are building these things - one, two? What's so irresistible about history that those factories can't be closed? Are there so many of them that we haven't enough torches to cut them up, or enough smelters to melt them down? No, Mr President -it'll be easier to stop this than you think.'
'You're already too late.'
Trent jerked his head in the direction of the new voice. 'What did you say?'
'I said, "You're already too late."' The young man advanced several steps from where he had been standing. 'Right now, there are at least eleven production lines in operation around the world. I know of five more that'll be up before the end of the month -three of them in Canada, and owned by my employer. And there're at least thirty labs working on improvements - the Japanese are already testing a design that's a third smaller and has a fifth fewer parts. America isn't the world, Mr Trent. Maybe the Supreme Court will be afflicted by sunspots, and we'll be the last to benefit from the Trigger, instead of the first - but it will happen.'
'Who is this?' Trent demanded of Breland.
The President stood and invited the newcomer into the circle with a sweep of one hand. 'John Trent, may I introduce Dr Jeffrey Horton, associate director of Terabyte Labs and principal inventor of the Trigger.'
'And former life member of the National Association of Rifle-men,' Horton said, dropping his membership card onto the table in front of Trent. 'While you're counting heads, make that a net gain of a half-million minus one -I have no interest in belonging to an anachronism. And that's all you'll be, as irrelevant as a muzzleloader encampment or a reenactment of the Battle of Shiloh, if you keep closing your eyes to what's happening -what's already happened.'
'I see,' said Trent, coming to his feet. His hands were trembling with barely-suppressed fury. 'I hope you enjoyed your little deception, Mr President. And I hope you enjoy your blood money, Dr Horton. I trust that you'll be profiting handsomely from betraying your country.'
Horton shook his head. 'You never have understood, have you?'
'Understood what?'
'That the reasons you love your guns are exactly the same reasons others hate and fear them,' said Horton.
'What are you talking about?'
'It's the power- that terrible, concentrated power in your hands, at your command. The power to kill in an instant of rage, or impatience, or greed, across a room, across a street. There's a djinn inside the gun that obeys you - and because it does, others must, too.'
'A philosopher,' said Trent curtly. 'I despise philosophers. They delight in making the simple obscure.'
'No,' said Horton. 'A physicist. But I'll accept the definition anyway.'
'It doesn't matter,' said Trent. 'You can't even see the erosion of individual rights that you and your kind have engineered. Those issues obviously don't matter to you. So we're done here.'
'Not quite,' Horton said sharply, taking a step to block Trent's path to the door. 'I want to correct your mistaken assumption about something - I'm not earning a penny from the Trigger patent. I donated it to the public domain almost two months ago - a free license. That's part of why things are moving as quickly as they are. It's true that I got paid well while I was working on it, and someone'll make money selling it, but if you think this is about money or politics - well, you're very wrong.'
&nbs
p; Incredulous, Trent stared at Horton as though he had revealed himself the devil incarnate. 'You won't be satisfied until you've taken every last gun away from us, will you?'
Horton tucked his hands into his back pockets and showed a weary smile. 'You still don't get it - it's not about the guns. But you're right, I'm not satisfied,' he said. 'I won't be satisfied until Triggers are the size of a briefcase and every shop-owner can afford one. I won't be satisfied until they're the size of a comset and every home-owner can afford one.
'Hell, I won't be satisfied until they're cheaper than a good handgun and just as easy to conceal. So you say you won't feel safe carrying your Clock on the street in such a world? Then turnabout really is fair play. We haven't felt safe with you carrying it in this world.'
Drawing a deep breath, Trent summoned all of the contempt he could muster and slathered it over every word of his rebuttal.
'You have to be two of the most foolish men this office has ever seen,' he said, circling toward the exit. 'Your little toy won't protect you from a mugger with a knife, or your daughters from a gang of rapists. It won't turn away a gang or slow down a Chinese division. You're living in an imaginary world where people want to get along - I'm living in the real one where they covet everything you own.'
