The Trigger

by Arthur C. Clarke

  'You are so thoughtful,' he said, and patted the couch he was sitting on. 'I guess we'd better get this moved, so I can thoughtfully leave you alone.'

  'Maybe we can just leave it where it is.'

  Greene cocked his head questioningly and waited for her to explain.

  'It hasn't been that easy for me to sleep here,' she said, seemingly embarrassed by the admission. 'I thought about this today - and I'd rather have you in here where I know what you're up to than out there making strange noises in the middle of the night. If you don't mind, that is.'

  He shrugged. 'I suppose that'd be all right. Unless you sleep with the lights on, or have some sort of unnatural relationship with your cat, or something like that.'

  'No,' she said, amused. 'Of course, I may change my mind when I find out what sort of strange noises you make in here in the middle of the night.'

  'I'm housebroken, I never snore, and I've taught my spiders not to bark.'

  'A prince among men,' she said. 'Let's give it a try, then.'

  There were a few awkward moments as they prepared to turn in. Lee was momentarily startled when Gordon, apparently oblivious to her presence, stripped down to a pair of white boxers before slipping into his unzipped sleeping bag. A few minutes later, when Lee returned from changing in the women's lounge, Gordon caught himself being unaccountably curious about how her knee-length nightshirt draped her body.

  Darkness relieved both of them of their embarrassment, but did not erase their awareness of the other. The silence seemed meaningful somehow, as though it were waiting eagerly to be broken, as though it had an awareness of the moment which transcended theirs. Greene fought against the temptation to read more into her tentative invitation, and in doing so had to confront a cache of unexamined thoughts.

  I always told myself it was because we have to work together, that we didn't need that complication. But it's more that you deserve better than a six-week wonder that ends after we've been to bed a few times, and I don't know if I have more than that in me.

  The office was an inside room with no windows, and Gordon could barely even make out Lee's outline on the bed against the opposite wall. But he listened to her turning on her side, adjusting her pillow, releasing a settling breath. What are you thinking over there? Did you expect any different? Are you disappointed, or relieved, or is it just an arrogant fantasy that you're even aware of me?

  Greene sighed, and then wished he could snatch the air back, because the sound seemed all too loud and meaningful in the darkness, too like an invitation. And because he had created that opening, and feared that she would avail herself of it, and knew that there were questions he could neither answer nor gracefully deflect, it became necessary for him to be the one to break the silence.

  'Lee?'

  'Mmmm.'

  'There's something I've been meaning to ask you -'

  'What's that?'

  'Do you really think babies are cute?'

  'Why do you want to know?'

  'Just exploring one of those men-women boundaries. I don't have any sisters, you know. Two older brothers. Sean doesn't want any kids. And Brandon has this new baby that cries all the time, and as near as I can tell he doesn't even think she's cute yet.'

  'So what good would my answer do you?'

  'I just wondered how universal this baby thing is, how much starch there is in the stereotype. Whether all women are drawn to it on some level, even women who're happily single with successful careers.'

  'Ah -I get it now. This is one of those summer-camp slumber-party flrst-week-in-the-dorm conversations.'

  'Right.'

  She was slow to respond. 'It sounds like you already believe the stereotype, or you wouldn't ask the question.'

  'I can see as readily as anyone that men and women are built to different specifications, if that's what you mean.'

  'For example?'

  'I've never seen guys cluster around a stroller the way women do. Brandon calls Molly his babe magnet. That's why he doesn't mind taking her for a walk, or shopping.'

  'Your brother sounds like a charmer.'

  'Well, he's only twenty-six. He won't be sentient for another couple of years.'

  Lee chuckled savagely. 'What does that say for you?'

  '"Danger, danger. Will Robinson -"'

  She laughed. 'What was - is? - your mother like? Since you have no sisters to set a better example -'

  'I'd say that being a mother was my mother's first and best destiny, and she knew it. She stayed home with us until the youngest of us - me - entered high school. I remember I was turned around enough at one point to feel guilty about that. She told me that we didn't keep her from doing anything she wanted to do more, because there wasn't anything she wanted more. I don't think those were just words.'

