The Trigger Read online

  The second occasion, when Brohier accepted the National Medal of Science from President Evans, had been a quieter but considerably more dignified affair.

  But all of that had been before Mark Breland moved into the Oval Office.

  The first man since Kennedy to move directly from the Senate to the Presidency, and the first 'people's President' since Teddy Roosevelt, Breland had - for better or worse - broken or rewritten most of the rules about how Washington worked. Neither Evans nor Engler would have allowed the likes of Wilman, Goldstein, and Brohier to be kept waiting for nearly two hours for a prearranged audience. But this was Mark Breland's White House, where nothing was as before.

  Breland's personal charisma was often likened to JFK's, but the resemblance ended there. He was from the Senate, but not of it, and his wealth was 'new money' and self-made - Breland had been a star pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies for more than a decade. With an engaging smile, an old-fashioned work ethic, and a one-two punch consisting of a disheartening fastball and a wickedly deceptive slider, Breland pitched the Phils to three World Series, collecting two Cy Young Awards as the best in the game.

  But Breland was unimpressed by celebrity, including his own. Throughout his career, he had quietly turned down all endorsement deals, even when they would have doubled or trebled his substantial annual salary. Then a frustrated athletic-shoe company tried to borrow Breland's fame without using his name or image in a clever ad featuring blurred action shots, shadowy figures, darkened locker rooms, the sound of running footsteps, and a grandfatherly narrator who began each spot by drawling, 'Yessir, he was the best I ever saw -' Instead of suing the company, Breland shamed them with a memorable press conference that produced an even more memorable quote:

  'Why should anyone care what kind of shoes I like to wear? I'm the only one walking on my feet. And doesn't everyone here know that it's the walking, not the shoes, that gets you where you want to go?'

  It was a national audience's first glimpse of the plain-spoken, common-sense populism that would come to define Breland's public reputation. And it was not the last time he would break the rules. In an era when major league rosters might change completely in a span of only two or three years, he played his entire career for one team, and chided his fellow players for valuing money more than loyalty, saying, 'No mercenary was ever a hero. You can't expect to be cheered when you change uniforms in the middle of a battle.'

  And after posting his one losing record in what had become a nightmare season for the whole team, he apologized publicly to the fans and gave back his salary in the form of refunds - $2.71 per ticket for every game he appeared in, mailed or credited to every ticket purchaser on record.

  'I'm lucky enough to be a grown man playing a boy's game,' said the note accompanying the refund checks. 'I'll take your money again when I've earned it on the field.' Eight teammates followed his lead. And the following season, the team regained its competitive form and reclaimed first place.

  In part because of moments like those, when an off-season wrist injury prematurely ended his career, 'Breeze' was the marquee player in professional sports. In the news coverage of his retirement, the most frequently applied adjectives were 'genuine' and 'honorable'. And his fame had spilled over into the mass cultural consciousness, placing him in that elite group of athletes instantly recognizable by millions who had never seen him play.

  When Breland called the chairman of the beleaguered Pennsyl-vania State iDemocratic Party and told her that he wanted to run for the Senate, party officials had been jubilant, thinking that they finally had a horse they could ride back to respectability. But somewhere along the way, the roles of horse and rider got turned around. Behind Breland's golden reputation were dual degrees in literature and political science, an incisive and decisive mind, and an unwavering conviction that the country's problems were solvable through a generous application of industry and compassion.

  'These are my family values,' he said on election night, the phrase somehow sounding fresh on his lips, 'the values that were my parents' greatest gift to me, the ones they taught me by example. You work hard. You protect and provide for your family. You put your responsibilities before your desires. You lend a hand when someone's struggling, listen and hold a hand when someone's hurting, speak up when someone needs guidance, stand up when the truth needs a friend.

  'None of this needs explanation, or justification. Everyone here understands. Everyone knows it's the right thing to do. These are the values of communities that work, of tribes, villages, neighborhoods, towns. Our challenge is to extend those values to communities the size of states and countries, and in time to the whole globe.'

