'Did he carry the table with that?'
'Seemed so to me.' He paused. 'Grover, for a couple of months after Breland's speech, I kept hearing variations on "It's a shame they didn't have a Trigger" - talking about some killing in the news, some tragedy that didn't have to be. There was a woman at table five that night who said something I hadn't heard before -'
'"It's a shame they didn't have a gun."'
Groesbeck looked at him with surprise. 'Were you here, and I just missed you? Yes, that's what she said - with exactly the same mixture of anger and regret that I used to hear from the others.'
'I wasn't here,' Wilman said, and drained the last of the soft drink. 'All I had to do was think of the last thing I wanted to hear - nostalgia for the good old days, when real Americans kept pistols in their nightstands.'
'You can't get away from the fact that if one of those victims had a gun -'
'-Somebody would probably be dead,' Wilman finished. 'Maybe one of the rapists. Maybe one of their victims.'
'And maybe those three men would have just stayed in their condo, drinking away their self-pity,' said Groesbeck. 'You can't escape the fact that some guns did some people a world of good, and the Trigger's taking those guns away, too. I know, you like the tradeoffs - but, then, none of those women was your daughter.'
'No,' Wilman said. 'Just like none of those men was my son. I don't want my daughters raped, Marty - but I don't want my sons shot to death, either. Why should I have to choose between those alternatives?' He stood up from his stool and gestured at the empty bottle. 'How much?'
Groesbeck grunted. 'Just hand over your debit card. - But, much as I need the money, in the future you might think about asking the price before you commit yourself.'
'When the price makes a difference to me, I do,' Wilman said, surrendering his card. 'But not every decision can be made with a calculator. - In fact, I doubt that any of the important ones can be.'
In theory, there were eight different ways for Karl Brohier to reach Jeffrey Horton.
The standard comset Terabyte Laboratories issued to its employees was a Celestial 3000 Personal Office - which, by no coincidence, incorporated Terabyte solid-state memory and was built in a factory owned by Aron Goldstein. The Gee-Three would accept voice, flat video, page, and priority page signals in real time, and store voicemail, 3-D video, fax, and hypermedia for playback on a base station. And with three-band global pointcasting, Celestial claimed that its customers enjoyed 'universal connectivity, from pole to pole and mountain to sea'.
But there was nothing Celestial could do about a customer who muted the ringer, disabled the pager, and allowed his mailbox to fill up with sex ads and get-rich schemes. There was no technological recourse when a man simply didn't want to be reached.
For more than a week, Brohier had peppered Horton with urgent entreaties to come back to Princeton. The longer they went unanswered, the more anxious and impatient the director became. Toward the end of the week, he was driven to violate his own security rule for unpublished work. Trusting Celestial's kilobyte encryption, Brohier sent Horton the key equations he wanted to discuss, hoping to tempt his protege into at least a long-distance collaboration.
'I have taken this as far as I can on my own, Jeffrey,' Brohier said in the attached message. 'I need the Ruyens transformations verified, and some help with the beta combinametrics. Then it will be time to bend metal, as the engineers say.
'We thought we had already seen the whole opera. When you look at these files you'll realize how naive we were. Everything that's happened so far amounts to no more than the overture. I hope you will help me write the finale - but if you choose not to, understand that I will have to turn elsewhere. I can't bear the thought of leaving this work unfinished. As it is, I can hardly keep from dancing a giddy jig around every physicist I see.'
But to Brohier's disappointment, even that appeal did not bring any response - not even regrets and good wishes. He allowed forty-eight hours to pass, then reconsidered and extended his personal deadline another day, but to no avail.
Even then, it was difficult for the director to bring himself to turn his back on Horton, and he took a long slow walk through the Institute woods to think it through.
It was impossible for him to be angry. More so than with any of the other bright young talents Brohier had recruited at the founding of Terabyte, his feelings toward Horton had taken on something of the flavor of the relationship between accomplished father and promising son. Whether Horton realized it or not, he was the heir apparent, the son Brohier expected to eventually take over the 'family business'.
