David's Sling (34 page)

CLICK
. Bill blinks slowly for the camera. His tone changes; he is done reading. He waves his hands in an impatient gesture, and synopsizes. "The 'unpredictable' men and women include both Nell Carson and Hilan Forstil. And the 'indecisive' list includes both Jim Mayfield and the Speaker Of the House, Avery Faulke. Ladies and gentlemen, until the selection of Hilan Forstil as our new vice president this afternoon, Faulke was the next man in line for the presidency."

CLOSE. CLOSE
. "The men who wrote this summary believed that they could manipulate Faulke, but that they could not manipulate either President Carson or the new Acting President, Hilan Forstil. Did the Soviet Union instigate this attack on our president in the hopes of putting Faulke into power before the selection of a new vice president? It would be very dangerous for us to disregard the possibility if it is true. But it would be equally dangerous for us to believe it, if it is false."

His trembling stops. He presses on with his best Zetetic assessment of the facts, trying hard to avoid truths that might not be real.

Jet turbines hummed with their fiery power just beyond the confines of the curved metal walls of Nathan's prison. Recycled air from the nozzle overhead blew dry and cold across his face, stealing the moisture from his throat and his eyes. He swallowed a little wetness, while his mind fell into itself. He angrily pondered the current absurdity. He sat in an airplane, performing lazy circles at 30,000 feet, while Nell lay unconscious in Walter Reed Hospital.

He blinked in the face of the air nozzle, then twisted out of its way. He joined Hilan in watching Bill Hardie on one of the monitors, moaning softly as the story built an array of evidence that the Soviet Union had ordered Nell's murder.

"That idiot!" Hilan muttered at the close of the broadcast. "What's he trying to do, start another war?" The engine hum quietly emphasized the danger. They were sailing somewhere over the middle of the United States, in case the assassination was the first step in some grander plan. Nathan focused on Hilan again, forcing himself to think of Hilan in his new role: Acting President Forstil.

Nathan shook his head. "You can tell he's trying to make a Zetetic presentation, but he still has a lot to learn. Meanwhile, even if Hardie were a perfect Zetetic commentator, he is speaking to a non-Zetetic audience. Both the speaker and the listener must know how to play their parts, or the communication will fail anyway. By the end of this broadcast, half the people in the country will think it was all a Communist plot. "

Hilan shook his head. "And the worst part of it is that they may be right."

Nathan started to object, but Hilan continued. "Ted Muhlman was a Communist party member for several years, though he left over a decade ago. In the past couple of years, he's been in and out of mental institutions, suffering from grandiose fantasies. Was he Communist or was he crazy? Or perhaps a little of both? Did the KGB whisper in his ear, egging him on? And that ceramic pistol he slipped through the metal detectors—you can't pick one of those up from a Sears catalog. How did he get one?" Hilan closed his eyes. "And if the Russians really did pull this stunt, what do we do about it? Put out a contract on Klimov?"

Nathan shook his head sharply. "No! He might push the button if we did that. "

Hilan threw his hands in the air helplessly. "So we just do nothing." He threw his head back into the high airplane seat. "It just doesn't pay to be a superpower. "

Nathan rolled his eyes. All he could think of was Nell. All he wanted to know was that she would be all right. But these thoughts had nothing to do with the crisis they now faced. "We must keep a clear perspective on what has happened here." He started ticking off the key points. "First of all, we'll probably never know if the Soviets ordered it or not. "
Nell!
his thoughts screamed.
If they did this
,
I want to kill them.
"Second, it almost doesn't make a difference whether they were behind the attack or not. There's a more frightening, more basic problem here: if that Revised Assessment of the Global Consequences of Nuclear War really reflects Soviet policy, the Russians are willing to risk nuclear war any time a weak man occupies the White House."
Thank God, Nell, that you were there
,
that you were strong!
Will you ever be there again? Will you ever be strong again? "Hilan—President Forstil—for every Nell Carson in U.S. politics, there is also a Jim Mayfield. For every Hilan Forstil, there is an Avery Faulke. If that Soviet Doctrine remains in force when another man like Mayfield becomes president, well go through this nightmare again. There will be more Irans, more Afghanistans, more—"

''No!" Hilan trembled. "There has to be another choice."