  It was a message that wanted a wider audience. It found that audience six years later, when Breland asked to be entrusted with the job of President of the United States.

  He asked the people, not the Democratic Party. One term had been more than enough to make clear that the qualities which endeared Breland to his admirers vexed and infuriated the party leadership. He was too direct and not nearly beholden enough for their liking. Breland would not play The Game, would not bow to the icons and mouth the mealy platitudes, would not keep his place or mind his tongue. The party could neither control him nor silence him. He did not need the party, and both of them knew it.

  The party needed him, and both of them knew that, too.

  Though jaded Beltway insiders dismissed Breland as a light-weight and discounted his chances of making it as far as the nominating convention, he was good copy - as quotable as he was quixotic. And his words struck a chord, not only with early adopters across the political spectrum, but with some of the jaded press covering his unconventional campaign of ideas. February's joke became, in turn. May's longshot, August's surprise nominee, and November's poll-defying President-elect.

  Breland's first act the next morning was to announce that he wouldn't accept the Presidential salary of $2 50,000. 'I'm a rookie in this league,' he said. 'Let's wait and see what kind of year I have.'

  And so far, it had been a strange and wonderful year, as Breland continued to break the rules and upset expectations.

  He had canceled most of the pomp of Inauguration Day, including the parade - putting the focus on the democratic miracle of the peaceful transfer of power, and on the theme of his address, 'We can do better.' Within two months, the press that had loved Breland the candidate was beating Breland the chief executive about the head and shoulders with that phrase, mocking his ad hoc administration for a series of missteps great and small.

  But instead of resorting to the usual White House tactics of denial and distraction, Breland crossed up the press corps by publicly agreeing with them.

  'Yes, we've made mistakes. Did anyone here expect me to pitch a perfect game on opening day?' he asked a roomful of journalists and a national holovee audience. 'Because I didn't expect it. It just doesn't happen - which I'm sure you know, since most of you folks have been following this sport longer than I've been playing it. But I'll tell you this: more than once in my career, I've been wild early, found myself down a couple of runs to a good team, and gone on to win. Leave me in the game, coach. I'll be all right.'

  Allergic as they were to folksy metaphors not of their own creation, the Washington press remained cool - but the public was charmed. Breland's approval rating went up eight points, and had remained high despite the best efforts of his enemies.

  But you're still missing the plate with your fastball, Wilman thought crossly, rising to go question the appointments secretary once more. But before he and his accumulated annoyance got there, he was intercepted by Breland's chief of staff, Richard Nolby - the man who had arranged their visit.

  'Senator,' Nolby said breathlessly. 'I'm terribly sorry. This situation in Algeria has had us hopping all morning. But the President is free now - if you and your companions will follow me?'

  One thing that had not changed during the Breland tenure in the White House was the power geometry of the Oval Offic
e.

  Visitors who were there to be flattered, impressed, intimidated, or humored found Breland behind sixty inches of flame oak desktop, ensconced in front of the famous curved windows in what he and his aides had dubbed 'the hot seat'. Visitors who were there to negotiate, brainstorm, debate, or conspire had their meeting with Breland in what he called 'the pit' - a pair of claw-footed davenports facing each other across a glass-top accent table. A matching armchair, which Nolby had never seen Breland use, made the pit into a U that seemed more intimate than the room that surrounded it.

  For more than an hour, Breland had been perched on the front edge of one of the davenports, listening raptly as his visitors laid out the details of an astonishing discovery. The science was beyond his ability to comprehend, but the implications were not. Every goal he had, every problem he faced, every hope he harbored had suddenly been rendered irrelevant. These three men - unprepossessing in appearance, naive in outlook, unpolished in presentation - were sweeping away Breland's game plan, rewriting the future before his eyes.

