The Human Division (20 page)

“Are we sure it’s from the State Department?” Birnbaum asked.

“I’m checking the name right now,” Smart said. “Yup. It’s a deputy undersecretary for space affairs. Small fry in the grand scheme of things.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Birnbaum said. “Get him on when we come back. I’m going to light him up.”

“Her,” Smart said.

“Whatever,” Birnbaum said, and girded himself for battle.

*   *   *

Having furnished the pictures, Birnbaum fully expected Washington’s clients to furnish a war. What he wasn’t expecting was a blitzkrieg.

Birnbaum’s show numbers for the day were actually about 1 percent below average; fewer than a million people heard his rant live, streamed to the listening implement of their choice. Within ten minutes of the rant, however, the archived version of the rant started picking up listeners. Relatively slowly at first, the archived version’s numbers began to climb as more political sites linked in. Within two hours, the archived version reached another million people. Within three, it was two million. Within four, four million. The show archive’s hits grew at a roughly geometric rate for several hours afterward. Overnight there were seven million downloads of the
Voice in the Wilderness
PDA ’gram. By the next day’s show—a show devoted entirely to the subject of the Colonial Union, as were the next several shows—the live audience was 5.2 million. By the end of the week, it was twenty million live streams per show.

Like a crack in an overburdened dam, Birnbaum’s pro–Colonial Union rant created a rapid collapse in a polite silence from various political quarters, followed by a swamping flood of agreement with Birnbaum’s vituperation for the current administration position of holding the Colonial Union at arm’s length. Birnbaum had occupied a sweet spot in the media discourse—not so influential that he was unable to promote a potentially unpopular (and possibly crazy) theory, but not so obscure that he could be dismissed outright as a kook. Too many Washington insiders, politicians and journalists knew him too well for that.

The administration, wholly unprepared for the tsunami of opposing views on this particular topic, flubbed its immediate response to Birnbaum and his followers, beginning with the unfortunately clueless deputy undersecretary for space affairs who had called in to Birnbaum’s show, who was so thoroughly dismantled by Birnbaum that three days later she tendered her resignation and headed to her home state of Montana, where she would eventually become a high school history teacher.

At least she was well out of it. The government’s response was so poorly done that for several days its hapless handling of the event threatened to eclipse the discussion of the Colonial Union itself.

Threatened but did not eclipse, in part because Birnbaum, who knew a good break when he saw one, simply wouldn’t let it. From his newly elevated vantage point, Birnbaum dispensed opinion, gathered useful tidbits of information from insiders who, two weeks before, wouldn’t have given him the time of day, and set the daily agenda for discussion on the topic of the Colonial Union.

Others attempted to seize the issue from him, of course. Rival talk show hosts, stunned by his sudden ascendancy, claimed the Colonial Union topic for their own but could not match his head start; even the (formerly) more influential show hosts looked like also-rans on the subject. Eventually, all but the most oblivious of them ceded supremacy on the topic to him and focused on other subjects. Politicians would try to change the subject; Birnbaum would either get them on the show to serve his purposes or harangue them when they wouldn’t set foot into his studio.

Either way the subject was his, and he milked it for all it was worth, carefully tweaking his message for statesmanlike effect. No, of course the Colonial Union should not be excused for keeping us in the dark, he would say, but we have to understand the context in which that decision was made. No, we should never be subjugated to the Colonial Union or be just another colony in their union, he’d say other times, but there were distinct advantages in an alliance of equal partners. Of course we should consider the Conclave’s positions and see what advantages talking to it holds for us, he’d say still other times, but should we also forget we are human? To whom, at the end of the day, do we truly owe our allegiance, if not our own species?

Every now and again, Louisa Smart would ask him if he truly believed the things he was saying to his new, widely expanded audience. Birnbaum would refer her to his original answer to the question. Eventually Smart stopped asking.