  'Was she a Family First covenantor, then?'

  'Oh, no,' he said, chuckling. 'There was nothing political about it. She was just being mom.'

  That helps me understand the context of the question,' she said. 'So what kind of answer do you really want? General or specific? Sociobiology or psychology?'

  'Ladies' choice.'

  'How quaintly old-fashioned of you,' she said, yawning involuntarily. 'I guess I'd say it's a confidence-point-nine-zero generalization. Most women are drawn to babies, and most of them can't even tell you why. But there's that other ten percent. I have had a couple of friends over the years who avoided babies like they were booby-trapped.'

  She stopped a moment, then added, 'But now that I think about it, both of them came from screwed-up homes - one abusive step-father, one alcoholic mother. And both of them had cats. Maybe it's a confidence-nine-five generalization, after all.'

  Then there are exceptions - no cats, no horses, no dogs, and no regrets -'

  'You're mixing up at least four different kinds of women,' she said. The relationship between women and dogs - big dogs, anyway; little dogs count as cats - is nothing like the relationship between women and their cats, or women and their horses. Mind you, I'm not saying there isn't some compensation and displacement involved in all three of them. These are relationships, not possessions.'

  'So if cats are substitute babies -'

  'Sometimes,' she cautioned. 'And dogs are sometimes solicitous lovers. - Not literally,' she added hastily.

  'Not usually, anyway. And horses -'

  'Horses - horses are complicated.' She thought a moment. 'I think horses manage to evoke all the kinds of human relationships there are, from the purely mercenary and utilitarian to the profoundly personal, even sexual. The horse can be mother, father, friend, child, lover, devoted servant - not to mention the powerful wild thing held captive between the horsewoman's legs, kept in check by harness and whip and the rider's will -'

  'I'm guessing you watched Xena when you were a kid.'

  'How did you know?' He could hear her smile.

  'Lucky guess,' he said. 'But, still, you say there are exceptions -women who simply aren't drawn to motherhood and babies, who haven't filled that space with substitutes and aren't running away from their own terrors.'

  'Yes. Which is why you can't make one rule for all women, why women have to be able to choose.'

  'And are you one of them? The exceptions?'

  'Ah - so you do want the personal answer, after all,' she said, sighing. 'No. I like babies fine. I do think they're cute. I wish I'd been able to be around more while my sister's kids were little. And I haven't given up hope of having one or two of my own. - Don't read anything into that.'

  'Wouldn't think of it.'

  'Just for the record, you could have been a little less eager to agree,' she said, and sighed. 'I'm not what men want. I know that. And I'm not interested in trying to be what men want. - No, that's not really true. I understand it well enough, and I'm not one of those women who find the whole thing disgusting. It just doesn't come naturally to me. I'm a tone-deaf siren, a wallflower at the mating dance. And I do wonder why men can't want me for me. I'm smart, I don't defer, an
d I didn't put making babies number one on my list of priorities. Does that disqualify me somehow?' 'It shouldn't,' he said. It doesn't. Now give me a clue or three about what you want, and where you think you might find it -

  There were two messages waiting for them in the morning. The one from Brohier advised them that he would be remaining in Washington for a few more days. The one from Horton asked for their best estimate of when Baby would be ready to travel.

  'Something's happened,' Gordon said. They've made some kind of deal.'

  That would be good news, wouldn't it? Or did you want to live like this forever?'

  'It's not good news. Brohier's going to hand the Trigger over to the Pentagon, and Horton's going to stand by and let him.'

  'You don't know that. The boss promised me -'

  'It's inevitable. If they were thinking globally they'd be in New York, visiting with the Secretary General of the UN. Look, Brohier's not in Washington to cruise Embassy Row. He's in Washington because he's a nationalist at heart. He doesn't want to do anything that might weaken his country.'

  'And that's a problem for you?'

  'It's seventeenth-century thinking, not twenty-first-century thinking. Strong armies, strong city-states, strong walls. But there are no walls anymore. We have a global culture and global commerce built on science and technology. Every attempt to politicize scientific knowledge has been an unmitigated disaster. Information wants to be free.'