  Everything you know is wrong -

  'I can see that I'm not going to be getting a full night's sleep for a while,' Breland said, shaking his head. 'I hope you'll understand when I say that I'd like to witness this Trigger effect myself, at the first opportunity -'

  'As would I,' said Wilman.

  'Everything we've told you is the truth,' said Goldstein with a hint of indignation.

  'Did I suggest otherwise? It's not doubt you were hearing,' Breland said. 'You and Dr Brohier arrived at my door with enough credibility to tell me the incredible and keep me listening. But I confess to the childish desire to touch the miracle.'

  'We'd be happy to arrange that at your convenience,' said Goldstein, looking mollified.

  'Well - it's hardly the most important thing to be settled,' said Breland, and looked to Nolby. 'I suppose we should have General Stepak in to hear this, and Carrero,' he said, naming the Secretaries of Defense and State.

  'At the very least,' Nolby said. Though we'll have to be careful to keep this information tightly compartmentalized. Dr Brohier, who else knows about this?'

  'Does it matter?' Brohier asked with a raised eyebrow. 'In the long run, there are no secrets in science. The universe will not cooperate in a cover-up.'

  'Richard wasn't thinking about a cover-up, I'm sure,' said Breland. 'But I have no doubt you've already -'

  'Wasn't he?' asked Wilman sharply. 'Mr President, there's only one reason we're here. And that's because you, more than any other person, have it within your power to see that this discovery is used for the benefit of the human species, for the advancement of civilization. These men are patriots, as am I - but none of us came here to offer you anything as transitory as a technological edge over our enemies. The Trigger isn't something to be "compartmentalized" - it's something to be shared, to be spread around the globe until it's in the hands of everyone who can benefit from it. And if you're not of like mind on this, we'll make our apologies for misjudging you, and take our leave.'

  'Just because we aren't at war doesn't mean we have no enemies,' said Nolby, unmoved. 'Just because there are no troops massing on our borders and no warships off our coasts doesn't mean our enemies can't threaten us. And with old Soviet nukes in at least twenty countries, the threat is extremely potent. Remember Srvestibad,' he said, invoking the name of the first city since Nagasaki to vanish under a mushroom cloud. 'We don't want one of those in Florida or Texas or California.'

  'I remember Oklahoma City,' said Wilman. The guns that most threaten us are our own. The fanatics who most threaten us are home-grown.'

  'No.' Breland shook his head. 'Oh, that threat is there -'

  'Not merely a threat,' Wilman said. 'We've just become numb to the bloodshed when it happens in ones and twos. Shoot ten in a restaurant or a post office and we'll pay attention for an afternoon. Kill fifty by blowing up a railroad bridge and the City of Chicago and we'll pay attention for a week. But eleven thousand gun murders every year pass beneath our notice - until it's a sibling, a friend, a child -'

  'If we were losing eleven thousand young men a year to fireflghts in rice paddies or jungles or sand dunes, you wouldn't be shrugging it off,' said Goldstein. 'But because it's in vacant lots, and bedrooms, and bars -'

  'I don't shrug it off,' said Breland. Though perhaps there's something to the charge that we're numb to the bloodshed, or at least inattentive. But I wish I could tell you - hell, I wish I could tell CNN - how much our intelligence agencies have done for this country over the last ten years, how much pain they've spared us by keeping those weapons away from our borders. There've been so many sacrifices, so many heroes, that no one's ever heard about.'

  The Trigger can make the CIA's job easier,' said Wilman. 'But if all we do with it is protect our own, then shame on us. There are innocents dying every day in Panama, in Korea, in Angola, in Bosnia, because of the detritus of wars that ended half a century ago - a hundred million mines waiting in the dark for a child's footstep. There are places in the world which haven't known a day's peace in a hundred years, because guns and bombs drown out all other forms of dialogue.'

  Breland smiled wryly. 'You are a passionate and persuasive man, Senator. One might think you've done this sort of thing before.'

