'I'll do my best, Mr President,' Schrock said with a nod. As he stood, he reached up and touched his lapel, drawing Breland's attention to the silver pin he wore. The face of the pin was in the shape of a Q, with an arrowhead pointing to the right. 'Are you familiar with the figure?'
I'm afraid not. Your unit insignia?'
'More like my fraternity pin. It's a creation of Theodore Sturgeon - a neglected writer of the last century,' said Schrock. 'It means, "Ask the next question." I wear it to remind me what I'm supposed to be doing.'
'If you don't mind my asking, what "fraternity" would that be?'
'I don't mind. I belong to the Alliance for a Humanist Future - the Futurians.' When he saw no recognition on Breland's face, Schrock added quickly, 'It's not a proscribed organization. We have a social and technological agenda, not a political one.'
'Which would be what, exactly?'
Schrock smiled. 'Actually, you borrowed our mission statement for your speech last year: "We can do better." Made me reach for the zoom, to see if you were wearing one of these.'
'Well - as you can see -'
Waving off the demurral, Schrock said, 'It's not important. Member or not, we consider you part of the alliance. And when you see one of these - and you might be surprised where you do - you'll know you have a friend there.'
It was a curious ending to a disturbing conversation. Breland did not know what to make of Schrock or his intimations, so he set them aside until he could learn more about the so-called Futurians.
But he knew that the information Schrock had brought him meant trouble. It was difficult enough to hear that the path he had chosen would not take them to the summit - not least because he had begun to suspect it himself. It was far more distressing to discover that, far from moving the world toward disarmament, the Trigger might be pushing it back toward not only the proliferation but the use of nuclear weapons.
That kind of backsliding was intolerable, completely unacceptable. The question Breland had no answer for was what, if anything, he could do about it.
The President was not the only person in the District of Columbia harboring a growing apprehension about the direction events were taking. At the Mind Over Madness offices in Georgetown, Senator Grover Wilman was fretting over reports from a completely different realm.
Months ago, Wilman had effectively abandoned the duties of his Senate office, placing his staff on autopilot after the manner perfected by the Stennises and Thurmonds. On the insistence of his chief of staff, twice a week Wilman reported to the Capitol instead of to the brownstone three-story two blocks from the University. But it was strictly for appearances - behind his closed door, he was teleconferencing with MOM's staff in Kuala Lumpur, or Prague, or Nairobi.
His voting attendance had dropped below thirty percent, and would have dropped lower if it were not for the new remote voting rules. Wilman could not be moved to take the time to actually cross
Constitution Avenue and appear in the Senate chamber. Coming to the outer office, where the vote-verifier sat alone on a small desk, was the biggest concession he was willing to make for the sake of appearances. The Trigger campaign was all that mattered to him, and the moment would not wait.
So he left it to his Congressional staff to answer the mail, and handle the constituent problems, and fend off the callers and visitors who thought themselves important enough to have a claim on the senator's time. It was the work of the foundation's staff which had his attention, and which was the source of his concern.
At Wilman's instigation, Mind Over Madness had taken on the task of easing the transition to the new paradigm. In a span of just four months, it had tripled its budget, dipping deeply into its endowments to fund a presence at every point where the intelligent application of money could make a difference. Their efforts went far beyond attitudinal advertising and working the wires. They were trying to provide as many answers as possible to a problem the Trigger created - how the law-abiding and nonviolent could protect themselves from the bullies in their lives.
MOM's money was paying for studio space and instructors for free martial arts training in the sixteen metropolitan areas which accounted for sixty percent of all gun homicides and armed assaults. The curriculum had been developed under MOM's sponsorship, and consisted of six techniques for disabling single attackers and two for dealing with multiple attackers. Graduates as young as nine and as old as seventy-three had already successfully defended themselves, and the press had coined the phrase 'citizen ninjas' to describe the phenomenon.