Nathan asked, "Is that document real?"

Hilan exhaled slowly. "As nearly as the CIA can tell The Soviet government apparently created that doctrine." He smiled. "Of course, as I'm sure you'd point out, just because a government bureaucracy creates a document doesn't mean that particular individuals know about it. Nor does it mean that particular individuals agree with it, or that they would necessarily follow it." He quoted the Zetetic line,
"Institutions
do not
know
anything; only individuals have knowledge." He shrugged. "Unfortunately, that summary predicted recent events perfectly. And it
was
commissioned by Yurii Klimov himself, shortly after he entered the Politburo. It may not be Soviet doctrine, but it's probably Klimov's doctrine." Hilan grimaced like a trapped animal. "Jesus, he's younger than Gorbachev was when he came to power. Klimov could be in charge for decades." He pounded the arm of his chair with his fist. "And there's nothing we can do about it. There's no way to protect ourselves from Klimov, except to elect an unbroken succession of strong presidents. And well certainly fail to do that."

The plane bounced as it hit an air pocket. They climbed, then leveled off. Nathan felt his throat growing even drier, knowing what he would now offer. "We do have another alternative. I know another choice—an Information Age choice—that is so dangerous, so frightening," he paused, lost for words, and finally smiled, "so
incredible,
that it scares even me."

Hilan looked at him questioningly.

"We know that the HighHunter is a flexible yet reliable weapon. We built it with small Crowbars that killed tanks. Next we built it with larger Crowbars that killed ships. Now we can build a bigger one, a specially designed one, that kills hardened missile silos."

Hilan continued to stare.

"All the Russian submarines were wiped out in the war. The bomber fields are soft targets, easy to destroy. The mobile missiles on railroad cars have been tracked with near-perfection for years. Only the missiles in hardened silos are invulnerable to existing weapons—and we can destroy
those
with a new Crowbar, a SiloHunter. In principle, we can kill every Russian missile capable of reaching the United States. We can disarm them as a nuclear power. "

"A preemptive first strike?"

Nathan nodded. "A
nonnuclear
preemptive first strike. No exploding warheads. There might not be any human casualties at all."

"But if something goes wrong, if they still have a few missiles afterwards, if Klimov decides to shoot them rather than lose them, we could end up with a whole planet covered with casualties."

"Yes.

The hum of engines tightened around the silence, as two frightened men stared at one another. Nathan spoke. "I wasn't necessarily recommending this as a course of action I was pointing it out as an alternative—one that we won't have for long. The Russians are already studying the HighHunters, and the significance of the Flameout. They'll figure out the dangers of a SiloHunter, and there are a number of ways they can protect their silos, once they're alerted."

Hilan laughed—the laughter of a man on the verge of tears. "It certainly does put all our eggs in one basket, doesn't it?" He continued very softly. "But the alternative, to pray that we never have a president like Mayfield again, is like putting all your eggs into a basket with no bottom. Jesus, what an awful choice." He held his head in his hands. And then Hilan Forstil, a man who had made his life a demonstration of power and confidence, moaned like a small child. "I don't know. I don't know." He reached in his pocket and pulled out a small swiss army knife. He played with it as he spoke, more to himself than to Nathan. "You know, ever since I made that trip with Jan, I've been different. Whenever I face a crisis so difficult that I can't imagine how to cope with it, I remember that
I am a man who has climbed a MOUNTAIN
. What obstacle can challenge a man who can do such things?" He breathed deeply, and once again he was the president.

The airplane started a gentle descent. An aide appeared at Hilan's side. "Mr. President, there have been no followups to the assassination. With your permission, we'll return to base."

Hilan nodded. "Very well." He smiled at Nathan. "I presume you're off to see how Nell's doing."

Nathan smiled back, despite his surprise. Had his thoughts of Nell been that obvious? "Of course. I just hope they let me in; I'm not exactly family or anything."

"They'll let you in. You'll go as my envoy."

Nathan nodded his thanks. "I have something for you as well." He fumbled for a pen and paper, wrote down a telephone number and a password. "There's going to be a decision duel tonight, an important one. One of our best students is dueling for his certification.
Join it.
" He stressed the words.