By then he was at the door, with his right hand closing on the doorknob. 'And you're either insane or hopelessly naive if you really think a hundred million Americans are going to stand by and let you take away their guns and their god-given rights.'
It was a perfect moment - the best presence-of-mind-parting-words-slam-the-door exit he had ever managed, or could ever hope to.
Too bad, Trent thought as he drove away, that to share it with anyone he would have to also revisit the nightmare of the darkest morning of his life.
* * *
22: Alchemy
The wonderful thing about Triggers/
Is Triggers are wonderful things/
Their insides are made out of widgets/
Their outsides are made out of zings/
When bombs go boom! and ammo foom!/
You'll know I'm having fun/
But the most wonderful thing about Triggers is - /
I have the only ONE
NSA INTERCEPT LOG
Search Key 00062883Hit: A3H07HB Rating: 99%
Classification: Folk Doggerel, Derivative
Sender: Anonymous Propagation: Netwide
The lawsuit aimed at stifling the Trigger had offended Jeffrey Horton on both a personal and a philosophical level. Claiming that Trigger technology was unconstitutional seemed to him to be of a piece with the Pope silencing Galileo or Tennessee forbidding the teaching of evolution. It was a small-minded, short-sighted, self-serving absurdity, and he had found himself bursting with eagerness to denounce it as same.
'All of their justifications are just sugar-coating for anti-intellectualism,' he had grumbled to Dr Greene after reading the NAR's court filing online. 'If they had their way, it'd still be muskets and flintlocks. This is the twenty-first century, not the damned eighteenth.'
'Don't tell me, tell them,' Gordie had replied. 'I'm not the one who said you had an ugly Baby.'
Taking the suggestion to heart, Horton had contacted the White House to offer his assistance in responding to the lawsuit. That had led to a long conversation with the President and the longer flight back east for the confrontation with John Trent.
It had not gone quite as he had expected. Horton had wanted to see for himself how Trent's mind worked. The President had wanted Horton there as a resource he could call upon. Neither of them had anticipated Horton would play quite so large a role in what transpired.
But by the time he jumped into the conversation, Horton had built up a full head of righteous indignation. In venting it, he had satisfied himself for the moment, but he had also irreversibly crossed the line about which Brohier had warned him. He had walked out of the shadows into the spotlight, and placed himself right beside the President.
The day after his confrontation with John Trent, a gun rights Web site outed Dr Jeffrey Horton as the inventor of the Trigger. Most of the article was polemic and character assassination, easily shrugged aside. But the biographical material sent a chill down Horton's back. To judge by the errors and omissions, most of it seemed to be drawn directly from the AAAS Directory and Terabyte's own publications. But there were also three photographs of him - including a vidcap of him sitting in the gallery for the joint session of Congress - with sighting circles and crosshairs superimposed.
Immediately below his photos appeared his former address in Columbus, along with a map of the driving route from there to Terabyte's Columbus campus.
'We can make that page go away,' said FBI Director Mills at a hastily arranged meeting that included the President and the director of the Secret Service. 'But they've already accomplished their goal - we can't stop the information from spreading. The mainband news organizations will probably have it by this evening, if they don't already.'
'So what do I do?' Horton asked, looking to Breland.
'It's up to you,' the President said. 'You can decide to make yourself available, or you can decide to make yourself scarce. My suspicion is that it won't much affect how much they talk about you, but it might affect what they say.'
'He still has a safe harbor in Nevada,' said the Secret Service. 'No one knows about the Annex yet. Maybe just going back there is the best idea.'
The director of public relations was vigorously shaking her head and edging forward on her chair. I've already fielded three direct inquiries about the identities of certain people who've been under our wing this week, and there others are nosing around,' Rochet said. 'I say we step right up and answer the questions, let them have a peek at Dr Horton, maybe even allow a press conference - then let him high-tail it back to Nevada.'