  'What do you expect from them? Dr Brohier is as proud of his National Medal of Science as he is his Nobel Prize.'

  'Brohier is a throwback,' Greene said with disgust. 'Look, I expect Brohier and Horton to think about the politics of the Trigger. I

  expect them to act like Homo sapiens sapiens, not Americans. We're supposed to be outgrowing our tribal mentality, not reinforcing it.'

  'Are the two mutually exclusive? It's perfectly reasonable to make sure your own home is safe before charging off to save someone else's.'

  'But giving the Trigger to the military amounts to hoarding the fire hoses and then wondering why our neighbors' houses are burning down. Come on. Lee - I know you can't want this to end up in the same warehouse with the Ark of the Covenant, the cold-fusion turbine, and the Roswell UFO.'

  Lee was shaking her head. 'You're so paranoid that you're starting to make me feel normal by comparison. No, I don't want to see the Trigger used to make the powerful invulnerable - it's good for people like Nkrumah and Morana and Son Lee to have to worry about finding themselves on the wrong end of a gun. But I can't believe that we'd give the Trigger to people like that.'

  'You don't think our government still plays the game of propping up our friends and weakening our enemies? I didn't think you were that much of an innocent.'

  'Gordie, I'm not naive about politics, I'm bored to tears by it -there's a difference. Church politics, city politics, national politics, international politics, it's all the same, just an endless pissing contest punctuated by the occasional bloody brawl.'

  'You can't pretend the outcome doesn't matter -'

  'It's as inconsequential to me as the outcome of the next Ohio State football game -'

  His face showing mock horror, Greene made a cross of his forefingers and held it up before him as though warding off a demon. 'Heathen child!'

  'It's my heretic heart,' she said agreeably. 'As far as I'm concerned, you could call the whole season off, and apart from the quiet and the improvement in the traffic near campus, I'd hardly notice the difference. Which is pretty much how I feel about elections, family feuds, hostile takeovers, superhero comics, professional hockey, and action movies. I'd keep the Olympics, but get rid of the national uniforms - everyone represents themselves. No medal counts.'

  'You're a totally alien creature.'

  'I thought we agreed on that last night,' she said. 'Gordie, seriously - maybe I am naive to trust the promise the boss made me, that we'd see the Trigger used to liberate rather than oppress. But it seems to me that making a disarmed world work is going to require a lot of trust, and I'm willing to take that chance. We have to be willing, or we're dead at the start.'

  'Except Horton isn't in Washington - Brohier is,' Greene pointed out. 'What kind of promise did he make you?'

  She had no ready answer for that, save a frown. 'It doesn't matter anyway,' she said, turning to her work. 'What could we do, even if we had proof you were right? Arrange an "accident" that'll destroy the lab and kill us? Run away with Jeff's babies and see how long we can keep one step ahead of the FBI? Publish the notes and specifications on the Internet and let chaos come?'

  'I'd be willing to think about at least two of those.'

  'Well, I'm not,' she said, turning back toward him. 'Like it or not, we're committed to this course. And if the first mass-produced Triggers are built by TRW and installed in the White House basement, the Pentagon courtyard, Air Force One, and the Social Security Data Center, so what? It's a Trojan Horse, Gordie. Because you can't use the Trigger in self-defense without disarming yourself at the same time.'

  They'll find a way around that.'

  'By the time they do, we'll have the size down to a suitcase and the price down to a good deskstation, and Triggers will be everywhere, creating little oases of sanity,' she said. 'Or maybe we'll have boosted the range so much we'll just build three great big ones and park them in Clarke orbits a hundred and twenty degrees apart. That's something Washington can make happen, and Tehran can't.'

  'It's worse than I thought,' he said gloomily. 'You're an optimist, too.'

  'Bite your tongue,' she said sharply. 'The optimist only sees the up side, just like the pessimist only sees the down side. I'm a meliorist. I see the possibilities. You have to have hope, Gordie. The kind of stars-in-your-eyes, feet-on-the-ground hope that lets you see a better world hiding in the shadow of this one - and warns you that only hard work will bring it into the light.'