The nonprofit retailing arm of the foundation had vastly expanded its operation from an Internet publisher and storefront (The Peace Library). MOM was now buying the entire production run of stun batons, shock-boxes and chem-sprays from five different personal defense companies - all but one owned by Aron Goldstein.
They were reselling those nonlethal weapons at cost - not only on the Net, but through StreetSmart kiosks in hundreds of malls. The low prices and the near-monopoly kept the lines long, even though nearly one in four applicants who passed the criminal registry check were rejected after an interview with a counselor.
In the entertainment realm, Mind Over Madness had endowed the annual Pax Prizes - $100,000 cash awards in eight different media to writers whose work best exemplified the notions that entertainment did not require exploding bodies and dramatic tension did not require drawn firearms. Taking an even more active role, MOM had bought a small multimedia production company, renamed it FaxWorks, and hoped to turn it into a major content producer in both interactive and performance media.
But, distressingly, beneath this ambitious edifice cracks were starting to appear in the foundation - one after another after another.
The first came to Wilman's attention in a report focusing on crime patterns. He called in the analyst - a fourteen-year FBI veteran volunteering in the Georgetown office - to question him more closely.
'As I read what you sent me, after an initial dip, we're not seeing decreases in the targeted crime categories. We're seeing steady or increasing numbers and a shift in the victim population.'
That's correct.'
'What's happening at street-level? Take me beyond the numbers.'
The analyst shrugged. 'Contrary to popular notions, most criminals aren't stupid. If there're fifty bank branches in town, and the twenty biggest are protected by Triggers, the rest of them are going to get extra attention. And because the average take is down -'
'You get perpetrators who work three days a week instead of two.' Wilman frowned. 'This is what's driving the traffic in counterfeit LifeShield signs. People who aren't protected yet want to have that sign out there saying "Go rob someone else."'
The FBI analyst nodded. 'Along the same lines, if the merchants' association turns West Avenue Mall into a LifeShielded property, the bangers are going to start hanging at Northland Mall instead. And when the Star-Bellied Sneetch Tribe finds that The Cat In The Hat Gang has already staked a claim to Northland, you get a turf war that you probably wouldn't have had before.'
'So to whatever extent people would rather relocate than give up their weapons, the Trigger aggravates the situation by artificially restricting the supply of territory and increasing the demand.'
The analyst nodded again. 'The effect is of concentrating the remaining weapons in an ever-smaller area, and things get worse rather than better for those who inhabit that area.'
'Ghettos for violence.'
'In a manner of speaking.'
'So is this strictly a transitional phenomenon? What do you expect to see, say, three years from now, when Northland and most of those little banks are LifeShielded, too?'
'The wolves always look for the cripples and stragglers. There isn't any projection I've seen that brings us close to having entire cities being protected. I'd expect the status quo, only more so -two societies, two cultures, the haves and the have-nots.'
Another crack showed up in a longitudinal study of the economic impact of the Tr
igger, which included a comprehensive catalog of Trigger-related products. Reviewing the update one day, Wilman found an item with a new-item flag which was troubling enough that he had to verify it himself.
At a digital shop based on a server in the Cayman Islands, Wilman found a database called Safe Passage offered for sale by an organization called The Resistance. The database was a catalog of LifeShield installations in North America, offered as an unlicensed add-on for GPS navigators and other trip-routers. If the database was accurate, anyone who had a copy could smuggle explosives or ammunition safely between almost any two points on the map.
Wilman arranged to have a surrogate acquire a copy of Safe Passage, and then turned it over to the NSA for analysis. It proved to be a clone of the supposedly secret database used by LifeShield Transport to make deliveries, twenty-four days out of date but one hundred percent accurate and complete. The leak was plugged ten days later with the arrest of an LST driver and depot manager in Idaho, but Wilman was not reassured. Neither the digital shop nor The Resistance could be touched, and there was enough money chasing that kind of information to assure that someone else could be bought.