Reluctantly, Hilan nodded. "I presume there's a particular reason for this?"

"Of course." Nathan smiled mischievously. "Isn't there always?"

Jessie Webler looked at the dueling screen with both pleasure and disappointment. He sat in the left-hand duelist's chair, like a chess master preparing for the world championship, suspicious that his opponent was leaving him alone during this quiet pre-game time specifically to increase his anxiety.

Such a chess-playing opponent would have smiled, for the psychological impact of the waiting was clearly taking its toll. Jessie played with the computer's trackball for a moment with rapid, exacting movements. Next he sat quite still, relaxed and unfocused. Finally, he sat as though staring into a dark shadow where monsters dwelled, while he pulled at his moustache in short jerks. His moustache had several bare patches as a consequence, exposing the chocolate-brown skin beneath.

As he shifted between relaxation, playful rolling of the trackball, and anxious tugging at his upper lip, Jessie recognized the swirl of emotions rolling within him. Sometimes, he confessed to himself, he felt the silly yet dangerous anxiety of a student taking his final exam. Jessie found this anxiety unacceptable, though understandable: it
was
his final exam. He was about to begin his certification duel. The statement he defended hung on the main screen, immutable and self-evident: NO SITUATION CAN JUSTIFY A PREEMPTIVE FIRST STRIKE AGAINST THE SOVIET UNION.

Pleasure, disappointment, and anxiety. His pleasure came from his confidence that he would win this duel. His disappointment came from his confidence that it would be an easy victory. His anxiety came from a suspicion that perhaps his immutable statement was too obvious. Perhaps the answer was so obvious as to be wrong.

The pleasure and the disappointment seemed like natural echoes of Jessie's whole life. Throughout school he had been top in his class, always enjoying his successes, yet always a little saddened by how easily they came to him. Some people accused him of arrogance, though he didn't feel arrogant inside. Other people accused him of brilliance, though he didn't feel brilliant, either. Indeed, he worried about people's definition of brilliance. Jessie made mistakes all the time. If he himself qualified as a brilliant man, despite his regular failures, what of the others? If a fellow who made mistakes as frequently as Jessie did could qualify as the cream of the human crop, did mankind really have enough smarts to survive? Pondering this question, the anxiety seemed natural to Jessie as well.

When he had first encountered the Zetetic Institute, the concept of the decision duel had staggered him with its elegance. Jessie recognized it immediately as a belated but correct response to human gullibility, derived from research performed in the '60s and '70s. In those long-ago experiments, psychologists had uncovered several critical facts, facts that no one acknowledged at the time, though they seemed obvious upon reflection.

The researchers had studied jurors in court trials. One group of jurors attended the trial in the usual way: they sat in the courtroom, watching the defendants, the accusers, the lawyers, and the judge. They watched the whites and the blacks and the men and the women, with blond hair and black hair and blue eyes and brown, wearing pinstripe suits and t-shirts, supported by lawyers both flashy and quiet. The psychologists discovered that the jurors made incorrect judgments with disturbing frequency.

So the second group of jurors did not see the trial: they heard it. They heard the voices of the defendants and the accusers and the lawyers and the judges. They heard the Southern accents and the Boston accents and the ghetto accents. They still made errors, but not so many.

So the third group of jurors did not even hear the trial: they read it. They read the transcripts of defendants and accusers and lawyers and judges. Even dull, dry transcripts did not erase all distinguishing marks from the men and women in the courtroom: the college grads and the high school dropouts
still
used different words and different expressions. And the jurors still made errors. But they made fewer errors than either of the other two groups.

When Jessie first heard about those dusty experiments and their obvious results, he wondered why America had not responded with a prompt and efficient transformation of the court system. Surely, decisions on human imprisonment were important enough to demand the most accurate possible decision-making processes!

But the court system had not changed, not even over decades of intervening time. Indeed, the results of those studies had quietly disappeared into history, remembered by almost no one. It was through this quiet human forgetfulness that Jessie encountered another of the most frightening features of the human psyche: men tend to remember facts that support the beliefs they already hold. They forget facts that contradict those beliefs.