And just as it would be for a father, it was hard for Brohier to know that Horton was struggling, and harder to realize that there was nothing Brohier could do to help him through it. In a way, Brohier felt that he had failed Horton - failed to prepare him for the weight that had fallen on his conscience.
And yet, who could have anticipated where it would lead? How often had a theoretical physicist even needed a conscience?
After all, it wasn't science which had transformed the world, but the marriage of technology and capitalism. The ignorant might blame science for the ills and evils of the modern era, but that was a case of mistaken identity - no research scientist ever polluted a water table with PCB, or performed a third-trimester abortion, or denied someone insurance based on a genetic screening, or turned the Internet into a covert way of peering into private lives.
Real scientists were invisible outside their own circle of peers. Even Nobel Prize recipients barely registered on the public consciousness, as Brohier well knew. A Heisman Trophy or an Oscar counted for far more - there was no market for Heroes of Science trading cards. Status was still measured in arcane units: by-lines, citations, appointments, grants.
No, apart from the occasional entrepreneur like Sagan or Pauling, it took the heavy hand of politics to raise a scientist to the status of household name, and to confer a moral polarity on the research they pursued. Einstein gave Roosevelt the roadmap to an atomic bomb. Eisenhower injected Salk's vaccine into the arms of twenty million schoolchildren. Von Braun and his Germans built Kennedy a moon rocket.
And Jeffrey Horton handed Mark Breland the Trigger.
Though he himself had played a role in that, Brohier's own conscience was clear. He harbored a lifelong contempt for those who resorted to violence to resolve their problems, and especially for those who used violence to trump decisions made by rational or democratic means. Like many of his calling, he both lived in and believed in a meritocracy, in the triumph of superior ideas and the leadership of superior men.
The enemies of civilization were the terrorist, the bandit, the assassin, the bully, the anarchist - precisely because of the way petty men of no accomplishment could bring the good and great low with the squeeze of a trigger or the push of a button. It was a perversion of the natural social order, a kind of rabid egalitarianism that would not tolerate another's success.
In Brohier's eyes, violence was not merely the last refuge of the incompetent. It was the gloating revenge of the sore loser.
The quintessence of civilization was the concept of good sportsmanship, and its principles were easily understood - graciousness in victory, acquiescence in defeat. They could be seen in the way outgoing Presidents surrendered their offices, the way Oscar losers applauded winners, the way victors showed mercy to the vanquished. They could even be seen in a gentlemen's duel that ended in death, because that'contest had rules which were binding on both sides.
But terrorist violence - the shot from the dark, the bomb in the mail, the blackmailing threat - was the antithesis of civilization. And, by Brohier's lights, class violence was indistinguishable from terrorism. That was why the director had been lenient with Lee and Gordie after the Cleveland incident. Brohier had no brief for gun-wielding thugs out to terrorize good people who were playing by the rules.
Still, he was under no illusions. Civilization was hard, and terrorism was easy. The tensio
n between order and chaos was ubiquitous and eternal. Brohier knew in his heart that logic and reason were easily drowned out in the human dialogue by the insistent voices of passion and self-interest.
Even so, he firmly believed in the bootstrap theory of progress - that even a minority committed to reason, to excellence, to the high principles of civilization, could make a difference. Society was not led from the middle, but from the top - by the ideas of the thinkers, the discoveries of the explorers, the creations of the inventors, the words of the philosophers, the marvels of the builders, the sacrifices of the pioneers.
As he was fond of saying: rudders are, as a rule, much smaller than the ships they steer. Leverage mattered.
Leverage, and which hands were on the wheel.
That was what the Trigger represented to Brohier - leverage. Leverage that could be used to turn society in the right direction, toward a saner and more civil existence. And if it was not enough leverage, or if more hands were needed to hold the wheel steady in rough seas, then it was incumbent on him to do what he could to help.