The new monthlies came in. Live audience of the show was up 2,500 percent. Archived show up a similar number. Forty million downloads of the PDA ’gram. Birnbaum called his agent and told her to renegotiate his latest contract with SilverDelta. She did, despite the fact it had been negotiated less than two years earlier. Walter Kring might have been a six-foot-ten-inch alpha male right through to his bones, but he was strangely terrified of Monica Blaustein, persistent Jewish grandmother from New York, five feet tall in her flats. He could also read a ratings sheet and knew a gold mine when he saw it.

Birnbaum’s life became the show and sleeping. His thing on the side, miffed at the inattention, dropped him. His relationship with Judith, his third wife, the smart one, the one who had maneuvered him out of the prenup, became commensurately better in nearly all respects. His son Ben’s soccer team actually won a soccer game. Birnbaum didn’t feel he could really take credit for that last one.

“This isn’t going to last,” Smart pointed out to him two months into the ride.

“What is it with you?” Birnbaum asked her. “You’re a downer.”

“It’s called being a realist, Al,” she said. “I’m delighted that everything’s coming up roses for you at the moment. But you’re a single-issue show right now. And no matter what, the fact is this issue is going to get solved one way or another in the not-all-that-distant future. And then where will you be? You will be last month’s fad. I know you have a shiny new contract and all, but Kring will still cut your ass if you have three bad quarters in a row. And now, for better or worse, you have much, much further to fall.”

“I like that you think I don’t know that,” Birnbaum said. “Fortunately for the both of us, I am taking steps to deal with that.”

“Do tell,” Smart said.

“The Rally,” Birnbaum said, making sure the capital “R” was evident in his voice.

“Ah, the rally,” Smart said, omitting the capital. “This is the rally on the Mall in support of the Colonial Union, which you have planned for two weeks from now.”

“Yes, that one,” Birnbaum said.

“You’ll note that the subject of the rally is the Colonial Union,” Smart said. “Which is to say, that single issue that you’re not branching out from.”

“It’s not what the Rally is about,” Birnbaum said. “It’s who is going to be there with me. I’ve got both the Senate majority leader and House minority leader up there on the stage with me. I’ve been cultivating my relationships with them for the last six weeks, Louisa. They’ve been feeding me all sorts of information, because we have midterms coming up. They want the House back and I’m going to be the one to get it for them. So after the Rally, we begin the shift away from the Colonial Union and back to matters closer to home. We’ll ride the Colonial Union thing as long as we can, of course. But this way, when that horse rides into the sunset I’m still in a position to influence the political course of the nation.”

“As long as you don’t mind being a political party’s cabana boy,” Smart said.

“I prefer ‘unofficial agenda setter’ myself,” Birnbaum said. “And if I deliver this election, then I think I’ll be able to call myself something else. It’s all upside.”

“Is this the part where I stand at your side as you roll into Rome in triumph, whispering ‘Remember thou art mortal’ into your ear?” Smart asked.

“I don’t entirely get the reference,” Birnbaum said. His world history knowledge was marginally worse than his United States history knowledge.

Smart rolled her eyes. “Of course not,” she said. “Remember it anyway, Al. It might come in handy one day.”

Birnbaum made a note to remember it but forgot because he was busy with his show, the Rally and everything that would follow after it. It came back to him briefly on the day of the Rally, when, after stirring fifteen-minute speeches from the House minority leader and the Senate majority leader, Birnbaum ascended the podium and stood at the lectern on the stage of the Rally, looking out at a sea of seventy thousand faces (fewer than the one hundred thousand faces they had been hoping for, but more than enough, and anyway they’d round up because it was all estimates in any event). The faces, mostly male, mostly middle-aged, looked up at him with admiration and fervor and the knowledge that they were part of something bigger, something that he, Albert Birnbaum, had started.

Remember thou art mortal,
Birnbaum heard Louisa Smart say in his head. He smiled at it; Louisa wasn’t at the Rally because of a wedding. He’d rib her about it later. Birnbaum brought up his notes on the lectern monitor and opened his mouth to speak and then was deeply confused when he was facedown on the podium, gasping like a fish and feeling sticky from the blood spurting out of what remained of his shoulder. His ears registered a crack, as if distant thunder were finally catching up with lightning, then he heard screams and the sound of seventy thousand panicked people trying to run, and then blacked out.

