"Let's return to your specific situation, then, Mr. Forrester. What did you do?
This was a question he had prepared for. Susan Wright was certain that it would be the most damning part of his testimony. In order to minimize the chance of the truth being twisted, they had practiced his answer.
"What did I do? he repeated, playing for time. "Well, I knew that the event cascade that I'd identified would involve people and organizations in a number of jurisdictions, because of what it was. The problem was that none of them had the responsibility, or the authority, to consider the situation globally. I couldn't simply have alerted the Metro Bureau of Water Resources, because all they were concerned with was whether the lock on the river operated properly, not what might happen if the top few feet of the lake were to suddenly go downstream. Besides, unless something was to make the lock inoperable " " and even the drainage failure below it a few years ago didn't do that " " it was purely conjecture. It's not something they're really interested in.
"Fine, Glendon said. "So we know what you didn't do. What did you do instead?
"I told the others at the conference. After all of the scheduled events have finished, there is usually an informal gathering where the folks that are still around can discuss how it all went, and make suggestions for the next conference. Well, one subject under discussion was what to do with a few thousand dollars left in the organization's account after all of the expenses were paid. It was presented as a challenge: how to get the most use out of the money. Quite a number of suggestions were offered. As you might imagine, with a group like that, the value derived from spending the money was achieved through applying it, like a lever, to an event cascade which required a bit of priming, sort of like a pump.
The courtroom was very still. After all of the testimony regarding the details of what happened at the other end of that river, of the damage caused by all of the water surging through the system, his narrative was a bit like playing a few bars of the theme after the concerto's rousing climax had subsided. He thought for a moment, and then continued.
"I wanted as many people as possible thinking about the potential results of a failure of that lock. And I thought that the best way to do that was to pose the question, what would happen if that money was spent on enough explosives to destroy the lock? My expectation was that once the others realized what might happen, a number of people would independently report it to a variety of different places. I never expected that any of them would conduct the experiment.
"And yet someone did, the prosecutor said calmly. "Someone took your suggestion as a challenge, or perhaps as a request for action, and destroyed the lock. Someone followed your directions, Mr. Forrester, and a lot of people died.
"But it never should have happened. Not the destruction of a city a thousand miles away. What I saw, the potential event cascade that I saw was that all of that water would create a storm surge along the river. A surge like that ought to have scoured the riverbed, and improved the river's navigation channels. The Corp of Engineers had dredged those channels, and would have been spared the time and expense of clearing them for another ten years. That surge should have been a net benefit to cities and industries up and down the river.
"I guess you were wrong, Clendon said lightly.
"I guess I was. But that's because the condition reports filed by the Corps of Engineers all these years have been falsified. The flood control dams hit by that surge should have withstood the pressure, according to the reports they filed. They shouldn't have failed, yet they did. The navigation channels they dredged should have guided the extra current down the center of the riverbed, but instead, they collapsed, and that released all of the toxic waste that has been hidden beneath the riverbed while they took kickbacks and looked the other way. Healy dam was designed to protect the Constongo Gas pipeline, not to collapse on it. Every step along the way, that surge exposed the results of decades of graft and corruption on the part of government contractors, intended to enrich the companies at the cost of our environment. And that, sir, is why I have subjected myself to five months of being called a terrorist. I knew that the only way for the people of this country to see what has been done in their name, and with their money, was for it to be exposed in a court case that could not be swept under the rug, because the public execution of an accused terrorist sells the most ads of anything on any channel or in any newspaper.
"That cascade I saw, Mr. Clenden, led right to this moment, and I was determined to ride that wave all the way to the beach. That, sir, is why I did it.
The reporters had already bolted by the time the prosecutor found his voice.
Susan Wright sat back and grinned. Winning isn't always about winning.
THE END
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