'So let's undercut them, and take away the profit motive,' said Wilman's senior strategic coordinator. 'If we openly market a list that's ninety-five percent complete for ten dollars, how many people will cross the line to pay a thousand dollars for that last five percent?'
'It's not the information that matters,' said Wilman. There aren't even a hundred unmarked Trigger installations. The liability issue makes it impossible to have stealth installations in public places, at least here - we would if we could, but we can't. No, it's the sales pitch, the reason for putting the data together this way that matters. People are starting to find work-arounds. And there's damned little we can do about that.'
The next crack appeared in an urgent teleconference called by the Atlantic States field coordinator in the wake of deadly bombings in Baltimore and Manhattan.
'People have caught on to the fact that they can use the Trigger as a fuse,' the coordinator told Wilman. 'And it enormously simplifies making and planting a bomb.'
'None of that fuss with timers or fuses or remote controls.'
'No technology at all. Making a bomb becomes a matter of gaining access to an explosive, and then concealing it in the trunk of someone else's car or the cargo compartment of a bus or train or a parcel - anything that someone else will take care of moving. And this approach has the added psychological impact of making people paranoid about entering LifeShielded space - for just that moment, they wonder if they're riding with a package of death, one of these so-called "hitchhiker bombs".'
But most alarming to Wilman, because it spoke to the attitudes of the mainstream rather than the criminal fringe, was a crack that he discovered through his own resources.
For nearly two decades, the Algonquin Saloon had clung to a tenuous existence on a side street three blocks from the Georgetown University campus. A cross between an Internet newsgroup, a old-fashioned talk show, and an even older-fashioned British pub, the Algonquin catered to two endangered vices - caffeine and live, face-to-face conversation.
It was the creation of one man, Martin Groesbeck, an energetic and voluble former journalist who'd retired 'rather than go over to the enemy' when the Washington Post was purchased by DisneyNet. Groesbeck had an ear for issues, a trustworthy face, and a knack for drawing out the occasional shy or intimidated visitor to the Algonquin's seven circular tables. Through the marriage of an idiosyncratic vision and sheer stubbornness, Groesbeck had managed to create and sustain a unique community he proudly called 'a seven-ring intellectual circus'.
He threw strangers randomly together at the nine-seat tables, and sat in to fill an empty space or 'stir the soup' at a sluggish roundtable. He wrote and published a daily house broadsheet called The Real Slow News which highlighted social and political issues, copies of which were known to turn up far from Georgetown. He wandered from table to table in the early evening, scattering fire-red Devil's Advocate cards - each bearing a controversial proposition in Groesbeck's distinctive handwriting - on tables as conversation-starters.
Groesbeck delighted regulars and offended newcomers with his 'bouquets and brickbats' policy, under which he tore up the checks of customers whose participation kept things interesting and doubled the bills of customers who were conspicuous spectators or tedious bores.
Saturday evenings were reserved for guest presenters, an event Groesbeck promoted as 'Nights of the Roundtable'. Applying his own idiosyncratic standards, he offered 'interesting people' from all walks of life (no politicians need apply) a chance to test their ideas in front of a roomful of articulate critical thinkers who gave no points for credentials. Considering that he only offered a token honorarium, a surprising number of the invitees accepted, leading to some of the Algonquin's most memorable moments.
But as a business, the Algonquin was a grand failure, despite the full houses most weekday nights and every Saturday. The turnover was too slow and the average per check too low to do more than break even.
Wilman found the Algonquin too valuable to risk seeing it replaced by a pottery shop or a piercing emporium. Of all the places he frequented in and around Washington, it was the only one where he could be sure that what he was hearing was unaltered by his celebrity or his position or the speaker's ambitions. Not even within the foundation offices could he be confident of that. The Algonquin was his touchstone, his bellwether for public opinion - the sort of well-grounded, passionately-held opinions which had staying power as memes.