  'Home field advantage,' Wilman said lightly. 'No apologies.'

  'Of course not.' Breland glanced sideways at Nolby, then fixed his gaze on Brohier. 'You want me to start a disarmament race.'

  'Yes,' said Brohier. 'Yes, exactly.'

  'Forgive me, Mr President, but that's the worst kind of foolishness,' Nolby said. 'You can't change human nature. You can't eliminate conflict. It isn't the weapons - it's us. It's greed, and lust, and rage, and someone standing in the way of what we want. War was invented long before gunpowder, and murder long before war. Take away the guns and they'll use knives and clubs. Take away the bombs and they'll use poison and fire. This doesn't touch the impulse that leads to murder, that leads to the order for the infantry to advance.'

  'I pity you,' Goldstein said, though his expression spoke more clearly of contempt. 'You live by choice in a bleak and hopeless world, and use your pessimism as an excuse for inaction.' He looked to the President with a steady, challenging gaze. 'But even if Mr Nolby were right, and our species is condemned to create murderers and warlords, the least the rest of us can do is make it as hard for them as we possibly can.'

  It was Wilman who answered the challenge, and his words made Goldstein and Brohier both stare in disbelieving wonder.

  'Mr Nolby is right. It's dishonest to pretend otherwise,' Wilman said. 'Without war, we'd hardly have any history. Without murder, we'd hardly have any fiction. We are flawed, and the flaw is a failure of empathy. We are unable to give the suffering of others the same weight as our own mild discomfort. We block the pain of others from reaching our nerve endings, lest we find ourselves impelled to do something to relieve the pain.

  'But Mr Nolby is also wrong. He discounts the significance of learning, the possibility of enlightenment. I could not now bring myself to do for you, President Breland, what I willingly and unthinkingly did for another President, half a lifetime and half a world away. I learned from my experiences, and so must we all. Do you have children, Mr Nolby?'

  'Three sons.'

  'Ah, well, then at least you have some foundation for your pessimism,' said Wilman. 'If you come home tonight and find your sons beating each other with sticks in the back yard, you will want to talk to them about respect, about other ways of solving disputes, about the rules of your household. But while they're trying to absorb the wisdom of your advice and the earnestness of your warnings, won't you also take away the sticks? In fact, won't you do that first?'

  He did not wait for an answer, turning next to Breland. 'I welcome the revolution. I want to see how it changes things if our presidents can no longer napalm a jungle or machine-gun a crowd, if all that the general's tanks can threaten is what they can run over, if the worst t
he premier's planes can do is drop rocks. I want to see if a commander will send an army into battle knowing that the very weapons his soldiers carry will likely kill them. I want to see if that army will march into battle unarmed.'

  'Haven't you made the strongest man in the tribe king, then?' asked Breland.

  'In some respects, likely so,' said Wilman. 'Sir, I won't promise you an egalitarian world. Dominance hierarchies will not disappear - they'll be strengthened. And so it should be.'

  'This is a good thing?'

  'It's the express lane of the road to peace. One of the most insidious things about guns is how they inspire the ambitions of weak men -how they lead them to fight when they properly ought to submit, and to keep fighting when they should accept stalemate. Nature's been turned upside down by these weapons. Imagine what rutting season would be like if the bucks were armed with shotguns.'

  Breland showed a rueful smile, and Goldstein laughed uncomfortably. By then, Nolby was openly scowling. 'Then you mean to betray your country, to surrender the planet to the Chinese?' he demanded. 'Because our military technology is the counterweight for their numbers. Take away our technology, and the balance of power shifts to them. And the Romans built an empire with nothing but the phalanx and the oared galley.'

  Brohier rescued the moment for Wilman. 'President Breland, I can tell you that the Chinese physicists are just as capable of making this discovery as we were,' he said. 'In fact, I can't offer you any reassurance that they didn't make it five years ago. We are as likely to be a little behind as a little ahead.'