Free Empire by Orson Scott Card Page B

fingerprints all over them. Cole figured he could pretty much rule out denying that he was there.
    There were a lot of other pedestrians streaming onto the Roosevelt Bridge. Usually pedestrians wore jogging clothes. Now they were in suits, or women walking miserably on high heels.
    At times like these, people rethought their dependence on cars. Started wishing they could live in an apartment in the city and walk to work. Then, when the crisis passed, they’d see how far those apartments were from grocery stores and movie theaters, and how old and rundown they were, and even those who went to the trouble of looking at rentals were stunned at how little you got for the money, and pretty soon they were back behind the wheel again.
    But these pedestrians staggering across a bridge devoid of automobile traffic except for the occasional military vehicle meant something else, too. They were a victory for the terrorists.
    Weirdly, though, it was a defeat for them as well, Cole realized. All the oil money that funded them—if we no longer burned oil for transportation, if we really became a pedestrian world, then what would the whole Middle East be but a waterless wasteland with way too many people to feed themselves?
    But that’s what these diehard Islamists wanted. For the whole world to be as poor and miserable as the Middle East. For us all to live the way the Muslims did in the good old days, when the Sultan ruled in Istanbul. Or earlier, when the Caliph ruled from Baghdad, fantastically wealthy while the common people sweated and starved and clung to their faith. And if it meant reducing the population of the world from six billion to half a billion, well, let eleven-twelfths of the human population die and Allah would sort them out in heaven.
    What the terrorists aren’t counting on, thought Cole, is that America isn’t a completely decadent country yet. When you stab us,we don’t roll over and ask what we did wrong and would you please forgive us. Instead we turn around and take the knife out of your hand. Even though the whole world, insanely, condemns us for it.
    Cole could imagine the way this was getting covered by the media in the rest of the world. Oh, tragic that the President was dead. Official condolences. Somber faces. But they’d be dancing in the streets in Paris and Berlin, not to mention Moscow and Beijing. After all, those were the places where America was blamed for all the trouble in the world. What a laugh—capitals that had once tried to conquer vast empires, damning America for behaving far better than they did when
they
were in the ascendancy.
    â€œYou look pissed off,” said Malich.
    â€œYeah,” said Cole. “The terrorists are crazy and scary, but what really pisses me off is knowing that this will make a whole bunch of European intellectuals very happy.”
    â€œThey won’t be so happy when they see where it leads. They’ve already forgotten Sarajevo and the killing fields of Flanders.”
    â€œI bet they’re already ‘advising’ Americans that this is where our military ‘aggression’ inevitably leads, so we should take this as a sign that we need to change our policies and retreat from the world.”
    â€œAnd maybe we will,” said Malich. “A lot of Americans would love to slam the doors shut and let the rest of the world go hang.”
    â€œAnd if we did,” said Cole, “who would save Europe then? How long before they find out that negotiations only work if the other guy is scared of the consequences of
not
negotiating? Everybody hates America till they need us to liberate them.”
    â€œYou’re forgetting that nobody cares what Europeans think except a handful of American intellectuals who are every bit as anti-American as the French,” said Malich.
    â€œYou think we’ll do it?” said Cole. “Bottle ourselves up and let the world go to hell?”
    â€œWould it be any