That was why Wilman had found ways, indirect and anonymous, to funnel money into Groesbeck's pocket and keep the Algonquin's doors open - grants, private gifts, a book contract, a short-term consultancy. If necessary, Wilman was prepared to do more: to set up a trust which would buy the property and hire Groesbeck to manage it.
But for now, he could walk through those doors as a regular but not a rescuer, and sample both an opinion and a vintage Pepsi. Or, if time was at a premium, he could come early in the day, sit at the serving counter in the back, and squeeze the sponge that was Martin Groesbeck.
'What do you hear that's new, Marty?'
The big man turned away from the chrome taps he was polishing. 'Order something, and we'll talk. Let's see, you take your caffeine cold. I've got some Royal Crown Draft in. Cuban sugar, American spring water, concentrate from Canada.'
'Glass-bottled?'
'Metal cap and all.'
'Dig one out of the ice.'
'I like a customer who doesn't ask "How much?",' Groesbeck said with a smile, plunging a hand into the cooler. 'So what's the keyword today, Grover? Breland?'
'We can start there. How's the "internationalist conspiracy" selling?'
'Not very well - but, then, this isn't South Dakota. People here have actually been to other countries - and I don't mean Niagara Falls or Tijuana.'
Wilman chuckled. 'And these worldly and enlightened folk are saying -'
'It's been an interesting evolution. Breland's actually been doing a little better. Two months ago, I never heard anyone defending him - he had supporters, mind you, but no defenders. They were still looking for a defensible position.'
'Have they found some, then? I thought the Bringer of Chaos and Enemy of Liberty camps had command of the field.'
'They forgot to set up pickets around the high ground,' said Groesbeck. The defensible position is forgivable idealism. Every time Breland comes back to his we-can-do-better theme, a few more people in the B ringer of Chaos camp seem to realize that he's serious about it, and that he was serious all along.'
Wilman cocked an eyebrow. 'Bringing him what, exactly? Grudging respect?'
'Integrity points. The secret agenda all the cynics were ready to impute to him, or his handlers, or the Trilateral Commission, hasn't materialized - his agenda is right out there in the open, and was from the beginning. More civility - less killing.'
'Which, on secon
d consideration, is starting to sound like not such a bad idea to them?'
To an extent.' Groesbeck bent forward, resting his forearms on the serving counter. 'What I'm hearing sounds like the reluctant admiration we reserve for someone who sets a standard we're not quite sure we can aspire to.'
Wilman nodded slowly. 'We have to temper our approval somehow, as a hedge against being called on to follow the avatar.'
Groesbeck patted the countertop with the flat of one hand. 'Just so. In Breland's case, he stands accused of thinking too well of us. You see, he's handicapped by having been surrounded all his life by nice people. Early exposure to villainy broadens one's horizons, or so it's said.'
'Sounds like the conclusion of someone who lives in Newsworld, or Movieworld,' said Wilman. The real world isn't nearly as violent as either of those places. Most people can get from one end of a day to the other without seeing or laying hands on a gun. - Which includes most gun owners, if they're being honest.'
'I won't argue the point,' said Groesbeck. 'I know my father owned a shotgun, and my mother had a revolver. But in twenty years of living at home, I never saw either one of them - and I was a nosy kid. Still, I could find you an argument, if you wanted one.'
'Without going to South Dakota?'
'Sure.' Groesbeck pursed his lips. 'Two nights ago, there was a fellow at table five going on at length about why the Life Shield program was a "disaster". He wasn't the most eloquent customer in the house, but he was very upset about those condo rapes in Milwaukee -'
'The week after the condo turned on its LifeShield,' Wilman recalled. 'Three men who lived there were arrested.'
'That's the one. I remember that this fellow said, "Not everyone with a gun is a bad guy. Not everyone without one is a good guy. A bad guy without a gun can still do a hell of a lot of damage. A good guy without a gun can't always stop it from happening."'