In the end, that was what swung the decision - an obligation deeper and stronger than that which his feelings for Horton could command. Sitting in the sun on a bench at the edge of the woods, he realized that he had waited for Horton as long as conscience would allow. It was necessary to go forward without him.
On his return to his office, he wrote a brief note to Samuel Bennington-Hastings:
When you have a few minutes, I'd like to talk to you about something I've been working on.
It seemed as though Brohier had barely lifted his hands from the keyboard when the young mathematician opened his door and poked his head in.
Testing Ashby's interdimensional transport, Dr Sam?' Brohier asked with a raised eyebrow.
Bennington-Hastings beamed a bright smile. 'I was afraid that you'd be planning on eating your usual dinner, and -' he touched his chest and made a guttural sound like an explosion '- I'd find you face-down in the smashed potatoes.'
Brohier laughed. 'Come in, Dr Sam. Come in and take a look at this.'
There was no trace of the playful sprite when Samuel Bennington-Hastings talked mathematics.
'This - this is wrong,' he said, swiping at the whiteboard with a cloth. 'The relationship is asymmetrical - you see, here is the correct expansion, and this value falls out on the right side.'
Brohier frowned unhappily. 'Then the covalent function is indeterminate.'
'Of course. This entire recapitulation is unnecessary. Where did you get this?'
That section provides the morphological inertia that restores the initial resonance matrix.'
Bennington-Hastings made a scoffing sound. 'Sheldrake. I'll erase it.'
'Wait - wait. If I lose that function, then there's nothing to restore the time-zero eigenstate. The material won't return to its initial condition.'
There is nothing in what you've shown me to indicate that it should.'
'But would the new eigenstate be stable?'
'If the solution set for the resonance matrix is complete and meaningful - and if stability is a feature of the solution set.'
Pressing his right hand to his cheek, Brohier turned away and walked to his desk. He picked up his cup of Indian coffee and sipped at it as he considered both the threat and the opportunity in Bennington-Hastings's contention.
'I had been expecting - counting on - a morphological safety net,' Brohier said at last. To create a local change that lasts only as long as the input continues, and then to have the material revert to type under the influence of its universal resonance parameters. Peer pressure to conform, if you will.'
Bennington-Hastings glanced back at the whiteboard. 'As Descartes said of god, I have no need of that hypothesis.'
'We can change the information envelope permanently.'
'I see nothing here that forbids it.'
Then we also could destroy the information envelope.'
'I see nothing here that forbids that, either.'
Brohier set his cup down with an unsteady hand and walked back to the whiteboard. Reclaiming the marker from Bennington-Hastings, he gestured at the lower right quarter of the board.
'Correct me if I'm mistaken, but this is consistent with the parameters of a matter-antimatter reaction,' he said. Erasing the morphological extension with his sleeve, he scribbled several mathematical symbols in the vacant space. 'You see? The values for particle and antiparticle cancel, and their bound energy is released in mutual annihilation. Remove the resonance matrix -'
'And we will have direct experimental evidence of the conditions at the beginning of the Universe,' said Bennington-Hastings. 'Sadly, our funerals would have to be closed-casket.'
'Brohier's Last Theorem.'
'Very much so.'
Their light tone belied a sobering realization - that an elemental energy discharge from matter stripped of its matrix would dwarf not only the largest man-made explosion ever, but every cataclysm Earth had witnessed since the Yucatan impact.
'Perhaps I'll take another look at the Sheldrake hypothesis,' Bennington-Hastings volunteered, breaking the silence. 'We wouldn't want to have any unexpected outcomes when you take this off the whiteboard and into the laboratory.'
'I'm going to revisit every piece of it, from top to bottom,' said Brohier grimly. 'My tolerance for uncertainty is suddenly very thin.'