'They'll eat him up,' said Mills bluntly. 'Nothing personal, Dr Horton, but you have no experience with what passes for journalism here.
Speaking forcefully, Rochet said, I've always believed that it didn't matter whether the natives were preparing to feast you or roast you, you're better off helping make the arrangements than leaving everything to them. I think we can spin this very nicely, if Dr Horton agrees. He's a pleasant-looking young man, smart, well-spoken, no political baggage, no extreme agenda - why let them demonize him when we have the truth on our side? This static over the Morgensterns isn't changing any minds, just giving the opposition something to rally around. We can give our people something to rally around, too - an unassuming hero. What do you think, Doctor?'
Horton searched their faces for an answer. 'I wouldn't want the rest of the team to think I was trying to take all the credit,' he said slowly.
'You'll talk to them beforehand, explain the situation.'
Nodding, Horton added, 'But I also don't want to let what the Ammo Locker said go unchallenged.'
'Absolutely right,' said Rochet. 'You shouldn't give them the last word. It's all about perceptions.'
'I was thinking it was about the truth,' said Horton.
'Not often,' said Rochet. 'But we always try to start there.'
'Was that a decision, then?' Breland asked Horton.
'I think so,' he said.
'Good,' said Rochet, standing. 'Why don't you come with me to my office, then, and we'll get to work.'
Like a Picasso drawing figures in mid-air, Aimee Rochet was an artist working in the transitory and insubstantial - impressions, perceptions, and, when necessary, illusions.
Overnight, she put together an event which was not merely a political debutante's coming-out party, but a hero's coronation. When the Commerce Department balked at rushing through a National Medal of Technology for the Trigger developers, she rummaged through the White House archives and found paper authorizing an earlier incarnation, the Presidential Medal of Progress. She lined up an enthusiastic audience big enough to fill a wide shot by tapping the middle-level staffers of the State Department. The two living Am
erican recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize were rushed into town to sit in the front row and be seen shaking Horton's hand.
The frothy speeches for the President and his honoree were whipped together by the usual suspects on staff, but she personally rehearsed Jeffrey Horton on his, and then rewrote his remarks to make them simpler and more in keeping with his natural rhythms. She hand-picked the media representatives who would be allowed to take part, and gave a three-hour scoop to a particularly friendly correspondent from Bertelsmann Worldwide. At a morning breakfast, she coached Horton through what she thought was a successful mock press conference. And when the time came, she personally moderated the real thing.
The only thing Rochet couldn't do, she thought regretfully as she looked out at the thicket of raised hands, was answer all the questions for Horton. He shared Breland's faults - he was too real to memorize a polished answer, too honest to avoid the political potholes. Unlike Breland, he was an amateur. She could only hope that he wouldn't wound himself too badly.
She pointed, thinking. We open with the big bear. 'Yes, Richard, you have the first question.'
'Dr Horton, Senator Wilman says that the LifeShield is the answer to a pacifist's prayers. Have you discussed this with either Senator Wilman or god, and do you think global disarmament is a realistic goal?'
Come on -just like over eggs and pancakes - you don't have to answer them all-
'I don't know Senator Wilman,' Horton said. 'But I'm pretty sure that god is on the side of peace. Whether global disarmament is realistic or not, I can't say. I can tell you that the LifeShield team will be happy if our discovery moves the world in that direction.'
Not bad, she thought. Now the vicar -
'Dr Horton, Alfred Nobel made his fortune selling TNT to both sides in a series of nineteenth-century wars. Would you accept a Nobel Prize for discovering the antidote to dynamite, or would you consider that blood money?'
'Nobel told his friend, the Countess Bertha von Suttner, that he wished he could produce a machine or material that would make war impossible. He seems to have been thinking about deterrence - mutual assured destruction - but I don't think anyone who's honored by his Foundation has any reason for misgivings.'