*   *   *

Birnbaum looked up and saw Michael Washington looking down at him.

“How did you get in here?” Birnbaum asked, after he had taken a couple of minutes to remember who he was (Albert Birnbaum), where he was (Washington Sacred Heart Catholic Hospital), what time it was (2:47 a.m.) and why he was there (he’d been shot).

Washington pointed with a gloved hand to the badge on his chest, and Birnbaum realized Washington was in a police uniform. “That’s not real,” Birnbaum protested.

“Actually it is,” Washington said. “I usually work plain clothes, but this was useful for the moment.”

“I thought you were some sort of
facilitator,
” Birnbaum said. “You have
clients
.”

“I am and I do,” Washington said. “Some cops tend bar on the side. This is what I do.”

“You’re joking,” Birnbaum said.

“That’s entirely possible,” Washington said.

“Why are you here now?” Birnbaum asked.

“Because we have unfinished business,” Washington said.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Birnbaum said. “You asked me to pimp a pro–Colonial Union story. I did that.”

“And you did a fine job with it,” Washington said. “Although at the end things were beginning to flag. You had fewer people at your rally than you had anticipated.”

“We had a hundred thousand,” Birnbaum said, weakly.

“No,” Washington said. “But I appreciate you making the effort there.”

Birnbaum’s mind began to wander, but he focused on Washington again. “So what unfinished business do we have?” he asked.

“You dying,” Washington said. “You were supposed to have been assassinated at the rally, but our marksman didn’t make the shot. He blamed it on a gust of wind between him and the target. So it fell to me.”

Birnbaum was confused. “Why do you want me dead? I did what you asked.”

“And again, you did a fine job,” Washington said. “But now the discussion needs to be brought to another level. Making you a martyr to the cause will do that. Nothing like a public assassination to embed the topic into the national consciousness.”

“I don’t understand,” Birnbaum said, increasingly confused.

“I know,” Washington said. “But you never understood, Mr. Birnbaum. You didn’t want to understand all that much, I think. You never even really cared who I worked for. All you were interested in was what I was dangling in front of you. You never took your eyes off that.”

“Who
do
you work for?” Birnbaum croaked.

“I work for the Colonial Union, of course,” Washington said. “They needed some way to change the conversation. Or, alternately, I work for Russians and the Brazilians, who are upset that the United States is taking the lead in the international discussions about the Colonial Union and wanted to disrupt its momentum. No, I work for the political party not in the White House, who was looking to change the election calculus. Actually, all of those were lies: I work for a cabal who wants to form a world government.”

Birnbaum bulged his eyes at him, disbelieving.

“The time to have demanded an answer was before you took the job, Mr. Birnbaum,” Washington said. “Now you’ll never know.” He held up a syringe. “You woke up because I injected you with this. It’s shutting down your nervous system as we speak. It’s intentionally obvious. We want it to be clear you were assassinated. There are enough clues planted in various places for a merry chase. You’ll be even more famous now. And with that fame will come influence. Not that
you
will be able to use it, of course. But others will, and that will be enough. Fame, power and an audience, Mr. Birnbaum. It’s what you were promised. It’s what you were given.”

Birnbaum said nothing to this; he’d died midmonologue. Washington smiled, planted the syringe in Birnbaum’s bed and walked out of the room.

*   *   *

“They have the assassin on video,” Jason from Canoga Park said, to Louisa Smart, who had taken over the show, temporarily, for the memorial broadcast. “They have him on video injecting him and talking to him before he died. That was when it happened. When he revealed the plot of the world government.”

“We can’t know that,” Smart said, and for the millionth time wondered how Birnbaum managed to talk to his listeners without wanting to crawl down the stream to strangle them. “The video is low resolution and has no audio. We’ll never know what they had to say to each other.”

“What else could it be?” Jason said. “Who else could have managed it?”

“It’s a compelling point, Jason,” Smart said, preparing to switch over to the next caller and whatever
their
cockamamie theory would be.