He did not share the rest of his thoughts, which were to haunt him for days to come. We are already running this experiment. We have altered the information envelope of human culture, and changed the behavior of its constituent matter. Have there been any unexpected results? Have we prevented many small calamities - or laid the groundwork for the one great calamity that will shatter everything?
In the wake of the successful test of the Twins and the departure of Jeffrey Horton, the Annex had reached a cusp. The first question Leigh Thayer and Gordon Greene had taken up after taking over was whether the lab still had a mission - and if so, whether it was one that required the Nevada facilities.
The problem is that this place is too big and too small at the same time,' Greene had explained to Goldstein and Brohier in a videoconference. 'Too many people spending too much time together too far away from civilization - the pioneering spirit eventually wears thin, especially when there's no place to go to get away from each other. At this point, these people feel like they've built the bloody bridge for the Colonel. It's time to either pack up and go home or turn the camp into a settlement.'
Thayer had a different perspective, but had reached the same conclusion. The test and development situation is impossible - my labs and the test range should have been isolated from everything else from the beginning. With the uprated Mark I and the Mark II, we're always impinging on the whole campus, including the apartments. At this point, I don't know if it's going to cost more to move the test units or the residences and support facilities, but somehow we have to separate them. If we don't, I can't see that it's worth keeping the Annex open.'
It was Goldstein who had reduced both their presentations to the essentials. 'So we either put more money into the Annex, or write off what we've already spent there. We need to decide whether to make the Annex a permanent part of Terabyte.'
'Exactly,' Greene and Thayer had said in unison.
'Very well. Karl and I need to talk. We'll let you know as soon as there's a decision.'
Two days later, Brohier had delivered the answer - the surprising answer, since it made no economic sense whatsoever. Goldstein was acquiring an additional nine square miles of property adjoining the Annex site, and opening the corporate purse for a thoroughgoing transformation of the facility.
'There are two conditions,' Brohier had informed them. 'One, that both of you agree to stay on at least until your recommendations have been implemented. And two, that you make certain we have at least one operational test unit available throughout the transition.'
Then it had been Greene and Thayer's turn to consult in
private.
'What do you think?' Greene had asked.
'We're talking about a commitment of at least a year, wouldn't you say?'
'I'd guess two, allowing time for all the dust to settle. Can you stand the thought of another two years out here?'
She had shrugged. 'I'm ambivalent. I like the air. I hate the heat. I love the night sky - all the stars. I miss the color green.'
'What about the work - and the company?'
'I can see some potential in both,' she had said, with the barest hint of a hopeful smile. 'What about you? You're the footloose one. Aren't you missing Columbus, all those student dives filled with Girls of the Big 10 candidates?'
Greene had laughed. 'I like the scenery here - and the challenges. I'm planning to stay.'
Then I suppose I will, too.' Then she had smiled sweetly and added, 'After all - you'd be in deep trouble trying to handle it all without me.'
Nearly seven months had passed since then, and the first phase of the metamorphosis was now complete. Security chief Donovan King now had responsibility for an unfenced sixteen-mile-long perimeter guarded by four thousand sensors, five four-wheel-drive trackers, and a whisper-quiet cherry-red helicopter that mounted a million-candlepower light pod, rocket flares, and dye bombs. Donovan was unabashedly enjoying his new toys, and there had been several unconfirmed sightings of off-duty staff officers wearing black't-shirts bearing the puckish logo AREA 5.1 SECURITY.
In the southwest corner of the enlarged Annex site, a new Village had sprung up on the rise above a dry arroyo. It boasted three paved streets, twenty new homes, a half-acre of irrigated grass as park and playground, a general store and late-night grille, a fitness and recreation hall with a first-class minitheater, and the Family Center - one wing of which was a health clinic, and the other a day-care facility.
What the Village did not have yet was any residents, though many Annex workers had already packed their apartments in anticipation of the move. But they were at the mercy of the building inspector for Eureka County - a part-time post currently held by the owner of the largest building-supply dealer in central Nevada. The inspector had already canceled two appointments and failed to appear for a third.