  By the time she finished, Greene was eyeing her with a curious expression that seemed one part skeptical amusement and three parts surprised admiration, or perhaps the other way around. 'You really are something else, Dr Leigh Thayer,' was all he said, in a voice so carefully neutral that it didn't reveal which way the balance finally tipped.

  'Funny, that's what it says in my FBI surveillance file, too.' Her gaze narrowed, but her eyes betrayed her with a twinkle. 'But how would you know that, unless - you're one of them.'

  'Hah. I'm not just one of them - I'm the original one.'

  'Just as I suspected all along,' she said, her face relaxing into a smile. 'Look, what do you want to tell the boss about the timetable? I should have my part wrapped up by the end of Friday - Saturday noon at the latest.'

  'Tell him ten days.'

  She squinted questioningly at him. I thought you were closer to being finished than that.'

  'A week, then.'

  'Gordie, what's this about? You're just tinkering with the power trailer now.'

  'I think we need to burn in the portable - at minimum power - for seventy-two hours before we move it. Bounce it around a bit, too.'

  'Why?'

  'So we'll know we can count on it during the move.'

  'Still thinking about FBI agents in pursuit?'

  He shrugged. 'About what else is in those shadows. We might as well have the benefit of our own creation, both here and when we leave here. I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.'

  'You're sure you're not just digging in your heels and trying to slow down the Terabyte express?'

  'I'm sure,' said Greene firmly, then added, '- though I'm not saying I wouldn't if I thought I could.'

  She nodded understandingly. I'll tell the boss that the prototype is ready whenever, and the portable will be seven to ten days. He won't question it. He knows it's only the two of us here, and that we're doing the best we can.'

  'I don't want to ask you to lie for me -'

  'I won't,' Lee said. 'I'll just say we're not quite ready.' She glanced around the lab, now strip
ped of not only every personal touch, but all traces of the work that had been done there, and sighed lightly. 'This was the job of a lifetime. And it's over. I know that. But I'm not quite ready to leave.'

  * * *

  9: Colloquy

  Algiers, Algeria - Opening ceremonies of the World Islamic Progress Conference were disrupted by a deadly rocket attack that killed thirty-two and wounded scores more, including visiting Egyptian President Mohamed Khaled. In retaliation, Algerian Prime Minister Zaoui ordered ground and air assaults on Hassan Hattab strongholds in Z'Barbar and Tipaza. Later, in an interview on CNN, Zaoui denounced 'the blood merchants of France and America' for selling advanced weapons to the anti-government insurgents.

  Complete Story Anti-Terrorism on WIPC Agenda

  Khaled Addresses Conference From Hospital Bed

  None of the three men waiting restlessly in the Oval Office anteroom was a stranger to the White House, but none of them were accustomed to being treated like beggars at the back door.

  Before his anti-gun activities made him a political leper, Grover Wilman had been one of the Republican Party's rising stars. Coming late to politics, he offered a mature visage unburdened by a long legislative pedigree, and found himself cast as the worldly-wise war hero. Between Congressional briefings, legislative strategy sessions, and media events, he had logged more than sixty visits to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, most during the first term of President Evans.

  Because power has always and everywhere courted wealth, and wealth invariably returns the favor, Aron Goldstein also knew the White House well. He had been favored with invitations to social events and State dinners by four successive Presidents, including Evans. In a deft and delicate balancing act, Goldstein had managed to preserve his virtue while retaining both their interest and his access. By neither begging for favors nor buying them, he achieved a reputation for integrity which made him more welcome in those circles than any mere money-man could be.

  By contrast, Karl Brohier had only been inside the White House on two occasions, but both had been red-carpet events. The first had been President Engler's campaign-season 'cattle call' of Nobel Prize winners. In that now-infamous embarrassment, Engler had tried to claim credit by proxy for America's scientific successes. Minutes later, Bartlesmann, the recipient of the prize for medicine, pointed out from the same South Lawn podium that Engler had cut the Federal science budget in half, and killed the program under which Bartlesmann himself had received his doctoral training.